“Wait, don’t go in there!” My sister yelled, the distance between us growing further. I venture deep into the field, the corn stalks a wall around me.

“For the love of God, Ben! Get back here!”

Dead leaves decaying on the soil attempt to pull me back, to return me home where the mystery of this neglected corn field will remain unsolved until the intrigue weathers away. But the smell of smoke was a stronger force. It attacked my senses, drawing me further in. I was prey to the secrets of these acres of land.

“Ben!”

Perhaps I am intruding on something once sacred, and that this is the only chance I get to turn. There is a chance this place may have always been a corn field, and it needed the presence of a human life again. Whatever the true story was, I kept going until I reached a clearing.

Above me, the sky faded to black. The transition was fast. It had been morning when my sister and I arrived here. Ash crunched below my footsteps until I came across a book. Engraved upon the leather cover was a cross, the kind particularly associated with Christianity. I reached down to pick it up, my fingertips coated in dust.

Then, I saw it. For a flash of a second. Burning, glowing fire ascending higher up the pile of hay. A woman struggling against the post she was restrained to, the fraying rope chafing against her pale skin. The billowing smoke served as a muzzle as she suffocated with each intake of breath. I took a step forward, but the bible dropped from my hands, and it was all gone. I returned to the present moment where the sky remained blue.

As I turned back, I began to cough and hack out the remnants of flame I inhaled. Even after returning to my sister, the words of what I saw wouldn’t come out. I was met with a smack on the head.

“What we’re you thinking running off like that?!” She demanded. “You could’ve gotten lost!”

It’d been impossible to forward an apology. The bible placed in the clearing seemed to be waiting for someone to catch a glimpse of the trial it witnessed in that very spot. Nobody leaves one in a corn field like this, let alone forgets about it. Are there more among this crops?

I couldn’t think of the answer now. My sister wouldn’t stop hitting me.