The Barn

The Barn



As a child I was afraid of the dark and going into the basement alone was unthinkably frightening. One thing that I was frightened of was this barn below my grandmother’s house. My cousins, whom I played with, lived in a house below the barn. We would play together until after dark while my mother would be visiting with my grandmother at the top of the hill on the other side of the barn. When my mother was ready to leave she always called down to my aunt’s house to tell me to come so we could leave. I would step out into the light of one of those yard lights and start off at a fast run up to my grandmother’s past the barn. I never slowed down. The barn had both ends open with the tractor parked inside at night. At night you could see enough light through the middle of the barn to see shapes in the barn, but not enough to make out what they were. Horrors waiting to jump out at me played through my mind every time I went by that barn at night.

    On one of those fall nights I had an experience that will haunt me forever. It was a good day, running through the woods. We went down these dirt roads and hid along the side to scare my cousin’s little brother as he tried to keep up. Then we went downhill towards the creek. We would climb trees along the side of the creek and swing until they would bend and let us down. It was the end of October with leaves all over the ground. We ran up the slope and into a field while I was looking over my shoulder and ran into a scarecrow. I went down and nearly screamed when I looked and saw what looked like a dead body with clothes on. Of course my cousin was nearly doubled up laughing at me. As his little brother arrived, the farmer whose scarecrow I had just tackled saw us and started yelling. Then we made a hasty exit back to the house to recover.

    It was late so we had dinner and then watched television till I had to go home. It had been a cool day, but not cold enough for a jacket so I had on some jeans and a short sleeve T-shirt. By the time the call came for me to leave it had gotten dark and chilly outside. By the time I was ready to leave, one of those scary commercials came on. It showed a baby’s crib in a poorly lit nursery and as the camera showed the side of the crib there was this hideous claw hanging outside and someone screaming “It’s alive!” That scared me to death and didn’t make going outside by myself very easy at all.

    When I stepped outside I noticed was that besides being cold, it was very quiet. There was a quarter moon showing through a cloudy sky. I started running up the hill thinking about that claw in the crib and decided not to look at the barn but just the path. My resolve broke as I heard something and turned to see a gust of leaves. It startled me so I stumbled. When I turned back to continue up the hill I saw some movement inside the barn opening which made me stop. I had never gotten this far up the hill and stopped, so I was terrified. About that time something jumped in a thicket to my left loud enough to make me take off right up the hill.

    Just as I topped the hill my foot rolled on the handle of some tool and I fell. I landed in the gravel and slid past the corner of the barn, but I was temporarily distracted by the burning of the cuts on the palms of my hands. I rolled onto my side and brushed the gravel from my hands I and heard something walking through the leaves around the barn. One of my shoes had come most of the way off my foot and as I bent forward to pull it back on I could see the pitchfork that I had tripped on being pulled back around the corner. The cold sweat that broke out all over my body froze me to the core as I listened to a dry rustling sound moving closer. I knew I didn’t want to see it so I rolled over to my hands and knees to scramble away. Just as I got to my feet I felt a hand on my shoulder spin me around to face my horror. I looked up into the vacant straw stuffed face silhouetted by the moonlight and began to scream.......