Scarecrow Year
Key art
Prologue
A scarecrow stands at the centre of a field sown in a long spiral. Months are knotted along a wire that runs from its wrist to a post: twelve cloth knots, the last of them still loose.
Watch
Permanent screening
2:57 · 16:9 · not filed.
One line
Before the synopsis
Tally marks stitched down the burlap coat record a full year in thread.
Synopsis
Folk Horror · Standalone · Upcoming
A woman follows the spiral inward along the bare path between the rows. The air does not move. The straw in the sleeves does not move.
Her steps are the only sound, a dry brush on the path, and then even that stops when she reaches the centre. She stands at the post and looks along the wire. Eleven knots are hard and small.
The twelfth hangs open, cloth soft, the year's last month not yet closed. The scarecrow's blank stitched face points down the next turn of the spiral, not back at the way she came. The blackened steel hat sits on the pole above that face.
Extended sequence
After the cut
Straw shows under the brim and does not lift. She waits there a moment with her hand near the loose knot and not yet on it. A stem at the row's edge ticks once and goes still. Nothing else in the sowing moves.
She does not call out. The field gives her no wind to answer. The tally stitches down the coat stay dark and even, a full year already kept in thread, waiting on the last knot alone.
Figures in the frame
Kept at the edge
She pulls the newest knot tight against the post. The wire draws taut and hums once. The hum dies into the rows. The scarecrow turns without any wind until the blank stitched face points back along the row behind her.
The sleeves stay empty. The blackened steel hat is no longer on the pole. It lies broken at her feet, straw still caught inside the crown.
Codex fragment
The tally thread on the coat pulls one stitch and stops. The year's record stays complete. None of it comes undone. At the far edge of the field a second scarecrow stands, small only because of distance, outside the spiral entirely. Nothing like it shows on the outer row during her walk in.
The scenario is filed in the Codex.
Sound of Imagination
It does not enter the rows. The centre figure holds the turn it has taken. The stitched face remains pointed back along her path. No wind arrives to explain either figure. She stays at the centre with the broken hat in her hands.
Showcase
Object from the universe
The break in the steel is a dark edge on the bare path. She does not put the hat back. She lifts the broken crown.
Straw shifts inside it while every other stem in the field stays still. The wire, already taut, eases the width of a finger at the new knot and hums a second time, shorter than the first, then holds. The knot stays tight.
The Craft
Image · motion · sound
The earlier still, then the minute after the cut, then the object. The Craft
Straw moves once more inside the crown and then is still. The twelve knots hold.
The spiral path behind her is empty. The far figure remains outside the sowing. The centre scarecrow keeps its turned face.
Read it as written. The scenario.
Filed in The Houses
Filed under Darkness & Psyche in Folk Horror. A house film. The house keeps the climate. The climate keeps this title.
The next room
After this filing
Straw lies quiet in the broken hat, and the figure beyond the last row does not come in. The next room is Village Without Maps.
After the frame
Mark · keep · letter
Released rooms keep a mark from one to five, a keep on this device, and letters that stay with the page after the feed has moved on. Scarecrow Year is ready.
Letters under the frame
The Archivist · held
Filed in the archive. The page does not expire.