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The Thing That Stalks the Fields



Estimated reading time — 6 minutes

It was a few weeks ago that the hay bales started creeping slowly away from the house. Every morning when I woke up, each had moved a few hundred feet from where it was before. I assumed it was pranksters with nothing better to do, and I so I ignored it. Within a few days, though, the bales began to approach the boundaries of the farm. I was tired of the whole game by then, and decided to move them back. It took a tedious hour to bring them all from where they were to over near the house again, and by the time I was done I was ready to snap the neck of whatever little pissant was deciding to screw with me.

The next morning, I found each and every one of my horses messily decapitated. The smell was what woke me up. Each one was slumped over against the side of its stall. There were no signs of the heads. I spent the rest of the day cleaning up the mess and burying the remains. It was only when I was done that I noticed the bales of hay had all returned to their positions from the day before, scattered far out into the fields. This time I left them where they were.

That night I sat on my porch with my shotgun in hand and a pot of coffee on the table beside me. I sat for hours, straining my eyes into the fields to catch a glimpse of who was moving my hay bales. Finally, I was beginning to nod off. I would have, but just as my eyes began to close I heard a clamor and a rustling of trees from the nearby woods. I leaned forward, my heart racing with excitement; I was going to catch the bastard. I fumbled with my gun and fidgeted in my seat, waiting anxiously for whoever it was to get close enough to ambush. It was only when the thing got close enough for me to make out its silhouette in the dark that I was frozen still. The thing that crept into my fields from the nearby woods didn’t seem to notice me sitting there. It stalked, hunched and deliberate, through the field with the posture of a tiptoeing thief. If not for the fact that it must have towered to over ten feet tall even in its crouched position, it might have seemed almost frail. The thinness of its arms and legs and the emaciated, caved-in quality of its chest reminded me of a starving animal. Still, this thing was undeniably strong, and I watched it hoist each bale up into its arms with ease, and set it down carefully a while away, taking only a few strides to cover the distance. I watched it work, moving each bale thoughtfully. Every once in a while it would straighten up to look around at the other bales’ positions in the field, before adjusting the one it was working on ever so slightly.

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Before it left, it looked towards the house. I felt its eyes sweep over me in the dark, but whether it saw me or not I couldn’t tell. Then, it turned silently and crept back the way it came, disappearing into the dark of the woods. It took me an hour before I had the courage to move at all. I went inside after a while, but didn’t sleep that night. It was only when the sun rose that I dared step off my porch into the fields. The hay bales were where it left them. Strangely, it didn’t move them as far as it had in the previous days. They were approaching something invisible in the fields, and as I looked at them I realized that they seemed to be marking some line. Indeed, as I walked around the house, I saw the distinct circle that they formed with me at the center. At first I thought the bales were just being haphazardly moved away from the house, but now I could see that they were instead being moved towards some boundary. The thing was sending me a message. I slept uneasily that night, and only because I was exhausted.

The next morning the bales hadn’t moved at all. They didn’t move at all for the rest of that week, in fact. They were finally where the thing wanted them. I made myself sick trying to interpret them. Why would this thing expend so much energy moving my hay bales, and threaten me with such violence should I try to interfere? Killing my horses was just that – a threat. An intelligent threat, at that. It knew what would scare me, and it knew that I would understand the implications.

The sound of an automobile working its way along the road to my farm one morning gave me a little rush of excitement. I’d been planning to abandon the farm since I saw the thing, but I couldn’t hope to leave on foot without risking it treating me like it treated my horses. But, if I could get in the car with whoever was coming my way, I might be able to escape before it could stop me. I didn’t know or care who it was. I decided that the moment they stopped the car, I would jump in the passenger’s seat and tell them to get the hell out of here. I didn’t get the chance.

The car worked its way slowly along the road, trundling across the uneven ground. I urged it silently to hurry. It was when it passed between the two bales placed on either side of the road that I began to hear a booming clatter from the woods. The thing burst suddenly from between the trees, sprinting on all four of its terrible, gangly limbs towards the car. Within a few seconds it was there, pouncing on the automobile like a predatory cat. Within moments it was picking and peeling the vehicle’s steel frame apart, working to get at the driver. The man, whoever he was, screamed all the while and I could hear him even over the crunching of metal and the shattering of glass. It was only when the thing crushed him carelessly in its hand that the screaming stopped. It tossed him away, and straightened up to look at me once again. In the sunlight, I could see the inhumanity of it. It was composed entirely of something awful and alive which was lashed together in a messy semblance of a human form. Whatever it was made of looked so polished and hard, that if it weren’t for the minute writhing of the stuff, I’d think it was made of granite.

The thing retreated back into the woods, and I was left to my shock. My eyes wandered to where the car sat, the engine still sputtering, between two of the hay bales. Suddenly, I understood. The message was clear. I am this thing’s captive, and I am not allowed visitors. Nothing may cross the borders it has set. I’m trapped here, by the thing that stalks the fields, and it demands nothing except that I never leave. Still, I don’t know if I can handle being that thing’s canary. I’ve been thinking hard for the last few days since I saw it crush that man’s chest, and silence him before he could finish his scream. If I crossed the hay bale border, it’d probably do the same. It’d smash my skull before I could put my hands up to protect myself. It’d go and find a new pet, and probably keep looking until it found someone who could stand knowing that it was waiting just outside, watching it at all hours with its shiny, insect eyes.

I’ve been thinking hard for the last few days, and I might just make a run for it.

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Credit: David Feuling (AmazonTwitterFacebookRedditPatreon)

This story was submitted to Creepypasta.com by a fellow reader. To submit your own creepypasta tale for consideration and publication to this site, visit our submissions page today.

Check out David Feuling’s critically-acclaimed trilogy of novellas, The American Demon Waltz, now available on Amazon.com.

All three novellas in the trilogy described below are included in the compilation:

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“Bravo Juliet” is a survival horror military thriller, and the first novella by acclaimed fiction author, David Feuling. It tells the story of an elite soldier serving under US Army Special Project: Acrylic Geist, before she is betrayed and left to die in the wilderness of war-torn Vietnam. Brutal injuries, debilitating sickness, and the growing Lovecraftian threat of “The Maw” test not only Bobby’s will to survive, but her grasp on sanity itself.

“Witness to Those Waiting” is the second book in the “Bravo Juliet” series. Master Specialist Barbara Balk returns to investigate the subterranean mazes carved out beneath Kosovo’s towns and streets. From her entry through the Ngordhje churchyard, she must face undead horrors and ancient evils alike in her quest to return to the surface with answers.

“Vechnaya L’Vitsa” pits Corporal Barbara Balk against new foes in the depths of U.S. Covert Command Outpost (USCCO) #241. Leading a team of six soldiers and tasked with defending the experimental LISEMEC superweapon until it is ready to fire, can Bobby hold out long enough while under siege? Her resolve will be tested by supernatural forces, enemy sabotage, and the expansive Antarctic wasteland itself.

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175 thoughts on “The Thing That Stalks the Fields”

  1. So… this thing just decided one day to mark the area and make it’s presence known? Just like that? I mean… a little pre-moving-haybales spookiness would have added some suspense… just something to think about. Still great though. 9/10

  2. That was incredible. One of the best pastas I have ever read. up there with Candle Cove and Ansai’s Goatman. A well deserved 10/10

  3. I really enjoyed this pasta up until the end. The ending was well written, but I think there needed to be more between the car incident and his realization.

  4. Uh… why does the narrator seem more concerned about the hay bales moving than the dead horses? :-?
    I agree that the thing’s motivation are pretty unclear, and it is also unclear how the narrator figures them out (from what has been described, it seems more likely that the creature does not want anyone crossing the border to get in, rather than not wanting the farm owner to get out).

  5. great pasta but the ending came way too fast and it was too abrupt, I was expecting an awesome ending but this wasn’t that great still great pasta 9/10

    1. GUNTER OVERLORD

      a cow should cross the boundaries and then he makes a run for it as the stridler takes the cow and rips its body i half and the man is hiding in a motel 100 miles away……………and then it goes and punches a hole in the motel owners door,grabbing the owner and launches it into the mans window,knocking him out and he wakes up in the farm with it stridler’s arms around him holding him in a child-like position like he was a teddy bear with it sitting down rocking back and forth

  6. I’d say this is one of the best pasta’s I’ve seen. I’ll admit, I expected the ending to be creepier, but the writing was still fantastic.

  7. Oh hell. That was surprisingly good. I give 8/10. But unlike the comment above, instead of Good Ol’ Slendy, I pictured Ryuk from Death Note… The description almost matches perfectly.

  8. BUT WHO WERE THE HAY BALES?

    Srsly though, I found the ending to be a bit of a disappointment. It had a lot of potential. What happened?

  9. No phone? No car? What a retard! Oh wait… maybe this DOESN\’T take place nowadays, or even remotely recently. Could be 1920 for all we know.

  10. No phone? No car? Nothing?

    And he lives on farm that gets NO traffic?

    He…deserves to die, if he\’s really that big of a dipshit.

  11. Sad that story was not continued. does not i didnt like it. great story. the man isnt threatened. only held captive. protected from outside company. kept from leaving. amazing story.

  12. Very good story, but I had to stop at the bit where the car passed the hay bales and actually draw a diagram. I couldn’t figure out how there could be a hay bale on each side of the road if the bales are encircling the house. But now I understand, if the road disects the circle perimeter, it works…. though the bales would be at an angle to each other.

    Overall, very good story, I liked it a lot. But I do agree, it ended rather abruptly.

  13. Not bad overall, the buildup was great, the plot intriguing, and the story made almost believable. However, it’s just lacking a certain “je ne sais quoi” that would make it amazing. Has potential, but that potential was not fully reached. Even so, I’d give it a solid 8/10. Good job, and keep writing.

  14. hmmmm… i loved the idea of the story but wth kinda ending was that? sorry if i’m being harsh especially because i couldn’t write anything like this in 100 years. but it ended on a poitless sentence? i decided to leave? thats it? soooooooooo much potential to be a great story. grebbed my attention from the beginning i just wish you would’ve expanded on it cause it was great

  15. I think that the creature was just protecting the farmer. Maybe the man in the car was up to no good. I feel like the thing just wants to be friends, but hasn’t figured out how not to be scary.

  16. theguywhoreadsthisstuff

    I’d prefere to see what would happen when people start noticing missing people (the guy in the car) and authorities come down. I would of been nice to see a confrentation, and maybe a bit more of a solution on why the thing is doing that

  17. @ ;A;
    “Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you gonna get”
    apparently you can get a thing stalking you if you live on a farm XDD
    this is really good though, a bit too Sci-fy for me, but really good.

  18. HarglBlargl took the words right outta my mouth. The creature sounds more sweet than scary. I think he just wanted a friend. I wouldn’t mind being some field monster’s pet. <3

  19. @K.K

    “*don’t
    *point
    *just
    Failing with overloading ammount of typs!!! :3”

    Do you mean “amount” and “typos”??
    FAIL!!

  20. AM I THE ONLY ONE WHO INSTANTLY THOUGHT JACK SKELLINGTON AT THE DESCRIPTION OF THE CREATURE :(

    …Yes? Okay, then. :L

    This was awesome, though, and I loved it. 9/10 c:

  21. I really liked this, the only thing that bothered me is that he doesn’t seem to worked up about his horses being decapitated. Like he’ll sit on his porch with a shotgun ready to shoot whoever has been moving his hay bales, but you can cut off the heads of several animals and you’re okay.

  22. It was great really, I liked it, but…. somthing that possibly could have been cleared up before the ending would be more about the creature and why exactly it was protecting the farm/this person? This part did’nt make much sense to me, that’s all. Just an opinon…

  23. Awwww, field-thing has a cruuuush. <3

    I don’t know. The way that the “thing” was described made it seem far too adorable to be even slightly unnerving. “If not for the fact that it must have towered to over ten feet tall even in its crouched position, it might have seemed almost frail.” D’awwww.

    Otherwise, it was well-written enough but seemed to flounder. It would be altogether forgettable to me if it wasn’t so ironically and unintentionally sweet.

  24. not perfect, but a shit ton better than what we’ve been getting recently.

    8/10

    plz to not rush the endings kthx

  25. i actually kind of liked this one, despite it having a couple of errors here and there. The concept of someone virtually away from the civilized world (i apologize to the farmers, i didn’t know how to describe that better) being held captive by something that is somehow invisible, yet doesn’t mind going out in the sun like characters in many stories and seems to be always watching, is interesting and creepy.
    I give it a 6/10.
    These are the two main errors i noticed.
    It is unrealistic that the protagonist is awoken by the smell of the decapitated horses. Unless he lived very close to the animal’s stall, and the thing happened overnight, it is impossible for the smell to be so strong, at the point of even waking him up. It would take at least 2-3 days of rotting in the sun for the corpses to be so smelly. If i’m wrong on this one, i apologize.
    Also, the part where he calls the fact of the creature killing his horses an “intelligent threat”. Why of course. No one would think of it being a threat after finding all their horses methodically killed overnight after they did something. It takes a smart man to connect the dots, huh?
    An intelligent threat would have been, maybe, tearing the protagonist’s scarecrow apart in many little pieces (if he has hay bales, i am also inclined to think he has at least a scarecrow too) or maybe leaving marks or scratches on the ground next to his house, or clearly sabotating his car or something. THIS is an intelligent threat.

  26. CarolynBoBarolyn

    I’m not quite sure how I feel about this one. The plot was amazing, but it could have been way, way, wayyyyy longer.

    And I kinda wasn’t scared of it… dunno why.

  27. Could have introduced the horse and the car better, like build a little suspense instead of just “Oh hey they died”. It would have been better if he had smelled them, before he found them.

    Just a little help, great pasta! Yummy yummy sauce

  28. I actually really like this pasta. Most of the stories I read here are of overdone concept. Wasn’t the case with this one, though.

  29. Loved the first few paragraphs. Despised the ending. Could use a bit of fleshing out.

    Also, I don’t feel that it was implied that the monster was keeping him captive. I felt that the monster was protecting him or something. That needs to be elaborated a bit more.

  30. Julia appreciated your work.

    I loved the idea of the lanky but strong creature. They hay bales was good too. But there are some main things that I think would be best to clean up in order to make the story have more suspense. With much due regard, two things that really got to me:
    1. “I assumed it was pranksters with nothing better to do…” This disengaged me immensely. I thought “cliche, unoriginal, the usual unauthoritative, oblivious main character in a thriller.” Perhaps, mention instead, a state of knowing. Create anti-irony in which the character needs to know more than the audience or we are disengaged.
    2. “The next morning, I found each and every one of my horses messily decapitated. The smell was what woke me up. ” If you were to switch the order of these two sentences, again a build of suspense would latch the audience immediately and the appeal to senses as the opening line will wake the speaker and the audience up with anticipation.

  31. So narrator had mother of all guard dogs? My advice is: there are very few problems you can’t solve with a flamethrower and some death metal playing in the background. Hmm need 2 invent a way to play music in the back of the mind…

  32. Agree with Tram. It was really, really good, but the realization is very bland. I think all us readers knew, yes, he was circling him. The narrator is a bit stupid since he pretty much figured it out himself, just didn’t put it into the same words till the end.

  33. @Heywood Jablome = Amish.

    I liked this pasta; I didn’t head over heels love it, but it was well written and I enjoyed it. Very nice.

  34. Sir Shoop Whoopington

    Perfect with the exception of the very end, the last line was sort of dull. Too long to truly be pasta but well written enough to keep me interested. 9.5/10, points off only for the last line.

    BTW, perhaps this site is haunted but i have had to wipe this computer several times since I posted last and furthermore, I have had my IP address changed a fair few as well. How and why does it still remember the name I always comment as? It’s kinds weird IMO.

  35. @Bertski: The car could have been the mailman delivering the mail, and it was an educated guess fueled by the fact that the thing made a perfect circle out of the bales with him in the middle and anything that came in it killed but it left him alone.

    Very good, i really liked this one, its a mile ahead of anything we’ve had on here in a very long time. I would like to see it fleshed out into something longer deeper and more involved.

  36. Gah! It keeps posting before I’m done! Anyway, as I was saying, I guess if the stories continue, this way, we’ll have those pastas again soon! Keep getting better!

  37. Fantastic story, the last line shows the sheer desperateness of the narrator. He’s willing to die rather than become the thing’s captive. The placing of the bales was mysterious and suspenseful, well written and I hope to read more.

  38. I liked this one a lot. I’ll agree with some of the above posters; I’d love to see this made a bit longer. I was also thinking like “What” did, and was wondering when we’d see anm obvious Slender Man reference. Well done :D

  39. HA! I do’t live on a farm, I live in a city! Mr. Beastie there won’t go after me! :P Anyway, I like the pont LetItBe made of the arragemnet of the stories. Good catch. Also, someone said he was stupid for not having a phone or family, but isn’t that better. If he had either of those two things- let’s ust say he has a wife- remember what happened to his horsies?? *shudders* Yeah, I guess I could nom a little more considering the pastas that are basicly labled : “Read me and you’ll get food poisoning!” Bravo

  40. Do it do it do it do it!

    @Mmmm: Actually, you can. I woke up to the smell of vomit once, and another time I woke up from the smell of the fact that my dog had pooped in my room.

  41. not true. they have fire alarms for deaf people that release the strong odor of wasabi. it worked on sleeping test subjects.

  42. I thought it was a great pasta, though the ending came a little too fast, ended too abruptly.

    Overall, very nice, I hope to see more of this quality

    8/10

    -2 for the rushed ending

  43. Title reminds me of “He Who Walks Behind The Rows” a la Children of the Corn.

    On the whole, I liked it. It was direct, simply worded, and there were very few mistakes – I tend to favor works with heavier description, but your word choice fit the speaker well. It could have been a bit more exciting, but I’m fond of beastie stories and this one certainly has potential. You’ve piqued my interest, good writer. I am hungry for more.

  44. This one was actually rather good, but it would have been better if the thing had killed someone else before he knew what it was trying to kill him, and it would have been better if the thing had a better description of it

    1. Well, sometimes it’s good to leave a creature up for a persons imagination sometimes. I mean if you explain something to much it can take away from the scary (this is depending on the situation of course) in the end our imagination can make things a lot more scary than someone just telling us what’s what.

      1. Maybe it’s all one big twist, and the outside world is a giant rouse, surrounding this one man that is really just the breeding ground for a meal of epic proportions, and the man in the truck was the one sent to check on the first hatched egg. So, the thing was himself, or his mind, stopping them from turning him into such. What?

  45. @Mmmm Not a true fact; In the summer my dad and I leave our windows open to let in fresh at night while we sleep, and one night a skunk sprayed right beneath his window, so the smell came in. It was so bad, it woke him up and he choked and gagged until it left.

  46. Hmmmmmm.

    This pasta entertained me very well, and I feel I should leave a comment.

    …I’m just not entirely certain WHAT I should say about it, though >.>

  47. …What?? I don’t get the “twist” at the end. It had so much potential with the beautiful imagery and skilled detailing, but then it just picked me up by the shirt collar, and tossed me into a river. It was like the author all of a sudden remembered he needed to knit his mom a sweater and made up a quick ending to get it done and over with. A pasta like this deserves a more decent ending.

    1. The twist is that he let himself be killed by the thing. Which means that “it” is now wondering around, looking for his next “canary”.

      Your comment made me LOL so hard though :D

        1. it does not say he dies yes, but the author implies that he tries to escape at the end.”I’ve been thinking hard for the last few days, and I might just make a run for it.”

    2. True, it does deserve a better ending but its definitely on the top of my list! I love the “twist” and the fact its not some bull crap, unbelievable story. And to leave the farm: TANK. Excellent.
      #360noscopes11thprestige

      1. How is this believable in any fucking way? An insect like creature that is intelligent and over ten foot tall is within reason to you?….. Um, okay.

        1. Kamira Heramace

          its a freakin story DUDE I mean COME ON MAN do you beleive in SPONGEBOB NO but you dont walk up to kid on christmas and say BY THE WAY your parents lied to you

    3. I was captivated by the moving hay bales, I kept reading, was interested when the horses were killed as a message to stop messing with the bales. Loved it when it was discovered that the bales were a boundry the narrator was not to cross. Then i was badly disappointed by the end. The creatures motivations are unclear and that is something i need in a story like this cause the idea of keeping him trapped in that hay bale boundry is so out there and interesting I as a reader need a reason for it.

      Was he just keeping him penned as cattle and saving him for a later slaughtering and eating? was he really a canary being kept as a pet?

      This is a great example of a good story with a bad and too sudden ending

    1. That thing is pretty interesting i wonder if I can study it. Bet it’s going to be pretty hard to catch though. This sounds like fun.

  48. so basically raep?

    Good story, but the climax/ending came a little too fast, and how the protagonist figured out the motives of the creature is fuzzy.

    7/10

    1. Nah, it’s pretty easy to determine the creature’s motive. I mean, it stopped moving the bales of hay when they were arranged in a circle around his house, when he tried to move them himself, the creature killed his horses as warning. This theory is proven further with the fact that the creature killed the person in the car.

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