The Red Duffel Bag: A Ghost Story for Halloween

Every year around Halloween, I share a story. This one is mine, and it’s fiction. Pour something warm, turn the lights down, and read it slowly.

The Red Duffel Bag

It’s been nearly four hundred years now.

It was fall. Late October.

Now, all these centuries later, when late October rolls around, things begin to happen.

Strange things.

Things that can’t be explained away…

But to understand, we need to go back.

Back to that evening in October, so long ago.

Bert was an unusual kid. I say kid, but not because he was young. He was alone, and he didn’t have many friends, if any. It made him awkward. Naïve, even.

He wanted to be like the other kids. He just didn’t have the social skills needed to make friends.

The older boys in town knew this, and they often took advantage of it, and of him, if for no other reason than their own amusement.

It was Bert’s naïveté that brings us to this story.

To this night.

The boys had been drinking. They had found the alcohol stash of one of their parents. Whose it was is unclear, and really doesn’t matter now.

As the four boys were heading out of town, they happened upon Bert, who was walking alone, killing time before heading back to where he was staying to get some food and sleep.

The boys ran up to him, grabbed him, picked him up, and began tossing him between themselves, laughing and carrying on.

Still, Bert didn’t really mind.

Much.

He looked up to these boys. Everyone liked them. They were popular in school. The elders in town liked them. All the girls in school mooned over them.

They were everything Bert wasn’t.

But for them to even involve him in anything meant everything to him, regardless of how they actually treated him.

The boys always took every opportunity to mess with Bert. Mostly because they could, and because they knew he would never really do anything to stop them.

And even if he tried, he couldn’t have mustered the strength to fight them off.

It just wasn’t in him.

So Bert joined them on their journey.

They pushed him, jostled him, tripped him, and laughed at him and at each other as they continued to swill from the liquor jug, getting more and more inebriated and obnoxious.

It wasn’t very late, but the fall sun was waning. The golden glow of sunset was giving way to the bluish darkness of nightfall.

Even so, the boys continued their belligerent march along the trail.

Bert noticed the crunching thud of each boy’s bootsteps as they trudged through the woods. The bare treetops rubbed and scratched against one another in the wind.

The steady thud-thud of their footsteps, coupled with the crackle-click of the tree branches, created a spooky, almost haunting orchestration.

Foreboding.

It made Bert shudder.

The boys noticed.

They began teasing him about being afraid of the dark.

He laughed with them because he didn’t want them to think, or know, that he was.

Then, all of a sudden, the laughter and taunting stopped.

They all stopped dead in their tracks.

They didn’t even breathe.

The only sounds were the wind and the branches moving overhead.

There, in front of them, not more than ten yards away, stood an eerie sight.

In the dim light of the fading day and growing darkness stood a large figure.

A barn.

Its wood was faded, gray, and cracked. Some of the boards were split like dried, chapped lips, as though the building had been sitting beneath the sun for years.

Once the boys steadied themselves, they laughed.

Maybe a little nervously.

None of them would admit to that.

One of the boys chuckled.

“Ha. It’s just an old barn.”

They all breathed an even deeper sigh of relief.

“Let’s check it out,” another said as he stepped toward the barn.

Bert was more hesitant.

That dark figure, with its upper hayloft door hanging open and its peak jutting out over the shadowed entrance, looked to Bert like the hooded darkness of death staring directly at him.

The only thing missing was the sickle.

The boys noticed his hesitation.

And they seized on it immediately.

They grabbed him.

They laughed at him.

One of the boys picked him up from behind and screamed like a banshee.

“What’s the matter, Bertie? You scared?”

One of the boys grabbed the heavy wooden door and pulled it open.

It creaked.

Popped.

Squeaked on its hinges as if the door itself were in pain.

How long had it been since these doors had last been opened?

Judging by that sound…

A very, very long time.

It was almost completely dark inside the barn. It had gotten dark enough outside that very little light could penetrate the interior.

One of the boys lit a match and held it high, looking for a lamp hanging on a hook near the entrance.

In the faint flicker of the flame, a reflection flashed from the glass mantle of the lamp.

There it was.

He headed toward the reflection as the match went out, reaching forward until his fingers found it.

Aha.

Cold, smooth glass.

He had lit so many of these lamps in the dark. This wouldn’t be any different.

He felt around the base for the arm.

There it was.

He moved it and raised the arm to lift the glass.

There.

He struck another match.

In the bright glow, he touched the wick of the lamp.

Whoop.

The lamp came to life.

He lowered the chimney and adjusted the wick, making the flame a little brighter.

He gave the lamp a small shake.

Good.

There was kerosene in it.

Not much.

But enough.

He held it up and found a hook to hang it.

The boys looked around the inside of the barn.

It appeared as though the farmer and his hands had simply put away their tools and walked out.

Never to return.

The harnesses and bits were still hanging on their hooks, exactly as they had been placed the last time they were used.

The stalls still contained hay, although it was old and stale.

Hay drifted down from the upper loft.

Along the walls were sickles and scythes of all sorts, machetes, and other sharp instruments and tools used by farmers.

They hung there silently.

Waiting.

Waiting to be picked up and used again.

One of the boys grabbed a scythe and began sweeping it through the hay on the barn floor, throwing more straw than actually cutting.

Bert was becoming increasingly nervous with all the metal “weaponry” hanging around them.

One of the other boys noticed.

He started teasing Bert.

He picked him up and tossed him around the stalls.

Bert didn’t really care.

Having them include him made him feel welcome.

Even a part of their group.

For once, he felt like he belonged.

So he tried hard to hide and suppress his fear and anxiety, even if it meant being the butt of their jokes and teasing.

But it was becoming harder.

The more they roughhoused, the more they drank.

And the more they drank, the more sinister their play became.

One of them swiped at Bert with the scythe as if Bert were a stalk of wheat being cut down.

The razor-sharp blade barely missed him.

Then a machete was thrown in his direction.

It flew past him and buried itself in the wall.

All of it was wrapped in laughter and drunken giggling, punctuated by pulls from the liquor jug they continued passing around.

Things were becoming scarier and scarier for Bert.

He tried to convince himself their “fun” was just that.

Fun.

But he was having a harder and harder time making that argument in his own head.

Then one of the boys grabbed him and threw him into a tall pile of straw.

As he landed and began sinking into the hay, Bert considered simply lying there.

Maybe they would get so drunk that they would forget he was there.

But deep inside, he knew better.

Two sets of hands grabbed his ankles and began dragging him out of the hay.

A moment later, Bert was sitting on the floor with the boys surrounding him.

Each held a farming tool that, tonight, had become a weapon.

One had the scythe.

One had the machete.

And the other held the deadliest of all.

The sickle.

They moved around him, swiping and swinging the weapons as they danced in a circle, taking turns drinking from the jug.

The oldest, and clearly strongest, of the group swung the sickle as if he were brandishing a sword.

Left.

Right.

Then back to the left.

No one ever knew for sure exactly what happened.

Everything happened so quickly.

So much of it was a blur.

One of the boys grabbed Bert by the arm and pulled him to his feet.

Then he tossed him toward one of the other boys.

At that exact moment, the larger boy swung the sickle high above his head.

And brought it down.

At the same moment Bert was thrown across the floor, the sickle made hard, swift contact with his neck.

There was a clean slice.

Then blood.

Blood flew everywhere, spraying from the severed torso where Bert’s head had just been.

Jet after jet sprayed into the air, arcing toward the floor and spattering the ground.

The boys were splattered as the blood continued to gush with every heartbeat.

Bert’s body slumped first to its knees.

Blood sprayed from both sides of what remained of his neck.

Then his torso fell forward and struck the floor.

The last few spasms of blood became puddles that continued to spread as his body convulsed.

At the moment of contact with the sickle, Bert’s head seemed almost to pop off, much like a toy doll’s head.

Except his eyes were open.

And there was an expression of absolute horror on his face.

The boys watched as Bert’s head spun through the air, trailing ribbons of blood in a spiral before landing in the hay.

Thud.

The sound of his body hitting the floor came at almost the exact same moment.

Then came another thud.

The sound of Bert’s head landing.

And then

Stone-cold, absolute silence.

Even the breeze seemed to stop.

The trees stopped rustling.

Everything seemed to go silent in shock.

In horror.

The three boys simply stood there.

No one made a sound.

No one moved a muscle.

They stared at what had just happened.

The silence was deafening.

They stood there in shock for what must have been only a few minutes.

But it felt like an eternity.

Finally, the three of them took shaky, rattled breaths.

One of the boys spoke.

“Oh, shit.”

What had just happened?

Then panic began to settle over them.

What were they going to do?

How would they explain this?

Who would they have to tell?

Silence again.

Then the older boy spoke in a deep, low, steady voice.

“We’re not telling anyone.”

The other two looked at him, shocked.

It had been an accident, sure.

But there would still be repercussions.

They had been drinking.

Although they had all sobered up suddenly, they had been stinking drunk.

“What are we gonna do?” one of the others asked.

“What do we do with him? We gotta hide him somehow. Somewhere. Do we bury him?”

He looked toward the others.

“What if someone saw us leaving town with Bert? There would be questions. Lots of questions. Questions none of us want to answer.”

The older boy took a deep breath.

Then, in that same calm, steeled tone, he said:

“We’re telling no one.”

He paused.

“Bert had no family. He was a loner. He had no friends. Most people barely even noticed him. No one would ever notice that they hadn’t seen him.

“We didn’t meet up with him until we were well, well away from town. No one saw him with us on the road or on the path to this barn.

“This barn has been abandoned for more than forty years. With all the growth around it, I’d bet there isn’t anyone around who would even remember a barn being here.

“We’ll just dig a hole out behind the barn and bury him.

“We’ll go home just like we had been hanging out.

“Nothing out of the ordinary.

“No one would suspect a thing.

“Even if we ran into someone going back into town.”

The boys agreed.

It was the safest plan.

After all, these boys were among the most popular in town. They had good grades. Nobody would ever consider the possibility that they could be involved in something like this.

They found an old canvas feed bag.

Once they located where Bert’s head had rolled, they placed it inside the bag.

Another boy found some rags and a tarp.

They rolled Bert’s body in the tarp and used the rags to wipe up as much blood from the old dirt floor as they could.

They put the bloody rags into the bag with Bert’s head.

Then they dragged his body and carried the bag around to the back of the barn.

In the darkness, they took turns digging until they had a hole deep enough to bury him.

They were careful.

They didn’t want the scent of blood to attract animals.

When the hole was deep enough, they rolled Bert’s body into it.

It landed with a dull thud.

One of the boys tossed the feed sack into the hole.

It landed with a softer, wet slap against the tarp below.

The feed bag had become red with the blood from Bert’s head and the bloody rags.

They quickly filled the hole.

They scattered dead leaves and twigs across the ground, making it look as though it had never been disturbed.

Then they returned to the barn.

They kicked dirt over the areas that still looked like blood and kicked straw and hay across the floor, hiding whatever evidence remained that they had ever been there.

They wiped down the sickle and hung it back on its hook.

The other weapons were returned to their places.

The lantern was replaced on its nail.

Then the flame was extinguished.

They crept outside.

And closed the barn door.

They walked together in silence until they heard a creek.

“Hey. Let’s get over there and clean ourselves up. Wash all this dirt and blood off of us. We can’t be spotted coming home looking like this.”

The three stepped down the creek bank.

They removed their shirts and began scrubbing their faces, hands, and hair, making sure there were no traces of blood left.

Then they tried to wash out their shirts as best they could.

As they dressed and headed back along the trail, the older boy spoke again.

“When you get home, throw those shirts into the stove and burn them. We can’t be seen washing them, or there will be questions.

“And we can’t have our moms wash them.

“Walk out to the barn and drop to your knees. Dirty up your pants. They’ll look like normal farm wear. When they’re cleaned, torn, and eventually thrown away, no one will notice.”

No one ever spoke directly about that night again.

No one ever remembered or asked about Bert.

But that isn’t quite how this story ends…

Modern Day

Late October had always been an eerie time in the small town.

And this particular October, nearly four hundred years after the events in the old barn, was no exception.

Strange things happened.

An unsettling atmosphere hung in the air.

On this night, a group of teenagers gathered around a bonfire in the same woods where Bert had met his tragic fate.

They roasted marshmallows and told ghost stories, the flickering fire casting eerie shadows across their faces.

As they laughed and enjoyed the warmth of the flames, the group shared tales of the mysterious barn and the long-lost legend of Bert.

The tale had been passed down through generations.

Over time, it had become something of a ghost story in the town.

They spoke of the haunted barn where Bert’s ghost was said to roam.

It was rumored that on dark October nights, his headless figure could be seen drifting among the trees, seeking revenge on anyone who dared enter his domain.

As the teenagers continued their storytelling, they became more and more intrigued by the idea of visiting the barn.

The bravest among them, a boy named Sam, volunteered to lead the way.

He believed in facing his fears.

And he thought it would be an exciting adventure.

With flashlights in hand, they followed Sam through the forest, their curiosity slowly overshadowing their unease.

When they reached the barn, its shadowy silhouette stood just as it had for centuries.

Sam pushed the creaking door open.

The teenagers cautiously stepped inside.

The same lantern still hung from its hook.

As if frozen in time.

As the group explored the barn, a strange sensation washed over them.

They could almost feel the weight of history in the air.

The echoes of long-forgotten events seemed to whisper around them.

It was as if the barn itself remembered.

As if it still held the memory of that fateful night when Bert’s life had been so tragically cut short.

The teenagers walked farther into the barn.

Then they noticed something unusual in the corner.

There, partially buried beneath years of dirt and hay, was an old feed sack.

Its fabric was stained.

Discolored.

Forgotten.

When they pulled it from the dirt, they were horrified to discover what was inside.

A skull.

The empty sockets of its eyes seemed to stare back at them.

Silent.

Accusing.

The group gasped in shock and terror.

The legend of Bert, which had been little more than a campfire story, had suddenly taken a nightmarish turn.

The discovery of the skull sent shivers down their spines.

They knew they had stumbled upon something much darker than they could ever have imagined.

In that moment, they couldn’t deny the eerie feeling that Bert’s restless spirit still lingered within the barn.

Waiting.

Seeking justice for his gruesome death.

They fled the barn, leaving the skull behind.

But as they ran, they knew they had become part of the legend.

And they couldn’t help but wonder what other secrets the barn might still hold.

The memory of that night would haunt them forever.

And the legend of Bert and the haunted barn would continue to chill the hearts of those who dared to venture into the woods on late October nights.

Because some stories, no matter how old, should never be forgotten.

This story is fiction. Happy Halloween from my family to yours. I’ll be back next week with my usual real-estate guidance.

David Greiner, REALTOR®/Auctioneer
Better Homes & Gardens Real Estate | The Good Life Group
Five consecutive years of the Nebraska REALTORS® Association Mark of Excellence
DavidSellsOmaha.com
308-660-6472

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