Here is this year's Halloween story!
The Haunted Hayride by Susan Buffum (Copyright 2020 Susan Buffum)
It was just supposed to be a fun thing
to do, the six of us heading out to Blackburn Farm for the haunted hayride. The
school bus drove us past the farm all the time. They grew pumpkins there. There
was an orchard to one side that went up a slight rise. At the top of the rise
was an old windmill made of brick that had fallen into ruin, its sails
tattered, the skeletal framework of its blades broken in places. In the fields
across the street they harvested hay.
It didn’t seem strange that there were
just the six of us who climbed into the wagon. It was a raw night with a lot of
ground fog. Grisly old man Blackburn, with his straggly, long, gray hair, had
hitched his team of big, shaggy, black horses to the wagon. He was all dressed
up like an old-fashioned undertaker with top hat and tails. His son, Creepy
Charlie, we all called him, hung a lantern on a pole on the front corner of the
wagon and then gave us a maniacal grin, wishing us a “Safe journey through the
orchard,” before stepping back into the shadows near the barn.
I was sitting on a bale of hay behind
old man Blackburn who was perched on the driver’s seat. The others were
scattered in the wagon, sitting on hay bales like I was. Tom was at the back as
the wagon rocked and creaked along the rutted road. Soon, a heavy bank of fog
came from out of nowhere. I thought they might have a fog machine, but it was a
weird, almost viscous fog that seemed to cling. I had to wipe it off my face.
It felt slimy. Somewhere a dog howled, most likely one of the hounds back in
the farm yard. There was a strange thud, the wagon rocked. I threw my arms out
to the sides, but there was nothing to grasp onto. I fell off the bale into
loose hay on the wagon floor, scrambling to get back onto my seat. When I
looked up, Tom was gone. “Hey!” I cried, but no one paid any attention to me.
They were taking pictures of one another on their cellphones and laughing.
Jenny disappeared next. Old man
Blackburn shouted, “Heads down!” and we all ducked. At least I assumed we all
had. Low branches scraped and scratched across the sides of the wagon making an
awful sound that set my teeth on edge. Jenny was gone when I sat back upright on
my hay bale.
“We lost another one,” Ronny grinned.
“This is so cool!” An eerie yellow light seemed to be bobbing toward us through
the twisted, stunted trees. It looked vaguely human in form, but then it
suddenly came at us fast. I ducked as it swept right over the wagon. When I
looked up, Ronny was gone.
Sandy, Kayla, and I looked at one
another. They shrugged and then they smiled. “It’s a haunted hay ride, what do
you expect?” Sandy remarked.
Up in the branches over our heads there
came a rustling and flapping sound. I peered up through the now wispy fog and
saw hundreds of crows settling into the tree tops. “Ya know what that’s called,
don’t ya?” old man Blackburn cackled raspily. “A murder of crows.” Great.
The crows made those freaky, ratchety
sounds. A number of them cawed raucously. I put my hands over my ears. If Kayla
shrieked when she disappeared I don’t know because all I could hear were those
crows!
“Who’s next? You or me?” Sandy asked,
leaning toward me, an almost crazed glint in the depth of her eyes.
“It’s not going to be me!” I cried as we
reached the rise, the abandoned windmill right there in front of us. I threw
myself face down in the hay at the bottom of the wagon bed. From there I heard
the creaking and clattering of old wood, the flapping of torn, deteriorated
fabric as the blades began turning rapidly.
When I dared pick myself up off the
floor, Sandy was gone.
“Ya enjoyin’ the ride?” cackled old man
Blackburn.
I sat back down behind him without
saying a word as the wagon began the slow and twisty descent down the backside
of the rise. There was a rutted dirt lane that would circle back behind the
orchard. It ended at the barn. All I could do was sit and wait…wait to join my
friends wherever they had gone.
