☾Spine-tingling tales ☽

Spine-tingling tale 11

"Tommy knows that you pushed Hannah into the mud, if you don't tell the truth he'll come to get you."
"Daddy I know that Tommy is just a scarecrow, not a real person!"
"You'd be surprised buddy. Now go wash up, we will talk more about this at dinner."
It's sort of funny, I can remember a conversation that I had at 10 years old so vividly, yet I nearly forget my keys every morning. But that was 8 years ago, Dad always knew that Tommy freaked me out, so he would use him in his punishments. Tommy wasn't even our scarecrow first, he belonged to my Grandparents. When my Dad was 7, my grandparents took him on a trip to Italy. They were staying at a farm that was also a B&B. On their last day there, as "a gift for being such great guests", the mother of the man who owned the farm gave my grandparents Tommy.
"He is more than a protector of the crops" She told them.
This was a very nice gesture, but my Dad grew up in the suburbs. So Tommy sat in their attic until Halloween came around every year.
When my Dad turned 16, he began to work as a farm hand at one of the largest farms in New York State. He rose through the ranks and eventually married the farmer's daughter, my Mom. Around the time my Mom found out that she was pregnant, they were both 24, but my pop-pop was dying. He held on so hard to see me born. He died when I was three months old, handing the farm and all of its business to my parents. We grow tons of crops and we're also involved in both the milk and meat businesses, Tommy sits in our cornfield. Oh, I'm guessing you would probably like to know what Tommy looks like! Well, nobody ever really bothered to take a picture of him, but I can easily describe him to you!
Tommy was a pretty large scarecrow, his whole body measured about 6'5. His face was always pretty human like. His face was actually light brown leather morphed into a pretty spot on human face. A red B is carved into each of his "cheeks" (those have been there since Italy). He always wore a straw hat. If it ever started to fall apart, we would buy a new one. As for clothing, Tommy was always dressed for success. Instead of overalls and plaid, my Dad dressed him up in a cheap grey suit he bought at the thrift store. Since then, his suit has gotten pretty tattered, but Dad says that "it gives him character". To top it all off, are his hands and feet. My Grandfather on my Dad's side was in the military for 16 years, so when we inherited the farm, my Dad attached my Grandpa's old version of SAP gloves, and combat boots to Tommy. But the creepiest thing about Tommy isn't whats on the outside, but what's on the inside. Tommy isn't stuffed with straw, but a mixture of animal hair from the Italian farm originally, plus some from our farm whenever he would have small rips, and human hair from local barber shops. I always asked my Dad why, but he never really had an answer, he just said that it was how he was... So that's Tommy, just imagine seeing that on a crucifix, wouldn't that scare the hell out of you? Well he traumatized me!
My phobia of Tommy began when I turned 8. I was with a few of my friends out in the cornfield playing tag, when I rammed shoulder first into Tommy's "shin". I would have quickly shook this off and forgot about it, but as soon as I did, I heard something. It sounded like a very faint moan, like someone trying to hide pain. The sound persisted for a few seconds before I realized that I was hearing it above me. I sprinted back into the cornfield and yelled for my friends that we needed to get back home.
I told my Dad what had happened and he teased me. He used Tommy as a joke until around the time I turned 16, that was when he became scared of Tommy too.
It was early October, and we had just opened our pumpkin patch to the public. The farm went all out when it came to Halloween time. Besides the decent sized pumpkin patch, we ran a haunted hay ride through the woods behind our house, and we turned Tommy's corn field into a corn maze. Well, one day a woman and her young son came running out of the maze and began yelling at one of our workers. My Dad saw this and asked the woman what was wrong. She told my Dad that,
"You should tell your patrons when you make an attraction scary."
This was weird because the corn field was NEVER used as a horror attraction, my Dad informed the woman of that, but she angrily replied,
"Yeah right, just tell your scarecrow actor that he shouldn't touch the guests."
My stomach dropped when she said this, not only was I still terrified of Tommy, but I had no explanation for what this woman was saying. It wasn't windy at all that day, and Tommy was always tied to the crucifix extremely tight. My Dad looked worried, but he told me that he had to go check to see if Tommy's ties had come undone and that I needed to go help the front workers at the register. About an hour later, when the farm was getting really busy, my Dad finally came out of the corn field. He looked pretty shaken, like he was in a hurry. When he was completely out of the field I noticed that he had something big in his arms, it was Tommy. I went up to him to ask him what was going on, but he just grumbled something about having to put Tommy away. As he passed me, I noticed that the back of my Dad's sweatshirt was cut up.
Dad put Tommy into the storage shed next to the cow barn. He never brought him out again. I would always ask Dad to bring Tommy back out, my fear had turned into morbid curiosity, but he would always say no. This annoyed me for some reason, so last July, at my graduation party, I was determined to bring Tommy out. Two friends and I walked to the storage shed, everyone else was too busy partying all over the farm (220 people came to the party, it was awesome). My Dad always locked the storage shed with two padlocks. I didn't have any sort of key, so tipsy me decided that using bolt cutters would be a good idea. We got through the first one, but we stopped when we heard a loud thump from inside the shed. It sounded like someone jumping in the air and landing right on their ass, hard. All three of us jumped, but we all screamed when we heard someone yell, "HEY!" behind us. We turned to see my Dad standing there with a pitchfork. I thought he was trying to scare us but instead he just yelled at us to get back with everyone else, and wedged the pitchfork between the door and the ground as a makeshift lock.
Last August, I went away to college. It's only 45 minutes from my house, but I wanted to experience dorm life. In college I discovered my love of photography. But unfortunately I didn't discover that until mid-December, and I wasn't going to be doing any photo shoots in the freezing CNY winter. When late March hit, the snow was finally melting away! I took advantage of this on March 28th, when I went back home to do a solo shoot. Before you ask, I didn't want to take pictures of Tommy, I couldn't even if I wanted to, in January, a blizzard destroyed the storage shed, and Tommy went missing during the storm.
I started at 10 in the morning, mostly taking pictures of the cows, pigs, and horses. Then I got around to the woods. It was a normal shoot, until I got to the large oak tree where we had built a tree house when I was younger. Carved into the tree, in pretty large letters was the word "LACRIME". It was pretty weird, but I assumed that some kids had done it. My suspicion was seemingly confirmed when I got to our old bonfire pit.
Around the pit were dozens of empty beer cans and blunt wrappers. I didn't mind this, but what was inside the pit turned my stomach. A small rabbit was nailed to a small cross, and a sticky note was stuck to its head. Written in sloppy handwriting was the word "LACRIME".
I planned on telling my parents about it when I got back to the main house, but I wanted to finish up with the photoshoot. Next, I went to the abandoned farmhouse next door. This farmhouse has been there since before Pop-pop owned our farm. Nobody has claimed it, and for some reason the town hasn't done anything about it (I'll post a picture of the house at the bottom of the story).
So I approached the house from the front, and immediately got hit with this rotten smell. The closer I got to the dilapidated house, the worse the smell got. I finally put my shirt over my nose, and entered through a hole in the side of the house. I took out my camera to start taking pics, but I felt something brush my neck. I fell over and turned around on the ground, only to see that nobody was there. I put my hand on a log that was laying behind me to get leverage to stand. As soon as I placed my hand down, I felt a mixture of something furry and damp. I practically "kipped up" and looked at the log. A human scalp sat on the log. I held back vomit and ran outside. I called the police and then my parents.
A few hours later the police had finally left after questioning my family and I. My Dad told me to stay in the house for the rest of the day, I usually would have argued, but after the barn, I complied. Around 2 in the afternoon I had fallen asleep while watching Netflix, but I was awoken to the sound of squealing from outside my window, which was close to the woods. It sounded like a human trying to imitate a frightened pig. I yelled for my Dad, he ran into my room brandishing his Hawk shotgun. I pointed to my open window, and he stuck his head out of it. He was like that for a few seconds until he ripped his head back in, knelt down, put the gun through the window, and shot. I wasn't ready so I screamed at him asking what the hell was going on, and he told me that I needed to get into the living room.
My Dad, Mom, and I all sat on the couch watching tv. My dad would periodically walk around the house looking in every room. Finally, around 4:30, I told them both that I needed to know what was going on.
My Dad laid the gun against the sliding glass door, and sat down in the recliner next to it.
"It's Tommy...." He began to explain.
"Garry I don't think we should be telling him...." My mother interrupted him.
He waved his hand in the air. "No, Jen, he needs to know."
I sat down on the other recliner in the corner of the room and interrupted both of them.
"Need to know what? Just say it."
"Tommy is alive. He is a living thing."
I snorted, and looked at my Mom. For my whole life, my Mom has been a skeptic of EVERYTHING supernatural. She is also a "devout" atheist in contrast to my Dad's laid back christian views.
"Yes, I do DJ."
That's when I sat back in the chair, my heart felt like it was burrowing into my stomach, I nodded.
"Your mother and I have known for three years now, but my parents have known this since they got him."
"How?"
"I'll try to explain it like your grandparents did a couple years ago." He sat there for a few seconds, trying to gather himself. "Something is inside Tommy. I'm not going to say that it's a ghost, because I don't know if that's true."
I was a little confused, he saw this, so he began talking slower.
"My parents first noticed that Tommy was different a month after we had gotten home from Italy. Things in the attic would become broken without anyone being up there. Then, while we were all out of the house, things downstairs would be moved. We didn't know what was going on until your Grandma personally saw Tommy move. She was in the attic putting away things when she heard something move. She quickly turned around and looked at Tommy who was sat against the attic window. His arm was inching back to the place it was when Grandma had first saw him. Tommy somehow knew that Grandma saw him move, so he began to shake. Grandma ran out and locked the door. After looking over Tommy, your Grandparents couldn't find a logical explanation. So unbeknownst to me, they tried to contact the Italian family. Through this, they found out that the people that owned the B&B had been arrested just two weeks after we had left. 35 bodies were discovered buried in their vineyard after the husband had gotten arrested during a botched kidnapping attempt. The police released that they believed that all four members of the family were using people in some type of weird ritual that involved living forever. They thought that somehow during those rituals, Tommy was created."
I sat back in the chair with a grin on my face. I expected him to follow up with "Just kidding", but my Mom and Dad just sat there.
"So why would you risk bringing him around me? Why wouldn't you just throw him away or burn him?"
"You don't think Grandma and Grandpa tried to get rid of him? He would always just come back."
I leaned forward, "...And destroying him?"
That's when my Mother sat forward also.
"I can answer that. After your father's corn maze incident, and what your grandparents told us, we tried to contact the relatives of that Italian family. We were able to get ahold of the husband's brother. We asked if everything about Tommy was true, and he said yes. We asked him if we could destroy Tommy, and he told us to never destroy the body. Whatever is inside Tommy right now won't just go away if we burn him, it will just go into the nearest object or person that it could. We didn't want to risk that happening to you."
I nodded, I still felt like this whole thing was crazy, but I was curious.
"So what exactly happened to you in the corn maze?"
"Well after I roped off the maze, I went to check out Tommy. I used these shears to cut the rope that was holding him up there, and placed them both behind me. I checked to see if the cross was loose when I felt something cut into the back of my shirt. I instinctively jumped forward and I hear a light crash behind me. Tommy was now laying on the ground, but closer to me, but I couldn't find the shears. I assumed that someone else was in the maze and tried to hurt me, so I picked up Tommy and ran towards the exit. But right before I got out, I heard something come from inside Tommy, it was a voice. Oh wait what did he say.. Lake? Grime?"
"Lacrime?" I quickly asked him.
He looked surprised, but continued talking. "Uh wow, yeah actually. But anyway, as soon as I heard that, I pretended like I didn't hear it, and decided to lock him up in the shed."
Again, I sat there waiting for them both to start laughing, but instead I looked at my father, this pretty big guy who I had always looked at like a superhero, holding back tears. I started to say something, until I heard light footsteps in the front foyer. My Dad snatched up his gun and ran towards the sound. Before my Dad even left the living room, I heard the front door open and slam shut. I followed my Dad. Of course, when we got there, nothing was outside.
The rest of that night was uneventful. But it dawned on me that if Tommy had ran out the front, he probably saw the parking pass sticker for my college on my window. I got a bit worried the next day that when I got back to school, Tommy would be there waiting for me, but he thankfully wasn't. Over the past month I've been calling my parents every day to see how they're doing. They haven't seen Tommy since, but one morning my Dad did wake up to a paper taped to the front door. "Lacrime" was written on it. The police still haven't found out what was up with the scalp in the barn. I have no proof that it was Tommy, but unfortunately, I think that it was him. Since I live in a single, every night I check every inch of my room just to be safe. I'm afraid that he is looking for me.
Some nights when I'm laying in bed, I swear I can hear that squeal outside my building. I feel like I should see if it's really him so nobody else gets hurt, but I just can't do it.

A/n: I'm sorry for such a long one! I just wanted to share it since it creeped me out quite a bit! I have another long one which was actually the first unnerving thing to actually stop me sleeping at night, which I want to add too. However, I need to know who actually reads these so please let me know if you do.