The Herd

Table of Contents

The southern province of Lin was a place of golden wheat, quiet streams, and evenings thick with the scent of woodsmoke. For generations, Huaimin Village had lived untouched by the chaos of the outside world. Farmers rose with the sun, children played barefoot in the dirt, and the only sounds at night were the hum of crickets and the slow creak of waterwheels. Until the sheep came.

At first, they were just shapes in the distance. Thirty, maybe forty of them grazing near the tree line where the forest met the fields. Their coats were ragged, their ribs sharp against matted wool. People assumed they’d strayed from some distant flock. The first sign something was wrong came one morning when farmer Lu found his cornfield flattened, stalks shredded down to the roots.

“Greedy bastards,”

He muttered, cursing the wild sheep. But that afternoon, his wife screamed from the yard. A pile of feathers lay in the dirt where their henhouse had been opened. The hens weren’t just missing, the ground was slick with blood, and tiny bones lay cracked like twigs. It didn’t stop there. Within days, ducklings disappeared from ponds, rabbits from hutches. Every kill was the same ripped open, meat torn away, bones split as though by a predator with crushing bite force. But these were sheep. The village tried to laugh it off, but unease spread fast. Sheep didn’t eat meat. Sheep didn’t stalk prey.

Then came the night of the storm. Wei, a young shepherd, didn’t return home by dusk. When the rain hit, villagers went searching with lanterns, calling his name into the wind. They found him staggering into the square, clothes shredded, blood pouring from deep, crescent-shaped gashes in his arms and shoulder. His eyes were wide, pupils blown in terror.

“They chased me”

He gasped, before collapsing into the mud. The next morning, the mayor sent for the district authorities. Armed men arrived with rifles and hounds. For three days, they hunted the herd through the hills, felling almost half. But then, as quickly as they had come, the officers left. Two weeks later, the sheep returned. And there were more of them. Twice as many. Maybe triple.

No one could explain it. No lambs had been seen. No herds had passed through. Yet here they were, their numbers swelling unnaturally, moving in tight, unnerving formations. They grazed by day, but at night they vanished into the woods, only to reappear near the village in the pale hours before dawn.

The district office issued its decree: If the herd approaches, you may kill on sight. Some farmers welcomed the order, eager to protect their fields. Others hesitated, whispering about curses, spirits, or worse.

“It’s not right, their eyes follow you. They think.”

Old madam Su said. But her warnings were ignored until the day a man named Ren decided to slaughter one. Ren was a big man, known for his stubbornness and his drinking. He’d caught a lone ewe near his property and dragged it into his shed. 

“Meat’s meat,”

He told his neighbor, smiling. The neighbor claimed he heard the ewe making a low, almost growling sound as Ren shut the door. That night, Ren’s screams tore through the village. By the time anyone arrived, the shed door was hanging open. Ren lay inside, throat ripped out, ribs gnawed bare. The ewe was gone.

After that, the killings escalated. Not just livestock but people as well. A field worker found dead in the orchard, skull shattered. A child vanished while fetching water; only her shoe was found, lodged in the mud near hoofprints. The hoofprints were always strange. Too deep, as if the animals weighed more than they should. And often, they circled the victim.

Lanterns burned all night in Huaimin now. Families barricaded their doors, piled furniture against windows. The local priest walked the streets swinging incense, muttering blessings. It didn’t stop the herd.

One moonless night, farmer Lu woke to a scraping sound outside. Peering through the shutters, he saw them. A dozen sheep in his yard, their wool hanging in filthy clumps, faces lifted toward his window. Their mouths moved in slow, chewing motions, but no grass passed their lips. One ram stepped forward. Its eyes glowed faintly in the dark, catching the reflection of Lu’s lantern. And then, with slow deliberation, it rose onto its hind legs. Lu stumbled back from the window, heart pounding. When he looked again, the yard was empty.

But in the morning, he found hoof prints pressed deep into the mud leading straight to his door. By now, the village was dying. Families fled in the night, abandoning homes. Those who stayed lived in constant dread, weapons at hand. Every dusk brought the same ritual: lock the doors, snuff the lights, listen for the distant, hollow bleating.

Tian, a boy of eleven, claimed he’d seen where the sheep went in the woods. He told the mayor they gathered around a black pit, wide as a house, with bones heaped at the edges.

“They were looking down into it, like they were waiting.”

Tian whispered but no one believed him. Not until the night the herd came in full force. It began with the dogs barking, then silence. Then, the sound of hundreds of hooves, moving as one. The ground seemed to tremble. The herd poured into the village from every side. Rams with curling horns, ewes with wild, matted wool, lambs whose eyes shone white in the dark.

They didn’t just attack they herded. Pushing people toward the square, cutting off escape routes, forcing them into a tight cluster. Screams rose, rifles cracked, but it didn’t matter. The sheep lunged, tearing into flesh with impossible strength. Some villagers swore they heard words in the bleating, low and guttural, almost human. By dawn, Huaimin was silent. The fields were empty, the houses still. In the square, the cobblestones were slick red. The herd was gone.

Weeks later, travelers passing through found the place deserted. No bodies. No animals. Just hoofprints leading into the forest.And if you listened closely at night, they said, you could still hear them. The sound of hooves. The low, hungry bleating. And sometimes, far off in the dark, the sound of something standing up on two legs.