The Ranch

The Ranch

By Austin Devine

6/7/2013/12:00 P.M.

Hello, my name is Mark Anderson. I am a city boy born and raised in Las Vegas, Nevada. When I was young my father Tom left my mom and I on the streets for some low life whore who he met on the Vegas strip. My mother and I lived off of what we could but it wasn’t much, she was a great lady who fought for me through thick and thin and did things no one should ever have to do for anyone. She died last year, my uncle sent me some mail yesterday saying;

Hey there Mark, I know it is hard living without your mom and all but I think I could give you                 new home if you’re willing to work for It me and my family would love to have you! Just call my number and I’ll come give you a lift to my house down in Oklahoma.

                 I called about four days after I got the letter, my uncle arrived and we’ve been riding in silence for about five hours now. The ride is long and the radio is country only, I would change it but I don’t know what my uncle would do if I did. So I said;

“Well we have been riding for quite a while now and you haven’t said a word, are you ok?”

                 As he stared at the road in silence, I tried to lighten the awkward quietness with some different songs, but when I grabbed the nob to change it the radio started smoking, as it went dead. Uncle ignored the now broken radio and continued to drive, I was in shock thinking that he was going to be mad for me breaking his radio, but he wasn’t   as confused as I was I just ignored it. The silence had an unnerving feeling running through me like I have ever had before, I looked out to see the ranch it had a nice little house a big old barn and a really big fence around it.

                 The truck pulled into the driveway and we were greeted by a deadly silence, there was no one in sight for miles on end, as I was standing by the truck and looking around I noticed a lady standing in the distance quite away. Knowing my uncle didn’t want to be bothered I decided to make my way over to her, as I walked though it seemed endless, the closer I got the farther she got away. I ended up running into a dog, it had no collar and looked like it hadn’t been fed for weeks so I ran to my uncles house to see if he had some dog food, easily enough to the right of the door was a bag of dog food. I grabbed a bowl and filled it up; the dog ate in luxury that day.

                 I went inside to see where I would be sleeping but my uncle was nowhere to be found, I decided I would go have a look around since I had only been here for about thirty minutes now. The building was two stories with old wood, well everything, everything was made of wood besides furnishings, looking around I found a picture of my mom, uncle and well what I guess would be his family. The only thing strange about the picture is my mom, she seemed well real, she seemed like if she wanted to she could pop out of the picture at any moment.

I heard the dog barking quite wildly, I ran to the window to see uncle walking towards the door with what looked like a big pitch fork. I ran outside and said

                 “Uncle what in the hell are you doing, you’re scaring that dog!” Uncle stared with black eyes as I kept yelling to try to stop him. Uncle in what I thought was a drunken rage, he plunged at me with the pitch fork hitting my shoulder and thrusting me to the ground, my shoulder was pierced and bleeding hard, and the stray attacked uncle and bit his leg! Uncle in his rage turned to the dog and started swinging the pitch fork at it, the dog dodge every hit uncle threw at him; I quickly got to my feet and talked my old drunk uncle beating on his face until he passed out. I ran towards the dog to make sure it was okay, it seemed to be fine but it stared into the distance, as I looked towards the way the dog was staring I saw it, the dog had been staring at a large group that was walking in the cornfield you could see only the heads of the people.

                 There was one thing I noticed though looking towards the large group that was starting to come out of the cornfield was my mom, she was the leader of the group she started in a dead sprint towards me, I turned and ran the dog started barking and running towards me. The only reason I ran was because I watched my mother get buried, the only place I thought would be safe was the barn so I ran towards it and opened the door wide enough for dog and I to get through, as we both were in I closed the door. I took my phone out and used it as my only source of light, I looked at the time and it was three p.m. it was quite dark, I ran around the barn looking for something to help but what I saw was odd.

                 In the middle of the room was a newspaper dated February 17, 1990. I looked at it closer to see the my uncle and his family in the section where most interesting murders go, it says thier cause of death was never figured out all they knew was that they never found the little girl’s body or know if she is alive or not. I looked over a bit and noticed another paper; the odd thing about this paper is it was dated tomorrow, July 8th, 2013. On the front page was a picture of a body bag and above it was my name and a report going with the details of my death, the paper read;

                 “The death of 22 year old Mark Anderson was found in the same barn Jimmy Anderson, Marks uncle and his family was found butchered to death by unknown man.

                 My heart stopped for a second, I looked up at the dog and started to pet it, it started to whimper as if it knew I was giving up. The barn doors started to move but I blocked it so no one could get in, they started moaning and begging me to let them in, I wouldn’t go near that door. I climbed up the ladder to the 2nd part of the barn, as I reached the top I saw a pair of eyes staring at me from behind a stack of hay bales, I looked at it and asked;

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in">                   “It’s you, you’re the one who is doing all of this.” But was I looked towards it more I noticed it’s the little girl from the older newspaper, I looked towards the little girl as she slowly walked up to me and got to ear height with me and whispered in my ear;

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in">                 “The reason I wasn’t found is because they buried me under the barn.”

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in">                 I looked down at the little girl’s body, she was missing an arm, she was extremely dirty and her hair was quite messy, she was wearing old pioneer looking clothes and had a bluish looking bow in her hair. As I regained myself I realized the little girl was gone, I looked down towards the barn door to see the little girl opening the barn door, the dog barked and barked until the door opened. When the door came open the dog ran outside for safety as the large pack of people started after me, I sat down on a hay bale and waited. The monstrous people came closer and closer, my mother was the leader of it all, as she got closer I realized they all had large knifes in their hands. It was too late, I didn’t stand a chance I looked out the window in the barn one last time to see the dog, the dog was sitting whimpering like it was trying to say get out of there. But they always said

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in;text-indent:.5in">“Can’t beat them join them.”