Hallow Scream

The Oklahoma sky, black and bruised, seemed to press down on the earth like a suffocating hand. A windless night. Not a whisper from the endless rows of corn that stood rigid, as if paralyzed by something unseen. Jaclyn stood on the edge of the Applegate Estates, staring at the skeletal barn in the distance, her heart heavy with a sense of dread she couldn’t explain.

She wasn’t supposed to be here. Nobody was. The farm had been abandoned for decades, left to rot after the Applegate family disappeared on Halloween night. Cattle were found torn apart, the ground soaked in blood. The farmstead had since decayed, along with its haunted history. The stories were too wild, too twisted to be real.

But something had called her here. A pull—no, a compulsion—that gnawed at her insides. She had to see for herself.

The dirt road leading to the barn was overgrown, but as Jaclyn walked, the path seemed to clear. The moonless sky offered no light, and the beam from her flashlight seemed feeble against the suffocating dark. Each step she took felt heavier than the last, as though the land was swallowing her whole, slowly, inch by inch.

The barn loomed ahead, its roof collapsed, its beams twisted like broken ribs. It was an ancient corpse of wood and steel, decaying in silence. But there was something else—something more than just age and ruin. It reeked of malevolence.

Jaclyn hesitated at the threshold, the barn door hanging crookedly on rusted hinges. The darkness inside felt alive, pulsating like a heart buried deep in the earth. She took a deep breath and stepped inside.

The air was wrong—thick, heavy, like it was pressing in on her. It smelled of rot and something far worse, like the rancid stench of death. The beam from her flashlight flickered and sputtered. Shadows danced across the walls, twisting unnaturally, moving even when she was still.

Her eyes caught something carved into the dirt floor—symbols. Strange, jagged lines dug deep into the earth, forming a circle around the barn. They pulsed with a faint, sickly glow, as if the earth itself was alive, breathing. Jaclyn’s skin prickled with cold sweat. She wasn’t alone.

And then, the sound.

It started as a low, guttural moan, vibrating through the walls. Jaclyn froze, her heart hammering in her chest. The moan grew louder, more distorted, turning into a screech so high-pitched it felt like nails scraping the inside of her skull. She dropped the flashlight, plunging the barn into near darkness. But the glow from the symbols grew brighter, casting everything in a sickly green hue.

The ground beneath her feet began to tremble.

From the far end of the barn came a scream—a hollow, elongated cry that sounded as if it had crawled from the depths of hell itself. Jaclyn staggered backward, her mind racing. The barn door slammed shut with a bone-jarring crash, trapping her inside. The walls groaned as the temperature plummeted, frost creeping along the wooden beams.

Her breath came out in ragged gasps as she turned to run, but her feet felt glued to the ground. No, not glued. Held.

The soil beneath her began to heave and shift, cracking open like the earth itself was giving birth to something ancient and vile. And then, they emerged—skeletal hands, long fingers caked with dirt, clawing their way up from the ground. One hand shot out, grasping her ankle with a force that nearly pulled her off her feet. More followed, digging into her legs, cold and relentless, dragging her down.

She screamed, kicking wildly, but the hands were too strong, too many. Faces—mangled, distorted—rose from the earth, their hollow eyes staring at her, mouths frozen in endless screams. They weren't just dead. They were consumed—souls devoured by the cursed land, trapped here forever.

The scream echoed again, closer this time, almost inside her head. Jaclyn twisted her neck, eyes wide with terror as she saw it emerge from the shadows. A figure—no, a mass—twisted and deformed, its limbs impossibly long and its flesh hanging loose like a rotting shroud. Its face—if it had one—was a grotesque amalgamation of features, mouths where eyes should be, eyes where mouths belonged. It was a creature born of nightmares, a thing that should never exist in the waking world.

Its limbs cracked as it moved, pulling itself closer to her with a hideous grace. Its many mouths gaped open, whispering in an ancient, guttural language that clawed at her mind. The words twisted in her ears, making her skull throb. Blood trickled from her nose, but she didn’t notice—her focus was on the creature, its presence suffocating her, filling her lungs with cold fear.

The hands from the earth dragged her lower. She screamed again, but her voice was swallowed by the barn, her sound lost in the ever-growing cacophony of the thing’s whispers. The earth beneath her began to shift once more, this time with greater violence. The barn floor cracked open, revealing an abyss below, a pit of endless black from which no light could escape.

The creature’s hands reached out, impossibly long, its fingers brushing her skin. Where it touched, her flesh withered, decaying before her eyes. Her muscles spasmed, her bones felt like they were splintering from within. She could feel herself being torn apart—not physically, but something worse—her very soul being ripped from her body.

The thing’s many mouths twisted into grotesque smiles as its whispers filled her mind, echoing endlessly, pulling her deeper into its void. Her body was breaking, crumbling, as the earth opened wider beneath her, pulling her into its eternal, hungry maw.

With one final, hollow scream, the land swallowed her whole.

The next morning, Applegate Estates stood as it always had—silent, rotting, forgotten by the world. The wind stirred the cornfields once more, and the barn stood quiet in the distance, as though nothing had happened.

But in the depths of the cursed earth, the thing still whispered, still hungered. And soon, it would call another. It always did.