Short Horror Stories ^~^

Sink Hole

A/N; If you are uncomfortable with blood/death, I recommend you don't read this story. 

People in my small town tend to disappear when they venture too far out past the city limits – the abandoned farm land that sits between our town and the Florida Everglades to be exact. This farmland, haunted farmland some would tell you, has been off limits for the past fifteen years. The official story goes that a little over fifteen years ago a farmer disturbed an ancient aquifer while drilling a well. The water in the aquifer broke free, and opened up a sinkhole that swallowed him and his wife. The unofficial story, the one told late at night in hushed tones, goes that the farmer disturbed an ancient Native American burial ground while digging this well, and brought down a curse down upon himself, his family, and the entire town.

Most people in the town know someone who vanished after traveling too far outside the town. Curiosity is dangerous; over the past fifteen years our small town has learned to mind our own business. Keep off the old farmland, and no one gets hurt. Every so often the state police will roll through, usually asking about hunters or campers that disappeared. They never find anything, and eventually lose interest.

By the time they were sixteen, most guys in my town claimed to have spent a night out on the old farm. Most were lying about it, but no sixteen-year-old boy would admit that the old farm scared them shitless. So the charade continued through the years. Guys would gang up and bully those who they suspected had never been onto the farm. It usually ended up being me, the one that the other guys would gang up on like a pack of wolves.

I was the only guy in my high school that was upfront about never visiting the abandoned farm. It was my family that used to own the old farm; my father who disappeared along with my mother. Only three years old at the time, I moved in with my grandmother afterwards. I've always been regarded by the town as an outsider; someone to be pitied. Though they would never say it aloud, I suspected that the town viewed me as responsible for the disappearances.

High school was hell. The students, even the teachers, treated me as if I were a leper. Taunts, jibes, and occasionally pushes and punches followed me throughout the school day. By my senior year of high school, the cruelest bullies perfected their art. A group of them would see me approaching, and began to loudly discuss the last time they had snuck out onto the abandoned farm. They'd talk about how easy it was, and that only a true coward would be afraid of the farm. Then they would all turn to me and ask why I hadn't been out there. Their taunts had no limits, their cruelty only constrained by their creativity.

Everything changed Halloween night of my senior year of High School. Junior Ravner, the captain of the baseball team, rounded up his buddies and hatched a plan. They had a Halloween prank that would go down in town history. Well, they were right – this town will never forget what happened that night.

As usual, I was their target of choice. I can understand why. I had no friends to back me up, the teachers, hell, pretty much the whole town hated my family. No one would come to my defense, in fact, they all enjoyed a laugh at my expense. The baseball team went to state finals last year, so Junior and his cronies could get away with anything.

I have to give them credit, they had put a lot of effort into planning their "prank". They had the audacity to kidnap me from the front steps of my grandmother's house on Halloween. I answered the door, expecting to see a few kids in costumes their parents had bought from Walmart. Instead I was greeted by three giants wearing grotesque clown masks.

The tallest clown, whose clown mask was done to look like Pennywise from the movie IT, pulled me out of my house and pushed me down the front stoop and onto my lawn. My fight or flight instincts kicked in, and of course I tried to run, but there is no running from Junior Ravner, a top University of Florida recruit. He caught up to me easily and knocked me over, giving me a good kick in the stomach as he taunted me, "Cowering like the dog you are", before bending down to put a burlap sack over my head.