The Scarecrow in my Backyard

I recently moved to the city. I grew up living out in the country. The funny thing about Minnesota, at least to me, is that you could be in the middle of a city of 50,000 people or more, but all you'd have to do was drive for 20 minutes and you'd be in the middle of farm country.

From an early age my momma took me out to the garden and showed me how to plant vegetables by hand. When I got older, my dad showed me how to take care of the cattle and our crops.

I always had a place in my heart for farming. Even though I knew that I'd never grow up to be a farmer. So, after college, when I was able to buy a small house for myself, I made sure the backyard had enough room to plant a modest garden.

I've since moved to the city because there's no room to plant gardens here. I live on the 15th floor of the apartment building and when I look outside I see pavement and streetlights and people wandering to or from work and bars.

That's how I sleep now.

About three months ago I'd been on the tail end of a 50-hour work week. My team had been working on a deadline and the fact that we were finally able to sunset the project was enough to make us want to celebrate. After a few too many beers a coworker dropped me off at my house and I stumbled straight to bed.

It was a scream that woke me up.

You know when you're in that level of sleep where you aren't sure what is going on? Like those times when your phone rings at two in the morning but for some reason you can't recognize the sound of your own phone so you keep trying to turn off your alarm?

That's what that was. I heard the scream. In some part of my head I knew it was a scream, but it was so out of place that I couldn't process the information, so I just sat up in bed, looking into the darkened hall, wondering what had happened.

I sat there in the silence for about a minute before I laid back down. I just couldn't wrap my mind around the sound I had heard and my exhaustion overwhelmed me again.

My head wasn't on the pillow for more than a few seconds before I heard the scream again, but this time it wasn't a scream exactly. It wasn't scared, it was...angry. A shout?

I lived in a quiet neighborhood so that idea of hearing someone out in the streets shouting didn't make any more sense than hearing a scream.

I don't think I'm a coward, but it was hard for me to look out the window blinds. It took a few moments for my eyes to adjust to the shadows outside in the dim moonlight, but there was definitely something in my backyard.

I could see the silhouette of something moving out there near the fence at the edge of my garden. I sat there looking out, thinking that maybe it was just some stupid kids pulling a prank like those idiots who were dressing up like clowns a while back, but then the hollering started again and I could see whatever it was flail around in the darkness. I could hear the sounds of limbs smacking against the wood of the fence.

Again, I don't think I'm a coward, but I didn't get out of bed. I wasn't even sure if I wanted to call the police. I don't think there has been a single time in my life when the idea of having to call the police has ever even been an option. I just wanted whoever was outside to go away.

The yelling and thumping went on for another full minute before finally going quiet. I looked out my window again, part of me hoping to see that the person was gone, part of me terrified that it was the scene in the horror movie where the killer has his face or mask pressed up against the window.

But when I looked outside, he was still there, just standing out in the darkness in that same place. It looked like he was just standing there, staring at me.

I can't pretend like I wasn't afraid. I mean, I know that by now it's pretty obvious that I was afraid the whole time, but now...now there was just this guy, some psycho, staring into my house.

Staring at me.

I don't own a gun, so I grabbed a metal softball bat I had for an after-work league and went to the back door. I can't remember a time in my life when I had ever squeezed anything so hard. As if I were afraid I'd drop the bat and be defenseless. I could feel my own pulse as my forearms went tight with exertion and I tried to calm myself.

I took a breath.

Then another.

One last breath, then I opened the backdoor, and saw the person, the man, still standing in that same spot, still staring at me from the darkness.

"Hey!" I yelled. "Get outta here!"

Yes, I'm well aware of how pathetic that sounded, but I was still a little drunk and it made me just paranoid enough that I started to think the guy could have been high and crazy enough to do something really crazy. I mean, those clown videos showed them standing around, just looking at the camera then suddenly rushing at them.

Even if this was just a prank, it was messed up.

Finally I yelled, "I'm calling the cops!" But still, the shadow didn't move. I could see enough of him to see that it was a person. It wasn't a trick of the light or anything. I could see a head sort of tilted to the side and arms and legs.

It sort of reminded me of the scarecrow my dad had when I was younger. Except I could see there was no crossbar that would have been used to hold the arms up. The man's arms just dangled there. I was positive that I saw them twitch and I worried he was going for a weapon, so I slammed the door and called the cops.

The 911 operator told me that they had already received a call from my neighbors (obviously ones that had more sense than me) and police had been dispatched to my location.

It wasn't more then 30 seconds later that I heard the sirens coming down the street. I rushed to the front of my house to see the flashing lights dancing around my darkened neighborhood. Not wanting to do something dumb like run out at the cops, I went to the backdoor again to see if the guy had run away.

But when I got there, I could see that he was still there. And it definitely was a he. There was just enough light from the police cars driving up that I could see the wild-eyed glare of the man. His face looked all twisted and his eyes bulged out grotesquely.

I could hear the police rushing around the side of the house and ordering the man down on the ground.

But he didn't move.

They warned him that they were armed, but still he didn't move.

I could just see the cop through the corner of the window and he had one of those taser guns in his hand.

He gave the guy one more warning before firing.

I saw the jolt in the man's arms and legs as it hit him. His head snapped back too, but to my horror, he didn't fall down. He just stood there convulsing.

No, not standing.

He wasn't standing.

When the cop and his partner shown their light on the man, I saw the most horrible thing I possibly could have.

I saw the scarecrow in my backyard.

I talked with the police afterward and it wasn't until the next day that they pieced things together. I had taken off work to try and recover, not only from drinking, but from what I saw.

The man was a career criminal, and, like I had worried about, a meth-head. He had just robbed a gas station a few blocks from my house and had been cutting through yards to get away.

At least, until he got to my house.

Something you should know about my house. About my garden. The plot of dirt I'd use for a garden wasn't anything special. I didn't landscape it really and I didn't have a nice fence or anything to keep out the rabbits and other animals.

I just used some basic, plastic tornado fencing to encircle everything. And to hold it in place I used what is essentially four pieces of rebar that the previous owner of my house had left in the garage.

So really, my yard was a fence, then a small plot of dirt with four 4-foot long pieces of rebar sticking out of the ground.

...God...

The cops figure that when he got to my fence he tried to hurdle it, but must have slipped from the scuff marks they found. And when he fell, he fell straight down onto one of the pieces of rebar.

It skewered him straight through his ass.

That yell I heard was him falling onto it.

The hollering and flailing afterward must have been him coming out of the shock of the moment. It had been the back of his feet kicking while dangling in the air that I heard on my fence.

By the time I got to my backdoor, his bodyweight had forced him to slide down the rebar as the metal slowly pierced through his body.

He was probably dead when I first yelled at him. Maybe if I had done something sooner he would still be alive instead of dying, impaled on my garden post. The pool of blood soaking into the dirt and grass at the base of the post. Criminal or not, I can't stand to think of what happened to him.

That's why I live in the city now. No scarecrows here.