The Harvest Moon Pact

No one born in Marrowfield asked questions during harvest.

Not when the fog came early.

Not when the scarecrows bled.

Not when the woods screamed after dusk.

Every year, just before the harvest moon rose high and red, the elders selected one name. Written in bone-char, placed in a folded black cloth, and burning in the center of the town square while the chosen stood barefoot in a circle of salt and ash.

This year, the name drawn was Silas Grieve, 17 and angry, with a mouth too sharp for his age.

He laughed when they told him he’d been chosen. A tradition based on fear and fairy tales, he said. You people burn bones and expect blessings. You’re all lunatics. But no one laughed with him. Not even his mother. She whispered, Run, and the ground will eat you.

Still, Silas refused. He’d seen no gods. No monsters. Only tired men with dirt under their nails and women who stitched herbs into doorframes, like it would keep the world from cracking open.

On the night of the harvest moon, Silas waited in the field. Alone. No fire. No elders. Just stalks of corn, whispering as they swayed.

The wind died.

The earth exhaled something foul.

Then he heard a sound, a wet shuffle, like meat dragged across burlap. Something walked upright, but not well. Its bones cracked with every step. A face like stretched bark. Eyes like candle wicks. No mouth, only a stitched X.

And it was hungry. Silas ran, but he didn’t make it far. Not because it was faster. But because the corn moved for it, turned for it, and wrapped Silas’s legs in roots slick with old blood. He fell, screaming, as the thing approached, slow and certain, the way rain falls before a flood. It pressed its stitched face to his.

Silence.

Then it opened its chest. Inside were all the names. Every name chosen from every year. Faces etched into its ribs. Mouths moving in soundless agony. Now there’s a new face there. Silas. And this year, the corn is redder than ever.