Someone critique my story please!

I've been spending a lot of time on r/nosleep and I was inspired to write a story. At this point I don't feel like I can add more to this particular part, but I think I'd like to make it a series and build off this story more. Putting myself in the reader's shoes, I would always wonder what happened. I'd want to know. I'd love some feedback!

Summer Girl

I've always been a summer girl. As far back as I can remember. It's hard to pretend you're a mermaid any other season of the year when you're a farm girl. But summer; oh, summer. Days spent at the creek, the river, and as I grew older, various ponds with friends.

The transition from summer to autumn always left me with a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. There were nights I'd make myself physically ill thinking about it. It's always been a rough transition for me and I never knew why.

All of my relationships ended during autumn. Whether they lasted six months or two years didn't matter. When I met my husband; we started dating in the autumn and as the years went by, I began to view it differently than I had before. In his world, it was a time of bonfires and parties with friends. As time went on, it became a season of enjoyment for me. I started looking forward to the chilly mornings and chillier evenings. As our lives changed and grew together, autumn became symbolic. We married in October. Bought our forever house in September the following year. We moved in on a gorgeous October day. Thus began the life we'd always dreamed of.

The house itself was nothing special. It had some nice touches, but it was nothing like the house we'd always dreamed of. The land though, that was another story altogether. We had acres. And acres. Trees upon trees. Gentle rolling hills, valleys, hollers. There were meadows, small clearings really, dotted throughout the trees. We studied the maps for hours. Plot map, topo map, any map we could find with our property on it. We weren't allowed to walk it before buying, so we tried to orient ourselves with the lay of the land through maps. After years of living away from the country, my heart sang and I was home again.

We weren't so far out that our location proved to be a hardship. We had rural mail delivery. The nearest town was maybe a fifteen-minute drive. It had all the essentials: grocery store, gas station, library, parts store, feed store, post office, hardware, mechanic shop. It was definitely a change from being in the city with perfect cell signal, super marts, and high-speed internet though. Here cell signal was spotty at best and nonexistent at its worst. We hadn't been there two weeks before my husband started researching how to lease a portion of the land for a cell tower. He made calls and they were starting construction on a tower the next week. I had no idea how he did it, what he knew to research, or how he got them here so fast. Regardless, we soon had a good enough signal we had service all the time. I had already decided before he got the tower put in that I could spend a couple hours here and there at the library researching. I didn't see any reason to change my plan.

My first solo trip to town I signed up for a library card and then I got busy. I knew the generals about gardening, but I wanted more information. What not to plant beside onions. Best time to plant seedlings is sprouted indoors. Stuff I hadn't paid enough attention to in my youth. The librarian, an older lady with gray hair and glasses, proved to be a wealth of information. It was long before I stopped looking at the books and started taking notes from her. She told me how to get our soil tested to determine what nutrients our garden might need. She gave me tips on building a fence to keep out hungry bunnies and raccoons. It wasn't long before she was sending me to the feed store to learn from the old farmers that ran in and out all day. I learned so much those first months. And then winter set in.

My husband and I slowly settled into a rhythm. My early mornings were spent sipping coffee, watching him bustle about while he got ready for work. From the time he left until the time he got home the day was mine. I got used to not getting ready for a job and relaxed into the life of a homemaker. Life was perfect. We spent our free time that first winter clearing brush and plotting fence lines. We weren't like sitcom couples; we could work in perfect harmony all day without snipping at each other. We spent those working hours in amicable silence or boisterous chatter. I preferred the days of chatter over the days of silence. The silent days were almost foreboding. When we weren't talking the woods were eerily quiet. There was no scuffling in the underbrush alluding to rabbits in the area. Very little birdsong. We saw few tracks when there was snow. It always seemed as though the small creatures were absent. I often wondered if we would even need a fence around any garden we planted. We weren't far from the house that first day I heard the knocking. It sounded like someone was banging a large stick against a tree. My husband didn't hear it, but after it happened four more times I told him I was cold and wanted to be warm. That was all the encouragement he needed to head for home. I continued to hear the knocking the rest of the winter. My husband heard it on occasion, too. There was no rhyme or reason to it. It seemed completely random. I never told him about the nights I'd hear it followed by a keening howl. Bear hated those sounds. He'd hide in our bedroom those nights, trembling.

I wanted chickens. I wanted cows. I wanted goats. Hell, I even wanted pigs. At the first sign of spring, we started what small repairs were needed to make the barn habitable for the hoards of animals I dreamed of adding. After that was done, my husband built me a chicken coop to prepare for the spring hatch. I wasn't sure how many birds we'd lose to predators over time, so twelve seemed a good number to start with. I decided a trip into town was necessary to ask the librarian. So I went only to discover a younger woman had taken her spot. My librarian friend had died over the winter. I asked for her address. I knew she lived by us somewhere and wanted to pay my respects to her husband. I was told he died the same month she did. I felt the loss deeply. She was my first friend in this town. With the news of her death heavy on my heart, I turned toward the feed store in search of answers to my chicken question. They were happy to help, the owners and two farmers who were lazing about inside. I inquired as to my favorite farmer who should have been at the store that time of day. More loss, making my heart even heavier. There was no one at his house to pay my respects to either. I don't know which made me sadder: the fact that they weren't around anymore or the fact that I couldn't even tell their families how much of an impact they'd had on me in such a short time.

Not long after that, I purchased my first cattle. Six head. It seemed like a good starting number. While I was buying feed for them one day I ran into a guy and ended up coming home with a pregnant sow, a collie puppy, and two barn cats. By the time I got home and showed my husband, he just shook his head and laughed.

As my husband had to travel to work an hour each way every day, a small price to pay for country living, all of the farm duties fell to me during the week. That wasn't a problem since I was the one that brought home all the animals in the first place; they were my responsibility. Weekends meant I had help and got all the morning chores done earlier than any other days. After chores, we'd spend the rest of our days exploring our property. We hadn't ventured far when we cleared brush and ran fence lines. There was so much to explore.

Our first discovery was an orchard. I was almost certain it was apple trees, but I wanted to stop for a rest and check to see if I was right. I could barely contain my excitement while we ate our picnic lunch of sandwiches and chips. Being an avid apple pie fan, I could tell my husband was excited, too, even if he didn't jump up and down in glee like I did when we first saw it. There were eleven trees total. Each tree was carved with a letter. L I A F C E M O S L T They were not brand new carvings, but not ancient either. We didn't really know what to think of it but guessed maybe they were the types of apples each tree grew. I wrote the letters down in my traveler's notebook so I could research apple varieties later. Despite the carvings all the trees appeared healthy, not requiring anything from us, so we piled into our Ranger and continued on. We found the creek that day and several little branches (what most people call streams) that flowed into it. The weather wasn't quite warm enough to explore the creek further, but I was excited to find a decent sandbar our first day exploring. I could already see our little red headed children laughing and splashing there. It wasn't long after that we decided to call it a day. Back home we fell into our usual weekend evening routine. After cooking and eating together, we snuggled in bed for a movie. Bear, the collie I brought home from the feed store, lay on his rug at the foot of our bed. If I knew then what I know now, I would have raised his as a livestock guardian dog. Hindsight is 20/20 they say.

We didn't go out that Sunday opting instead to spend the day in bed exploring each other. The next month worth of weekends flew by without any more exploration. We were too busy gearing up for our first summer bonfire. The bonfire came and went and was a huge success. Our friends declared our property the new hangout. Of course, they'd all already been here at one point or another, but it's an entirely different thing when everyone's schedules line up and we're all together. On fire weekends we didn't explore. We didn't want to be tired for the evening festivities. So our first summer went.

Some Saturdays my husband stayed back home working on various projects while I explored. I didn't worry going out by myself; Bear was a great companion. My husband always insisted I take my pistol and shotgun anyway. Just in case, he always told me. I never found anything strange on my conquests alone. Bobcat scat, deer beds, wildlife. General forestry stuff.

It was when we were together we found the weird stuff. Another orchard. This time cherry. Those same random letters carved into the trees. C A L F I T O S E L M I never did find apple varieties for each of those letters. There are plenty of cultivars, sure. There are also lots that aren't native or they're new enough strains they couldn't have been planted here and gotten so big already. After finding that second orchard I wondered if I'd mistakenly labeled those first trees apple instead of cherry. I didn't. The letters didn't make sense for cherry varieties either. The next discovery was a foundation in a ring of pine trees. It was big, it was old, and it felt like we shouldn't be there. It just didn't feel right. I didn't feel right. I got sick that night after we got home. I spent hours in the bathroom hugging the toilet crying.

When we went out the next time, Bear went with us. We skirted around that old house foundation and ran smack into a cemetery. The stones looked weathered, but there were no dates. Only letters. F E S T O L A M I L C We pressed on that day and came to the southernmost point of our property: the railroad tracks. I loved hearing that train roll by in the night. Took my husband ages to get used to the whistle. Not me. We could hear it from our house when I was a little girl. Then I lived a block from tracks when I first moved out on my own. It was a soothing sound to me.

Knowing there would be no trains coming through, we decided we'd walk the tracks for a bit. Dumb I know, but for some reason, the trains only came at night. I'll be the first to admit I know next to nothing about them. However, it always puzzled me why they'd blow their whistles through our property when there was no crossing in sight. And why they only came at night. It was odd, to say the least. Bear refused to get out of the Ranger at the tracks. I didn't worry much. He was trained well enough I knew he wouldn't run away. My husband, the dog whisperer. We were only a short way down the track when Bear started whining and growling. When I looked back at him he was on the floorboard hackles raised and cowering at the same time. My first thought was predators. I knew there were bobcats around. I just hadn't managed to see one yet. When I turned back to my husband to tell him we should go, he was standing perfectly still. His face was pale, gaze focused on the ground. There was white everywhere. It wasn't just the rocks the tracks were laid on. Bones. There were bones everywhere. Big. Small. Broken. Whole jaw bones. Small animal skulls. More walking showed much of the same. That section of track was littered with them. I always assumed animals knew to stay out of the way, but surely there were some casualties to the big engines that roared by. Not like this though. I never imagined this. We didn't know what to think. Frankly, I was becoming uncomfortable and agitated. We needed to leave. Now. Walking back my husband noticed something we'd missed before. A large rock, pale pink like that of a quartz memorial stone. It looked relatively new compared to the other stones we'd seen that day. On it was carved three words: FALL IT COMES

The leaves on the trees were starting to change. Shades of golden yellow. Just a hint of burnt orange. Gorgeous colors painted by nature. My heart was racing. It would be FALL soon.