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There at the end, with all his friends either dead or missing, Finny had trouble remembering what, exactly, had lured them out to the Murder Farm.
He yanked the starter cord on the chainsaw and tried to recall.
They all had different reasons.
Sara-Jae had wanted to see if the legends were true. She had always wanted some sort of proof that there was something beyond this fleeting, flesh and blood existence. Barely twenty years old, and she was already fixated on death. She had wanted to see one of the legendary ghosts said to roam the farm.
She had seen the shrieking spirit of Old Man Hensely himself, swinging from a noose in the barn, his legs gnawed down to the bone. The sight drove her weeping and screaming into the dry corn field, where the rats—tired of feasting on Hensely’s ghost-flesh—dragged her down.
The stars above seemed shifted from their usual places.
Leland had come to the Murder Farm because that’s what Sara-Jae had wanted to do. Leland had loved the girl since they were both in grade school. Sara-Jae didn’t return the affection, but that didn’t dissuade Leland. His spirit broken, his sense of pride long abandoned, he still followed her like an obedient dog.
He had not followed her into the field. His spirit and pride seemed to suddenly return to him around the time Sara-Jae started screaming. No, he had died in the cold embrace of Mrs. Hensely, who called to him from the upper farmhouse window. She wore a beautiful white dress and a veil. The veil was soaked with blood.
Something called, loud and long and mournful, from the deep forest surrounding the farm.
Beau had come because he didn’t have anything better to do. He was always up for getting away from the rest of the world, finding a little privacy so he could drink cheap booze from his flask or smoke a joint.
He had been pretty high when the four Hensely children scurried out from under the rotting front porch. They were small and skinny and pale, their heads masses of pulverized meat and shattered bone. Teeth that were no longer human jutted out from the puffy red flesh and clotted blood. Beau laughed as they dragged him into the darkness under the porch.
The ground heaved, and great, rune-marked obelisks rose up from the earth.
As for Finny, it had been the gold that brought him to the Hensely farm. Rumor in town was that Old Man Hensely was an alchemist of some sort, and he had managed to concoct a recipe for making gold. Finny knew it was bullshit, but these days, he was getting just desperate enough to put his faith in a little manure if it meant filling his pockets.
He had almost forgotten the gold by the time he threw himself into the old tool shed to hide from the rats and the spirits and the beasts Old Man Hensely’s inhuman shrieks summoned from the woods. In the tool shed, the sight of the old chainsaw—covered in black grease and barn dust—thrilled him as much as the sight of treasure.
A huge shadow passed in front of the shed, and the ground trembled with its passing.
Maybe the legends were partially true. Maybe Old Man Hensely had been some sort of alchemist or sorcerer. But he hadn’t been calling up gold all those years ago. Whatever he had conjured into the world had cast him into madness, driven him to kill his wife and children with a shovel, then hang himself in the barn, where the field rats would tear at his feet and crawl up his legs to feed.
Cloven feet—impossibly large—stamped the earth right outside the shed.
Finny pulled the starter cord on the chainsaw.
Nothing.
The cord pulled sluggishly.
Great wings flapped overhead and something heavy landed on the sagging, creaking roof of the shed.
Why had they come to the Murder Farm?
To be sacrifices.
He gave the starter cord another yank.
The chainsaw sputtered.
Reluctantly.
Taunting him.
Under his feet, the dirt floor changed, glistening, taking on the consistency of diseased, seeping skin.
He pulled the cord once more.
The chainsaw roared to life.
Smoke filled the cramped and cluttered tool shed.
Finny roared, too, and he kicked open the door.
He charged out into the night.
He wondered, if he survived, if he might find gold in whatever new world waited for him just outside.
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