Barn Chores

“John you stupid redhead fuck,” I said playfully. “Hurry up, that blunt isn’t gonna roll itself.” “Fuck you too, Mike,” he responded. He flipped me off, as usual. He scratched his beard before returning to his duties.

It was early November, and it had just begun to get cold in our little corner of the US. We all lived relatively close, in an area that was easily 40 minutes from any city of considerable size. For reclusive stoners like us, it was perfect.

We were sitting cross-legged in the floor of Sam and Kelly’s house; a cozy, unassuming little place equally in the middle of nowhere. As if on cue, Sam and Kelly both entered the room with red, glassy eyes. They greeted their tailless kitties before sitting down on their bed. After a few minutes of idle chatter, John had finished his blunt. He held it up for us to inspect.

“Not bad for a ginger,” Kelly said playfully. “Yeah, I figured you’d find a way to fuck it up,” Sam added. John flipped them both off with the blunt in his mouth. “Don’t light it yet,” Sam continued.

“Roll another one and we’ll smoke them on the way to the barn.” Kelly and her family were equestrian masterminds. They rode in competitions, and were responsible for taking care of a dozen or so horses stabled at a farm and pasture even further in the middle of nowhere, about 15 minutes’ drive from their place. John and I didn’t mind going to the barn; we usually went late at night, and it was peaceful and serene. Neither of us knew a damn thing about horses, but we could appreciate it for what it was.

“You guys think we’ll be able to see Jupiter at the barn?” John asked out of nowhere. “I saw on the news that it’s supposed to be visible tonight.” “Not sure,” I responded. “Haven’t heard anything like that.” I picked up my phone and tried to pull up FaceBook, but was greeted with a “network error” message.

“My phone isn’t working…” Sam said, looking up from his giant new iPhone. “Same here,” Kelly said. “I tried to look up the Jupiter thing but everything’s all fucked up…” I was curious. “John, check your phone too.” After a moment, he turned his phone toward me. It had the same error message that all of ours had. It certainly wasn’t a message any of us had seen before. Being the lackadaisical stoners we were, we decided it wasn’t too important. We had each other and some weed, which was all we really needed. After a few more minutes of preparation, we loaded up in Kelly's Jeep and began driving to the barn.

We cracked one window and began to pass both blunts around in different directions. I inhaled deeply, letting the stresses of the day fall away. Within minutes, I stopped thinking about work and applying for grad school and began thinking about things like black holes and Donald Trump in a tutu. And I loved it. Sam and John were locked in a geopolitical debate while Kelly listened attentively. I instinctively pulled my phone out again, but was greeted with the same error message yet again.

“What do you guys think is up with our phones?” I asked. “We all have different providers, so it seems strange that they’re all out at once…” “Mike, you’re stoned and thinking too hard about this,” Sam said with a laugh. Kelly nodded.

“I dunno man, maybe it’s a conspiracy,” John replied, his eyes lighting up but still glassy from the blunts. “Seems weird with all this government corruption and election shit going on. Can’t be a coincidence if you ask me,” he said matter-of-factly.

As stoned conversations typically do, the subject shifted about 10 more times before we finally arrived at the barn. John rolled down his window and entered the security code on the small pad. Within a few seconds, the gate began to swing open. We puttered up the hill and took a right toward the barn. I looked to the left, and saw the looming mansion atop the hill. I figured it belonged to whoever owned the property. Kelly never talked about it much. I took another toke and looked out the window.

There wasn’t a cloud to be seen, especially that late at night. The stars looked especially bright, and they cast an eerie glow on parts of the pasture. I could see the horses standing or trotting about. They seemed to be especially alert that evening.

We pulled to a stop in our usual spot, just in front of the barn. One dim light swung in the hallway, and a cold wind whistled through the breezeway. We all hopped out. Kelly and Sam shared a quick kiss, and she asked him to go to the far pasture and bring Cigar and Major down to be fed. I never really understood horse names. I guess I still don’t. Sam turned and began walking up the hill, the way we came, toward the far pasture.

“I’m gonna get their feed ready,” Kelly said, motioning to the near pasture. “Can you two go get the rest of the guys and start letting them come in?”

“Sure thing,” John responded before I could. “After I hit this blunt again.” Kelly smiled and rolled her eyes. John and I walked to the near pasture, passing the blunt and coughing as we walked. “I don’t see Jupiter,” I commented. “Are you blind?” was his response. “There it is!” He pointed upward and to the right. Sure enough, a blaze-orange ball hung in the sky, glowing warmly but seeming to produce no other light on the surface of the pasture.

“How did I miss that on our way in?” I asked, laughing. “I dunno, maybe because you’re a goddamn stoner, asshole,” John responded, shoving me. We exchanged a few “fuck you’s” before continuing. As we were about to open the gate and let the boys out for feeding, we heard shuffling and commotion behind us.

We turned to see Sam running down the hill, with no horses in tow. Panic was painted across his face, clearly visible even in the moonlight. “KELLY!” he yelled. “Something’s in the pasture!” Kelly came jogging from the barn proper. “What, you mean like horses?” she asked with a grin.

“No, dammit, something ELSE is in the pasture, and the horses aren’t moving!” Sam exclaimed, clearly upset. After a few moments of not knowing what to do, we grabbed the two large flashlights kept in the barn and began walking up the hill toward the far pasture.

“Was it moving? Was it a human? Are the horses hurt?” I asked, attempting to ask all the questions floating through my already hazy mind.

“I have no fucking idea man,” Sam responded. “All I know is it isn’t natural and the horses might need help.” That was enough to cause Kelly to break into a jog. We followed suit. After a minute of running through the cold wind, we began to approach the gate to the far pasture. Sam and John shined their flashlights at the pasture. We saw the figures of two horses, but they seemed to be frozen, asleep, or paralyzed; there was no movement. Kelly gasped and held her hand over her mouth. John, Sam and I approached a bit more, to where we were standing right on the outside of the gate.

Two steaming heaps of gore lay on the ground, about 20 feet from each other. Further back in the pasture, the figures of the horses stood silent and unmoving. John shined his light at them, and we realized they were being held up by some sort of cables that attached them to the ground. As if something had hollowed out the horses, but wished to preserve their skin and bone structure. I puked involuntarily, and the rest of the gang held their shirts over their noses to block out the horrific stench of the piles of innards. I felt a blinking sensation behind me, and turned to see what we thought was Jupiter pulsing with bright then dim light. After a few seconds, the rest of the stars in the sky began to follow the blinking-and-dimming pattern.

Sam was in full-blown hysterics. “What do we do? Jesus Christ, somebody fucking killed the horses. What if they’re still here? Should we leave?”

Kelly, though still visibly shaken, put a hand on Sam’s shoulder. “Let’s try and stay calm. Sam and I will go up to the house on the hill and ask them for help. This is their property, we’ll have them call the cops and they should be able to come make sense of all this. We’re in over our heads,” she said, surprisingly calm despite the situation. John and I exchanged glances.

“You two stay with the Jeep, we’ll be back in a few minutes,” Sam said. With that, they took off up the hill in a brisk run toward the house that overlooked both pastures and the barn. John and I walked carefully back to the Jeep. He tried to hand me a blunt, but I refused and told him to put it out. Now wasn’t the time.

“Did you see the fucking sky?” I asked, pointing up. “Jupiter and all the fucking stars were putting on a goddamn light show.” “I think you’re hallucinating,” John responded. “Jupiter is still up there and nothing is happening now,” he said. “I bet some sick fucks broke in the pasture and killed the horses. Maybe they have something against the family that owns the place, who knows?” For once in my life, I wished I wasn’t stoned.

I checked my phone again. This time, it opened up a webpage I had never seen before. No matter what I entered into the address bar, I was always redirected back to the same strange page. It was a smoky black background with simple, bold red text. “AWAKENED IS THE NEW, LIFT YOUR EYES AND REJOICE!” it read.

Before I could show my discovery to John, a gunshot rang across the pastures. We heard a shriek, and saw a tiny figure running back toward us. It was Kelly. She ran into the light of the barn near the Jeep and nearly collapsed. “Sam… somebody shot him…” she heaved before throwing up on the pavement. “Holy fucking shit!” I exclaimed. “Is he dead!?” “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t think so. We have to call the cops right now, I think he got shot in the leg and he can’t move!” I turned to John to see his response, but he was no longer standing near me. He had taken a few steps into the barn and was facing away from us, with arms outstretched. Kelly saw it too. We stared at him for a moment.

“Awakened is the new,” he said so softly we could barely hear him. He continued walking down the breezeway of the barn. From the other end, we saw several beings, roughly horse-shaped, walk into view and toward John. They had the skin of horses, but it bulged and bent in all the wrong places, as if something inside were wearing the horse’s skin as a costume.

John turned briefly toward us. “Lift your eyes and rejoice!” he screamed before running headlong into the fleshy beings.