Reddit Collection (Fresh-Short #9) by DeYtH Banger (ebook reader with highlight function .txt) 📕

felt her thinking it over, realising it was better to come with me than be left alone in the dark. She followed. I strolled boldly up to the field, my plan was simple. Get her into the field, hide from her and then jump out on her, just freak her out. Nice and easy. I'd done the hard part of getting her in there in the first place. She'd jump, get bitchy at me but it would make me feel a hell of a lot better.

We walked into the field, the corn came to well above our heads and within a few seconds we were completely immersed, cut off from the rest of the world. I felt Sarah tense up almost immediately, I knew this would work well.

 

 

"Maybe this wasn't a good idea," she was squirming now.

"It'll be fine, unless it's ghosts or drug dealers or something." I smiled to myself in the dark knowing I was just feeding her fears.

I waited until we were a few more feet in, then I slowed my pace letting her take the lead, before long I'd distanced myself enough to break away from her. I stopped walking trying to stay as silent as possible, it didn't take her long to realise I wasn't there any more. "Amy!?" she shouted, "Where the fuck are you?! Stop playing tricks. If you don't come back right now I'm going to leave you in here."

 

 

I heard the fear in her voice, she was starting to crack, just a few more minutes and she'd be really bricking it. I had to stifle a laugh to stop from giving the game away.

 

 

I realised I could step this game up and so bent down and picked up a clod of dirt as quietly as I could. I launched it above the corn and if came down a few feet away rustling the branches as it did. The plan worked perfectly, I heard Sarah give a startled gasp.

"Amy, fuck this shit I'm leaving now"

 

 

I heard her make her way through the corn and thought I'd better make my move now before it's too late. I waited until she was close and readied myself. Any second now...

"Ahhh!!!" I jumped out on her screaming as loud as I could but something wasn't right. No one was there.

"What the fuck?" had I just been trolled by Sarah? I had to give her credit if she had, I mean I just didn't think she was that clever.

As I stood there wondering what the hell had just happened I heard a blood curdling scream. There was no denying it, it was Sarah and she wasn't trolling.

 

I shouted for her, ran in the direction of the scream but, nothing. It was too dark to see anything any more but I couldn't hear anything either. I fumbled my way through the field, hearing my own blood pumping in my ears.

"Sarah" I whispered, something was telling me that shouting wasn't a good idea any more.

I heard movement up ahead and stopped, I was about to run forward, sure that I'd found her when I heard a thud, then the laugh.

 

Whatever I forget in life, that laugh will never be one of them. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end, every muscle tensed. I knew that I needed to get away.

 

I ran as fast and as quietly as I could away from that laugh. I didn't know where I was any more but it didn't matter any more as long as I wasn't there. It felt like forever but finally I broke through the corn and fell onto the concrete of the road. I'd come out exactly where we'd gone in, only now, there was just me.

I ran for home, not stopping even though I couldn't breathe. I went straight to bed, ignoring the questions of my parents hoping that waking up in the morning I'd go into class and there she'd be surrounded by all her friends laughing at me like always.

 

10pm the knock on the door, the questions started.

11pm the police arrived, more questions.

 

11:30pm the search started, a search that wouldn't end until 2 months later in August when the body of a young girl was found bound and mutilated in a corn field.

Living with the guilt is something you never get used to.

The thing in the fields.

 by  Snake973

 

 

When I was young, I lived on a farm in rural Oregon with my parents. I was the only child. We weren't a big commercial farm. Just a family-type thing. We had five cows, three horses, a small herd of goats, two dogs, and one chicken coop. We also had some Indian Runner ducks we kept mostly as pets. We didn't really make any money off the place, just enough to sustain the animals and a little extra for ourselves. Money enough to take a decent vacation every couple of years. Dad had his other job in town, an insurance agent. He was the only one around really, the town wasn't more than about 1,500 people. Mom gave horse-riding lessons as well. We weren't rich, but we were comfortable.

 

It was really an easy life (or at least it could have been a lot worse), I went to school, Dad went to work, Mom took care of the animals, then we all had dinner together every night, and I would go to bed while Mom and Dad had a beer or two and watched the news. Sometimes at night I would hear things outside. Mostly just normal stuff. The cows or horses would get spooked by a coyote or something, or I would hear the dogs chasing a rabbit, barking their heads off. Every once in a great while we would find a chicken dead. Dad would always tell me about it but never let me see the body, although I asked frequently. He would keep Mom and I inside until he had gone out, did whatever he did with the body, throw sawdust over any blood, and then life would go on as normal. I assumed it was foxes, as I had seen a couple of them out in the pasture over the years, slinking around back and forth through the grass.

 

The summer when I was ten years old, I remember helping Mom change the bedding in the horse stalls, when we heard a huge racket going on outside. If you've never heard the sounds of a horse in pain, you don't want to, trust me. It sounds almost like a person screaming. Well that's what we heard, and one of our horses, the palamino, came running into the barn with a wound on it's left thigh. Four long marks, like claw marks, ran across it's body for about a foot. It had blood running down it's leg, and was limping. I was so scared by the sight of that much blood that Mom locked the horse in a stall and made me go inside with one of the dogs. She told me to lock the door and stay inside until she came in to get me. I did.

 

Eventually Mom came inside and told me that the horse had hurt itself on the barbed wire that ran the perimeter of the pasture, we owned more land beyond that, but it was mostly forested. I guess I believed her at the time, but at dinner that night I noticed Dad was being particularly quiet and Mom was talking a lot more than she normally did. She was being really animated, and I noticed that Dad had gotten his rifle out and set it by the back door. Usually he only did that when the coyotes had been acting up.

 

That night I went to bed as normal, but I had trouble falling asleep. I turned on my desk lamp and decided to read comic books until I got tired. I have a very vivid memory of reading Uncanny X-Men and hearing the back door open. Looking out, I could see my Dad by the porch light, lighting a cigarette and holding his rifle under his arm. He started walking over to the driveway and then turned to follow the fence line. I couldn't sleep until I knew Dad was back safe. I kept coming downstairs with the excuse of getting water to see if Dad was back in the house yet, and each time all I saw was Mom sitting on the couch in the living room, staring at a blank TV screen and looking worried, sighing occasionally. Eventually, about 4 in the morning, I think, Dad did come back, and I was so tired and relieved that I fell asleep as soon as I knew he was home. He never told me what he did that night, but I never thought to ask.

 

Two months later I was back in school. It rains a LOT in Oregon in the fall, and this day was no different. All I could hear from my bedroom was rain hitting the ground and the aluminum roof of the chicken coop. There was light thunder in the distance, but it was slowly getting closer. I thought I had heard a coyote yapping out around the garage, or it could have been one of the dogs. I looked out, straining my eyes to see whatever there may have been. In a brief and distant lightning flash I saw something. It looked almost like a person, but hunched over, and with a long torso. It was tall, taller than Dad, who was a good six foot four, at least. I just barely caught a glimpse of it on the near side of the garage, then the light faded and I didn't see it again that night.

 

There was another dead chicken the next morning. The third in just as many weeks. I told Dad what I had seen the previous night. The color went out of his cheeks momentarily, until he told that the storm must have been playing tricks on me. I accepted that.

 

Four months after that we lost a cow. It was in the middle of the night, and we all woke up at the same time. There was a lot of noise in the pasture, but only briefly. The cry of a dying animal, and a primitive, guttural yell that I had never heard before. Dad rushed up to my room, I could hear him running up the stairs to my room. He had his rifle in hand, and opened my door. He saw I was awake and told me to stay inside no matter what and try to go back to sleep. I don't think I have to say that sleep wasn't really an option any longer, but I did stay in my room, with a blanket held tight around my shoulders and staring out the window. Probably about ten minutes later I heard gunshots in the field. I don't know what he was shooting at, whether it was whatever had attacked the cow, or the cow itself, trying to put the animal out of it's misery.

 

Dad rarely, if ever, talked about that night. I later found out that he had gotten to the cow only to find it ripped open on the ground, bleeding out from it's