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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/RoseMayden on 2024-11-25 03:56:53+00:00.
This feels so embarrassing to post about online, but here goes. I (36F) happen to own a house with no one for miles around. The only reason why I moved here to begin with was because my grandma passed away last year, and I was the only one in the family who had even visited her in the past five years, so naturally, I was the one to inherit the house. I know that I didn't have to move here, but I think there was a part of me that viewed her quaint Devonshire countryside cottage with rose tinted glasses. When I had visited, it had been around the Spring Equinox; birds chattering between the apple trees, flowerbeds and vegetable patch abuzz with bees and flourishing colours, the sun peeking through the clouds as I sat in the garden working on my thesis. Now, I'm lucky if I get even get a single fruit or vegetable, or one bright flowerbed.
I think the reason why she left the cottage to me was, in part, because she expected me to have a family upon moving there. She had never known that my then husband and I had been on and off for years, bridging between cold distanced fights whilst he was away, and fiery spats half the time he was home. My grandma was never told that I lost our son either, mostly because I didn't tell anyone, including my ex husband. I don't remember a lot of that time, but I think I was just hoping it would pass more than anything, I became passive and hoped that it wouldn't be asked about. My husband and I eventually separated that year, once the truth came out a month later.
I've grown used to the cottage the year after having moved in. The roof is leaky sometimes, and the walls creak and groan when it's windy. I am on my own, but I maintain the house fairly well, with the help of YouTube tutorials and some patience. I take on projects as a way to keep my mind active and busy. Sometimes I'll go wandering across the moors. Sometimes I'll stay in with a cup of tea. Usually depends on the weather.
My most recent project has been a second stab at getting the garden patch ready for spring. It wasn't a particularly big space, a cottage garden roughly the same size as the house itself, surrounded by thick, thorny hedges, a fence which I had repaired that summer, the apples trees at one end with the shed, the patch at the other guarded by a scarecrow. I named him Harry because of the carrot coloured woollen hair he had.
Harry wasn't bad company, at least. As crazy as it sounds, it wasn't the worst thing in the world having something to natter away to whilst I was dragging at weeds with my clippers helped. He wasn't arguing back, calling me dramatic nor saying I was exaggerating. Of course he was only straw, but it was nice still imagining that he was listening.
I talked to Harry for the entirety of October into November, until the ground grew too hard to penetrate with my shovel, and I eventually elected to leave the garden til spring. I felt that I had gotten to a stage similar to that described in the blogs I'd seen online, anyhow. At least this spring I would hopefully be starting from a better beginning. I brought out my jigsaws, my books, the blankets as the cold crept in. Spent the bitter evenings huddled up in my armchair with a cup of tea, reading whilst flicking absentmindedly between pages, not really reading, until the first snowfall.
I truly didn't mean to look outside, but I couldn't help it. I wondered a mad thought, whether Harry was doing okay in such weather. It was supposed to be a kind action, something normal and silly but once I was out there with that blanket, looking at him, I couldn't help noticing how the wind made him seem as if he was shivering.
That night, as I laid in my empty bed, I wished that Harry was alive. Maybe if there was someone out there who wanted to listen, who cared enough about me and what I had to say. I couldn't possibly conceive of any man, but Harry was different.
I awoke the following morning to a man screaming in agony. Practically leaping from my bed, I hurried to my window which overlooked the gravel path, only to see nothing. I wondered if I was hallucinating.
Next, was the garden. I quickly shoved my feet into my slippers before rushing myself down the stairs, nearly falling in the process. Upon making it to the window, I got my answer.
Harry was moving. He was moving. His cloth head thrown back in agony as his crude mouth, filled with straw, fell open, screeching to the world that he was alive, alive alive!
I hurried outside, arms outstretched, and yet he didn't seem to notice me. It was only after I threw my arms around him that he would begin to writhe, pushing me away. His eyes, two small buttons, burned into mine, as he studied my face.
I studied his right back. I wondered whether he recognised me, he had always been pitched on a pole taller than me, perhaps he didn't remember my face because I had always been bent over gardening?
His blanket laid on the ground. I reached down to pick it up and fold it, smiling a beam from ear to ear as I did.
"It's me, Harry!" I spoke with shaky words. "It's me, remember me? Don't you remember me?"
He only continued to scream. Part of my stomach dropped a bit, as I began to wonder if he really didn't recognise me. Perhaps he couldn't talk after all. Maybe that had been too much of an assumption.
Maybe I could teach him.
The thought brought me a smile as I headed back inside to find a pad of paper, shutting the door to block the screaming although it did little to muffle it.
My efforts with the paper proved fruitless in the end, since h didn't have much in the way of fingers, just straw nubs. He continued to screech the entire time too, and it was beginning to give me a headache.
It was a few days of this before I had enough, and coincidentally, that was when I began to notice the smell. It was after a particularly rainy day, a welcome event now as it blocked out the screaming even if it was just a bit. I headed out after the rain with a towel, stepping through the back door only to reel back at the smell.
It smelled as if something had died. I then noticed the silence, the sudden silence.
Harry stood where he always was, his head hung lifeless. maggots crawled from his chest, and I noticed the patches of green, blue, yellow mold upon his cloth face.
The screaming began to make sense.
Harry stays in the shed now. He's not made a peep since that day, and I'm glad of it. There's some benefits to living with no one for miles, and that is the silence. I don't think I realised just how used to that I had grown. I've never been happier.