THE LAST TRAIN

Genre: Horror

 

 

 

THE LAST TRAIN

By Randy Romero

 

 

The rumble of the train jolted Alice from her slumber. She woke disoriented and bemused. She blinked rapidly as her eyes adjusting to her surrounds. She stood up and saw that the train car was empty. Row after row of padded red seats with nobody occupying a single one of them.

She had a lot of questions, but no answers. The first was, how did I end up here? The second was, where am I?

A train, obviously. She knew that much. But where was it going? And why couldn’t she remember getting on? Why couldn’t she remember anything?

She wondered if she had been drinking that night. Is that why I can’t remember anything? Did I black out?

She cupped one hand over her mouth and smelled her own breath. She couldn’t smell any alcohol.

Her first guess was that she had been out partying with Tina and Michelle. If she wasn’t drunk, she probably got really high. Tina’s boyfriend always had primo weed and one joint was all it took to send Alice into another world.

They had also discussed trying psychedelic mushrooms. Tina’s boyfriend had a connection who could get them. Did she trip out and fall asleep on her way home?

No, Alice had done shrooms in high school and she was familiar with the experience. She didn’t feel high. Her mind was clear. She wasn’t seeing or hearing anything. She didn’t feel any different. She was just confused as to how she ended up on that train.

If she was with Tina and Michelle, where were they? Another question that Alice didn’t have an answer to. Surely her best friends wouldn’t have left her alone and asleep on a train.

But Tina and Michelle weren’t always the greatest of friends. Alice wouldn’t admit that, but it wasn’t hard to notice. Alice was the odd girl out, the one who didn’t fit in. If Tina and Michelle had plans with some of the more popular girls in their school, Alice was usually left out of those arrangements. Or if they had an invite to an exclusive party, Alice rarely received that same invitation. But Alice refused to believe they would just abandon her on the subway.

She took another look around the empty train car. Nobody around to ask where they are or where they’re going. She assumed there had to be somebody on this train she could talk to.

She got up and walked to the next car, also empty. As she worked her way through, she wondered if she was all alone. It was an unsettling feeling to think she was trapped on this train by herself, with not a clue how she ended up there in the first place.

How long had she been asleep? She wondered. She patted herself down, feeling for her cell phone but couldn’t find it. She didn’t have her purse either. And she never wore a watch. She considered watches obsolete with the advancement of cellular phones. Now everyone had a watch right in their pockets. But that did her no good when her phone was missing. Maybe a watch wasn’t a bad idea after all.

The last train car was occupied. The passengers were sparse and all sitting two rows apart. She approached an elderly woman with a silk scarf tied around her neck. “Ma’am, sorry to bother you, but do you know where we are?”

The woman didn’t reply, just stared straight ahead.

“Do you know where this train is going?”

The old woman didn’t move, didn’t sigh, didn’t blink, she didn’t even seem to breathe. She stared blankly at the seat she was facing, never looking up to acknowledge Alice.

She approached the next passenger, a middle-aged man dressed in a worn out, wrinkled suit, carrying a briefcase.

“Sir, do you know where this train is heading?”

The man offered no reply.

She looked at the other passengers. A bald man in his mid-thirties, heavyset with a mustache. A woman with jet-black hair, her arm covered in scars and track marks. And a teenager wearing a sports jacket. They all shared that blank, expressionless stare. She took a seat in the back, and drew a deep breath.

Why isn’t this train stopping? It should have stopped by now. Unless…maybe I’m on an express train. But how the hell did I end up on an express train? Why won’t anyone talk to me?

“She doesn’t know why she’s here,” the old woman snickered and the other passengers laughed quietly.

I’ve got to get off this fucking train.

She walked back to one of the empty cars, sat down, caught her breath. She felt trapped, which was her biggest phobia. She didn’t like to feel stuck or boxed in.

This train didn’t seem to stop. And she couldn’t see anything outside its windows. Nothing but darkness. How long was this tunnel?

The woman with the scarf joined her. “I didn’t know what to think either when I woke up here. It’s hard to accept the truth. But we’re all here for a reason.”

“What reason might that be?”

“There’s a reason,” she assured her. “You just don’t remember it. Not yet.”

There was no shortage of psychos in New York City. Alice assumed this old woman was just another head case and decided to play along.

“And why are you here?” she asked.

The old lady unraveled her scarf, exposing the deep scar from where her throat had been slashed, a self-inflicted wound.

“Enjoy the ride while it lasts. It doesn’t get any better than this. Join us in the last car when you’re ready.”

The door to the car opened and the conductor stepped on just as the old lady stepped off, retying her scarf.

The conductor, towering over Alice, asked for her ticket.

A forked tail poked out from under his long coat. She gasped, turned away.

“I don’t have a ticket,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’m very confused. I woke up here and I don’t know how I got here. I don’t know where we’re going. I promise I’ll get off at the next stop.”

“Don’t worry about it. This one’s on the house. I know it’s confusing at first. The people in the last car, they were all confused at first too. It takes time to come to terms with it.”

“Where are we?”

“This is the last train,” he said.

“The last train to where?”

“I think deep down you know the answer to that. Try and remember how you ended up here.”

She remembered it all now. If she closed her eyes, she could almost see it. A warm bathtub. A cold razorblade. The blood draining from his wrists. The life leaving her body just as her mom made the gruesome discovery.

“I’m…I’m…”

“You passed on.”

“But why am I here?”

“You hurt a lot of people in your life, Alice. Think about the pain your mother felt when she found your body. Or when she found the drugs in your dresser. All the pain and suffering you put your family through. Was it worth it, Alice?”

“Where are we going?” she asked vehemently.

“Isn’t it obvious?”

“Go to hell!” she screamed.

The brakes squealed and hissed as the train came to a startling stop all on its own.

“Take a look around,” the conductor said. “We’re already here.”

IN THE SHADOWS

Genre: Horror 

 

 

 

IN THE SHADOWS

By Randy Romero

 

 

Detective Andrew Corso, a tall, lean, immaculately dressed man in his early forties, stepped out of the decaying building, looking a few shades paler. He’d seen a lot of things in his fourteen year career, but nothing could have prepared him for that.

He approached the groundskeeper, a gaunt old man with snow white hair and sallow skin. He was short and had terrible posture. He looked ancient to Andrew, who couldn’t even pinpoint his age. But the man’s age was irrelevant. Andrew’s only concern was the dead body in building three.

“You were the one who found the body?” Detective Corso asked the groundskeeper.

“Unfortunately,” the groundskeeper replied. “It’s not the first I’ve found, and sad to say, it probably won’t be the last. Teenagers love messing around in these buildings. They sneak in all the time at night. Public Safety patrols the area, but the kids usually hide their cars down the road and walk here. Public Safety will drive through, but they never search the buildings. I’m sure they’ve heard all the rumors.”

“That South Oaks is haunted?”

South Oaks was a mental institution in Fairview, Long Island. It opened in the early 1950’s and closed in the mid 90’s, and the buildings have been off limits to the public ever since. But that hasn’t stopped people from getting in. All the buildings used to be sealed and boarded up. But people kept finding ways of getting in. Eventually, the county gave up trying to seal the place off.

Public Safety do their best to keep the area clear, but kids always find a way to sneak around them. The local police rarely bothered to patrol the area.

“Uh huh,” the groundskeeper nodded. “I never believed it myself. But the shit I’ve seen over the years makes me think otherwise.”

Corso wasn’t the superstitious type. But being a detective meant believing that nothing was outside the realm of possibility. So he didn’t dismiss the groundskeepers claims, no matter how absurd they seemed. But he was interested in the facts, not the legend of South Oaks.

“Where did you find the body?”

“Building number three. The Thumper.”

“The what?”

“Kids call it The Thumper. In the daytime, it’s dead quiet. But at night, you can hear a loud thumping sound emanating from the basement as if someone or something is stomping around down there. Most kids know not to go in there when they hear that sound. Apparently not this one. Maybe his friends dared him to go in. Maybe he was feeling courageous, or stupid. All I know is he went in and it got him.”

“It?”

“The Giant. A former patient of the hospital.”

“All remaining patients were transferred to Windsor Sanitarium.”

“All living patients. The dead ones, they stayed behind.”

“You’re telling me that a spirit murdered that kid? He was tossed around that building like a ragdoll. Broke just about every bone in his body.”

“I’m aware of how crazy it sounds. But these buildings contain powerful spirits. Some spirits are harmless. They’re just lost and trying to find the light. But some spirits can leave a mark.”

Andrew hadn’t seen anything like it before. The boy, seventeen year old Matt Craven, had been thrown repeatedly into the basement walls of building three. Then someone or something hoisted him up and flung him full force into the ceiling.

Corso examined the body before speaking with the groundskeeper. Innumerable fractures and contusions. Massive blood loss. The back of his skull shattered against the basement ceiling.

“Tell me more about the buildings.”

“The Banshee is in building number four. You can hear her wailing at the top of her lungs every night, crying for her lost child that led to her being institutionalized. Building two, lots of roamers. Wandering spirits that are trapped and confused. They can’t find the light, so they stay here, doomed to roam the halls of these buildings. And don’t even get me started about building number one.”

“You found his friends hiding in building number five, right? But building five is one of the only buildings that is still all sealed up. How did they get in?”

“The tunnels. There’s a series of underground tunnels that run in between the buildings for easier access. They must’ve been in the basement with their friend in building three. They probably took off through the tunnels when they saw what was happening to him. Building five is where they used to perform the lobotomies. It was a different time when they first opened South Oaks. Back then, they thought they were helping. They didn’t know any better.”

“Show me the tunnels,” Corso demanded.

“Officer, with all due respect, you’d have to be a fool to go wandering around in those tunnels. I only go down there in the daytime, if I absolutely have to. And I mean absolutely have to. The only reason I went down there in the first place was because I heard noises in building five. Otherwise I would’ve stayed above ground.”

“I thought you said these buildings were safe in the day?”

“Some buildings are safe. But not the tunnels. Besides it’s pitch black down there.”

“I’ve got a flashlight. Lead the way.”

“Why do you want to see the tunnels so badly?”

“I need access to building five. I want to see where his friends were hiding.”

“What for?”

“Evidence. You may believe in spirits. I believe in reality, things like murder. One man couldn’t toss that kid around like that. It had to be the work of multiple people. I suspect his friends had something to do with it, but I need something to prove it.”

“Follow me,” the groundskeeper sighed. He led him past decaying structures with broken doors and busted windows, covered in vines and moss. Each one stuffed with asbestos. Each one a safety hazard. One wrong step in those buildings can mean the difference between life and death. There was the empty morgue, its body slabs ice cold. Old filing cabinets left behind that were never cleared out.

The long, narrow tunnels were dark and claustrophobic. They had to go through building four to get to building five. He climbed the steel ladder and the groundskeeper slowly followed him.

The tunnel was pitch black, just as the groundskeeper had described it. Corso’s flashlight only illuminated a small portion of the long, black tunnel. As they moved slowly through the tunnel, Corso heard something skitter past them. A rat was his first thought. He shuddered to think what else was down there. There were no openings, no ventilation system. Corso was feeling short of breath by the time they made it to building five.

The building was bare, minus a few desks and forgotten filing cabinets. The walls were decorated with graffiti. The rooms contained wired bed frames but no mattresses.

“Watch your step,” the groundskeeper warned him.

At the end of the hall, in the shadows, he saw her.

“Do you–”

“Yeah, I see her. A nurse who died here. She’s been wandering these halls ever since. I wouldn’t get too close to her. Remember, some spirits can leave a mark.”

She was a thin woman with a pallid complexion in an old fashioned white nurse’s uniform. The sight of her turned his spine to jelly. Corso heeded the groundskeepers warning and kept his distance. He tried not to move as he observed her, but he couldn’t stop himself from shaking. He watched as she silently turned a corner and disappeared down a dark corridor.

Corso took a deep breath and composed himself.

“You alright?” the groundskeeper asked.

“Yeah, I’ll be fine,” Corso said, trying to shrug it off. They continued walking in the opposite direction of the spectral nurse.

They took a turn and the groundskeeper pointed with one bony finger.

“This is where I found them.”

The room was bare. They hadn’t left anything behind. He shined his flashlight across the walls and the floor. Not a drop of blood. They didn’t have any on their clothes either. But what had happened to their friend? There’s no way one man, or one spirit, did that much damage.

“Nothing to see here. Did you find anything else?”

He turned to face the groundskeeper, but the old man was gone. He checked the adjacent room. He checked all the other rooms on his walk back, but there wasn’t a trace of him.

When he got above ground, he breathed a tremendous sigh of relief. He walked back to building three and approached some of the officers on the scene.

“You guys seen the old man around here?” he asked two of the officers.

“Old man?” one of the officers asked.

“Yeah, the groundskeeper.”

They stared, mystified. “Groundskeeper? What groundskeeper?”

If Andrew Corso didn’t believe in ghosts before, he did now.

WICKED

Genre: Horror  

 

 

 

WICKED

By Randy Romero

 

 

Sarah Barber called out from the kitchen, “Harold, you want mayo or mustard on your sandwich?”

Harold offered no reply. Even if he did, she could hear nothing over the blaring television. Wheel of Fortune was on, and an excited contestant was telling Pat Sajak that they’d like to buy a vowel.

“Harold, if you’re awake, turn that damn TV down. I can’t even hear myself think.”

Since Harold didn’t respond, she decided for him. She made him a turkey, ham, and cheese with mustard. She used white bread because Harold was stubborn and wouldn’t accept any substitutes. And American cheese because he had the palate of an eight-year-old. Then she made herself a turkey and swiss on whole wheat with light mayonnaise, because she had to be mindful of her cholesterol at her age.

She walked into the living room with two plates and found Harold nodding off in his recliner. “Dinner is served,” she said and dropped his sandwich in his lap.

He sat up and reached for the remote to turn the volume down. “Stupid TV. The volume is all screwed up.”

“There’s nothing wrong with the volume. There’s something wrong with your hearing.”

“My hearing is perfectly fine. My doctor said so himself.”

“You haven’t been to the doctor in years.”

“Well, the last time I went he said my hearing was perfectly fine.”

“Shut up and eat your sandwich,” she laughed.

Harold Barber’s hearing wasn’t what it used to be, though he’d never admit it. At least he still had his eyesight. Sarah couldn’t say the same with her black, thick framed glasses. Without them she’d be squinting to see the letters on the board behind Vanna White.

The phone rang, startling them both.

“Goddamn telemarketers,” Harold muttered. “I told them not to call so late. I’m going to be pissed if it’s them.”

“I’ll see who it is,” Sarah said.

The phone was on a small end table beside the burgundy sofa. All they had was a landline. As senior citizens, they avoided new technology. They had no use for cellphones seeing as how they rarely left the house. They didn’t own a computer either. They got all their entertainment from television and they got all their news from the papers.

Sarah picked up the phone and raised it to her ear.

“Hello?”

Heavy breathing on the other end. Then a voice came, one that rattled her brittle bones.

She stared straight ahead, her feet glued to the beige carpet. Her throat was as dry as a desert. She couldn’t utter a word to the person on the other end of the phone.

“Who is it?” Harold asked, his curiosity piqued.

Sarah lowered the phone from her ear. “It’s…It’s Anna,” she whispered.

“That’s not funny, Sarah. Why would you joke about something like that?”

She held out the phone. “Hear it for yourself.”

Harold got up and snatched the phone from her hand. He put it to his ear and Sarah huddled around him, as close to the phone as she could get.

They both listened in fear. They could say nothing. They could only listen. It was garbled and distorted, but it was clearly Anna’s voice.

But Anna Barber was dead and had been for 19 years. The Barbers were sure of that.

She was buried under a concrete slab in their basement.

Harold heard enough and dropped the phone in its cradle.

“Do you believe me now?” Sarah shrieked.

“Yes…I heard it too.”

“How is it possible?”

“It’s not possible. It’s got to be a prank. A sick, sick joke.”

But who? Harold thought. Who would stoop so low as to imitate their (as far as the rest of the world was concerned) missing daughter?

The Barbers wanted to love their daughter more than anything in the world. But anyone could see, even from an early age, that Anna wasn’t like other children. She didn’t talk much. She didn’t make friends easy. The other kids tended to avoid her. Animals were terrified of her presence. The Barbers couldn’t even own a pet.

They knew Anna was different. But they tried to deny the truth. Only her nana saw what she really was.

On her eighth birthday, when Anna went to blow out the candles on her birthday cake, the flames shot up so high that it charred the ceiling. That was when her nana proclaimed in front of the entire family that Anna was a witch.

Harold and Sarah balked at the accusation, until they spoke with her in private. She implored them to give Anna up for adoption. She warned them that as long as Anna was around, the whole family was in danger.

One week later, nana was dead. She bit off her own tongue in her sleep and choked on it.

Nobody dared to call Anna a witch after that. It wasn’t just the animals that were afraid of her. It was her parents too. They kept a close eye on her for years, into her teens.

At night, they would hear her talking to somebody else in her room. But every time they went in to check on her, she was alone. Some nights, she would disappear without saying a word and turn up the next day like nothing happened. That was around the exact same time that people from the neighborhood started dying under questionable circumstances.

There was a girl at Anna’s school who used to pick on her. Sarah had spoken to the principal about her and remembered her name when she saw it in the paper. Jessica Priest. It’s hard to forget a last name like that. Jessica and her parents had died in a car accident when the brakes had mysteriously failed.

Then there was Scott Levy, the kid up the street who called Anna a weirdo in passing. He was out drinking with his friends one weekend and took a fall off a roof. His friends told the cops he wasn’t even that drunk, and the toxicology report backed up their claim. They also told the cops that it didn’t seem like an accident. They insisted it was intentional.

They said Scott just got up and walked to the ledge like something compelled him to, and took a two-story plunge.

And Mrs. Garcia, who looked down on Anna ever since she was a child for being “different”. She was found in her garage with her car running.

When she was home, she hardly spoke, hardly left her room. Her skin was sickly and pale. Her shoulder-length hair was tangled in black knots. Her eyes were dark and bloodshot. She bared no resemblance to the child that Harold and Sarah had raised.

Anna was seventeen when Harold decided to end it once and for all with a double barrel shotgun. They had gone snooping through Anna’s things when she was at school, and had found among her possessions, items belonging to other people from around the neighborhood.

Stashed away in her bottom drawer was Mrs. Garcia’s hairbrush and Jessica Priest’s necklace, along with Scott Levy’s wallet and countless other stolen items. They knew then something had to done. The evil growing inside their daughter was too powerful to control or contain.

They buried their secrets in the basement and declared Anna missing. The police didn’t care too much to investigate, and Harold and Sarah didn’t push them. No suspicion ever fell on the Barbers. Their family didn’t question it either. They all just assumed that Anna had run away and would turn up one day whenever she felt like it.

“This isn’t happening,” Sarah moaned. She sat back down on the sofa because she was feeling faint.

“It’s a stupid joke, Sarah. Some asshole is messing with us. That’s got to be it.”

The phone rang again and this time it was Harold who answered. He didn’t say anything. Just held the phone to his ear.

“Did you miss me?” a haunting voice asked. “I’ve missed you.”

“Anna, is this really you?” he said, a quiver in his voice. “Where are you?”

“I’m in the void,” Anna said. “That space between the dead and the living. It’s so cold where I am. I’m cold all the time. Why did you do it, daddy? Why did you do it?”

Harold dropped the phone and yanked the phone line out of the wall. “I’m done listening to this crap.”

He walked into the kitchen to avoid addressing the subject any further. “Get a grip,” he whispered to himself. “Anna is gone. Somebody is having a good laugh at your expense.”

A faint sound emanated from the basement. He wondered if Sarah heard it too. It sounded like something was scratching and clawing its way up the stairs.

Harold jumped as all four burners on the stove ignited with a loud crackle and the flames shot up into the air, almost setting the curtain above the kitchen sink ablaze. Harold managed to put all four out with his heart practically beating out of his chest.

From the kitchen, he could hear the shrill ring of the phone. The phone that he unplugged…

Sarah stared unblinking at the phone, afraid to move from the sofa.

“Don’t answer it!” Harold cried.

The phone stopped just as the TV went out. Then the lights flickered and faded. The TV crackled and sizzled as the screen exploded. The end table went flying across the room. Sarah leapt to her feet and ran into Harold’s arms. For a moment, their sofa was suspended in the air before it was flung against the wall, shattering a row of picture frames.

Sarah ran for the door, but couldn’t get it open.

“What’s wrong?” Harold asked.

“The lock…it’s jammed or something. I can’t get it open.”

“Move out of the way.”

Harold tried with all his strength, but the lock wouldn’t budge. The lights blinked on and the basement door creaked open. They could hear it’s whining hinges all the way from the living room. It was as if Anna was beckoning them, calling them down to the basement.

“You stay here, I’m going downstairs.”

She pleaded with him not to. But stubborn old Harold just refused to listen. He said if he wasn’t back upstairs in two minutes to call 911 and find a way out of the house. But Sarah wasn’t about to leave his side for even a second.

“If you’re going, I’m going too.” She squeezed his hand tight.

They walked to the basement door, took a deep breath, and descended the stairs…

 

 

***

 

 

The house was all marked off with yellow police tape when Gordon Matthews showed up on the scene with a cup of coffee in hand. He met the coroner outside.

“No bagel?” the coroner asked.

“I only had time for coffee this morning.”

“How’s the wife?”

“Ex-wife. She’s been putting me through hell. Thanks for reminding me. What have we got?”

“It’s best you see it for yourself. The couples name is Sarah and Harold Barber.

Matthews ducked under the yellow tape that formed an X in front of the door and surveyed the scene.

“What the hell happened here?” Detective Matthews asked the officer who was first on the scene.

“Murder, suicide? Double homicide? Take your pick. The place is a mess. There’s blood everywhere. I’ll leave it to you and the coroner to figure out.”

“What else have you got for me?”

“Coroner places the time of death around 4:45AM. But neighbors heard noises through all hours of the night. One neighbor said it sounded like they were rearranging furniture at one point. Another one heard yelling, or screaming. They couldn’t be sure. Then around one in the morning, neighbors reported what they said sounded like a jackhammer. Looks like the husband decided to tear up the basement.

We don’t know what happened after that. Both bodies were found here in the living room. Multiple scratch marks on both victims. The woman’s left hand was pierced with a pair of scissors. Numerous stab wounds to the face and torso. The husband was gutted with a butcher knife. Oh and get this, the coroner says the wounds appear to be self-inflicted. I haven’t looked downstairs yet, but some of the boys are poking around down there now.”

“Hey, detective,” another officer called. “We found something in the basement. You’re gonna want to see this…”

SCARECROW

Genre: Horror 

 

 

SCARECROW

By Randy Romero

 

 

 

Ted Crawford was the first to hear the unsettling din.

Somewhere, off in the distance, beyond the dense birch trees, past the red painted barn, Ted heard the unmistakable cry of a newborn baby.

“Did you hear that? Ted asked.

“Hear what?” Amy said. It was a miracle she could hear anything over the sound of Grey’s Anatomy. It wasn’t even a new episode. It was a replay. But nothing, and I mean nothing, came in between Amy and Grey’s Anatomy. She even had her hair dyed to resemble the main character, Meredith Grey.

“It sounded like a baby.”

“A what?”

He was about to shout over the television when common sense prevailed, and Amy reached for the remote to lower the volume.

“A baby,” he repeated. “It sounded like a newborn baby. It sounded like it was crying.”

“Vagitus,” she said in such a matter-of-fact way he felt slightly embarrassed for not being familiar with the term. He had no clue what it meant, but it sounded dirty to him.

“Excuse me?”

“It’s the technical term for the cry of a newborn baby.”

“You learn something new every day,” he said.

I never should have bought her that word-of-the-day calendar, he thought.

Ted’s ears pricked up as he heard it again.

Amy heard it too this time.

It sounded like it was coming from the adjacent cornfield. Being the oldest of four siblings, Ted was accustomed to the shrill cry. There was a road just past the cornfield and he wondered if there had been an accident.

It was a dreary night in mid-October and there was a powerful chill in the air, so he grabbed his coat off the mounted rack by the front door.

“Where are you going?” Amy asked.

“To check it out. There might’ve been an accident. Somebody could be hurt. The cornfield leads out to the road. I’m going to take a look.”

“Daddy, don’t go,” Aiden pleaded. Ted hadn’t even noticed him standing there at the bottom of the stairs. “I have a bad feeling about this,” Aiden added.

“It’ll be fine, son. I’m just going to check it out and make sure everything’s okay.”

“But what if it’s not a person, or a baby?”

“What could it be then?”

“It could be a…Bubak.”

Aiden was a certified horror fanatic. While other kids his age read comic books or Harry Potter, he was reading up on urban legends and mythical creatures. Every culture, every region, every country had their own variation of the boogeyman. In Slovakia and the Czech Republic, their boogeyman was known as the Bubak.

“A what?” Ted said, wondering why he let his eight-year-old watch horror movies and read up on all these fictional monsters.

“A Bubak,” he repeated and shuddered at the word. “It’s a creature that resembles a scarecrow. It cries like a helpless, innocent baby to lure its victims. They say it comes out every full moon to feed.”

“There’s no such thing as a Babadook or whatever it’s called. It’s just a silly story, Aiden. You should know that. It’s no different than those horror movies you watch. It’s all fake. I’ll be fine. You two just stay here. I’ll take my cell phone with me just in case.”

The wind whistled through the dying leaves of autumn as Ted walked across the property. Mid-October and it was already freezing. They were in for a rough winter and Ted was dreading it.

He couldn’t hear anything. No sounds. No voices. No crying. The noise seemed to stop as soon as he stepped foot outside.

He cut through the opening of the cornfield and walked among the rows that towered over his head. The moon shined bright, looming over his head like a bad omen.

A self-proclaimed classic rock enthusiast, Ted immediately thought of that CCR song, Bad Moon Rising.

Don’t go around tonight. Well it’s bound to take your life. There’s a bad moon on the rise.

His son’s words echoed through his head.

It comes out every full moon to feed.

Ted chortled. “Come on, don’t be ridiculous,” he said aloud to nobody but himself. “Don’t let Aiden’s stories get to you. There’s no such thing as a Bubak or whatever he called it.”

He heard it again, that high pitched shriek, and started running towards the sound. He found himself in the center of the field, where the noise stopped abruptly.

“I guess it’s just you and me,” he said, acknowledging the scarecrow suspended on its post. “Hey, you’re not a Bubak, are you?” he asked and chuckled, if only to ease his frayed nerves.

He started walking towards the road, continuing his search, when something caught his eye. He looked back, but the scarecrow was lifeless and still. For a split second, out of the corner of his eye, he could’ve sworn he saw it move.

“I’m losing it,” he said, shaking his head.

The scarecrow leapt from its post, and Ted stumbled back, losing his balance. It wore the same torn, stained overalls and straw hat that Ted had dressed his scarecrow in. But this was no straw-filled scarecrow. This thing was flesh and blood. It lurched forward; a creature with a skeletal frame, and eyes that glowed as bright as the moon itself.

Ted whimpered, sounding like a newborn baby that had led him to this predicament.

Then he screamed.

A brief, weak, muted scream that could barely convey the pain inflicted upon him.

The last thing Ted saw as the Bubak sunk its serrated teeth into his flesh was the moon shining brightly overhead.

It comes out every full moon to feed.