Barns Red Whisper

That faint red hue, like a mist over a bog. It calls out every night, like an instinct that tells someone’s watching. I try not to indulge, my grandfather says there is no light, it’s just another barn, unused for decades. It mystifies me he doesn’t see what I do, although the barn is miles away I see it as if it were on our own lot. Working the fields in the day it plays its siren song, like a mosquito buzzing past my ear but smoother. I can feel it play around my ankles, crawl up my shirt, whizz past my nose, these slight alluring tingles like a woman trying to seduce a potential mate with the caress of her finger. I feel it glide across my skin and it always lifts off in the direction of the barn.

I’ve ventured off during the day, the area around wet and deep. Covers my shoes in mud, which is why I’ve only visited twice. There’s a family of red sparrows that live inside, scared the bloody hell out of me the first time I ventured. It’s dark inside, slivering cracks in the barn’s rusted demeanor allow shards of light to slip through, the beams have an imperceptible red tinge to them, more like a feeling. I’ve seen slips of red movement here and there but I’ve chalked it up to the sparrows to keep my mind level.

One night I’d lied in bed, waiting for deep sleep to whisk me away. Then I was sitting up in my bed, the window ahead of me only allowed an expanse of red to be perceived as a crimson vapor poured in from the slits of my window. I felt no fear, no curiosity, nothing, not even the bed beneath me. I just saw the smog dancing around my room, rising, densifying until my room was no more. My body is nowhere to be seen, I am the mist.

I woke with purpose, but was I really awake? Like a state of inebriation, something was within me, guiding me. I did not resist, I enjoyed it. It soothed as an equal equilibrium had been reached, one goal, reach the barn.

Stepping out of my home in the cool air of the night, the grass linked through my toes as I made my walk. The barn was a spectacle, as if not even there, the light was so brilliant. A modest silhouette was made out from the barn as crashing waves cavorted like sun flares. Reaching out and brushing my cheek, delving deep into my diaphragm and taking grip, I’m pulled into the air. Lured ever so near, I can almost reach out and touch the corroded wood, the chipped paint is a perfect mask, it’s beautiful. Take me! I plead.

“Johnathan!” Like a coiled whip snapped in my face, I return to reality and am dropped to the floor. The slush of the mud below pads my fall as I turn to see my Grandfathers lamp lit face looking at me with the concern of a thousand terrified parents.

“Wha-” Like the earth hungered for the soul of the innocent, he was swallowed into the murky depths with the snap of a finger. The light from his lamp, partially swallowed, lit only upwards, as if signifying a final chance. It too was devoured.

I’m frozen. A brush of my spine lifts goosebumps from my skin like braille. A kiss of my neck, a twirl of my hair, a whisper in my ear.

Come into the barn, my darling.

I force myself to turn around, painstakingly slow.

As the whisps of red all around come together in front of the doorway to the barn, I see a beautiful woman take form. She places her hand on my cheek.

I have everything you need.

I shiver.

“W-Where’d my G-Grandfather go.” I tremble out.

I have everything you need.

“P-Please I just want to go home.” I barely utter.

I will not tell you again, into the barn my pretty.

Her words are more a whisper of resonation as she rubs the mud off my brow.

A tear spills from my cheek.

“Please, I want my Grandfather back.” I try to muster any authority I can, but a voice crack illustrates my bluff.

Haaaaaaaaaaaaarrrgggggghh

She screams in the night, I feel my ears tear from the inside, all sound replaced with a stagnant ring. I crawl back on my hands and feet, her presence growing to tower over the highest tree. The mud below sucks me in, I can wriggle but I cannot move. Only my face is left above the surface to see her monstrous countenance overtaking my entire field of vision. Her face decays to that of the undead, sunken in eyes, a jaw barely hanging on from the string-like skin of her cheek. She screams at me, saying only God knows. I can’t hear the demonic tones, but I feel them and they hurt. Like my skin is being split and ruptured from the sheer force, the ferocious moans like sledgehammers to my skull and ribs. She continues to chant her sermon as I’m slid through the mud, into the barn.

I see a shard of the moon through the rotted wood of the roof. The spirit steps over, once again limiting my vision to red.