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Chapter 2. Uploaded Thursday November 18, 10:05 PM.

“Dawn, wake the f**k up,” Alex Elphough, her father, barked at her, looking in the rear-view mirror and seeing her lounging in the back seat.

“I am up...”

“The hell you are,” he grumbled, his eyes returning to the road. There were half-sized, adolescent corn plants growing on both sides of them, many of which were dead. It was the hottest summer on record in Southern Ohio, hotter than hellfire, some of the old rednecks said. All the crops, newly-planted, were dropping like possums in the path of a midnight rider. It was far too hot for them to survive. The cattle didn't really care for the heat either, but no one really noticed, because a hot cow makes just as much beef as an air-conditioned cow.

Alex, a backwater farming man, nearly threw his room service chocolates against the wall when he heard about the heat on the news. They'd been vacationing in Gatlinburg for the past month, just him and Dawn and her older sister Dee, when he'd seen it on The Weather Channel. Record highs. Heat advisories. Old people dying in their homes. He probably cussed out the TV.

“Dawn, put your shoes on, we're almost home.”

It was six o'clock in the evening, the sun bright and golden as it slithered beneath the horizon. Dee was sitting in the front seat, looking at her nails. She was bold and slender and attractive, appearing to be an older and somewhat tanner Dawn, with darker eyes and slightly fuller lips. In her lap was a book, The Bridges of Madison County, resting on her jean skort.

This was the picture Dee Elphough presented. Beautiful and intelligent. She had shown promise since her third birthday, when she successfully read the front page of the newspaper to her mother, and on her kindergarten graduation, when she orated a three-minute speech about how important her school was to her. In sixth grade, she had created a new household method for reducing fossil fuels and won a statewide science fair competition. And then there came the Future City Competition in eighth grade, and the National Merit Scholarship in tenth grade, and a perfect score on her ACT in twelfth grade. Even more impressive, she accomplished all this while competing in four different sports and holding an average of two boyfriends per year past the sixth grade.

Dawn, however, lagged behind.

With developmental dyslexia, Dawn was unable to read until second grade, and received a constant stream of low grades for her horrendous spelling. At her kindergarten graduation, instead of orating a three-minute speech, she punched the boy next to her in the jaw, knocking him off the stage and narrowly avoiding lawsuits. In sixth grade, she failed her science project, skipped the day of the science fair, and got caught giving a seventh grader a blowjob in the locker room. Not surprisingly, in the eighth grade, she became heavily intoxicated at about seven parties, spent a good six hours in the principal's office, and garnered the attention of about a dozen teenage gossip mongers, forever tarnishing her reputation. At all this, her father merely shrugged, claiming he knew it from the moment she took her first drink of alcohol �" at age five. He knew it was only downhill from there, and since he knew it, it was justified.

Of course, there was the blame game as well. Dawn's bottom-of-the-barrel delinquent attitude was frequently attributed, by psychiatrists and peers alike, to the death of her mother.

When Dawn was ten years old, her mother (a purportedly “fierce” woman named Sandra Elphough) took a business trip to New York and went missing. She was found three days later, floating in the East River, nine bullet holes in her chest.

It would mark the end of any potential promise Dawn showed.

After that, she was Dawn Elphough. The W***e of Babylon. She was the scourge of the entire Rosslyn School District. Her life story was written on bathroom stall walls: “Dawn Elphough is a s**t. She'll suck your dick for free,” “Dawn Elphough is a f*****g c**t,” and so on.

There were others, but they were all stupid.

“Where are we?” Dawn asked.

“Feesburg,” her sister mumbled.

Dawn sat back and looked out the window, the agrarian colors rushing by. It was late June, but the crops were withered and colorless, dried out from weeks without rain. The ground was rock-hard and splitting open. To Dawn, it felt as if they were living in a desert. Despite the rain and the heavy-hearted weather, she had enjoyed it down in Gatlinburg, where she could escape from her numerous social woes and be her own person for a couple weeks. But now she was back, trapped in the heat, and she felt as if she were just a punching bag again.

While she was sitting in the sunlight, her hair appeared auburn, glowing red in the evening's glare. Her legs were bronzed and smooth, her thighs thick and strong from playing softball. She was fairly chesty, with her breasts forced upward in her favorite push-up bra, exposing plenty of cleavage. And though few people knew it, her face was actually very pretty; she had richly brown, almond-shaped eyes and one of those nice, heart-shaped faces. Long lashes, too.

Of course, no one looked at this. They all looked at her past, her present, her most plausible future �" her reputation, most of all. It was a tragedy, especially for a fourteen-year-old.

“I'm so worn out...” she said.

“Hey,” Dee said, looking at her father, “did you get me a new laptop?”

He nodded. “Yup.”

“Windows 7?”

“Yup.”

Without emotion, she replied. “I love you.” Dawn sat in back and scowled at this exchange, her eyes still peering out the window. She was thinking about her mother. She hated being this worn out; it always made her feel deep and philosophical. Nostalgic, too.

She could remember her mother screaming, her arms reeling from one of her drunken binges, her eyes jagged with veins. It was always her mother who loved her, who would only b***h and shriek. It was her father who was violent, pummeling her to the ground and giving her only a fraction of a second to escape. Once upstairs, she could hear them from her room for hours. The fleeting yell of anger. The violent smack of flesh against flesh.

But, she supposed, it was all in the past now. She hadn't felt her father beating her senseless since her mother died, and she simply supposed he'd never do it again.

Nevertheless, she still hated him. She hated him for his laziness. For the way he treated her mother while she was still alive. For all his insolence and arrogance, she hated him, and would've enjoyed watching him die more than anything else in the world. This is what she thought, at least, no matter how invalid it may have been.

She put her hands on her lap. The sky was pretty outside. They were driving past a long row of green crops, the first she'd seen in miles. It was corn, standing at full height in the middle of summer, the bright yellow vegetable resting in each and every husk. She had never seen anything so phenomenal before; her father was apparently thinking similarly, as he kept whispering, “There's no way. God damn, there's no way.”

Then the corn cleared, and the phenomenon became obvious. Beside the field was a white farmhouse, the milky paint splitting and peeling off the siding. The windmill was rusty and broken-down, and the ground was dry and cracking, just like everywhere else in the southern part of the state. Every window was dirty, every blind was askew, and every shutter was falling off its hinges. It was a picture of decadence; the fine, gorgeous fields beside the dilapidated estate. It was then that Dawn realized: This is my house.

“Holy s**t,” her father said aloud.

Rolling down the dusty driveway, they stared in awe at their almost-supernatural corn, grown to full height �" again, supernatural height �" during the driest, hottest summer on record. It was impossible. They go away for one month and this happens. Obviously, for being blatantly lazy, their karma is a sheer miracle.

“That's just impossible,” Dee said, her eyes glazed from looking at the rows upon rows of fresh, green corn.

“But it's there.”

“But it's impossible.”

“Who's that on our porch?” Dawn asked.

There were a couple people standing around on their tiny porch, dressed like they were from the hills of Kentucky and grinning like excited retards. They had baseball caps on their heads and were gumming chaw all the while, their lips puckered and full and their eyes small and slimy. One was leaning over the porch, laughing and chugging down a can of Natty Light, another was rocking in the rocking chair, hands in his pockets, and a third was holding a baby. It was a moment of perfect, Appalachian redneck Zen.

Sitting in their old Chevy Impala, they pulled up beside the porch, Dawn's father glowering at the rough-edged hick types lounging in front of his house. “Goddamn it. Is that Chief Blaycock?”

“I think so... yes,” Dee said, holding her mouth funny and peering over her sunglasses.

He grunted angrily, parked the car, and hopped out. “D****t, Lonnie, where's Old Careymore?” he asked the man sitting in the rocking chair. The only response he received was a chuckle and a nod towards the front door.

“Dee!” he shouted, removing his cap and scratching his bald spot. “Where are you?”

“Over here.”

“Come with me. Dawn, you stay outside.”

Dawn shrugged without listening, looking out at the cornfield. God, that was one hell of a miracle, she thought to herself. But then it occurred to her that they'd have to harvest it, and soon enough it would catch the attention of the media, and all of that would snowball into something awful. And now she frowned, holding her purse and wondering what she was going to do with herself.

“Well, howdy, Dawn!” hollered the man holding the baby.

Dawn smiled at him.

“How was that vacation of yours?”

She knew the man to be her cousin, Ed Careymore, a person who she found relatively enjoyable. He had a nice smile, at least. “Fine,” she said. “It was nice to get away, I guess.”

The man leaning on the porch laughed. “I wish I could get away! Damn cops around here...”

Chief Blaycock stopped rocking and smirked.

“...It's a rough life, I suppose,” he finished, and took a drink.

After he'd sealed his lips on the can, the awkward silence was unbearable. Seeing as the Chief wasn't much on speaking, Dawn piped up and asked, “So how'd this happen?”

“Beats me.”

“You know as much as I do, Dawn.”

Chief Blaycock shrugged.

The screen door burst open and out walked a man, standing about six feet, two inches tall in holey jeans and a ratty A-shirt, holding his hands up high and proclaiming: “Behold! The king of corn approaches!” Alex shoved his way past him while the others clapped their hands, grinning like excited retards once again.

“Jesus Christ...” Alex mumbled.

“Ain't that something?” the man in the holey jeans, presumably Old Careymore, said. “You've got the finest crop in all the land, son! Whatcha gonna do about it, now?”

Alex shrugged.

“Oh, come on now.”

Dee walked out behind them, along with Ed's girlfriend and mother of the baby he was holding. She was a pudgy, ditsy-looking woman with blond hair, staring stupidly out into the cornfield. Ed turned his back to her.

“F**k, I don't know,” Alex growled. “Why the hell are you all here anyway? Didn't I leave it up to Old Careymore �" just Old Ed Careymore �" to take care of my property?”

“They don't mean no harm.”

“Oh, f**k that.”

“No, I wouldn't. Now, you just relax and get inside.”

At Old Careymore's urging, Alex and Chief Blaycock and everyone else except for Dawn and Ed went inside, loud shouts ringing out from behind the screen door once they'd all filed in. Ed walked up to Dawn and grinned at her, showing her his little baby and grinning all the brighter as she cooed over it. “Ain't she nice?”

“She is,” Dawn said.

“Thank you,” Ed acquiesced, looking out at the hot sun setting slowly over the corn. “I swear to God, Dawn, I swear to God, I don't know how it happened. It just... did. And dad called us over and said, 'Sweet Jesus, look at the corn!' and we were all amazed as hell. It was really something.”

“I bet.”

“Yeah...” he lost his grin a bit. “You got any clue how it happened?”

“Nope.”

He looked down at his little baby girl. “Well, I suppose it's just the good Lord telling us we're not working enough, right?”

Dawn shrugged, and Ed shrugged, and they were both perplexed. After a moment or two, he went in, leaving Dawn out there with her memories. Memories she'd grown out of, but in the darkest parts of night, dared to remember.

She remembered it clear as day: The black beast.