Beyond the Raspberry Bushes
Scarecrow of Crawdad Creek
The land remembers. The quiet isn’t empty.
Some stories don’t come from imagination…
they come from memory.
This one started a long time ago—
somewhere between childhood summers, quiet farms,
and the feeling that something was always just a little… off.
In the summer of 1992, eight-year-old Taylor Mae Dayton spends her days tending raspberry bushes on her grandmother’s small Brakesville farm.
It’s quiet there. Familiar.
Until the crows come.
And like most things in Brakesville…
it starts small.
By nightfall, something changes.
The wind turns dry.
The quiet grows heavy.
And what stands in the field
is no longer just straw and thread.
​
It watches.
​
It moves.
​
And it wants something
it cannot take.
​
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Beyond the Raspberry Bushes is an Appalachian Gothic novella rooted in memory, place, and the quiet kind of horror that doesn’t scream—it lingers.This is not a story of sudden fear.It’s a story of something that stays.Of land that remembers.Of silence that isn’t empty.And of a child who may already belong to something she doesn’t understand.
This story sat with me for years.
Somewhere between memory and imagination—
quiet farms, raspberry bushes, and that feeling that something wasn’t quite right.
It’s a short.
A quiet kind of horror.
The kind that doesn’t scream… it watches.
And if you’ve ever spent a summer in the hills…
you might understand it a little too well.
— Tibbi Ann Hardix 🖤
