The Beasts of Haddon’s Field

They started moving almost the moment Farmer Haddon turned his back and climbed into the cab of his tractor. The smoke from the machine obscured his view or he would have noticed the giant bales of yellow-brown hay lean toward the town edge of his field without benefit or wind nor anything else to move them. If he had noticed, and stayed thirty minutes longer, he might have seen them roll an excruciating inch. But he hadn’t and he didn’t..

Night by night the bales crept like small glaciers inexorably and unnoticed toward the farmer’s house and, beyond that, to the town of neat houses. Occasionally, he would scratch his head and wonder, as he sipped his coffee in the cab of the tractor, if he hadn’t seen the hay bales farther up the field. He would notice a dead animal, small body crushed and punctured as if by a fallen tree with many sharp branches but paid it no heed. Once he even saw a deer, pulped almost beyond recognition not ten feet from the largest bale. He nearly walked up to it, to investigate more, but a breeze redolent with fresh grass swirled about him and reminded him of the work yet to do before sundown.

Thus unbothered, the bales kept moving until, one moonless night, they stopped and began to unfurl. Stalks came together to form thick legs, sharp tusks, and ravenous mouths. They set their hollow eyes on the doomed town and lumbered to the feast.

You get a spooky story and an appropriately-themed Easter egg. Halloween egg? Candy Corn egg? One of those. It’s yours, if you spot it.

I don’t know why mammoths have been on my mind lately as frightening creatures but they have. This isn’t the first thing I’ve written with giant, lumbering beasts. Juggernauts like that scare the heck out of me. It goes all the way back to The Sword of Shannara, really.

Write along with the prompt here!

(Photo Credit: TheDigitalArtist on Pixabay)