"Crossroads is where I was, mister. Crossroads." Shy strummed. Even when he spoke his voice was perfectly sonorous. Every movement, a dance.

The four good boys sat fat on their fence. Shy's outline stood perfectly under Old Lonesome Tree from where the good boys sat watching his little song and dance. Shy had indeed come back with some difference. They couldn't even hate him, he was too fine.

"We'll see you later." Samsung promised. There was no threat in his tone. He looked forward to Shy's performance. Instinct made him set his bigotry aside. They all plucked grass and tried to conduct the breeze of the fields as Shy had. He was an impressive Nobody, that was for sure, is what they were thinking.

They had no idea. Shy was always gifted, he was just too scared to show it. At the crossroads he had met himself. He'd been blinded by the Morning Star. Nobody could look at Shy and not see that he was second to God in Creation. As each of us walks among the others, pretending we are merely men. Shy remembered where his star was hung.

"I invented music." Shy laughed. He clapped and walked along and the resonance carried, timed to the rhythm of all the world. He could, at will, cause reality to be more like a musical. He grinned and walked backwards, noting the perfection of all things in his wake, humming and warming their instruments. The whole world a grand orchestra.

As he walked backwards he snapped his fingers and hunched over and scatted. The ants zigged and zagged at the command of his beat and the birds dipped and chirped as backups. Even the clouds seemed to fracture like the constructs from music, images, patterns from the increments. As Shy leapt into a song it was all about to make his walk to the barn go by like a choreographed number, except who stood in his way. Shy was standing on the air, sinking to the road as he was obstructed by this wraith.

Her darkness was a veil, a shadow. She sucked the vim from the air and caused gravity to pull Shy back down to the road. His perfect velvet slippers finally tasted the mud of the road. No more floating on the air.

"Anna Lee. I was going to call on you, right after the Barn Thing." Shy swore.

"No you were not." Anna Lee told the truth. She never lied.

"I would have. I was just going to go the the Barn Thing first." Shy tried to explain.

"You would not have." Anna Lee bid him walk beside her. Color drained from his face as he matched pace with Anna Lee. He tried not to look at her.

"Anna Lee, you should not be here." He told her. He felt sick and terrified. He did not want to see beneath that darkened veil.

"My story takes precedent. You have all night. I only have until sunset." Anna Lee reminded him. "Walk with me, my childe. My sacred lord, my little god. Take me where we used to go. Take me by the hand." Anna Lee commanded.

"No. I am still alive, Anna Lee. I am still alive. Don't you put that curse on me! Don't you take this away, I just got back. I know who I am now!" Shy stopped and even as he stammered there was a perfection to his cadence. As though he were beginning to sing everyone's favorite song. Then the air went dead.

Anna Lee turned to face him, her dark veil looming hideously. Corruption of the flesh, the macabre and the grinning skull and empty eye sockets waited beneath, with Anna Lee's hair and jewelry and somehow: her living voice. Then she responded to him in perfectly matched musical resonance:

"I only speak until the sunset. I only walk until I arrive. I have only a little while. Love me till I fade away."

Shy was not for such a date. He dropped his instrument and fled to the barn. He ran so fast his slippers became muddied. His slacks became torn. Only his shirt stayed, but he'd sweated it purple. So he arrived as he had left, for his wallet had also fallen out onto the road as he ran. So out of breath he had no charming voice, nor could he win anyone with a smile. He had to watch the Barn Thing from outside. It was just as well, because someone had to tell the story of what happened next.

I myself was just a newborn and my mother did not go. So that is why the memory is only for me and Shy and Ma. And the daughter of Jericho, who's name is also Anna Lee. She wasn't Shy's Anna Lee, though. Shy's Anna Lee was dead so many years before any of this happened.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

Jericho was mean to Anna Lee after her mother died. He made her into the woman of the house at a young age and he was cruel to her. She was a tough girl, though, and worked hard with the animals. They did so well, with her husbandry and a bit of luck, that the herd multiplied. Jericho Beef was worth millions as a company. Anna Lee stood to inherit the brand she had built. She just had to outlast her father.

As the years went on, however, the old man showed no signs of aging or slowing down. She needed a miracle. Like a sign from God. Or the devil. Either would do.

Under the rising Saturn, under our own moon, the white calf was born. She called it Midas. Right away she could see this was different from all the other births. It began by eating its own afterbirth, the placenta and bit into the udder for blood.

She gave it the runt of the piglets from the next day and it killed and ate it. Anna Lee could see this one was different for sure. She helped her father with the corn maze they were making for this year's Barn Thing. It was the eleventh one he had made on his own and the twentieth one he had made. Now she was learning the trade of making corn mazes, her third one. She asked if he would let her design it and he told her she could try. He liked her design.

She had made a hunting grounds for Midas. When they were done she put Midas in the maze where it could feed on small animals. Jericho saw it feeding on one of his dogs and went to get his gun. Anna Lee was very good, at that point, at persuading her father. She clubbed him over the back of his head.

When he came to she discovered he had no recollection of even making the maze. So she put together the Barn Thing herself. People were going to go into the maze with that thing and she didn't care. Some weird evil had gotten hold of her. Maybe it was some kind of revenge.

Sometime during the next year, after Shy came back, there was a new corn maze. This one was just Anna Lee's work. Jericho had gone missing at that point. So had six other people, including two people from the year before who never came out the maze. At least that is what the rumor was.

Shy went into the barn after the corn maze opened. Everyone else in the world had gone inside.

"You aren't from around here?" Anna Lee asked Shy. He was sipping some punch solemnly.

"I am. I ran into a ghost." Shy told her. He tried not to make eye contact with her. She thought it cute.

"You were the one I hired for this." She held up his letter. "Coulda used some music. Wasn't much of a Barn Thing without the dance. Not much of a dance without the music."

"You had music." Shy pointed out.

"Come let me get you some fresh cloths." Anna Lee offered suddenly. She led him to the house and bid him undress behind a screen. She found fitting cloths for him to wear, and some boots. "That's better."

"Thank you. I will refund you what you paid me in advance. As soon as I find my wallet." Shy promised.

"Don't. As you said, I had other musicians there tonight." Anna Lee laughed. The others were Samsung and his friends who never saw him skulking outside and filled in for him. They had played terribly.

She took the double barrel shotgun from over the mantle and the revolver she had finished loading. She tucked it into her belt. She had discarded the white rabbit of the masquerade with the blue butterflies painted on it. She gave him one kiss and smiled strangely.

There was then a bloodcurdling scream from the corn maze. Others started to scream in terror also. But it was no ordinary maze. It was a series of barbed wire fences in the shape of a labyrinth that were disguised as a corn maze. Nobody could escape.

"What is in there?" Shy asked Anna Lee.

"My daddy's bones." Anna Lee laughed. It was the sound of madness.

"I've got to go." Shy told her.

"You haven't heard all their music." Anna Lee promised him. She aimed the shotgun.

So he stood there at gunpoint and listened as the beast found and killed them all, one by one. He trembled and cried for the night was long and odious. Not once did the shrieks and strained voices cease. He recognized Samsung, the last of the victims:

"What the Hell? There is no way out!" Samsung decried.

"He is right." Anna Lee lowered the gun. The deathcries and screams of terror had ceased.

"Is it over?" Shy was backing away from her.

"You never guessed what I buried in there." Anna Lee worried.

"What is it? I don't know, a sea monster? A dragon? A pale horseman?" Shy stared at the darkness outside the blood soaked cornfield.

"I buried my father. A yearling bull of sable beauty. It eats people." Anna Lee sang mockingly.

"Please don't sing. I can't. Why? Halloween?" Shy wondered. "Just not music now."

"No more music? You heard enough music from the Horn Maze?" Anna Lee asked him playfully.

"I couldn't make music again." Shy predicted. "That's your's now."

"I never liked music. Too bad its mine now." Anna Lee giggled.

Down the road he walked. The sun started to come up. He noticed the Jack O Lantern on my Mama's porch and came and sat beside it and cried. My Daddy had gone to the Barn Thing. Everyone in the world went to the Barn Thing.

They all went and they all died.

I never got to go to any Barn Things. Shy tells me I am not missing out on anything. He says the best part of a Barn Thing is the music. We got that.

Anna Lee still holds one Barn Thing. Nobody comes.

Every night is Halloween for Shy so he can sing to us. Ma says he has the voice of an angel. Keeps the devil away, keeps the devil at the crossroads.