A faint whistling

It took another hour to skin the remaining two goblins and tear out their hearts, and once those were finished I began searching through the farmhouse for anything of use. I found spent casings in the dust near the front door and around the fence post. Some from a high caliber, and some from a pellet gun. I pocket them all. The house itself was small: made all the smaller by the fact that nearly half of the roof had collapsed inward and buried most of it. There was a bed tucked in the corner of what remained, next to the stone fireplace. Black soot that looked a lot more recent than anything else, stained the gray stones of the mantle.

Tally marks were carved into the stone of the wall next to the bed. I took the time to number them: 198, together. I dug around the ground and found a few spent needles, and a torn leather strap, and the book [Basics of Alchemy] hiding beneath the pillow. Lucky find. I tucked the book into my backpack and headed back outside. I picked up the spear and club of the dead goblins and set them on top of the blanket.

Behind the farmhouse, about 500 or so meters away, within the borders of the stone wall and behind the fields of amber grain, there was a large barn in a much better state than the farmhouse. I unholstered my pistol as I approached. Right off the path that bisected the wheat fields, I spotted something hidden in the thick grass. At first, I thought it was a small stone: no larger than the size of my hand, but there was something...off about it. I bent down and picked it up and dropped it with a yelp.

It was a skull. A human skull: a splintering crack forming along the crown where it would have been struck by something. Large, empty eyes stared up at me through the blackness of dust as it lay on the ground where I had dropped it. I examined where I had picked it up further. It was wrapped in a faded blue cloth, with red borders, and white embroidered threading. Beneath it was a larger skull: strands of braided straw-like blonde hair still stuck to pieces of flesh not yet picked clean by the elements or the animals, attached to the body of a woman who was similarly adorned in blue and red cloth. This woman's leg was caught in a bear trap and looked to be severed at the ankle.

My stomach rose into my throat as the realization of what I was looking at set in. I put the baby's skull back in its place. As I was doing so I noticed something on its finger: a golden ring with a line of white diamonds embedded in the middle. Well, it's not like this corpse was going to miss it, right? I pulled it off and examined it for a second. Inside of the band were words that I had no chance at reading: Nyt ja ikuisesti. I shrugged stuck it in my pocket, and continued the walk to the barn.

Arrows and bullets lay scattered in the dirt on the approach: as the skeletons of men and the twisted remains of goblins poked out from underneath the wheat. The barn door hung half off its hinges, and I was able to go in fairly easily.

A small battle took place here. Definitely. Broken tools lay embedded in the skeletal remains of Goblins, while human bodies lay in similarly broken states. For every human body, there were at least three goblin bodies. I picked up what tools I could: a hoe embedded in the shattered skull of a goblin: a sickle in the shattered grasp of a human., and a scythe. Every one of the bodies here were adorned in similar clothing to the woman stuck in the bear trap in the wheat field outside, I noted. I headed back outside and placed all of those on top of the bed with the other things. When that was done, I continued searching through the barn.

Bodies of goblins were scattered heavily inside beyond the line of dead men. Pocked with arrowheads and bullets. An old bag hung up on an iron hook caught my eye. It was green and burlap, but also incredibly deep. I slung it over my shoulder and continued looking for things after I picked out the arrows that could be salvaged and placed them in there.

Horseshoes? They could probably sell those, right? I put the five I found in there. An old mallet? Get in there. A hammer? Get in there: though I'd probably keep it...I needed something else to help set up my camp. While the tarp worked for the most part, it should only be temporary. Too much air seeped in underneath, and the whole thing flapped continuously whenever the winds got particularly blustery. Perhaps I had become too spoiled: I needed to improve my living conditions: these last two nights had been absolutely miserable. With how cold it was this late in the morning there was no doubt that it would continue that trend.

That reminded me…

I pulled out my PID and sent a message to Jack:

"Can you tell whoever comes to sell my things to pick up a construction skill book?"

The reply came when I headed up to the hayloft.

"Will do. Are you doing okay?"

"It's cold." That was all I managed to tell him.

"We left you some matches and fire starter stuff. Should start a fire."

"Ok."

I had already known that, but I was still upset at him and the others. I put the PID away and continued the search. I was a bit more lucky with the bodies up here. People must have lined them to fire upon the incoming goblin hordes. It was smart, but they must have been incredibly outnumbered — riddled as they were with arrows. Most of their weapons were broken beyond the point of salvaging: still, the scrap could probably be used for something, right? I picked up what I found and put it in the old burlap seed bag.

One of these corpses held an old hunting rifle, and a rotted pack of bullets sat beside him. I pulled hard at the rifle, and it didn't budge. I pulled harder and harder until the right arm holding it in place came off at the elbow: already partially severed by an arrow. I peeled the arm off my prize and picked up the .357s in the rotted box. I hopped down from the hayloft and put the rifle on the pile on the bed.

The hayloft stretched all the way around the inside of the barn like a squared horseshoe, ending at an elevated platform on either side of the barn's door. I walked this rim looking for anything. Animal bodies lay in skeletal heaps in the stalls that lined the walls on the ground level. There must have been a whole community of people who lived around here. I wonder if similar scenes played out in barns all around here, or if this was their last stand? If similar scenes did play out I wondered if they would be just as resource-rich. Pistols and revolvers were the most common firearms. All of them were old. Really old. Rusted and falling apart. There would be some market for them, right? I stuck them in the bag.

Once the bag was fit to burst, I stepped down from the hayloft and swiveled the seedbag over my chest as I slung my backpack over my back. As I was stepping over the bodies of the men who died on the line, I caught a glint in the dust once more. Luckyyy.

I pulled up the skeletal hand, and, sure enough, there was another ring: similar to the one that the dead woman had been wearing. I pulled it off and turned it over in my hand, the words: Aina ja ikuisesti, were engraved within the golden band. I stuck it in my pocket and walked back to the farmhouse.

I pulled the pillow off the head of the bed and placed it in the middle of the pile, folded the blanket inward, and tied it together at the top with the leather strap that I had first found in the dust by the bed. This was going to be heavy, but I had all day to take it back, right?

While doing this, I hear a faint whistle coming from the field, followed by a scraping. This pattern continued while I folded the larger blanket underneath it over to hold it in place, and tied it in place over my backpack like a large sling.

Whistle. Scrape. Whistle. Scrape. Whistle. Scrape.

They grew closer by the second. When it was at the back door. I peeked out with my hand on my pistol. My whole body shook as the remains of the woman with the straw blonde hair stood there: her blue and red dress caked in dust and blood, with her bare, skeletal finger pointed forward, and her mouth open in a perpetual scream.

The whistle came from her parted jaws: hung in place by mummifed flesh clinging on like old clay. A pair of dried vocal cords rattled inside of her rotted throat as a puff of dust escaped from her sunken mouth as she took a step forward: her leg bone scraping against the ground as she did so.

Soon, a chorus of whistling broke out from the barn. I picked up my rifle and sprinted the hell out of there as far and as fast as I could.