Meeting Place

2021

The sweet scent from a solitary, mature jasmine vine grappled onto the dusty walls of the abandoned barn hung in the gentle, twilight breeze. A vine planted by lovers long ago, adrift in hopefulness but trapped in reality; destined to find shelter within these four walls until the end of time.

“Logan?” a slender, teenage boy with straight, black hair whispered into the deepening night. A murder of crows cawed in the distance, sounding closer and closer, raising the hairs on the back of his neck. “It’s almost completely dark, let’s just go.” He stood, trepidatious on the rocky ground, in front of the doorless opening to the barn, flashlight grasped tightly in his left hand. Decades ago, when this was a working farm, there’d have been hands to remove the fieldstones, but now the boy’s white sneakers met rock upon rock.

A creak of a footstep on timeworn floorboards came from inside. The boy shone his flashlight, wary of the slightly tilted structure, withered by wind and water to a dull grey, with only hints of the original red paint. His light illuminated a narrow path through the gloom. The sound of another footstep, the boy backed up nervously, “Logan, this isn’t funny!” He flicked the flashlight’s gaze from left to right and back again.

From around the left corner of the structure, a second figure jumped out and screamed, “RAWR,” grabbing the flashlight from the boy’s hands. Two more screams, and high-pitched, cackling laughter as Logan doubled over, catching his breath, and finding great amusement in frightening his companion.

“That wasn’t funny,” the boy snapped, red-faced. “And how did you get back there? I’ve been watching the door the whole time!”

Logan straightened up and handed over the flashlight. “There’s another entrance on the left side. Come on, Kaleb. I think there’s a trap door to check out.”

“Please don’t go back in there, let’s go home,” Kaleb said feebly, trying to get Logan to give up exploring but not holding much hope that he would listen.

“But the trap door supposedly leads to a tunnel into town! They say that bootleggers used it to smuggle moonshine to the tavern in Briggshire.”

“You want to go in a tunnel?” Kaleb’s eyes were as large as possible in his round, innocent face. His flashlight hand was shaking slightly, and if he’d been looking anywhere but directly at Logan, he might have seen a shadow move slightly to the left out of eyeshot.

“Duh,” Logan said nonchalantly, looking down and flattening out his white t-shirt on his stomach, which was covered in dusty cobwebs since his first foray through the barn. He paused and looked up into Kaleb’s hazel eyes. With a compassion that only graced Logan’s personality occasionally, he reached up and stroked Kaleb’s face, then rested his hand on Kaleb’s left shoulder. The two boys looked at each other, with a longing they had both only started to acknowledge.

“I’m going in,” Logan said, turning on his heel and taking a few large strides into the decaying barn.

Hurriedly, Kaleb said, “Please, don’t,” and reached out, grabbing Logan’s bicep, turning him back around.

For the slightest second, Kaleb saw his friend’s eyes, flashing white, before he was shoved with more strength than a fourteen-year-old should have, hard enough to knock the air from Kaleb’s lungs. He flew back off his feet, unable to draw breath for a scream, before landing roughly on his back, his head hitting a rock. The dull thud sounded unheard in the pitch-black fallow fields surrounding the old Briggshire barn.

1921

The creak of the narrow trap door, hidden in the right corner amongst the hay-covered floorboards, could barely be heard on this howling, stormy night. On the opposite end of the dusky room, the barn door swung dangerously on its rollers, thudding in the darkness.

A tall, well-dressed man in a grey pin-striped suit climbed up from the tunnel beneath the red barn. He stayed crouched for a moment to close the door behind him quietly, even though it was unnecessary with the moaning wind. As he straightened up, he smoothed out his suit front, removing stray cobwebs and clumps of dirt, though he missed a few on his shoulders.

“Walter,” a second man whispered, emerging into the stream of moonlight filtering in from the hayloft window. They stepped closer, and Walter grabbed the other man’s face firmly before landing his lips on his; they kissed for what seemed like an eternity but still wasn’t long enough.

Walter backed up, while the shorter, stouter man pulled an envelope from his left overalls pocket. “Tickets, we leave tomorrow. Ten o’clock to Grand Central.”

“Roy, I…” Walter began as Roy reached out and grabbed his right hand. He gripped back half-heartedly. “Roy, I can’t do this anymore.” Unable to look directly at him, Walter let go and took a step back. “This has to stop.”

“What—” Roy’s face went still, crestfallen briefly before his expression hardened and he nearly yelled, “No. No, you love me, and we’re almost out. We’re so close!” He stepped forward again. “You promised we could leave and be together. Walter, I can’t do this without you!”

“Then don’t. Please, forget me. I can’t, Roy.”

Roy’s left hand was balled up into a fist, crumpling the envelope of long-awaited tickets. “I know you love me.”

“I don’t,” Walter seemed steadier now, his face resolute in the moonlight, though he knew in his heart it wasn’t the truth.

“I’ll tell everyone,” Roy threatened quickly, as his mind ran through his options. “I’ll tell your family, the whole town, if you don’t leave with me tomorrow!”

He took a step forward and Walter a hasty step back, stumbling on uneven floorboards and falling backwards onto the hay-strewn floor. He looked up at Roy with a lightning-flash of pure fear before desperate anger flooded his veins.

He’d be ruined. He would lose his family just as surely as he would by leaving, except this way they would disown him, he would be outcast. Alone. But even so, he couldn’t face what it meant to leave with Roy—to be free, untethered, at the mercy of whatever God or fate felt he deserved. The prospect filled him with dread, and he wanted nothing more than to make it all go away.

Roy stopped advancing but continued his threats. “I’ll tell everyone!” He stood looking down at Walter, not seeming to see that he was reaching out for something in the dark.

Walter found the smooth handle of a pickaxe. Anger at his own decisions that led him to this junction, anger at Roy’s threats, anger at the entirety of the world roiled in his heart. His fingers gripped hesitant at first, but something in the darkness whispered that he could make it all stop. He listened.

Walter clambered to his feet, unsteady from falling. Without a word, only heavy breathing, he swung, and hit his target.

There was a wet noise, a splatter of blood. Roy’s body fell to the ground, twitching for several moments before it went limp.

The moonlight in the barn seemed to grow brighter, illuminating what he had done. “Oh, God.” The axe fell from Walter’s numb fingers. He looked down at the body in front of him, eyes still open wide, mouth agape with blood trickling out the corners. His stomach lurched and he raised a hand to his mouth, only to flinch away from the gleaming wetness spattered across it, which in the dimness looked black.

Behind him the barn door banged in the wind again, startling him forward. Walter hurried to the corner, and dropped to the ground, grasping for the iron handle on the trap door. He found it, slipped in, heart-beating out of his chest, and jerked it closed behind him. Walter ran down the narrow pathway, pinging off the walls, reaching out ahead, hands scraping on rocks and roots.

He made it several paces before he heard a godawful growling of crumbling terrain. Dust flooded the tunnel from all sides as the fortifications began to cave-in ahead of Walter. He spun, but the walls were crumbling behind him as well, until he was forcibly stuck in just a few feet of space between two mounds of earth and rocks.

In the next two days, in which Walter remained alive, a solitary thought crossed his mind. In choosing not to escape with Roy, he’d sealed his own tomb. He’d never be free of the Briggshire barn.

2021

Kaleb woke up to a throbbing knot at the back of his head. It was still nighttime, but he didn’t know how long he’d been unconscious, and the air felt colder now. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his cellphone… only to find that it was out of battery. “Crap,” he muttered. He sat up, too fast at first and then more slowly to keep his head from swimming and looked at the barn towering above. He felt around for the flashlight that must have flown out of his hand when Logan had pushed him, his cold hands searching blindly over the rough, rocky dirt. From the direction of the barn, he heard a faint scraping noise.

“Logan?” He said hoarsely, his throat dry. “Logan?” A bit louder and clearer. Kaleb got to his knees and stood up cautiously. He fought against his urge to run down the dusty path to the main road they’d come in on. It was only two miles back to his house, but a sense of foreboding came through clear. Logan needed help; he couldn’t just leave him behind.

Kaleb’s alert ears picked up a scraping noise, as if metal was being dragged against wood.

“Logan? Can you hear me? Is anyone there?” He stepped forward hesitantly. His foot kicked something that skittered across the ground. The flashlight. Kaleb reached out in front of him frantically. His fingers finally grasped the cold metal cylinder, and he clicked the rubber button. Light. Against his better judgement his stepped into the barn.

The flashlight illuminated just enough for him to see Logan sitting cross-legged on the floor rasping the sharp end of a pickaxe in a semi-circle around his body. He was staring blankly straight at Kaleb, but it was as if he couldn’t see him right away. Without any change in demeanor, he lunged up and forward, swinging the pickaxe toward Kaleb. It missed as Kaleb dropped to the floor and rolled right, out of the way, leaving Logan to hit the wooden floor hard with the axe. It was momentarily stuck, but that left Logan between him and both, the main exit, and the latch-door on the left side of the barn.

Kaleb turned and ran into the back corner, shining his flashlight quickly in every direction, then finally straight down. A wrought iron handle was sticking upright at attention, as if wanting to be found.

Kaleb pulled it open and jumped in, closing it behind him. He found himself in tight quarters, rocks jutting out to either side, and he could see a few paces ahead before the tunnel turned right. Betting on it ending up somewhere better than the barn, he ran, but not for long. Just around the bend he hit an earthen wall.

“Shit.” Kaleb turned, ready to turn back and take his chances, but before he could, a figure appeared before him in the stream of flashlight. A white face, otherworldly and, without a doubt, not Logan.

The figure lunged, bony hands outstretched, Kaleb screamed, and the flashlight clattered to the ground.

1821

“Lovely,” a tall, dark-skinned man said looking upon the jasmine sprout nestled against the bright red barn.

“It’s for you, all for you, Samuel.” A second, fairer man stepped up to his side taking his hand. He pulled him toward the barn and they both stepped inside, closing the door of the Briggshire barn.

© Jasper A. Flintsmith 2021