On the Beam

She had gotten up well before dawn so she could drive the 20 miles out to the ancient barn just as the sun came up and she’d been there ever since, taking pictures of every imaginable thing for her college photography class. Now it was after noon and the light was ugly, beating down mercilessly on the sere landscape. She grabbed the pack she had left lying by the barn door and went inside, standing in the doorway while her eyes acclimated to the sudden darkness.

A few beams of light blasted through holes in the roof, illuminating the dusty air and providing a little light for her to see by. But there wasn’t much to see. Several coils of rope hanging from hooks on the support beams, a rusty axe and a few other corroded metal objects that she couldn’t identify. A pile of what looked like old rags. Parts of the barn were shrouded in darkness but none of it suggested anything other than years of disuse. She found an old wooden box and dragged it over to one of the supports to use as a seat. Digging around in her pack she found a bottle of water and a sandwich. Sitting on the box, she stretched languorously and started eating.

Even though it was cooler in the barn than it was in the sun it was still warm and stuffy and the droning buzz of the flies lulled her into sleep, the half-eaten sandwich on her lap and her flask of water on the dirt floor beside her. It was pleasant. She hadn’t been sleeping well lately, worrying about a bunch of stupid stuff she knew wasn’t worth the effort of close contemplation but that still kept her awake at night. She suffered from anxiety, a family trait that sometimes made holiday get-togethers unbearable. Cannabis provided welcome relief but made her anti-social. And it seemed that musty, abandoned barns had the same soporific effect.

She woke slowly, enjoying the feeling of slack, relaxed muscles which was something of a novelty for her. She must have been asleep for several hours because she could see that the beams of light coming through the ceiling had moved and now made visible parts of the barn that had been hidden in shadow before.

Her eyes widened. There was something hanging down from up in the shadows. She stood and walked over to see what it was.

A noose, hanging motionless in the still air.

She approached the noose slowly, not looking where she was going. Tripping on something she almost fell, barely managing to catch herself. A skull skittered across the floor, rolling unevenly, finally coming to rest by the axe. The empty eye sockets seemed to regard her curiously. Suddenly creeped out, she turned away from the skull and looked down to see that the shapeless heap she’d not really paid much attention to earlier was a pile of men's clothes and the rest of the skeleton. Obviously someone had committed suicide and hung there, undiscovered until the flesh had rotted away and the skeleton and clothes had dropped to the floor.

A wave of melancholy passed over her as she thought about the person who was driven to do this, so alone that their death had gone undiscovered and unremarked. Was it the owner of the farm, or just someone who happened by the abandoned barn and took the ultimate step in a state of profound desperation?

Overcoming her squeamishness she went through the clothes, looking for pockets that might contain something that would give her a clearer idea of what had happened here. But if there had ever been anything it had long since rotted away.

She wondered how he had done the deed. He must have climbed out on one of the beams, fastened the noose around his neck and jumped. If he’d done it right death would have been instantaneous. As she considered the possibilities she thought she saw something on top of the beam—just the edge of a piece of paper, barely visible.

There was a ladder built into the wall that allowed her to climb up to the beam. Once there she slowly crawled out until she came to the piece of paper, only to find it was just a candy wrapper. No note.

She saw now that the rope hung from a hook that was screwed into the ridge board, the bottom of the noose ending just above the beam. It was about 12 feet above the floor, which looked a long way away from where she was. She felt a momentary wave of acrophobia which she dismissed as absurd. She wasn’t afraid of heights. But the air up here was much warmer than the air at ground level. It felt thick, almost syrupy. She decided it would be a good idea to make her way back to the ladder.

She didn't feel comfortable turning around so she moved cautiously backwards across the beam when her pant leg caught on an old nail and the combination of her lightheadedness and the pull to one side sent her plunging to the ground, her neck snapping with a loud crack as she fell directly into the pile of clothes and bones.

Then the only sound was the incessant buzz of flies.

If the barn could think it would have been amused that the noose had now claimed two lives and both in the same way. There had never been a neck in that noose. It had been put up there long ago for an entirely different purpose. But, of course, barns are inanimate objects, with nothing inherently evil about them.

Right?