I grew up on a corn farm about thirty miles outside of Salina. This would've been late seventies, early eighties. The farm had been in my family since the forties, my grandfather bought it after the war, and my dad took it over in '68. I'm calling because I've been thinking about this a lot lately. Something I saw out there. Something we all saw, actually, but nobody really talks about anymore. My sister mentioned it last Christmas, just in passing, and it all came back. So I figured I should finally tell someone. The property was big. Two hundred acres of corn, mostly. We had some wheat on the north forty, but corn was the main crop. During harvest season, those fields went on forever. Row after row after row. You could get lost out there if you weren't careful. I knew kids who did.
This started in the fall of 1978. I was fourteen. My brother Tommy was twelve. We'd been helping with the harvest that year, not the actual combining, we were too young for that, but running errands, bringing water out to the crew, that kind of thing. My dad had this old John Deere that kept overheating. I remember because he was in a foul mood about it all week. The first time I saw them was a Tuesday. Late October, right around dusk. The combine had broken down again, some belt or pulley, I don't remember exactly, and Dad sent me out to the east field to grab a toolbox he'd left by the irrigation pump. I took the ATV, which I wasn't really supposed to do without permission, but it was getting dark and I didn't want to walk. The sun was almost down. That time of day when everything goes orange and the shadows get long. The corn was still standing in most of that field, maybe seven feet tall. We hadn't gotten to it yet. The fireflies were out, drifting between the rows. It was quiet. Just the sound of the ATV and the corn rustling in the breeze.
I was maybe fifty yards from the pump when I saw movement. Between the rows, about thirty feet to my right. At first I thought it was Tommy. He liked to follow me around sometimes, try to scare me. But then I realized the figure was too small. Maybe three and a half feet tall. The size of a young kid, maybe six or seven years old. I stopped the ATV. The figure stopped too. Just stood there between the corn stalks, not moving. I couldn't see details, it was mostly in shadow, but I could see the outline. Small body, large head in proportion to the body. Arms that hung down too long, if that makes sense. I called out. 'Hey! You lost?' Nobody answered. The figure just stood there. Then it moved, and that's when I knew something was wrong. It didn't walk. It kind of... jerked forward. Like someone was pulling it on strings. One moment it was standing still, the next it had moved maybe five feet closer, but I didn't see it actually take steps. Just this sudden, stuttering movement.
[ Story continues in the full game... ]