Good evening, it’s Spooky Boo here in Sandcastle, California. Tonight on the Midnight Scares podcast I have two very spooky stories about the Blood moon. You know, in Sandcastle every blood moon we have a lot of really strange disappearances and sacrifices. That is why you should know the next full lunar eclipse March 14, 2025. The actual blood moon, which would occur in October, will be on October 18 in 2032. The difference is that an actual spiritual blood moon is in the month of October and a regular lunar eclipse, even if red, is not. Many of our citizens get a little confused but it’s OK. Their sacrifices keep them happy for most of the rest of the year–usually. There is the occasional slip up in the graveyard.
I’d like to invite you to chat with us on Saturday nights on YouTube. Come and visit at 6:00 PM Pacific on www.splatterdaynightmares.com. It might be stories, a movie, or whatever we can enjoy watching and have a nice fun chat. Also, join my Patreon page where you can get a commercial free version of this podcast and some goodies as well as future copies of books and even chapters of unedited, upcoming novels. I’d love to see you there. Visit www.scarystorytime.com/patreon to find out how.
Now let’s begin…
Camping Trip
by Samrev09
Possession. It’s the strangest thing. Being out of control of your own body. What could it possibly feel like? Agony? Peace? Nothingness? These are the questions that race through my head ever since that day in 2011. The day I witnessed the impossible. The day I lost my best friend to something beyond reason. Something beyond our reality.
Seven years ago, my friends, Ellie, Chris, Mark, and I went on an unsuspecting camping trip in the eastern panhandle of West Virginia. We had all been true outdoorsy types and liked a challenge whenever we went. It was our yearly tradition. Apparently, it had been someone else’s too. That was the biggest mistake of our lives. Camping on the night of a Blood Moon.
We came into Paw Paw (Stupid name, I know) around three in the evening. We hadn’t gotten anything for lunch yet, so we stopped at a McDonald’s in town. I swear no matter how small a town is, it will always have a McDonald’s. There were only two other locals dining there and we could hear every bit of what they said. We should have taken them seriously.
“Blood Moon tonight,” said the elderly woman of the couple, “You know what that means, Lester?”
“I know, I know,” the man groaned, “Stay out of them damned woods. I heard the same stories you did, Edna.” He seemed disgruntled.
“That’s right,” Edna told him, “They say things come out on a Blood Moon. Bad things.” She joked with him and reached across the table to tickle him. It must have been nice to have such a relationship when you get that old.
“I wasn’t going back there anyway. Ain’t nothin’ in season yet. Less you wanna be pinging at the leaves.” He ignored her tickles entirely.
“You’re no fun,” she told him. She poked one gnarled finger into his shoulder. And that’s all there was to their conversation. It lasted all of a minute but would have changed our lives forever. We were such fools.
“The old folks are always the superstitious ones,” Mark chimed in. I hadn’t been the only one listening to the elderly couple chat.
“Yeah. They can’t help it though. They were raised in a time when there wasn’t any proof to prove ‘em wrong. Same with their parents and so on,” Chris had told us. We all agreed with him and laughed about them later.
We got in our car and drove it down many of the back roads looking for a place to pull off and begin our trek. Around four we found a spot to set the car for the night. It was on one of the worst roads I have ever seen and looked nearly abandoned. As we unloaded we talked and joked around. We were having the time of our lives. Just the simple joy of nature and friends.
In the back, we had only a few things. A cooler with snacks, a bottle of water each, two tents and four sleeping bags. We divided the load as evenly as we could and made our way through the first edge of underbrush. I realize now that it was colder in those woods. A lot colder. None of us cared though; it was a scorcher of a day and we were glad to be out of the heat.
“We should’ve brought bug spray,” Ellie piped up about a mile into our hike.
“I know. These things are thicker ‘n fog,” I exclaimed. The bugs had begun swarming us almost instantly and were a constant cloud buzzing around our heads.
“We’ll deal with it for now,” Mark told us from the front of the line, “It’s just a day.”
“How far are we? Or do you know where we’re going?” Chris hollered to him.
“No, but I’ll know the place when I see it,” Mark told him confidently. We passed by one rather open spot, but Mark determined it was just barely to small. We should have stayed there. It would have been all right. We trekked another two miles before we finally found the right spot. By then it was a little past five and we began to set up camp. Our little clearing was just big enough to accommodate our tents. It seemed perfect. Too perfect.
“Alright, we got ourselves a nice little base camp,” I said to everyone, “Should we get the fire going?”
“Yeah. I’ll gather up some firewood,” Ellie said enthusiastically as she trotted off into the woods. We could hear her breaking off dead branches and gathering sticks.
“What do we do now?” Chris asked. He was newer to camping than the rest of us.
“Anything you want. Look at nature, help get the fire going, try to find a stream. Anything!” Mark told him with a hand on his shoulder.
“I guess I’ll get some stones to make a fire pit with,” Chris said looking around. I walked to Mark and handed him his water bottle. Mine was a little under half-empty.
“Cheers,” I told him jokingly as I tapped his bottle.
“Cheers,” he repeated.
We sat around at camp for a while as Chris and Ellie got stuff for the fire. Mark and I got the tents out of our packs and assembled them in the clearing.
Once constructed we rolled out everyone’s sleeping bags inside. They got back right around the time we were finished.
‘Got the stuff!” Ellie told us dropping her bundle. Chris did the same. Mark and I got to work constructing the fire while they rested. Finally, we had ourselves a nice little camp that a woodsman could have been proud of. We lit the fire. In the instant before we did, the forest seemed to stop. No birds, no squirrels, no deer. Not even a leaf rustling in the wind. We all felt it. An unnecessary tense moment. A few seconds later life started back up. The noises of the forest resumed, and life went on untouched.
“Spooky,” was the only thing Chris said. We all nodded in agreement. Later we just forgot all about it. In hindsight, if I had to guess that was when They showed up. I’d bet anything on it.
The rest of the evening we sat around our campfire feeding it occasionally, laughing often, and talking always. We sat and leaned back, pointing out stars and marveling at the moon’s orange shade. At one-point Ellie even busted a bag of marshmallows out from the cooler. We roasted them on sticks and ate them just like that because no one had brought anything to make s’mores.
“What kind of camping is it if you don’t have marshmallows?” she asked and we all laughed. We were feeling good and having fun. We didn’t know it then, but the chaos would start in only three hours. Right at the stroke of midnight.
We climbed in our tents around ten, worn out from our hike. We had no trouble falling asleep on the uneven ground. We were fast asleep when Chris got out of his tent to take a whiz. It was eleven-thirty. Mark must have heard something because he roused me from my sleep. He was sitting up and had an ear cocked to the woods.
“Mark? What time is it?” I whispered raggedly. He put a finger to his lips and shushed me. “Mark wha…” He shushed me more vigorously this time.
“Listen,” he whispered. It was barely audible. I cocked an ear with him and heard something too. Footsteps. Footsteps and voices. I could hear whoever it was trudging through the brush and growth.
“Mark, it’s probably just Chris or Ellie,” I told him trying to comfort myself more than him. I knew I was wrong before he said anything.
“No. It’s more than one person. Why would they be talking?” He had a point. I was somewhere between confusion and fright.
“Can you tell what they are saying?” I asked him. Even in the dark of the tent, I could see him shake his head.
“It’s just mumbling. I can’t hear them,” he told me.
“What should we do?” I asked him. I was getting nervous by then and my palms started to sweat.
“Nothing yet. Just wait. When we can’t hear them anymore we’ll get out and look around.” He sounded just as nervous as I felt, and it gave me a little relief.
“What about Ellie and Chris? Should we wake them up?” We were still whispering in our little tent. The voices had gotten farther away.
“Yes. Definitely. I don’t want to be out there with just us.” So, we sat and waited. It seemed like an eternity but couldn’t have been more than two minutes. Eventually, the voices vanished.
“Alright. Now we go,” I said. I unzipped the door very slowly, trying to make as little noise as possible. I stuck my head out and looked around twice. There was nothing there. I began to crawl out and waved Mark on behind me. We snuck to the others tent and unzipped it. Inside lay only one shape. It was Ellie. I shook her awake and she looked around.
“Sam?” she asked after blinking twice. “Is that you?”
“And me,” Mark said poking his head around me.
“Why are you here? What time is it?” She was still confused.
“We heard something,” I said, “Where is Chris?”
“He’s right here,” she mumbled bringing her hand down. It fell on an empty sleeping bag. Her eyes widened, and awareness flooded them. “Chris?” she asked.
“Where is he?”
“We don’t know. There were people just out here. Voices. They went that way,” Mark said pointing down the slope.
“Did they… take him? No, that wouldn’t happen. Would it?” Her terror was almost full-blown. The look on our faces confirmed her fears. “We have to find him then. Let’s go.”
“Yes. Let’s go,” I said. We clambered out of the tent and back into the clearing. The Blood Moon lit the night in an almost unreal way. We started down the hill not saying a word. Halfway down a light appeared way ahead of us. It was fire. A torch.
“Woah, hold on,” Mark whispered placing a hand in front of us, “What is it?”
“Fire? Who’s lighting torches out here?” Ellie questioned. Mark and I had no answer. The fire began to move as it was carried and briefly we caught the silhouette of the figure holding it. After a few more feet it stopped and was placed in something. We were maybe two hundred yards from all of this. Another torch was lit and brought about eight feet from the other. It was well lit, but to far away to make out anything.
“We need to get closer,” I suggested.
“Are you crazy? We have no idea what these…” Ellie began and was cut off by Mark.
“He’s right,” Mark said calmly, “We’re too far away. And we still haven’t found Chris.” Now I wish to God with every fiber of my being that I hadn’t been right. I would give anything just to go back and leave. But, the past is in the past.
We crept the rest of the way down the embankment to flat ground and stalked closer. From our new position, we could see them. In a large clearing was a ring of about forty people all in hooded cloaks. They stood heads bowed and hands together chanting. In the center of this ring was a square wood frame. Suspended in the middle by ropes on his wrists and ankles hung Chris. He looked more scared than anyone ever could. He was sobbing as the group chanted.
“Eccham Deus ves. Cen boja re kuwan. Miret so. Penno asen gaf.” The group of men chanted this in unison. It was no language I’ve heard before. In my mind, it must have been the language of devils and all that is unholy. That is all it could be. Chris continued his sobbing.
Then a new figure stepped into view behind Chris. This man was obviously the leader. His robe was billowy and had many intricate gold swirls and designs running across it. The chanting stopped as he approached. He came around from Chris’s left side and left our view momentarily. When he reemerged, he had produced a large knife. Chris cried harder.
“Stop, my child.” The man’s voice was deep and powerful. Chris stopped and looked right at him. He tried to speak but merely mouthed the word “why”. The man turned our way for a second and I got a glimpse of his face. He was old. His face had been scarred by the wrinkles of age more than any man I’d ever seen. He stood still in front of Chris looking him in the eyes. Then he looked up towards the moon and mouthed a soundless scream. Then he began to chant, and the group joined him.
“Eccham Deus ves. Cen boja re kuwan. Miret so. Penno asen gaf.” They repeated this twice more then stopped. The man in the gold-lined robe raised his knife and brought it down slowly. It traced through Chris’s flesh, opening dark red wounds in his chest. They did not bleed. Chris did not scream.
The man stopped when he had three different symbols on his chest in a triangular pattern. They were foreign and unrecognizable to me. They were strangely sharp yet curved at the same time, each ending in a curl. Chris hung from the frame limply.
“It is time.” That was all the man said to start it all.
There was a great rush of wind and a feeling of raw power. It passed through the woods like a gale and buffeted everything. Everything but the man and Chris. They were stock still for this hurricane force wind. It seemed like they were in a pocket of calm. The eye of the storm. I remember seeing some of the cultists even fall over, but most kept their footing.
Then it stopped, and Chris looked around. He said two words I’ll never forget.
“There’s nothing.” Then he began to thrash and spasm violently. The whole frame shook, and the group backed away in awe. He writhed and screamed, muscles tightening and pulling. I could see every vein in his body, grotesquely outlined beneath the skin. He then began to grow. I wasn’t sure at first, but it was happening. He bulged and lengthened. It looked like his skin wouldn’t contain the muscle underneath, but it did. It was hard to tell for sure, but I think he stopped at around eight feet tall. The ropes were slack enough so that he could stand now. He broke the thick lines with ease.
What used to be Chris now stood in the middle of a wary group, breathing deeply. It looked around a couple times then threw its head back and roared. There is no other word to describe what it did. It hadn’t screamed or yelled, it had roared. It was long and guttural. Once it was finished it sniffed around. When it moved its clothes ripped in little places. Later they would become rags. Then the thing turned and looked right where we had been hiding. The group looked with it.
“Who’s there?” asked one of the cloaked figures. We turned and bolted back up the hill while the group yelled and pursued us. The used-to-be-Chris thing roared again and charged after us. We made it to the top of the hill and in our panic, Mark ran in a different direction. To this day I’m not sure what became of him, but I still have hope that he made it out.
Behind us, the thing plowed through trees and members knocking everything out of his way. We arrived at camp and kept running. I remember picking up some of the still smoldering embers of the fire as I ran through it. The noise got closer and closer behind us as we ran. We shouldn’t have come this far in. We’ll never make it, I thought to myself.
About a mile back through the woods the noise stopped for a second. Ellie turned and slowed down just as I heard a tree fall. The thing picked it up with ease and hurled it right at her. It hit her with the force of a freight train and I watched her upper body get pulverized. I turned just in time to see it grab her still living remains and crush them beneath its hands. Something thick and dark ran between its fingers.
I ran faster as it began to close the distance. We were passing landmarks I recognized from the hike down as we got closer and closer to the car. Then I formed a painful stitch in my side and was limp-running through the woods. It made it all the easier for the thing to catch up to me. I heard its approach and knew it couldn’t have been more than fifteen-feet behind me when I could see the car. I felt in every part of me that I was about to collapse, but it was my only hope. Stitches in both sides racked my body as I made my desperate escape from the beast. In that last bit of underbrush before the road, I actually felt his fingers scrape my back. I almost fell and regained my balance when I crashed through the tree-line panting heavily. I scurried around the car and fumbled it open. I fell in the driver’s seat and gasped painfully.
I looked back in the trees expecting to see it fly out and flip the car. But it did no such thing. I scanned the forest and found it. Standing right where I was only moments before was a hulking abomination staring loathingly at the car. Its amber eyes stared out from the trees as some invisible force held it in. I flipped it the bird and closed my eyes. I’m so thankful for that barrier.
I spent the night in that car trying to recover from my four-mile sprint. I slept at some point and woke at the crack of dawn. I scanned the woods again but saw nothing. Only the carnage it had created in its fury. I thought of Ellie and wondered if I should get her body. No way. I’m not going back in. There might not even be a body left. She had been hit by a flying tree after all. Then I thought of Mark but brushed it off. The thing came for me and I had given him plenty of time to escape. I hope.
I started up the old car and drove straight through Paw Paw and didn’t stop until I got to my town of Wheeling. That’s where I sit now, seven years later, recounting the night that changed my life. I’m still scared of that thing. It’s always here. I always see his amber eyes, full of hate and murder. I see them in the dead of night. In the corner, out my window, anywhere they’ll fit. Those weren’t the eyes of my friend. They were that of the devil. I still wonder if Mark made it out. It’s been seven years and no contact, so my hope is starting to fade.
I try to keep up with the news from over east as much as I can. It’s hard with such a small town as Paw Paw. There have been five more groups of campers and three solo hikers that have disappeared in those woods. One of the groups went missing only last week. That’s why I’m writing here and now. I guess those folks just weren’t as lucky as I was.
Harvest
by Dgrady237
Anna and her father looked down at the bloody goat carcass on their porch in silence. It was the third of their livestock to be slaughtered that month. The bodies always ended up in front of the house. This one was closer than the others. They stood there for some time, side by side.
Anna was a thin girl of thirteen with dark blonde hair that hung down over her shoulders in limp curtains. Had she lived a different life, she probably would have been almost beautiful, but her face was hard and perpetually determined in an unnerving sort of way. It mirrored her father’s. Her eyes were large, round and grayish-blue. They were alert, but flat and somewhat calculating. The few folks in town who had had the rare chance of conversing with her found that it was somewhat unnerving to have those cold eyes look at you. They seemed to know just what you were hiding in your head. No pleasantries necessary with this young woman. Her disposition made for a good farmer though, like her father. She was precise with her work and unbothered by the business of raising and slaughtering animals on the farm.
Her eyes flicked up to her father. He, Jareth, a mostly silent but not unkind man, turned his eyes, which were not at all flat, but fiery and golden brown, back to her. He nodded. They hauled the body to the back field together, although one of them could have moved it alone. It was not a large goat, and it was missing its head and innards, which lessened the weight significantly.
That night, they burned the goat’s body in a pit that had become the designated burning spot. They didn’t want to use the contaminated and mangled meat and they didn’t want any animals coming in and sniffing around after it, or maybe they didn’t want whatever thing had been tearing up their livestock to come back. Either way, it felt like the right thing to do and it had become a sort of ritual for them, one that each of them secretly felt was its own kind of ancient magic to ward off evil, or bad luck, or whatever it is that poor folks use to explain their misfortune.
Anna’s mother, Ellen, would watch from the window when they did this, her face a frozen mask of worry. She didn’t like the woods and she didn’t like the killing. She did the housework and had planned on doing the child rearing, but there had only been one child, Anna, and Anna took care of herself. So, it was just Ellen, hiding inside, keeping her mind busy as Anna and Jareth did their duties every day, and now, their burning every night.
That night, Anna had a dream. She dreamed she was wandering through the woods near their farm, but everything was bigger. The brush was so thick, she could barely push her way through. There was no path, just leaf-lined ground and trees so thick they blotted out the sunlight. She was frightened, and every noise made her pause and wait. She felt that something was stalking her. She could smell it. It smelled like the burning goat, burning flesh. Then the pain started. It ran up her legs to her hipbones. It felt like every bone was splintering and trying to push through her flesh. She felt her arm bones go hollow, like something was eating the marrow inside, sucking it out. Her body creaked like dry twigs and she screamed.
She looked down to see her knees bending, agonizingly, backward, and her collar bone jutting out against her tightening skin. She knew somehow that her bones were gone, replaced by animal bones, bird bones, light, and brittle and sharp. She fell to the forest floor, the weight of the meat in her body cracking her new frail skeleton. Her fingertips were bleeding and she saw the tips of sharp talons pushing through her nail beds. The pain was like fire and she wished she would die, wished the darkening forest would take her fast so that the awful pain would stop. And then it did, and it was dark. She heard a voice in the blackness coughing and wheezing out the words:
“Killing harvest. Harvest for the blood moon, child.”
Anna awoke in her bed crying hot tears, her throat throbbing from her choked screams. She looked at her fingers, wanting, for one insane moment, to see the sharp talons, so that she might tear them down her face, and rip her eyes out…and then, the reality of the cold room brought her dream-drenched brain back to normalcy. Her face changed back to its normal state so quickly, it was as if she had never stirred at all. She just sat there on her bed, staring blankly at the window across the room at the half moon that hung there, her hair clinging to the sweat on her forehead. Finally, she looked down at herself and saw that her underwear was drenched in blood. It was her first time.
That morning, Anna grabbed her knapsack and her mother’s grocery list from the kitchen and headed into town. She hadn’t said a word to her mother about her supposed induction to womanhood. She had simply cleaned herself up and scrubbed the evidence out of her sheets and underwear as best she could. She wasn’t surprised by the arrival of her first blood. She knew what it was all about, but it didn’t seem like the kind of thing her mother would want to hear about. Change often upset her, so off Anna went with some tissues stuffed into her underwear and her usual determination to get the work of the day finished.
She walked down the dirt road leading from the farm, looking down at her battered old work boots as she kicked rocks and worked her way towards the main road. Suddenly, a bloody mass of fur came into her sightline. She stopped, her boot only six inches away from it. She stopped and stared down at it. It was a cat, or rather it had been. Now, it was hardly recognizable as anything at all. It was just a blob of black, blood-matted fur. She could only tell it was a cat because of the sharp teeth jutting out of a small, crushed head. One triangle ear still stood out on top. She felt ill at the sight of it. It wasn’t a cat she had seen before, but it’s closeness to their farm made her uneasy. They were like psychotic gifts, left around the property for her and her family to find, or maybe she was just falling too far into her father’s psyche.
For all the stoicism her father had on the outside, he had just as much superstition and paranoia about the world rolling around on the inside. At night, when they stood by the fire, if there was something to be burned that night, he would tell her his theories. He had many, and they were not full of the kind of magic that Anna would have liked to hear. They were dark and violent ideas about what the world was really made of. He was not the kind of father who would tell you not to fear monsters in the closet. He would look you directly in the eye and tell you to be wary then, and maybe keep a knife under your pillow.
Anna pulled her thoughts and her eyes away from the cat and moved on down the road. When she made it to town, she was reminded again of how secluded their lives on the farm were. She only came into town maybe once a month. Mostly, they got on eating off the farm, or had some things delivered. She looked around at all the entertainment: a movie theater, a comic book store, a small wooden playground in the park. They all seemed odd to her. The only thing she really liked to do for fun was read. It didn’t seem there was time for much else, and although she didn’t know it, her mind was far more mature than most people her age. She had bigger thoughts in her head than watching a cartoon movie about talking dogs or reading beauty magazines telling her how to get some model’s look with five simple tips. She felt like an alien whenever she came into town. None of it made much sense to her.
She went into the store to get her mother some soap and baking necessities. She got what she needed and briefly stopped in an aisle with feminine hygiene products, but didn’t know where to begin to choose something or what to do with it if she did. She decided she would use the tissue technique until she asked her mother about it. She supposed that was inevitable, and she would just have to deal with the awkwardness of that conversation.
On her way out of the store, paper bag in hand, she nearly ran into a boy whose name she couldn’t remember. She had seen him a few times when her mother used to take her to church. His parents owned one of the big white Victorian houses on Main street. She supposed they were rich, but that didn’t mean much to her except that he and his mother and brothers probably didn’t have daily work to do around the house and they certainly didn’t have to skip any meals.
This boy was pale and soft with little sunken eyes that darted around as he talked. He looked at her chest several times during their brief conversation. She noticed men did that now, and she barely had much to speak of in the way of curves yet. She sometimes felt they were checking to see, or rather waiting to see when she would be ripe enough, to see if she had turned woman yet. She supposed now she had, and wondered if this boy could smell it on her.
“Have you heard about all the dead animals?” he said with a grin too wide for such a statement. Anna just stared at him.
“I said, have you heard about something killing all the animals? My Daddy said there’s a wolf or a bear or something roaming around out there in the woods, but my Ma says it’s the devil come to reap.”
“Reap?” she said, her eyes locked on his.
“Yeah, you know, take from us for our sins. Punishment for what we are,” he listed off, obviously parroting everything his mother told him.
“And what are we?” she said, feeling light-headed and wanting to run away from his moony, cottage cheese face.
“Humans. We’re full of sin and lust. You know about that, right? My mom says girls are the most sinful, especially trashy little sluts like you,” he said. He caressed one of her small, newly formed breasts and winked at her. He was laughing at her, sneering at her, perhaps thinking that he was really doing a fine and dandy job of making conversation on this lovely afternoon.
“Oh wait, that’s right. My friend Tim says you farm folk only fuck animals. Is that right?” he actually laughed out loud at this.
Her head felt like it was full of bees, and a veil of red fury slowly lowered over her field of vision. She dropped her grocery bag, raised her arm up and brought it back down with the swiftness of a cat, raking her nails across his cheek. It drew blood.
The boy screeched and pushed her away. He clutched his bleeding cheek and backed away from her. He tripped over the curb and into the street and landed on his cushiony ass. Anna walked over to him calmly, silently, and brought her foot up and then down directly onto his genitals. He coughed out a dry scream, tears streaming down his face, rolling back and forth crying.
“Y-y-y-you BITCH!” He was crying like an infant, his face as red as a tomato, writhing in the street. Anna stood over him, one leg on each side of him, and leaned down into his face. He went silent immediately and looked up at her with eyes like saucers. She crouched down and looked at him, her nose only three inches from his. There wasn’t a hint of anger on her face then, just cold, analytical curiosity.
“We don’t fuck animals. We slaughter them,” she said. He whimpered.
“Do you know how to use a knife?” No answer from him, just wide-eyed fear.
“I do,” she said. She pulled a hunting knife out of her boot. “I could bleed you dry with two cuts. Here and here,” she mimed slitting his throat and his stomach with the edge of the knife. He closed his eyes and promptly peed his pants. She stood up and gathered up her groceries. There were a few people standing on store stoops looking at her, looking at her like she was some kind of beast. She looked back indifferently and then turned and walked home.
That night, Anna had another dream. In this dream, she was standing in the middle of her bedroom. The wooden floorboards and white walls were all silvery-gray in the moonlight. She could hear scratching coming from the walls and the floor. The sound was light at first, and then it got louder, more desperate. She heard a low mewling sound start from under her bed. It sounded like a cat in pain, but then it was screeching louder like a hawk, and the sound was everywhere. It was inside her head. She put her hands to her ears to try to block it out, but that only made it worse.
Her back was against her windowsill now and she heard the crying coming from outside. It was human crying. Her eyes snapped open and she could feel the cool air from the window and she knew she was awake. She turned and looked out the window and saw her father shambling towards the pigsty. He was shouting to himself, crying, dry heaving, but still walking toward the animals.
She slipped down the hall and passed her mother and father’s room. The door was slightly ajar, and she could see her mother standing at their window in her nightgown, watching him, too. She turned toward her daughter and her face looked as white as the moon, as white as bone. She looked like a corpse. For a moment, Anna had a wild thought that it was a mannequin, something her mother had put up for sewing, but then it moved towards her. She walked towards the door, looked at Anna with nothing but pity and deep sadness and shut the door. She heard her mother drag a chair over and prop it underneath the door handle.
Anna pulled herself away from the door and wandered down the hallway to the stairs. She wanted to go back to her room and lock her own door, but she couldn’t. She was scared for herself, but more scared for her father. Something was wrong with him. Something had been wrong with him for a long time but she felt that it was being kept from her, that secret. Her father seemed to disappear into himself around this time every year and her mother warned her to keep some distance from him. She said it was the work, the harvest season that gave him stress.
She left the house through the back screen door and stepped into the cool night. Her bare feet touched the damp grass as she walked towards the sounds of squealing pigs. She approached the pen slowly and could see the pigs pushing towards the fencing. They were trying to get away from something and there was a clear circle in the center of the pen. Then a scream, high and human-like, cut through the night. The rest of the pigs went silent, but for that one dying animal in the center. Then, it went silent too. She moved closer, her legs trembling, threatening to give way, and she saw a figure rise up. It was her father, but he was changed, his shoulders enormous and hulking, his mouth too big and dripping, his face long and pointed like a hyena. He was clutching half of the pig in fingers that looked like claws, gnarled and sharp and much too long. He was covered in blood that looked black in the moonlight. He looked up at the moon and cried out. He howled; an agonized cry that made her moan with fear. Then he knelt again, and she could hear gurgling, ripping sounds. She tried to run, but her knees buckled and she knelt there, sobbing. She put her hand over her mouth to stop the sounds. She looked back towards the house and saw her mother’s ghostly figure in the window, watching.
The pigs started to squeal again and she looked back and saw the beast standing in the center looking right at her, gore and flesh hanging from his mouth. His eyes were black sockets with flickers of sickly yellow light burning deep down, down through tunnels that seemed miles long. He locked eyes with her and she saw his body, convulsing once, flinching at her presence and then going stiff as he assessed his prey. She screamed then, loud, and managed to make it to her feet. He made a lightning-fast move towards the fence to get to her but stumbled on the circling, grunting pigs. She saw him go down. She ran towards the woods to try to cut to the road. All her mind could think was to get into town, to get some help.
She pushed through the trees, and bushes, oblivious to the scratches that were opening up on her face and arms from the sharp bramble. She ran, her throat on fire and her body numb. She ran until she got to a clearing. It was so bright from the moonlight, she squinted against it. She saw the path that led to the road on the other side, but it was obstructed by a mound of dirt and debris in the center. She ran towards it, but as she got closer, she saw that it wasn’t a pile of dirt. It was a pile of bloodied animal carcasses. There must have been near a hundred dead animals piled high, their dead eyes staring dumbly this way and that.
Suddenly, she was being hurled to the ground. The wind was knocked out of her and before she could even try to take a shuddering breath, she felt her arms being pinned down. Something was on top of her. Then something hit her. She felt an explosion of pain on her right cheek as warm blood dripped down into her ear. She looked up, dazed, and saw that it was a boy. It was the boy from town. Two figures appeared on either side of him; his friends. Her eyes rolled back and forth between them trying to focus. Another hit to her eye, and the pain jolted her back into reality. She looked into the eyes of the boy and could see the fury there.
“Got you, you dumb bitch,” he spat in her face. The other boys laughed. She realized the one on the left had a bat and the one on the right had rope. The boy on top of her leaned down into her face.
“You’re gonna be nice now, right? I figured you might want to apologize to me. We’re gonna have a good time now,” he was smiling. Anna whipped her head up and crushed his nose with her forehead. Fresh blood exploded out of his face and flooded her mouth. She coughed and spit. He screamed.
“Tie her up!” he screamed. The other boys began to tie up her arms and legs.
“I knew you and your family were a bunch of fucking freaks! I knew it! They’ll give me a goddamn medal for putting a stop to this evil shit!” He looked at the pile of animals and then to the surrounding woods. She could see the fear behind his anger.
“But first, we’re gonna have some fun,” he said. He licked her face from chin to eyebrow. He looked at her, wanting to see her fear, her submission. She spat blood into his eyes. She had plenty in her mouth. He grunted and wiped his stinging eyes with his shirt sleeve. He looked at her with such hate then that she knew he probably meant to kill her. He put his hands on her throat and started to squeeze. One of the boys laughed and howled like a wolf, but not like any real animal. They sounded small and foolish in the dark of the forest where real monsters roamed. The boy was straddling her, holding her neck and smiling, and then he sat up and howled at the moon as well.
There was a whizzing sound and then a thud and his head was gone. Anna gulped in fresh air as his grip loosened and then fell away. His body slumped over and fell to the ground. The other boys were screaming, running. She rolled over on her side, gasping for breath, and saw her father, or what he had become, standing over her. He looked at her and then leapt over to the boy’s rolling head. He picked it up and tossed it onto the pile of dead animals and then went off into the trees after the other two.
On the other side of the clearing, closest to the road, Anna could see dark figures lining the trees, some with torches. She didn’t know how many there were. They were watching. Then suddenly, they began to retreat, back towards the town. She could see there were many, stretching all the way back to the road. Anna closed her eyes. The shock and loss of oxygen was too much for her, and everything went black.
When she woke up, she gasped in cold air and sat up. The sky was starting to lighten with the day. Her ties were cut, and she sat up and saw her father was crouching next to the rotting pile nearby. She looked at the pile of animals and saw the heads of the three boys neatly lined up on top, their faces eternally frozen in screams.
Father and daughter regarded each other. His eyes were his. He seemed afraid of her, ashamed maybe. She crawled to him, put her arms around his neck and hugged him gratefully. He wrapped his arms around her and hugged her back. Looking over his back, she could see a ring of more carcasses: deer, dogs, cows, and more bloody meat sacrifices that she couldn’t identify, didn’t dare try to identify for her own sanity’s sake. They were littering the tree line where the townspeople had stood, their own yearly offerings left to be collected. He picked her up and carried her back to the house, their duties for that year’s harvest complete.
“Pop?” She looked up at him with tired eyes. He looked down at her.
“Those boys…” she started.
“They won’t be missed.”
“But their parents…”
“Their parents should have taught them the rules. You’re a woman now. It’s time your mother and I teach you too. It’s time you know what you are.” Anna closed her eyes and slept.
