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i.
The first time she notices it she’s drunk.
Go figure.
In her defense, they’re all drunk, celebrating a recent revenant kill around a campfire on the homestead. Everyone is in attendance tonight, a rare coming together of their ragtag gang for something that has become a trivial pursuit in many ways.
Wynonna went to the whiskey before she could dwell on what that meant, a little overwhelmed by the ease with which she likened murder to the mundane.
The mood is easy, light. Even Dolls seems content, barely speaking but enjoying the conversation around him and nursing the one and only beer Wynonna had seen him take from their generous stock inside.
Wynonna is wasted though. A few too many rounds of Kings, a lot of showboating, and an overwhelming need to numb every neurotransmitter in her body has her wobbling around the fire like she was walking on stilts. Every time she steps a little too close to the flames, Nicole nudges her sideways and away, saying something to Waverly about “a walking hazard” and “technically flammable with all that whiskey in her.”
One of those times Nicole nudges her a little too hard. She tries to keep her balance, all while trying to throw punches at Nicole, stumbling into the night until she could stand upright. When she finally manages that, with way more effort than it should take for someone her age, she sees it.
A goddamn scarecrow.
Wynonna blinks a few times, turns around to see the fire a few yards away, then turns back. The scarecrow is still there, perched beside the mailbox Doc placed for them, stuffed arms outstretched and pinned to crisscrossed wooden planks. It is the scariest goddamn sight Wynonna has seen in at least six hours.
“Looking for a brain?” she shouts, her curlish laugh cut short by the chill that surges through her seemingly without cause.
The scarecrow is simple, standard. Nothing special about it save for black veil that covers its face, only its makeshift mouth and chin exposed to the elements, and a tawdry hat. The clothes are worn, tattered and torn to shreds almost, but what bits Wynonna can see appear to be from what was once a police uniform. It gives her the creeps, but otherwise, it is nothing more than a pile of constructed straw.
“Let me know when you find one,” she continues with a sigh. “Mine’s no good.”
Just as she starts to go back to the fire, a strong gust of wind whips her hair into her face. She pushes it away, sputtering and shooing the air around her like it was a fly. When she can see again, the hat that had once rested on the scarecrow’s head sits on the grass by her feet.
It goes against every instinct she thought had lowered along with her inhibitions, but she has to look, has to see it, has to know it is not—
Gone.
“What the— ”
Then suddenly the scarecrow is before her, its face a mere inches from hers, and behind the mask, she knows it is staring at her with real, human eyes. The soul behind them sears into her own, unblinking and unwavering in its intensity. All Wynonna can do is stare back, limbs stiff with fear, until she wills her mouth to open.
Before she can scream, though, Waverly calls to her.
“Wynonna, what the hell are you doing out there all alone?”
Nothing falls from her lips but a whimper when she sees the scarecrow back where she first saw it, watching her with a distant, dead stare.
Wynonna swears off drinking for a week.
ii.
The homestead is quiet, and so is Wynonna.
She sits on the porch, clad in jeans and a flannel too thin to be shielding her from the cold, and drinks bourbon straight from the bottle. It’s not good, a cheap brand that she found in the cupboard underneath the sink, but it does the trick. She lets it trickle slow and steady down her throat, savoring the smooth burn, the warmth that pools in her tummy and then unfurls like ink in water to touch and coat every organ, every limb, every appendage, the tendrils of alcohol caressing her into a dreamless sleep.
These days she hasn’t a want for dreams, can’t fathom them. Nightmares she welcomes, waits for, rocking back and forth on the porch with Peacemaker on her lap and a .40 oz on her knee, the last drop of which she doesn’t drink until the last of her will wastes away.
Waverly has been waking her, finding her. Sometimes she makes it to her bed, though she never quite manages to fit herself under the covers. Always she lays above them, fully clothed, not even bothering to take off her boots or unbuckle her holster or take an aspirin with the ancient backwash that now has resided on her bedside table since she welcomed herself home eons ago.
Now, Wynonna basks in the silence of twilight, eyelids heavy with exhaustion she is intent on ignoring. The autumnal wind carries a plethora of motley leaves across the land. They whirr around in circles against the dead grass, occasionally lifting into the air and then dispersing again. Wynonna watches them as they make their way toward the edge of the property, lifting and falling and then—
There it is, the scarecrow .
Wynonna jumps, throwing Peacemaker off her lap and kicking the empty bottle of bourbon beside her feet. It rolls off the porch onto the dirt and shatters, along with her concentration as she lunges for Peacemaker, bent on giving that burlap bastard a deserved Earp deliverance.
Except when she rights herself again, Peacemaker locked and loaded, the scarecrow is gone.
A floorboard creaks inside. Wynonna turns, Peacemaker trained on an invisible target.
“At ease, Earp.” It’s Nicole, hands raised in surrender, a tired smile on a face still tinged with the remnants of sleep. “I’m not the enemy.”
Wynonna quirks a brow in defiance but turns back to the abyss ahead of her, sitting and placing Peacemaker back in her lap. “You will be if you disturb my rest like that again.”
“Is that what we’re calling it?”
Stare fixed on a horizon she cannot see, she hears Nicole settle on the floor beside her with a soft huff.
“It’s cold out here.”
Her fingers are numb, but she refuses to relinquish her revolver or whiskey for even a second of reprieve. “Nothing gets by you, does it, Haught?”
“No,” Nicole says simply, leaning forward, her arms loosely holding her legs where they bend at the knee. “No, nothing gets by me. Not a suspect, not a revenant, not a friend drowning her grief at the bottom of a bottle.”
It’s meant to instigate, but Nicole, predictable as she is, lets it be. Rarely can Wynonna bait her, something that annoys her most days but infuriates her today. They had talked about this—about Dolls, what he meant not only to her but to everyone. Wynonna was not the only one buckling beneath the weight of their fractured world.
Call her selfish, but now she wants to wallow in a vat of her own mourning until she becomes a pruny husk.
“I don’t have what you have,” she says finally, eyes cast downward, afraid to confront Nicole or the scarecrow should it waltz its way onto her property uninvited again. At least vampires have the decency to ask . “I just … have myself.”
When Nicole says nothing, Wynonna turns just so to watch from her periphery as Nicole tilts her head to the side in confusion or contemplation. For someone with such an affinity for felines she has all the characteristics of a Golden Retriever: patient, loyal, and kind to a fault; dependent upon praise for survival; and unable to conceal her big, dumb emotions. The crease between her brows that deepens the harder she thinks has even been affectionately dubbed a “worry wrinkle” by Waverly, which just goes to show Nicole Haught is nothing if not transparent.
Or so Wynonna likes to think.
“We all just have ourselves,” she says, glancing at Wynonna, who averts her eyes in time to avoid seeing the subtle sympathy in Nicole’s earnest stare. “Is that so bad?”
Wynonna can’t help but snort. “If you’re as ruined as I am, it's hell.”
"I think you ought not to talk about yourself like that."
Now Wynonna fully looks at Nicole, frowning. "And why is that?"
"Because I like you a lot,” Nicole says with a sad smile, shrugging before standing and then walking to the door, stopping with her hand on the knob to offer Wynonna one last look of shared understanding. “I want you to like you a lot too."
iii.
The third time she sees the scarecrow, she threatens it with Peacemaker.
“What happens if I shoot you, huh?” she slurs, stumbling to the side before she aims Peacemaker at the scarecrow. “What happens if I blow a hole straight through your stupid, straw head? Will you screw off to Oz and leave me the hell alone?”
Nothing happens. No glowing light illuminates the darkness surrounding them. No tingling sensation prickles her limbs as the adrenalin from the anticipation of another wrong righted surges through her like electricity. No red eyes, no fiery pit to hell, no hallelujah chorus, the latter of which she likes to pretend plays in the distance whenever she sends another demon to the underworld.
Nothing but Wynonna, Peacemaker, and a goddamn scarecrow.
With a growl she presses the barrel to the scarecrow’s head, hoping the muzzle at least scorches the thin mask it wears. When nothing happens again, she pulls the hammer back, squares her shoulders, and narrows her eyes.
“Fine. Any last words, Jeepers Creepers?”
Scarecrows are not sentient, just anthropomorphic. This one is hardly that. All of its limbs are crooked. It has no eyes, all of them hidden by a veil behind which nothing exists but black. There is no soul to be found in that abyss, nothing but a well of bleakness. Yet Wynonna hesitates. For a second fear gives way to sympathy that compels her to lower her weapon and then reach for the scarecrow, fingers just a fraction of an inch from touching the fabric that masquerades its face.
Then the wind blows, the mask comes off, and she sees is herself.
All she can do is scream.
xx
Awakening from a drunken slumber is like watching a reel of film develop. Slowly, and painstakingly so, memories fade in reverse, a slideshow of moments almost forgotten— better off forgotten, mostly—pushing through the fog and into the forefront of the mind. The morning after her third encounter with the scarecrow, Wynonna, playing the roles of photographer and muse in her mental darkroom, confronts a host of demons captured on her cerebral camera for her pride and denial to reconcile with her humility and truth.
“Coffee, Wy.” Waverly places a mug before Wynonna, who sits at their table hunched with her head in her hands. “Three sugars and lots of cream.”
Wynonna hums.
“It’s sweet,” Waverly continues, sitting across from her.
“Does it have a shot of whiskey?”
Wynonna finally tips her head upward to find Waverly staring at her not with contempt but concern.
“You’ve got to let me in, Wynonna.”
This is normal, standard. Wynonna loses her mind, Waverly helps her find it, and the dance goes on and on and on until one of them drops dead.
Sometimes Wynonna thinks it would be better if she did.
“I heard you,” Waverly continues, wringing her hands together where they rest on the table. Wynonna wants to reach for her, to still her movements—to allay all her worries once and for all. Instead she waits, watching as Waverly works through what she wants to say. “I heard you … screaming .”
Lying to Waverly is as useless as trying to tame a wild boar in heat, something Wynonna has attempted drunk and on a dare, which is why she only nods, fingernail scratching the faded varnish on their table.
“What happened, Wynonna?”
Their history hangs above them like the stars in the sky. What happened indeed . Centuries of asking has gotten them nowhere but here, sisters sat like a priest and a confessor, one a vessel for the other’s vices. Wynonna wonders what Waverly does with all her damage, if it weighs her down like a pocketful of stones.
One day Wynonna worries she’ll drown in the depths of her despair, too tired to tread water she never wanted to swim in.
“Something is following me,” she says quietly, unable to suppress the frown that tugs at her face, so weathered and worn as is. “ A scarecrow is following me.”
Waverly pales, eyes widening in what can only be described as sheer horror, and Wynonna thinks, perhaps, there are far scarier things than scarecrows.
xx
Daddy taught her a lot of things: how to shoot a gun, how to whistle with her hands, how to change a tire. Mama taught her a lot of things too: how to start a fire with sticks, how to throw a horseshoe, how to pick a lock. But the most important things Wynonna learned she taught herself: how to bare her teeth, how to sharpen her nails, how to howl at the moon.
Daddy taught Waverly a lot of things too: how to hide, how to disappear completely. Daddy had a lot of demons, something Waverly knew well, his scapegoat for every wrongdoing that befell the Earps. For that reason she made herself as small as possible, seeking solace in solitude, afraid that any misstep would cause more abuse from a man that was supposed to protect her.
“It meant he forgot about me a lot,” she says, and if the thought brings her any sadness, Wynonna can’t tell, the mask Waverly wears as concealing as the veil her scarecrow stalker dons. “Anyway, just because he ignored me doesn’t mean I ignored him .”
Waverly frowns, a single fingernail scratching the faded varnish on their table. “You know how he was prone to passing out on the couch after a binge, drunk as all hell?”
Wynonna nods, thinking she is prone to the same, the shame causing her to look elsewhere.
“I’d come downstairs after hearing him come home. I was worried he’d vomit in his sleep and … well, you know.” She shrugs, sheepish. “Most of the time he would be mumbling in his sleep, talking about monsters, demons … the works. Every now and again then, though, he would talk about a masked scarecrow.”
It is no easy feat, scaring Wynonna. Blood and guts are boring; all weapons pale in comparison to her big, bad bitch of a Colt Buntline Special; and, if she closes one eye, every supernatural entity that has the misfortune of crossing paths with her looks like a DIY Halloween costume in duress. Most of her fears are cerebral anyway: failing to protect Purgatory, never seeing her daughter again, losing her baby sister. These are her shadows on the wall, her bumps in the night, her monsters under the bed. Any other ghost story is a lullaby by comparison.
Yet this , another ancestral heirloom she never wanted to inherit, terrifies her.
“You remember when he locked you in the cellar for three days just for making me that scarecrow costume? I think he did it because he was scared , scared of the thing that was haunting him.” Waverly has yet to take a breath, too absorbed in the thoughts she tries to articulate in a way Wynonna will understand to pause for a second. “Years later I did some research. I scoured the homestead, looking for anything that could explain what had Daddy so unnerved, and … well, I found it.”
Wynonna gulps. “What … what was it?”
With that she stands, walking to the living room and pulling a book from a shelf. Wynonna follows, sitting beside her at the fireplace, letting the warmth from the flames calm her.
“Nathaniel Hawthorne,” she says, lifting the book to reveal the name she uttered, though it means nothing to Wynonna. “Daddy may have been a drunk, but he liked his literature. Unfortunately, his literature didn’t like him.”
“This is a collection of stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne,” she explains, opening the book on her lap before beckoning Wynonna closer. They sit together, hunched over the book, shoulders touching, anchoring one another in the moment. “There are a couple pages that are more worn than the rest with dog ears and illegible handwriting— Daddy’s handwriting.”
Wynonna follows her hands as they search the book, opening to a page entitled ‘Feathertop’ before turning to another entitled ‘The Minister’s Black Veil.’
“This one,” she says, now moving to the book to rest on both their laps, each of their knees supporting its weight, “is about a scarecrow who comes to life at the hands of a witch, Mother Rigby, who provides him with a pipe he must puff to remain alive, human . Feathertop, the scarecrow, eventually falls in love with a girl, Polly, and she reciprocates his feelings. All goes well until Feathertop and Polly happen upon an enchanted mirror that reflects Feathertop for what he truly is—not a man, like they both thought, but a scarecrow. Repulsed by his reflection, Feathertop goes home to Mother Rigby and throws away his pipe, collapsing into a heap of straw, his short life extinguished.”
Waverly flips forward a couple of pages and breathes in shakily as her index finger trails down the page, putting pressure on paragraphs marked with words neither of them can read. “This one is about a minister, Reverend Hooper, who begins wearing a black veil, much to the chagrin of the townsfolk. His fiancée, though she loves him, soon breaks off their engagement, unable to convince him to remove the black veil that obscures his face. No one knows why he wears it, and Reverend Hooper never gives a reason. So his life goes, devoted to both God and his mask. Reverend Hooper then falls ill, and at his deathbed, surrounded by the town and his beloved fiancée, who never married, he refuses to remove his veil, telling those around him that they all wear black veils. When they bury him, they bury him with the black veil on his face.”
When Waverly says nothing more, Wynonna nudges her shoulder, urging her to continue. “This scarecrow you’re seeing is a manifestation of all those anxieties Daddy had. It’s a demon of the mind, the imp of the perverse, convincing you that you are just like him, that you deserve the same damnation and punishment. Daddy read these stories, melded them together in his mind, and created something tangible from the intangible. That is what is following you.”
Wynonna, however, is not following. “Well … how do we kill it?”
Waverly smiles sadly, resting her cheek on her shoulder as she reaches for Wynonna, fingertips touching hers just barely. “We don’t. There is nothing to kill.” Wynonna opens her mouth to speak, to protest, but Waverly shakes her head, gripping her hand now and squeezing. “ You’re the scarecrow, Wynonna.”
“I … I don’t understand.”
“The only way to stop this is to forgive yourself. You have to forgive yourself, Wynonna. Why is it so hard for you to see yourself the way I do?”
The world stops spinning for a moment but not Wynonna’s memories, which cycle through her mind like dirty laundry that can never again be clean no matter how many quarters win it washes. All of them are shoved into a broken blender full of a toxic medley of terror and trauma that Wynonna can taste in the form of bile at the back of her throat without so much as a sip. The thought of it alone nauseates her. Waverly wants her to drink it though, and so she does. That much she owes her.
“I … don’t think I deserve it.” Her words can hardly stand on their own, wobbling with the weight of her emotion. Waverly nods encouragingly, and Wynonna nods too. “I don’t deserve to be forgiven. Waverly, I’m just like him.”
To ask for forgiveness was to admit a fault. Daddy had no faults, a sinner sheathed so well in the borrowed skin of a saint that few doubted his holiness. Willa was the staunchest believer, heir to the Earp throne, hopelessly devoted to the cause of ending their familial curse lest she disappoint Daddy and generations of gunslingers before him. Wynonna, not yet a wayward bullet, aimed her worship at his altar too, guided as much by tradition as the need to be wanted. Now she was him, haunted by the same entity that plagued his drunken nightmares.
Fate had a funny way of reminding her she was helpless to resist its twists and turns.
Waverly, it seems, disagrees.
“You are not him,” Waverly says harshly, cutting through the silence with clear importunity. “Daddy had every right to fear Feathertop, to fear the minister’s black veil, because he knew what he truly was: a real shit-ticket.”
Wynonna snorts, shaking her head until tears fall from her eyes onto the pages of the book between them. It smudges the ink, though she thinks that may be for the better. “You can say that again.”
“You know, at the end of the story, after Feathertop has died, Mother Rigby says, ‘There are thousands upon thousands of coxcombs and charlatans in the world, made up of just such a jumble of wornout, forgotten, and good-for-nothing trash as he was. Yet they live in fair repute, and never see themselves for what they are.’” Waverly brings her hand to Wynonna’s neck, forcing their heads together, and laughs through a steady stream of tears. “That was Daddy. You … you’re Feathertop, my sister, my hero.”
Wynonna smiles softly at Waverly, seeing her in all her incarnations: an innocent child with flowers in her braided ponytail, a clever teenager with a well filled to the brim with sadness in her stomach, a tender adult with so much to prove.
Daddy taught her a lot of things, but Waverly taught her everything.
xx
The scarecrow never returns, though Waverly threatens to set it ablaze with a flamethrower, courtesy of BBD, should it ever rear its ugly, burlap head her way again.
Wynonna knows the threat is aimed at her—with love.