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The Sect
© 2007 Sara Parker – that is, everything that doesn’t already belong to Stephen King
A Children of the Corn fanfiction by Eccentric Banshee
Story Note: With the arrival of Burt and Vicky, Isaac saw the dissention that had been budding among his followers. He allowed Malachai free reign in dealing with the outlanders, and so the fate of the two was sealed, and Isaac’s place as leader was secure with Malachai’s contentedness. He never allowed himself to get so close to being overthrown again, and so now, a year later, he reigns in Gatlin, with Malachai in power as his trusted right hand.
Brief Summary: Poor Malachai. He was simply walking peacefully in the cornfield when one of the children approached him, crying wolf. The wolf in question, Jess Hale, was simply looking for a payphone, but outlanders in Gatlin are never well-received.
Full Summary: Jessica Hale left her Texas home on impulse after a fight with her parents, intending to go to her sister’s in Montana for a week or so to cool off. However, when she has an accident in the middle of Nebraska, it seems she’s a bit short of choices. Gatlin presents itself to her, and she heads that way on foot, only to find that it’s seemingly deserted, a ghost town. As she looks through the streets, she encounters one little boy. Before she can speak to him, he runs away. Annoyed, she continues searching, certain that if there are children, there are adults. However, moments later, a tall boy with red hair rounds the corner, and then the games begin.
chapter one – you get to meet my family (figuratively), and malachai ruminates on cornfields
Around lunchtime, I decided that my parents and I had both had time to cool off, and that if I didn’t call them now, I’d be in even more trouble when I decided to return home to them. So, I balled up the wrapper of the hamburger I had absently consumed, tossed it in the restaurant’s trashcan, and walked across the street to use the payphone I’d seen just outside of the convenience store.
I thumbed in a few quarters, dialed home, and tried not to wince as I fitted the phone to my ear, attempting not to imagine the kinds of people who might have used the phone before me. Head lice, grease, ear wax—I immediately made my mind stop. I had enough neurotic tendencies as it was, I didn’t need to go around wiping off every receiver I used. Actually, that wasn’t a bad idea…
My thoughts were interrupted when my mom picked up. She sounded wary and her voice was a little shaky, a sure sign that she’d been crying, and I sighed, resolutely pushing away the tinge of guilt I felt at the sound. “Hello?”
“Hey, Mom, it’s me.” I could imagine her reaction to that just by hearing the silence on the other end—she was stiffening up, eyes bugging, disbelieving that I’d had the audacity to run away and then call about it!
“Jessica Hart!” I was anticipating the shriek, and at the first syllable, winced and held the phone away from my ear. I had to save my hearing for the future, after all. I could still hear every word of her rant, bright and clear. “Do you have any idea what you’ve put me through this morning? Waking up to find you gone, no note, calling all of your friends frantically to see if we could find you—”
“I know, Mom,” I said, risking putting the phone back to my ear in order to interrupt her. She was running out of examples, anyway, so she quieted. “I’m going to Angeline’s.” That was my twenty-two year-old only sister, the person I was most envious of—the outgoing, brunette, married sister that worked on a ranch in Wyoming; the one I loved to death. She’d never turn me away.
“What on earth would you want to do that for?” Mom, bless her heart, couldn’t quite understand why Angeline and I got along so well. It wasn’t that she promoted rivalry between her daughters, but she knew I was envious of my sister and couldn’t comprehend that something about Angeline made me put that envy aside so that we could actually be friends. I think she thought it was positively barbaric, two sisters with all the potential for rivalry getting along so well. Mom was weird like that.
“Well, she’s the only person I can really talk to right now without wanting to chew glass.” Okay, that was a little harsh. But really, they had started it. “I figured I’d stay with her for a week. Maybe more, if I like it there.”
Mom’s voice changed to cajoling, sensing that my mind was made up. “Sweetheart, you have to come home. You don’t have money for this, and you have school at home, and Darren’s been hanging around, worried. Jess, you’re only seventeen. You can’t do this.” Yes, this was Mom trying to sweet-talk me. Kind of sad, isn’t it? I’m all for respect for the parents, but I also tend to be honest, and Mom had the persuasive powers of post-Watergate Nixon on crack.
“I have money, Mom, enough to get me there, and back if I choose,” I said, resisting the urge to beat myself into unconsciousness with the phone. I still didn’t know what kind of people had been using it; a chunk of earwax might come loose and lodge in my eye.
“What do you mean, if you choose?” She was getting slightly hysterical. “You’re not leaving us?!”
Whoops. That had been the wrong thing for me to say. I winced. It had been on my mind all along to possibly stay with Angie for good, but I shouldn’t have mentioned it to Mom. She was the freak-out type. “Mom, please,” I said. “I can hear the stress in your voice.” The whole county can hear the stress in her voice. “Just relax, okay? Take a deep breath or two. Don’t worry. I just need to get away for a while.”
“Sweetheart, your father won’t have it,” she said, after taking my advice and breathing, and as a result sounding a little calmer.
I sighed and switched the receiver to the other ear, figuring that if my ears were going to get infected by some freaky virus, they might as well be evened up. “You let me handle Dad.” And the strategy there is ignore, ignore, ignore. Don’t acknowledge that he’s pissed and maybe he’ll calm down. Yeah, like that’s ever worked before.
My inner-voice was getting sarcastic. Great. Mom kept on talking. “What about Darren?”
Eesh. Darren was the poster boy for the neighbor-boy-your-parents-want-to-set-you-up-with stereotype. He was blonde, blue-eyed, slim, short, and, to sum it all up, safe. I was all for not getting beaten up by your boyfriend, but in Darren’s case, safe equaled boring. I’d never been the slightest bit interested. “Darren and I aren’t interested in each other.” Well, at least half of that was the truth.
She didn’t buy it. “I know he’s asked you out.”
“And I said no, didn’t I?” I was cut off by an automatic voice—Your time has run out. For another five minutes, please insert fifty cents. Sighing, I fished out two more quarters, all the time wondering why I was such a sucker for punishment. Mom was talking when the phone clicked back on line.
“—such a nice boy, and you’ve never so much as given him a chance! You’re not the type to lead a boy on, Jess, so what’s going on?”
“Mom, can we please talk about something other than Darren?” I’m seventeen. Not exactly ready to rush off and get married, although I know it would relieve you and Dad very much.
She had one more weapon in the arsenal. “What about your school?” After she fired the question, there was a satisfied sort of silence. Sort of a, ‘What are you going to say about that?’
“I’ll catch up,” I said simply.
She huffed. “I can’t let you do that.”
“You didn’t let me leave last night, either. We all saw how effective that was.”
“Young lady.” Her tone had turned suddenly frigid. I winced. I was in for it now. “I am your mother. You speak respectfully to me.”
“Yes, Ma’am.” There wasn’t much else to say. I might be rebelling right now, but seventeen years of growing up in a town twenty miles from Dallas had sort of brainwashed me. I was now doomed to be respectful to all adults, and if I wasn’t right off, to remedy the rudeness immediately.
“Jess, I want you to come home. If you do, I won’t tell your father.” More cajoling. It had little effect.
“No, Mom. I’m sorry, but I just can’t be there right now. I’m seventeen, not twelve.”
“You’re under our roof!”
“Not anymore.” There was some satisfaction in finally saying that, I had to admit. This argument had been boiling for two years now, but had finally erupted last night around eleven, five minutes past my curfew. I felt that they were treating me like a child, not giving me enough freedom. They figured that they were protecting me. Somewhere during the course of the argument, I’d screamed, “I wish all you adults were just gone!”
Immediately, they’d begun picking apart the ridiculousness of that wish. It was frustrating, especially when Dad reverted to his favorite tried-and-true, can’t-recover-from argument: “You live under my roof, young lady, so you will obey my rules.”
So now I’d left. But Mom wasn’t happy about it. “We’ll call Angeline up. She won’t let you stay with her.” She’d been reduced to threats now. I have to say, I was a little disappointed that she’d resorted to that, but I hid it.
“Mom, I’m running out of time on the phone. I’ll call y’all when I get to Angie’s, all right?”
“Jess—!”
“Goodbye, Mom.” I made a kissing noise into the phone—out of habit, not disrespect, I assure you—and hung up. Sighing loudly, I stepped away from the phone and straightened my shirt—a black, wide-necked thing with three-quarter length sleeves and the word Bowie scrawled across the chest in white, layered over a white camisole top—I liked the extra length. I went to my car and climbed in, ignoring the feeling in the pit of my stomach, the feeling that said that I was in the wrong. I started driving again after making sure my tank was full—I knew that gas stations were few and far between out here, and I didn’t want to risk running out.
After that, it was driving and thinking and sometimes singing. I had a decent singing voice and could carry a tune thanks to five years of piano lessons, so I enjoyed singing, whether it was along with my radio or just by myself. I sang to keep myself awake, most of the time. It wasn’t a particularly scenic drive, very flat and surrounded by crops.
I had about fifteen minutes until I crossed the Nebraska state line, so as I drove, I reflected on my life in general.
Our family was average, I guess. I had a very domineering father and a very high-strung mother—they fit well together; he took control of stressful situations, which suited her just fine. I can see how, after the previous argument, you could assume that I hated my parents, but the truth was very much the opposite. I loved them with all my heart. I just couldn’t stand their rules some of the time, especially now that I was a liberty-thirsty late-teenager.
I had an older sister—Angie, you already heard about her—and an older brother, Timothy. Tim was crazy. At least, that’s the only solution I could come up with; crazy or masochistic. Why else would he run around shooting his friends with little balls of paint and letting them do the same to him? They wore masks, but they also came home with ugly bruises, the best of which looked like mere hickeys, and the worst looking like bloody fist-marks.
Yes, dear nineteen-year-old Tim was into paintball. I’d never really gotten into it, but it consumed Tim’s life and thoughts, so he wasn’t much a help to me whenever I got into a brawl with my parents. The only time he disagreed with them was when they grounded him, preventing him from paintball practice. Then he really raised the roof.
I am nothing special. You might think I’m afflicted by false modesty, but that’s not the truth. I really am nothing special. I’m not plain, but neither am I lovely, my features conspiring to prevent either. I guess the best I could say about me is that, if the situation is right, if I got enough sleep the night before and if my complexion was behaving, if my hair was voluminous enough and if I applied makeup carefully, I can be somewhat striking. Otherwise, I’m just normal. Maybe I could be called ‘pretty,’ since very few people are really plain or ugly, but the word is used lightly in reference to me.
Pale blonde hair the color of cornsilk is maybe the only unusual thing about me—so pale that it was almost white under certain lights. Still, it doesn’t combine with the rest of my features—brown eyes, pale skin, a too-sharp chin, sharp cheekbones that can be a blessing or a curse, depending on the lighting, and a thin mouth—to make me eye-catching. I’m average height, 5’6 or 5’7, and of a healthy weight. Dad says that us Texas girls need to be sturdy, but I think that adjective connotes a short, plump, strong girl roping horses. I’m none of those three adjectives.
Today, my hair was tied back out of my face with a black ribbon, allowing me more visibility for the road—not that I needed it. There wasn’t much to see; I hadn’t passed a car in an hour. Back to the reflection.
I enjoyed Texas. I had friends, family, and all that good stuff there. However, about halfway through my sixteenth year, I’d get these periods when I felt like I was just being stifled. It sucked, to put it mildly. I’d just need to get out.
Those times passed, but it just so happened that, that particular week, I’d been going through another one of those phases. The argument made me snap, so I tossed some belongings in a bag, collected all the money I had, got in my car, and left. Angie would let me stay at her house; I knew she would.
I sighed. Next time I talked to my parents—and I inevitably would; Angie would insist on it before she’d give me permission to stay—Dad was going to raise hell. He wouldn’t be able to stand having me strike out for myself.
Deciding to try not to anticipate that, I turned on the radio and then proceeded to keep my mind occupied by tuning it out. In this way, I reached Nebraska. The Corn State, apparently, judging by the cornfields that started up even before I reached the state line and refused to yield to anything else. It was late spring, so the corn would be ready for harvest in a month or so. Quickly, the fields lost my interest, and I just drove.
I couldn’t help it—with the monotony of the roads, other than passing a few signs proclaiming nearby towns, I fell into a sort of daze. I wasn’t even aware that the radio had gone to static, I just stared ahead.
I wasn’t immediately aware, then, when a kid stumbled into the road in front of my car. I was going a good sixty-five, and so there was no chance I could slow down. I swerved, but my bumper still caught her, sending her flying. Adrenaline pumping through my veins, I screeched to a stop and unbuckled my seatbelt, launching myself out of the car and running unsteadily towards the child.
She was flat on her face. I was hyperventilating as I turned her over, but her bloody face and the mangled feel to her body told me all I needed to know. I’d just killed her.
I could barely breathe. I gasped, sitting back, trying to force my body to function properly, when a hand fell on my shoulder and jerked me backward—
And I woke up to a faceful of airbag. My head hurt, and I unbuckled my seat belt, leaning back and shutting my eyes as the results of the dream-caused adrenaline rush left me weak. Quickly, fear and relief—the former because I’d wrecked the car, the latter because the dream was false—rushed in and took its place, and I groped for the door handle, found it, and stumbled out to survey the damage.
I should have known better, I thought, scorning myself, as I looked. I’d managed to find the one part of the road that had a ditch in it and I’d driven straight in—at least, that was what it looked like. It was Sunday afternoon—the time when I was accustomed to having a nap—and the road was more hypnotic than ever because of the lack of… well, anything that really caught attention. I should have known I’d fall asleep, should have pulled over the second I found myself slumping into a daze.
I put my hand to my aching head, and then pulled the neckline of my shirt back a little—there was a welt above my chest left from the seatbelt. I figured it could be much worse, and was thankful that it hadn’t been. Surveying the car, I sighed heavily. Looked like my parents were right. I glanced up at the road for some sign of help.
There was a sign there. Gatlin – 1. Hmm. A town, one mile away. I could call from help there. I decided not to try starting the car, as airbag deployment meant that things were pretty serious. I dug my keys out of the ignition and started walking.
I walked on the side of the road, ignoring the sun, which was growing warmer with each minute. I tried not to think about the I-told-you-sos and the fact that I was five hours from any of my family, and just tried to focus on who I’d call and what I’d say. I’d never fallen asleep at the wheel before, but I had no doubt that they wouldn’t let me forget it now that I had.
At least no one had been hurt. That dream… it was freaky. And who had grabbed me from behind? I figured it must have been the seatbelt in reality, snapping into place, catching me from an untimely flight through the windshield—or forceful impact with the airbag. Only my head had hit it, but that was enough for me. The ache had only slightly subsided.
It seemed like I walked forever. Finally, though, I began to see the buildings—but it was quickly apparent that something was wrong, or at least different. It didn’t take me long to figure out what it was—no cars, and no people. It was a veritable ghost town—but at least it was a change from the cornfields, which were starting to drive me slightly stir-crazy, so I decided to keep going and look for someone. It was a relatively small town; maybe they were all at church or all at someone’s house. It was conceivable.
I hadn’t been walking for long when I saw someone—a child of about nine, rounding the corner. He stopped stock-still when he saw me.
“Hey,” I said, relieved that the town had some occupants. “I was wondering if—”
He turned around and fled without a word. I stared in confusion after him. “Hey!” I called. He didn’t as much as glance back, disappearing around the corner. I wasn’t that scary, was I?
I stared, perplexed, for a minute, and then shook my head. “Friendly kid,” I muttered sarcastically. With nothing else to do, I started walking again.
Things were different now. He looked upon the fields as… well, almost his domain, though that was probably considered blasphemy. Everyone knew who they belonged to. Still, he was most comfortable in the fields, his fiery red hair glinting in the sun between the stalks, maneuvering the maze with ease. He knew the field in and out, each little rabbit path, each unbroken stretch of stalk after stalk.
He walked among the stalks now, his knife at his side, his feet making no noise on the ground. He came out here to think, and he’d been in need of some good thought for a while now. When he came to a small clearing in which the other children had been working, he stopped, scanned it with eyes as blue as the sky, and then dubbed it worthy with a short nod. He stepped into the clearing, lifting his face to the sun, and shut his eyes.
It had been one year since they’d sacrificed the two outlanders to their Lord. Since then, they’d lived relatively undisturbed, working to make the town more subtle to those heading through the land, under Isaac’s command. That year was filled with ritual and steady punishment of those who fell short of the Lord’s standards. He carried out that punishment cheerfully.
In the past year, there had been three more children that had gone to join God as they reached the age of nineteen. One of them was faith-filled, hardworking Rachel—the others, insignificant. He, at eighteen, would be the next to join their Lord. He wasn’t quite sure how he felt about that. He knew that the very thought was blasphemy—he should be joyous, but somehow he felt as if he hadn’t had his fill of life. He was willing to give it time, though, expecting that this last year would show him the purpose.
He had grown, he knew that. He was the strongest of all the children, with ample reason to be, and the tallest. He had their fear, and a certain grudging respect—he protected them all from the outside threats. Upon the first sign of trouble, the first thing said was “Get Malachai.” They ran to find him, knowing that they’d be relatively safe with him around, as long as they stayed out of his way. In a sense, he thought that this mutation of respect combined with fear was better than the honest respect and hero-worship Isaac was given. He never had to worry about being overthrown, whereas Isaac could get paranoid at times, convinced that someone was ready to kill him.
A rustling of the stalks behind him, as loud as a tornado tearing through them to his ears, made him open his eyes. “Malachai! Malachai!”
They were calling him. He turned to see young Thomas running in his direction. His eyes narrowed, and as the boy reached him, he snatched him up and lifted him up to eye-level, his shoes dangling two feet above the ground. “You’d better have a good reason for disturbing me,” he snarled. He knew very well that Thomas did—otherwise he wouldn’t have risked bothering him—but he enjoyed seeing the fear in the child’s eyes. It was the source of his power.
“Outlander!” squeaked Thomas, almost too terrified to speak. “There’s an outlander in the town!”
Malachai stared at him for a second, and then dropped him to the ground, turning away. “Don’t fear,” he said, well aware of the irony of the statement, since he’d been the cause of the boy’s most recent fright. He was actually quite looking forward to this—it had been a long time since any real excitement had occurred. “I’ll take care of it.”
Very quietly, he left the field. Thomas tagged along behind him, careful not to get too close.
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