The Crypt Volume One

The Farmer's Wife: part one

By Casey Dummont

The Farmer's Wife was a straight shooting, po-faced, middle aged woman named Viola. Her husband, a man called Percy who resembled a lumpy potato with hair like cress, was stubborn, a bore and a skinflint.

At night they would take opposite sides of their feeble kitchen fire, staring at the pitiful flames without saying a word – they had said everything there was to be said in their 30 year marriage.

One night, the farmer spoke. “That'll be me then,” Percy stood up, took his coat and hat from the stand, and left to start the overnight journey to a faraway town for a cattle show. The show would start early the next morning, and he needed to be there in good time to have his prize Jerseys ready for their appearance.

After locking the back door behind him, Viola threw a bucket of water onto the fire. Twitching the nets above the butler sink, she poked a suspicious blue eye out at the wild hills dressed in deep night. The cottage was in the middle of nowhere, and with her husband gone she was all alone.

The wind gusted and the trees clattered their branches. The shutters on the kitchen window slammed against the outer wall, 'Bang, bang, bang'.

Viola didn't care – she was already heading, candle in hand, up the stairs to bed.

'Bang, bang, bang', went the shutters on the landing window as she passed by, her well-fed frame steaming along in the crystal clear panes.

Her plump hand found the scuffed brass door knob to her bedroom. She twisted it carefully to the right, for it was loose in its socket and prone to falling out.

The room was still and stale as she entered. Percy's slippers were kicking up a funky stink in the corner, and spying out like a scolded child from beneath a creepy old rocking chair. But there was something else mixed in with the funk of her husband's neglected feet. Something she couldn't quite place. Whatever it was, it was enough to singe the long black hairs peeking out of her nostrils.

Tired from a long day on the farm, Viola placed the candle on a side table made of the same dark wood as the creepy chair, the wardrobe opposite, and the chest of drawers to her right.

Directly outside the window, a tree with sharp branches tapped the pane. 'Rat, tat, tat,' was the sound of them falling against the glass like a spectre knocking to be let in.

Being a farm, there was also the stinking smell of cow dung drifting in through the thin pane. Viola was used to it. Only Percy's slippers – and that other new smell she couldn't yet place – were enough to wrinkle her flat nose.

Wrestling off her dressing gown to reveal a frilly green nightie, she pulled back the covers on the new bed and slipped inside.

They were damp and cold, so she tucked her crusty feet up to her rotund backside so as not to feel the displeasing sheets against her hairy shins. Focusing her suspicious gaze on the tree wavering back and forth, its scrawny branches spreading out like a spider's web over the window, she closed her eyes and fell asleep.

3am. A full four hours had passed. The wind and rain had stopped, and all outside on the farm was perfectly quiet. So what had awakened Viola? Why was she staring up at the peeling ceiling with a perplexed expression and a cocked ear?

Scratching.

It wasn't the sound of an animal taking its back paw to their ear, nor of a human scratching their head or skin. It wasn't the sound of branches scratching the pane, either – the tree was still.

The scratching sound continued. Viola sat up and stared around. A china doll was regarding her from the rocking chair, her tiny black eyes following Viola as she pushed back the covers and stood upon the yellow rattan rug with her hands on her hips.

'Scccrratch, scccrratch.' It sounded like two long draws of fingernails down fabric.

Viola Duckworth wasn't a woman to be trifled with. Buxom and heavy handed, it took a lot to scare her. That's why, huffing and puffing, she dropped to her knees, pulled up the valance and glared under the bed.

Aside from a couple of mothballs and that rotten stench, there was nothing to be found. Lumbering up, she thundered over to the wardrobe and thrust open both doors. She found nothing but racks of clothes that had seen better centuries, let alone better days.

'Scccrratch, scccrratch.' It was coming from behind her.

Viola snapped her head around, the action making all the little coloured rollers in her hair jump and bounce like circus fleas. Grabbing one of Percy's balding slippers, she made for the chest of drawers, convinced there was a sneaking mouse or rat in the room.

After a few minutes of rummaging through piles of pants and granny stockings, she came up empty. “Oh to hell with it,” she threw the slipper to the floor and jumped back into bed.

Instead of returning to her side, she lay on Percy's to be closer to the slipper in case the mouse or rat presented itself in the open. One good thwack with her meaty mitts and the creature would be killed instantly.

Except, it was no mouse or rat in the room with Viola. It was something much bigger, much scarier... and something that was already dead.

4.15am. 'Scccrratch, scccrratch.'

“The devil with ya!” Viola shouted, half asleep, as the scratching continued. Once awoken fully, she couldn't be sure what was happening at first so she simply lay there, one ear cocked, eyes wide open, body as stiff as a poker.

The mattress was moving beneath her left shoulder. It jumped up at the corner – punched by something fighting to get out beneath.

As already told, not much scared Viola but the appearance of something long and bony in her peripheral vision made her blood run cold with terror.

Fingers.

Rotting fingers with dirty, torn nails had wriggled their way free of the mattress. They flexed at the knuckles, seemingly enjoying their new found freedom.

Viola shrieked as they latched onto her arm, digging so hard into her skin that they created a series of tiny puncture wounds.

The mattress started moving more violently beneath her. So violent that she could have been lying on a tempestuous water bed.

A hand, then an arm, just as rotting as the fingers they were connected to, appeared next. The arm clamped fast across Viola's mountainous breasts, pining her to the jerking mattress.

But she was a strong old bird and quick with it.

“Get off me, ya devil!” she bent the fingers back, snapping one off at the knuckle, and punched the arm brutishly to make her get away. Her heart was thrumming faster than a hummingbird in flight. Terror filled her fag ash throat.

Viola backed up to the wardrobe, knowing she should run but seemingly too mesmerised by the creature being birthed from the mattress to do so.

The decomposing arm gave way to a shrunken shoulder. A head with matted blonde hair covered in blood and maggots came next. With the seal broken fully on the mattress, the smell of dead flesh swam all over the room.

“Holy Mary!” Viola threw herself at the door as the gruesome head clicked and turned in her direction. It moved in a shuddery fashion that made it look and sound like a wind-up voodoo doll.

Jamming her sweating hands around the door knob, Viola's heart nearly faltered to a stop as she heard the lump of brass fall to the floor. “Curse you!” she dropped to her knees to stop it from rolling beneath the bed...

...The same bed where a maggot infested female corpse was pulling herself out of the mattress she had previously been stuffed into. A sunken chest, narrow hips and bowed legs with knife thin knees were covered by a manky, bloody sheet of a blue dress.

In that frightful, wind-up doll fashion, the corpse raised its arms and held them out to steady itself – a classic zombie pose if ever there was one. It stared at Viola with bloodshot eyes.

And then it began to walk...