
                        Why Does It Move?

     Gage noticed the blood first.  It ran through the weeds like
a river cutting through the country side, a red crimson river
that had stained the dirt that it treaded on and emptied into a
lake that came to an end only a step away from where he stood.  
He looked down at the red patch and with his eyes he followed its 
path to the back of the barn behind a stack of hay and just out 
of eyesight.  Must have been alot of blood, he thought, as he 
noticed how far the river had traveled before it crusted before 
him. 
     It was the stench that hit him next.  A smell worse than
manure that was like a cloud of fog that had filled the bard, a
smell so bad that it clung onto your skin until you wouldn't be
able to wash it away, so bad that it slithered like a snake up
your nose and bit down on your brain.  There was no doubt in
Gage's mind that if death had a smell this was it.  Dark, cool
and tangy. Almost a life of its own.  His stomach felt a quesy
shake as the air closed around him like the leathery wings of a
sleeping bat.
     It was the tiny buzzing sound of flies that he noticed next
as he stepped closer to the hay following the path of blood.  He
could hear there wings flapping, their mouths tasting as they 
swarmed over what they had found.  By the hundreds they flew 
before him in a wild frenzy, their buzzing almost deafening, it
was like looking into fog that was alive.  More and more flies
were entering through the doorway coming to find what the others
had already found.     Gage took another step closer to the hay,
he peered over the haystack and at first all he could see was a
cloud of flies, buzzing like hungry leopards feasting on their
prey.  And then he could see the man's body just below the cloud,
he could see the face, one eye fastened straight up staring up at
the roof of the barn, the other socket empty as flies crawled
along the cavity. The man's hair was streaked back with blood and
his chest was almost gone as if a dent had been created.  And the
flies swarmed over the man, feeding on him, crawling over him,
inside him.  
     Gage fell back away from the man with a soft grunt from his
lips as he tried to scream but his throat had gone dry.  When his
back smacked into the barn wall he collapsed down into the floor 
of hay.  He looked down and saw that he had landed in the end of 
the bloods trail.  He looked back at the haystack that hid the 
man but he couldn't see anything.  The other side of the barn was 
too bright as the sun shined in from the doorway.  The only thing 
he could clearly see was the shadow of the haystack against the
back of the barns wall.      But then there was something else,
another shadow, a hand crawling up the wooden wall, stretching
out searching for something to grab.  And Gage saw another shadow
as the dead man began to raise himself.  Gage looked at the
haystack but couldn't see the man who was rising behind it, he
could only see the hay and the bright light of the sun.  He
looked back at the wall and the dead man was now standing, a full
figure in a dark shadow rose from the barn wall.  And it moved
closer.
     Gage wrapped his arms around his legs and began shaking as
cold shivers broke up his spine.  He started crying and sounds
that were suppose to be horrible screams only sounded like
whimpers when he opened his mouth.  He looked back at the
haystack.  Nothing.  He couldn't see a thing.  Back to the wall
and the shadow almost covered the wall as it stretched out as it
slowly walked closer and closer to where Gage was sitting on the
blood stained floor of the barn.
     He turned his head from the man that he couldn't see but he
knew he was only a few feet from him.  Looking to his side he
could see his own shadow being cast along the barns wall.  And he
could see the man reaching out for him with long bony dead 
fingers.  He could see the long finger nails like sharp razors at 
the end of each finger.  This time he did scream as he felt the 
cold touch of the man as he laid those bony fingers along his 
shoulders and began to squeeze.  He looked straight up at the man 
who held him by his shoulders and he saw nothing.  No man.  No 
nothing. 
     But the shadow on the wall showed the man's fingers wrapping
around the childs throat and firmly the fingers pressed down
until the boy struggled to survive.  A trail of what had to be 
blood began to seep out of a spot where one of the nails had 
broken into the skin.
     Gage fell down into the dead man's stain of blood.  The 
stain was no longer dry.  Gage closed his eyes forever as the air 
left his lungs and he listened for the first sound of the flies 
buzzing in his ear.