The Red Shed

As the sun set on the city of Faircastle, streetlights beside the roads flickered on. In one parking lot near Faircastle High, the city’s public school, stood a group of 3 students. The teens argued about what was kept in the red shed on the far edge of the school grounds.

“I heard it was a brand new car! A Lexus, I think.”

“A likely story, Harry. My mate Alex told me it was the home of a dead farmer. That shed was where he kept his animals which he treated horribly, feeding them dirt-cheap food and letting them suffer because he didn’t believe in antibiotics. In the end, one of his own sheep ran him through when he was letting them out for a stroll. He’s stuck there now, forced to haunt the same place he mistreated those animals.”

“What a load of rot, Tom! My brother knows the uncle of the guy who owned that shed initially and it was no farmer,” another one scoffed. “He was a shady businessman and some say that he hid a treasure somewhere underneath it, keeping the shed itself as a warehouse.”

“Simon, hear me out; you may be wrong on this occasion.”

One thing they all agreed on, however, was that the shed needed investigating. There was a gate with a lightning bolt symbol surrounding the property, but a quick search of the perimeter revealed a rusty old shovel lying on the ground. Tom, the activist of the group, picked it up and started digging next to the fence. 15 minutes later, he’d dug out a hole big enough to squeeze through to the other side. The trio walked towards the door of the shed, shovel in hand, only to be met with an iron padlock, covered in rust. Simon, being the most intelligent one in the group, took Tom’s shovel and, despite Tom’s protests, swung the shovel directly at the lock. With a solid clang, the lock fell to the ground. Tom and Harry grabbed at the handles of the shed and forced them open, circling back to join Simon at the now open entrance.

The three of them stared into a dark void, one too dark to simply be described as “black.” It was undoubtedly creepy, but that didn’t deter the trio. They walked in bravely, wondering what fortunes would await them, without knowing that they wouldn’t walk back out. The doors of the shed took that moment to slam shut. From an outsider’s perspective, you could hear a faint tapping at the door, but if you were as far away from the shed as the gate surrounding it was, you wouldn’t hear a thing.

Next week, missing posters were all up around town, searching for the three missing students. The people searched high and low, even though some of them were starting to realize that their efforts would be fruitless. A month later, the search was officially called off, although tips were still welcome. A year later, the trail fell cold. A decade later, the disappearance of the three missing students had become an urban legend, something mothers used to terrify their children. The last missing poster around town was snatched up by the gentle wind, floating up and over the church, the houses and the townspeople before gently coming to a rest at the entrance of the red shed on the far edge of the school grounds.