"The Red Shed":
I had just turned thirteen that fall, and life on our hog farm in rural Iowa felt like it always had, one long routine stitched together by chores. The scent of hay and manure clung to every breath of the crisp air. My parents were constant motion, always checking, fixing, barking orders to keep things running smooth. Mom took care of the books and the lighter tasks. Dad handled everything that required strength. His hands were thick and cracked like the old barn wood, and he never slowed down, no matter how late the sun went down.
That November evening, the corn harvest done and winter creeping closer, we stayed out in the main barn, sorting equipment beneath the harsh white glare of the overhead lights. The pigs snorted and shifted in their pens, restless in the cold. Wind scraped across the leftover stalks out in the dark fields, sounding like whispers.
“Alex, hand me that wrench,” Dad said. His voice was steady, though exhaustion dragged at the edges. He was fixing a water line that had been leaking for days. Mom hovered close by, wiping her hands on her jeans, looking paler than the fluorescent bulbs allowed. She had been feeling weak since her procedure a few days earlier. She never liked to show it.
“Sure,” I said, passing it over. The metal felt icy against my skin. We fell into silence again. Only clinks and snorts and the quiet sighs of the building settling around us.
Mom shifted suddenly, bracing herself against the stall. “David, I think I need a break,” she said. Her voice was soft, but the firmness underneath told me this wasn’t the first time she had brought it up tonight. “My legs are shaky. I’m going to head in.”
Dad looked up, eyes narrowing not in concern, but calculation. “Fine. Grab the pet carrier from the red shed first. I need those kittens out of the way before tomorrow.”
It wasn’t a request. It never was.
Mom hesitated. Just a flicker. She nodded anyway. “Alright. Won’t take long.” She gave me a faint smile. “Alex, come in soon. Dinner’s waiting.”
“Yes, Mom.”
She pulled on her jacket, stepping out into the cold. The barn door closed behind her with a long groan, leaving me and Dad alone with the echo.
We worked longer than we should have. The clock hands crawled. Outside, the night swallowed the windows, turning them into black mirrors that reflected our tired shapes. Something gnawed at my stomach, a quiet alarm I tried to ignore.
Dad finally straightened, stretching his back with a wince. “Let’s check the office. Make sure we logged everything.” His tone was clipped, impatient.
The office at the front of the barn was a cramped room with a desk, old papers, and monitors showing fuzzy security camera feeds. While he flipped through notes, I kicked my heels against a stool, trying to shake off that growing unease.
“Where’s your mother?” he muttered after a few minutes. “It doesn’t take that long to get a carrier.”
“Maybe she’s checking the kittens?” I said, though it felt thin. The shed was close. The darkness outside wasn’t usually unnerving, but suddenly it felt like something living.
Dad sighed sharply. “Go get her. Tell her to hurry.”
I grabbed the strongest flashlight we kept. The moment I stepped outside, the cold hit with a bite. Gravel crunched under my boots as I hurried toward the red shed. The door sat slightly open, a thin band of light cutting through the dark.
“Mom?” I called, pushing it open.
The air inside smelled of feed and dust. Tools lined the walls. A lamp flickered above. No reply.
I swept the beam from corner to corner.
That was when I saw her.
She lay face down on the dirt. Knees drawn like she had tried to crawl. The corn rake jutting from her back looked wrong, almost planted there on purpose. Blood spread dark into her shirt, a slow, terrible bloom.
My lungs locked. I dropped to my knees beside her. “Mom!” I whispered first, then screamed it. I touched her hand. Cold. Too cold.
I ran.
“Dad! Dad!” The flashlight bounced wildly as I sprinted across the yard. My voice cracked with each shout. “It’s Mom!”
He bolted toward me, and when he saw her in the shed, all the color drained out of his face. “No. No, no.” His hands shook while he fumbled with the rake, trying to pull it free. The sound was wet and final. We carried her together, her body heavy and slack, to the truck.
“Is she going to be okay?” I kept asking as we flew down the empty road.
“I don’t know,” he said. “She must have fallen. She was dizzy earlier.” His voice didn’t match his eyes. His knuckles on the wheel looked like bone.
The hospital lights were too bright. They took her away. The minutes dragged. When the doctor returned, his expression told me everything. He said she didn’t fall. The wounds were too many. Stabbed again and again.
Police filled the waiting room, asking questions Dad answered too quickly. “It was an accident. She went alone,” he insisted.
People started talking. Small towns always do. Mom had friends who said she felt trapped, that Dad decided who she saw and what she did. Months of tension replayed in my head. Arguments over dinner. His voice sharp. Hers tired and pleading.
The police searched his tablet. Searches about infidelity. About punishment.
Then they reviewed the security footage. Or tried to. The entire hour when Mom left the barn was missing.
A deputy asked me quietly, “Did you see your dad leave the barn that night?”
I remembered the moments he stepped away. Quick. Intent.
“Maybe,” I said. My heart hammered so loud I wondered if he heard it. “A couple times.”
The investigation stretched on. The farm grew quieter each day, like it was holding its breath. Dad said the marriage was fine. He said he loved her. He said everyone else was lying.
The jury saw through him.
Life in prison.
I live with my aunt now. Nights still take me back to that shed. I see the beam of the flashlight. The blood on the dirt. The rake’s terrible shine.
The farm sits abandoned. Fields overgrown. An entire life left to rot.
Sometimes, when I think about my mother walking into the darkness that night, I wonder if she already knew she wasn’t coming back.
Out there, far from everything, the danger isn’t in the shadows or the animals or the wind. It is in the hands you trust. It is in the silence of a place where no one can hear you scream.
"Tied Up Lies":
I had lived across the road from my brother’s farm for as long as I could remember. Rural Kentucky could feel like its own pocket of time, especially in October when the corn stood tall and dry enough to whisper against the wind. John and Mary kept the place running with steady hands and tired backs. Their boy, Alex, had come home from the army a year earlier, all restless ambition and half-finished ideas. Their daughter, Anna, worked with horses down south and only visited when her schedule allowed. She had just come home from a big race, exhausted but glowing with pride.
On most days, I saw them from my porch, waving or crossing the road to share coffee and gossip. Familiar comfort. Family routine. Though that week, something in the air felt wrong, like a chill that didn’t come from the season.
Earlier, Alex had brought home a stranger named Victor. He claimed he needed work and could help around the farm. Fixing fences. Clearing the barn. That sort of thing. He didn’t last long. Anna told me Victor made her uneasy, always staring, always asking questions that didn’t belong to casual conversation. I tried to calm her over the phone, saying some folks don’t know how to be around people. Alex brushed it off too. “He wasn’t a good fit,” he said. “No big deal.”
Still, a quiet alarm stayed ringing in me.
Sunday evening, John called to invite me to supper. I declined, distracted by chores and the ache in my knees. I could see the house glowing from my window, warm against the darkening fields. Around eight, voices carried across the road. Laughter maybe. I smiled a little to myself and finished the dishes.
Then gunshots shattered the quiet.
Sharp. Echoing. Wrong.
My mind tried to explain it away. Hunters? A car backfiring? No. Too close. Too many.
I tried their phones. No answer. One after the next. My heartbeat felt thick in my throat as I crossed the road, gravel popping under my shoes. The fields smelled like cold earth and broken stalks.
Halfway up the drive, a figure stumbled out of the shadows. Alex. Wild-eyed. Tape clinging to his wrists like torn snakes. He collapsed into me.
“Aunt Beth,” he gasped. “Victor. He came back. He tied us up. Shot them all.”
Before I could think, I was moving past him toward the house. The front door glass was shattered. The knob turned too easily. The living room looked frozen mid-breath. Anna lay face down on the carpet, blood spreading wide and dark beneath her. Two holes in her back. My knees nearly gave out.
I called her name, whispering and choking on it.
In the kitchen, Victor lay sprawled, eyes open to nothing. A steaming crockpot burbled beside him as if the world hadn’t just caved in.
I forced myself down the basement stairs. Mary sat slumped against the concrete wall. A neat, awful wound in her forehead. I backed up the steps, shaking, and found John outside on the back porch steps, chest ruined, body crumpled like a coat left behind. The gun glinted near his hand.
I stumbled into the yard, dialing 911. The operator tried to steady my breathing as I stared at the house that only minutes ago had been full of life.
Alex rocked on the ground, muttering pieces of the story. He tried to fight. He grabbed the gun from Victor. He couldn’t save them.
The police arrived fast. Lights washing over the corn rows, red and blue bleeding across that quiet Kentucky darkness. They wrapped me in a blanket, but nothing warmed me.
Then came the questions.
The tape on Alex’s wrists was loose. Just a single loop. Anna’s bindings had been layered tight. Too precise. Too patient.
The bullet count didn’t match. The magazine held seven. Nine had fired.
The friendship between Alex and Victor wasn’t chance. They found diner footage from the week before. Jokes. Drinks. Familiar touches on the shoulder. Not strangers. Not even close.
Money troubles had been eating Alex alive. Resentment too. Anna was the golden child. John wouldn’t give Alex a share of the farm. Every look, every conversation replayed itself in my mind until I saw what I had tried so hard never to imagine.
Days later, investigators connected the final dots. Victor had been a pawn, guided through whispered plans and promises. The woman who introduced them brokered communication. Victor did the dirty work. Alex finished it.
He confessed before the trial even started.
Now the farm sits quiet. Too quiet. The fields are overgrown. The porch light never comes on. I still walk the road at dusk sometimes, careful not to look too long at the dark windows.
People think evil sneaks in like a storm. Loud. Obvious.
I know better now. It can wear familiar boots, eat supper at your table, call you family, and still leave you standing alone in the end.
"The Fifth Victim":
The harvest season in our rural South African village always meant long days cutting sugar cane under the sun, sweat soaking our shirts and the sweet scent of fresh stalks clinging to our skin. That year, fear clung to us even tighter. Women were disappearing. Their bodies later surfaced in the cane fields where we worked, left like secrets buried in the green. My cousin Zama became one of them, and the terror that haunted everyone suddenly came for us too.
Zama lived with us on the edge of Mthwalume, a quiet place where neighbors shared sugar and stories over fences. She was 38, gentle, and devoted to her daughter. On the morning of July 6, she straightened her skirt and smiled at me while grabbing a small shopping bag.
"I’ll be back soon," she said. "Leave supper. I’ll help when I get back."
I only half looked up from repairing our fence, nodding. I watched her walk down the dusty path, the sun catching the bright cloth wrapped around her head. That was the last time I saw her alive.
Days crawled by. The police came and went, asking questions already asked.
"Anyone suspicious around here?" one officer asked.
I told him what everyone already knew. Women were being found dead, hidden deep in the farms. Three so far. Their names whispered like curses. Prayer meetings were held at the spots they’d been discovered, wooden crosses hammered into the soil, wilted flowers left under a sky too bright for such sorrow. Women no longer walked alone. Sunset brought locked doors and silent dread.
One evening, a candle flickered weakly between me and my aunt, Zama’s mother. Her voice trembled as she spoke.
"Musawakhe, my child is out there somewhere. I feel it. What if she is hurt?"
Her hands twisted a cloth until the fabric puckered. I tried to reassure her.
"I will search again tomorrow."
I didn’t believe my words. The cane was thick as a maze and stretched farther than hope could carry.
Sleep refused to come. The quiet inside the house pressed on my chest. Near midnight, I grabbed a flashlight and slipped outside, determined to search the abandoned fields where the other bodies were found. My footsteps crunched along the path between sleeping homes, then faded into dirt and grass as I stepped into the fields.
The cane rose high above me, leaves brushing my shoulders like restless hands. Every rustle forced me still. Wind. An animal. Or someone who shouldn’t be there.
I called Zama’s name, louder each time. Mud sucked at my shoes from the last rainfall. I pictured her teasing me as she often did, laughing at my slow work.
“You’ll finish that fence next year at this rate,” she’d joke.
The memory punched the air from my lungs.
After what felt like hours, I reached Siyabonga’s farm. That was where two bodies had been found before. Siyabonga was a hardworking neighbor. Over tea earlier that week he warned me.
“Be careful. Whoever did this knows these fields like his own home.”
His words echoed now, darker and heavier.
I swept the light across the edge of the field. A flash of white caught my eye near a twisted tree. My heart hammered as I knelt to move the leaves. A skirt. Her skirt. My chest tightened.
“No,” I whispered.
Her body lay still beneath the branches, eyes closed as if mid-breath. Flies buzzed. The smell was a wall I could not push through. The flashlight slipped from my shaking hands. Darkness swallowed everything.
A sharp crack behind me snapped me back. Cane breaking. Someone there.
I grabbed the light and spun, its beam slicing the shadows.
“Who’s there?” My voice cracked.
Silence. Then another step, closer this time.
I ran. My legs scraped against stalks and thorns, lungs burning as terror chased me faster than anything human should. Images of the other women flashed in my head, discarded and alone. I did not want to be the next.
Bursting onto the main path, I sprinted until home came into view. I pounded the door until my aunt opened it. Words tumbled out.
“I found her. Zama is gone.”
Her wail cut through the night as she pulled me close.
Police confirmed it in the morning. Her ID still in her pocket. Another woman was found nearby. That made five.
The village erupted. Rage and grief swallowed every conversation. Two men were arrested. One confessed, claiming the deaths were his doing. The next day, he took his own life in his cell. The second man walked free. No evidence held him.
Siyabonga later shook his head when I told him everything.
“One man cannot move bodies like that with no car. There is more to this.”
The fear never left. Even after the harvest, even after headlines moved on. The cane fields still sway in the wind every night, but their rustling sounds too alive. Too familiar.
I still take my flashlight sometimes and walk the paths where we once joked and worked. I listen for footsteps that do not belong. Someone out there knows those fields as well as we do. Someone who blends in.
The harvest returns each year, but the memory of what we found remains carved deep into the soil. Evil does not always run from the places we call home. Sometimes it hides there.
"Repossession":
I couldn’t shake the feeling that our lives had slipped away like the last ears of corn picked clean from the field. My father, David, had poured every drop of sweat into that land, and now it was gone, taken by the bank without a second thought. Our small Minnesota town always felt quiet during harvest, the fields stretching under the wide sky like a promise. In the fall of 1983, that sky seemed to press down on us, heavy and unforgiving.
The bank’s letters piled up. The auction sign hammered into the dirt felt like a gravestone. We were left with nothing except the humiliation of losing what generations had built.
After supper one evening, my father called me into the kitchen. His hands were cracked from years of wrenching machinery and hauling feed. His eyes looked hollow.
“Alex,” he said, voice low. “We can’t let them get away with this. That land is ours. Paul and his helper Henry are coming tomorrow to inspect things. We need to be there first.”
My breath hitched. I was eighteen, still building dreams, but every one of those dreams sat in that dirt. “What do you want to do?”
He didn’t answer right away. He just glanced at the shotgun leaning against the wall. The silence between us said more than he ever could.
That night I lay awake, staring at the ceiling. The wind pushed through the dry stalks outside, whispering like a warning. The world kept moving, tractors humming in distant fields, but ours had come to a stop.
The next morning, we drove back to the farm. Even after repossession, it still felt like home. My father parked the truck behind the barn, out of sight. He took the shotgun. He handed me a rifle. “Only if we have to,” he said.
We hid in the old shed. Hours dragged on. Every creak of the building made me flinch. My legs cramped. The silence pressed on my skull. I kept imagining neighbors driving by, seeing us crouched there like criminals. Maybe that’s what we already were.
Finally, a dust cloud appeared on the road. Paul’s shiny sedan rolled up like it didn’t belong anywhere near a farm. He stepped out confident as ever. Henry followed, clipboard under his arm. They strolled the property like shoppers at a yard sale.
My father walked out first.
“Paul,” he called. “We need to talk.”
Paul froze when he saw the shotgun. “David… come on now. Put that down. We don’t want trouble.”
“You already made plenty,” my father said. “Years of work. You crushed it in one signature.”
Henry swallowed hard. “This isn’t the way.”
I stepped out beside my father, rifle raised though my hands shook. I didn’t want any of this. I wanted him to back down. I wanted everything to stop.
Paul lifted his hand slowly. Maybe he was reaching for his phone. Maybe something else. I never found out. My father fired. The blast tore the air apart. Paul collapsed, blood blooming through his white shirt.
Henry ran. His fear hit me like a punch. I yelled, begging him to stop. He didn’t. My finger pulled the trigger before my mind caught up. He crumpled into the dirt.
The silence afterward felt cruel. Nothing moved. Nothing dared.
My father approached Paul. The man was still breathing, choking on pain. “You shouldn’t have pushed us,” my father whispered, finishing what he started.
We buried them near the irrigation ditch, the soil dark and soft. My arms trembled as I dug. Every shovel of dirt felt like a new weight dropped on my chest. I kept thinking a car would appear, someone would see us. No one did.
My father sent me home as the sun dipped low. The world looked unchanged. Birds flew. Combines worked. Everyone else kept living while we had burned our futures to ash.
Sheriffs came days later, asking questions. We lied. My father didn’t blink. I barely spoke. At night I lay awake, heart pounding at every sound, certain ghosts wandered the field.
When the deputies found blood and tire tracks, they returned. They took my father in. He came home hours later, more defeated than angry.
“They’re closing in,” he said.
The next morning he was dead in the barn, the shotgun beside him. The note said he did it to protect us. I never believed that. He just couldn’t face what we had done.
They found the bodies. They found the guns. They found me guilty.
Now I stare at these gray walls, replaying that afternoon in the empty fields. Every shot still echoes. Every heartbeat of hesitation still cuts through me. I think about how the land looked under the autumn sun, golden and endless. It was everything we lived for, and everything we destroyed.
I wonder if the earth remembers the blood we gave it. I wonder if it ever forgives.
"The Baxter Farm":
I had been drifting for months, taking whatever work I could find, when I met Roy Baxter down at the mission in Springfield. He looked like any old farmer, rough beard, clay-colored cap, a slight shuffle in his walk. He cupped a hand behind his ear whenever someone spoke, claiming he was hard of hearing. Maybe he was. Maybe he wasn’t. He offered me work on his farm, a place out in the countryside where the roads ran long and empty. “Buying cattle at auctions,” he told me. The pay was good enough. I needed a bed. So I went.
We turned off the highway and drove deeper until the stars disappeared behind stacks of dark corn. The Baxter farm sat alone, the closest neighbor miles off. The house leaned a little, tired siding and a porch that groaned when Roy stepped on it. Ethel, his wife, watched from the kitchen with small, sharp eyes like she was trying to see through me. She barely spoke when she slid a plate of beans and bread my way. “Spare room’s upstairs. Work starts early.” Her voice had no warmth, only rules.
The days started blending together. Roy had me open a post office box under my name, then a bank account with cash he handed me. “You’ll use those for the livestock. Easier that way.” I didn’t understand why the account had to be in my name, but I told myself not to poke holes in good fortune.
We hit auctions twice a week. I’d buy cattle with starter checks, then Roy would flip them fast. He’d pat my shoulder sometimes, saying I was catching on quick. Ethel always hovered nearby, scribbling notes in a little book like she was inventorying me as much as the cattle.
The farm never felt alive. There were chores, sure, but the quiet settled heavy. At night I lay awake listening to the hogs snorting or the corn rustling in the breeze, every sound too precise in the dark. One afternoon I went behind the barn to dig out some tools. My boot caught on something. I crouched and brushed the dirt away. A bone. Too long to be from a pig. White like it had been underground too recently.
When I stood, Ethel was right there. She hadn’t made a sound. “Stay away from back here.” Her tone cut cold. No explanation. No smile.
That night I listened to Roy and Ethel whispering in the kitchen below my room. Words slid through the wood floor in fragments. “Next one…” and “checks are ready…” The more I thought about that bone, the worse those whispers sounded.
A few days later, the real checks arrived at the bank. After another auction run, Roy complained I’d bid on the wrong stock. Ethel’s look lingered too long. “Maybe it’s time to wrap this up,” she said without looking at me. My gut tightened. I said I’d close the account in the morning and move on. Roy gave a slow, thin smile. “Morning, then.”
Sleep was a lost cause. Around midnight, a board creaked outside my room. The door eased open. Ethel’s silhouette took shape in the crack. She didn’t step in. She just watched. When the door closed again, I lay frozen, breathing shallow, certain I wasn’t meant to see tomorrow.
Ethel claimed she had errands early, so she left before sunrise. Roy made eggs in silence. Then he asked me to help in the barn before we left. “Pest problem,” he said, grabbing a .22 from the wall. Vermin rifle, he called it.
Inside, the hay smell was mixed with something sour. The tractor outside was hitched to a trailer. A shovel and a folded sheet of tarp lay in the bed. Tools for a cleanup, not pest control. Roy handed me a stick and pointed to a dark hole in the dirt. “Start there.”
I crouched and prodded the ground. Something cracked under the pressure. My heartbeat thudded in my ears. I looked back just as I heard a small metallic click.
Roy stood there, rifle raised, eyes dead calm.
I tried to keep my voice even. “We can close the account today. Clean slate. No trouble.”
His finger twitched on the trigger. “Ethel’s already in town waiting,” he said quietly. “Could be simple.” He sounded tired, like this was just one chore too many.
I talked fast, every word a plea disguised as reason. The bank would ask questions if I vanished. People had seen us together. Slowly, impossibly, the barrel dipped. “You speak of us, boy, we’ll find you,” he said.
We drove to town. Ethel’s face drained when she saw me step out of the truck still breathing. They closed the account with stiff politeness. I didn’t go back to the farm. “Keep everything,” I told Roy.
I found a bar and tried to drink the shaking out of my hands. That’s where I met Rose. I told her everything. She didn’t laugh or walk away. She agreed to drive me back to grab my stuff.
When we pulled up, Roy and Ethel stormed out of the house, fury all over their faces. I told them Rose was my sister. Ethel wrote down her name and license plate like she was filing it away for later. “Get your things and leave,” she said. “Now.”
I listened.
Weeks later, I landed in jail in Nebraska for public drunkenness. A news report came on about a farm in Missouri. A couple arrested. Five bodies dug up behind a barn. Transients. Shot. Buried with no names.
I sat on the cold cement floor staring at that flickering screen, knowing I should have been number six. I still don’t know why Roy lowered that rifle. Maybe he hesitated. Maybe I just got lucky.
Every harvest season, when the wind rattles through tall corn, I think of that bone in the dirt and Ethel watching me sleep. I remember the silence of those fields. The emptiness hiding secrets beneath the soil.
I left alive. Most didn’t.