The Pole Barn

You don’t remember how you got here, just that you woke up on a dusty futon in a large empty garage with a slick concrete floor that you place your bare feet on as you jolt awake. Light is coming through the high windows on the one wall but you can only see tree tops swaying outside. You’ve never been here before but something feels familiar about this place. You try to recall what happened the previous night but you feel like someone played kickball with your brain then poured the gooey mess of gray matter back into your skull like a punchbowl. You’ve got a piercing headache and when you feel the base of your skull there are stitches there. You start to feel panic coming on.

You can’t remember anything before the moment you woke up and that’s when a cold animal fear metastasizes in your body, spreading slowly at first but gaining momentum, growing larger. You stand up but feel woozy and have to sit back down. You take a breath and try to remember your own name. Your name is _________. 

You start to panic.

“Take a breath,” you say aloud to yourself and your voice sounds unfamiliar like you’re speaking from the bottom of a well. Your throat is dry and scratchy as if you’ve been screaming all night. You start to remember how you got here. 

Last night you remember the woods, thick and dark and alive and something was following you through them. You weren’t sure how you knew but you could feel something watching you. You saw nothing and no one. You were scared and muddy and barefooted. Then you came upon this place, a towering white pole barn in a clearing. You think you can remember a chopped wood pile next to the door and a single light on above the entrance. You remember running for the structure, not looking back, never looking back. Then you were stumbling inside and felt around in the dark and collapsed on the first soft thing which must have been this futon you are now sitting on. 

You look around. This is one of those big empty spaces with a concrete slab floor and framed in walls with aluminum siding. The walls are bare studs with batts of pink fiberglass insulation in between them, covered with plastic sheeting to hold the insulation to the wall. The ceiling joists are twenty feet above you and there are thin slit windows high up on one wall. There is a front garage door and a back garage door and a small regular door that you entered through last night to the right of the garage door. The place is totally empty except for a woodstove in the corner and the black dusty futon you sit on. You get up and feel wobbly on your sore legs. There is a small room in the corner near the futon. You go to it and open the louvered shutter door to find a toilet and a sink.

“What the fuck is this place?” you say aloud to yourself and then you feel your stomach churn. You flip open the lid to the toilet and vomit into the rusty water. It’s mostly bile. You wipe your mouth and turn on the tap to the sink and splash water on your face. There’s no mirror in the bathroom, you must look like a mess. You check your pockets but there’s nothing in them. Where did your phone go? Your keys? 

“Okay, don’t panic,” you say. You turn off the taps and dry your face with your shirt. You make for the exit door. You try the knob but it doesn’t budge. Locked. Cold fear creeps up your spine. You bang on the door. You run to the big garage door and try to lift it but it won’t move. It’s locked from the outside. So is the one at the back.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!” You yell. You kick and pound on the back door with your bare foot and pain shoots up your toe and you hop around on one foot until you plop backward onto the futon. You hold your foot and feel yourself on the verge of tears. That’s when you hear it. A rustling sound. Something is moving around just outside. Not like a squirrel, something big. You look up at the windows but only see the swaying of tree tops and white sky.

“Hey, hello, is anyone there? I’m locked in here. Hey, is anyone out there?” you shout at the door.

Silence. The rustling sound has stopped. You get up and approach the garage door putting your ear to it. You think you can hear a distant rustle of leaves. Then the silence is broken by a roaring on the other side. You pull your face away from the door just in time because suddenly something slams against the other side of it with an incredible amount of force and you feel the wind come off the blow and you topple back onto the futon again and hit the back of your head on the metal frame opening the stitches. White light erupts in your vision. Then another strike on the garage door, then another and the metal begins to fold inward toward you as whatever is outside rams a deeper dent into the aluminum frame. 

Bang! Bang! One viscous slam follows another. The roaring becomes louder. You can feel hot urine running down your leg as you scramble over the futon and cower behind it. Something is trying to tear down that door and get inside and you realize this must be the thing that was watching you in the forest last night. Black eyes flash in your memory. Something big and hairy like a bear but with a sinister intellect reflected in those black glinting eyes through the darkness. Something with a hominid face like your own. 

It can’t be real, this is all just a bad dream, you think. You drop into the fetal position and cradle your legs in your arms as you clamp your eyes shut and press your bare cheek against the smooth cold of the concrete floor willing yourself to wake up. Wake up. Wake up! 

“Wake up. Wake the fuck up!” Then you realize you’re screaming into the vacuous space of the pole barn as the thing outside slams against the metal garage door again and again and the aluminum door bows further, crushing inward, and the roaring is unbearably loud now. Something halfway between a throttled human scream and a guttural animal rasp. No, not a bear, something else, something monstrous and cruel and hungry and about bust that fucking door down and pick you apart like a bird bone. You’re screaming now, not words anymore just screaming your voice hoarse as you try and will yourself awake but are beginning to realize this isn’t a dream. This is real.

Then silence. 

Your mouth is still wide open but only a wheeze is coming out. You’re out of air, out of breath and too afraid to open your eyes but you do it anyway. You’ve tucked yourself completely under the futon and you see light coming through the aluminum door just beyond the protection of your hiding place. Then a shadow flits across the lightholes. Strobing them. 

There is a creaking whining sound like metal rails bending. Then the door comes down in a wild crash in front of you kicking up dust. Light floods the room and all is quiet now. You’re sure that thing must, must have gotten inside but you hear nothing. No foot falls, no hulking ripple of air currents that accompany the movement of something that size, no more roaring growls, just the sound of the leaves swaying outside in the forest. But that thing must be around here somewhere, hunting you. It can probably smell the blood pounding in your ears. 

This is your only shot. You swallow your adrenaline and crawl towards the light and slither out from under the futon and rise up to your feet and crash out through the hole in the garage door and make for the tree line expecting at any second for something to take you down from behind, hot breath on your neck before the killing strike. You make it to the treeline but you keep going. You run until the sun goes down, then you run all night but see nothing and no one. That thing is still following you, you’re sure of it. You run until you come upon a clearing with a big white pole barn and a pile of chopped wood near the door and a single light on above the entrance. You make a run for the door, not looking back, never looking back…

About the Author

Louis Redka is a writer, educator, and occasional plumbing/heating contractor living in southern New Jersey. He enjoys anything that takes him outside into nature.