Abbey's Drawtober 2021

Day 4: Unkillable Horror

In the days after my father died, I've learned what he had been protecting me from.

But that's not the beginning fo the story.

The story begins when I was born. My Pa always said it was a stormy night, but he always liked to exaggerate. Anyway, my Ma, God rest her soul, had just the day before, been feeding the cows like usual, when she was hit by a wave of sickness like nothing she'd ever experienced. And then she knew.

How my mother knew she was gonna die, my Pa never said, but I had a feeling it had to do with the barn.

I didn't mention the barn? Well, I don't know much about it myself. I was never let inside, but sometimes, Pa would take a cow inside, and come out alone, locking the door behind him. Sometimes, when Pa was out (he always took the key with him) I would press my ear against the barn doors. I could feel it through the wood, a resonating heat, and sometimes, I could even hear breathing.

But anyway, back to Ma. Ma knew she was gonna die bringing me into the world, but instead of crying, she went to Pa. She told him, calmly, that they needed to go to the hospital, and that she was sure, completely sure, that she was about to die.

I can't imagine how my father reacted to that. He probably thought she was crazy. I assume he didn't know about the barn then. The farm was my Ma's, given to her by her Ma and Pa, and it had been passed down for years and years. But he drove her to the hospital, reassuring her all the way.

As it began to storm, and my Ma sat in a waiting room chair, she grabbed my father's arm. She then said something that he would never forget. "If I don't go, she will. I'm not letting her die."

And so it was that I was a girl, just like Ma said, and just like she predicted, she didn't survive the night.

My Pa used to say she saved my life. I think I know better now. She simply postponed my death.

It's funny, really. That one story was as close my father would get to acknowledging that the life we lived was unusual. Still living on Ma's farm, still feeding livestock to the barn, he refused to admit that maybe, the life we lived together wasn't a completely normal one.

I knew this. I should have confronted him when, at a sleepover at a friends house, I fell ill, feverish and nauseous, but when he took me home, I immediately felt better. I should have confronted him on his deathbed, when he was coughing up black bile into a handkerchief. But I didn't.

And that's how I got here. I haven't fed the barn in the weeks since Pa passed, but I was angry. I knew that it killed him. I knew it killed my Ma. So I was going to starve it. I sold off all the livestock, and I haven't been within 100 meters of it for days.

I can feel the heat from the porch now, so I've retreated into the house. I've got a kitchen knife with me, as I write this, but I know it probably won't help. But maybe it will hurt.