Story 1027: Harvest of the Horned Ones

In the shadow-swallowed corners of Red Hollow, beyond the burned-out chapel and the brittle scarecrows, there stands a field that no one plants, no one tends, yet each October it blooms in sickly gold.

The villagers call it The Offering Field—a cursed place where the Horned Ones reap.

They are not gods. Not demons. Something older.

Something hungry.

Each fall, when the moons turn a rusted crimson and the wind hums like a throat being slit, the field stirs. The stalks sway without breeze, tall and skeletal, roots writhing like veins in the soil. Faces grow in the corn—real faces—mouths sewn shut, eyes wide and weeping. They're the missing, the forgotten, the unwanted.

And when the harvest moon rises full?

The Horned Ones come to collect.

No one remembers how the pact began, only that it must be honored. Each year, a child is chosen.

Not killed.

Given.