She slowed down, about to turn back, when she caught sight of something beyond the trees to her left.
An old barn.
Mallory walked off the trail, pushing aside a curtain of ivy to get a better look.
Blackened by fungus and age, the enormous building sat at the far end of an overgrown field, looking dilapidated and on the verge of collapse. A towering concrete silo stood behind it, its dome top peeking over the barn’s sagging roof like an archaic observatory.
“Cool,” she whispered.
She glanced around, making certain the property was abandoned, then waded through the weeds until she stood before the ramshackle structure. She craned her head upward to take in the sight.
This close, the barn blocked out the sun, and its worn timbers hid in the shadows.
She rubbed her arms to dispel the electrifying chill that arose from her nerves at the thought of seeing a face appear in one of the building’s open windows.
To the left sat the fire-gutted shell of a two-story farmhouse, half-hidden by trees. To the right, a collection of tin henhouses dotted the weeds, all surrounded by the drooping remains of a rusty barbed wire fence.
She noticed spray-paint graffiti decorated the silo’s base with the names of those who’d visited here and felt the need to leave their mark, but none of the writing could keep her gaze from returning to the open front doors of the barn.
Mallory stepped up to the threshold and stopped. She panned her gaze from one side of the open main chamber to the next, sweeping the scene from the dusty floor to the high, hole-speckled ceiling.
She took her first tentative step forward, moving inside as if entering a forbidden tomb guarded by malevolent spirits.
Wide horse stalls took up most of the space to each side of the lower room, their wood walls dotted with insect burrows and rot. High above a wheeled rope and pulley hung from a rusty track along the central crossbeam. It appeared someone had added a new rope to the old contraption and turned it into a ride of some sort, using the wheeled runner to slide back and forth between the two open haylofts at either end of the building.
Uncertain whether the upper levels were safe or not, Mallory stuck to the ground level. She picked her way through the rubble littering the floor, occasionally kicking over a fallen wall panel to see what lay beneath it or prodding at suspicious bits of trash and mentally reconstructing how they had gotten into the barn.
The shadows deepened the farther she went, wrapping her in a cool embrace.
At the rear of the building she found a wooden storage bin in the far right corner. An open metal chute jutted from the wall directly above the bin—
After making sure she wouldn’t step in anything gross, she climbed into the empty bin and stepped up to the chute for a closer look. She peered into the dark.
The rectangular passage extended upward at an incline into blackness, with the far end barely visible in the murk. The messages appeared to continue for the full length of the chute, hundreds upon hundreds of them, no doubt left by local teens over the years.
Mallory scanned the writing closest to her, sometimes having to guess at the words where one note overlapped another. She read proclamations of love, giggled at dirty jokes, and frowned at the occasional racial slur or homophobic remark. Drawings accompanied many of the notes, and they sometimes included phone numbers or web sites. She spotted peace signs and swastikas, hearts and skulls, naked cartoon people drawn with oversized boobs or gigantic penises.
She read almost two dozen messages before spotting a familiar name among the clutter: Tim Fleming.
Mallory’s eyes widened.
The last part of the name was scribbled over by the thatch of doodle-lady spreading her legs, but Mallory was sure she had the name right. The last half of the message reappeared on the other side of the drawing, and her brow furrowed when she put the two together, whispering the words aloud.
“Tim Fleming… is a dickless faggot.”
Mallory stared at the message, cringing with disgust. She read it again and recalled her meeting with Rebecca. The woman seemed nice enough, but that didn’t mean her son would be the same. Obviously he wasn’t too well liked by someone. And she had already agreed to hang out with him later in the day.
She looked up, into the chute, searching the messages a little farther inside.
And found another bearing Tim’s name.
She looked to the left wall.
To the right.
She counted twenty notes with Tim’s name, but the ink was faded and scratched, written over in some parts. The freshest-looking message lay just out of reach, but what little she could see of it told her that it promised to be the juiciest bit of info yet.
Mallory groaned, unable to read the rest.
“Who? Tim Fleming loves who?”
Due to the incline of the chute the last half of the message vanished into shadow. Even on her tip-toes, she couldn’t see what it said.
“Damn.”
She couldn’t help wanting to know the rest. It was like a sitcom at this point. And here, obviously, was the source of the whole conflict, teasing her like cliffhanger ending.
She rested her hands on the lip of the chute, testing its strength. She looked up. Obviously the metal was strong enough to hold the weight of those who had ventured inside to leave their tag on this makeshift bulletin board, and all the newer messages seemed to be farther up. Perhaps one of them would reveal the name of the mystery girl Tim loved and shed light on the reason for so many hateful comments about him?
After one last moment of contemplation, she climbed inside and crawled upward.
Up and up she went, getting closer and closer, but now her own shadow was blocking the light, and she couldn’t fully see the entire message until she was almost on top of it. Then, finally, mercifully, she discovered the final piece of the message.
Mallory rolled her eyes.
“I crawled all the way up here for THAT?”
She expelled her frustration in a single long breath, not wanting to think of how dirty she’d gotten, especially now that it was all for nothing. The upper opening of the chute waited just a few yards ahead, letting in a little more light, and she inched along toward it, searching the writing for more mention of Tim. She found plenty, but nothing that explained the anger behind the messages.
She reached the top of the chute.
Switching interests, Mallory wondered what the inside of the silo looked like, imagining it as a huge archive of spray paint and ink.
She leaned into the dank air of the silo’s interior, looking around to see what she could make out in the gloom.
The second she did, the foul stench of rot overpowered her senses.
She gagged and coughed with each lungful, involuntarily clutching her nose when she reeled away from the stink. With a moan of disgust, she twisted around to slide back down the chute, but with all her weight pressed on the unsupported edge at the opening, the sheet metal bent and the section she sat on tore away from the wall, spilling her backward.
