Burt and Vicky’s attack and sacrifice in Gatlin is the violent culmination of their discovery that the town’s children have built a religious order around He Who Walks Behind the Rows. The assault destroys their attempt to investigate the community as outsiders: Vicky is taken, Burt dies in the corn, and the children interpret the deaths as a sacrifice that authorizes a change to their rules.

Causes and Background

Burt and Vicky approach Gatlin through signs that turn ordinary religious forms into evidence of a distinct local faith. A sermon heard over the radio speaks of atonement and salvation, while the station’s proximity is confirmed by a red tripod tower visible above the corn. Its broadcast places religious language within the same agricultural landscape that governs the town’s life.

A corn-made crucifix provides a more intimate clue. Crafted from dried husk and a small cob, it bears a figure shaped from the kernels left on the cob, with the letters INRI raised above it. The object adapts a familiar Christian emblem to corn, suggesting how the town’s belief has reshaped inherited religious symbols around its own sacred crop.

The church supplies a further warning. Its sermon board announces the power and grace of He Who Walks Behind the Rows, dated the previous Sunday, July 24, 1976. Inside, Burt finds a book whose cover declares that the iniquitous should be cut down so the ground may again be fertile. Together, the sign and the book connect the community’s theology to the land and to the justification of violence; Burt recognizes a single governing idea behind them, though he does not accept its terms.

The Attack and Vicky’s Disappearance

The church’s warnings become immediate when Vicky sounds the Thunderbird’s horn continuously. Burt rushes outside to find children converging from several directions: side streets, the town green, and the school playground. Their old-fashioned clothing gives the gathering a coordinated appearance, but their weapons are ordinary rural tools—knives, hatchets, pipes, rocks, and hammers. The contrast between their youthful faces and their purposeful approach makes the assault seem less like a spontaneous disturbance than the enforcement of a shared order.

The children surround the car and batter it until its ornament falls away, its tires are slashed, and its windows break. Vicky crouches inside, trying to fend off hands reaching through the shattered glass; when the driver’s door is pulled open, she clings to the steering wheel. Burt had called for her to get the shotgun, but she is too panicked to respond. He runs toward the car, only to be struck in the arm by a knife thrown by a red-haired boy. The attack has divided the pair: Vicky is trapped at the vehicle, while Burt is wounded outside it.

The red-haired boy tells Burt to prepare to stand before God, then reaches for him. Burt pulls the knife from his arm and uses it against his attacker, who dies in front of the watching children. The sudden reversal interrupts the assault but does not restore Burt’s control of the situation. The group falls silent, and he notices that Vicky has disappeared. When he demands to know where she has been taken, a boy answers only with a gesture drawing a blade across his own throat. The children do not explain her fate; their sign makes the threat unmistakable.

Death in the Corn and Communal Aftermath

Burt searches for Vicky in the corn, where he finds that the children have displayed her at the clearing as a sacrifice. Nearby stand two older skeletons: one in a minister’s surplice and another in a police uniform marked as a chief’s. Their presence links the couple’s fate to earlier victims and to Gatlin’s past, while the clearing’s status as the sacred place of He Who Walks Behind the Rows turns the discovery into a passage from human violence to supernatural danger.

The corn rows close behind Burt, leaving him without an exit. Something immense approaches through the crop and enters the clearing, described as green and bearing enormous red eyes. Burt screams, but the narration says he does not scream for long. The encounter ends his attempt to escape and leaves him dead alongside Vicky; the event’s progression—from a public assault in town to an isolated death in the corn—makes the clearing the culmination of the children’s attack and the domain of the power they serve.

At midday, the children gather again in the clearing, looking at the couple’s bodies and the two older skeletons. Isaac, nine years old and already recognized as the Seer since the corn took David a year earlier, presents the deaths as a revelation: the couple’s sacrifice, he says, was completed by the deity itself. He also identifies them with the Blue Man and the false minister who had escaped many years before, making the new deaths part of Gatlin’s remembered religious history rather than an isolated act.

Isaac declares that the Age of Favor will now be lowered from nineteen plantings and harvestings to eighteen. The change converts the deaths into a rule governing the community’s future: those who have reached eighteen are now subject to sacrifice. Malachi and Joseph are the only two members of the gathered party at that age, and the others wait for Malachi’s response. Malachi, who had led the hunt for Japheth and killed him before casting his body out of the corn, accepts the decree as the word of God.

The aftermath extends beyond that gathering. In the following weeks, the girls make many corncob crucifixes in an effort to ward off further evil, turning the corn-made emblem found earlier into a repeated protective object. That night everyone already above the lowered age limit walks silently into the corn toward the clearing to secure continued favor. Ruth, pregnant with Malachi’s child, calls goodbye and weeps as he goes; he does not turn back, and the corn swallows him. The community thus absorbs Burt and Vicky’s deaths by renewing its rites, making sacrifice both the consequence of the attack and the mechanism through which Gatlin enforces its altered order.

The Rule Change and Its Consequences

At midday, the children gather again in the clearing, looking at Burt and Vicky’s bodies alongside the two older skeletons. Isaac, nine years old and already recognized as the Seer since the corn took David a year earlier, presents their deaths as a revelation: the sacrifice, he says, was completed by the deity itself. He identifies the couple with the Blue Man and the false minister who escaped many years before, folding their deaths into Gatlin’s remembered religious history rather than treating them as an isolated attack.

Isaac then declares that the Age of Favor is lowered from nineteen plantings and harvestings to eighteen. The decree turns the deaths into a rule for the community’s future: those who have reached eighteen are now subject to sacrifice. Malachi and Joseph are the only two among the gathered children who are eighteen, and the others wait for Malachi’s response. Malachi, who led the hunt for Japheth, killed him, and cast his body out of the corn to prevent it from polluting the crop, accepts Isaac’s pronouncement as the word of God. The community’s violence thus becomes not only punishment but a mechanism for changing the institution that governs its members.

In the following weeks, the girls make many corncob crucifixes to ward off further evil, repeating the corn-shaped religious emblem Burt and Vicky had encountered before the attack. That night, everyone already above the lowered age threshold walks silently into the corn and toward the clearing to gain continued favor from He Who Walks Behind the Rows. Ruth, pregnant with Malachi’s child, calls goodbye and weeps as he leaves; Malachi does not turn back, and the corn swallows him. The aftermath shows the community absorbing Burt and Vicky’s deaths by renewing its rites: the sacrifice leads directly to a stricter age rule and to the silent departure of those newly condemned by it.