Sometimes the Road Signs Lie - Part 3 - Final Update

[Part 1](https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1ncnn91/sometimes\_the\_road\_signs\_lie/)

[Part 2](https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1ndj5j4/sometimes\_the\_road\_signs\_lie\_part\_2/)

I never thought I’d return to Gomper’s Farm, let alone so quickly, but circumstances change, and with them, expectations.  It took me nearly a whole day to find the road the signs had led us down, and by then it was dusk and I returned back to my hotel so as not to be out after dark.

Melanie stayed home this time.  Her condition had gotten significantly worse since our road trip and she had been prescribed bed rest by the OBGYN, among other things, until she was ready to deliver.  Her mother hadn’t been happy with me flying out to New Mexico, even with the lie we told her about it being a work trip, but her mother’s chagrin was a small price to pay for what I was hoping to get out of a reunion with Arthur and Ruthy.

I drove up the dirt road following the only street sign now for Gomper’s Farm, hoping to find an answer to something that had happened to us not long after returning home.

I parked my car next to Arthur’s pickup truck and stepped out.  I waited for a moment, wondering if I would hear the sound of the birds carrying human-like screams along the air.  To my relief, I heard nothing at all.

I walked around to the front of the house, prepared to knock as I had mere weeks before, but found that I didn’t need to.  The door to the farmhouse was open.  Dirt coated the entrance floor, suggesting that it had been open for a while.

Cautiously, remembering the face I had seen in the window but feeling the bravery given to me by the daylight, I called out into the house. 

“Hello?” I called.  “Arthur?  Ruthy?”

No reply.

I stepped into the house, noting first that the shotgun Arthur had answered the door with was no longer propped against the wall in the corner by the door.  

“Hello?” I called again.  “Is anyone there?”

I explored the house carefully, worried that if I surprised anyone too much that I would find my skull full of buckshot, but sensing that I was totally alone.

The kitchen was clean, with only a couple of plates in the sink with dried on food that could have been from the night before, or perhaps longer.

The bedroom where Mel and I had stayed looked exactly like we had left it.

I called out again, as I headed up the stairs toward the part of the house I hadn’t been.  There were three doors down the hallway from the top of the stairs.  I chose the first and opened it.

It was a young boy’s room - a time capsule from decades ago. The boy who had once dwelt here must have been six or so judging by the toys, books and decorations that filled the space.  Above the bed in large block letters was the name “Jonathan.”

The next room was a bathroom adorned with yellow daisies over most of the surfaces.  

I opened the door to the final room and was struck by two things simultaneously.  First, was the body of Ruthy Gomper laying in the bed.  She wore a nightgown and looked as if she had gone peacefully in her sleep.  Second was the putrid odor that had somehow not completely filled the house, possibly because the door had been left open.  It was clear that she had been dead for at least a few days - perhaps not long after Mel and I had left.

But there was still no sign of Arthur.

I went downstairs and out the front door, glad to be rid of the smell that followed me after I opened the door.  

I walked around the side of the house, calling Arthur’s name and getting nothing in return.  I checked inside the large shed and found the road signs that Mel and I had seen driving down the road that night, along with a third that said “Freeway Entrance - Left - 1 Mile” just like the first sign we had seen.

I turned the flashlight in my phone on and held it up to get a better look at the shed.  There was some old farm equipment scattered around the area, but what caught my attention was toward the back.  I took a few more steps to get a better look and found a corner of the space had been decorated like a bedroom.  There was an old bed with a rusty frame and a torn mattress set up in the corner, along with a collection of what appeared to be chew toys sprinkled around.  Above the bed in block letters, similar to the boy’s bedroom I had seen in the house, was the name “Christopher.”

I took a few more curious steps forward to get a better look at the makeshift living space, then felt something at my feet.  I stooped to pick up the item buried in the dirt and found part of a chain.  As I picked it up, the chain emerged from its resting place in the ground, and as I pulled it up, I found that it was connected to a large metal pole posted near the bed.  I followed the chain on the other side and found at the end part of a broken shackle.

I dropped the chain, letting it tinkle to the ground, and left as quickly as I could.  If Arthur was here, I knew that this was the last place he would want me to be.

I examined the rest of the farmyard, wondering where, if at all, I would find Arthur, and my eyes landed on a shape beneath a tree in the distance.

I could hear Arthur’s words from the weeks before “mine’s under the apple tree” and wondered if this was the tree he had spoken of.

As I drew closer, the shape beneath the tree became clearer, and I recognized it as the man I sought.

“Arthur!” I called, beginning to jog now.  “Arthur I really need to-”

I stopped.

It was Arthur, but he wouldn’t be answering any of my questions.

The top of his skull was missing and his body was slumped against the trunk of the tree, hunched over the barrel of the shotgun that still rested in his mouth.

His body was covered in bite marks and scratches that looked like perhaps he had given himself the least painful death presented to him.

Beside Arthur’s body stood a wooden cross with the name “Jonathan” carved into the horizontal piece.

He had said “his” was under the apple tree.  He had meant his son.

Which begged the question I had come with that now seemed wouldn’t be answered - what happened to the other boy?

A piece of paper stuck out between Arthur’s fingertips.  I stooped down and grabbed it, hoping perhaps a suicide note would give me at least part of the answer I had come for.

It wasn’t a note, however, but a photograph.  One that had to be twenty five years old or so.  A younger-looking Arthur smiled back at me, holding a five year-old at his hip who wore a wide grin and a pair of overalls just like his father.  Next to them stood a younger Ruthy who stood next to another child who was far larger than the first and whose face had been scratched out.

My stomach twisted in knots as I looked down at the second boy.  The shirt he wore was one that had been given to us in the box of old clothes, but despite the clothes it was clear to see that there was still something off about him. His legs and arms weren’t quite right, his fingers too long, his torso too thin.  It was the body that belonged to the face I had seen when we had spent the night and I had opened the curtain - a creature meant to seem human, but had just missed the mark.

I put the photograph back into Arthur’s dead hand and walked back toward my car.

Melanie hadn’t been right ever since we left that night.  She had gotten sicker and sicker by the day.  Her OBGYN had insisted that we come in to make sure everything was alright, and that was when we discovered it.

Melanie was pregnant with twins.

The doctor told us that it was possible, however rare, to miss a child on the ultrasound, but I knew that wasn’t what it was.

The pieces all started to fall together for me over the next few days, which led me to take a flight back out to New Mexico in the hopes that Arthur or Ruthy could help us.

When we had left that day, Arthur had told me something that I hadn’t taken very seriously then.  He said “if she has two, take the little one and run.”

Those words echoed in my head when we went through the box of clothes Ruthy had given us.  We saw that the baby clothes came mostly in pairs, which made sense because we knew that the couple had twin boys, but when we noticed that there was always a far larger outfit than the other, I began to wonder why Arthur had told me to take the little one and run.  What had happened to his little one?

Furthermore, why had he been so concerned about my leaving Melanie alone that night?  He had asked me at least twice to make sure, as if it were vitally important, and I had shrugged it off, not realizing then that I had left her alone that night - just once - when I jogged out to get a better view of the street sign.

Just before I heard her scream.

She doesn’t remember it, but I believe that moment is when that thing - “Christopher” - got to her.  Arthur had warned me about the birds that lay their eggs in another bird’s nest - he had even gone as far as to call the things making the terrible noises “birds” and it hadn’t clicked.  He had been trying to warn us about Christopher and however many others like him there were living there at the farm - about the dozen or so pairs of eyes that had followed us up the trail to the house.   

Those things didn’t like that and stopped him. They had cried out in the dark outside the window as they listened to him tell me the story about the brood parasite birds and the birds who mimic the sounds of children crying.  

They didn’t like it because by then they had laid their egg, leaving nothing but a faint, white scar encircling her navel that was nearly completely gone now, and they didn’t want us to know.

I wondered if Arthur had killed Christopher before taking his own life.  The wounds on his body told the story of a man who had fought hard against a wild animal, and I could only imagine it had been the creature who had been born from his wife’s womb alongside his son.  He had told me that the black bird had ripped the other bird to pieces when he was a boy, and I couldn’t help but think that the same thing had happened to his son at the hand of the other.  If that were true, the only thing that could stand between Arthur and redemption for his son was Ruthy, and with her gone that was all he had left to do.

I could see him discovering her death, and setting out to avenge the death of his only son after all these years only to find that the fight was one he could no longer win.  He had taken his gun outside and had searched for the beast, eventually finding him and perhaps killing him before crawling his way up to where his son lay and turning the gun on himself lest the wounds take his life instead.

Or perhaps not.  There was no way to be sure - not really.

I got back to my car and climbed into the driver’s seat.  My hands shook as I turned the key and started back down the road.

My phone found service for just a moment and I looked down and saw that I had three missed calls - two from Mel, and one from her mother.  There was a text message as well that read: “It’s happening!!!”

I was about to be a father.

I stepped on the gas pedal and sped back down toward the main road, stopping only for a moment to make the turn at the now defunct sign that read “Gomper’s Farm.”

As I made the turn and the sound of the engine was just low enough, I thought I could hear a cry carried in the air.  The sound was almost human.

MAAAAAA.