Almatter Farm II: Break

4/20/2026

Worldbuilding and storytelling with a dash of horror. Directly related to Ordin Willowbrim's Diary and part 2 following The Ring

It almost sounded like a fried duck wing snapping under a bit of delicately applied force, followed by a whimper. Then suddenly I realized I could hear myself think again. As though a thousand crickets ended their chorus in unison; a sound so ever-present that it went beneath notice was gone. The song had stopped. Memories flooded back, first as foreign sparks of long-lost truth, then smells, sounds, and finally- faces. The dogs and barn cat, my cows, my father's ox. Seven farmhands, two of them my own kin. My husband. I could remember them. I could remember their names, favorite foods, arguments. I could remember watching half of them die. 

Another pop, and the sound of viscous liquid pouring onto wooden floors. I stepped out of the hall to see my sister suspended three feet in the air, with thick ropes of blood-tinted slime pooling below her. She was held aloft by the finger-long teeth of a massive, bone-white, face with sunken features. Its black eyes were empty, endless pools with no discernable beginning or end. But as it turned to face me, effortlessly holding her limp body, there was no question of where it was looking. The moist flesh at its cheeks peaked as it almost seemed to smile around Claribel. In a blur of motion, the six or seven feet of pale, slimy neck that stretched to the cabin ceiling whipped back into the hole it emerged from, taking the hairless, misshapen face and my sister with it. Until her legs caught on the broken floorboards, that is. Her body was jerked down once more before it snapped and tore like old sugarcane and disappeared into the newly opened pit in our dining room. 

The grits she'd cooked were still steaming. 

I don't know how much time passed. My vision started to swim as I stepped forward to stop my fall and remembered how to breathe. The flood of memories continued to pound into my mind;  freezing was all I could do to remain conscious, even as my hands began to shake and my heart threatened to explode out of my chest. I crawled to the lip of the hole and hung my lantern over it. It was half as wide as I was tall and deeper than the light dared to penetrate. Still slick with my sister's blood and whatever slime the creature was covered in. 

Scrambling to my feet, I rushed to my bedroom- no, the bedroom my husband and I shared- to confirm that I wasn't mistaken. My breath came in ragged pants as I peered into an identical hole in the floorboards there. One I'd walked past every day for weeks after my husband's blood dried around its edges. The bedsheets from that night sat bundled in the corner, caked with his blood, where I left them. Where I'd complained about the stain, then calmly removed and left them there. Despite what I'd seen that night.

I stood and spun, taking in the room with fresh eyes as I reached to fiddle with my wedding band. Gods above, I'd tossed it into the fields just this week, trying to remember him. And as my eyes settled on the mirror I had stared into every day this week as I brushed my hair, I saw it. Clear as noon sky, scrawled in my husband's blood and written by my own hand: "IT TOOK HIM TOO. YOU HAVE TO RUN. YOU HAVE TO REMEMBER. YOU CANNOT FORGET AGAIN." It resembled a half dozen other messages scrawled around the house that I saw and unwillingly ignored every day. 

Focusing hard and remembering that night, I remembered how I - no, we- had run. I had grabbed my sister, who was similarly panicking and weeping. It had been clear that she also suddenly remembered everything this monster had taken from us over the previous few months. We had both run through the corn with nothing but the clothes on our backs. We'd gotten some distance away and hid, fearing forest wolves and watching to see if we'd be followed. In the distance, one of the heads had risen high into the air, twice the height of the barn it had emerged from, suspended on a fleshy white neck. Another had risen to join it in the sky, out of the vegetable fields this time. Then another from the roof of the main cabin, and a fourth from somewhere near the latrine. They had turned their identical faces to the full moon and started singing, swaying in the cold night air as the sound had begun to massage its way into my mind. I had felt my terror fade, then my grief. Then my thoughts of my husband- how he had loved me, how he'd clung to the side of the pit, how his scream had been cut off after he slipped from my grasp- had all flickered away like dying stars. until there was just a gap in my mind where he and his memories had lived. 

I shuddered as I returned to the present and contemplated the madness, no- the sorcery, that caused me and my sister to return after seeing and knowing what we did. Wait-- sister? 

My body was moving before I could realize what was happening as the sound -that damnable song- registered in my mind. I grabbed the axe of my husb- I grabbed the axe out of my bedroom and sprinted for the exit. And as I'd made it out into the cool night air, I could feel my headache mounting. Four stalks of pale flesh towered over the estate, jutting out of holes in the earth and the massive heads of this creature from hell belted their ethereal song. I howled at the top of my lungs to drown the sound and fear out as I rushed at one of them, rage and sorrow that I could no longer explain overpowering my terror. I skidded to a stop and my body coiled; the blunt side of the axehead rotated around my body to touch my shoulder as my muscles screamed. I let the axe fly. My eyes were splashed with a hot liquid and I felt the axe vibrate in my hands as it bit into.... nothing. 

I was standing in the middle of the estate in my nightgown, ignoring a dinner that my sis..- a dinner that -I- just finished cooking, for no reason. I wiped my eyes clear of this green-black ichor that was covering half my face and pulled my axe free from its place in the air. And as the last of my awareness of the situation was stolen from my mind, I walked back into my home to eat dinner for two alone. 

I felt and ignored the hot breath of the massive face, inches from my back as I ate, because my mind could not accept it; the song would not allow it. Even as its hungry pants from behind blew my hair into my face a dozen times. Even as it pushed aside chairs to force its way deeper into the room and across the table to stare at me directly. Even as its pale white face snapped and contorted in front of me, becoming a macabre facsimile of my sister's. My hands drummed and scratched anxiously on the table, to the point where my fingertips were sore. My mind could never hold onto why.

I climbed over one of the resting creature's massive necks to enter my bedroom, still unable to perceive it. My temples pounded as its song ripped away thoughts of my sister and gave my mind a dozen excuses for my hands and nightgown being covered in slime and blood.

I did not sleep well. It was surprisingly good at mimicking her grin. 

The sun had been up for some time when I'd finally gotten out of bed. I was exhausted by nightmares of strangers being pulled to their deaths. On top of that, I had a horrible wooden splinter lodged up under my left index fingernail. It took more than a few minutes to retrieve it and clear the debris from the nailbed, and as I worked I could not shake the feeling of being watched. Silly thought for a solo farmer on a property as isolated as mine.

The dining room was a mess. Chairs were out of place and a horrendous-smelling film covered most of the floor. Gopher-piss, probably. Another hole in the floorboards too. Definitely gophers, what else would it be? 

I started getting the space back in order: counters, general tidying, and the floor took most of the morning, slowed by throbbing headaches every so often. One drove me to take a seat and as I tried to re-center myself, my fingers passed across an irregularity on the table. Through blurry eyes, I could make out the words but not their meaning, scratched haphazardly into the table. My head ached, my finger ached. Everything hurt. 

Staring at the hastily scrawled words sent the feeling of a white-hot metal spike through my temples; I read and re-read, grasping and losing and regaining the meaning every second. Blood dripped from my nose onto the table from the effort of focusing, but I refused to let the thought slip away. I fought and tore at the wall in my mind, clawing at the memories just beyond it. My breath came in ragged gasps as I ground my teeth and held. 

Then something inside my brain tore, the tension released, and I could hear The Song clearly, so loudly it forced me to wince. It blared from monstous faces across the property, the closest of which hovered just outside the dining room window at eye level, watching me. It had been there the whole time, singing its horrible song as its neck snaked out of the hole in the middle of the room and out the door. I tried to calm my breathing and fought not to meet its eyes. 

To pretend to not notice it. 

To not see the bits of my sister still hanging from its teeth. 

To make my interest in the fireplace full of smoldering coals nearby less obvious. 

To pretend there wasn't a plan brewing. 

I looked down and read my note to myself, my mind the clearest it had been in years:

"The song stops when they eat. Remember."

This story may continue. DnD Gamemasters might recognize what's happening here, as will players. It's loosely based on an encounter with a very popular monster that you should not spoil for yourself if you aren't already familiar.