By Victoria Gao

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This is a horror story set in a ghost town that the protagonist called home until she meets a strange visitor.

On a Sunday afternoon, Mikaela wheels a cart of grass and hay to the barn where her goats and sheep reside. When she opens the barn’s door, the animals “Baaa” in harmony and run toward the edge of their pen. Some of them jump up and nudge the wooden posts of the pen with their hooves in their impatience to reach the food Mikaela hands to them. 

Mikaela smiles as she watches the animals eat grass from her hand. When all of the animals receive their food, she finds comfort in rubbing their soft fur. She walks around the pen and gathers the clumps of fur that shed from them in a linen bag.  After filling the bag, she heads back to the house to process the fur into yarn.

Wooo, wooooooo, wooooooooooo. The wind howls around her cabin. Mikaela looks outside her window and sees red, orange, and brown leaves falling off of the trees surrounding her cabin. Bursts of cold air seep through the cracks between the logs forming the walls and ceiling. She shivers in her wool afghan and walks towards the fireplace at the center of her cabin. As she walks, she hears creaking above her like that of someone tiptoeing on her ceiling.

She can’t imagine who would trespass on her property. Her house is located in a ghost town that is devoid of technology and people. Over the past decade, most of the young adults in the town moved to cities hundreds of miles away for better jobs. After they settled and saved up enough money, they moved their parents and children to the cities as well. Mikaela was unable to move because her family owned the biggest farm in the town and grew most of the food that fed the town’s residents. Because her family’s elders were happy with their stable source of income from the necessities that they sold,  none of them considered sending the family’s young adults to a city. Mikaela’s cousins and siblings, however, didn’t want to do backbreaking labor for the rest of their lives so they ran away and Mikaela never heard from them again. She wonders how her family is doing right now.

Suddenly, she begins to hear scratching sounds against the front door. She glances at the door cautiously and slowly inches towards it. BAM! BAAAAM! The banging cracks the top edge of the door. Blood seeps through the cracks and drips onto the floor of her home, centimeters away from her feet. What animal could have caused so much damage? There is no time to think. She jumps back from her door and immediately looks around for a hiding spot. 

Process

After attending a workshop about horror fiction, I became inspired to write my own horror story. This story is an attempt to experiment with that genre. I plan to polish this draft and submit it to publications in the future.