Return to the Black Farm (The Black Farm, #2)

by Elias Witherow

She was a little older than me, somewhere in her late thirties, early forties, and looked like she had just gotten out of work. Her dark hair draped around her shoulders and her brown eyes met mine with a curious gaze.

“Boy you’re a serious one, aren’t you? It’s just a drink.” I stood up. “Everything starts with a choice.

“Jess, what’s wrong?” I asked a little more urgently. Jess didn’t look at me, her voice soft and scared. “I think something’s in the house.”

“It’s time to go back to the Black Farm.”

You may have escaped that place, but you left hell in your wake.”

“You fed the Pig, but you did it with a gut full of angel flesh. Pure, holy flesh. And that flesh acted as a poison. When The Pig ate you...when you crawled down its throat...you changed everything.”

What if it came here? What if it came looking for you? For your family?” “Why the hell would it do that?” I stuttered. “Because you’re the one that ruined it.”

“If I go, I can’t promise your family will be safe. I’m giving you one last chance to stop that.” I brought the knife up under his chin. “Out.” Ramiel sighed suddenly and stepped back. “Very well. I wish it didn’t have to be this way. I’ll see you soon, Nick.”

Something tells me that he’s going to regret that lol

Jess sat naked at the kitchen table, her arms splayed out before her. Two crude spikes had been rammed into her hands, pinning her to the table. Blood dripped from the gored flesh, her eyes half-lidded with pain, her face beaten and bloody. Her mouth hung open, drool dripping from the corners and across her chest. Her hair was strewn in sweaty clumps around her swollen, blackened cheeks.

Standing next to her, with one slender hand on her shoulder, was a creature that ripped the fear straight from my mind with all the horror of hell behind it. It stood at least seven feet tall, its humanoid body stripped of flesh to expose raw muscle that bled and oozed a viscous red pus. Its arms were long and covered with protruding, squirming fingers that wriggled and pointed and rolled in their sockets. Its head sat upon its shoulders, a massive thing of bone and sprawling black hair. It looked like a horse, except it had horns that curled back behind its head and almost touched the ground at its back. It was bone-white, contrasted by two green eyes that pulsed and glowed and dripped from their sockets like mucus before slithering back into their hollow orifices.

It was Theo. He had been stripped of his pajamas and placed on his back. Protruding from his chest was another spike, a long, thin thing that looked like carved bone. It had been rammed directly into his heart and through the wooden table, holding him in place.

In one violent motion, the horse head tore my son’s leg away from his body. It happened in a flash of blood and bone, a sick pop filling my head. Jess screamed, trembling, her eyes bloodshot and red.

As she did, the creature holding the leg grabbed her by the throat and shoved our son’s severed limb down her throat. Immediately, Jess gagged and coughed, her eyes bulging with shock and revulsion. The horse head tightened its grip around her throat and pushed the leg deeper, its arm entering Jess’s mouth and traveling down her throat to deposit the meat into her stomach.

Jess’s broken jaw hung uselessly, a ruined expression of horror now permanently pulling her face apart. Her tongue lolled out across her bloodied teeth and she shook beneath an onslaught of chest heaving sobs.

The monster leaned down across our child and ripped his tiny head from his shoulders. Blood splashed across my wife’s face as she came back to life in a wave of new anguish. I was screaming, somewhere, somehow, I was screaming and crying and fighting and blind with my own terror.

In one merciless gesture, the creature rammed Theo’s head down my wife’s throat with enough force to break her teeth. She screamed and thrashed, her howls deafened as the monster pushed the head down her throat. Her throat bulged and expanded, her air flow cut off.

“What the hell did I just see? What was that?” I choked. Ramiel stood his ground. “That’s what happens in twenty-four hours unless you do what I tell you.”

“Go back to the Farm or don’t. You now know what happens if you stay.” “You can’t do this to me,” I hissed.

“Tomorrow night,” Ramiel said, “and they will be allowed access to your family.”

Get it done and when things are back in balance, I will return to the Farm and bring you home. I will be watching from the heavens.”

Dying was a lot like I remembered. Slow, painful, a void of hopelessness that pulled me in deep and swallowed me down into the darkness. I didn’t fight it. I didn’t resist. I simply allowed myself to descend beyond my body and into the jaws of the afterlife. I felt my consciousness slip, slide, and then plummet, sending me soaring through a blinking sputter of sensations that rendered me immobile and isolated. My mind was ripped from my flesh and cast into the abyss.

They were dragging a man, his body stripped of clothing and covered in deep lacerations. Mud and leaves clung to his beaten, ruined flesh as he was dragged along, a pattern of growing infection. The chain ended in a rusty hook that had been inserted into his mouth and punctured out from his lower jaw. Blood ran down his neck in thick streams, lost beneath the dirt and forest floor. As the party passed in front of my position, I locked eyes with the man. He was alive.

If you kill us, then the clouds will spit us out and we will start again. But not you. The Pig is GONE! Who will give you life again?”

“What’s about to happen here?” Danny kept his eyes on the ocean. “A lot of us are about to die.”

This is an evil place filled with people who deserve some goddamn peace. One of the most complicated and horrible events in someone’s life shouldn’t be punished with such wickedness. I’ve never met God, but to send Suicidals to a place like this? He’s either lazy or just as evil as the Pig.”

“I need people to be better than me,” Danny suddenly exhaled, almost urgently, a finger pointed to his own chest. “I need people to be able to make the hard choices I couldn’t make. And every single new Suicidal I see here is a reminder of my own weakness. And I can’t-fucking-stand-that.”

“Imagine that every person in your life reminded you of the worst thing you’ve ever done. Wouldn’t you hate them? Wouldn’t you grow to loathe their existence?”

“Did you really think I’d forget what you did to me?”

“You’re name’s not Jack.

Your lol

“Do you actually think the Pig can die?” “Everything dies.” “No, not everything. Some things just get meaner.”

The creature looked like a blob of mud with stubby arms drooping from its gooey body. A pair of massive eyes sunk into the rotund figure along with a wide mouth that seemed to ooze brown slime. As it slid across the ground toward us, it raised its pathetic arms in a defensive posture.

She believed in you until the bitter end.

“I’m done with that place. What I carry with me now...I think it’s a scar, a punishment for what I did right before I left.” “What did you do?” I looked down at Jess’s gravestone. “I hurt someone. Badly.” “Did they deserve it?” “I don’t know,” I said distantly, “but I had to do it in order to save you. To get you out of there. To get some answers.”

Wherever you are, I hope you’ll find me again, my love. And know that wherever I am, my heart remains with you.

AHHHHH