Spirits in the Silo

“Why the hell are we at the grain silo, Jax?”

Jax put his truck in park and looked squarely at his sister, “Are you an idiot?”

“Probably,” Kayla replied with a shoulder shrug.

“We’re out here because my boyfriend stopped responding to our texts and calls and this storm is brutal. It’s dangerous and we just found his car plowed into the side of a flooding, narrow bridge without him in it. 'Probably' ‘cause you decided to bring up that stupid, cheap Carrie-knockoff local legend and spooked him, so he tried to get out from under the bridge and he hydroplaned into the railin’. His safest bet was to find somewhere elevated and this decrepit old building is the only thing out here for miles.”

“It was a rhetorical question, but thanks for the exposition dump, nerd.”


Jax sighed angrily, he tapped the steering wheel with agitation. Kayla looked down, she was fidgety. She didn’t want to be out in this mess, she hated storms like this. She could hear the tornado sirens off in the distance. Every bolt of lightning lit up the rolling fields around them like a camera flash. It was pitch black otherwise. It didn’t feel right.

Though she’d never admit it, she had made herself anxious rattling off the old legend of the doomed prom queen who was rumored to haunt the covered bridge down the way. Preying on morons dumb enough to park in the darkness, appearing in rearview mirrors with a devilish smile before enacting her revenge.

She had only been trying to get a rise out of her brother’s beau, treat him to some country livin’ folklore. The last few photos he had sent caused her heart to drop. The blurry visage of a figure in the back of the car belonging to the now missing Michael Thompson had to be more than a smudge on his mirror. It had a face, features. Someone was in his backseat. The lightning flash in the distance illuminated the interior of the car with such intensity it sent shivers down her spine.

He must have been so scared. She felt guilty for invoking it.

Jax looked distraught. He was immensely smitten with the slick-talking, pearly white-toothed big city boy who had come into his life like the tornado that threatened to rip them from the earth. He was obviously worried. How could he not be? Nobody simply vanishes into thin air as easily as Mikey had, especially not in a storm this bad. She prayed he hadn’t gotten swept up in the floodwaters and pulled into the river.

“Mikey’s a smarty-pants city boy, Jax. Like ya said, higher ground and a roof and all that. I’m sure he’s fine,” Kayla said quietly.

“I pray he is,” Jax replied as he lifted his hood up.

He turned his high beams on, let it illuminate the front of the old grain processing and storage building a few feet away. The rain poured down off of the roof like a deluge, the thunder rumbled above them, the winds howled like an angry beast hungry for flesh. There was trouble on the blackened horizons, he could feel it. He’d lived out in Tornado Alley long enough to sense a storm that would devastate everything it touched when it began to fester. It crept into his bones like a sickness. His old football injury throbbed. The city would be rattled by this come the morning.

Jax steeled himself and stepped out of his oversized, American-made pickup full of recently purchased wood meant to fix the fence back home. He raced toward the partially open barn door and slid inside. Kayla hurried in after him. She grabbed onto her twin brother’s arm, held tight. Her razor sharp, bright orange bangs were limp against her forehead, dripping water down onto the lenses of her cat-eye frames. The DuBois siblings took stock of the situation.

“This is creepy as hell,” Jax mumbled. He took his glasses off and attempted to dry them with his shirt.

“There’s a reason this place is number two on the local favorite haunts list. All the blogs rave about it,” she replied.

“Kay… ya really need a better hobby.”

“Feels like we ain't alone.”

Jax rolled his shoulders, grabbed his cell phone, and flipped on the flashlight. He swept the entrance, searched for footprints or spots of blood. He saw the last photo his boyfriend had sent him still on the screen. A selfie with panic on his handsome features and a break on the bridge of his nose. Blood was running down his scruffy chin and his soft brown eyes looked terrified, illuminated by the shocking blue-white of the lightning that popped around him. He couldn’t deny the distorted… thing behind him looked eerily human. The shot was blurry, it looked like it was taken mid-motion, in a panic.

He prayed Mikey was alright. It looked like he had hit the steering wheel when his car plowed into the guardrail. He hoped he wasn’t concussed.

The wind whistled through a broken window in the back end of the dark building. It sounded like shards of glass falling onto metal flooring. They could feel the temperature had dropped drastically in the short time since the sun had set. A noticeable decrease that made the warm, late August day feel more like a chilled November evening in a matter of moments. When the sky turned green they knew it was going to be bad.

Jax was angry, he should have gone out to get Mikey the moment he sent the first text that he had stopped on the bridge due to the rain. Hell, he should have offered to pick him up from the university after his classes got out hours ago, when he felt the atmosphere shift. He felt guilty.

Somewhere above them, high in the rafters, a barn owl’s wings stretched and smacked the edges of the old wood. Its eyes glowed a bright, haunting color as Jax’s cellphone light shot by it. A few mice scurried away into old burlap bags, trying to avoid the talons of the predator above. An old hook swung against the force of the winds, the chains creaked like a door in a horror film. Worst of all, most horrifying of all, the ambient noises had started to sound like screaming.

“Mikey!” Jax called out as he stepped inside.

The barn door snapped shut behind them. Both Kayla and Jax tensed, whipped around to see the heavy wooden door shake.

Jax exhaled, “Dammit… you and your stupid homecoming queen ghost B.S.”

“Prom queen!” Kayla snapped.

“Doesn't matter! Ya shouldn’t be messin’ with that stuff, ain’t nothin' good ever comes from invoking the paranormal. Start looking for Mikey.”

“What is this, an episode of Scooby-Do? No way, we are not splittin' up!”

“Then start walking!”

Jax ripped his arm out of Kayla’s grip and started heading further into the building. A broken down tractor sat before them, tires deflated and dust on the windshield. Its once vibrant, firetruck red exterior looked more like oxidized blood in the darkness. It looked like something moved underneath it.

Everything was soggy, the gaps in the roof allowed the heavy rainfall to tumble in, saturating the floor and antiquated equipment. The place shut down after two middle schoolers were found dead in the grain silo a few years back, two months later the foreman was found impaled from one of the bailing hooks, another man was killed in the baler shortly after.

The building was old, anyway. Technology had advanced since it was erected and it quickly fell into a decrepit state. No one wanted to be responsible for razing it to the ground, so it stood as a monument to more archaic times. A landmark to let travelers on the old dirt road know where they were. A hangout spot for curious teens and a hell of location for Halloween events. Nothing more.

Something shifted behind a worn down hay bale. Jax narrowed his gaze, swallowed hard. Whatever it was that had moved was human sized. And it sure as hell wasn’t his boyfriend. He slowly reached inside of his coat, palmed his handgun gently as a precaution.

“Mikey?” he called out. He was simply met with silence.

The barn owl above them made its presence known, its hoot echoed against the pelting late summer rain and increasing wind speeds. The screaming tornado siren sounded horrific. They’d never make it home, they’d have to wait out the storm here, pray they’d see the sunrise.

He stepped around the hay bale. The mold covered bale was lopsided and reeked. He saw bootprints made of mud. He had lost sight of his sister, but he heard her calling out for Mikey elsewhere in the building. She was above him. He looked up, saw her stepping up the rickety old stairs to the top of the grain sorter for a better view of the massive building. At least he had eyes on her. He steeled himself and followed the muddy trail down the back hallway. He knew where it was headed and he couldn’t keep his heart rate from speeding.

The silo doors.

“Do ya see him!?” Jax yelled, hoping his voice carried high enough to where Kayla could hear him over the storm.

“Nope!” she screamed.

He stopped outside of the grain silo doors. The bootprints disappeared by a small pile of old, rock hard grain pieces. One of the doors was slightly ajar, bloody fingerprints rested on the handle. He gripped hold of the lip of the door, gasped when a burst of lightning snapped overhead through the open roof hatch. He cursed angrily under his breath and continued pulling the door open. Its hinges were rusted, stiff.

Another crack of lightning. His heart dropped.

Stuck inside the small remnants of the once mighty grain yield were several mismatched limbs, sticking out this way and that from the mounds. Feet with sneakers. Hands with rings. Possibly an ear. He felt his body shiver as the illumination from the storm died down and the clouds raced forward overhead. He moved his flashlight across the space and saw nothing. He was scaring himself. That had to be it.

He took a single step back and felt his body collide with something. He turned around quickly, gasping and ready to draw his gun.

“It’s me!” Mikey said quietly, hands raised and trembling. He had dried blood on his face, whiskey hued eyes wide with terror.

Jax embraced him, “Oh, baby. Ya scared me.”

“Quiet… she’ll hear you…”

“Who? Kay?”

“No…”

Mikey shook his head weakly, he was trembling, soaking wet, dazed.

“Take a deep breath, you’re scaring yourself over a stupid ghost story. She was trying to get a rise outta ya, that’s all,” Jax said gently as he set his hand upon his face. His boyfriend’s skin was chilled.

“Did you see them?” Mikey asked.

Jax cocked his head to the side, “See what?”

“The bodies.”

“Calm down.”

Above them, Kayla screamed shrilly. Both men turned their eyes to the catwalk just barely visible through the back hall doorway. They watched as Kayla tripped, hit the metal of the structure beneath her with a heavy thud. She scrambled to her feet and kept running toward the stairs.

Jax grabbed Mikey’s hand as a cacophonous sound rumbled behind him. The grain began to shift, he swore he saw bodies begin to shudder and claw their way out from the suffocating death trap. Mikey gripped hold of Jax’s coat and pulled him close. His terrified eyes were locked on the catwalk. Jax shifted his gaze back, saw a white specter float in and out of focus like headlights rolling across a window late into the night.

“Move… move!” Jax stammered as he pulled his boyfriend away.

Several ghastly, decomposing bodies started crawling out of the silo into the storage building, wailing in distress. The trio raced back toward the entrance. The tornado siren screamed, the metal panels of the storage rocked with earthquake like intensity. Kayla sobbed in agony as she tried to pry the sliding barn door open. She had cut her forehead open in her fall. Jax and Mikey joined her, the three desperately tugged against the forces of the wind threatening to keep them locked inside.

Over his shoulder, Jax saw the ethereal shape of a woman in a dress floating down the stairs toward them. This couldn't be happening. There was no way.

“Damn prom queen!” he screamed as the door finally gave and snapped open.

They piled into the truck. Jax threw it into reverse, his tires squealed and kicked up mud and sod before it finally gained enough traction to escape the sunken, soggy earth. The vehicle sped off down the hill, toward the covered bridge where the wrecked sedan sat, key still in the ignition. The group sat in silence as Jax desperately tried to think of somewhere nearby to lay low until the storm died down. They were miles from away from everything.

“That was… intense,” Mikey finally mumbled.

“The folks on the city’s ghost forums are going to loose their minds,” Kayla said with a half-assed chuckle, obviously quite shaken. She wiped some of the rain saturated plasma from her forehead with her sleeve.

“Shut up. How ya doing, Mikey?” Jax asked, studying the hardly visible bridge before him.

“Scared,” Mikey mumbled, embarrassed.

“Sorry for spookin’ ya,” Kayla said genuinely.

The truck lurched forward as it hit the flooded portion of the covered bridge. Everyone groaned. Then it came to a stop. The headlights flickered. They were so close to freedom, the end of the bridge was only a few feet away.

“What’s wrong?” Kayla asked.

“Dunno,” Jax admitted as he pressed the gas pedal down. The tires didn't move.

He blinked, shook his head to try and clear his thoughts. He turned his eyes up to the rearview mirror, smiled at his obviously exhausted boyfriend who was leaning against the window. He reached up to adjust the tilted reflection that had shifted in the chaos.

As the full of the backseat came into view, he felt his breath catch, his hands tremble. He knew why the truck had stopped. The smiling, ghostly pale face with mascara lines running down her cheeks turned her skeletal head toward him, her features were distorted in his mirror.

He resigned himself to defeat, extended his hand back to hold onto his boyfriend. Mikey understood, he had seen her, too. He took hold of Jax’s shaking fingers, quietly mouthed that he loved him. Jax nodded. He knew.

As lightning crashed above them and the tornado siren was drowned out by the horrendous, deafening approach of the tornado, the old covered bridge finally gave way and collapsed, throwing the vehicles and the doomed trio down into the rushing, flooding river.

At least, Jax thought, at least we are together.

“Spirits in the Silo” is a follow up to the flash fiction piece “Left on Read”, which was written for the Feb. 2022 issue of Worth Writing About.