The Long Horse Barn

A group of old friends bring a horse statue to life with the power of friendship. Then they go on a wonderful journey together full of horse puns, blood, and divine judgment. 

Transcript

The Conqueror Worm by edgar allen poe

Lo! ’t is a gala night

   Within the lonesome latter years!   

An angel throng, bewinged, bedight

   In veils, and drowned in tears,   

Sit in a theatre, to see

   A play of hopes and fears,

While the orchestra breathes fitfully   

   The music of the spheres.

Mimes, in the form of God on high,   

   Mutter and mumble low,

And hither and thither fly—

   Mere puppets they, who come and go   

At bidding of vast formless things

   That shift the scenery to and fro,

Flapping from out their Condor wings

   Invisible Wo!

That motley drama—oh, be sure   

   It shall not be forgot!

With its Phantom chased for evermore   

   By a crowd that seize it not,

Through a circle that ever returneth in   

   To the self-same spot,

And much of Madness, and more of Sin,   

   And Horror the soul of the plot.

But see, amid the mimic rout,

   A crawling shape intrude!

A blood-red thing that writhes from out   

   The scenic solitude!

It writhes!—it writhes!—with mortal pangs   

The mimes become its food,

And seraphs sob at vermin fangs

   In human gore imbued.

Out—out are the lights—out all!   

   And, over each quivering form,

The curtain, a funeral pall,

   Comes down with the rush of a storm,   

While the angels, all pallid and wan,   

   Uprising, unveiling, affirm

That the play is the tragedy, “Man,”   

   And its hero, the Conqueror Worm.

I drove past The Long Horse Barn every day on my way to work. I guess I drove past it on the way home too, but I was on the other side of the highway, and it was usually dark out, so The Long Horse really only lived in my thoughts in the mornings.

I hadn’t always called it that in my head. I noticed The Long Horse about a year into my commute – or two, maybe? These days everything all blurs together. Anyway, the barn was just another barn until the front door rotted off, then it became fascinating. Looking at it from a distance I knew logically The Long Horse had to just be a piece of old farm equipment or something, but I could never make out exactly what it was. 

There was still a low stable door that blocked about half of the inside, and the stable door was tucked into the barn just enough that no matter the time of day I could never completely see inside. I could only see the metal neck and head of what looked like a misshapen horse peering over the peeling stable door. In small glances; seconds adding up to minutes adding up to hours, I'd look at The Long Horse and try to make out what it really was, but I could never see it as anything else. It was made of metal, rusted or painted brown, and there were two spikes where the ears should be, along with scraggly strands of plants or moss that made up what should have been the mane. It had a long face, but not much longer than a normal horse. But the neck though, that went back into the darkness of the barn with seemingly no end. 

I saw the Long Horse in the rain and sunshine, I saw it at sunrise and at night. It greeted me every morning. I saw it more often than my friends, and the little family I had that remained. With the front door rotted off, the rest of the barn decayed exponentially faster. I watched the paint peel, I watched the boards fall, but even with the added sunlight I never got a better look at The Long Horse. It never left the shadows. 

It was a sunrise that got me in trouble. The barn had hit the stage of decay where it stopped being ugly and started being beautiful again. It stopped being a building in need of repair, something that could be salvaged, and started being a relic. It was a ruin, a piece of history. The paint was more peeled than it wasn't, and the vines had taken over more than half of the building’s carcass. It had become something new.

I thought about the barn all day at work after that. I thought about how boring my life was. Fucking work, then home then chores. Rinse and repeat. I don’t know when it happened, growing up the world was full of magic. You’d base your life around the little things and in turn, every little thing rewarded you with an adventure. There was always something to do. Catching tadpoles in the spring, kicking pumpkins in the fall, exploring the creek in the summer, and having snowball fights in the winter. Even just walking to a park, or riding your bike to the store brought new sights and sounds and people. When did it all get so fucked up? 

I decided it was time to bring some of that magic back. I needed a change in my life. Badly. 

Penny, Henry, and Patrick had been my best friends when I was a kid. They were the ones I’d always gone frog catching or bike riding with. As we'd grown up we’d escalated to smoking joints in the woods, and the occasional mailbox smashing runs. Nothing too crazy, just stupid teen things, but things that always felt like an adventure. 

Years ago now, fuck I don’t think I could tell you how many, Patrick had moved on. We’d never been quite sure what happened to him. He was technically still missing, but between the drugs and just the dumb things he did in general,  Penny, Henry, and I had all done our mourning long ago. 

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen Penny and Henry so I decided to call them up, and plan a little trip to the Long Horse Barn. I figured we’d re-live our childhoods a bit, and spend some time remembering Patrick as well, since his birthday was coming up. Truth be told I think that’s part of why we stopped hanging out so much, because our hangouts inevitably became remembrances for him. But that was okay, maybe that’s how it should be because someone had to remember Patrick. God knows his family didn’t give a shit. They acted like he’d never even existed.

It was a sunny afternoon when we all finally made time. Henry looked older than I remembered, his hair was graying fast. Penny looked younger, the last time I’d seen her she’d been cultivating some serious bags under her eyes, and her hair was thinning. But she’d been doing something different now, getting more sleep maybe.

We parked at a gravel lot a field away from the barn, and on the walk up we slowly saw The Long Horse take shape. I thought it would break apart and become clearer as we got closer. Like a face in the clothes pile at the foot of your bed, turning back into old socks, or a shape in the sky that looked like your dead dog, whipping back into just a cloud as it moved. But no, The Long Horse stayed The Long Horse, and as we got closer, we got a better look at him than I’d ever gotten before. 

It was some kind of statue or sculpture. It was a greyish brown with a mottled texture reminiscent of stone or fiberglass. It did indeed have a long horse face, with big cartoonish eyes, and pointy ears. Its hair was a dark matted green and looked to be made of wires. Moss was growing on The Long Horse, giving it an almost ancient mystical look. But that was offset by the bright multicolored graffiti that decorated the horse with various tags, poorly drawn penises, and one misshapen swastika. 

As we got closer and saw into the barn more we could see how far back the horse’s neck went. It was a dozen feet before the neck touched the haunches back in the recesses of the barn. 

“That’s fucking creepy,” Penny said. 

“I like it,” Henry said. “It’s weird.” 

I’d brought flashlights, I know we all have them on our phones now, but carrying our own made it feel more like it had when we were kids checking out an old shack in the woods or a cave. It was like we’d sought out adventure rather than letting it find us. Somehow it felt important that we were coming here with purpose.  

I lit up the back of the barn, and we were able to see all the way to the horse's back legs, about another ten feet from its front hooves. More graffiti tags and poorly drawn genitals decorated its long, long body.

The inside of the barn was considerably less enticing than the outside. The outside had all of the vines and sunlight. The inside had spiderwebs, and dirt and smelled like rotten eggs. And of course, The Long Horse itself was off putting. But we'd come here for adventure, so Henry unlatched the stable door and gestured for Penny and me to go first. We joined The Long Horse in his home, and a sudden gust of wind closed the stable door behind us. 

There were holes all over the ceiling and walls, but hardly any of the sunlight outside seemed to find its way to the inside. We split up and started looking around. The things that happened in old barns hadn’t changed much since we were young. We found cigarette butts, beer bottles, and used condoms. 

We’d each brought our own drink of choice and after wandering for a bit we pulled over some dusty and unstable chairs near the haunches of The Long Horse. Of course, the conversation drifted to Patrick, and, as always we tried to focus on the good. He hadn’t been perfect, but who was?

We each poured out a drink for him into the ground of the barn and feeling in the mood to do something silly, I walked up to the mouth of The Long Horse and poured a shot of sour apple whiskey over his wide mouth. 

The change was instantaneous. The wind picked up, the sky grew dark, and The Long Horse began to shake. The plaster around his face cracked and spider-webbed out along his long long neck. Penny and Henry froze mid-toast. The Long Horse’s face shook off the plaster, and as he sneezed, a very real, very alive horse's head emerged from the rubble. The plaster along his neck fell as he wiggled up and down, shaking the casing off of his body. I was so stunned I let the entire flask run out across the long horse's face. By the time I was done pouring, he’d hatched.

I fell to the ground and Penny and Henry watched in stunned silence, their glasses still raised. The Long Horse emerged, gray with white dust from whatever had been covering him. He shook like a dog, but his neck wriggled freely like a snake, and he paused for just a moment to take in his surroundings. Then he lifted his hoof and in one fell swoop he smashed Penny and Henry's bottles. 

“Cheers,” he said.

Penny screamed. I did too. Henry, in shock, said “Cheers” back. 

When we’d settled down, The Long Horse spoke once again. 

“Helloooooo there,” he cooed. “You fine folks have brought me to life with the power of friendship!” He snaked his neck around to lick the top of his back. “Boy, it sure was dusty in there.”

None of us knew what to say. 

“Well don’t let me interrupt,” he said, and he wiggled his head over to me. “You were just toasting to your pal Patrick.” 

He had fur under the dust, and all the proper parts of a horse, but his eyes were huge and his face was long, and in his mouth, he had rounded sharp teeth like a dolphin. 

“Finish your toast,” he said, his dark brown eyes looking into mine. 

“I uh, I don’t have anything left in the flask,” I said.

“Beer him Henry.” The horse said.

Henry, nervous at the realization that the horse knew his name, tossed a beer over with an unsteady hand. He gave one to Penny as well and grabbed one for himself. 

“Thanks,” I said in a shaky voice, twisting off the cap with my shaky fingers. 

“Finish your toast, to your best bud Patrick.” The Horse sounded friendly in the same way a cat is friendly lying on its back. 

We all looked at each other, and I started to move over to Penny and Henry, convinced I was either dreaming, or that Henry had spiked our drinks. I’d had enough of The Long Horse, I was ready to go home and lie down. 

“Finish your toast, or I’ll bite your fucking fingers off.” The Long Horse said, and I froze. He smiled, showing off his impressive crop of teeth. Then I decided, that real or not, it was time to start listening to The Long Horse. 

Henry, deeper down the bottle than us threw a beer at The Long Horse so he could toast too. It crashed into his neck, and even though he looked soft, it shattered on impact. 

“I don’t have hands Henry.” The Long Horse lifted his hoof up, “and even if I did, I wouldn’t toast to Patrick.”

We all looked at each other, raised our bottles, and Penny found the words. “To Patrick.” 

I drank and drank. It seemed appropriate for the situation. 

“What good friends you all are. You miss him don’t you?” The Horse asked. I moved over to Penny and started bringing her to Henry, figuring it was best to be together for this. 

“We do,” I said.

“Can you tell me your favorite memory of him?” The Long Horse asked. He too moved to be closer to us, and held his front hoofs aloft, cradling his head in them like a girl at a sleepover. His upper half was held up effortlessly, like gravity didn’t have a hold on him.

We weren’t thinking of Patrick though, we were thinking about escape, and the Horse knew it. “You can try to run if you want,” he said, “see what happens.” 

“Patrick guided me through my first acid trip,” Henry said. “Fucking wish he was here now.”

“He also dosed you for your first acid trip,” the Horse said. “He was a sneaky boy, your Patrick.”

“He always protected me from creepy guys at the bar,” Penny said, tearing up. 

“Oh, Penny.” The Horse said “Pretty pretty Penny. That’s because he had no interest in you.”

“And how about you?” The Horse asked me.

“I-I don’t know,” I said. I tried to conjure up the times Patrick had made me laugh, I knew they were there but I just couldn’t remember. 

I was saved by Henry who got up and sprinted out the barn door. He was fast but the horse was faster. Its head whipped around and followed him over the stable door. He caught him just feet outside the barn, and without hesitation, ripped into his throat with his teeth. The horse then lifted him up with one bendy leg and brought his body back in the barn. He set Henry’s newly bloodied corpse at our feet. 

The Long Horse said through gory teeth. “What can I say? I’m a cliche.” 

Penny threw up, and I just stared at him.

“Cause I ate his Adam’s apple? Get it? You guys are no fun.” He whinnied sadly. 

He put a hoof on my shoulder, his grey arm bending like it had no bones. “You don’t have any memories of Patrick you wanna tell me about do you buddy?” He asked.

“I can’t, - why can’t I think of anything?” I said. 

Penny bent down over Henry’s body, sobbing softly. 

“Oh relax,” the Long Horse said. “He’ll be fine, he’s already healing up, see?” I looked down, through my own confused but teary eyes, and saw the hole in Henry’s neck closing up. 

“You can’t kill what’s already dead.” The Long Horse said, smiling with his dripping mouth. 

“What the fuck are you talking about?” I asked it. 

“What is your job?” The Horse asked me, dodging my question. 

“What?” 

“What is your job? Where do you drive every day?” 

I just stared at him. I didn’t know. 

“I’ll do you one better,” he said as Henry started coughing back to life. “What’s your name?” He asked me. 

“It’s, I know this-  of course I know this -” 

“No, you don’t, and your friends don’t either.” The horse wrapped behind us, having the time of his life. “You’ve been here the longest. Your soul was the filthiest. I won’t give you your name back, you’re better off without it.”

“If we’re dead where are we?” Penny asked. “We’re not in heaven, but I mean why? Does that mean that we’re in -” She got quiet. “Are we in hell?” She asked. 

“Of course not!” The Horse said “I’m much too pretty to work down there. We’re in Purgatory.” on that last word he blew a raspberry. “Well now that the horse is out of the bag, let’s get you where you need to go!” 

We helped Henry to his feet and watched the light outside disappear. It wasn’t like a sudden nightfall so much as the world outside simply vanished. It was just us, the dirty old barn, and The Long Horse. I knew I should have been in shock or denial or something, but I wasn’t. It felt, well, it felt right that we were all dead. It was like I’d known it for quite some time and had only just confirmed my suspicions. But what the fuck was my name? I should know that. 

But The Long Horse interrupted my thoughts.“Get on my back!” He said, “We're going on an adventure!” 

We didn’t move. 

“I don’t have a saddle, so you’ll just have to ride me bareback.” He said, and he wiggled his back. “Go ahead and mount me!” That did not entice us so he quickly added; “Or else!”

“Fuck it,” I said. I touched his side, behind his shoulders. He felt cold and hard, like stone. 

“How do I get on your back?” I asked him.

“You can pull my hair, I don’t mind.” 

I yanked myself up and decided that despite what the horse had said we were probably in hell. I Helped Penny up and together we lifted up Henry. We all straddled his cold back together, me holding his dark hair, Penny holding onto me, and Henry in the back holding her. 

“Hold on tight!” The Long Horse said, then he jumped into the air and started flying. We broke through the already broken ceiling and entered the void. 

There were no stars, no sky, no nothing. We were moving, but there wasn’t any wind, so it kind of felt like we were just wiggling on the Long Horse up in the air. 

Penny whispered in my ear, “If we’re already dead, why isn’t Patrick here too?” 

“What’s that?” The Horse asked. “You want to see Patrick? Well, that’s good because he’s excited to see you too! They’ve even given him back his eyes for the day.” 

“Given him back his eyes? Patrick’s in hell?” I asked the question out of formality, out of knowing I shouldn’t assume my friend was in hell because he’d been my friend. But it made sense that he would be. I only wished I knew why I thought that.

Penny and Henry didn’t seem to understand though. “What the fuck do you mean? Where’s Patrick?” Henry asked. Penny just held onto me, not wanting the horse to hear her again. 

I squinted into the void, looking for anything in the distance, but there was nothing. 

“Your nameless friend is right Henry, Patrick’s in hell of course! His soul was marked for eternal dam-neeeeigh-tion!” he said, neighing on the last word. It pissed me off that what was so clearly not a horse was patronizing us by making horse sounds. 

“That doesn't make any sense!” Henry yelled.

The horse snaked his head around, getting close to all of us. I worried about him not looking at where we were going, even though there were much bigger things to worry about. His horizontal pupils narrowed and spread to the sides, and for the first time, he got serious. “Yes it does, and you all know it.” 

None of us knew what to say. 

“Oooooooh boy we’re almost there!” The Horse slowed. 

Ahead of us, we could see a red-orange glow in the distance with something at the center. As we got closer, it became a lipless mouth that grew larger and larger. It was in the shape of a frown, with spaced-out, needle-sharp teeth that left gaps in the middle. The teeth went on and on, the sides ending a mountain away from us. Had I not known they were teeth, I would have just thought we’d come upon a stone prison. 

Though there were gaps in the frown we could only see smoke, but we could hear screaming from what sounded like hundreds of voices. 

“Don’t worry, we’re only visiting,” the horse said. “Knock knock.” He opened his mouth, his smile letting his head separate almost at his ears, and wrapped his mouth around one of the teeth. Then, as hard as he could he bit down. The teeth opened slowly in response, the jagged spikes parting to allow us inside. 

None of us wanted to take the first step, so the Horse wrapped its body behind us and started shoving us forward. He stopped as we were halfway between the gates, directly in the path of the jagged mouth. 

He laughed and said, “Welcome to hell.” Then the teeth clamped down. 

I woke up in a puddle of blood. Across from me, Penny’s head was still stitching itself back together. At my feet, which were all the way across the room was Patrick. He was bent over Henry, holding the two halves of his torso together. 

After we all got done screaming, and the Long Horse helped put us back together again, we all sat in a circle in the small bloody room. The room was made of wood and had a bed in the corner, and nothing else. I don’t know what I’d been expecting, Patrick shackled to the wall in some burning cave maybe. This felt more like some old and strange prison. 

The Long Horse curled in on himself like a snake and smashed his hooves together to get our attention. “Who wants to tell me why Patrick is in hell?” The Long Horse asked. Patrick opened his mouth and The Long Horse shushed him with his hoof  “Not you, that’s cheating.” 

“Patrick shouldn’t be in hell!” Penny yelled. “He was a good person.” 

Henry had sobered up and he’d had enough “What the fuck do you want from us? What is this? I know I wasn’t fucking perfect but I don’t deserve to be here, and they don’t either.”

“You, the one without a name. Do you want to guess?” 

“How the fuck would I know?” I answered.

The Long Horse sighed, disappointed in us. “Henry we’ll start with you.” The Long Horse moved his head and neck in that strange weightless way, his arms just along for the ride. Suddenly, a book appeared in his hooves. It was nondescript, with a black cover that had simply the word ‘sins’ written on it in shaky handwriting like someone with hooves rather than fingers had written it. “Senior prom Henry, did anything happen there that you want to tell us about?” 

Henry said nothing. 

“Patrick brought that sophomore girl, and you watched him slip a little something extra in her drink?” The horse nudged Henry with his bendy elbow. “You told him he was a wild card, and you laughed about it. And you let him take her home, all sleepy and silly at the end of the night.” The horse licked his hoof and turned the page, crinkling it. The page was not made to be turned with hooves. “We can see your thoughts too you know. You thought ‘good for him, finally getting some ass.’” 

Henry moved to say something, and The Long Horse kicked him in the mouth. I heard a crunch. Then Henry started spitting out teeth.

“Penny!” The Long Horse brought his book of sins up to her next. “You had several chances actually. You had Patrick and the other boys over all the time, but Patrick stood out to you for one reason. When you had him over, you always noticed he had eyes for your little sister. Your much, much younger little sister.” The horse looked at us, hoping for a reaction, but I couldn’t even remember Penny’s house. Honestly I had to struggle to remember anything about her aside from her name. “You noticed this, and you knew it wasn’t quite right, but Penny, you thought to yourself ‘That’s what she gets for dressing like a slut.’” 

The Long Horse sidled up to me next but closed his book. “We’ll get to you later. I think we all know why Patrick is here.” 

Henry had regrown his teeth, but he kept his bloody mouth closed. Penny and I didn’t want to chance it either. 

“Patrick you can go ahead and admit it now. It took us long enough to get you to say it, I suppose we’ll let you say it for your friends.” 

Patrick sighed and looked like he was about to speak, but stopped himself. He looked at us with sad, sleepless eyes. Eyes that had apparently been removed from his skull until recently. However long he’d been down here, I guess he still cared what we thought of him and he stayed silent. 

“Fine then, I’ll say it for him. Your old pal Patrick is a Pedophile. And you all knew it.” 

The Long Horse wrapped around us all, pulling us closer together. “Let’s all have a group hug, for old-time's sake!” And with that, he squeezed and squeezed until everything went black. 

We woke up in the void, tied to The Long Horse’s back with what looked to be human hair. He’d also tied a balloon around my wrist that said: ‘Thank you for visiting hell.’ 

We’d woken up just as a blue light was appearing in the distance. The gates of heaven were a smile rather than a frown, but the teeth were just as sharp. 

The Long Horse clapped his hooves together, and our bonds fell off. We stepped off his back and onto an invisible surface in the void. We weren’t allowed inside though. I tried to peer in, to see what was beyond the pearly white gates, but all I could see was clouds. There was a soft blue light coming out just a bit, and I felt calm being in its presence. I wanted so badly to know what was on the other side. 

The Long Horse said “You might end up there eventually. But your souls need some more work.”

“What's going to happen to us?” Henry asked. 

“That’s not for me to decide” the Horse replied. Then, the clouds started shifting, “that’s her job.” 

A girl parted the clouds, no older than twelve or thirteen. I didn’t recognize her, but then again I didn’t even know my own name. The Long Horse reached out his head and flattened it to get through the gates. The girl tousled his ears and rubbed his face like she would a friendly dog. 

“You don’t remember me,” she said. “But that’s okay, I remember you.” She smiled at us, but it didn’t feel vengeful, it seemed like a genuine smile. “Here, I’ll show you.”

Suddenly we were all watching a house party. Penny and Henry weren’t there, but I was. I watched my younger self, somewhere in my twenties or so, drinking a beer and mingling. I watched him laughing and dancing. Then I watched him go upstairs. He heard a commotion behind the door and laughed to himself a bit. “Patrick you dog,” he said, opening the door. Inside the door was indeed Patrick and a girl, but Patrick was the only one making any noise. I watched my younger self look for long enough that he certainly saw both that the girl was unconscious and that she was most certainly a girl and not a woman. I watched my younger self lose the smile, but he did not intervene. Instead, he simply closed the door and went back to the party. The smile came back soon enough.

The vision ended. 

I looked back at the girl, and realized, sickeningly, that she did not look any older than she had in the vision. Like The Long Horse though, she could read my thoughts. “I didn’t die then. Or anytime soon after. No, I had a long life after that, despite Patrick,” she said. “But I wanted to appear like this so that you and your friends could see just how young I was that night. I’d snuck into that party for my thirteenth birthday.” 

Penny and Henry looked defeated. Finally, I spoke up with a simple “I’m sorry.”

“I believe you,” she said. “But you can’t enter heaven until your soul is clean.”

“What should we do to them, Mel?” The horse asked, apparently on a first-name basis with the girl. She stroked his neck absentmindedly. 

“I’ve been thinking about this a long time,” the girl, Mel, said. “You learn a lot up here, you can find out anything at all about the world if you want.” She smiled again, but this smile felt vengeful. “ If you took a scale, and you weighed all of the suffering that’s happened because of truly evil people, well, it’s nothing compared to the suffering that’s happened because of people like you.” She pointed to all of us, “people who do nothing. You’re not evil, you’re just nothing. You can see something horrible, and decide it’s not your business, and I think that’s worse. Patrick was fucked up, but you all, you just can’t be bothered.”

She pulled the horse's head closer to her, nuzzling his face, and spoke to him now. “They all knew what was happening, and they all wanted to sit back, and do nothing. They stood by and they watched.” She kissed The Long Horse on the top of his head. “So I say we let them do that. Let them sit back and watch every horrible thing that Patrick has ever done.” With our sentence passed The Long Horse left her arms, flattened his head, and came back through the gate. 

This time he sat on his knees, bending down and bowing his head. This time he didn’t have to ask, we knew what he wanted. This time he wouldn’t drag us, we had to go ourselves. And we did, maybe because our souls had been in limbo long enough that we wanted to change, or maybe simply because we had no other place to go. One by one we all climbed on his back, and he took us down into the void. 

Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the podcast inside your house! To hear every tale of terror as they are released, subscribe to our show on your podcast app or on Youtube or follow us on Facebook and X. And Until Next Time: Make a little time to horse around this week, if you don’t, the horses might start human-ing around, and nobody wants that.