A Haunting

Part 1

A Haunting

VAL DAY-SANCHEZ

Copyright © 2016 Val Day-Sanchez

All rights reserved.

There was a stillness that seemed to surround her. She could feel it even before she opened her eyes. A crisp chill in the air alerted her to the sudden change in seasons. She sat up and wrapped the quilt around her before making her way through the house. It seemed foreign at night, the familiarity and easiness of the day only seemed to be present with actually sunlight. Now dark, shadows and cold floors accented the creepiness that seemed to engulf her as she moved through the narrow hallway and down the stairs. It wasn't merely the absent of light or the presence of the moon, there was something else, something there.

The exorcists had come and gone. They all collaborated the stories that there was in fact something, a presence. Some claimed they had removed it, rid the house of its otherworldly atrocities while others conceded that it had chased them out while it still very much remained. Her family had moved out but she remained. She seemed to be the only one that had felt a connection to it. While they had all feared it, she felt something more.

Her husband had begged and pleaded with her to leave. Even when he'd been loading the luggage into the car he still was adamant about them all leaving, as a family. He didn't understand that she felt their family was already divided.

On the porch, surrounded by their thirty acres she envisions the horses snoring in the barn. In her mind she sees the chickens secured over their nest in their coop. She pictures the goats sleeping in the pasture. The pigs are inside, their mud waiting for them. The farm hasn't had animals for a year but she knows it will again one day. Inadvertently her mind revisits the first killing.

She had risen early, not much unlike this morning, it was still dark outside but she had felt compelled to go to the barn. As soon as she reached the doors she knew something wasn't right. The rope they used to secure the doors had been absent and although there was no breeze the door was swinging wildly back and forth, banging against the outside of the barn. She wondered how no one else had heard it, even the horses seemed to pay it no mind. She stepped into the barn, pulling the door closed behind her. The smell was what captured her first.

Blood possess an unmistakable scent, one that cannot be confused. She knew then that she shouldn't continue without at least notifying her husband but something pulled her forward. Further into the barn, a dripping noise accompanied the potent scent. It only grew more tenacious as she approached the stalls. Holding up her lantern she saw why the horses had been so quiet. They had been filleted. Their bodies skinned, their necks barely still attached, their tongues hanging loosely out of their mouths, their corpses hanging above her, suspended with the rope from the barn door. In a panic she backed away, stumbling, she fell to the ground. Her body was accented with their blood that was dripping from the carcasses. She pulled herself up and began to run back to the house.

Her husband had been seated on the porch, pulling on his boots. He must of noticed she was absent from bed. How long had she been out here, she thought. The sun was beginning to rise. When he saw her, he ran to her meeting her in the field where she collapsed. "The horses," was all she could say.