Short Stories

The Farmer Is Here

A man stood beside the fence looking pensively through the barbed-wire thicket. He was searching for something human, but all he saw was this tangle, this horrible systematic tangle of wires ㄧ then some scarecrow figures staggering through the heat towards the latrines, bare ground and tents, more wire, more scarecrows figures, bare ground and tents stretching away to infinity. The detective grunted to himself as he climbed over the fence. Once over, he reached into his back pocket, and pulled out a small notebook. He quickly jotted down his surroundings: what he saw, how eerily quiet it was around him, and how the scenery reminded him somewhat of a war zone. The detective was given this case only about a week ago. His department was receiving countless reports of people that have gone missing, and after drawing the lucky, or perhaps unlucky straw, he was stuck with the case that nobody else wanted. After a few leads, he had ended up here. Placed in the middle of nowhere, this so called 'camping site' was the sort of place your mother would tell you not to go to during the night.

As the detective walked from tent to tent, in search for any clues, he didn't know which was more unsettling; the abandoned tents, or the countless rows of scarecrows. Upon looking around the tents, he came across one where there was phone inside. It looked as though it was thrown, or perhaps it was dropped there by accident. He bent down, and picked up the the discarded piece of technology. The detective pressed the home button, in which it revealed the lock screen picture of a teenage girl and her dog. He swiped to the right, and the phone unlocked itself. It then opened up the phone's camera, the app that the owner was last on before discarding their phone. In the bottom right corner, there was a small icon that showed the last picture that was taken. The detective noticed something very strange about the picture, and decided to click on it. The last picture that was taken last was of an over stuffed scarecrow. It had obvious blood stains leaking from around the neck, and it wore a sign that read: 'The Farmer Is Coming'. The next three photos were all black.

Feeling even more unsettled thanks to the photo, the detective knew that this may help him even further with his investigation. He decided to take a photo of the picture with his own phone. When he had finished, he felt something prickly tap his shoulder. The detective turned around quickly, and what stood behind him was the same scarecrow he had just seen in the photo. Only this time, the sign read, 'The Farmer Is Here'.