A Short Stay at Abermen Farm (Short Story)

By the sole creek bordering Abermen Farm and its unofficial sister of Saxon descent, a thinly worn farmhand watched the stream, its riffles, and the soft flow trickling eastward into white pines cumulus atop undulating hills. The creek didn’t travel far, or wide, but it served the farms, and too their narrow existence upon an unforgiving land. The man studied some more and listened to the forest begetting itself. Just beyond him, near the fields, sat the farmhouse nestled between two contorted aspens. The world spun as softly as the trees swayed around him, deceptive in its speed when governed by gravity. His heart calmed with nature, but only reveries fortunate, and when he came back to the world, the silence was doubtful, and only the birds spoke of the dying crops. Walking back to the Abermen’s where he’d been residing, he gazed at the neighbor's property but saw nobody, and further pondered the quietude of an autumn of sickness. 

Running, drifting, now fading: means of movement he knew as kin had betrayed him, and as the years tailed him, detained the man, and wracked him at the knees, settle down he did not, and foundation was sought elsewhere, though fail he did in havens and homes, in love and life.

“I’m going to town to see my wife, I trust you to watch things, take care of it while I’m gone,” he remembered the old man’s words, spoken just a week prior when he saddled his mule and raced as fast as the jackass willed it. Horses were a commodity, and their only steed had up and rotted in the ere of fall, suppose by the same illness the old man’s wife had been stricken with, and subsequently hauled into town by neighbors who now kept inside. This thought hit him in both temples, followed by a headache, and once again, although this time with more than a glance of apprehension, he stared at the samaritan’s farmhouse a stone’s throw past the creek. Old man Abermen’s wife, how was she faring if not dead? Surely the lesions had begun to fester, inflamed, and hot as embers writhing her insides. Her fever had been swift in its ascent, and Mr. Abermen, his senses drifted with her, leaving the farm to a roving stranger. There was a tendency in the effete man, to see things that Wilhelm discerned as caverns. 

“Strange, rather strange,” he whispered between his lips and continued his path back to the humble shack where he’d stayed. Hanging from the exterior, right next to the opaque window, tools of the trade hung jagged: sickles, spades, and sheers. He felt it rather pointless, to tend to crops that were sure to wither with the months, this farm too, he thought, but still, he honored the old man’s wishes and fought the urge to steal everything and run. The first season’s batch of pumpkins had decomposed prematurely, and it would unlikely yield another before winter’s frost. He was to attempt it regardless and considered himself at the dead end of a dirt road to nowhere. A promise was made, however wavering, he’d given the old man his word, the elderly farmer who placed his property at a stranger’s feet: a man named Wilhelm, a drifter in search of four walls to shelter him. Good a place as any to call it quits with his aged aspirations. 

The afternoon passed, and so continued his worry, and his work, to keep his mind off the idea of expansive decay. One of the trellises had fallen, and another askew, so he propped them upright and dug them deeper. Nobody left the neighbor’s house, neither in or out. So he kept his eyes keen and scrutinized the property beyond their side of the stream. From the garden, he couldn’t hear the faint flow of the water, but far off over the umber trees, he could see carrion birds circling the forest like bats of day.

Washing his hands in the creek, the water was clear to the rocks, and shine too did the evening sun on its surface, nevertheless, his reflection could not be seen, but trees shimmered in the moving mirror. Wilhelm stood up and edged the streambank, walking a line along it; the crows were nowhere in the sky now, mayhap they flew down and began to pick at whatever remains called to them.

Every fiber in his threadbare soul wished to step across, and this temptation only intensified the more he looked back at the house, ruminating on the stillness that was. Wilhelm shook the feeling and continued about his duties, removing malformed pumpkins, and thinning the patch and any rotten membranes. Roguing had to be done as well, and as he picked up a pumpkin to relocate it to compost, pests scattered, unrecognizable to him, wearing the tiniest red marks upon their shining backs. Irked, he shuddered away and tossed the blackening pumpkin on the midden heap. Despite the scientific complexity of a genocidal, crop-snuffing disease unbeknownst to him, and an infection perchance spreading through the geography, and the populace, he assumed his station again. Was there some entity that transcended life, a morbid creator punishing the world for his misdeeds? As a commanding officer may his men for one soldier’s insubordinate tongue to instill discipline in the face of all else which seeks to force its hand. There was a simpler form of this notion in his headspace, though it didn’t articulate as such, Wilhelm felt this as a cumbersome weight within him and soon after, scatter had the thought like the bugs of Abermen’s crops. 

The russet moon suspended oblate above hilltops resembling mountains at night, and the fall winds carried leaves from their mother’s; the dark was fireless, mountaineers hid from view, or so Wilhem thought from the window of his shack as he wiped the glass down and saw black. No one had ridden this way from town, and even the woods had failed to speak that dusk. He searched in his mind for the word desolation, yet he couldn’t find it. The floorboards creaked long, cringing notes at his feet, and the tools that hung outside clinked with each tap of the shoddily planked shack. He sat on the borrowed bed, only to spring up a moment after and lope toward the window. With one stride, he peered back into the dark. Out there, somewhere, he’d pieced fragments of a life he’d never lived. As he closed his eyes and dreamt of vanishing, he heard somebody yell for assistance, and torchlight cut the trees from the road. Accompanied by the clunking of horse hooves, the man on the horse raised his voice.

“Anybody home?! Hello?!” The man shouted, and Wilhelm could see him riding forward with a lantern swinging from his hand. It went quiet again as the man stopped the horse by the front door of the Abermen Farm, and looked around the darkness, scanning it before settling his eyes on the drifter’s shack. The horse nickered, and then Wilhelm realized it was no horse, but rather the donkey old man Abermen called his own, and the same one he’d ridden into town a week ago now saddled by a possible ruffian. Its hairs were muted gray, and its mane spiked to a point. Hereafter, Wilhelm thought about his choices and weighed them accordingly. Is he armed? Wilhelm wondered, and when the boards creaked below him, the man in the light shot his glare toward the shack, and the donkey began to move with its rider. He didn’t appear to have a weapon and there was no rifle on his back or within a scabbard, this relieved Wilhelm, if only slightly, and he grabbed a hoe that rested against the corner of his dwellings. He took a deep breath, pushed the door ajar, and peaked out as the night air met his face; the man was staring right at him, and atop the mule he’d surely stolen, his glare was level with Wilhelm’s.

“Who are you? Speak!” Wilhelm demanded, leaping out the door to meet the man. He was startled to the nerve, and the man recoiled in response; Wilhelm shook the hoe in the black eyes and shouted again. 

“Woah, please, calm yourself! Why the hell are you still here? Whole world’s gone to shit! Good god, man!” The stranger screamed and covered his face; he seemed to be genuinely terrified but Wilhelm didn’t budge, and he wagged the hoe once more, ordering the small, suspicious man off the mule. 

“Just watching after my hide, that’s all,” Wilhelm said and spat on the ground next to him before gesticulating the man by tool toward the shack. The door was ajar, and the candlelight burned through to them when the winds began to carry.

“It’s cold out here,” the man’s voice quivered as he spoke, and he clicked his tongue for the mule to follow him. 

“We’re not going anywhere until you tell me where you got the donkey. I recognize that spot—right there on its hind.” Wilhelm pointed with the hoe, and the mule stood with eyes closed, its tail spinning circles beneath the moon. 

“I… the man who owns the farm, he told me to take the donkey back…” the man spoke yet conveyed no conviction as if stumbling for an alibi.

“He what? Why would he do such a thing?” Wilhelm shook the hoe, surveying the darkness beyond them but never letting his vision stray for too long, alas the man slips away and daggers his heart. He briefly considered letting the man run, but the more he stood there the more his presence upset Wilhelm. 

“Okay, he didn’t say anything about the donkey… he’s dead! I told you, the whole town has gone mad!” The man seemed hesitant to shout such happenings of chaos, and the tools dangling from the shack hit the ground and he backed into it. 

“What happened, tell me now!” Wilhelm smacked the dirt beside him and it stuck into the infertile soil.

“I stole the donkey, okay! Don’t kill me! The doctor died, and everyone went wild, it happened so fast!” The dirty man slumped against the wall, submitting himself to the floor. Wilhelm could see blood on his cotton sleeves, it wasn’t more than a cut’s worth, but it kept him at arms when he picked up the hoe again.

“How did he die? You fancy telling me that? You’re running my patience thin, I don’t know why I’m even bothering with you. Just run! Back the way you came, And leave the donkey, you two-bit thief!” Wilhelm jutted his chin out, imploring him off the property. A fraction of him, a large and rather prudent piece wanted to bolt off into the darkness and leave the place behind, but his stubborn curiosity had bested him, albeit a morbid hunch. Wilhelm had been a petty thief once, and considering such a past, he went to put his weapon down when the man flinched, and hence Wilhelm took up arms again. 

“He shot himself square in the face… everyone was huddling around, houndin’ him, and he took his leave and shot himself!” The stranger clamored for mercy, squirming against the shack. 

“Where’s Mr. Abermen? Is he dead too?” Wilhelm cocked an eyebrow. “He’s dead I tell you! Please, we need to go. Old man Abermen, his wife, they’re all sick!” He continued, rambling and pleading for a reprieve, but upon bracing himself against a stump, he erupted with a fit of coughs, waving his hand fore and aft. 

“And how do I know you didn’t kill him yourself?”

“God dammit!” The stranger shouted for the final time and despite his apparent fatigue, he lurched from his slumped position and grabbed hold of WIlhelm’s ankles.

“I just wanted to nab a few things and be on my way, god damn you!” He bellowed, and shortly after, overpowered Wilhelm to the ground with him, coughing in his face and wrestling the farmhand. Slick with sweat, and hardly an opponent, the stranger flopped about; Wilhelm framed his forearm against the man’s chin and postured himself to his feet. It was then the febrile man reached for the hoe beside them, as soon as his palm gripped the handle, he wretched and fell from Wilhelm’s grip who tried to catch him, but he slid through his fingers and hit his head against the crushed stone. He wasn’t sure if it was the iron from the rust, or the blood pouring from his softened skull that exuded such a familiar smell. As he vomited up his insides and bled from his coal-black eyes, his beard was frothy, and he reached for Wilhelm’s ankle in a last attempt at anything. 

“No… no! Are you okay?!” Wilhelm raised his voice to its peak, and it echoed off over the hills, and into the darkness of a night that was now burning. Far off, the forest scorched itself and lit every shadow orange in the presence of the dying man. The creek glistened red, refracting the light of distant flames. Without planning, Wilhelm picked up the man, leveraging him onto his shoulders. He figured the least he could do was provide him a bed to rot on or burn had he not gathered the functions to walk. This didn’t last long, and the nameless man began to shake, coughing, and foaming at the mouth. Wilhelm kicked the door open and tossed the paling man on the bed, he trashed, and struggling to speak muttered, “Water…” 

“Water?” Wilhelm asked before putting the man’s request together; he headed out the door and fetched a bucket of water. The heat had risen in minutes, and when he looked out to the forest of fire, what he could not see, he could hear all too well: the cries of animals, more human than crow.

“Fire… they’re burning it all,” Wilhelm lipped the words as he made his way back to the shack, bucket in hand. The air was without cold although the fire was miles out, he felt it, and he saw the heat too, orange and luminous hazed by shimmers. Opening the door, the man didn’t react or turn his head to meet him; his shirt was off, and on the ghastly skin of the stranger whom he knew not his name, Wilhelm could see the sores that crossed his skin, and his eyes unwavering in death. One arm was limp, hanging off the bedside, and when Wilhelm realized the man had passed, by wounds or infection, or both, he set the pale down and stepped back out into the fire-lit night. He gathered in a sack a hundred or so pumpkin seeds from their bins, a singular tool to dig the dirt, and looked toward the donkey that still sat, snorting and unperturbed by the changing of seasons before it. Wilhelm sensed the dead man was still alive, he wasn’t sure why he thought such a pointless thought, because when he went to check on his corpse, it hadn’t gotten up, so Wilhelm shut the door and ran the consideration of suicide through his skull. It wasn’t hard to shake the suggestion of killing himself, and despite having dreamt of it for years, he continued with pain and seldom vindication.

As the night burned on, and the fires crept up the hills, down roadsides, and along the rivers, Wilhelm retrieved his few things and saddled the donkey. He considered stealing the mule a necessity and upon this deed, did not reflect on the parallels of his actions. The flames were soft from afar, near noiseless as they charred the valleys and above, a vista never to be forgotten by the few who witnessed it. Grabbing hold of the reins, he looked back at the neighbor’s property right past the creek; overcome with a renewed curiosity and a deep sigh, he breathed the lukewarm air and trudged down the road. Birds flew from their perches, and animals, presumably humans too, made their exodus from their homes in the deep glow of the night. The windows of their house were lined with a week’s layer of dust, and the firelight yonder illuminated the wooden interior. 

“Anybody home?! Fires! Fire’s outside!” Wilhelm bellowed as he knocked on the door, once, then twice in succession. But nobody answered, and upon staring back into the window, he noticed a bloated corpse lying near the hearth. With no more time to think or unwillingness to ponder further in the proximity of decay, he sprinted for the mule and took the reins. Abermen farm was behind him, the flames before him, and so he wandered again, the smell of ashen Earth, the pungent rot of flora in a world rootless.