October 12
Arriving in Oaksgrave
So it was on my route anyway, but thanks to a lot of you for recommending I check out Oaksgrave. Turned out it was the most eventful town yet. It’s a nice place, a bit church-y for my tastes, but cute.
I showed up during the harvest festival (special thanks to amphiwren66 for the rundown) and immediately got chatted at by some old lady with real oracle vibes. Asked about some missing kid, she gave me her number and I agreed to call her first if I heard anything relevant (better than the pigs :P). She said some real cryptic shit. "See you again in 20 minutes." My gut said to trust her though, so I let her be.
The harvest festival is real nice, if a bit rickety. Everything that’s set up looks like it could be taken down in a hurry. I swear I saw masking tape holding the ferris wheel together. Good food though. Talked to a cop about the missing kid thing. Or, he talked to me about it, I never told him anything.
The only place that looked like it would stand up in a light breeze was the corn maze. There was some weird vibes coming off of it, so of course y’all already know what I did, I walked right in! I got lost, but not like in a normal way you get lost in corn mazes, it was clearly supernatural. Lotsa ghost kids pitter-pattering around, I got to the center and there was just like, a normal looking scarecrow.
One of the ghosts started talking to me, obviously I didn’t turn around to look because he seemed helpful enough. Must’ve been stuck there for 20 years, he said his sister was pregnant with Jane Druly (the town gossip that I was planning on cosying up to in my last post) when he died. Real helpful though, told me that Ed was the center of all the weird shit, and that he "doesn’t like it when the lights go out."
I went to leave, but the scarecrow was in front of me. Didn’t even really move, I just looked away to go and it was there instead. And then it did something real weird.
The scarecrow reached out, and a human child’s hand came out of the wrist and grabbed me. Now obviously I’m not one for attacking kids, but this was sure not a kid anymore, so I whipped out Baby Blue and stabbed it. It dropped me and I ran.
And then immediately tripped, but instead of eating dirt, I just fell into it up to my waist. Like stepping in a puddle where you can’t tell the depth, but there was no puddle, just dry cornmaze soil. Didn't sink any further, luckily, and pretty quickly a real nice butch came up and started helping me out, along with a kid in the brightest jewel blue and yellow outfit. They pulled me out, and I asked the woman if she had a light - and even now I remember this pretty vividly - she said "Of course I do, I'm a lesbian." Which, fair, but I had to explain that I was talking about a flashlight. I figured that it would probably work to keep Ed off my back.
Turns out she did, and she handed it over right before we bolted. The rest of the cornmaze is a blur. I remember using the light trick and it working, and I remember the kid being weirdly competent. Almost ended up trusting the kid more than my own senses, she sure seemed to know where she was going. Eventually a path opened up in the maze to some river out back, and a grave under a tree.
Honestly not sure what even happened exactly, but the grave was open and there was a kid's corpse in there?? Not new, real old, probably 20 years if I had to guess. There was what I'm pretty sure is a witch's jar in the grave with him. The kid said to burn it, and at this point I was just too stunned to really argue. The lesbian dropped her lighter in, and I heard what I'm pretty sure was Ed screaming. Eventually the body burned out, and the cornmaze was un-haunted.
We watched them drag the police chief out, apparently he'd gone in after I had and got cut up real badly. Good riddance if you ask me. Some other folks might ask why I'm staying, but I'm sure y'all know that this is a real promising start to my visit in Oaksgrave. I'm excited to share whatever else this weird little town has in store for me.