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up, the sight I beheld brought a warm memory to mind—one
harkening back to the conclusion of the Great Darkness.
The entire world stood balanced on the very lip of
complete madness back then, secured by only a single strand
of spittle. But the madness was not of the purest variety,
only the reactionary insanity ignited by commonplace minds
crushed into the spaces of merciless revelation, without the
slightest application of imagination for proper lubrication.
This particular memory concerned the March of the
Scaremen. I remember precisely where I was when I heard
the story come over the radio. The rain had been lightly
falling on the rooftop of a house I had entered, and I was
enjoying the fresh food I’d discovered stuffed inside a
refrigerator in the basement.
The voice on the radio described them as “unholy
deformations of the human condition, congeries of twisted
anatomies assuming the most horrific shapes and positions
one most likely couldn’t imagine, all of them posed via
the assistance of sharp implements and other stabilizing
materials, like wooden stakes and barbed wire.” The
voice went on to report that the sculpted bodies had been
created “for reasons that seem to relate to the scaring-off of
people, like some variety of macabre scarecrow.” I sat in
the shadows, chewing slowly, listening intently. “Reports
are still coming in, but preliminary investigation puts the
numbers in the thousands. From everything we’re hearing, it
sounds as though a nightmare has taken up residence in the
hills surrounding the city of Paleton.”
That very evening, after the occupants of the house had
returned, I used their bodies to create an homage to the
Scaremen of Paleton, who had marched wicked and solemn
from nightmare into waking.
That same sense of wonder I’d felt back then came upon
me now, as a large, foggy cornfield filled with ordinary
scarecrows opened up before me. I could imagine their
artificial bodies overfilled with ripening human meats,
154 | Mark Anzalone