Read Part 1 of The End of The Road Here. Read Part 2 Here.
He pulled back again on his cigarette and flicked it into an old coffee can at his feet. Sat down on the stoop, beer in hand, wondering about all them back home and what they were doing. Wondered what he was doing, now that he’d had a moment to think on it. But he was sure no one would want to see his face for a while.
The beer went too quick so he went inside to grab the other. He thought about the cheese and bread for dinner, but didn’t feel much like eating. Sat back out on the stoop to get out of the cold of the house. The sun was falling closer and closer to the mountaintops, and he knew before long it would disappear and he would be in the pitch-black. He needed a fire. Needed to warm the place up.
So he went inside. Went inside and through to the backdoor, which opened easily enough. Slugged back the rest of his beer and set it down on a stump near the woodshed with a clink. The woodshed latch wasn’t bolted, and the wood that held it up was rotting with moss on every shingle. Back there he could smell the marsh-stink. Could smell the rotting wood. Still no birds sang, but the bugs had started up, droning on in one, singular note.
He pulled up the ancient, rusted lock from its hold and the latch fell open, the heavy door swinging right along with it and slamming into the shed with an echo that would have sent the deer off, if there were any. Tools hung haphazardly all around the walls and along the ceiling, saws and chains raining down. An old hatchet lay just inside the door. He grabbed it, and turned around to look at the rotting woodpile leaning against the shed; at all the leaves, grass, and pine stuck in the cracks, like something had been living in it. Grabbed a piece of wood and it just fell apart in his hands.
He looked around for anything else to use for wood. The rest was just cattails, grass and gravel all the way to the trees he’d come through on his way up. A bad feeling started to boil in his stomach, as if someone was watching. And the marsh-stink was getting to him. The flies had found him, too. Swatting another buzzer away, he threw the axe down into an old stump, decided his sleeping bag would have to do for one night, and walked back into the cool damp of the house, the door still hanging open, waiting for him to come back inside.
This story is currently a work in progress.
Part 1 is available here. Part 2 is available here. Part 3 will be linked here when it is written. If you can’t wait and need another creepy story to read, try reading Lita by this author!
Jessica Barratt 