Free Story Friday 8-8-25

 Free Story Friday: Autumn Harvest

A Bubak Story

A Bubak Story
Every Friday we feature a free short story inspired by urban legend or folklore—reimagined with a dark twist. This week we’re heading to the wide-open fields of the Midwest, where a harvest doesn’t always mean corn or wheat… sometimes, it means you.


Autumn Harvest

The first thing Claire noticed about the new farm wasn’t the leaning windmill or the sagging barn or the way the gravel drive rattled the truck’s bones.

It was the scarecrow.

It stood ten rows in from the road, a little off-center like someone had measured by guess instead of string. A moth-chewed duster hung from its shoulders, tatters drifting even when the air held its breath. A slouch hat shadowed a burlap head stitched with a seam where a mouth should be, thread tugged into a permanent almost-smile. Straw bled from the cuffs like veins.

And it faced the house. Not the field. Not the road. The house.

“Charming,” Claire said, shouldering a box through the front door.

“Came with the place,” her dad replied, trying on optimism like an old jacket. “I’ll take it down once I get the water pressure sorted.”

“We’ll keep what’s got good bones and toss the rest,” her mom added, forcing a bright smile at the tired kitchen.

Claire wasn’t sure there were bones left. The porch sagged like it was sighing. The fridge hummed in a worried way. Out past the back door, prairie rolled into corn until the horizon made its own weather.

That night the windmill creaked on a slow pivot that matched Claire’s heartbeat. She lay still, counting the turns, each groan of the blades sounding like a door opening somewhere it shouldn’t. The wind carried a dry whisper through the corn, like someone in the next room talking under their breath. The house settled in unfamiliar clicks and pops, voicey as an old dog dreaming. Somewhere in the attic, a loose shingle worried itself against the roof with a tiny, toothy chatter.

Claire pulled the sheet up to her chin and watched the rectangle of window darken until it was only her face looking back—and the hat shape out by the field, a darker dark on the horizon.

By morning, the scarecrow still hadn’t moved. Still faced the house.


On day two, a blue pickup eased into the drive. A woman climbed out with a Tupperware of cinnamon rolls and a look that said she’d seen a thousand new families and knew half would stay.

“Ruth,” she said. “Welcome to Ashford.”

“Thank you,” Mom said.

Ruth’s gaze slid toward the front field. “That scarecrow yours?”

“Came with the sale,” Dad said.

“Pull it,” Ruth said flatly.

“We will,” Dad replied.

“Before Harvest Night,” Ruth said. Her voice carried the weight of someone who had repeated this warning for years and been ignored more times than she liked to remember. “Lock your doors. And if you hear a baby crying… you didn’t.”

Claire blinked. “I’m sorry—what?”

Ruth didn’t smile. “Storms leave their dust where they want. Stories do, too.” She tipped her fingers at the Tupperware. “Fifteen seconds in the microwave. I’ll bring eggs next time.”

“What’s Harvest Night?” Claire called as Ruth left.

Ruth didn’t answer. The dust her truck kicked up hung in the air long after she was gone. It tasted faintly of metal.


That dusk, Claire sat on the porch with a glass of water, staring at the field until the scarecrow’s hat blurred with night. The windmill creaked. The corn whispered. The scarecrow faced the house.


Ashford High smelled like pencil shavings and floor wax. Trophy cases held photos where everyone’s hair looked wind-combed.

Third period—art—she met Joe.

“You’re the new one,” he said, dropping onto the stool beside her. A wheat-and-guitar patch was stitched on his denim jacket, its edges fraying from real use, not fashion.

“Claire,” she said. “We bought the old Hillenbrand place.”

“Haunted silo,” he said, stone-faced.

Her brows lifted. “Seriously?”

He grinned, a grin that looked like it had been practiced in mirrors and tractor cabs alike. “Nah. It’s your front field you gotta worry about.”

“Oh, good.”

“You going to the fair?”

“I don’t know. We’re still unpacking.”

“It’s not optional,” Joe said, ticking items off like they were sacred rites: pie auctions, tractor pulls, jam contests.

“Sounds intense.”

“It’ll change your life. Also, pie.”

“Only if you explain Harvest Night.”

His smile thinned. “Who told you?”

“Our neighbor. Said to lock the doors. And… something about a baby crying.”

“Bubak,” he said. “Old story. Came with the wheat. Scarecrow that wears the clothes of the ones it takes. Lures you with a baby’s cry.” His voice softened like he’d been told that same story as a kid and didn’t like how it had stayed with him.

“You should still come to the fair,” he added.

“Is this a date?”

“I’m asking you to eat a funnel cake so good it’ll make you believe in God.”


The fair rose out of the county lot like it had been planted and watered by gossip. One day an empty rectangle of baked clay; the next, a ferris wheel, food trailers, and pens where goats stared with biblical judgment. Strings of bulbs looped overhead, warm as captured stars.

Mom handed Claire a twenty. “Bring me a funnel cake and a picture of the prize pumpkin.”

That morning, Ruth had stopped by like weather. “Lock your doors,” she said without hello. “And pull it, if it lets you.” She lingered a moment, eyes on the corn. “My granddad said the first time he saw it, it was wearing his cousin’s shirt. Two days later, the boy disappeared. My daddy swore it wasn’t just a story. And he was the kind of man who thought everything was just a story.”

At the fair, Joe was where he said: by the 4-H chickens, narrating a rooster standoff like it was an epic battle.

“Ready?” he asked.

“For what?”

“The best and worst food of your life.”

They ate corn dogs, shared lemonade that tasted like actual lemons, watched a grandmother outbid a farmer with mythic forearms. In the exhibit hall, they admired quilts stitched like maps. Under the gazebo, Joe played a song, and the mayor nodded like music could be regulated.

Claire let the fair show her how to breathe different. Grease and sugar and hay braided together on the air. A toddler in cowboy boots did a determined, wobbly march, fisting a ribbon like it had personally chosen him. Teenagers swarm-laughed past with plastic hammers. Over by the canning table, two women debated the correct setting for jelly like the outcome could tip elections. An old man in coveralls leaned on the fence and watched the sky more than the rides. “Wind’s turning,” he told no one. “Smells like change.”

For a while, Ashford was lights and sugar and borrowed joy. Claire forgot the windmill. Forgot the scarecrow.

Then the sun slid behind the grain elevator. The air cooled, thin and sharp. The ferris wheel lights looked farther apart. People glanced toward the fields without meaning to, as if the land itself had cleared its throat. Music from the gazebo thinned, like it, too, was listening.

Claire heard a sound. Faint. Thin. The sound a newborn makes before it learns crying brings anything.

A baby.

She went still. “Do you hear that?”

Joe’s shoulders tightened. “Stay here,” he said, and disappeared into the crowd.

She waited. Texted where are you twice. Fireworks cracked overhead. The baby cried again—from the direction of her road. Louder.

She told herself it was a cat. She told herself not to be the girl who runs toward crying in the dark because a story told her to.

Then she was running.


The road home seemed longer in the dark. Corn rose on both sides, black edges whispering. The baby cried again—off to the right, in the rows.

She stepped between the stalks. The fair fell away. The crying stayed just ahead, like a voice on a string.

She stumbled into the irrigation lane. The crying stopped.

A slow, steady creak slid into the silence.

The barn.

She ran.

The barn door stuck, then gave way. Moonlight cut a white stripe across the floor. Dust drifted like it had nowhere better to be. In it sat a spinning wheel—too big, too old, wood worn to a dull glow. The treadle rose and fell, steady as breath.

A figure hunched over it, hat brim low, coat pooling. Straw showed at the wrists, at a tear in the knee. The air around it smelled of old burlap, mildew, and something sour-sweet—like fruit left too long in a cellar.

“Hello?” Claire asked, because sometimes the wrong word is the only one available.

The Bubak didn’t look up until she spoke again—“Joe?”—and even then its head lifted like it had to remember how. Denim showed beneath the coat. A patch. Wheat curled around a guitar neck.

Her mind tried to reject it, to replace the image with safer ones: a prank, a costume, anyone else’s jacket. The wheel clicked once, twice, a tiny imperfection in the wood counting down. A thread slid over the flyer, whispering like hair across a comb.

“Joe,” she said, and her voice cracked.

She grabbed a rusted pry bar. Its cold bit into her palms, rough with rust and flakes of old paint. She swung. The Bubak caught it in one long-fingered hand—skin like cold leather—and set it down gently, almost kindly. That patience undid her more than violence would have.

From the shadows, a muffled cry rose and snapped, as if a mouth had been covered at the last second.

“Please,” she said. “Take me instead.”

The wheel turned.

It held what it had made up to the light: a ragged fringe meant to hang from a sleeve. The fibers shimmered like hair in water.

It stepped past her, cold peeling over her skin without touching, and tied the fringe to the scarecrow’s denim sleeve. Adjusted the hat. Looked at her—measuring.

Next harvest, something said in her bones.

Then it disappeared into the rows, leaving the smell of burlap and damp earth behind.


They found Joe’s bike in a ditch by the fairgrounds. No one asked Claire where she’d been.

Ruth arrived. “You saw it,” she said.

Claire nodded.

“Pull that thing down. Burn it.”

“We tried.”

“Try again. And if it won’t let you, don’t turn your back.”

Claire sawed at the post until her hands blistered. The scarecrow watched with its stitched smile. Threads on the denim sleeve lifted in a private breeze.


Joe’s memorial was three days later, in the school gym—the only place big enough for a town’s grief. The pastor said dust goes to dust and forgot to say where songs go.

Afterward, she stopped at the edge of their front field. The corn rattled. Somewhere, the barn held the shape of a sound: a wheel.

Ruth’s truck pulled up. “If you hear it again, don’t go.”

“I went,” Claire said.

“And you came back. Spend that mercy like it cost you.”

They stood with the silence. Out here, the land doesn’t echo; it drinks the sound down and keeps it.

That night, when sleep hovered, Claire heard it—the patient creak of a wheel. Not loud, more like the groove a sound wears into the air when it has turned long enough. She lay on her side and stared at the thin line of light under the door, as if anything could come through that didn’t already live in the walls.

Next harvest, the not-voice had said.

Okay, she thought back.

Outside, the windmill turned one slow notch. The scarecrow faced the house. Or her. Or both.

In the wide and waiting dark, the fields whispered things people were never meant to keep.

Enjoyed this story? Urban Legends, Mystery, and Myth explores the creepiest corners of folklore—from haunted objects and bloodthirsty creatures to chilling historical mysteries.

Want more bite-sized horror? Check out our book series, Urban Legends and Tales of Terror, for reimagined fiction inspired by the legends we cover here.

Because some stories don't stay buried.

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