Soilrich Tales

Police sirens cried passed the dirt road; two cars in hot pursuit of the red convertible ahead. As Rebbeca Nile tried escaping her pursuers.

Clasping her foot down hard on the paddle, and geared up to gain more speed; with her Gloved hand tightly rubbing against the steering wheel and a beating heart threatening to break through the bone barricade of her chest.

frightened of what Fate awaits her if-ever the police following behind, caught her.

Though not an expert driver, her efforts at handling the stolen car, would impress even a retired motorcar racer. Maneuvering The Toyota to evade the fallen tree branch.

As the red vehicle capsized right into the main road of town leaving a haze of dust and dirt behind, before the two police cars, burst through the cloak of dirt and almost oversteered off road into a horrible crash hadn't one of the cars braked just in time.

A cuss was shouted from one of the cops, as they resumed momentum and kept heading off to catch up on the convertible.

Looking back through the rear view mirror, Rebbeca smiled at the advantageous distance between her car and the cops; knowing if she could Make it out of Soilrich, through the south tunnels, she was as free as a bird taking first flight into the open word.

And start all over a more honest, and decent life. Without needing to rob or burgler-in to someone's home. And most importantly, free from her brother.

But when an unexpected POP!!!. Snapped her out of the thought, the car began to rattle and rumble, no thanks to one of her tires, puncturing over a rock. And caused her tank to leak a trail of fuel.

her anticipated escape plan was spoiled; and her control over the car began to fail, causing the car to swirl out of place with an almost tilt, threatening to roll over, but settled in place, steaming of smoke.

Panting her lungs out, the woman gasped for breath almost chocked herself inhaling dry cold air; she tried calming her tensed-up breathing. Her nearly blacked out mind returned to the preset; listening to the sirens drawing nearer.

She'd quickly remembered that jail time was nigh if she sat there any longer, and grabbed her 6 cartridge pistol and abandoned her vehicle.

Sighting the cornfield, across the road, wrapped in a fog that's never left or softened; the same well known Cornfield plagued by a cover of bleakness filled with silent horrors of untold experiences, that still haunt the minds of old folk of Soilrich.

But thinking too much wasn't an option, the given five seconds she had needed a decision, to hide in the only place even the most wanted of criminals wouldn't dare venture into?. Or the opposite side, run into the open field across the train tracks; heading back into town, and possibly get shot by the cops?. Or just give up?. No, he wasn't going to give up nor die.

"I'll find my way out," she said, and began to trotter towards the misty crops "I just won't go much further, than i can handle."

And with her mind made up. Rebbeca would force her soul to consider this very first and last choice to find refuge in this godforsaken land; said to be inescapable with more than a dozen cases of people who went through those cornstalks, were never seen again.

A labyrinth of maize, intriguing many, bizarrely attracting scientists and experts to study this everlasting fog; caused by no known natural weather conditions.

A supernatural phenomena that had Rebbeca praying it would hide her for few hours, so she may leave behind this cursed town, her unpleasant past and the recent crime, behind her life.

Having went more than five meters into the cornfield, she waited and listened, aiding her eyes which weren't advanced enough to see through the grey cloud hazing through the land.

Relying on her ears, she monitored sound to make out whether her pursuers dared in walk after her; as she did catch sound of the two cars parking and the sirens go quiet, or if they'd wait.

Now it felt like a gamble as who would outwait the other. Not planning on going any further into the field, The woman, glanced at her wrist watch and only two hours remained before it would get dark.

"MISS NILE.. WE KNOW YOU'RE IN THERE!!!" Suddenly a deep voice spoke through a megaphone.

"AND WE ARE WILLING TO GIVE YOU A CHANCE TO COME OUT." It was them, the cops she thought and slowly took steps backwards, snapping some stems and dried leaves under her boot heel; attentively keeping her ears on the police.

"LOOK. MISS NILE, YOU KNOW THE CORNFIELDS AREN'T SAFE, SO PLEASE DON'T ADD TO THE LIST OF MISSING PERSONS, THAT WENT IN THERE AND NEVER SEEN CAME OUT AGAIN!" The voice rang and echoed through the corn, and Rebbeca now contemplated cooperating.

"I should... No.. I can't." She whispered indecisively, as her breath puffed out her lips and the tip of her nose began to get itchy, as the cold within the cornfield started to frail her body warmth.

Remaining silent, and grasping hard on a cornstalk, breaking it in her fist as the conflict of being trapped between making a choice had her immobilized, without a comforting thought of what outcome she would face.

Her silence responded back to the cops, as she could hear faint words, suggestions between the officers; they'll wait for her till nightfall, while having other lawmen close off alternative exits around town, and blocking the highway.

Having no other choice and definitely not wanting to get caught by night, in this morbid and unholy field.

" I'm coming out," she shouted her response of surrender."I'm coming"

Walking through the corn, and clearing away the cornstalks with her hands, she kept on proceeding back the way she ran from.

But with each step she took, the further into the cornfield she felt she was going; the silence of her pursuers began to frighten her and she'd shout repeatedly, attempting to make communication but nobody responded back and now her heart felt aloof realizing the maze of crops had swallowed her into it's cold inescapable belly.

"Hey?!..Hey! Anybody?" Her outcry shrilled but only to fade away into the mist, as if the world beyond was vacant with any form of help.

Trying her best to stay calm and desist her eyes from tearing up. She quickly ran fast and pushing and pulled away the corn, as her feet crashed and snapped and kicked through the loam soil; Tears beyond control or restrain, ran down her cheeks, mind sinking down into a horrible thought of she was going to die; like many others. A death in the one place even priests had condemned and compared to hell, televangelist's preaching about and declared it as Satan's cold farm devil plants.

Rebbeca ran fast but more corn, leaves and dirt was what her body endlessly charged through. Then precipitately banged painfully headfirst against a pole; Halting her in place, a sudden stop that left her with a nasty cut on her temple, aching in waves throughout her head.

She took a moment to breath and glanced at the tall pole she never saw, being in the way. As her wound left her senses bewildered.

for a lengthy amount of time. She'd study the object and looked up at it, seeing a shoe peeking through the fog; dangling on the pole, but more was there she didn't see clearly for the haze had thickened like a sheet of thick smoke.

Then as her sight adjusted and the fog gave glimpses of what the pole had, a hung body down from it. A dead body of a man. Stiffly held up by a noose around his neck, a hanged cadaver, giving a sight that flooded Rebbeca with terror and dread beyond belief.

"Oh god!, no no,no,no,no,no!" she turned away from the horrid image, trying to convince herself, it wasn't real, she didn't just see a corpse hung on a pole that stood a few meters tall, overlooking the cornfield.

Unable to bare this unholy discovery, she ran from there; ignoring the throbbing pain on her head and dazed state she's in. She continued to run until she gasped out her shock, as another pole blocked her way and with it, hung two more bodies.

Daad bodies that mystified the unknown nature of this place; one of a child and another of an elderly woman."Could it be Jane? And miss Doyle?" She wondered, if what she saw was, the girl who went missing three years ago. And her babysitter?

She asked herself as the overwhelming discovery tripped her back on her butt and sat looking up at the decaying bodies; skin dry and pale blue, infested wounds rotting down to the muscles and bone.

The moment passed with an ironic subtlety, Baffled at what or who hanged these people. What monstrous heartless psycho would end the life of the curious innocent soul of jane; though having not met the child formally, her heart ached for Jane. Remembering her cutesy nature and infectious personality; or what inhumane twisted mind would think of killing an old woman who never looked for anyone's trouble?.

Only an evil as old as this town, If not older; had such level of cruelty to deem them deserving of this blasphemous punishment. The cornfield had revealed to Rebbeca, how uncaring and cold it was. Unmasking a mystery darker than fathomed, that bewildered many folk since 1799, when the first colony arrived to occupy this land and disappeared without a trace, months before Soilrich would be a settlement.

An uncertain form of death loomed around Rebbeca as she felt the stranger cold brash passed her back; was she going to be an addition to the list of those hanged by an unknown force acting as judge, jury and executioner against those who dared venture into this accursed field?.

A thief, carjacker and accomplice to a hit and run murder, Rebbeca listed out each sin she ever committed, questioning how will her fate end. Undoubtedly worse. If her end would be painless or quick?. Excruciating and unmerciful?

Questions was all she had, as she sat there on the dampened soil.

Unable to make peace with it, and without the will to surrender just yet; to end up dying without earning a right to a marked grave. Rebbeca remembered she had her pistol tucked warmly against her thigh in her jeans. And that was enough to fight against whatever fiend haunted this place.

Making up her mind to shoot her way out or having tried her best. She'd steady herself, wiping off the thin trail of blood on her face and nursed her head wound with the sleeve of the Navy blue jacket and glanced at her Watch, almost 5:50pm it was and she had to escape before the merciful light of the sky, dimmed into darkness and permanently sealed her fate in the abysmal of unsolved cases boxed away forever.

She began to stride. This time with minor speed and more caution. More focus and no room of fright to choke her into a breakdown.

Keeping her direction straight, she knew no matter how large the field was, a straight uninterrupted or sidetracked walk will lead her somewhere; hopefully to freedom. As freedom was now escaping for her life, be caught by police or slip away into a new fresh start, wasn't her concern anymore. Any prison cell was better than this hellish realm of unknown terrors cloaked within a cold and blinding grey filtered air.

She walked through the stalks, and came out to find a narrow path going left and right. A sign that brought her a form of hope, but which way should she take?; That annoying feeling of indecisiveness returned again but she couldn't keep going forward through hundreds if not thousands of cornstalks. Cussing at herself, she followed the trail leftward. Which neither curved nor turn, a straight long trail she walked through.

The immeasurable amount of silence almost convinced her she had gone deaf, hadn't it been for her own thick breathing. Her boots making thuds as she took each step forward, on the dirt, reminding her sound wasn't absent from her ears but she was probably the only living, moving creature there.

Feeling a bit tired and even much colder, Rebbeca wondered if this trail was just mockery from the cursed fog, playing with her mind as the path didn't end. And seemingly felt like she was walking in a loop. Left and right sides looked the same. All was corn; East and west unknown, south and north was undetermined. The air hardly moved, and time though moving by suggestion of her silver beaded watch, time seemed to have stopped.

Already at the brink of considering that sinful act offered by the gun she carried. An option that felt as if the devil disguised as a saint, persuading her. Feeling that warmness chime against her thigh; as suicide! danced around her mind, to save herself from all this torment and fire a bullet into her brain. And end it all.

Suicide in a place like this would only lead her soul into a long journey of wandering this maze as a spectral entity trapped forever only to torture and torment the next unfortunate person to come here. While trying to distract herself from the thought, she saw a pole unlike the first two she saw. It was narrow with nails pinned on either side all the way up to a box, And thats when her eyes widened; realizing it was a landline phone.

'Of course!' she thought. Two of those phones were installed here, to call for help if ever someone got lost.

Quickly she'd pace to the pole and climbed up the old rusted nails. The half assured sign of hope had grown more now, exciting her heart to beat faster and warmer than ever. And with each climb, she knew that whatever Deity that governed humanity and beyond was watching down at her and evidently proved he or she or it was real.

And finally after climbing more than 8 meters off ground. She clung to the pole and opened the box, indeed a phone was there with the wiring correctly in place and commenced from the box, through long thin line, stretching away to whatever help she was going to reach. Grabbing and placing the fashioned phone against her ear.

"Hello?, hello is Anyone there?" She spoke listening on the faint ringing sound. As the device had no button or switch to turn.

"Hello? Please! Is there anyone there. I need help, I'm lost in the cornfields. The old cornfields by the train tracks."

As her words came out in shivers. She held on to the phone and prayed wholeheartedly that someone would answer her. But nobody responded for almost five minutes before a voice responded. "Hey! yes. hello?"