Ashwood County 8

Chapter Eight:

Ashwell Farm

A casefile of rot, silence, and things that still breathe when no one’s left to listen.

No one mowed the lawn after she left.

Didn’t matter much—the grass never really grew right out there anyway. It leaned away from the farmhouse like it remembered something. Something buried deep.

Locals still call it Ashwell Farm, though the Ashwells themselves are long gone. Except Ezekiel.
His name clings to the air like rust on the porch railing.

They say his ghost walks the property.
They say a lot of things out here.

Clem didn’t believe in ghosts.
He believed in consequences.

“You sure about this?” Stanley Butters had asked. “You’re buying a ruin.”

“I’m not buying it,” Clem had said. “I’m settling a debt.”

Stanley had the kind of athletic build that made folks assume he played something. Truth was, the only thing he ever played was the ponies, and he was awful at it. His father, Wesley Butters, had been a legend once—best shortstop in the state, people used to say. Made it to the bigs for a minute. Then he tore his shoulder and nobody ever brought it up again, like the injury was a curse they didn’t want to invoke. These days, Wesley sold property and silence. Stanley just tried to fill the space between both.

Clem rubbed away the chill in the burnt section of his forearm that hadn’t felt anything in a decade. The nerves were long dead, but the memory wasn’t. Some fires never leave when they’re done. They just burn for an eternity turning parts of your soul into ash. This place needed to be gone. Ezekiel needed to go. There was no place for him here anymore. He’d made a promise he aimed to keep. You always paid what you owed.

Some debts were personal. Others were sacred. Clem wasn’t sure which this was anymore. But if Ezekiel was still here—if the land had kept him—then the past hadn’t stayed buried. And that meant Clem couldn’t either. 

He hadn’t been back since the heatwave. Since the trial. Since the baby.
Since the silence.

The porch swing moved before he touched it—slow and even, like it had breath of its own. The door opened without resistance. Inside, everything waited like it always had.

The living room was still half-intact. Dust covered the furniture like a burial shroud, but near the front window, something new had appeared.

A child’s plush toy—orange, grinning wide with cartoon malice—was suctioned to the glass, its plastic paws outstretched like it had clawed its way in. Or was trying to get out.
Clem stared at it longer than he meant to.

He didn’t go upstairs.
He knew better.

Out back, nailed to the utility pole where the wires had long since been stripped, a strange cast-iron figure clung to the metal—small, human-shaped, climbing in vain.
Clem didn’t remember it being there before.
He didn’t touch it.

The letter was in the kitchen drawer, just like she said.

“The cost of silence isn’t just memory.
It’s rot.
It’s what grows in the soil when truth stays buried.”

It wasn’t signed. Didn’t have to be.

He found the old knife, still in the floorboard. Still stained.
Still there.

Clem folded the letter, slid it into his coat, and stepped outside. He didn’t need to stay the night.
He only came to see if the land still remembered.

It did.

It did.

Wind peeled across the field, shaping something in the grass—
not a path exactly, but an invitation. A dare.

He didn’t follow it.
He didn’t need to.

Some truths grow back no matter what you burn.

And Clem finally understood the price.
Funny thing, though—some things still felt unpaid.

---

The cruiser rolled to a slow stop at the edge of the overgrown drive, gravel crunching like old bones beneath the tires. Sheriff Danner didn’t move right away. He sat behind the wheel, elbow on the door, eyes locked on the silhouette standing near the porch.

Clem Ford.

Danner studied him in silence, the engine ticking as it cooled. There was something about Clem that never changed—but not in the comforting way. It was the way a locked box never changes, no matter how much dust gathers on it.

What was it that kept haunting this man?
Yeah. Haunting.
That’s what you’d call it. Every time Danner looked at him, he saw the ghost of something. Not a specter. Not a shadow. Something worse—something buried deep enough that no one could get a clean look at it. A sorrow turned inward. A reckoning that never made it past the skin.

Most people never noticed it.
But the ones who did?
They had ghosts of their own.

Deputy Mills leaned forward from the passenger seat, trying to get a better look.
“Want me to say something?”

Danner shook his head. “Not yet.”

Clem turned toward them. His shoulders didn’t lift or tense, but the motion was deliberate—watchful. He clocked the cruiser, then shifted his gaze to the other vehicle now approaching in the distance. Danner recognized that look. Calculation. Mistrust. Clem Ford had never been one who took to strangers. Hell, he didn’t much care for folks he’d known his whole life.

Danner pushed the door open and stepped out, slow enough not to startle. Gravel crunched beneath his boots. The breeze tugged at his collar, but it didn’t break the tension.

“Clem,” Danner called out, voice even as he walked up the drive, hand extended.

Clem didn’t move at first. His eyes stayed on the other vehicle. He hesitated.

Then—finally—he looked at the sheriff.

“Don’t mind them,” Danner said, nodding slightly toward the second vehicle. “They’re with me. They’re from the city. City police. They got questions.”

He paused, not lowering his hand.

“You gonna act right, Clem? I’d appreciate it if you did.”

Clem glanced once more at the vehicle, then at Danner’s outstretched hand. There was a beat—one breath, maybe two—before he nodded.

And then he took it.

Their handshake wasn’t long, but it landed heavy. Like something old had just stirred.

There was a creak from the porch as Ramirez and Vance approached. Ramirez, for once, came slow. No sharp stride or clipped pace—just deliberate movement, the kind you use when you respect the space you’re walking into. Vance stayed steady, his eyes flicking between the house, the swing, and the men in front of it.

Danner stepped back, hands resting on his belt as the two city cops got close enough to read the tension in the air. Deputy Mills joined them quietly, falling into place beside the sheriff.

Clem didn’t move. He eyed the newcomers with a look that gave nothing, his eyes narrowing like a man who’d lived long enough to know he could be both predator and prey.

Ramirez, who usually took the lead, said nothing. She stopped a pace behind Danner. It was Vance who spoke first—softly, but firm.

“We came with questions. But we’ll take silence, too, if it’s all you got left.”

Ramirez eyed Clem. She knew that look—it didn’t scare her. She respected it. People like Clem didn’t need a spotlight. They needed room. And time. She wasn’t sure which he had left, but she wasn’t about to steal either.”

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Author’s Note:

This story started as a writing prompt but ended somewhere stranger. The details—the letter, the figure, the plush in the window—are pulled from real things. Or at least from things that felt real. Ashwood County doesn’t always give you answers. Just echoes. Thanks to Di’s 3TC challenge for the spark—and to Sadje and her WDYS challenge for pointing me toward the door. I just happened to open it.

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Ashwood County remembers what others try to forget.

If this chapter stirred something, follow the trail.

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