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Delilah's Barn

Forgive Me

By Grant WoodhamsPublished 3 years ago 10 min read
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DELILAH'S BARN

Delilah's is just a barn. We have already marked it on our map as we contemplate the journey ahead of us. It'll be tough, a day's hike through a small mountain range consisting of rough terrain and deep woods before a wide open plain...

Back then, when I was a young man I kept a diary, the words I wrote on the morning before we left the only words I would ever write until now about Delilah's barn.

I can't remember who first mentioned the barn on that day. Forgive me Delilah we all sang and joked as we set out for our overnight camp. Just the three of us, Josh, me and Josh's cousin Ernie. We were all good friends. The barn was our destination. It was said to sit in the middle of nowhere and no one knew how it came to be there. I reckoned it had been part of a farm and built during the Civil War, though Ernie thought earlier. None of us really knew though. It was our sort of challenge.

All we knew was the myth of Delilah's. Supposedly others had gone before us and none had ever seen it. There were also stories that some had never come back. It all seemed too improbable. We wondered if previous adventurers, as we liked to think of ourselves, hadn't gone far enough or they had somehow missed it. And if everyone had missed it, how did they know there was a barn there? We were determined to find it. After all it was on the map.

The small range of mountains were not all that remote from the closest town, a tiny decaying mining settlement of about twenty mainly empty houses, though the general store was open. The man behind the front counter gave us the silent treatment and a bored look when we bought a handful of chocolate bars. They would be additional to the supplies we'd brought up from the city.

It wasn't until we were leaving that he spoke.

"Where you off to?"

"To other side of the Glory Range to find Delilah's."

He gave an almost imperceptible nod and rubbed a hand against the stubble of his unshaven face. He looked blankly at us and we turned and left. My car would sit in front of his store until we returned the next night. I doubted it would cause any problems, there was no one else about.

I think about it now, but I didn't think about it then. He probably wasn't all that old, maybe in his forties or maybe early fifties. He wasn't an old man, like I am now. And it has taken me a long time to wonder if he had been into the mountains himself and visited the strangely named Delilah's. That maybe like Josh, Ernie and me his visit had changed him, made him a different person. I wonder. But back then he was still in that small town, a ghost town almost. If he'd gone to her barn I think he would more than likely have moved as far away as possible.

It's not hard to remember, that although it was the height of summer it was a cold day with dark grey clouds scudding across the tops of the small peaks. A nasty chilly wind blew in gusts bringing the occasional shower. This would be followed by half an hour of sunshine before the clouds took over again.

We followed a path through one of the valley's of the range, checking regularly to make sure that we were on the right route. It was hard going, the rubble and rocks beneath our feet on the rudimentary track made us cautious, slowed us down. We each had a backpack with a sleeping bag attached. We'd divided the food between us, some pots too for cooking.

While we were in a valley between two low parts of the range we were still quite high and as we rounded a bend the path suddenly dropped away quite sharply leading us down into the promised woods or forest that we'd read about. Several deep creeks flowed with water that was as cold as ice, the only crossings were primitive bridges built with the logs of fallen trees. But once we crossed the creeks and started to climb again the tall trees dropped away. For a short while, maybe a quarter of an hour we climbed higher and higher and then suddenly we were on a plateau, the flat land rolling out in front of us.

It seemed to stretch forever, though we could see another mountain range in the distance, on the far horizon. Out here nothing stirred, the dark clouds and showers were now sitting in the valley behind us. The sun shone but with no great warmth.

We consulted the map. Everything seemed in order, the only difficulty being that the path we were on had ended. Perhaps there was a path but we figured the prairie grasses had grown over summer and covered it. And on this plain there was no landmark, nothing to be seen except what we thought in our exuberant mood was Delilah's barn, a dull blurry object in the middle distance. Without binoculars it was hard to tell how far away it was.

Like a mirage it seemed to grow no closer no matter how far we travelled. On and on we pushed. Josh's small transistor radio no longer picked up the local radio station. All was static. And this was before cell phones existed though I doubt that even today any service would exist out there. Ernie suggested it might be a herd of Bison. Ernie seemed to know a lot about Bison, we kidded him, thinking he'd watched too many cowboy movies.

As the day pressed on and our imagined barn almost appeared to retreat into the distance we forwent lunch and decided to eat the chocolate bars from the store instead. We'd originally intended to stop and warm up some soup we'd brought along. But time was slipping away, the sun was starting to slide to the west and although there was probably a good five hours of light left a growing sense of urgency started to invade our consciousness.

If we weren't there by dark we would have failed like everyone else before us to find Delilah's. But perhaps more importantly we would have to sleep out in a wilderness that seemed to grow more unfriendly with each passing minute. Ernie had decided by now that there were no Bison in this part of the State. We walked as best we could through the ankle and sometimes knee high grasses, three fit young men, who if we had known where we were going might not have been too concerned, but by now we had started to worry.

Almost in the blink of an eye the sun sat above that range of mountains in the distance. A fading red ball that sank too quickly. But in the act of dropping below whatever peaks dominated that skyline it left behind the smallest ray that lit for the briefest moment what we now knew was a building. Delilah's. And as the sun changed places with a moon we hadn't previously noticed, a strange light spilled across the landscape guiding us, showing us the way. What we couldn't see by day, was now self evident by night.

Delilah's barn. We might have congratulated ourselves, but we were exhausted and stunned by the noiseless world we now inhabited. Our voices seemed far too loud, the tread of our shoes on the ground likewise. In the light of the moon it was possible to see a large capitalised D above the barn door and a hex mark. Ernie whispered the hex was there to keep away witches. It wasn't news that Josh or I wanted to hear.

We unpacked in the dark, the flashlight that I had loaded with new batteries was dead. In between grumbles we lit a small fire and cooked the soup we'd originally intended for lunch. The flame was

dull, barely effective, lukewarm would have been high praise. The fun, the jokes, the bottle of bourbon we'd intended to have around a campfire didn't fit with how we felt. Without speaking we unpacked our bed rolls. There seemed nothing to do but sleep. And as much as Josh or Ernie or me looked at our watches we all came up with vastly different times. It was anywhere between eight and twelve.

I've never spoken to Josh or Ernie about it. I never will, but in that barn, in Delilah's barn that night, I didn't close my eyes. Not once. I had this sense that something was waiting for me to sleep and that if I did I would never wake. Josh and Ernie slept, I know they did, I heard the occasional snore. And as I lay there fighting the urge to drift off I felt the most enormous pressure coming from the mouth of the open barn. There was no door. I stared out into the night as the immense silence played with my mind. I found my camera and although I thought it was a meaningless exercise I aimed the lens at the opening and took a photo. The small click as I pressed its button echoed strangely off the wall next to me.

No bird or creature announced the arrival of morning. As the sun rose the pressure seeped away and the silence was replaced with a muted prairie wind. There seemed no shame in leaving Delilah's just after daybreak. For the sake of the exercise and proof of our endeavours I took some photos of the barn.

Where we had trodden the day before showed us the way back through those tall grasses. A day similar to the day before we made slow progress, turning occasionally to mark Delilah's barn gradually disappearing behind us until it was finally a smudge. Then having reached where the grasses ended and the trail began it was no longer visible.

Back in the old mining town we found the store closed. My car sat on its own and despite everything I feared it started first up and we drove back to the city. We had been to Delilah's.

Writer's Notes:

Photos: When the photos I took of Delilah's barn were developed all but one showed nothing but prairie grass. I had taken six photos. The photo I had taken in the middle of the night as I waited inside the barn for morning clearly showed a woman standing looking in through the open doorway. She stood there laughing.

Josh Partridge: Not long after our visit to Delilah's barn Josh checked himself into a psychiatric facility. He was suffering from hallucinations and fantastic headaches. I went to visit him on several occasions but he never recognised me. He died there several years later without ever recovering.

Ernie Partridge: I knew Ernie as a happy and carefree person, but after our visit to Delilah's he was convicted of killing a First Nation's woman and was sent to prison. I have neither seen or heard of him since.

Mining Village: I never returned to the small mining town of Lachapelle where we set out for Delilah's Barn. Recently looking at google maps I see that the entire town has been demolished, there isn't a trace of it. Even the road in has been removed.

END.

Mystery
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About the Creator

Grant Woodhams

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