Traveling shovel of death

      Nanowrimo has this tradition of the traveling shovel of death.  The idea, if I understand it correctly, is to be used when your plot gets stuck or stale.  You can spice it up by killing someone with a shovel.  It has to be a shovel and the person has to die. 

                Well, since my novel is already complete, I will just use the prompt for a short story, and if the shovel travels, why not have it travel under its own volition.

                The force pushed Jeb to the ground with such strength; he didn't know what happened before he had the taste of horse manure in his mouth and the smell up his nose. 

                He was angry, pushing himself onto his arms, he was going let that person have it, and he was going to teach them, that he was not a man to be messed with.  Quickly turning himself over he looked up and screamed, a loud primal, frightened scream.  A scream that sent the chickens flying and brought the dogs running. 

                "You are a myth, you aren't real, I don't believe in you" he screamed.

                Closing his eyes the last thing Jeb saw was a hovering shovel, swinging itself down with such force and so furiously, his feeble attempts to crawl away were denied. 

                Walking into the barn Bruce looked down and smiled, then turning around he left through the same door.

                Within moments, the barn was crowded with farmhands, someone was yelling for the police to be called, others were speculating on what happened.  Bruce was right there amongst the rest, playing his part as well as he had the past year.

                "It's the shovel I tell ya, the shovel got him" a man’s voice broke through the chaos.

                "Ah, c'mon that is a myth, nobody is going to believe that" another voice came.

                Bruce agreed at all the right moments and showed disbelief with it was necessary.  How should he know, he said, it's all a guess, he agreed, no, there can't possibly be a serial killer on the farm, he conceded.

                The officials arrived and looked at the body, there was blunt force damage to the front and the back of the skull.  The pattern of the struggle appears to show that there was only one person present, and yet, one can't bash oneself with a blunt object.   What made this even more of a mystery is that in the last 12 months, this was the 6th blunt force injury at this farm.  There were never any witnesses and there was never a sign of a struggle between 2 or more people.  The victim always appeared to be alone. 

                Later that evening the guys were talking, they were all strong men, and they were not easily frightened, and yet this, this had them all on edge.  Six murders in 12 months, there was no pattern, there were no clues as to why a victim would be targeted or what he had done to lead to the attack.    The farm hands decided that for the next several weeks, they should never be alone; working in pairs could save their lives. 

                Bruce didn't like this arrangement, though nobody seemed to care about what he wanted.  As the farm cook, he wasn't often included in the gatherings of the farm hands, they didn't invite him to the weekly poker nights, they weren't interested in having him follow along when they went into town, and they completely forgot about him when they made the decision to work in pairs.   What did they care if anything happened to him, in actually they just didn’t think about him at all. 

                For two long months, Bruce waited and bided his time.   Sooner or later they would get tired of being in pairs, someone would get careless and wonder off, and then he would be there, and he would enact his vengeance.   As he sat and waited he let his mind wonder to the time when it all began. 

                Walking through the pasture one afternoon, he had been rebuffed by a few of the farm hands.   .  He had invited them over for drinks, and the laughed at him.  He was new to the farm, the most recent hire, and yet he wasn’t a farm hand in the same way as them, he was the cook, and he wasn’t even the families cook, he cooked for all the hired help.  This somehow made him lower than them, in their eyes.  He felt hurt, but most of all he felt scorned.    As he was walking he cursed the men he had just left, with eyes filled with rage, he wasn’t watching his where he was going and he tripped and fell over something lying in the tall grass.   Taking a careful look, he saw that it was a shovel, the perfect garden spade he thought.  It was obvious to him; it had been laying the field for some time, so he decided to claim it for himself. 

                Walking back to the house, he considered how it could use it for his vegetable garden.  As he was thinking the Foreman saw him "Why you have found Ol' Darryl's spade" .

                "Whose spade" Bruce asked, he had been at the farm for only a few weeks, and had not met anyone named Darryl. 

                "He was a farm hand here years ago, but he was also the towns grave digger" the Formane explained.  "He disappeared years ago, and nobody has seen or heard from him since.  He was pretty old, so he just as likely went off to die.  He was a mean and nasty old goat, some say that shovel is possessed.  It was believed that when times of dying were slow, he would use his shovel to hurry the business up".

                Bruce looked at the spade "possessed?"

                Clapping Bruce on the back he said "Ah, but that's all nonsense of course, who ever heard of a possessed shovel, that killed people when it was bored".  

 Chuckling he walked off “It’s poker night, I don’t want to be late.”

                Bruce took the shovel into his room and looked it over.  It didn't look like anything special, it was just a shovel, and yet, could it be possessed?

                Within a week he had his answer.  After an argument with Larry, he went to his garden and began furiously digging up the dirt, and muttering to himself "Oh I'll get him, and when I do he will be sorry."  Much to Bruce's surprise, the shovel began to pull on him, he followed it's tug until they found Larry sitting behind the barn smoking and before Bruce knew what happened, it ripped itself out of his hands and began to hit Larry repeatedly, on its own. 

                It didn't take Bruce long before he learned how to control the shovel.  He would have to be careful, he couldn't get greedy and he couldn't be seen arguing with anyone, for fear the blame would to easily be turned to him.   He would bide his time, for a few weeks, or a couple months and then he would let his shovel loose when he found one of his enemies alone. 

                It had now been two months and the farm hands were never alone.  Bruce began to notice something strange about the shovel, he would twitch on its own, and it would leap and flutter, as if it was longing to strike. 

                One afternoon while walking behind the barn, he found the shovel hovering in his path.  He tried to walk around, he tried to move it out of his way, he tried to grab hold of it and control it, but the shovel was desperate it needed blood, it needed to strike.    Bruce turned to run and he began to scream, but before it could escape his lips he was face down in the horse manure.  He tried to scramble away, but it kept striking him.  Having completed its job, the shovel dug a deep hole and forced the body in.   

                Nobody knew what happened to Bruce, nobody much cared, but they also realized the murders had ended and that was good enough for them.   

                Four years passed and Gary, a newly hired farm hand was walking through a pasture, he was angry, "how dare they say that to me" he was saying out loud, when suddenly he tripped.  Falling to the ground he saw a shovel, a small garden spade it appeared.   As he was walking back to the farm someone said "Oh, you found Bruce's shovel"...