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Just the Wind
I?ve only told the full story a few times. I told my father and my best friend the next day. My Dad thought I had sleep deprivation, he could relate, but he said we?d get the police involved once he came home if I wasn?t convinced, but that never came to pass. He had a lot of other things on his mind by time he came back. My best friend thought it was some weird joke I was making, like I was trying to get him to say he believed me just so I could be an asshole over how gullible he was (something I had been guilty of on other occasions). No one was going to believe me and it wasn?t a pleasant memory anyway so I kept my mouth shut and never told the story again until I shared it with my brothers over a bottle of whisky three years ago, that was when the bank called in our debts and we lost the land. I know it's stupid but it seemed like a safer thing to talk about knowing none of us would ever step foot on the farm again. It was October of 2002 and my Mom had been in the hospital for half a week. She collapsed suddenly at work one morning and was rushed to the city for a series of tests and surgeries that I really didn?t want the details of since I was a 17 year old child trying his damndest to be ?the strong one? for everyone else. My Dad and brother Jared were with my Mom in the city. I stayed back to tend to the farm and my youngest brother Topher, who spent about 30 seconds by my Mom?s bedside before he realized that being there was going to tear him apart. He wasn?t doing much better at home with me. Work, school, and the emotional drain of my Mother?s still unknown illness had taken its toll on me. I had barely slept in days and was completely exhausted on the night in question; still, I know what I saw was real. It felt like it was going to storm so when I got back from town that evening I decided to park my truck in the barn in case it hailed or something ridiculous (have to love Saskatchewan ?Autumns?). We hadn?t had livestock in a decade so the barn had been converted to a parking area/maintenance garage. The wind was already blowing wildly and I had trouble getting the large doors closed long enough to slot the 2x4 that kept them shut into place. When I entered the house I sat down on the couch and promptly passed out until nightfall when I was shaken to consciousness by Topher. ?There is someone out in the yard.? ?Who is it?? I yawned. ?I don?t know.? ?What are they driving?? In small towns a vehicle is as good a piece of ID as a driver?s license. ?There is no car up front. I?m pretty sure I just seen someone by Grandpa?s shop.? ?Did you turn on the yard lights?? ?Yeah but ...? he looked like he was going to cry. ?You are probably just seeing things. Go back to bed.? I closed my eyes. ?The cats are gone.? This got my attention. Topher had adopted three kittens a few years earlier with the hope that they would help us get rid of mice in the granaries. The problem was Topher spoiled the shit out of them. He fed them every time he went outside and the kittens never learned to hunt for their own food. Three cats became seven, seven became fourteen, and the fourteen had just this spring turned into close to twenty or so useless cats that swarmed anyone who entered the front yard, looking for food. My Dad and Grandpa wanted to ?get rid of them? but Topher loved them too much so they got a free ride on our porch. Even when the weather turned bad they were never far from the front door. If it rained they stayed under the stairs but there wasn?t room for all of them so a few at a time would have to take their turn embracing the elements. In the whole time we had them only two things made the cats abandon the porch: a wild animal scared them off or someone came into the yard and they followed them begging for scraps. I went into the kitchen and looked out the sliding glass door into the front yard. No cats, no rain, and as far as I could see no one by my Grandpa?s shop either, but off in the distance I noticed the double doors on the barn swinging open in the wind, banging against the building over and over again. The 2x4 that locked them in place was barely visible lying flat on the ground. ?Probably just a coyote? I lied, amazingly unable to turn off my ?brave one? switch. ?I?ll go check it out.? I grabbed my Dad?s rifle from the closet and loaded it. I hate guns. Always have. I feel uncomfortable around them and I?m a horrible shot for a farm boy. Scratch that, to say I?m a horrible shot for a farm boy is an insult to blind farm boys everywhere. I have horrible aim by any standard. Topher knows this and the sight of me grabbing the gun freaked him out even more than he already was. No matter what I said he knew I was worried about what was out there. I tried to play it off as a half-assed joke: ?Hey, one of us needs to bag a wolf or something soon to shut Jared up.? Jared, the middle child, shot a coyote the previous fall and since seized every opportunity to break out the story (even to this day). To be fair to him, it was a beautiful shot, nearly 60 yards with an ancient .22. I suddenly realized how badly I wished he was there to go outside with me. I didn?t want to go alone but Topher was in no shape to help and calling someone to drive out there from town would surely throw the little guy into hysterics. I was supposed to be his brave older brother, and if I wasn?t that brave I figured I could at least try playing the role. So I put on my jacket, slung the rifle over my shoulder and stepped outside. It?s always struck me as odd that movies, TV shows, and books always use silence as a suspense builder, ?It was so quiet you could hear a pin drop? etc. People who think quiet is scary have never been in a situation that was both frightening and loud. Nothing is scarier than losing one of your senses when you might really need it. I came to that realization the moment I stepped onto the porch. The wind howled so furiously I could hear nothing else. Topher mouthed something indecipherable to me from the kitchen and I screamed back to lock the door behind me but I?m pretty sure he didn?t hear that either and I went on my way regardless, eager to get it over with. The weather continued to scream at me with every step. The wind was so cold on my face that it was hard to keep my eyes fully open. The intensity of the wind was a slight comfort. If the wind was this bad maybe Topher?s cats just went off to find better shelter, maybe the wind blew the barn door open? I remember thinking that it was definitely going to snow soon. I was halfway to the barn and my face already felt slightly numb. The gun was so cold against my fingers that, despite my better judgment, I slung it back over my shoulder. I should have brought gloves. I breathed onto my hands and slowed my steps as I approached the barn. Standing right in front of the swinging barn doors my mouth suddenly felt very dry as I looked at the ground. The lengthy 2x4 was approximately four feet from the door. It was quite unlikely the wind could have thrown it that far. I tried all sorts of insane rationalizing about how the storm had clearly blown the door open in a vain attempt to settle my nerves. I put the rifle back into my shaking hands and stepped into the barn. I mentioned before that the barn had been converted to a parking area/maintenance garage. The two areas were actually divided in half by a long make-shift door placed into a rut that spanned the width of the barn. It is not exactly accurate to call the thing a door; it was more like a moving wall that separated the parking area from the garage. The wall/door was made of scrap metal and it had an odd handle that is hard to explain without seeing it. Basically you had to lift the handle up (this lifted a pin holding the door in place) and then pull back on the handle to drag the door along the rut. Anyway, the important thing to know for the sake of the story is that this large metal door was not only awkward to open, it was heavy as fuck. I couldn?t open it by myself until I was 14 years old. It was closed when I parked my truck in there a few hours earlier. Now it sat about a foot open. The wind didn?t do that. Being inside the barn I was blessed with the partial return of my hearing. I battled the ringing in my ears trying to hear if anyone was inside the garage section to no avail. Unlike the yard lights that were connected to switches in the main house, the lights in the garage were controlled by switches several feet inside the room. I was so happy I accidentally left the light in the parking area on earlier but it did not illuminate any of the blackness inside the small gap in the metal door and I definitely was not walking into that room in the dark to turn on the lights on that side. I stood still for what seemed like an eternity in a strange stalemate with myself. I didn?t want to leave because I was so paranoid that I would be attacked the second I dared turn my back to the gap, at the same time there was no way I was going into the dark garage section. My mind was racing. I thought about how badly I screwed this up out of a desire to ?stay strong? for my little brother. I thought about what might happen to him if I died out there trying to stop, what, a robbery? Let whoever it was keep my Grandpa?s old tools, let them keep my shitty truck, I needed to get out of there now. And that?s when the stalemate was broken. There was a cracking noise, and what I thought was a slight whine, followed by a slurp. I instinctively screamed ?I have a gun!? (not the smoothest action hero line, I know). The silence returned. I heard the wind howl behind my back but nothing else. I yelled again. ?Who is in there? Come out now and I won?t shoot!? Silence again. For only a moment, then with an echoing boom something hit the metal door near the gap and I heard someone tear open the back door of the barn. I still wasn?t running into that dark room, who knows how many people were in there? So I bolted the way I came, out the front door and circled to the back of the barn. That?s when I saw it. The yard lights only cover the front and sides of the barn so the lighting was dim and the grass is tall in the back so I didn?t get the best look. The creature sat crouched behind the open back door waiting for me to walk through. Its back was to me but it looked human enough, naked but extremely hairy. Its hair looked mangy and tattered, patchy and grey in places like a beat up alley-cat. There was less hair on its arms, legs, and areas near its ribs/lower back. These areas of exposed flesh appeared bright red even in the dim light, like the worst case of wind burn I have ever seen. It held one of its hands to the side like it was ready to strike the moment someone walked through the door, the fingertips on this hand were blackened and ratty from frostbite. I don?t know if I screamed, the cries of the wind would have drowned them out anyway but the creature somehow became aware of my presence. It turned to face me in a quick confused motion and I got my best look at it. The bottom half of the thing?s face appeared to be covered in some kind of dark, sticky substance, which made its long hair and thick beard stick together in clumps. It bared its surprisingly human looking teeth at me and I fired. For all I know I fired straight into the ground because I don?t remember raising the gun, I don?t even remember pulling the trigger. I do remember its eyes, shocked pools of deep blackness that convinced me in an instant that this thing was not a man. It dashed low (perhaps on all fours) towards the opposite side of the barn and around the corner. I didn?t follow, remembering how it had waited behind the barn door a moment ago. I circled around the other side but that?s a long trip and it wasn?t there when I arrived. I lost it. I suddenly got the nauseating realization that it could have headed for the house and I rushed back to the front yard. If Topher was watching me from the kitchen I must have looked really stupid. I was basically spinning my way back to the house in a half run. I didn?t know if the thing had stayed by the barn or went closer to the house so I didn?t feel safe leaving my back in any direction. I was dizzy from fear and the constant turning by time I got to the door. I felt relieved that Topher had not actually locked the door when I stepped inside, and then sickened instantly by the fact that I allowed him to leave the door unlocked while I chased whatever the hell that was. I didn?t even want to think about what would have happened to him if that thing would have got me. I locked the door and the bolt. Topher was sitting at the kitchen table looking pale. ?Did you fire a shot?? ?Yeah, I thought there might be a coyote in the grass. Just fired one into the air to try and scare it away.? ?Was there a coyote?? he nervously nibbled a cookie. ?Nope, just the wind.? ?You forgot to close the barn door.? ?? I?m going to leave it til morning. It's really cold out. Get back to bed.? Topher went off to sleep and I didn?t even take my jacket off. I sat at the kitchen table all night with the rifle staring out at the yard. I waited and waited but I didn?t see anything other than the first snowfall of the season. The next morning I put Topher on the schoolbus and told him I was staying home sick. Emboldened by the morning sun I took the rifle and went to check out the garage. The inside of the garage was a complete mess. Tools that normally hung on the walls were strewn everywhere and a work bench by the door was knocked on its side. More seriously, I also found four of Topher?s cats, or at least what was left of them. Three of them were in a pile by the back door stripped clean of meat. A small pile of fur and inedible flesh sat beside the corpses. It looked like the thing sat there and skinned them. I wondered how it would have done that with fingernails ruined by frostbite. The fourth cat lay beside the gap in the metal door, its neck was broken and there were teeth marks with some sinewy tissue sticking out near the break. I assumed that the creature threw this one at me when I yelled at it and it made its escape. There was some dried blood on the back door and it was actually broken off one of the hinges. No other sign of it though. The snow behind the barn was undisturbed; I figured it probably moved on, plenty of other farms nearby with real livestock. I assumed cats were probably desperation prey. In any case just to be safe I flung the corpses into the bushes. I didn?t want the thing returning to the building hoping to finish its meal. Like I said, the two people I told the story at the time didn?t believe me and we had enough going on in our lives with my Mother?s health that I didn?t really dwell on it. I often thought about telling the story to Jared and Topher, especially after I moved away a year later, but I never did until that night three years ago. I always decided it was best to not worry them while they were living there. Maybe I was really concerned about worrying myself. I didn?t want to acknowledge what I saw. It was easier that way. Jared busted a lawnmower in 04 by running it through a bushy section behind the barn that rarely got cut. In the process he ran over something that got caught in the blades. Upon closer inspection it was a bloody, rusty flat head screwdriver that had gone missing the night ?a homeless man broke into the garage?, which became the official story according to my Dad. It kind of freaked me out. Thinking about that thing sitting there skinning those animals using a tool just like a real human. Every now and then I?d think about this and question my memory; I?d reconsider if what I saw was man or beast. And then I?d remember the eyes and drop the notion all together. I don?t care if you guys think I?m crazy, I?m convinced, either that thing was an honest to God monster or there was nothing out there but me and the wind. Edit: clarity, grammar issues. more