The Farmhouse(short horror story)

“Dad! Mom! The Net’s down again!” Craig shouted from his room upstairs. “I was in the middle of an online game!”
“Seriously?” Tina cried in exasperation. “What kind of hillbilly town is this?!”
The Jones kids stormed down the stairs, Tina taking the lead in front of her younger brother.
“Oh, what a tragedy,” their mother said with obvious sarcasm, looking at them over the Saturday newspaper. She and their father sat in the living room in front of two cups of their morning coffee.
“Where did you find this place? On a map from the Stone Ages?” Tina asked as she tossed herself down in the couch beside her father.
“Yeah, pretty much,” their father said with a laugh. He took a sip of his coffee. “Come on, we’re away from the hustle and bustle and—”
“And working internet, and even proper cable,” Craig completed, resting his elbows against the back of the couch behind his sister. “Gee, thanks, Dad. I don’t know how we survived so long without this life of serenity.”
Their parents had grown up in rural areas not unlike this, and had hated the noise and chaos but Tina and Craig had grown up in the city.
Suddenly. there was a knock on the front door. Craig sighed, straightened up, and headed to the door before his parents could tell him to. He wasn’t in the mood for them to tell him anything.
He was glad he did. The girl in the yellow dress that stood at the door with a wide smile and dimpled cheeks looked thirteen, around his age. She was beautiful.
“Hi,” she said. “I’m Sarah. Your next door neighbor.”
Next door…? Craig thought. The old farm they moved to was on the outskirts of town. There were no houses near enough to qualify as ‘next door’...
“I’m Craig,” he managed to blurt out.
“Just thought I’d welcome you to town,” Sarah continued. “I’m sure you’ll love it here.”
“Who’s that at the door?” Mrs. Jones called out from inside.
“Just one of our—” He stopped. He’d turned away from the door just for a moment, and by the time he turned back…
Nothing. No one.
“What…?” He stepped out, looking left then right, but couldn’t find Sarah.
Weirded out, he closed the door. He wasn’t sure how he’d explain this to his parents.

---

He didn’t see her again until later.
The internet didn’t decide to grace the Jones’s home with its presence for quite a few hours, so Craig and Tina were extremely bored the rest of the day. They decided to head outside around midday. Craig took his 3DS, and Tina took her phone, trying to see if she could get some signal in this dead zone town.
They crossed the wide field to the edge of the woods. There, Tina managed to get a few bars, and could catch up on social media… albeit slowly. Craig sat on a boulder and powered up his 3DS.
“Hey,” Tina said suddenly. “This town just got featured on Twitter. Apparently, people have been disappearing in the woods. The police are investigating, but… Hmm… it started with… a girl, last year.”
But Craig was barely listening. Something had caught his eye.
Something… was watching them from the woods, surprisingly dark considering the time of day.
Is that…?
He closed down his 3DS, got to his feet, and headed towards the trees.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Tina said. She was only older by a year, but she still treated him like a kid. “Didn’t you hear what I said?”
“I… saw something,” Craig answered. “I think it’s her.”
“Her?”
“Sarah.”
“So, you’re going in the dark woods to find a girl,” Tina said. “You’re kidding, right? She must be pretty hot.”
“Shut up,” said Craig, as he stepped over a log and into the darkness of the canopy.
“Hold up, I’m not letting you go in there alone!” Following her big sister instincts, she pocketed her phone and rushed in after him.
The woods were strangely quiet. They heard no rustling, no animal sounds… It was eerie.
Just a few steps in, they saw her. Sarah. Standing in a small circle of unbroken sunlight that shone through the trees.
“Hi, again,” she said.
“Hey,” Craig answered.
“Um… who are you talking to?” Tina asked her brother.

“I’m glad you stopped by,” Sarah said, fiddling with the skirt of her yellow dress.
“Uh… sure, no problem…” Craig answered, starting to feel a little weirded out himself.
“Seriously, who are you talking to?” Tina asked again.
“What do you mean? Sarah. She’s right there,” Craig said.
“Craig…” Tina said, looking in the direction Craig was pointing, “there’s nobody there.”
“What?”
Sarah’s dimpled smile had stopped looking cute. She creepy. Malevolent, even.
Craig looked to his sister, then to Sarah. “She’s right there,” he repeated, almost shouting this time.
Sarah stepped forward, and his eyes remained trained on her, his sister’s eyes on him.
“I bet you took one look at me, and thought about one thing. Boys,” Sarah said, her voice becoming coarse. She lost her color as she stepped out of the light. Everything from her hair to her dress suddenly turned a shade of gray.
Sarah lifted a hand and touched the branch of a nearby shrub, causing it to bend.
“What was that?” Tina exclaimed. “That bush just moved on its own!”
Craig was too stunned to say anything. But his mind was racing. “Let’s get out of here,” he muttered. His heart was beating as if he’d already started running.
Beside him, suddenly, his sister screamed.

---

Tina was in the woods. But she was not Tina anymore.
She had been led into the woods by a boy from her school, a boy she liked. A boy who she thought liked her. He took what he wanted from her. It was her first time, and she wasn’t ready, but he forced her. When he was done, he left her all alone, clutching her yellow dress.
She tried to get up and walk back home, but she was tired and hurt. She tripped and fell, being impaled by a the sharp, rotting branch of a fallen tree. And she was never seen or heard from again.
Alive.

---

This couldn’t be real. Craig was being strangled. By his sister. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t fight back.
He could do nothing but stare at the rage in her eyes as his vision grew dim.

And he was gone forever.

---

Tina was standing in the middle of the field outside the Jones’s home with no memory of how she got there. She didn’t even remember leaving the house. She had a strip of dirty yellow cloth in her hands with dried twigs and leaves stuck to it.
What the hell…?
She dropped the cloth, and headed straight for the house. She had to tell her brother what had happened.