The Turn of the Auger

It was the summer we moved into my great-uncle’s old farmhouse, a place my mother had inherited after his death. The house sat at the end of a long, dirt track, surrounded by fields of swaying corn that seemed to whisper secrets in the wind. We were a family of four—my father, who worked in the nearby town; my mother, who stayed home; my younger brother, Sam; and me, fifteen and resentful of the isolation.

From the start, there was an oddness to the place. The floors were scarred, and the air held a smell of old dust and machine oil. My room was at the top of the stairs, and I would often hear a rhythmic thumping from the attic above, like a heavy pendulum swinging. At first, I thought it was the wind, but on still nights it was there, steady and patient. My parents dismissed it as settling wood, but Sam, who was only eight, claimed he saw a figure in the barn, a man with a gaunt face and dark coveralls, always holding a large, spiraling tool.

School was a bus ride of forty minutes. I didn’t have friends, and Sam was too young to be interesting. So I spent my afternoons wandering the property. The barn was old, with a hayloft that creaked. There was a workbench covered in rusted tools, and on the wall hung a strange contraption—a long, helical blade attached to a wooden handle. It looked like something from a medieval torture chamber. My uncle had been a tinsmith, my father told me, known for his intricate metalwork. But this tool seemed out of place, too brutal for such delicate craft.

The sounds grew more distinct as weeks passed. I began to hear whispers, not in words but in the hiss of the wind through the corn, and the thumping from the attic became more insistent. Sam started talking about the man in the barn, describing him as friendly but sad. He called him ‘Uncle Joe,’ even though we had no relative of that name. I decided to investigate the attic.

One afternoon, I pushed open the trapdoor and climbed up. The attic was dusty and dim, lit by a single cobwebbed window. In the corner, buried under old blankets, I found a diary. It was my great-uncle’s, written in a neat, spidery hand. The entries were mundane at first, records of weather and crops. But then the tone changed. He spoke of a ‘spiral truth’ and a ‘debt to the auger.’ He wrote that he had made a deal, trading his craft for a ‘sweet, spiraling voice’ that would lead him to the ‘heart of the field.’ The last entry was dated two days before his death. It simply said, ‘It is ready. I will be with it soon.’

That night, I couldn’t sleep. The thumping was louder, now accompanied by a scraping sound, as if something was being dragged across the attic floor. I went to the top of the stairs. The door to the attic was open, and a faint, golden light emanated from within. I crept up and peered in. The light came from a lantern on the floor, and around it, the dust motes swirled in a spiral pattern. In the center of the spiral lay the tool from the barn, the helical blade. And standing over it was a figure—tall, gaunt, wearing black coveralls. He turned to face me, and his eyes were like polished stones, empty and deep. He smiled, and his mouth opened too wide, revealing a spiraling maw of teeth. ‘You’re just in time,’ he said, his voice like the grinding of gears. ‘The corn needs turning.’

I screamed and tumbled backward, landing on the hallway floor. The figure did not follow. The attic was dark again, the door shut. I told my parents, but they dismissed it as a nightmare. Sam just looked at me with pity and said, ‘He likes you. He wants you to help.’

The next week, we had a harvest festival in the town square. There were booths and games, but I felt watched. I saw a man in the crowd, wearing coveralls, his back turned. When he turned, it was the same face I had seen in the attic. He held up a hand and gestured for me to follow. I wanted to run, but my feet seemed rooted. He led me to a display of antique farming tools. Among them was the same auger, polished and gleaming. ‘It’s a grain auger,’ a vendor said, ‘used to draw grain from a silo. This one, though, it’s special. It was my grandfather’s. He said it could drill into the earth and find the voices.’

I backed away, but I felt the pull of the auger, a deep resonance in my bones. That night, I dreamt of the field behind the house. In the dream, the corn was not corn but a vast, spiraling maze, and at its center was a pit. The auger was drilling into the ground, and from the hole came a cacophony of whispers, all begging to be released.

I woke to the sound of the auger turning. It was coming from the barn. I threw on my coat and ran out into the night. The barn door was open, and inside, under a single bare bulb, the figure was operating the auger, driving it into a patch of dirt in the center of the barn. Each turn of the handle sent a shudder through the floor. ‘Help me,’ he said, not looking at me. ‘The corn is thirsty. It needs the blood of the machine.’

I saw that the auger was not drilling dirt but something else. There were roots, thick and black, and as the blade turned, they bled a dark, viscous liquid. The whispers grew louder, and I realized they were the voices of the roots, pleading. ‘Let them free,’ the figure said. ‘Turn until they are undone.’

I stepped forward, my hand reaching for the handle. But then I stopped. I remembered Sam’s drawings of the man in the barn, always holding the auger, and I remembered my father’s story: my great-uncle had been found dead in the barn, his head resting on a mound of fresh-turned earth, the auger beside him, its blade stained with a rust-like substance.

I yanked the auger away and threw it to the floor. The figure screamed, a sound like tearing metal. The roots writhed, and the floor buckled. I ran, grabbing Sam and my mother and father, and we fled to the car. As we sped down the dirt track, I looked back. The farmhouse was burning, a column of fire spiraling into the sky. We never returned, and the house was never rebuilt.

Years later, I heard that a new family had moved onto the land. They complained of strange noises, of a thumping from the earth, and of a man in coveralls who walked the fields, carrying a long, spiraling blade. I still see it sometimes, in my dreams—the auger turning, the roots bleeding, and the whispers asking to be turned, promising to set us free if only we would let them spin.