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A fresh and gentle summer breeze rustled through Emma’s crops as dawn rose.

Honey sunlight filtered through her dusty window pane, and she awoke to the smell of sun-baked air and pine.

She had always woken up with a smile, early start or not; ‘Perky’s Buds’ was going to be her legacy, or at least it was something worth settling down for.

Nighthawks chirruped, far away in the canopy of the Witchwood trees as Emma pulled on her work boots. She thudded on Zigg’s door as she skipped down the stairs to the kitchen.

“Ziggy! Early rise!” She called out. “Bring me a cup of coffee on your way out!” Getting involved with those machines was no longer her responsibility.

Out in the furthest field, there had been a bad outbreak of Verticillium wilt in the plants, and it was a full time job to tend to it before it could spread.

She dipped her pruning shears into the solution nestled in her work belt, and got to work where she had left off yesterday, snipping off the yellowing leaves.

“You were starting to look a little better yesterday.” Emma ran her hands through a shriveling branch with a sigh, and chopped the branch off. It crunched when she stomped on it. She’d get Ziggs to come through and tidy up.

“Emma.” A cold voice breathed her name.

“Don’t creep up on me Ziggy, you’re already late to work,” Emma chided, pocketing her shears to reach out to her coffee, except Ziggs wasn’t behind her.

She stood still in the field. A cool breeze whispered through the leaves from the Witchwoods, brushing over the back of Emma’s neck. In the forest silence, she could hear for miles: the scurrying of small paws over dried, crackly leaves, the scratch of nighthawk talons on the corrugated shed roof, the shake and rustle of branches in the woods and the annoying buzzing of a fat fly somewhere to her right.

No sign of Ziggs at all.

A sudden sensation told her not to leave her back to the Witchwoods, but she shook it off, turning around to get back to work.

“Hey Perky!”

She gripped her shears when she whipped around to come face to face the grating smile waiting for her on the other side of the fence: Louie Metzger, chewing obnoxiously on a wad of tobacco.

“Having some trouble with your plants there, Perky?” He grinned.

Emma jabbed her shears at the air in warning. The brothers were rarely alone. “This is private property, Metzger.”

“I’m not on it though,” he jeered. “Seems your plants aren’t too happy.”

“Yeah, I’m working on it.” If they weren’t some of the most incompetent men she’d ever known (which was a steep competition), she’d worry they had something to do with it.

“Y’know you could always give the land back to us.” His younger brother, Lars Metzger, strode out of the woods like he had just happened upon the conversation, a dull hatchet swung over his back. He came to lean against the fence, rocking back and forth on his feet. “We could restore it.”

“Where’s your dad? Don’t you have homeschool to get to or some shit?” She cursed under her breath, trying to concentrate on her pruning.

The Metzgers haunted her fenceline: she couldn’t get anywhere near it without one of them popping up to taunt her about whatever irrelevant ‘deliverance’ shit they were ever on about.

“It ain’t nice to curse.” And there was the third, Carl Metzger, arguably the dimmest of the three. “Daddy hates that language.”

Sometimes it was better to just ignore them.

“We know this wood, this earth, better than anyone – we hear it, and it’s real mad, Perky. And it is not your friend.” Louie dipped his head at the collection of yellowed, bruised leaves at her feet.

She snickered, holding a hand to her stomach as she shot them a warning look. “It’s Verticillium wilt. ‘The woods’ isn’t mad, ‘the woods’ are trees. Keep your rapture shit on your side of the fence.” The three of them probably didn’t even know what chloroplasts were. “It’s not like I’m gentrifying, I’m just a fellow–” she paused, searching for a word that might appease the boys. “Botanist, plant enthusiast.”

That made Carl laugh, and she dropped the patient act.

“I inherited this land, and–”

“Inherited from your daddy, who got it from his, all the way up to your great grand daddy, right? Who bought it from ours,” Lars jumped in. “That makes you one of us. No wonder the woods don’t like you.”

“The woods don’t like us?” Ziggs appeared through the crops, crestfallen, Emma’s mug of coffee in their hands.

“Yeah well our woods don’t like you either,” Emma made a sweeping gesture to her crops. “Now get off my lawn!”

Louie Metzger scowled. “Mock us all you like, Perky. But you released a great blight into Hatchetfield when you uprooted all those trees. We’ll get this land back one way or another!”

The three brothers spared a moment to growl and grimace at Emma and her farmhand before turning tail to slink back into the woods. They’d be back to bother her again tomorrow,
she was sure.

“What little freaks,” Emma huffed.

Ziggs sniffed, rubbing a hand under their nose as they let out a nasally laugh. They opened their mouth to speak but were interrupted by a sneeze.

“Hayfever? Already?”

They sniffled again, “I swear it’s never ever been this bad. It doesn’t bother you?”

“Nope.”

“Aww. Unfair.”

“Maybe it’s just a weird strain or something,” Emma shrugged, crunching a pile of dried leaves beneath her boots. “The pollen’s never bothered me.”

“Maybe it’s me who the woods are mad at!” Ziggs joked as they slipped on their gardening gloves and set to work.

Ziggs was laid back on the beat-up second hand couch that filled up the living room, a curl of smoke rising from their joint. They had been laughing to themself about something while Emma had been at work.

“You sure you don’t want a hit?” Ziggs asked, breaking her from her trance.

It was only when she drew back from the bright screen of her laptop light she realized how badly it had been stinging her eyes. “Can’t. I’ve gotta sort this out.”

“Yeah, but it’s making you like, majorly stressed out.”

Emma sighed, turning back to her laptop. “Verticillium wilt is something to be stressed out about. You can’t just kill it with fungicides. It’s the soil that’s the problem, it comes in through the roots and chokes out the vascular system.” She blinked, trying to get her eyes to focus on the screen again. “It is something to stress about.”

“Yeah but…” They trailed off. “That doesn’t sound fun.”

She snorted. “You–”

“You think that’s why those republicans are so pissed off about the weed? If it’s like, contagious? Are we ruining the trees? Because that would be like, so not me.”

Emma didn’t think they understood. “No, those guys probably don’t even know what Verticillium wilt is. God. They don’t even know what toothpaste is. They don’t give a shit about the trees, they just wanna scare us off the land so they can have all my weed for themselves.”

“Right.” Ziggs held up a hand, shuffling up on the couch so they were sitting upright, squinting out the window. “Like in Scooby-Doo.”

“And they’re not gonna do shit.” Emma rolled her eyes.

“Then what’re they doing outside right now?”

Emma whipped around, snapping her laptop shut. “Holy shit.”

The Metzger clan moved slow– Bob Metzger up on his litter, his children carrying one rung each as they lugged their way down through the field.

“Fuck.” She tipped her head back against the couch, rubbing her hand over her forehead. “You sit tight, Ziggy. I’ll go see what these guys want.”

“Don’t die,” Ziggs called out as she shut the front door behind her and stepped out onto her creaky porch.

The moon hung high in the sky, casting a silvery-blue glue down onto her crops and shining off the faded red metal of her tractor.

Wilted leaves crunched under her shoes as she trekked across her farm to meet them halfway, before they had to get any closer to her ranch.
Without speaking, the Metzgers stopped in their track, kneeling to set the litter on the ground. Louie drew back the tattered, red, threadbare curtains to reveal the shadow of the old man in the chair.

The moonlight caught the glint of the weathered hatchet laying across his lap. He cleared his throat, reaching for a handkerchief in his suit pocket to dab at his forehead.

“Your great grand-daddy was the one to buy this land from me. And he vowed to protect it.”

Emma sighed, biting down on her tongue inside her mouth. This is what this was, another one of those nights where she’d be stuck out in her field, swatting away mosquitos and listening to this geriatric man ramble on about something without any outside considerations.

Chances are, she’d be stuck here for about an hour at best, listening to a spiel she’d heard a dozen before. To make a show of it, she pulled out her phone to check the time.

“Is this a joke to you?” Bob’s voice has a smoker’s rasp to it.

“We warned you, Perky!” Lars chimed in.

The litter shuddered as the old man leaned forward, his veins bulging as he gripped onto the sides of his chair with meaty hands. There was a splutter of struggled breath, and Louie turned to help his father down from the chair. He reached for his hatchet, letting the metal blade thunk to the dirt at his feet so he could grip it like a cane.

He had never done that before, left his sedan. She swallowed down her dry throat, readjusting her stance so she was leaning against her tractor. Cool metal against her hot skin.

“The time for talk is over,” he grunted, dabbing down his forehead with his cloth. It was the sort of dirtied brown that suggested it had been white once. “How many trees do you think you cut down for this cannabis?” He took in a deep breath, his face twisting in a show of disgust. “Now, you’re a smart young girl, let me tell you something I’m sure you know.”

Emma didn’t gratify him with a response.

“Roots,” he begun, his shoulders drawing back as he took in a croaky breath. “What do you think happens to the soil when you cut ‘em all down?” He gestured to the soldiering shadows of the tall pine trees hung in the moonlight behind him, the Witchwoods.

“Land degradation,” she answered, a lingering distaste in her tone. He was making her pick between being smart and being right. None of it mattered to her though as long as they got off her land; she’d call the cops first chance she had. “But the soil is fine, there’s no erosion. I have a degree in botany. I know what I’m doing.”

His gaze darkened. The frown constantly plastered over her face stretched and etched new lines in forehead. “Let me explain something to you that you don’t seem to know then.”

Of course.

“The roots of the pine trees stretch all across the witchwoods. This grass of yours?” He plucked a crumbled leaf from the plant next to him, turning it back and forth. “Pathetic little roots.” He crumpled it in his fist. “That don’t do half the job they’re supposed to at keeping what’s buried underground.”

“I know about roots,” she cut him off, a cold chill down her spine. “But even if I packed up and left tonight you couldn’t just grow a bunch of pines here overnight. What do you care about soil erosion?”

It was more unsettling when he grinned. His blacking gums were rotted, his teeth stained with tobacco. “Now isn’t that a dumb question, boys?”

As if on cue, his pack started to cackle like a bunch of hyenas, slapping each other on the shoulder and howling like she had just told a side-splitting joke.

“It’s the sworn duty of the hatchetmen to protect this land. Some folks in this town are born… different. Back in the old days, they called it ‘having a touch of the gift.’ But whose gift? It is unclean. Vile sorcery! And it’s our job, to collect these…” he trailed off, digging up the right word. “Freaks. And bring them here to be planted.” He spat, his face turning a patchy shade of red. He dabbed sweat off his forehead, huffing.

“What the fuck are you talking about? Are you saying you’ve killed people!?”
“We’ve done them a favor,” he insisted. “The ritual frees them of their tainted flesh, and gives them a new body, of bark and leaf. The roots and canopies make a net. To catch all that bad magic, so it can’t seep into the precious skin of any more children.”

The way he spoke made her skin crawl. She wished she had brought her shotgun with her. She could outrun them to the house, but they’d follow.

“But you took those trees, like cutting a hole in the net. You’ve opened the floodgates, and this weed will not keep them in their graves!”

She took a step back, eyes wide, but Carl grabbed her wrist, snickering. “Caught her, daddy!”

“We’ll grow something new, tainted or not, starting with you.” Bob’s eyes vanished into the shadow of his worn hat, his toothy grin remained.

But Emma didn’t take kindly to threats – and what she dubbed the ‘anti-Grace Chasity’ trick was about to come in handy. She slammed a hand down on the flip of the wood-chipper attached to her tractor, and with a loud whir it chopped up the wilted branches and yellowed leaves Ziggs had left behind into a rain of splinters and pollen.

Their heads all tipped up in shock, Carl released her from his grip with a noisy gasp, clutching a hand to his red face as he sneezed and hacked.

“Shit!”

She stepped back, relishing a second to laugh at them as they cursed and sneezed, ready to bolt for the house when the Metzgers stopped instead.

Their hands went to their sides, the coughing and spluttering coming to a silent halt. She could hear each of their breaths. The anger wiped off their faces, and they stared at her.

Or, not quite her, something a little over her shoulder.

“The guilty must be punished. You’ll pay for this land in blood again,” Bob warned.
And then they turned, shuffling back down the path, leaving the sedan behind. Bob’s hatchet dragged a trail through the mud as they vanished into her crops.

Emma didn’t even think their house was that way.

She backed up, hesitating to turn her back to the field. But she could hear them rustling through the dried plants, getting further and further away until she could no longer hear them.

“What the fuck?”

Inside, Ziggs had returned to staring at the ceiling, too high to worry about what had happened.

There was no sign of the Metzger’s the next morning. Not even a single one of the sons appeared on the fenceline when she was pruning in the outer field. The only sign of them was the trail Bob’s hatchet had left in the mud where he had dragged it along behind him, and of course, the abandoned sedan chair in the middle of her field.

She had held back on calling the HFPD, just for now. They had left her property afterall, and she didn’t really have any proof they had done anything to her. Chances were the cops would give her more trouble over her weed than the vanishing intruders, knowing Sam Sweetly.
She set Ziggs to work tidying up the leaf massacre. They were probably high this morning, because they had said very little about anything as they headed out into the field.
Actually, it was suspiciously quiet. No humming of the tractor, or any trace of the ‘Grateful Dead’ playing from their radio.

Last she had seen Ziggs was when they were taking their antihistamine tablets in the kitchen.

Emma slipped off her work gloves, hanging her shears on her belt. After the Metzger’s intrusion and subsequent disappearance, she wasn’t comforted by the silence. Only the nighthawks watched on, their beady eyes giving away nothing.

“Off the weed, varmin!” She shooed the birds away from the stalks and they squawked at her as they flapped away, landing on the barn roof with a scratch of their talons.

A nighthawk called out to her, something she couldn’t understand. It hopped along the barn roof, twitching its head to the side.

There were about three of them lined up along the roof, one of them still had fluffy, speckled downy feathers. They better not be nesting up there.

“Ziggy!” She cupped her hands around her mouth to shout out into the empty field.
The nighthawk screeched back.

“What do you want, dude!?” She huffed, storming through the field towards the barn to shoo them away with a shake of her shears.

The barn doors were open. They weren’t usually open. “You forgot to close the barn again!” She called out, hoping Ziggs was somewhere nearby.

Unless it wasn’t Ziggs who opened it… She crept in, ears pricked, rolling open the barn doors.

She exhaled a sigh of relief when she saw Ziggs in the corner, two birds, one stone. “What’re you doing? We’ve got shit to do.” She rested her hands up on her hips, she hadn’t realized how tense her shoulders were.

Ziggs didn’t turn around to face them. There was a whispered reply, their words lost to the ground.

“Ziggs!” Emma called, craning her neck to see if they had headphones in. Her stomach dropped when she took a step in to approach them, and they didn’t even move. Something was wrong. “Hello?”

Ziggs turned around, a dazed look in their eyes when the sunlight from outside hit them. “It’s so bright out here.”

“Uhh. Yeah.” Emma nodded. “That’s summer.”

“Do you ever think about how the plants feel? What it’s like to choke? To not be able to breathe?”

She rolled her eyes, tipping her head back in an exasperated groan. “Are you high already? Come on, we have work to do. And the plants aren’t suffocating, plants photosynthesise. We’ve been over this. Now back to work. I didn’t hire you to slack off,” she chided lightly, her nerves shot. “Those Metzgers were creeping around here last night, so just be careful okay? They were on about some zombie ‘rising from the earth’ sort of shit. I mean, they didn’t do anything arrestable, so calling the cops would probably just piss them off more, right?”

“There’s so much to do.” They took a deep breath in.

“Don’t need to tell me twice. The Verticillium wilt is spreading west now. We’re gonna have to handle that. And did you clean up those leaves like I asked?”

“There’s so much to do.” Ziggs walked ahead, head tipped up to the sky.

“Well that was some real Blair witch project shit!” She called out after them. “Turn the radio on!”

She watched them head back into the cops, shoulders slumped.

“You’re kidding me.”

Outside the barn, the spiked leaves were crumpled and drooping. She plucked it from its branch, turning it back and forth. Had it spread south too? That was too fast for the virus to move. Sure, she had shredded that bag of leaves over the Metzgers but would it really wilt her weed overnight? It couldn’t, but how did she miss this?

A sound split through the field, not the radio but the revving of her tractor.

“My weed!” Through the crops, sat atop the rusted red tractor sat Carl Metzger, his faded flannel dirtier than last night. His hands ran absently across the gearshift, his foot going for the pedal.

“Ziggy!” They shouted to their farmhand, who was watching from the other side of the tractor. “Stop him!”

Ziggs’s head swiveled to stare at her; their eyes a faded, ghostly blue.

“Ziggs!” But they didn’t move.

Emma bolted at the Metzger boy before he could find out how to work the pedals, making a running leap onto the steps to grab the cab door. She tore open the tractor door, shoving herself in to push him away from the wheel.

“Now you’ve gone way too far man!” He put up no resistance when she grabbed him by the collar, shoving him out the cab door, yanking out the tractor keys with her other hand. “Trespassing, threats, spewing your ominous root shit is one thing, but what’s this!?”

Carl Metzger stared at her from the ground. “We’re reclaiming what was always supposed to be ours. You can’t keep us underground forever.”

From behind her, the weed shivered as Lars Metzger stepped out, and from behind Carl, Louie appeared from between the plants to join him. Instead of starting with their usual lecture about her ‘releasing a blight into Hatchetfield,’ they just stood and stared.

“Yeah, if this is some Scooby-doo villain style plot to scare me off my land it isn’t working. Ziggs, get back to the house, fetch the guns. I’m calling the cops,” she spat, waiting for their ringleader, Bob, to appear.

“You’ve cut the hole. You let us crawl through. We can breathe.” Louie stared up at the blue, cloudless sky, extending his arms to the summer sunlight. A breeze ruffled through his torn flannel. He tore in a raspy breath. Unpracticed.

“Piss off!” Emma snapped at them, hopping down to grab Zigg’s wrist and drag them back towards the house.

“What the fuck was that shit?” Emma cursed, throwing a look over her shoulder. The three brothers were standing still, their chests rising and falling with deep breaths, staring longingly up to the sky.

“The Hatchetmen,” Ziggs growled. “There’s still so much to do!”

“The wilt is gonna have to wait, I’m not letting them pick on my farmhand. But what was that back there? You couldn’t have grabbed him?”

“That’s not what I’m here to do.”

“Yeah, I guess it wasn’t in the job description but,” she trailed off with a roll of her eyes. “I’ll call the cops, you keep an eye on them, okay?” She threw open the ranch door, kicking aside the pile of muddy boots abandoned by the front window. “Just– stand here. All you have to do is keep an eye on them and tell me if they leave.”

“Oh– right,” they rubbed their red eyes, clearing their throat with a cough. “They nearly took the tractor! ”

“Sure, can do. Watch them?”

A simple enough responsibility for someone who appeared to be one joint down for the day. And it would buy her enough time to call the cops.

The HFPD, as useless as they tended to be, didn’t like the idea of making the drive all the way out into the witchwoods when a crime was yet to be committed.

They’d send out an officer to talk to Emma and the Metzgers first thing in the morning, which left Emma alone to defend her farm.

White moonlight washed over her yellowing crops, swaying quietly under the night breeze. A nighthawk perched on the branches of her overhanging evergreen. It kept its dark eyes on the woods with her.

Emma sat on top of her tractor, her shotgun aimed towards the cool blues and greens of the witchwoods that spread out in front of her, watching the sharp, dark shapes of the pine branches move in the wind, carrying the fresh scent of pine towards her.

Had the Metzgers even left her farm? She adjusted herself, staring up and down the still shape of her barn, not leaving her back to it.

Behind her. There was a sound in the plants. “Emma.” Something shifted somewhere in the tall stalks, and out emerged Ziggs.

“Oh, you scared me Ziggy.” She gave a relieved laugh, turning around to look down at them. “Is it already time for your shift?” Her blue phone light strained her eyes when she turned it on to check the time. Well past midnight. No sign of the Metzgers yet. “I haven’t seen any of them yet, but…” there was definitely something wrong. A bitter taste in the air, the smell of rot.

Ziggs stared out into the woods, sniffling, seemingly half asleep as they resumed their position out the front of the tractor. But they had actually woken up for it, so that was good enough. “The Hatchetmen have to be dealt with.”

“Yeah, totally. But call me if they show up. Don’t start a fight, leave that to me, okay Ziggy?” She gave them a hearty pat on the back, feigning a yawn as she trudged back to the house.

She heard the tiny squeak of Ziggs flicking open their metal lighter, and the burn of the flame. Lighting one up on the job would have certainly made the night a bit more tolerable.

She was so certain the forest seemed to whisper her name at night. And it was in warning.

She was impolitely awoken by a knock thudding on her front door. Emma opened her eyes with a groan, wondering how much longer she could get away with just laying there.

“Ziggy!” She called out. “Can you get it?”

Another pounding series of knocks.

She rolled out of bed, running her hands through her hair in an attempt to look impressionable so the HFPD would take her seriously, and not like she was some hysterical stoner.

“Ziggs!” She called out again, hurrying down the stairs as the HFPD knocked again.
An officer was waiting on her porch, having stepped back so that he could watch the Nighthawks hop about the end of her balustrade.

“Get out!” She snapped at the checkered-tail, stomping a boot down on a creaky floorboard to scare away the bird.

“Miss Emma Perkins? You made a call?” He held out a hand to shake. “Officer Rob. Can I take a report for you?”

She shook his hand hesitantly, already rather let down by their work this morning. “Yeah. My neighbors keep breaking into my farm.”

“No wonder your farmhand gave us such a rude welcome when we arrived,” he chuckled, rubbing a hand over his forehead in what might have been relief. “But our Sergeant has gone over to speak to the Metzgers to see what we can do for you.”

“Ah, ignore Ziggs. They were up late last night. We made sorta like a makeshift watchhouse to keep an eye on the fence last night. They took the last shift.” She didn’t know if they had gotten any rest. She’d let them off work early today.

“Where were you keeping watch?” Officer Rob asked.

“Just up on the tractor. They tried to steal it yesterday, so.”

“Mind if I take a look?”

“Yeah, sure.” She grabbed her muddied work boots from the shoe rack at the front door, shoving one foot in and digging it against the porch so she didn’t waste time doing up her laces. “Just up this way.”

She rubbed her eyes as they set off, yawning. It had been a while since she had pulled off a late night like that, especially when she was expected to be up so early. There was still a buzzing in her head.

“Go ahead, Doug.” Rob’s radio buzzed when he held it up to his ear.

“No one at the Metzger residence.” Emma heard a snippet of their voice buzz through. “Looks like no one’s been living here for a few days.”

A cool chill ran down Emma’s back. Officer Rob expression tightened.

“They were on your property last night?”

“They’ve been showing up for a while now. And I think you guys should look into them! Yeah, they keep saying this shit about like, burying things under the earth. Like, people!”

Rob cut them off with a sneeze, holding a hand to his face. “And we let Sam wait in the car,” he huffed.

“Huh?”

“Oh, sorry. I get terrible hayfever around this time of year. Does this always happen when you’re harvesting?”

“It’s not harvesting time yet,” Emma’s brow knitted.

And that’s when she tuned into what was a usual sound for the farm this early in the morning, and yet one that sent her heart skyrocketing – the rumbling of the tractor motor somewhere in the distance.

“Ziggs!” She shouted out. She took off, raking through her plants, drying and crinkled leaves catching at her hair and scratching at her skin.

She pushed through into the clearing: Half the western field lay in shreds at her feet. A clear sight all the way to the fence line, a thick haze of pollen clouded the air.

“Ziggs!” It was almost a shriek – roaring towards them up in their rusted tractor was their farmhand. Absent eyes and a firm grip on the wheel, and half the field plowed down in their wake.

Rob stumbled out through the crops beside her, wiping a hand under his nose, still sniffling from the pollen. “Oh my god!” His jaw dropped at the size of the tractor rolling towards them. He froze.

“Run!” Emma snapped at him, but she recognised that absent look in his expression.
“We’ve finally clawed our way out. We’ve breached the surface.”

Bob Metzger appeared through the haze beside Rob. The tractor did not slow down.
“Part of me has found a human body again.” For a split second, Bob’s voice didn’t belong to him. A younger, clearer voice seeped through his words like a broken radio signal.

And then out came his sons – Louie, Carl, Lars.

“And the rest of me was buried somewhere here.” They spoke as one, their words swallowed up by the sound of the tractor roaring closer. And then they turned on Emma.

She jerked back from Bob’s outstretched hand, turning on her heel to tear into her field.

Leaves snagged her skin and her hair, and she was out of breath as she breached the crop line. She picked up pace, the roar of the tractor chewing up the earth close behind, it's hot fumes hissing down her neck.

“Hey! Hey!” She called out, catching sight of the stationary police wagon parked up in her winding dirt driveway. “Hey!”

The Sergeant was leaning up against the fence, that same hollowed look on their face, but maybe that was because they were engaged in conversation with the ever-draining Grace Chasity.

“My mom says weed is the devil’s plant. I’m glad to see it getting mowed down.”
Grace had made the generous gesture to stop by on her bicycle ride – perhaps to protest her weed farm again, and her hands were crossed neatly over her handlebars, the ones with the kitschy pink and purple bike streamers, as she spoke up to the officer.

“The whole farm has to come down,” the Sergeant, Doug, spoke up. No, definitely infected. “The earth must return to its rightful state. There are so many more of us out there.”

This did not seem to catch Grace’s attention – Emma wondered if she was under the same stupor, but really, Grace was just this bad on a daily basis.

She turned around with a bright smile when she saw Emma, frozen in her tracks. “I’m so glad to see you and your farmhand have changed your mind, Emma. Although this is terrible for my allergies.” Her nose wrinkled up and she gave a shake of her head. “But I better go! I’ve got babysitting, and there’s one thing you’d better hurry up and know about Grace Chasity! I’m always on time!” She kicked her brakes up, peddling off with a saccharine little song trailing behind her.

“Oh my god!” Ziggs, Metzger, the officers; this sudden change only happened when they breathed it in. It was hayfever. It was an immune response.

But it wasn’t Verticillium wilt, it had nothing to do with the roots, it was the pollen, it was in the spores!

But in Graces’ absence, the Sergeant turned towards her. And with the same agenda in mind, wasted no time lunging at Emma. She twisted out of their way, jumping to slide across the hood, but she staggered her landing by coming down on her untied shoelace, and was dumped to the ground.

She pushed herself up, but the wagon door opened, and out stepped Chief Sam Sweetly with perfect timing, snagging her wrist in an iron grip to pin her arm behind her back. Shefigured she wasn’t getting anywhere anytime soon.

And in perfect unison, in a voice that didn’t belong to either of them, they spoke: “The Hatchetmen will know what it’s like to be buried.”

The tractor churned up the ground with a loud grumble on the other side of the heavy barn doors.

Inside the barn was dark. The humid, summer heat trapped inside the wooden walls, pressing up against Emma’s skin. Her breathing panicked.

Somewhere, under the hay and dirt that crossed the floor, had to be a body. Someone the Metzgers had buried. Not the first, and maybe not the last. And whatever this ‘gift’ was that Bob spoke about, this net that kept it trapped inside, had been broken. And it – the bodies? The ‘gift?’ – was coming up through the plants, coming out in the pollen.

That was what she had thought the heyfever was. Why the pollen had been so thick in the air as Ziggs, or someone who was Ziggs, tore up their harvest. And perhaps, why Ziggs had seemed to shake out of it whenever they were inside the house, away from it all.

“Okay, alright. I can do this.” Emma took in a deep breath, feeling the sweat layering on her skin, burning in the creases of her hands.

“If it’s in the pollen, then…” She turned around to pace the length of the barn, a warm palm pressed to her forehead. “Water. But god, I’m gonna need a lot of water. Where am I getting that water from? And I’m gonna need to get out of this barn!” She smacked herself on the top of the head for forgetting that crucial detail.

The officers had taken watch outside the barn she was held hostage in. And she knew they were going to come back. Unless the plan was to run her down with the tractor, or set the barn on fire with her in it.

She winced, backing up against a support beam with a thud. The whir of the tractor grazed too close to the outside of the shed, and she clenched her jaw tight until it passed.
If Emma’s farm had to go, she was not going to let these ghost freaks parade around in her friend’s skin (or the HFPD’s, she guessed. But they could do whatever they wanted with the Metzger’s). She was going to burn it down herself.

She unwrapped her flannel from around her waist, tying the sleeves tight around her head in a makeshift mask.

And when the tractor drew to a halt, inches from the barn, Emma prepared herself by the doors.

They slid open. A square of blinding afternoon light poured onto the barn floor. The figures of her eight haunted pursuers blocked her exit.

It was fine. She only need to get through one of them.

Wordlessly, the four Metzgers came to stand beside her, kneeling to the ground.
“Bob?” Emma didn’t like that. “Hey, get up.” She shoved his shoulder.

“Ziggs?” She called out. There was no recognition when she called their name. Not even a twitch of their head.

“There are so many more of us. In the earth, in the trees.” Ziggs heralded the group as the three members of the HFPD stepped into the barn to pull down shovels from the tool rack. “We have started here, but we will undo all of Hatchet Men's work. We’ll be free again.” There was the slightest hint of sorrow trailing in their tone.

The HFPD stood stationary, awaiting further orders. Their expression gave away nothing.
“And we’ll show you how it felt.”

Emma steadied her breathing as Ziggs approached. They placed their hands on her shoulders, and she let them push her onto her knees.

“You’ll rest well in the earth.”

“You wish.” She drove herself up into Zigg’s gut, knocking them down on the ground. There was a moment of shock from the hive-minded ghost where no one had coordinated a movement. She twisted Zigg’s shoulder, reaching into their back pocket for their steel lighter.

A shovel slammed down between her ankles. Officer Rob stood behind her, narrowly missing. Emma rolled onto her back, smashing a boot through the brittle post.

The lighter was snatched out of Emma’s hands. Doug loomed over them. The sunlight caught the metal gleam as they held it above their head.

Emma shot up, reaching for it. Ziggs snagged her ankle, the ground vanished under her feet as she slammed into the ground.

“If you weren’t possessed you’d be so fired right now, dude!” Emma snapped, barely a second to spare as she drew her legs out of the way of Sam Sweetly’s boots. She pushed herself up against the wall, throwing herself aside as Rob lunged at her. He smacked into the wall, dazed.

Her eyes searched frantically for the lighter. Doug no longer held it.

“I don’t have all the time in the world for this bullshit today,” Emma panted, trying to keep a sturdy stance. “Just hand over the lighter and this can all be over.”

She circled around the stationary Metzger, her remaining assailants preparing to block off her exit.

“The Hachetmen have to be buried,” they insisted in a mingle of whispery, airy voices, grainy with lack of practice.

And there was that glint again – clutched in Zigg’s hands.

She snatched the splintered remains of the shovel lodged into the dirt and launched it through the air. The group scattered, and Emma pushed past the Metzgers to dive at Ziggs. She pinned their hand behind their back, squeezing their wrist until their hand opened and the lighter dropped out.

She scooped it up, narrowly avoiding Sam’s swing. She took off. Racing for the mound of shredded weed laying in her field.

“You’re gonna have to give those bodies back, ghosts!” She spat, tossing the flaming lighter into the pile. With a roar, it came alight. Burning heat raced over her skin. A flashbang of light.

Flames ran through the pile until it was a smoldering heap. Smoke rose in thick storm clouds into the sky. Emma held her breath, pressing a hand to her mask. Her eyes watered as she backed away from the blaze.

For a moment, she lingered, watching everything she had ever worked towards burn.
She exhaled. More important work to tend to. The eight individuals that were quickly going to get stoned if they stayed out here long.

“Hey!” She shouted. “Chase me again! Come get your hatchetman!”

And against all clever thought, she bolted right back towards her shovel-wielding attackers, heat from the fire beating down on her skin. Sweat stuck her shirt to her back, her eyes burned. They raced towards her, she raced towards them.

At the last minute, she swerved, jumping up onto her tractor ladder and slamming the cabin door shut against the hands reaching out for her. Inside the tractor cabin, the temperature soared, sweat burned, she couldn’t breathe. She jammed the tractor keys in, slamming on the pedal, and racing them, and the tank full of fuel, away from the pollen, the fire, and the farm, the wail of sirens on the horizon.

That night, Emma sat on the roof of the ranch, relishing the cool night’s air on her warm skin. In the past, she had savored the fresh pine scent drifting from the treeline, but now everything smelled like smolder and ash. The firefighters had put out the inferno, washed the earth with water, putting out any trace of that ghostly pollen.

“Emma?” Ziggs poked their head out from the roof hatch. “I was looking for you!” They climbed out, shuffling over to sit next to her. They offered her a joint.

She held out a hand to turn down their peacekeeping gesture. She’d had enough weed for a while.

“You alright, man?”

“I just can’t believe the day was saved thanks to Grace Chasity!” She groaned, tipping her head back in frustration. “I had this whole plan, I was gonna steal a radio off one of the cops, call for emergency fire back up, but no, she just had to steal the show.”

The teen had not peddled far from the farm by the time the fire started. She had called for emergency services before Emma would’ve even handled the tractor.

“Oh, well,” Ziggs toasted their blunt into the air. “To Chastity, right?”

She snorted, because Grace would hate nothing more than to have someone smoke in her name. “Yeah, give me a hit, actually.”

“Sucks that you lost everything, though. That was a whole season of work, gone!”
Emma shrugged, exhaling a curl of smoke. “Not everything. I’ve still got my botany degree, and my savings, and the tractor – thank god. Those things are not cheap.”

“What’re you going to do now though? I don’t think I’ve got enough antihistamine tablets to keep myself safe from ghost weed. That would be like, a thousand tablets. At least!”

“Nope. I’m gonna have to start another pot farm. Somewhere that isn’t on haunted soil. So, literally, anywhere else.”

“Except Clivesdale, right?” Ziggs asked, tentative.

Emma clicked her tongue, dipping her head with conviction. “Obviously. Fuck ‘em.”

A lazy moment passed. There were no crickets in the witchwoods tonight. Only the distant call of the Nighthawks, flown somewhere far away from her farm. She passed the blunt back. “And yet still the worst part of this is that Grace Chasity saved the day before I did!”

“Nah, man! You totally saved the day! You got rid of the ghost weed, and saved the tractor from exploding and killing everyone!” Ziggs exclaimed. “And that’s pretty sick.”

Emma waved a hand, chuckling. “Well if I have to die, getting my flesh melted off saving your ass isn’t a terrible way to go out. I’m glad to have you back, Ziggy.”