“Come on, kid! They’re about to crown Miss Creamed Corn!”

Miss Creamed Corn? Oh, how you hate the Harvest Festival. Jerry, your best friend since fourth grade, is eagerly pulling your arm.

“Are you coming?”

You grunt something noncommittal and shuffle toward town square. Dingy booths, amateur crafts, a guy in clown makeup who is way more scary than he is funny. This stinks. When you were a kid, it didn’t get any cooler than crop mazes and bean bag tosses for stuffed animals, but now all you see are people that are way, way too proud of the size of their squash. Everyone still seems to show up, though. You see Todd Donnelly, captain of the football team, harassing Jason, the smelly kid who always wears a ratty black hoodie. Jenny, Farmer MacBride’s daughter, is standing next to one of the aforementioned giant squashes. Todd’s dad, Sheriff Donnelly, is talking to Deputy William and Father Grady at the foot of the Miss Creamed Corn stage. Even Jake, that creepy drifter who showed up last week, is stumbling around in a heavy trenchcoat and earflapped hat.

You and Jerry make your way toward the hastily erected stage, now becoming tough to see with only the last vestiges of daylight to guide you. You start to comment to Jerry that you can see fine from here, but he plunges into the crowd and you feel obliged to follow until the two of you are front and center for the MCC coronation. It’s hot and busy and you feel more miserable than ever.

After several uncomfortable moments, you start to ask why you have to be so close when the floodlights click on and Pat Kendall, the host of Miss Creamed Corn, strides onstage followed by the contestants. Third from the left you see Cindy Dithers and suddenly all becomes clear. Jerry has been chasing her since fourth grade, and tonight Cindy looks more beautiful and demure and blissfully emptyheaded than ever. Some of the other girls are pretty, you think to yourself, but Cindy has been making pageant judges swoon since she was nine.

Pat grins toothily and speaks into the microphone.

“Thank you so much, ladies and gentlemen, for coming out to see just which of these lovely local ladies” — here he pauses to leer just a little too long at the line of contestants — “will be crowned under the moonlight as this year’s Miss Creamed Corn!” The moon is big tonight, you notice. Really big, actually.

“It’s been a heckuva competition up ’til now, with these hopefuls strutting, singing and tap dancing their way into our hearts all day long. In the end, though, we all know there can be only one, and that one – our beautiful, talented Miss Creamed Corn of the Harvest Festival, is-”

And then you hear it.

IF IT’S A LOW, RHYTHMIC CHANTING, GO HERE.

IF IT’S A THROATY, MUSTY GROAN FROM BENEATH YOU, GO HERE.

IF IT’S A BOOM FROM HEAVEN, GO HERE.

IF IT’S A VICIOUS, BLOODTHIRSTY HOWL, GO HERE.

IF IT’S THE PIERCING CRACK OF THE EARTH SPLITTING IN TWO, GO HERE.

IF YOU HEAR NOTHING AT ALL – IN FACT, IT’S *TOO* QUIET – GO HERE.