Irrational

Rain was my favorite weather. It would rain for hours at a time, especially in the spring. I would open my window to hear the sounds, or I would sit on the floor in front of it and watch the droplets run down the glass, resting my chin in my arms on the window pane. In my upstairs bedroom, I had a beautiful view; vast plains of grasslands in the distance, shallow hills like ocean waves. Here and there, a vein of greenery, bushes and trees, cut through the land. The thickest and longest of which ran close to the farmhouse I lived in, and though I couldn’t see it through the foliage, I knew it covered the banks of a shallow river.

The focal point of the view was an old barn. It may have been a bright red at some point, but now it was a rich dark brown. Nearly as tall as our house, it would have comfortably housed more animals than were currently in there, but my grandparents kept only three goats in there. The rest was of the space was used to keep the hay dry, and farm tools like pitchforks and shovels could be found in there. A loft covered in soft hay served no functional purpose, but I enjoyed any moment I could sneak away to hide up there. It was like something from a movie, nostalgic and romantic.

After my parents divorced, I was sent to live on the farm with my grandparents. My mom’s job had her traveling a lot, so living with my grandparents meant that I could stay in one place instead of having to find someone to take care of me while I was in school. My grandparents weren’t particularly affectionate, but I had everything I needed, and the chores weren’t too difficult.

The cloud cover dispersed the sunlight evenly, but it was after seven o’clock, and I knew the sun was going down. It was still light enough to see the landscape. I took a deep breath, the sounds of the pouring rain and occasional rumble of thunder calming me. I thought about possibly going into the barn, maybe taking a book to read in the loft. I didn’t want to fall asleep in there, but sitting in the loft might be more interesting than sitting in my room.

As I considered this, a flash of lightning illuminated the landscape, and movement caught my eye. Someone was running through the rain toward the barn. At first, I thought it was my grandpa, he was usually out working on something for the farm at this time, but if he was trying to get out of the rain, he would have just come into the house. Besides, I’ve never seen him wear something like that, before. Trailing behind this mysterious person was a long, flowing black cloak. A hood concealed their hair and face. Once they reached the small side door to the barn, they opened it and slipped inside.

I felt a thrill of curiosity. It was probably nothing, some townie on a walk trying to take shelter from the rain, but even that was more interesting than the plans I had for the night, waiting for it to be late enough to go to sleep. I decided to go investigate. I was sure my grandparents wouldn’t mind a passerby waiting in the barn until the rain stopped, and I couldn’t imagine them being any kind of criminal; even the goats that were kept in there weren’t worth much.

I put on my jacket and zipped it up, and hurried to get my shoes on and tied. Not wanting to tell my grandparents about the visitor, in case they made me wait in my room while they took care of it, I crept down the steps and outside quietly. Pulling my hood up, I bent my head forward and sprinted across the short distance to the barn to avoid the cold raindrops, and quickly entered the same door the stranger had.

It was quiet in the barn, even with the rain steadily drumming against the roof. I pulled my hood back and looked around, seeing nothing unusual at first. The goats were in their small pen, chewing on hay. There was hay, loose and in bales, along the walls, the ladder to the loft towards the back, and several support beams in the middle.

I had to do a double-take: the stranger was peering at me from behind one of the support beams, their hood still up. They were hard to see in the darkness of the barn; I found I could see them better in my peripheral vision by looking slightly to the side.

Whoever it was looked just as startled as I felt. Still partially behind the support beam, they were completely covered by a black cloak, a pale hand resting on the beam showing their arm in a long sleeve of the same material that made the cloak. I couldn’t quite focus on their face, as if a light was glaring, or if they were submerged in shadow. I could tell they were staring at me with wide, dark eyes, their mouth slightly open, but the finer details of the features were indistinguishable. I wasn’t even able to tell if they were male or female.

Suddenly I felt much more afraid. Reasonably, I knew that there was little chance I was in danger. Even if this person was unfriendly, the door was right behind me. I was a fairly fast runner, and Grandma was almost surely either cleaning in the kitchen with the window open, or drinking iced tea on the covered patio. She would hear me even over the rain if I called out to her.

But this was an unreasonable fear, a sense of terror like what one feels alone at night looking into the darkness of the bedroom closet while the door is slightly ajar, knowing that nothing was beyond the door but clothes and junk, but that knowledge doing nothing to quell the fear that something else would emerge. Maybe it was the dim lighting, the sound of rain, the unnatural stillness of the worn-out barn. I swallowed a lump in my throat, and decided I’d better introduce myself instead of just staring.

“Um, excuse me,” I said. “This is my grandparent’s barn. It’s okay if you want to get out of the rain, I just thought I’d . . .”

As I spoke, the person didn’t move at all, didn’t take a breath or blink their eyes. Even their long cloak didn’t shift in an ambient breeze. For a moment, I wondered if I was staring at something else, an arrangement of inanimate objects that only looked like an eerie personage peeking around the beam, but I had seen them run in from outside.

“It’s probably okay if you come in to the porch,” I said, trying to be a friendly hostess like my grandparents would want. “My grandma would give you some water or iced tea while you wait.”

It was silent for a long time, no movement, and I thought again that I was talking to nothing. Eventually, however, they moved a little bit further behind the beam, and spoke. “This is not a safe place.”

Their voice had a low, gravelly quality, still not definitely male or female, and they had a strange lilt that may have been an accident. I was a little confused by this statement. “Yes, you’re safe here,” I reassured them. “You can wait in here if you want to, I just wanted you to know you are welcome to have some tea with us on the porch. The rain might last a few more hours still.”

Without turning their head, they looked with their eyes toward the goats. All three of them had stopped chewing and were staring at the stranger, very odd behavior for the usually disinterested goats.

“You should go inside,” they said monotonously.

I was getting more nervous by their unusual countenance. I wanted to leave, to sprint back to the house, up the stairs, and hide under my bed. Something deep within my subconscious was screaming at me that this was not human!

Determined not to allow my childish fears hinder my manners, I decided to politely excuse myself, go inside and tell Grandma about our uninvited guest, and let her deal with it.

“You can stay in here as long as you need to,” I told them. “I’m going to tell my grandma that you’re here.”

“Please do not tell them about me,” they said quietly, and began shrinking further behind the beam.

I watched in terror as their body disappeared behind the wooden beam that was too small to conceal a human body. In mere seconds, they were gone, not so much as a shadow left behind. I was frozen solid, my breath coming in shallow gasps, unable to make sense of what I’d seen.

Loud, booming thunder that shook the framework of the barn startled me out of it. I turned around, threw open the door, and sprinted back into the house as fast as I could. Instead of going around to the front door where I had come out of to avoid the kitchen, I went through the patio door that opened directly into the kitchen where, as I’d expected, Grandma was cleaning the floors.

I shut the door behind me and stood there, shaking in fear for a moment, while my grandma scolded me for tracking mud onto the floors that she’d just finished scrubbing. I didn’t know what to say, how to explain that I’d had some kind of hallucination, or that I’d seen a normal intruder and been scared out of my wits for some reason or another. My grandparents were very no-nonsense, like I was myself, and they would probably think I was lying. I might even get in trouble.

Before I could even decide how I was going to explain myself, we were interrupted by a bright flashing light and the loudest thunder I’d ever heard in my life. I fell to the floor, hearing a high-pitched scream and realizing after the fact that it was my own voice. Grandma hurried over to me and helped me up.

“What was that?” I asked breathlessly.

“Lightning,” Grandma responded as she held my shoulders comfortingly. “Must have hit one of the trees outside.”

“Or the barn?” I asked in a quiet voice.

Grandma turned and opened the door to look outside. Sure enough, the old, dried out wood of the barn was blackened with scorch marks. A small but quickly growing flame could be seen on the roof. To my surprise, the three goats were in the yard, running around erratically and bleating in fear. I didn’t understand how they got out; they were secure in their pen less than a minute ago, I’d seen them myself.

Grandpa came running over, then, and told Grandma to go in the house and call the fire department. The house was far enough away from the barn that it was safe from the fire spreading, but the old wood and dry hay in the barn would burn up quickly, and it was unlikely that it would be saved. It was old, older than was safe to use, he admitted. It was past time to get a new one. He commented on the miracle that the goats had somehow gotten out safely, but no more was said about the unusual circumstances.

I knew the person, or creature, I’d seen must have something to do with it, but I had no way to explain it. They must have let the goats out, and saved me, too. I remembered not being able to look directly at them, and even now, their appearance faded from my memory. I remembered, also, their chilling final words; “please do not tell them about me.”

I never did.