How Summerville Got its Name

The white metal sign peppered with rusting bullet holes read Welcome to Summerville. Lara frowned, her foot lifting slightly from the accelerator. She leaned forward, squinting through the dust on the windshield. Summerville? The name was puzzling. As a child, during the sun-drenched July she had spent here with her Aunt Summer, the town had been called High Ridge. Her mother’s old address book still had it listed that way. Why had it been changed? This couldn’t be mere coincidence. A town didn’t rename itself after an eccentric recluse without reason.
Palms aching, she adjusted her grip on the steering wheel. Her ring finger was bare now. The unexposed band of skin was pale where eight grams of platinum and a counterfeit promise had lived for six agonizing years. Lara had felt a surge of relief after yanking the ring off and leaving it on her dresser. But the ghost of its weight remained, a phantom shackle.
Her aging Honda Civic shuddered as it struck a deep pothole on Route 9. The struts were shot, the engine was ticking like a dying heart, and the gas tank was nearly empty. Lara pulled to the shoulder and checked her purse. Ninety-six dollars in crumpled bills and three quarters. She knew of wives and husbands who had emptied a joint checking account before running off but knew better than to give Mack additional motivation to find her. Mustering the courage to flee after waking from a nightmare at 3 o’clock in the morning, there had been little time to prepare. She just wanted out. Her phone, at least, was fully charged.
As the road descended into a shallow valley, the newly christened Summerville unfolded before her. Lara remembered the town from years ago, when it boasted nearly 3,000 souls. It had been surrounded by countless acres of corn and soybeans, the air thick with the sweet, heavy scent of damp earth, the streets bustling with pick-up trucks and sunburned men in mesh-back caps. Now, according to the faded census marker at the town limits, the population sat at 1430. Looking about through her bug-splattered windshield, Lara wondered if even that number was generous. On Main Street, the windows of a hardware store, a pharmacy and a bakery were boarded up with graying plywood. Faded foreclosure notices had been placed on other buildings.
Just outside of the downtown area, residents had all manner of junk cluttering their weed-overgrown lawns. Not just discarded toys and home appliances, but rusting vehicles as well. The town didn’t just look poor; it looked evacuated, as if some something had come through and taken anything worth keeping.
Then there were the scarecrows. In odd places. Lara slowed the Honda to a crawl as she continued away from the town square. In the overgrown front yard of a sagging Victorian house stood an elaborate figure. Not a primitive burlap-and-straw creation, it was amazingly detailed. The figure was dressed in a grease-stained mechanic’s jumpsuit, stuffed so tightly with some dense material that it possessed a lifelike form. Its head was a sack of thick canvas, but someone had meticulously painted facial features onto it. It hung from a heavy wooden cross frame, its boots dangling inches above the dead grass, arms lashed out wide. Lara found another scarecrow three houses down. This one wore a faded floral dress, perched on a porch swing. Its canvas face was elaborately painted to simulate make-up and lipstick.
She wondered why these had been removed from the fields and placed where they were. Despite the town’s dreary appearance, Lara found herself oddly charmed by the figures. They were quaint, eccentric fixtures, perhaps a lingering sign of community pride despite the prevailing decay. She began to notice subtle differences in the crafting—the precise stitching on a denim jacket here, the clever use of yarn for hair there. It made her wonder if the townspeople held an annual scarecrow festival or perhaps a spirited neighborhood competition to see who could construct the most lifelike creation. Her musings elicited a smile. In a place that felt largely abandoned, it was comforting to imagine the residents coming together each autumn, trying to outdo one another with nothing more than canvas, paint, and a bit of imagination.
Lara caught her reflection in the rearview mirror—she was a twenty-eight-year-old hazel-eyed beauty, someone that people turned to look at in a crowded room. It was that very attractiveness that had first drawn Mack’s obsessive, suffocating adoration. He had pursued her with a passion that she had mistaken for true affection. Flowers left on her doorstep, texts sent at midnight just to say he was thinking about her, friends he charmed so thoroughly that they though she was lucky. She was told that men like Mack didn’t come along very often. In the beginning, standing in the warmth of his full attention, she had felt chosen. And that had been more than enough. But looking back, she could trace the devolution of their relationship — the way he had methodically made himself indispensable, the way his generosity had carried the cloying scent of obligation. Eventually his attitude toward her had changed from you’re beautiful to you wouldn’t be anything without me. Worst of all, their coupling had become more akin to rape than lovemaking.
When Lara realized she had no friends left, Mack having systematically alienated every last one, she dug through her late mother’s old address books and found a handwritten note: Summer. High Ridge. One Magnolia Street. Lara had always known her simply as Aunt Summer, a name that had once evoked images of comfort, warmth and golden fields, though the family treated her like an unexpected late-spring frost.
Lara turned off the town’s major throughway and negotiated a winding, gravel path where the valley gave way to dense, old-growth timber. She loved the canopy of walnut, beech and ancient oaks, but a lack of sleep was catching up with her. Finally, after nearly four hours in the car, she reached her destination. At a clearing in the woods stood the house of her aunt about whom the family rarely spoke. Growing up, Lara had only heard her aunt’s name in hushed, judgmental descriptions over holiday dinners. Weird. Unnatural. Living in sin.
Summer’s place was a 1950’s style farmhouse that had never known paint, its cedar shingles well-weathered. The porch was lined with numerous glass jars containing dried roots, murky liquids and preserved specimens. As the Honda’s engine died with a dismal cough, the front door of the porch creaked open, and her aunt stood in the threshold.
Summer was a slender, tall woman of indeterminate age, skin deeply tanned, posture straight as a plumb line. Long, silver-streaked hair cascaded over her shoulders and back. She wore a dark green linen dress, and around her neck hung a gleaming silver amulet. But it was her aunt’s eyes, possessing an authority completely separate from the modern world, that held Lara motionless
Finally stepping out of the car, Lara felt unsteady. The long drive was catching up with her. “Aunt Summer? I’m… I’m Lara, Martha’s daughter.” Summer didn’t speak at first. She walked down the porch steps with a slow, deliberate grace, her bare feet making no sound on the wooden planks. Smelling of rosemary and other herbs, Summer stopped inches from Lara. She reached out a long, elegant hand, her fingers tipped with sharp, clean nails, and gently caressed Lara’s cheek. Her touch was warm, like a stone left in sunlight.
“I know who you are, child,” Summer said. Her voice was a rich contralto that seemed to resonate within her chest. “And I know what walks behind you.”
“I have nowhere else to go,” Lara whispered, the tears she had held back for hours finally spilling over. “He’s going to kill me, Summer.” Summer’s gaze dropped to Lara’s bare left hand and then shifted to the faint, yellowing bruise along her jawline which makeup couldn’t completely hide. A cold, terrifying scowl came over the old woman’s face.
“Let him try,” Summer said softly. “Now come inside and have something to eat. Then you can wash the road from your skin.”
The rest of the day passed in a strange, dreamlike haze. The interior of the house was a labyrinth of dark wood and heavy tapestries with the pervasive, intoxicating scent of drying herbs. There were no clocks, televisions, radio or internet. Summer lived by an older rhythm. She gave Lara a small, sunlit room at the back of the house. The mattress was stuffed with sweetgrass and lavender. And for the first time in a long time, Lara slept peacefully.
***
The next day, Lara offered to drive into town to buy groceries. Summer tossed a ring of keys onto her small wooden breakfast table and said, “Your car gave its last breath to get you here, so take my truck.”
As Lara drove her aunt’s battered Ford Ranger into town, she expected the curious stares that usually greet outsiders in dying communities. But something else was in store. She stopped at an unbranded gas station, the only one in town with an operational pump. The attendant, a weather-beaten middle-aged man stepped out of the small shack. When he saw the truck, he immediately straightened his posture. He took off his grease-stained cap and held it against his chest. When Lara lowered the window, he looked at her, his eyes wide with a mixture of intense curiosity and a measure of reverence. “Afternoon, miss,” he said, his voice dropping into an almost religious whisper. “I’m Hank. This… this is Miss Summer’s truck, isn’t it?” he said as he began to fill her tank.
“Yes,” Lara said tentatively. “I’m her niece, Lara. Pleased to meet you, Hank. Um… if you don’t mind my asking, can you tell me when the town changed its name from High Ridge?” Hank’s face paled slightly, his eyes darting briefly away before settling back on Lara. He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing.
“We… we changed it about fifteen years back. After the drought, when the soil was so dry it cracked. The crops completely failed, and a lot of folks left. Miss Summer… she stepped in. Over a single winter, she fixed the earth and gave us hope. We renamed the town to honor her and to make sure everyone remembers who saved the valley.” He gave her a polite, deferential bow of his head. “No charge for the fuel, ma’am. Anything Miss Summer needs, we provide. Always. “
“Oh, no, I can pay,” Lara began, reaching for her purse.
“Please,” Hank interrupted, his hand trembling slightly as he waved her money away. “We’re happy to help any way we can.”
It was the same at the small, dimly-lit grocery store at the edge of town. The cashier, an elderly woman whose skin looked as though it had been transplanted from dried apples, grabbed a cart and filled it with fresh produce, thick cuts of bacon, bread and jars of local honey, all the while speaking in hushed, ultra-polite tones. She refused Lara’s money with a look of near panic, only once making direct eye contact.
When Lara walked back to the truck, she noticed a group of three young men sitting on the tailgate of a nearby vehicle. They had been laughing, but the moment Lara approached, they fell silent. They didn’t leer or catcall, as men often did when Lara walked by. Instead, they got to their feet. But glancing down at the gravel, the trio waited like timid schoolboys until she had started the engine and pulled away. Lara realized that the townspeople didn’t just respect Aunt Summer; they were afraid of her. They regarded her as a reigning feudal lord. Or a volatile deity that demanded unwavering devotion.
As Lara drove back to her aunt’s home, she passed several scarecrows again, wondering why the town still had them instead of the modern equivalents. And why stick them in places where they weren’t needed? In the bright afternoon sun, she noticed something peculiar about the one in the mechanic’s jumpsuit. A cluster of fat, black flies was buzzing around the heavy canvas head, crawling in and out of its open mouth. No longer quaint, a dark oily moisture had seeped through the canvas fabric at the collar, staining the faded blue denim beneath. Lara pressed her foot down on the accelerator, her stomach knotting.
When Lara returned, she found her aunt in the garden behind the house, digging up a patch of pale, fleshy root vegetables that looked uncomfortably like deformed human hands. “I got gasoline and groceries, but they wouldn’t take my money,” Lara said. “When I asked Hank about the name change, he said you saved the town.” Summer didn’t look up from her digging.
“A town is like a field, Lara. Left to itself, it grows wild, choked by weeds, ruined by pests. The people here… they understand the value of a good harvest. They know that without a caretaker, the soil becomes useless. I’m the caretaker. Have been for a long time.”
“And those… those displays in the yards? The scarecrows?”
Summer paused, her silver hair catching the dappled sunlight. She turned toward Lara, her expression unreadable. “A caretaker must protect the crops from things that seek to ruin them. The townspeople understand what happens to weeds that choke our fields and gardens. The peace is preserved here because they have no stomach for the alternative.” Lara turned her aunt’s words over in her head, unsettled by them in a way she couldn’t explain. She had more questions, but suddenly felt a vibration at her right hip. With a sinking feeling, Lara reached into her back pocket and pulled out her phone. The screen was glowing, casting a cold blue light across her panicked face. She opened a text message, and there was no mistaking the sender.
FOUND YOU, MY LOVELY! HIDING IN THE WOODS? SEE YOU SOON.
Lara dropped the phone onto the floorboards. It bounced, the screen cracking. “No,” she gasped, her vision narrowing. “No, no, no. He tracked me. And now he’s coming!” Summer stepped into the kitchen, her bare feet leaving faint, damp outlines of soil on the wood. She picked up the phone, saw the message, and looked at Lara’s hysterical face.
“This the man who beats you?” Summer asked, her voice deadly calm.
“He’s a monster, Summer! You don’t understand, he won’t stop! He’ll kill me, and he’ll kill you for hiding me! Mack has a gun; he always has a gun!”
Summer still held the phone. Lara watched in stunned silence as the glass shattered completely, the metal frame buckling beneath her aunt’s bare fingers. The screen went dark and a wisp of acrid black smoke drifted from the casing. Summer tossed the ruined device into the trash. “Let the bastard come,” she said, her voice dropping into a low register.
***
The storm hit the valley just after supper. It began as a violent, unnatural gale that initially brought no rain; only howling, bruising winds that whipped the trees into a frenzy. The sky flickered with frequent bolts of lightning and the power failed. The house was plunged into near darkness, illumination coming only from the oil lamps which Summer took into every room. Every crash of thunder sounded like Mack’s fist against a door, each groan of the timber frame as threatening as his voice. Taking hold of a heavy fireplace poker, Lara sat on the floor of the living room, back against the wall, knees pulled to her chest. And then, through the howling wind, she heard it. The unmistakable crunch of giant tires on gravel and the deep, guttural growl of a powerful engine. Lara crawled to the window and peered over the sill. Through the darkness and the flickering lightning, she saw the burly Ford F-150 Raptor pull into the driveway. It blocked Summer’s old truck. The headlights cut through the gloom, two blinding white eyes. Then the loud engine quieted, the door opened, and a man stepped down onto the gravel. He was tall and broad-shouldered, wearing a black leather jacket and a baseball cap pulled low. Even from a distance, Lara recognized the arrogant, predatory stride. It was Mack. He held a long flashlight in one hand, its beam sweeping across the front porch. His other hand was buried deep in his jacket pocket.
“Lara!” his voice boomed over the wind, magnified by the acoustic bowl of the ridge. “Lara, honey! Come on out! You left your wedding ring at home, sweetie! I brought it back for you!” Lara sobbed, pressing her back against the wall.
“He’s here,” she whispered. “Oh God, he’s here!”
“Stay right where you are, child,” Summer answered. She had entered the room entirely naked, her pale, loose skin painted with intricate, geometric patterns using what looked like dark river mud. Her iridescent eyes reflected flashes of lightning from outside. She held a machete in her right hand.
“Summer, no! He always carries a gun!” Lara begged. Summer didn’t answer. She walked past Lara, the floorboards creaking softly under her bare feet, and threw the heavy front door wide open. Mack was now halfway up the porch steps, but halted and swept his flashlight beam up to illuminate Summer’s naked, mud-painted form. He let out a loud, mocking laugh.
“What the hell is this?” Mack shouted, his voice dripping with contempt. “Are you the crazy old aunt? Listen, bitch, I don’t give a shit about your hillbilly voodoo. Where’s my skank of a wife? Tell her to get her fine ass out here before I burn this shack down with both of you in it.”
Summer strode onto the porch. The wind caught her unbound silver hair, animating it around her head like a halo of knives. She raised her left hand, her fingers splayed wide toward Mack. “You have entered a sacred place without an offering,” Summer said, her voice seeming to echo from the trees, the earth, and the stones beneath their feet. “You have brought rot into the garden.”
“Yeah, yeah. Whatever,” Mack sneered. He pulled his hand from his pocket, revealing a handgun. He pointed it directly at Summer’s chest. “Step aside, old woman, or I’ll put a hole in that flat chest of yours.” Summer didn’t flinch. What happened next defied everything Lara understood about reality. Her aunt raised her left arm and quickly brought it down. The white beams of Mack’s truck headlights suffered a sudden overload of current and burst with a loud crack. Lara dropped down below the window, every bit as terrified as when Mack was about to beat her for being the cause of everything gone wrong in his life.
Then came a cadence of snapping branches from the edge of the woods. Thick brambles were crushed as a path was cleared. Mack’s sneer vanished. He stumbled back a step, his flashlight beam shaking wildly. “What… what the fuck is that?” From the tree line, figures began to emerge, figures that had been waiting at the wood’s edge—patient, still, set in the darkness well before Mack’s truck had entered the driveway. The creatures moved with a stiff, mechanical gait. In the flickering lightning, they became more distinct. The mechanic in the grease-stained jumpsuit. The woman in the floral dress. Another wearing an apron. Their canvas faces were frozen in expressions of agony and terror, yet they moved with a terrifying, coordinated purpose.
Mack panicked, firing shot after shot into the darkness toward the approaching menace. The loud detonations of the gun were partially swallowed by the roaring wind. The bullets tore through the canvas heads and chests of the scarecrows, spitting out sprays of dry straw and gray, powdery dust. But the intruders never slowed their pace. “Stay away from me!” Mack screamed. Then he turned back toward the porch, aimed his gun at Summer and pulled the trigger. The gun clicked. A dry, useless sound. Again, he attempted to fire. Click.
Summer raised her machete. She made a swift, downward slashing motion through empty space. Mack let out a horrific, desperate cry. He dropped the gun, clutching his right arm. Through a rent in his leather jacket, blood gushed from his forearm. He fell to his knees on the gravel, weeping, his arrogance shattered.
“Please,” he whimpered, looking up at Summer. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
“It’s a little late for an apology,” Summer asserted. “But a sacrifice will do.” The scarecrows closed in. Approaching Mack from behind, the mechanic wrapped its thick, straw-filled arms around his chest. The woman in the floral dress grabbed his left arm and another figure took hold of his right. Surrounded, Mack began screaming—a high, piercing, animal shriek that was cut short as a sack of coarse burlap was pulled over his head, stifling his cries into muffled pleas. They dragged him down into the darkness of the valley, his boots kicking and scraping uselessly against the gravel. Summer remained on the porch, her machete held aloft as she spurred her minions. Unnerved by Mack’s screams and loath to hear any more, Lara rose from the wood floor, hurried to her bed and pulled the blankets over her head. The wind howled through the night.
***
In the morning, stillness prevailed. The sun rose over the valley, casting long, golden shafts of light, and Lara woke to the welcome chirping of a variety of birds. The storm had vanished, leaving behind a clear blue sky and a cool breeze that carried the scent of autumn. Lara dressed in a comfortable pair of jeans and a flannel shirt, her movements slow and mechanical. The terror of the night before was crystallizing into a horrific collage she would never forget. But she was alive and Mack was gone.
Lara found her aunt seated at her small wooden table. Summer was clad in a dark green dress once more and her silver hair was pulled back into a pony tail. She was sipping tea from a ceramic mug, looking refreshed, her skin glowing with a youthful vitality which Lara hadn’t noticed two days ago. “Good morning, child,” Summer said softly. “The tea is fresh. Dandelion root and honey. It will do you good.” Lara poured herself a cup, her hands steady. She sat opposite her aunt, staring into the dark amber liquid.
“Is it really over?”
Summer smiled gently, taking a slow sip. “He won’t trouble you again. I convinced your Mack that he was much better off without you.” Noticing Lara’s raised eyebrows, Summer set her cup down with a soft clink. “Men like him are fragile,” she explained. “They’re driven entirely by vanity. So I filled his head with the notion that he was wasting his time here—that there were plenty of other women out there in the world who would gladly crawl on glass shards to catch his eye. Just for a moment of his precious attention.”
Lara stared at her aunt. “You… you let him leave?”
“Of course,” Summer said, her iridescent eyes shining. “Now you head into town and get us some of that firewood they stack at the side of the grocery store. And when you get back, tell me how the fields look.”
Lara drove down the uneven road in the bright morning light. Summer’s story about convincing Mack to leave was a convenient lie, and they both knew it. Men like Mack didn’t just walk away from a fight—not after being approached by a mob of burlap zombies and a silver-haired woman wielding a machete. But Lara had no desire to challenge her aunt’s explanation for why Mack was gone.
The valley was different today. The air felt lighter; the oppressive, stagnant weight that had hung over the town seemed to have lifted. The cornstalks in the fields were tall, robust, and waiting to be cleared for the next planting. When she entered the town limits, she passed another Summerville sign. The name felt like the title to a binding contract.
The people were already out on the streets. Hank was at the gas station, sweeping the pavement free of the storm-blown debris. When he saw Lara drive by, he stopped, took off his hat, and pressed it to his chest, giving her a deep, respectful bow. He looked relieved, almost happy. On Main Street, the elderly grocery clerk was washing her shop window, but immediately interrupted her work to help Lara load the firewood. As before, she wouldn’t accept payment.
The town was breathing again. Lara slowed as she reached the town square, her eyes scanning all about. She pulled to the curb in front of the local municipal building—a small, red-brick structure with a flagpole. In the center of the manicured green lawn stood a new figure — a scarecrow, lashed to a frame of sturdy oak timbers. The figure was dressed in a black leather jacket, dark jeans, and heavy work boots. The body was stuffed to bursting, sporting the broad shoulders of a strong man. A baseball cap covered the top of its head. Lara stepped out of the truck, her boots clicking softly on the asphalt. She walked onto the grass, approaching the figure. Its face was covered with thick, coarse burlap, stitched into the neck with heavy twine. But meticulously drawn features were sketched onto the rough fabric with dark, permanent ink. The painted eyes were wide, round discs of pure, unadulterated terror, the pupils constricted into tiny pinpricks of simulated panic. Its mouth was stretched open impossibly wide—a silent scream in the quiet morning air. Lara came closer, within inches of the display. She looked down at the figure’s right arm. Through a neat, clean tear in the black leather jacket, she could see a thick layer of golden, tightly packed straw. Then she reached out a bare, trembling hand and touched the burlap face. Beneath the rough fabric she felt a surprising rigidity. It wasn’t just straw inside. There was a solid structure beneath—the contours of a jaw, the bridge of a nose, the shape of a collarbone.
Lara gasped as she noticed a peculiar detail. The scarecrow’s left hand was lashed tightly against the wooden crossbeam, but the index finger was bent sideways at a sharp, unnatural angle—like an old injury where the bone had not been properly set. Mack had broken that same finger playing college football; he used to compulsively tap that crooked joint against his thigh whenever he was plotting his next outburst. What’s more, even under the straw the scarecrow’s shoulders were asymmetrical, the left side drooping slightly. An old collar bone injury. A sudden wave of vertigo washed over her.
She couldn’t be certain. It was a scarecrow, after all—an aggregate of burlap, twine, and stuffing. Perhaps her mind, fractured by years of psychological terror, was merely projecting his traits onto the canvas monster. But the resemblance was undeniable and suffocating. Suddenly, a large, iridescent bluebottle fly landed on the inner border of the painted right eye. It then crawled down the burlap nose and disappeared into the dark hollow of the scarecrow’s mouth. And from deep within the throat of the scarecrow, Lara heard a sound. It was incredibly faint, a sound that required the complete silence of the morning to perceive. It was a low, wet, whistling rattle—the sound of air being forced through a constricted passage. A rhythmic, desperate gasp that rose and fell every few seconds. In. Out. In. Out. Somehow, her husband was still in there, trapped, converted into a living pillar of straw and flesh, bound to the wood. His new purpose in life: to serve as a warning to any who dared to threaten the prevailing order, all the while his mind spinning with the fanciful delusions Summer had planted inside him. Delusions of adoring women seeking his attention and approval while his physical form rotted above ground in a town named after the witch who had broken him. Lara looked at the painted burlap face. For six years, she had lived in terror of his eyes, his voice, his hands. Now, he was a just prop; no longer Mack the Knife.
When the tension in her shoulders began to fade, something loosened in her chest. Not relief, exactly, but the quiet that follows a long-held breath finally released. The last, lingering phantom encircling her ring finger vanished, leaving nothing but clean, untethered freedom. She reached out, gently patted the scarecrow’s burlap cheek, and whispered, “Sayonara, Mack. And good riddance!
Lara turned back toward the truck, fingers rising instinctively to where her aunt’s silver amulet nestled against her chest. Summer had draped it around her neck, saying nothing beyond an admonition that it never be removed. The amulet felt warm and seemed to thrum with a vitality of its own.
She settled into the cab of the old Ford and gripped the steering wheel. The amulet caught the morning light through the windshield, throwing a small, bright star onto the dashboard. Lara watched it a moment, then allowed herself a slow, unhurried breath. For the first time in six years, she felt safe and protected. She put the truck in gear and drove back toward her new home.

Credit: Joseph Cusumano