I’m not a rancher. I want to say that right now, because I know next to nothing about animals, about raising them, or anything. A few months ago, I was looking for work. My friend and his family are ranchers…and well, why not? I thought it would be an interesting work experience. I gave him a call and took him up on his offer.
Now, I feel scared and angry.
I don’t know why I feel this strange anger. It bubbles in my chest, makes my blood boil, and my body tense. I can’t get over how many times my body cracks every time I move. It feels like I am stranded at sea, sharks circling me and just…waiting. Every now and then, one of them nudges the boat, reminding me that they’re still there. That they can smell me.
I guess I’m angry at the hopelessness of the situation.
And the thing is, my first day was normal. Even my second! Carry this, follow me, hammer this. Basic manual labor. There’s a lot to running a ranch, especially one that works with sheep, cows, and even a few horses. I don’t count the chickens - they don’t cause that much trouble.
But…my thoughts are running in circles, I need to be more coherent, or I never will sort this out.
Okay.
My friend’s name is Cade, Cade Finch. Not his real name, but I think that’s for the best. He’s a great guy and has always looked out for me. His family is just as kind. I was welcomed like a distant, but beloved relative when we arrived on the ranch. Hugs, food, and some time to settle in before work the next day.
The Finch family consists of Aydin, the father - Rachel, and the mother - Cade, Zoe, and Bradley their kids.
The next day, I was practically eager to pull on my freshly bought work boots. I didn’t mind carrying heavy things or running back and forth, I was like a machine. I think I wanted to impress them at first. Show them that I wasn’t just ‘city-folk’ and that I could keep up. Only later did I realize that it’s all about endurance - strength and speed come later.
That first night, I joined the family by a fire Bradley had set up. Aydin was smoking a cigarette with coffee. He said he usually drank coffee and smoked after sunset because he didn’t want to get up in the middle of the night. Not sure what that means.
“What do you think of the work?” Bradley asked me, staring into the fire.
“It’s good, I could get used to it,” I smiled. For a moment, I wondered if I was just being polite or if I meant it. “That’s a lot of cows. How many do you have?”
“Sixty-six, last I count,” Cade answered.
“Sixty-five,” Aydin corrected. “Calf died while you were away.”
Cade nodded simply. It was so matter-of-fact I couldn’t understand it. I would come to learn that animals dying on a ranch was bad, but not uncommon. Chickens especially. Cade explained this to me while Aydin went through a checklist of end-of-day chores with Bradley. Eventually, I just listened to them go through it while I stared across the plains.
“The barn?”
“Clean, locked.”
“The windows?”
“Clean, locked.”
“The one in the-”
“Took care of it. Just needed a tightening.”
“Hm.”
With those checks out of the way, we settled down. Not much talking, but we didn’t need to speak. We all felt the same way - tired. We always made our way inside before it got too dark.
The second day was much the same, although that’s when the working pains started to settle in. The only difference that I can think of is that we didn’t need to feed the sheep - Bradley took care of it while Cade showed me how to steer the cattle on a horse.
All-in-all, those were two good days.
-
The third day began with a scream - Zoe’s scream.
I slept in the same room as Cade - we heard the screaming coming from outside. It was still dark out, the morning sun a ways off. We both jumped out of bed, put on our boots, and rushed outside. Bradley was already outside. I could see him through the open door, dragging his sister back across the porch and inside.
As soon as they crossed the threshold, Zoe’s scream turned into crying.
“I tried! I did!” Zoe sobbed. “I didn’t-didn’t want him t-t-to come.”
“Well, that’s your own damn fault!” Bradley snapped, throwing his sister aside once they were indoors.
Zoe slumped on the floor. I think the landing hurt - it shocked her out of her crying for a moment. When she resumed, it was this pitiful weeping broken up with “I’m sorry” when she could get a lungful of speaking air.
I felt scared and awkward. I wanted to go to her side, but Bradley looked furious - murderous. I don’t know what she did, but she clearly regretted it. I just didn’t know what to do - I was in the dark.
“Who was it?” Cade asked calmly.
“That Kevin guy from down the road!” Bradley yelled. “Stupid bastard…just wanted a roll in the hay, sis?! Thought ‘What the hell? Let’s go for it!’, right?”
“No!” Zoe yelled. “I tried to stop him, I-!”
“Just another poor fuck after a blowy-from-Zoe, yeah?” Bradley shouted over her.
“Enough!” Aydin yelled behind us, making both Zoe and I jump. He was standing on the third step, sporting a wife-beater and tightening his jeans. “Zoe, room, now! Now!”
Zoe got to her feet and walked past me and her father. While I made way for her, Aydin did no such thing, forcing her to sidle past and look him in the eye as she made her way up the stairs. When she was out of sight and her footsteps fading, I heard Rachel Finch comforting Zoe. I was feeling more and more awkward by the second.
Aydin’s eyes settled on mine.
“Go to your room, son,” he told me, in his usually calm voice. “This isn’t your business.”
“Not yet,” Bradley muttered.
“No, not yet,” Aydin nodded sadly.
“What’s going on?” I asked, looking mostly at Cade. His eyes were on the ceiling as if searching for the words. “What happened?”
Aydin walked up to me, placed a hand on my shoulder, and directed me to the stairs before walking towards the open door. Bradley followed and soon Cade did as well. Before he closed the door, he looked back at me.
“Later, man,” he said. “Just stay inside. It’s okay.”
I could tell he was lying. I had known him long enough and I also had the common sense to know that nothing about the situation was okay. Still, I didn’t follow. I went up the stairs, hearing the soft cries of Zoe through the walls as I made my way to my room.
The warm, cabin-like interior suddenly felt a lot colder.
Did I go to bed? Fall asleep? No. For me, it was a slow burn. Fear seemed to dwell at the back of my mind, imagination built on it and with each passing minute I didn’t see or hear the other Finchs, the more unsettled I became. I started biting my nails again, which I haven’t done since I stopped smoking.
My leg wouldn’t stop shaking.
-
The sun was rising above the horizon by the time they returned. I heard them down the stairs, so I walked down to see them. Bradley was missing, but Cade and Aydin were there. Aydin was smoking a cigarette and Cade was chugging a large glass of water. The two looked tired, as if they worked a whole day already.
“You get any rest?” Aydin asked me.
“No.”
“Hm, thought not. We will keep it light today. Get ready and meet me at the sheep pen.”
Aydin clapped his hands together and rubbed them as he trudged towards the door. The mesh door clattered against the wall as he made his way outside. Cade rolled his eyes and walked with me back to the room. I was in disbelief.
“What the fuck was that?” I hissed.
“Don’t make a thing of it,” Cade said. “It’s normal around here, is all.”
“I don’t know what ‘it’ is, is all!” I told him, speaking with his country accent. “What the hell happened?”
“Man, I don’t know what to tell you,” Cade said.
As I got ready for the day, he tried to find the words. What came out was a mess of “I don’t know”s and “just don’t”s.
“Hey, you know how cows sometimes just die?” Cade said hopefully.
“No, Cade, I’m not a fucking rancher - just tell me.”
“There’s no real reason they die, they just do. It’s not like they are hungry, or thirsty, or have a disease or anything, They just stand one moment, a little weird sometimes later, and then they keel over - dead.”
“Why?”
“Like I said, no real reason. It’s like…they get really, really scared. Shocked. Disorientates them, messes with their system and they just die.”
“Like scared to death? Seriously?”
“It happens. Look it up.”
I did when the signal wasn’t so spotty. Bovine Stress Syndrome…or Bovine Sudden Death Syndrome. I couldn’t believe what I was reading. It was like reading that article about some people just spontaneously combusting. At least that was so rare it became a myth, but the cow thing wasn’t that uncommon.
While I helped on the ranch, I kept pushing to learn more. What I learned was that it wasn’t that uncommon on the Finch ranch. In the past year alone they had twelve such deaths. Yet, it didn’t seem to just hit the cows. Sheep and horses as well, possibly the chickens, but again, they weren’t sure about the chickens. Those things just died.
It always happened at night. There was no telling which night, it just…happened.
Eventually, my questioning led me to ask what that had to do with last night.
“It’s not only the cattle and sheep that die in the night, man,” Cade said. “Whatever does, it does it to people too.”
As he said that, my eyes reached the middle distance, where I saw a dancing flame. I saw a figure by the fire - Bradley. He stood there with a half-dismantled motorcycle I didn’t recognize, tossing things into the flames and then picking up a shovel. The air around him warped with the heat haze.
My heart pounded in my ears.
“Let’s call it a day,” Aydin said behind me. I didn’t jump, but the beating of my heart stopped for a moment. “Rachel’s made some peach cobbler.”
-
It was a pretty scene. The dining room sat between the kitchen and the living room in this large open room. Afternoon light cascaded through the windows. White sheer curtains flowed in the slight breeze. The silence, the colors, the smells of nature, and the warm peach cobbler could do nothing to dispel the tension.
“You have enough, son?” Aydin asked. He didn’t care. Maybe he looked at me seriously, but he didn’t take the question seriously.
“Yes, sir,” I said. “It’s really good, Mrs. Finch.”
“Thank you,” Rachel Finch said kindly. She always wore a smile, but her eyes were tired.
Aydin nodded, happy with the interaction, and took another slice. A few minutes later, the front door opened and Bradley walked in. His hands were a mixture of colors, from grease to dirt. He walked over to the kitchen sink to wash his hands, pulling a rag from his pants and using it to dry.
Bradley sat down beside Zoe and took a slice of cobbler from the tray with his hands, using his other to catch any crumbs. His hands were still dirty, but to him, they were clean enough.
“I…” Zoe began. Aydin’s jaw locked so fast and hard I heard it click. “I saw it.”
Everybody stopped chewing at this. Rachel Finch’s smile was gone, but the rest of her face was unchanged. She just started at the tablecloth.
“It had its back to me,” she continued. “It’s like a man, a g-gray man…long black hair and-”
“Stop talkin’, dear,” Rachel said.
It seemed Mrs. Finch had as much control as Aydin in these moments. Zoe fell silent, her bottom lip shaking as tears pooled around her eyelids. She clamped her mouth shut tight and a tear broke loose.
“It didn’t see you, so you should be fine,” Rachel said.
“How would you know?” Aydin growled.
“I saw it too,” Rachel said, meeting his eyes with equal ferocity. “I’m still standin’, ain’t I?”
“When did you see it?”
“Months ago, I don’t remember the time.”
“Rach, why didn’t you-?”
“There’s no need to make a fuss. It only takes one anyway.”
“We don’t know that for sure!” Aydin said, slamming his fist on the table.
With that, everyone but Aydin and I stood up from the table. I watched the four of them slide their chairs in and take their plates to the kitchen. All except Bradley, who walked back outside with cheeks full of peach cobbler. Aydin just shook his head and looked over at me. I must have looked funny to him because he smiled for a brief moment.
“Raise your voice at the table and that’s it,” Aydin said, slicing his hand through the air as if cutting an invisible rope. “Puts a stop to fights before they start. Damn family books she reads taught her that one.”
“It works, don’t it?” Rachel said, stopping behind Aydin and squeezing his shoulder with her free hand. She looked over at me. “And don’t worry, dear…just don’t go out at night, ‘kay?”
She kept her eyes on mine until I nodded.
My leg was shaking again.
-
I struggled to fall asleep that night.
The sounds of the Finch home stopped my breathing at the time. When I heard something creak, I imagined the front door being pushed open. A soft touch somewhere in the darkness became a delicate footstep. Every sound was a monster, a gray creature with long black hair. It made me sweat and the sweat made me itch.
That whole Bovine Sudden Death thing didn’t apply to sheep, or horses, or people. There was no way that Cade found all of this normal. That the whole Finch family found it normal! It was fucking insanity, yet once again, they treated it so normally, as if they were discussing bad weather or petty crime.
Animals, sure, you can grow numb to that. But people? How many times would someone have to die for that to happen?
I wanted to look outside. It was like standing at the edge of a cliff and the thought of jumping just pops in your mind. Only, I wasn’t doing something like jumping off a cliff. I was looking out a window. Something normal.
In saying that, I found myself out of bed and standing by the window, looking at the curtain. I hesitated for the longest time before my hand finally pushed the curtain far enough to give me some of the outside world to look at. The sky had painted the world midnight blue, the shadows, and silhouettes of objects breaking it up into this distorted blue image of reality.
I saw the barn, I saw the fences. I saw lumps and shapes of rocks, bushes, and maybe even sleeping animals. The world shifted slightly, slowly.
Yet, nothing outside moved.
But the window did.
Ever so slowly, it raised. I wanted to lower my eyes, my peripheral vision hinting at two specks at waist height. I backed away, my nature taking over as I lowered my eyes, but the curtain fell away just in time. Still, I saw the window frame’s silhouette through the curtain and the hand that raised it.
I was making a strange noise as if trying to speak, but my tongue was frozen. It was like gagging on words, on screams that so desperately wanted to escape my body. It was enough. Cade pushed me aside and ran to the window, pushing the curtain against the frame and then pulling it down.
Whatever was pushing it open didn’t struggle long before giving up. What little resistance it put up was beaten by Cade’s fear and strength. With that, Cade raised the curtain just enough to see the lock and put it in place.
“Fucking asshole,” Cade hissed. “It was his turn to check the windows.”
Cade ran past me again, but this time I ran after. He started checking windows and I did the same. I was careful this time. We made sure every single one was locked and in place. The one in Bradley’s room was partially open when we entered. A shouting match began between the two while I slowly made my way back to my room.
I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t say a word.
-
My voice came back that morning. I told Aydin today that I quit. I told him that this wasn’t what I expected. He understood, and the whole family understood. I didn’t have to wait another night - Cade drove me to the airport that day.
I’m back in the city, back home, if you can call this crappy apartment home. But I don’t feel safe anymore.
For the past two nights, I heard my windows rattle, I heard something outside my door. I didn’t think anything of it at first. Maybe vibrations from active neighbors or the wind - something normal.
Today, I woke up to a scream.
Outside my apartment, I saw the other tenants had gathered around my neighbor. Dead, at this door, key in hand and mouth agape. Emergency services were called, of course, the woman who found him explaining the situation as they climbed the stairs.
Before the body was taken care of, I asked one of the guys what happened to him. He told me they couldn’t find anything immediately, so it could have been anything wrong with his system - a heart attack, a brain aneurysm - they would run their tests.
Not that they would ever tell me the results. That was the family’s business and I’m just a neighbor.
Yet, sudden death so soon after returning home…I can’t help but think I saw enough of the thing at Finch Ranch. Not enough of it to kill me, but enough of it to follow me home. My windows rattle. I see shadows. My leg won’t stop shaking…it wakes me up now with these strong spasms.
I don’t know if this is the same thing and I will probably never know…
…because there’s only one way to find out what caused the sudden deaths at Finch Ranch.