“It's got meeee!” Rock wailed, as the shadowy fifteen-foot phantom seized her in scythe-long claws and dragged her into the air.

The two adventurers certainly had not expected to encounter such bizarre resistance. Only minutes earlier, they had emerged from a wooded stand to stand before an open area of fields and hillocks. To the west, a treeless ridge jutted against the inky evening sky. A red glow outlined its ominous form. Not the sun, for that had long set: instead, an ominous red hue lit the only feature on its jagged edge—an abortive black silhouette, a broken finger pointed towards the sky. The husk of a mill. The grave of a witch.

Between them and their ultimate destination, a farmhouse and a shed sat upon a rise, with fields of tended crops nearest them. The fields were arranged in patchwork quilts of seeds and soil. Spaced evenly throughout these, perhaps fifty feet apart from each other, tall scarecrows built from sticks and hay stood as silent sentinels.

Behind the two travelers, the phantom bullies had remained apace, flinging the occasional stone and taunt. “Go on up then, old witch!” continued their repetitious chant.

“Do you see anything about this that strikes you as…unusual?” Alexis had said, considering the fields before them.

“I see a lot of pumpkins that aren’t being made into pies,” Rock had scowled.

“Do catfolk eat pumpkin?”

“You have no idea,” Rock had returned, licking her lips.

However, as soon as the catfolk had taken her first eager step towards a collection of cultivars, the nearest scarecrow had come to life. Wrenching its spindly legs from the dirt, it fell towards Rock with a speed belying its shaky makeshift assemblage. The catfolk froze in momentary surprise, and this was all the opportunity the scarecrow needed to lift her up in its cobbled claws.

This is what had elicited the loud hopeless yowl. Alexis was momentary reminded of his childhood home of Greatwater, where alley cats would detail their despondency outside locked tavern entrances. But this was no simple alley cat, and she was in danger of more than a discomforting drizzling downpour.

“Witch! Witch!” This time the boys screamed in earnest. Their false bravado finally broken, their figures fled back into the enveloping shadows of the forest, where they were lost to time and memory.

Alexis’s left hand flew to his book bag; while he could easily resummon his eldritch magic, the bonfire had been a stationary target, and it had not held a hostage in its grasp. Alexis feared he was just as likely to strike his newest friend as he was the fiend.

The dilemma quickly resolved itself, however, when the animated scarecrow simply walked to the edge of the pumpkin field and deposited Rock unceremoniously in the brush. It then returned to its original location, where it had held vigil for at least the past decade.

Rock stood up, blinked, and brushed herself off. “Well, that’s another of my nine lives gone.”

“Oh? How many do you have left?”

“Lucky for me, I can’t count.”

Alexis replaced the flap on his satchel. “To be fair, I don’t think you were actually in any real danger. Look at this field. Look at these crops. Mad Maub has been dead for ten years, yet someone still tends to them, planting seeds, pulling weeds, and harvesting when the time is right.” He pointed to the steadfast scarecrows. “This is how she did it. We saw from the incident in town that she is (or was) very skilled at animating lifeless objects. An array of pumpkins. An entire bonfire. I think a small squadron of automated scarecrows to help her work the fields each season, protect the crops, and carefully remove any hungry wildlife would be well within her powers.”

The scribe rubbed his chin. “Though it would appear her earliest constructions were much more benign. I wonder if it was death that sparked a murderous rage.”

“Whatever. Okay, here’s the plan. You go distract that overgrown bundle of hay, and I’ll grab one of those sweet sweet pumpkins.”

“We’re not here to steal pumpkins,” Alexis returned. “Although…now that I think about it, you may have the germ of an idea there.”

Like their smaller brethren, catfolk could be incredibly speedy, when it proved necessary. Rock first performed some necessary stretches, digging her nails into the bark of a tree and arching her hips and back in a manner physically impossible for humans. Then she sprinted across the fields at a lightning pace, her orange fur a blur in the night.

The distraction tactic worked, and the weathered contraption tottered after her. Its creaking joints could not hope to match Rock’s blazing speed, and she kept well beyond its reach. Alexis, too, kept far away from its lengthy limbs, angling in the opposite direction that his friend was baiting.

In only a few hectic and frenetic moments, Alexis and Rock both stood safe at the far side of the pumpkin patch, breathlessly watching the scarecrow return to its original position. Its patrol apparently ended at the physical border of the fields: no longer sensing any immediate threat to itself or its harvest, the scarecrow repositioned itself on its respective mound, until time and the elements might finally reduce it to rubble.

The two adventurers resumed their journey to the west. Rock now held a small squash in her paws, and she easily split it into two halves with her claws.

“Pumpkin?” she offered, mumbling around a mouthful.

* * *

They discovered the shed where the last ten years of harvest had been dumped. There were three distinct layers of sediment to the massive mound. At the top, freshly picked yellow corn and green cucumbers began their slow and inexorable rot. Beneath them lay a layer of shriveled brown strips and shapes—the same sorts of vegetables, but from last year. And further beneath that, a waist-high mound of rich compost communicated the results of the past decade’s produce.

“It’s a shame the villagers in Bayn o’Boon never took advantage of this automatic farming system,” Alexis declared. “But to them, the moving scarecrows probably make this whole area feel haunted. Then again, it probably is.”

Adjacent to the shed was the lone dilapidated farmhouse where Mad Maub had once lived. It had obviously been unkept for years: several of the wooden slats were fallen from the walls, and the thatch roof was collapsed in three places. In approaching the door, Rock’s paws squelched into a thick morass of mud.

“This is odd,” she remarked. “It didn’t rain today.”

“Nor would it have likely rained exclusively in this defined of an area,” agreed Alexis, who then pointed. “Look. The wet area leads directly to the house itself.”

Unlike the shed, whose walls had been erected from layered stones, the farmhouse was a wooden affair. Time had not been kind to its form, and the sogginess of the soil had seeped into the planks along the foundation, riddling them with rot and moss and mold.

The front door was ajar. From within the darkened interior just visible, a dull thumping noise emanated. There was a brief splash of water, and the thumping noise receded.

When it was still and silent again, Rock cautiously pushed open the front door. “Well, that’s weird,” she said helpfully, as she entered.

Alexis followed the sound of her voice. His human eyes adjusted slowly to the gloom, and he noted three interesting facts. First, his foot fell through the spongy floorboards of this main room as soon as he’d entered; the rot was coming from inside the house. Second, a cauldron sat in a dark, unlit fireplace. It was filled to its brim with water, which had spilled over the edge and onto the stone hearth. This cascade eventually worked its way out into the room, turning the house into less of a home and more of a swamp.

Third, this state was due to another of Mad Maub’s old animated constructs. A humanlike figure composed entirely of brooms and broom handles entered the room from a far door, carrying a wooden pail of water. It added its load to the cauldron (which immediately splashed out across the floor) and then spun to the rear exit, likely towards a well. The bucket it’d carried was split along a seam, and it dribbled water as it went.

“I guess Maub had left it to fill the cauldron for her, right before she died.”

Together, Alexis and Rock examined the contents of the house that were still identifiable. Clay jugs and jars were still serviceable (if a bit slimy), but a small wooden table looked eager to topple over at the slightest provocation.

“Look here,” Alexis noted, pointing to a stack of books near a window. “It seems at least one person in Bayn o’Boon knew how to read after all.”

Ignoring Rock’s earlier complaint, Alexis relit his hand lantern and examined the moldy piles. The sheets themselves were beyond repair, having solidified into single soggy masses, but the titles were still faintly visible. Alexis read them aloud.

“‘Animating Objects for Fun and Profit.’ ‘The Homesteader’s Guide to Basic and Useful Magic Around the Domicile.’ ‘Necromancy or Transmutation? A Comparison of Practicality.’ ‘Unseen but not Unappreciated: Making Your Servants Work for You!’” Alexis shook his head as he replaced the disintegrating tomes. “Mad Maub wasn’t a witch at all. She was a student of the arcane arts. It’s regrettable, really; I think she would have found a welcoming home, back in Cloisterkeep.”

Rock was not listening; instead, she was sniffing the air suspiciously. There was more than just an overpowering cloud of mold and spores in the atmosphere. There was a sickly sweet smell of decomposing meat as well. Some sort of creature had died nearby.

There was one more door to the house, other than the front and the rear—one other room they’d not yet explored. Closed panels separated their space from the source of the stench.

The two travelers exchanged a nod and approached the frame. Alexis grasped the small wooden handle, sliding aside the bar that functioned as a lock. He pulled the door open.

From within, a stand of rusted armor spun to greet them. For its left arm, it wielded a meat hook; and for its right, a cleaver.

The animated butcher lumbered greedily towards Alexis and Rock, eager to add them to its stores.