The Barn

Neighs, moos, oinks and clucks filled the air. A festive time of day. The ever-jovial evening in the barn.

Farmer Sanders walked in, fed the animals, and paused.

"Why on Earth did I ever keep them separate? This ain't just more convenient, it's a downright party for them critters!" He thought to himself, as he filled the pig trough with slop.

Having finished the last of his daily duties, Farmer Sanders returned to his home for a night of drinking cheap whiskey, eating mediocre food, and just maybe clapping his lippy wife if she decided to go on about wanting to leave, again.

Late that night, as the whiskey's glow faded, Sanders woke up to a peculiar sound. Almost as if the animals were fighting. Certainly a different tone than was conveyed earlier in the evening.

Sanders went to investigate at his wife's behest, but found the barn silent. In fact, the moment he set foot outside of his home, all sounds of nature appeared to cease. Eerie as it felt, he was eager to shake off the malaise of consciousness, and get some rest.

The next morning, Farmer Sanders returned to the barn. He didn’t remember much about last night, but he knew he was out of whiskey.

The barn was silent. A mere shadow of the cacophony from the night before. He hayed the horses, fed the chickens, and slopped the pigs. Just before going back outside to let the cows out from the rear pen door, he marveled at the craftsmanship of his new barn.

It seemed to him as if every little detail was meticulously thought out by them “House Orchestration” people. Shady as they were, they fixed up the barn in half the time, and for half the price it would have cost him to do it all himself.

As he turned his gaze back to the door, something peculiar caught his eye. The horses ate, the chickens pecked, but the pigs… The pigs seemed otherwise occupied. Upon further inspection of the pig’s pen, he noticed something off-putting.

Now Farmer Sanders wasn’t the kind of man who thought too much. Not a man who felt much either. Too salty for the salt of the earth, too abrasive to be rough around the edges. Very simply very simple. But in that moment, when he looked into that pen, Farmer Sanders felt deeply disturbed.

The pigs were all gathered ‘round the mutilated body of one of their brood. A piglet lay still, breathing shallow, laboured breaths in silence. Despite having been provided with ample food every day, it appears as though they had rather hastily resorted to cannibalism.

“Suppose I oughta give ‘em more slop?” he thought to himself, as he used a large mucking broom to clear the way to the disfigured porcine babe. Further exacerbating his discomfort at the sight, he noticed that the pigs weren’t interested in the slop at all. In fact, it was as if they had no choice, but to eat the little piglet.

Farmer Sanders bent down to hoist the piglet, only to find it felt heavy. Far too heavy for a baby of that size. Upon realizing that what they seemed to perceive as their only food source was being removed, the pigs began to huff, then squeal. Then they got rowdy.

“What in tarnation’d you get yourself into Jim?” Mrs. Sanders hollered, torn between laughing at the site of her shit-caked husband, and exploding in rage over the shit-caked doorway.

“God dammit woman, get some soap and hose me down out back, wouldya?”

As Farmer Sanders turned back outside, he heard his wife lose the battle against her composure, and burst into laughter.

“I’ll give her somethin’ to laugh about…” he thought, as he trembled so violently with rage that the thick coat of pig feces almost shook right off of him.

Now Farmer Sanders didn’t have many friends. In fact, just the one. The town drunkard, Bill. He used to run a sawmill until a fatal “accident” called his negligence and alcohol consumption into question. His eldest boy was split right in half, they say. They also say that ‘Fat William Johnson’ was never the same after it happened. No one could know for sure though, as it was more than likely any time they talked to him, they weren’t doing more than talking to the bottom of a bottle of cheap whiskey.

“Hey Maud!” Bill bellowed between hiccups, “What happened to your, *hic*, face woman?”

“Oh hey Bill. It ain’t nothin’. I fell.” Maud said, turning her bruised face away from the visitor.

“You certainly fall a lot, eh? Maybe Jim should get you a walker!”

“You’re an ass, Bill. A real ass.” Mrs. Sanders huffed as she stormed off, wiping the budding tears from her black eye.

As quickly as Mrs. Sanders stormed off, the door of the quaint little farmhouse burst open to reveal Farmer Sanders, filled with fervour. After briefly pausing to double check that he hadn’t thrown the door right off its hinges, he began to yell to his portly chum.

“About damn time y’got here! I need you to hold back them pigs for me!”

“Wh…what? The pigs? Why?” the rotund man dabbed his sweaty forehead as he began to flush in the hot summer sun.

“C’mon, you’ll see!”

Moments later, they were “strategically planning” their way to remove the piglet's carcass. As Fat Will hopped into the pen, the pigs all ceased their interest in the now-still, mangled piglet.

“Uhhh, Jim? They normally like this?” Will asked, as he scanned the field of vacant stares that fixated on his plump thighs.

Farmer Sanders ignored his friend, as he deftly attempted to pry up the baby pig’s twitching body with a shovel. With one quick thrust, he shoved the shovel underneath, hitting something hard and firm, like a root. As he continued to jab at the "root" that held the piglet in place, a horrendous wail erupted from all the animals simultaneously. Distorted and grating neighs, moos, oinks and clucks plagued the air like the screech of nails on a chalkboard.

Desperate to evade the sound, Farmer Sanders hopped out of the pen, clapped his hands over his ears, and ran out of the barn.

“Jesus H. Christ! I ain't never heard no sound like that outta any animal, eh Bill?” Farmer Sanders exclaimed, as he turned around to see that the barn door was firmly shut behind him, his friend nowhere to be seen. “Bill…?”

The sounds had ceased a few moments later, and Farmer Sanders slowly walked toward the barn. An uneasiness began to wash over him, as a pit formed in his stomach.

“Bill!” he yelled again, while gripping the barn door's handle firmly, and tugging. No response from Bill, no budge from the door. Being the bright individual that he was, Farmer Sanders just kept yanking to no avail. That is, until a peculiar sound interrupted his vain attempts.

He pressed his ear to the door and listened hard for any sign of his friend. All he could hear was a squishy shlopping and crunching.

An old, rarely lit tungsten filament bulb illuminated in Sander's thick noggin. He decided to go around the back, and enter through the pasture doors that lay adjacent to the cow pen.

As the double door swung ajar with mild resistance, Sanders was met with blank stares. Every one of his cows was facing him, leering. No cud being chewed, no tails being wagged… hell, it even appeared as though they weren't breathing. Stone still, the bovine wall ahead of him just glared through milky white eyes.

"Alright girls, just clear way, y'hear…" Farmer Sanders announced, as he tried to gently wriggle his way through the beefy blockade.

Something was off… vague memories of his barely conscious investigation into the barn's midnight cacophony came slithering back. There was a sickly smell to the air. Not one you'd expect in a barn. Almost acidic, acrid even.

"Bill?" The hapless farmer cried out once more.

The upper door, and all the shutters were closed. Surely Bill didn't do that… Sanders knew they were open when he stormed out earlier, as now, he could hardly see a damn thing.

Through the narrow rays of light that penetrated the slits in windows and doorframes, he found his friend. Face down in the trough of uneaten slop was the half-eaten body of Fat William Johnson, crowded by gluttonous pigs.

“No, Bill! Christ!” he yelled as he ran over, grabbing one of his friend’s arms in a desperate attempt to hoist him out of the pen. But Fat William’s body wasn’t just too heavy, even after losing damn near half its mass. The pigs began fighting for their meal. However hard the farmer tugged, the pigs were winning this fleshy tug-o-war.

As he backed up from the pen, entranced by the grizzly scene, the farmer noticed something equally disturbing. There appeared to be a hole in the mud, where the piglet had previously laid, and out from the piglet’s backside was a long, pink, hose-like thing. It had been severed when he hacked at it with the shovel, and a thick black ooze leaked forth. That must've been the source of the rank smell.

As he stumbled back, the shutters began to squeak open. The light of day eagerly filled the room. The sounds of crunching and chewing ceased, as the pigs turned their gaze to Farmer Sanders. But it wasn't just the pigs. The cows, the chickens, the horses too. All had that mindless stare through milky white eyes.

As he desperately pushed and kicked at the barn doors, they just wouldn't budge. He desperately ran into the cow's enclosure, and pushed past the beasts, terrified. In the chaos, the cows began to stomp and cry out.

Finally, he made it through, and began to run from the barn. But not before one malicious meaty mammal gave chase. Thundering hooves caused the fearful farmer to haul more ass than ever before in his life.

Having reached his property line and hopped the fence, he was sorely out of breath. Had the stampeding hooves behind him not abruptly ceased, the beast would surely have caught him. Instead, it just stood still, with that blank stare. He couldn't see its eyes, but he knew they had that haunting milkiness. The cow began a blood curdling call. The call could be heard in the distance, from the barn, wailing back.

Suddenly, the cow dropped with a thud. Dead.

“Are you kiddin’ me? Some kinda man you are! I ain’t the farmer here. I do enough taking care of you, I ain’t feeding the damn pigs for you too!” Mrs. Sanders yelled.

“No Maud, you don’t get it. You didn’t see what we saw. The way those pigs, all those animals looked at us!” Farmer Sanders began to plead.

“So you’re scared of some pigs now? And you want me to handle them? Some kinda man indeed…” before she finished scolding her husband, his whiskey glass whizzed right by her head, smashing against the wall.

Mrs. Sanders froze up, as her husband walked over to the liquor cabinet, to check for whiskey that he knew wouldn’t be there. As he rifled through the shelves, he started one of his half-assed apologies.

“Listen, Maud…” he began, as he turned around to find that his wife was gone, the front door ajar.

Farmer Sanders hurried through the open door, conflicted on whether to lavish her with kisses, or kiss her with his belt. Strangely, she was nowhere to be seen.

Now, were Farmer Sanders half as smart as Maud, he'd have simply looked behind the door. Thankfully for her, he wasn't. He trampled back into the house, cursing and yelling. His temper tantrum proved an adequate cover for the sound of Maud walking down the front steps, getting into the pickup, and starting the engine. By the time Sanders got wise to the ruse, the truck was merely a dot on the horizon.

A strange mixture of feelings washed over the abandoned farmer. First, anger. Damn Maud for leaving. Damn Bill for being pig food. Damn himself for causing all this to happen. That's when the loneliness set in.

He'd been pretty isolated, out on his farm, but he was never really alone. He had Maud. When she wasn't enough, he'd call Bill. Worst come to worse, he always had his animals.

Right. The animals….

That's when the fear set in. First things first, he had to figure out what the hell was going on around here. Things all seemed to have changed once those damn house committee people fixed up his barn. Maud said they gave her the willies, but Sanders paid no mind.

"What in the hell did they call themselves…" he muttered to himself, as he collapsed defeatedly into his good chair. "the home handling committee? The house orchestra… damnit it was something stupid!"

The farmer racked his brain most the night until it finally dawned on him to hunt down their business card.

"Hello, and thank you for reaching out to the Home Orchestration Accreditors. We're currently experiencing a high volume of excited and enthusiastic callers. So long as your dedication rivals theirs, we will be with you shortly!" The automated voicemail machine answered, tauntingly.

What use was a damn phone, when no one would pick up? Sanders no sooner had slammed the phone, than the phone's bells began to hammer.

"Jesus Christ!" Farmer Sanders exclaimed, damn near dropping the bottle of whiskey that he'd been trying to nurse the last few drops from. Frustrated, he picked up the phone.

"What?" Sanders asked into the receiver.

Sanders was met with a static hiss and the mumbling of a hoarse voice. He sighed and slammed the phone. Immediately, it rang out once more.

"This some kinda prank?" He yelled into the receiver, but he didn't hang up. He was too fixated on the tumbler across the room that was slowly filling with whiskey. A single cube of ice bobbed in the glass. Only one man Jim Sanders knew took his whiskey with a single cube, William Johnson.

The raspy voice over the phone continued trying to speak, as Sanders doubted his sanity. He thought to himself, causing gears not used since grade school to turn in his head.

"Bill?" Sanders croaked into the receiver.

The static ceased abruptly, before the voice on the other end spoke clearly.

"Jim, the radio…" Bill's voice spoke, as the static returned so loudly that Sanders dropped the phone.

"Shit, Bill!" The farmer exclaimed, picking the phone back up, but there was only the loud hissing of white noise.

Sanders turned his gaze to the radio and walked over to it. He picked up the iced whiskey tumbler beside it and took a sip.

"Shit, I'm losing my marbles…" he said, as he turned it on and spun the dial. All stations were static, until…

A crooning voice with haunting percussion began wailing through the speaker.

"Don't go into that barn, yeah!" The coarse voice on the radio howled.

The horrible screeching wail began to roar out once more from the barn. Farmer Sanders shut off the radio, and dragged a chair in front of his door. The sun had set, and the sky was a pitch black sheet of cellophane.

Farmer Sanders paced in his kitchen, before picking up the phone. He had to call someone, maybe the sheriff. Unfortunately, a deafening silence was all he could hear from the receiver. Suddenly, the radio came to life once more.

"I said, don't go into that barn, yeah!"

From the window, Sanders could barely make out the barn doors gently swinging open. The screeches continued, as the beasts began to exit the barn. It was too dark to tell for sure, but they didn't look like any animals he'd raised.

A rumbling came from beneath his feet, the foundations of the farmhouse shook. It felt as though there was an earthquake. The work floorboards of the kitchen began to split, as tiny worm-like tendrils of pink forced their way up.

Farmer Sanders began to panic. Whatever was in the earth, under the farm, was awakening; it was growing.

He ran to the kitchen window, only to be met with the milky-white gaze of a horse. It bared its teeth at him, revealing deep signs of decay, as small pink worms wriggled from its gums. The shrieking filled the night sky.

As he desperately sought a way out, every window held the twisted visage of what was once a simple barnyard beast. A shattering window caused the farmer to yelp, as a scaly chicken flew into his living room. In futility, the farmer fled through the back door. He raced for the storm cellar, the concrete foundations would surely prove a sanctuary until morning… or so he thought.

The thick walls of cinder blocks only partially deafened the twisted and distorted barnyard cacophony. Then suddenly, silence.

For the first time since his youth, the farmer fell to his knees and prayed. The silence lured him into a false sense of security. As the farmer pleaded to any god that would listen, an old forgotten one answered. The concrete beneath his knees split, as the tip of a tendril reached into his pant leg.

Sun crested the surrounding hills, as a familiar pickup truck appeared on the horizon. Maud, along with her father, pulled up out front of the house.

"Jesus Maud, I never knew it got so bad…" her father said, peeking through a shattered window.

"He really went nuts this time." She said, sullenly.

"Maud!" A voice called from the barn, as the door slowly creaked open.

"Jim, you've got some explaining to do!" Maud's father yelled, as he entered the barn.

Maud slowly crept over the darkened building.

"Jim? You in there?"

No answer.

"Pa, what's going on?" She called out, stepping up to the threshold.

A static hiss from the farmhouse stopped her, as she spied a humanoid figure in the darkness.

"Don't go into that barn, yeah!"