Eerie Stuff

50 Foot Ant

My buddy John and I got into all kinds of weird trouble during my stay in Germany in the late 80’s and early 90’s. It never managed to matter which one of us came up with the idea, the other went along with it gleefully. The Sasquatch incident is one example. We got in so much trouble, our unit got rid of us. Pawned us off on another post within a year. I was TDY for nearly 4 years.

John found this goddamn ventriloquist’s doll someplace. Maybe he stole it, who the hell knows. We were at an Oktoberfest party, when he comes staggering up with that goddamn doll in hands. Here he is, drunk as shit, cowboy hat, cowboy boots, blue jeans, and a T-Shirt with Daffy Duck’s face smeared across it, with this goddamn UGLY fucking doll in his hands. It was like the Howdy Doody had raped Madam. It had red hair, a huge nose, and these jaws. Oh fuck, it had perfect HUMAN teeth, and as John was staggering toward me laughing, he had his hand jammmed up this puppet’s ass and was making the jaws clatter.

But I’m too busy paying attention to this hot German mulatto chick with big tits (Was she hot? Probably not, I’d been drinking for 2 days straight) and just caught John out of the corner of my eye. I mean, he registered, and I knew something was wrong, so I was turning around when he suddenly thrusts this puppet into my face and yells out in his hick ass Texan doofus voice: “WELL HEY HOWDY PARDNER!” and the puppet’s jaws are jumping around.

I scream like a little girl, knock over my beers trying to get away, and lose all my cool points. It didn’t help that I threw my cigarette down the mulatto’s shirt, I never saw her again. Fucking John.

So we spend the rest of the night staggering out with Ugly McToothy the Doll, he scared Polizi, kids, hookers, and of course, me, over the course of the night. I thought the goddamn German cop was going to fucking shoot him there. Instead he walked away cursing.

The next three taxi’s we try to get a ride back to post with, a hour fucking ride, won’t take us. As soon as they see the doll, they make us either get out, or they just drive the fuck off. Goddamn John thinks it’s funnier than shit, but I’m sobering up, and I’ve decided I hate that goddamn doll.

We end up hitching back to post, and this, gentle reader, is when the story starts to get bizarre.

A car pulls over, and we end up piling in, John hiding Toothy McCreepy under his shirt, like nobody is going to wonder why a 20 year old redneck cowboy looks pregnant, and the first thing I notice is that I’m sitting next to a drag queen. Not a good looking drag queen, the kind you can get a blowjob in the alley behind the bar from and still keep your self-esteem, but a “Is that a beard?” kind of drag queen that mugs you in the men’s room of the airport and you’re too embarrassed to tell anyone. It’s smoking clove cigarettes, the radio is playing old big band swing music, and before 5 miles go by, there’s a hairy knuckled claw resting on my thigh that’s slowly moving up.

Well, John sees the hand and figures he’ll save me before I do something stupid like punch out a drag queen, so he takes the doll, shoves it into the front seat area, spins it’s head around while chattering its teeth and screaming at the top of his lungs “HEY BOYS AND GIRLS, IT’S HOWDY DOODY TIME!”

The drag queen screams, John’s laughing, I’m yelling because the talons dug into my thigh, and the car goes out of control. That’s when I start laughing. John, the drag queen, and the puppet are screaming, I’m laughing as we’re going sideways down the autobahn.

When the car comes to a stop, the drag queen throws us out in the snow, and we’re plodding down the freeway, our thumbs out and an ugly fucking doll in tow. Now he’s using the wires to make it walk next us, its hand trying to flag people down, and its eyes turning red in the headlights. Anyone who slows down sees the doll, and tears off again.

I’m about ready to kick John’s ass, or maybe shove the doll up it, when a Blazer pulls up, the window rolls down, and someone yells “You assholes have got to be Americans!”

So, we ride in the back of the blazer, John playing with his goddamn doll, one of the guys has an honest to God portable CD player and is playing Guns & Roses on it. The gate guards wave us through, and they drop us off on main post. I happened to catch a glimpse of their bumper number as they drive off.

“Hey, John, you ever heard of 7/9th?”

“Ever heard of having your soul eaten?” (Or some lame shit like that)

“Seriously.”

“Ummm, no, why?”

“No reason.” And we go trekking through the snow for the goddamn barracks. I hate these fucking barracks. John and I and a few others had been sent to this hellhole called Wildflicken after John and I got busted for hiring a hooker to fuck the company mascot, this huge German Shepard named Hans, and she went to the cops because Hans clawed up her tits. Wildflicken had put us in this old goddamn building away from everyone else and made us lug our own shit in. We were supposed to be working at ASP 3 with a unit called 144th Ordnance, but instead pretty much sat around drinking beer and playing spades because those guys fucking hated us.

We get to the barracks, unlock the door, head upstairs, and I collapse in bed while John tosses Ugly McToothy into the corner, sets his hat carefully on the desk, then passes out drunk on the floor. I bitch, get up, and drag his stupid Texas ass into his bed, then pass back out in my bed.

I wake up to Thompson screaming at me. The suns out, and I try to pull my covers over my head and ignore him, but he whips back the blankets, still screaming something, and shoves this doll head in my face. I scream, suddenly sober and wide awake, and realize he’s screaming at me, thinking I’d gone in his room and put that ugly fucking doll at the end of his bed.

I manage to convince him there’s no way I could have done it. He figures John did it, throws the ugly doll at him, and stomps off.

“Get rid of that fucking doll, John, I’m telling you.”

“Fuck you. I like it. Hey, you going to the Class VI?”

So I go to the Class VI, and pick up a bottle of Mad Dog 20/20 for John and bottle of Wild Turkey for myself.

We get drunk, and John apparently got a badge for ventriloquism in the Eagle Scouts or Boy Scouts, or maybe just the League of Asshole Texans. He’s doing some cool stuff with puppet by that night, but its eyes still give me the shivers. When John acts like he’s getting blown by the puppet, I decide to walk to the Wildflicken NCO club and get drunk. Oktoberfest is still going on, and I hear the music for the festival, and instead of going to the NCO Club like a normal person, I head up to the carnival and start getting ripped.

I get back, drunk as hell, and John is passed out with a black eye (Peels had punched him in the face for scaring him with the doll) and Splinterhead is lying on the dresser, caught in the act of sodomizing John’s hat. I give the doll the finger, and leave my clothes in the middle of the floor and climb into bed.

About 3 AM I get up, take a piss, and decide, in my drunken wisdom, to take a shower. When I open up the shower curtain to get out, the doll is sitting in the sink, my straight razor (yeah yeah yeah, my Dad gave it to me, get fucked) in its wooden hands and staring at me.

I grab my razor first (let’s not be stupid) and then the doll, go back to the bedroom, and John’s still passed the fuck out. So I shove the doll under the covers about where I figure his dick is, and climb back in bed chuckling to myself.

And wake up to the doll sitting on the end of my bed.

“THAT’S IT! GET RID OF THAT FUCKING DOLL!”

“Come on, man, one of us must have put it there, or maybe Peels or Thompson.”

“NO. OK, I don’t do this often, but I outrank you since the Article 15’s, get rid of the goddamn doll.” John gives me that hurt Texas retard look, but fuck that, that doll Has To Go.

Two days later, after a hard day of playing Spades and watching porn, I come up to my barracks room, open my fridge and he’s staring at me from behind the half rack of Tucher.

“I TOLD YOU TO GET RID OF THIS FUCKER!” I scream at him, bursting into the day-room/CQ area, holding the doll at him and flopping it around.

“I did! Seriously, I did! Did you dig him out of the dumpster?” John looks confused. One thing about him, and one reason he always bit the farm on the Article 15’s, is that he couldn’t lie for shit.

We threw that fucking doll away over a dozen times, and every time the fucker showed back up. The worst one was when I woke up, it’s snowing outside, and the fucking thing was sitting on our windowsill and staring in at us, snow in its hair and ice on its face, its soulless eyes were watching me as I slept.

Finally, John, Peels, and I pulled a midnight recon out to the LAW range, behind 144th’s barracks and down the hill, and did something monumentally stupid. We stuffed the fucking doll into the one of the tanks that were constantly pummeled by anti-tank rockets, despite the fact we could have stepped on an unexploded rocket.

Oh, yeah, and poured a 5 gallon can of mogas in the hole we’d stuffed it in, and lit the fucking thing on fire.

The fucker never came back after that.

“The Nazi Ruins”
OK, Wildflicken was a monumentally fucked up place. A battalion of drunken tankers, and battalion of overworked and half crazy engineers, an MI battalion with a company of Rangers, an ordnance company full of drunks and crazy people, some unit on Hawk Hill that nobody ever saw, an overworked MP detachment, and a couple of units rumored to be out there in the woods that nobody ever saw.

And that was just the people. The place was goddamn worse. It served as a training hub for SS units, notably the 5th SS Panzer Division “Viking” and the 33rd SS Infantry Division “Charlemagne” [French volunteers] as well as Heer divisions, 95, 82 and 345 among others. The ammunition plant was staffed with forced labor imported from the East. (I stole that from the Wildflicken memorial page)

Most of the Americans who got sent there went a little crazy. Well, all the ones I met anyway. There were always rumors of a killer on post. Of course, it was always denied, but the rumors persisted.

However, there was a spot that might as well been a lure just for Peels, John, and me. I mean, it couldn’t have been more effective at attracking me if it was covered in free beer, mulatto women, and Grace Jones giving out blow jobs. For John, it was simply the fact that it was surrounded by a huge chain link fence threatening Dire Consequences should you be found. And Peels, well, Peels just had to know.

Down in the center of post are the Nazi Ruins. Old buildings, moss covered stone building blocks, rusting metal, and a fence surrounding it. Fog often appeared in the area and nowhere else on post, and the place had a bad reputation for evil and weirdness.

We were drinking with some boys from 144th when we hear about it, and John and Peels can tell that I just have to go there. They’re talking about how creepy it is, and how nobody can stand it at night, and how people have been attacked, two people came up missing after going in there and never returned, and all kinds of stuff.

So we immediately plan our foray into the Haunted German Ruins of Wildflicken. Thompson is going to be our safety. If we don’t come back by dawn, he’ll grab the other 10 people and mount a rescue mission for us. We almost have Thompson convinced to open the piddly little arms room for us so we can grab our pistols, but we didn’t get him drunk enough first, and he nixes that plan in the bud. Jeez, for an E-7, you’d think he’d be a little more responsible and give us our weapons, but no, we set out with compasses, a map I’d stole from 108th MI’s map room (well, actually, he just gave it me, but it sounds better for the story, doesn’t it?), some flares, our flashlights, and Peels brings a baseball bat.

It’s dark, cold, and shitty outside. But what do you expect, we’re on top of goddamn mountain? We walk past 144th and 168th and 108th’s barracks, hang a right, and cut into the woods above the medical clinic but below the theater. Now, if we get caught in the woods, we’re boned. AWOL Trail was highly frowned upon, but we weren’t after AWOL Trail, some dude from 108th got stabbed there the month before and the stabber hadn’t been caught and had cut up a guy from 168th pretty bad earlier in the week.

We were after Nazi Gold, not some dipshit with a knife.

We hit this area where there’s all these grave markers. Man, was it creepy. Complete with a fucking statue and everything. The markers are all in German, so Peels translates a couple, and we feel a lot better. This is a monument to the Polish laborers and the Jews who died here in Wildflicken.

Well, we would have, except for fog is starting to swirl around our boot soles, and it gets cold as shit while Peels is translating for us. I’m not afraid, though, I’ve got my trusty bottle of whiskey, and frankly, I don’t really care about myself.

We start back down the trail, heading for the fence, and the fog slowly rises till we’re waist deep in it. Peels is freaked the fuck out, and about takes my head off with the bat when I tell him: “There’s the fence.” He squeals like a stuck pig and whips around swinging the bat.

Well, climbing over would suck, but I drag out my leatherman tool and cut off the twist ties on the gate. I mean, come on, if you’re going to threaten me with jail time and maybe even public sodomy like the signs claim, you should put more than bread wires on the fucking gate. I’m so excited, I can barely keep from wetting myself as I pull down more whiskey and step beyond the fence.

I’m in trouble. (Do it in a singsong voice like you’re 10, that’s how I felt)

So we head through the woods, and the fog seeps away. It was kind of weird, behind us you could see fog, but the ground in front of us was clear. Peels was creeped out, John was trying to figure out what was wrong with his flashlight, and I took a deep breath after climbing on top of some old rocks.

You could smell it. Rot, rust, and something else.

Evil had been here.

We poked around the ruins, and I was disappointed. No ghosts, just once in awhile some lights off in the trees that when we run up to them, ended up coming back behind us, where we were. There was some odd noises that creeped out John and Peels, but I couldn’t find where they were coming from, and frankly, they weren’t fucking scary. Every one else was creeped the fuck out, and me? Well, I was disappointed, I wanted some scary movie shit, I wanted tortured spirits, and what I got was cold old ruins that were boring and stupid.

John brought us all running by yelling. There were two yellow eyes staring at him from a shadow by a wall, and he swore it was a ghost. I walked over, reached toward the eyes, and got jumped by a big ass rat. The fucker ran up my shirt, and Peels steps up save to day.

By beating me with the baseball bat and screaming like a girl.

That’s when the fog rolled in.

Kind of creepy now, but not too bad, so we check our watches, see it’s almost 1 AM, and by God, they were creeped out, and by God, it was boring as shit.

So we head back. We come into the room, they were talking about how creepy it was, and how they felt someone was watching them, and how the shadows were all twisted and deformed, and I was wondering if Nagle was back and if she’d let me titty fuck her.

“Christ, we were about to send a rescue party for you.” Thompson tells us.

“What? Why? We weren’t gone that long.” I tell him, looking at my watch.

2:30 AM.

“It’s almost five in the fucking morning, you freaks!” He points at the clock on the wall.

4:50 AM.

“Bullshit! You changed the fucking time!” I accuse him. We settle it by prank calling 144th and asking the time.

0505 when we call.

My watch is off by almost two and a half hours. All of ours were.

I still don’t get it how that could happen.

–more–

There was an accident at the range. Somebody called in the wrong coordinates, and 2 platoons of tanks lit each other the fuck up. Not with MILES gear, not on paper, but honest to God depleted uranium tank rounds blowing through each other. Eight tanks killed.

I was the ammo rat on site. My job was to account for the ammo, make sure the shit they drew from the ASP was accounted for, that their paperwork was strack enough for those assholes from 144th, and make sure the shell casings were accounted for. They’d set up, and started firing, and I was wandering around, up on the firing lane, but it’s tanks, so I’m safe, you know. I couldn’t have been more than 50 feet from one of the tanks when suddenly everything went white.

One second I’m standing there talking to Hayes, one of the other guys in our detachment, the next minute everything has gone white, there’s a loud buzzing, and I’m kind of… not there.

I can hear voices, but can’t recognize who they are. I’m alternatively hot and cold. I’m watching my life flash before my eyes, but not the fun stuff, the stuff I’d done wrong, the stuff I’d done right, but none of the stuff in between.

“Honey, you need to fight, you need to wake up.” It’s my girlfriend from JR High, standing there in front of me. Her face is still scraped, she’s still twisted wrong, and covered in blood.

“Wake up. Get up.” She tells me.

“I don’t want to.” I tell her. And I don’t. This is it, I finally get to be dead. I’m Not Going Back!

“You can’t go on, but I’ll wait here for you.” She tells me. I feel dizzy, like I’m falling, and everything goes from white to black…

And I wake up to some hairy fucking tanker kissing me.

Well, not really, he was giving me mouth to mouth. The shockwave from the tank round going by had knocked me cold, stopped my breathing, and turned Hayes into goddamn mist from the legs up. His intestines were scattered around where the force of the round’s passing had pulled them from what was left of his body and left them in its wake.

They got me on my feet, and first the medics, then the doctors down at the dispensary said I was OK, and let me check out. All I had was bruising on my chest and face, sore balls, a nosebleed, and a concussion.

I sat in my room, hugged my stuffed rabbit, drank, and cried. I couldn’t even die right.

I saw her again, later, after I blacked out from the pain and trauma of my burns and the psychological shock from the Ramstien Air Show Crash. She was crying, bloody tears, and petting my hair, and telling me that I couldn’t go on, but she’d still wait for me.

And again, when I was laying in a ditch after a car wreck dying. She told me, again, that I had to keep going, keep fighting, wake up. I woke up enough to moan and to attract the attention of a cop who was doing a final survey of the crash site.

Every time I come close to dying, she’s there, telling me that I can’t go on, that I have to fight, I have to wake up, that it isn’t my time to die yet.

She tells me that she’s waiting for me.

My shrink tells me she’s a manifestation of my guilt over her death, that she’s my subconscious trying to save me, but why just her? Why not any of my other friends who have died through the years? Why not one of my brothers and sisters? Lord knows I lost enough of them.

So why her?

——————————–

Enough Depressing Shit, how about :

”The _{(boring ass)} Haunted Castle_{(pile of rocks)”}
Germany is a fascinating place. I never hung around post if I could avoid it, I’d get in my car, my friends would jump in with me, or we’d grab a post-van (one of the OD green piece of shit VW vans you could sign out) and head out. There are all kinds of ruins scattered around Germany, and the arrogance of being an young American combined with my leatherman’s tool and the toolkit in my trunk, we could find all kinds of interesting places. Germany is filled with history. Churches that are older than America, ruins from before time (note that while I was interested in all this historical stuff, I was interested enough to go find it and look at it, but not interested enough to look up the history. I blame it on being young and stupid)

Peels was recalled back to the company after not only turning out to be homosexual, but getting caught plowing Thompson in the ass. Wildflicken had moved us into a new hovel, and our unit had sent 2 officers and 2 upper level NCO’s to keep an eye on us. The four of them had started out as hardasses, but within 2 months were little more than drunks like the rest of us. I’d managed to lay my hands on a map of German historical sites, and was cross referencing it with a map of sizable population areas, looking for one that would be sufficently away from population to be abandoned, when John, as always, comes up with the plan.

“Hey, what about this one?” He points at the map marking for an old ruin.

“Forget it, it’s in East Germany.” I tell him. I’d already been involved in two border incidents, and was lucky to escape jail time. I was only E-4, but I’d had a two star general scream at me these exact words: “And the Soviets are fucking PISSED!”

“No, man, check it out, we can do it. Seriously.” The more I look at the map, the more I become convinced he’s right.

It’s nowhere near any known population centers, and a quick trip to 108th to steal a map (Yeah, he gave it to me, but it sounds so much cooler to say I stole it, and I promised him if I ever got caught with the map with PROPERTY OF 108th MILITARY INTELLIGENCE written on the back, I’d tell everyone I stole it while his back was turned, so I’m kind of keeping my promise) of the area shows us that there’s no sizable population areas for almost 30 miles. The only worry is an East German helicopter base about 90 miles to the North, but we figured if we did it right, we’d avoid anyone finding us.

Nagle catches on to what we’re doing, and tells White, and now our little group is up to 4 people.

Here’s our plan. We wait until broad daylight, about 1000 hours. We penetrate the border at this point, which is a dirt road, and continue on to our objective, this old castle. We spend the night there after camoflauging our vehicle, then we make our extraction via a different road in broad daylight.

Should we be caught by enemy forces, we have 5 pair of Levi jeans, some rock tapes, 2 tape players, and 10 cartons of cigarettes. That should be enough to buy our freedom, that and our willingness to shoot our way out if anything major should happen.

It’s a sunny morning when we cross the border. Contrary to popular belief, the area wasn’t mined, there wasn’t any wire, just a little marker by the side of the road that we got out, pulled out of the dirt, and threw into the bushes. There’s our cover story, the area wasn’t marked, and we had no idea we were entering the 1K Zone or East Germany.

It’s a nice warm German summer afternoon when we finally pull up as close as we dare risk the car. We pull the camou net we’d stolen out from 144th the last time we’d been OP4 for them over the car, shrug into our backpacks, and head up the hill to the castle.

According to John, who is always full of shit, this castle was where they’d imprisoned werewolves during the Darmstahdt witch burning frenzy, and were they’d burned witches later on. He was telling us all kinds of bullshit stories, ruined by his brain damaged Texan accent, and we were all looking forward to the castle.

Everyone else was excited, but I was disappointed. All that remained was a section of the wall, an interior pile of rubble that was probably the internal keep, and two towers. While everyone else was running around with their heads up their asses, I examined the front of the towers.

Old bullet hole markings around the windows, and what was obviously an artillery round impact. Shit. This place had gotten the shit torn out of it in one of those nameless and probably forgotten fights during WW-II.

Still, everyone else was convinced we’d discovered the resting place of the Holy Grail, and were all telling each other what they thought the place was. I’d found “KILROY WAS HERE” on one of the stones, but didn’t want to ruin their fun.

There was steel plates over the doors of the towers, but a little work with my toolkit, and we got the locks open, and we’d still be able to lock them afterwards, so there wouldn’t be any sign of our presence. Everyone else was convinced we’d find shit that the Soviets or the East Germans had hidden inside the towers.

Why else would they put heavy steel plates over the doorways and windows?

Ummmm, how about to keep out assholes like us?

But I didn’t say it. I mean, they were my friends, why would I ruin their fun time. The insides of the towers were round, and boring, and we had to use climbing tools to climb up. Everyone was all excited about what they’d find, I wanted to see the room where the artillery round had hit.

I’d like to say there was blood and pieces of metal, and scraps of cloth, but their wasn’t. Still, I looked out the window, and saw that it overlooked the only access way up, and figured that the Nazi’s had probably mounted a machinegun right there, and the advancing forces had blown it to hell with a single artillery round.

We eat a cold lunch of MRE’s we’d stolen out of the supply room, then keep exploring. I’m looking to see if there’s any underground access, while everyone else dicks around. Nagle catches me behind the pile of rubble that was once the underground keep, and fucks me real quick on the rocks, then goes back to looking over all the cool (boring) rocks everywhere.

No underground access, probably buried in the rubble. The castle was pretty good sized at one point. From the piles of rubble that used to be towers, and the rubble of the keep, the keep was over a hundred paces per side, and it was over two hundred paces from the two towers furthest away from each other.

Nighttime comes, and everyone unrolls their sleeping bags, we light a little Coleman stove to keep warm and heat up our shitty food, and we all get a little drunk. Nagle and I go to our sleeping bags and grind for awhile before I get bored, claimed to have finished, and climb up the rocks. Nagle’s known me for awhile, and knows that sometimes I get… odd.

Pretty soon every single goddamn thing is evidence of ghosts. Crackling branches? Gunfire from the ghosts of the men who fought here. The breeze moaning? The lament of the dead. They were having the time of their lives, and I was bored shitless.

So I climb up in the towers to give them a once over with the NVG’s in the night time. I’d believed at the time that with NVG’s I might be able spot something not normally visible. (There’s a story behind that) Maybe, just maybe, this forgotten and abandoned place had more to it than was being told.

Nothing. Just stone.

Finally, everyone drops off, and I wake up to Nagle molesting me in the early morning. It isn’t even dawn, and when we got up and I chased her, with her giggling, into the largest tower, the one with the shell hole, we pretty much woke everyone else but between her shrieking as I playfully chased her, me stepping on John’s nuts, and everything else.

So we go into the tower, and she pushes me on the stone floor, kneels down over me and starts blowing me. Everything’s going good, when she suddenly spits me out and says: “Get your fucking hands off my goddamn ass.”

I look behind her.

“Ummm, we’re alone in here.” I tell her.

“Bullshit, there’s someone with their hands on my ass.”

OKAY! Everyone out of the pool. Dick go limp, scramble up, she jumps up, sees nobody is there, and screams. We go rushing out, she’s swearing that someone had grabbed her ass and hips, and we gather everything up, I relock the steel plates (none of the other cowards would go near them) and we head back to the car.

We extract through the East German border, and stop at a little town.

Nagle swore for years that while she was blowing me, some perverted ghost came up and tried to turn it into a threesome.

Me? I don’t have any answers. I didn’t see anything, but I do know that when I was holding onto her while she was shaking, her ass was cold. Yeah, it was pre-dawn, and kind of chilly, but her ass was COLD.

“What the Fuck?”
I woke up bright and early the day after the actual kill on the range. I was hungover as shit, and stumbled down to my squad leader’s room, knocked on the door, and told him I was too shook up to go to formation, and still hung over. He looked at me a little weird, but let me have the day off. I went back to my room and started drinking again, watching AFN and getting drunk. I passed out around noon, and got woke up to someone shaking the end of my bunk.

“Dude, wake up.” I opened my eyes, and it was Hayes, standing at the end of my bunk.

All I could do was stare in shock.

“How ya feeling? You all right? I was pretty worried about you.”

I just stared.

“I’ll come back after dinner, see how you’re doing.” And he walked out of my shitty little barracks room.

Needless to say I fucking panicked. I was freaked the fuck out. First my dead girlfriend haunts my dreams, now Hayes? What the fuck was going on? Hauntings were the province of grandma’s and weirdo’s like John, not me.

Next thing I know, it’s dark, and Hayes is standing at the end of my bed, shaking my foot.

“Hey, I brought you something to eat from the chow hall.” He waves at a plate full of food.

“Go away. Leave me alone. I didn’t do it.” I mumbled, trying to pull the covers over my head. Finally, I heard his footsteps leave, and eventually I pulled the covers off of my head, grabbed my glasses, and looked.

There was food on the little 3-drawer chest. I opened back up my bottle of whiskey and drank myself into oblivion. When I woke up, John was passed out in his bunk, and the goddamn food was gone.

Was I imagining things? Why would Hayes come back and keep haunting me? What the fuck kind of ghost claims to have brought you food?

I went downstairs and watched TV in the day room, wrapped up in my blanket, and wondering if I was cracking up. When I finished the bottle, I staggered up to my room, and passed back out drunk.

I woke up to someone kicking the bottom of my bunk, and Hayes was standing there in the morning sunlight.

“Get the fuck, you’re going to be late to formation, dipshit.” He tells me. I look over, and John’s passed out drunk.

“Yeah, and wake his stupid ass up too.” And he walks out of the room.

The hair on the back of my neck was standing up. I couldn’t figure out what the fuck was going on.

After all, I’d seen it when they were carrying me to the ambulance. Hayes had been dead, blown in half by the M1 round.

Shaking, and kind of afraid, I got up, got John up (who puked on the floor), and then took a shower and went to PT formation.

”YOU’RE A GHOST!”
I walked out to PT formation next to John, who reeked of alcohol worse than I did, and could barely walk straight. That was cool, as long as you didn’t fall out and sobered up, it was kind of ignored if you were a little drunk or hungover on the run.

And standing there, clear as day, in the morning sunlight, was Hayes. Dressed in his PT uniform. Standing right there in assistant squad leader position, and waving at me.

“John, John, tell me you can see him.” I grabbed onto John and pulled him to a stop.

“Huh? Who?” John looked around blearily.

“Hayes! Right there!”

“I’m not fucking blind, Ant. He’s standing right there waving at you.”

I kind of move over there and stand next to him, and we stand there for formation. How the fuck is he in formation? I fucking SAW him blown in half. Finally, halfway through waiting for formation to be called, I reach over and poke him.

“What the hell, Ant?”

“You’re not dead!”

“What the fuck are you talking about? I helped carry you to ambulance.” He tells me. I shake my head at him.

“You were fucking dead, I saw you blown in half.”

So Hayes tells the squad leader, who tells the CO, and the CO drives me to dispensary to talk to the doctor.

I swear to God, I saw him blown in half. He was fucking thrashed. Torn apart.

Nope. Wasn’t even hurt. Wasn’t even knocked out.

For some reason, I saw him blown apart, and it didn’t register he was one of the two people who helped me get to the ambulance. My memory still insists he was blown apart, that he was killed instantly, but he wasn’t. Shit, I remember being deployed to Desert Storm with him. He’s the one who drove me to the hospital when I dislocated my shoulder playing around. Weird, huh?

For two more years, he teased me about the whole thing. Which is how he got the nickname “Ghost.” No cool story involving ninja’s, or secret black ops where he killed 50 men with his bare hands, or where he’d invented a uniform that turned you invisible, or any of the NCO club bullshit.

But because I was all freaked out about him being dead when he wasn’t even scratched.

”How Barnes Saved the World”
We’ve all met them. Civilian or military, they’re always there. The guys who have a story to beat yours no matter what you say. For us who hung out at the Soldier’s Dome on Fort Hood, or Tremors in Harker Heights, it was this guy named Barnes. No matter what you did, no matter what you said, he was always better.

Well, like usual, the subject always rolls around to ghost stories. I mean, whose gonna call you out for it? Nowhere in a DD-214 or 201 does it say someone battled ghosts or some shit like that, it’s not like anyone can check, right? Last time I checked, you don’t get fucking awards and on the front page of the Army Times for defending the Secretary of Defense’s cat against the ghost of Lenin in a fight to the death on top of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Ghost stories are fun, and a good old fashioned shiver when you’re drunk.

So, my friends and I knew Barnes. He always came up and sat with us for some goddamn reason whenever he was where we were, and for about 2 months, he’d always shown up where we were on the weekends unless we went to my house. He thought we were his friends or some shit.

John would talk about his getting ass stomped by bulls for fun and stupidity, and Barnes would talk about how he almost won the National Rodeo Finals but missed by less than a second. I’d talk about working in a meat packing plant and shovelling cow ick till 2 AM, he’d talk about working on crab boats in Alaska and having to hit Alaskan King Crabs with a hammer when you pulled them up because they were often more than 15 feet across. Scott would talk about how, when he was a kid, he scored the Boba Fett action figure with the shootable rocket and shot the rocket up his nose so his Mom threw it away, Barnes would talk about having a limited edition Mellineium Falcon signed by George Lucas or an actual hover board like on Back to the Future at home. Nagle would talk about sucking dick, and I’m surprised he didn’t claim he could shove two dicks in his mouth. Seriously, the guy tried to convince us that he ran “Black Ops” in Desert Storm as a fucking Delta Operator.

One night, drunk, at my house, we came up with a plan. We’d come up with the most outrageous fucking ghost story EVER! And we’d all back it up. Hell, we collaborated on the fucking thing for weeks, polishing every little detail, gathering up pictures for “evidence” and even getting Ding, a SSG in MI, in on the whole thing.

So, when Barnes shows up that Friday, like a little puppy whose proud of pissing on the carpet, we launch into the story.

(This is entirely bullshit, I include it here for pure amusement and nothing else… If you think it’s real, you’re a goddamn idiot.)

“So Nagle, John, Scott and I were all put on REFORGER OP4 in 1988. We were part of CLEAR TEAM as a “mock rapid insurgent force” who’d attack unit HQ’s and all kinds of wild shit. (Complete bullshit, Scott was at a seperate post, and Ding was in a seperate unit, and I spent all of REFORGER ’88 sitting in a fucking tent eating MRE’s and playing with my dick as part of Blue Team) So REFORGER Special Operations Tactics and Covert Training Missions Command (nice name, huh?) decided to hide us where nobody would look so we could do surprise ambushes.

A graveyard outside of Flooberhaus (or Floobermaus or FFFfffflooberffffous, depending on how drunk we got while we were telling him this great story) which was off limits because Hitler used to lead occult rites in the graveyard and try to open the gates of Babylon to release demons to fight the Allies. It was in this graveyard that Eva Braun was bound to Hitler to serve him as a Valkyrie as a sign of the Old Ones approval and once in a while you could see her, dressed in an SS outfit and carrying a riding crop, wandering through the gravestones. So the whole place was full of weirdly engraved gravestones with occult symbols on them and weird names, and often, while we were hiding from Green Team Fast Assault Reaction Team Sections (hehehehee) we’d hear moaning from under the ground, or clawing sounds. At least twice a night we’d have to stomp down hands that suddenly erupted out of the dirt (usually to grab Nagle’s ass while she was pissing, but only after she wiped…) before the dead could get up and out and eat us all! We once even held back a VAMPIRE with a cross made out sticks until dawn when it dissolved with a scream! We even had a picture of the vampire and of the mist! (Yeah, it was me standing in a cloud of cigarette smoke, but boy I sure looked cool!) Yeah, it was totally creepy and spooky and shit! Hell, ask that guy over there, he was with us! Hey, Ding, come over here, we’re telling us about that fucked up shit in Floopergoose! Oh, no shit, hell, I remember that! Hey, sit down and have a drink, and join us in telling him about it! (I mean, come on, talk about a seed in the audience!)

One night, while I or Scott (We argued over who was actually on patrol, and then forgot about it) was doing patrol of the perimeter of where all 5 of us were hidden, all enlisted and lower NCO’s, with no officer because he went out one night to investigate the screams and we only found his dogtags on top of a grave the next morning! (OOOH! SPOOKY!) I was walking by this tomb when all of a sudden the door comes crashing open with a BOOM! and zombies attack me. JEWISH zombies. All bloated and purple and green from the testing done on them at Auswitchz and then at the graveyard, with an upside down Star of David on their foreheads, carved there obviously, and probably during dark rituals! Oh no!

They’re dragging me back into their tomb to either make me one of them, sacrifice me to the Old Ones, or (as Scott claimed) anally sodomize me repeatedly until dawn, when Nagle and Ding come running with entrenching tools and wade in, while Scott throws flashbangs. John sees a glow inside the tomb, and runs in, to be confronted by the ghost of HITLER HIMSELF! He managed to calf wrestle Hitler into the ground, tie him up with 550 cord, and Nagle and Ding hack us a way out while Scott calls the 75th Rangers to give us a hot extraction.

(By this time, the guys at the surrounding tables are roaring with laughter, or cheering Nagle’s account of how she lopped off three heads at once with her entrenching tool and smothered another between her tits at the same time. Shit, they’re even buying us beer, enjoying the jumping around we’re doing, yelling, and even showing pictures of our “deep recons into Green Team territory”, photo evidence of zombies, and a black and white picture of the Hitler Ghost.)

When the Rangers and Navy SEALS (hey, why not?) get there, they use the APACHE door guns to clear the LZ, and drag us all aboard a COBRA! On the Cobra is this guy in a black uniform and Air Force Four Star General stars on his shoulders (You know, the ones with the circles around them, so you can tell that they are Air Force!!!), who tells us we can never tell anyone about it. (Cues boos from surrounding tables and “Fucking Air Force dicks!”) We had to sit in the training prison camp till REFORGER was over and everyone made fun of us.

The End. (Cue clapping and bows)”

Are you done laughing yet? I mean, come on, who in their right fucking mind would believe that goddamn story? I mean, it was great, and took us probably an hour or so to tell, since we laid it on thicker and heavier as we went. It took everything I had not to bust up laughing right there. Seriously, you could tell by our big grins we not only were lying, but knew that our audience knew we were lying.

Barnes is fucking nodding, going “uhhh-huh” in all the right parts and then drops this bombshell.

He’d heard of that when he was in Special Forces in Deset Storm!!!!

Oh, that was an OK encounter( Here it comes…. wait for it…), but when he was part of the Paranormal Response Team before he lost his commission, he was part of team who (drum roll please…) SAVED THE WORLD! (DUM DUM DUM! Thank you, and goodnight, I’ll be here all week!)

So, apparently, on this Paranormal Response Team is a Native American Shaman, a goddamn Voodoo Witch Doctor (who was also a Colonel in the Marines and part of Force Recon and was once a POW for 6 years but cursed his guards so they let him go!!!), himself (because he can sense ghosts and often see them!), and some other people that he really didn’t mention. Obviously a pretty tight group.

They get a call that there’s a problem at (are you ready for this…) Camp David! Where President George Walker Bush Sr. is meeting with the Soviet Premiere Gorbachev, and they’re being sent in right away from Area 51! (Hold onto your soaked panties and don’t bother throwing them, girls, he’s married to supermodel from Canada, so you couldn’t tempt him anyway!)

Apparently they land, and find out that Gorbachev apparently brought with him 30 Spetznaz assassins to kill President Bush. (OK, by this time we’re all just snickering. But he’s hit the point of no return, just jabbering away) He’s rambling on about how the Spetznaz were all ghosts, men who were killed in Afghanistan or Beruit, or some shit (to be honest, I was too busy trying not to laugh and spray pizza everywhere) that Gorby had brought to take revenge on Bush for Desert Storm, and how they had to charge in there before they successfully killed President Bush, and how he’d point out the ghosts, and his team would obliterate them with a combination of M-17 fire (no shit, apparently the Army issued the Colt M-17 .50 Caliber fully automatic assault rifle with built in magazine loaded M-203 to everyone he knew, and he was qualified “double expert” in the fucking thing) and FUCKING MAGIC! Honest to God fucking MAGIC!

When he gets to the part where Gorby’s thanking them, and Bush is telling that they did their jobs, and they better leave when the press shows up, he’s sitting there with this smug expression on his face. His team was all awarded Medals of Honor but since it was a Delta Top Secret Code 99 Orange (or some goddamn shit, I just remember it had a couple of numbers and a color) he could never wear it. To top it off, he was badly injured by the ghosts, and lost his ability to make objects move with the power of his mind, although he graciously attempted to perform the trick for us when we asked.

Seriously, the kid claimed that the Apache shaman called up a wolf spirit to pull the ghost Spetznaz off of President Bush. Funny thing was, apparently, all the Voodoo Witch Doctor did was stay on the helicopter, since he was never spoken of after the team credits rolled by. Poor guy, he could have won a Medal of Honor and possibly even American citizenship! I’ll bet he got deported and killed in the Invasion of Haiti.

So as you can see, our “minor encounter in the graveyard during REFORGER wasn’t any big deal” to him.

So now you all know how Barnes saved the free world and all of you reading this, since the Pentagon would have launched the nukes if the ghost Spetznaz had killed Bush and the bracelet he wore told the Joint Chiefs he was dead.

”Let’s Go Home”
Well, Nagle had left Wildflicken and been assigned to Fort Polk, then Fort Polk had shut down and Nagle got moved to Fort Hood, where I was busy planning my escape from Worst Cav. Now, I’m not saying Worst Cav is by any means… oh fuck it… I HATED that goddamn place. I hated Fort Hood, I hated the OO-RAH! brain damaged douchebags who’d done nothing but sit at Fort Hood all their careers, but most of all, I hated the fact that I didn’t get to do my MOS 90% of the time.

SO it’s me, Nagle, Scott, and John back from NTC. NTC is fun, can be a blast, and I enjoyed running around in the middle of the desert for 45 days because I was on advance party. We all get leave about the same time, and Nagle comes up with an idea…

Let’s go home!

Well of course, I’m the only one with a car, so everyone assumes we’ll be taking my car. Fucking dicks. Why John’s going I don’t know, since his parents are only a Texas mile down the road, maybe he was lonely, or maybe he just wanted to have fun with his friends.

So we load up the car and away we go, and that begins:

”The Great Road Trip… plus ghosts!”
So we’re hauling ass from Texas to Idaho to Washington to Oregon to California to Texas! We’re gonna see Billy the Kid’s grave and whatever else we can. We’ve got the stereo blaring, the car full of crap, and four morons.

”The Black Shape of Who the Fuck Knows Where…”
So I wake up, and we’re hauling ass through some city, just flying, and I lean up to look around and see where we are. Nagle’s drooled all over my shoulder, I gotta piss, and I’m hungry.

We’re obviously in a large city, on the freeway, doing close to 90 MPH.

All of a sudden this black shape appears in front of, John locks up the brakes and cranks the wheel, and we barely miss this thing that looks like a huge fucking black bat walking down the middle of an interstate freeway.

John gets the car back under control, Nagle’s swearing that the thing has red eyes, I’m yelling at everyone to shut the fuck up and for John to pull over, his driving priveledges have been revoked.

And of course, at the truck stop, John asks, and we get the standard line:

Oh, yeah, lots of people see it. They say round here that it’s the ghost of this old woman/man/leper who wandered out in traffic and got hit/was beaten to death by hippies/got lost and drowned in piss.

John wants to go look for it, and whines for about 200 miles.

I ignore him, smoke cigarettes, and listen to the radio instead.

”The Valley that Time Forgot”
We got lost. Big Time. The roads weren’t on the map, nobody could find their watch, and I had just been driving for awhile because Nagle was blowing me and John and Scott were asleep.

We’re almost out of gas when we crest the hill, and hit fog. What the fuck? It’s in the middle of May! How the hell do we hit fog? Careful driving gets us through it, and we see a town sign name. I don’t fucking remember the town name, and who cares, right?

When we get into town, everyone is dressed all nice, walking around, and I swear, there wasn’t a car older than 1950 there. John sees an old Chevy for sale for $300 and wants me to pull over so he can buy it, I tell him to shut up, it isn’t a bronco or a fucking steer so he couldn’t drive it anyway.

Gas is $0.49/gallon, and I fill up. They only have leaded and unleaded, and it’s goddamn 1992, so I get unleaded. THe guy makes me use cash, and gives me a funny look about the credit card.

We drive slowly out, and it dawns on me.

Everyone is dressed like the fucking 1950’s. There’s kids playing shit out on the sidewalks, the houses are all the crackerjack box construction style, and everyone is looking weird at my 89 Ford.

So we get the fuck out of there.

Of course, in John’s story, as we were leaving he saw a bunch of guys in leather by motorcycles whose faces were skulls.

I didn’t see shit. His trip was better than mine.

”The Asshole on the Motorcycle”
We’re booking across Eastern Washington. I’m pissed, I’d argued with my ex-girlfriend, mother of my child, all around bitch, and I want to put as many miles between Spokane and myself as possible as fast as possible.

Before long, we’re up in the mountains, and cruising along. Nagle’s asleep, drooling on my crotch, and not in a sexy way, but as in soak through the jeans lukewarm sticky drool. John’s snoring time with the radio, and I think Scott might be dead back there. Whatever gas he’s passing sure makes the whole inside of the car reek like he’s dead.

We pass this motorcycle, and I glance at the guy. I mean, come on, it isn’t the 1970’s, this guy can’t get offended for making sure I’m past him when I change lanes. I’m doing fucking 90, he can watch the fuck out, and I forget about it for a couple of minutes until all of a sudden he comes out of nowhere, racing up behind the car.

Without the headlight on.

I guess it’s the full moon or some shit, I can see the shape of the asshole on the motorcycle pretty clearly, and when I look in the rearview mirror, he’s swinging something and edging around us.

That’s when he slams whatever the fuck it is into my car. Scott wakes up with a yell, John tells us he just wants a few more minutes, and Nagle snorts and blows drool on me.

“SON OF A BITCH!” I yell, and gun it. The car drops down and shoots forward, my spedometer clearing 95 and into the realm of guessing.

Sure as shit, he here comes, swinging the fucking thing and shattering my back window. Nagle wakes up with a scream and I almost fucking lose it because she hits my arm on her way up.

And John tells us he has 15 minutes before school.

“Get my goddamn pistol from under the seat!” I tell Nagle, snarling and whipping into the center of the freeway 2 lanes, making the Motorasshole swerve. We’re going uphill, and I can hear the guy’s motorcycle rumbling.

Shit, he’s got more horsepower than me, and less of a load. He doesn’t have Nagle’s big titties slowing him down.

I drop the car into 4th, hit the gas, and start putting some distance between us and the dickhead, and Nagle is staring at me like I grew a second head.

“GET MY GODDAMN PISTOL!” I yell at her, just as he roars back up and weaves back and forth around my back end, trying to pick a side. He whips around me, speeds up, and breaks my passenger side rear window.

THAT wakes up John.

“WHAT THE FUCK, MAN!” he yells.

Everyone is yelling about what is going on, and I just know that asshole on the motorcycle is grinning.

I slam on the brakes when he’s behind us, but he just weaves around us, and slams whatever it is down on my hood.

What the fuck? It looks like a length of fucking chain.

So much for that idea, I drop it into third, speed shift back up to fourth, and try to push the guy off the road, but he just goes the other way and drops onto my passenger side.

Nagle hands me my fucking pistol, and I hit the brakes, screaming to a stop, and jump out of the car.

He is turning around, heading for us.

The motorcycle stops, and this big son of a bitch gets off the motorcycle, and vanishes. I mean, POOF! Gone.

Fuck him and his magic tricks. I walk up, put two bullets into the motorcycle’s engine, get back in the car and leave.

We stop at a gas station to get gas and to survey the damage to my poor car.

Three broken windows, and the paint job is fucked.

I’m snivelling about my car when John comes back from paying for the gas, and we hit the road, when John tells us this gem.

Apparently there’s some freak on a motorcycle that for the last 20 years has been terrorizing people here and there on the road. Either he forces them to crash, or when they stop, he gets off the motorcycle and vanishes.

Apparently in life, when he’d gotten off the motorcycle he got wiped out by a passing semi.

I tell John to shut the fuck up, and keep driving for Olympia. But no, he doesn’t shut up, he regales me with tales of Texas retard ghosts and goblins till I threaten to leave him by the side of the road.

That’s when he notices that Nagle’s missing. Him and Scott start saying the fucking ghostly biker got her, and I just turn around at the first overpass and go back to the intersection.

She’s sitting on the curb of the gas station, smoking cigarettes and waiting patiently.

She told me the next time I left her behind, she’d hold me down and piss on my head.

”The Back Way to Olympia Via Nagle’s Short Cut”
We took Nagle’s shortcut. Cut off I-90 and onto I-95, and now we’re in a shitload of trouble. The pass we’re cutting through is either full of fog, or we’re in the cloud line, and to top it off, I’ve got one headlight.

Scott has his door open and his hand out, keeping an eye out on the white line. It’s so goddamn foggy that when we rolled down the windows, it seemed like it came into the car.

The whole time the three doofuses I’m in the car with swear they can hear all kinds of creepy noises, and weird shapes. After about an hour of this shit, I’m hearing shit too. Mainly a voice in my head trying to convince me to leave all three of them standing on the side of the road with their shit.

That’s when I hit the fucking thing.

Out of the fog looms this shape. Bigger than a man, bipedal, roaring, arms raised over its head, two treetrunk legs.

Nagle screams right before I hit it, and so does John. (John’s voice is higher) Scott yells “SHIT!” when his head bounces off the open door, and I yell “FUCK” as I try to dodge, but too late.

*BUMP*

Oh yeah, I’m doing 10-15 miles an hour.

It roars, and slams it huge fists on the hood of my car, stands back up, and I’m throwing the car in reverse and hitting the gas.

And the fucker dies.

It’s still roaring, slamming on my hood, as I get the car started, and slam the gas down. We rocket backwards, and I’m looking through my shattered back window watching the road behind us. Does it curve back there? Fuck, I can’t remember. I go back as far as I dare, throw it in first, and hit the gas. Fuck safe speeds.

“MONSTER!” John yells as we shoot by the figure standing on up, hands upraised, and roaring.

Fucking Nagle’s short cut. Almost got me killed. Again.

We get out of the fog, and start taking the back roads on the map that will eventually lead us to Olympia. My car is down a headlight, and I’m watching the temperature climb.

Fuck, something must have went under the hood.

It’s about 4 AM, the chances of finding a service station are next to none, so when I see a rest stop, I whip in without thinking. Everyone piles out of the car, and I notice there’s an old RV parked in the lot too.

I survey the damage. When Bigfoot (according to John) or the Hair Man of the Mountains (according to Scott) slammed on my hood, he fucked up my radiator. My grill is missing, and I figure I’ve got about $3,000 worth the damage in total to my car.

WHICH WAS FUCKING FINE WHEN I LEFT FORT HOOD!

So I empty out a bottle of Pepsi, and start making trips between the water spigot and my radiator, pour out Scott’s juice and fill the gallon thing with water. Of course, after I make eighty five thousand trips with this goddamn Pepsi bottle.

“Baaaaa”

What the fuck?

“Baaaaa”

“Shut up, John.” I tell him.

That’s when he bites me on the ass.

“WHAT THE FUCK, JOHN!”

I turn around, and there’s an honest to god fucking goat looking at me.

“Oh what the hell?”

The fucker jumps forward and headbutts me in the nuts, so I fold up like a hooker hit in the gut with a bat by a pimp, and the fucker headbutts me again, right in the top of the head, knocking me sprawling, then runs away!

And Scott and Nagle come around the corner, finding my sprawled over by the side of the car with a water bottle in my hand.

“What happened?” Nagle asks. Scott’s snickering.

“I got attacked by a goat.”

“Bullshit.” Scott says.

“Seriously!” I’m coughing and choking, and I’m pretty sure my nuts are embedded somewhere under my lungs. Nagle’s helping me up.

“I don’t see a killer goat anywhere. You sure you didn’t just trip?” Scott asks, looking around.

“NO I DIDN’T FALL! A FUCKING GOAT ATTACKED ME!”

Scott snorts. “Yeah, them goats are real man killers. I heard they kill hundreds every year.”

“Wanna walk to Olympia?” I ask him, and he shuts the fuck up.

He bends over to rummage in the back end, it’s not like he has to open the hatchback, the window’s gone. Nagle’s asking me if I’m OK, and walking me over to the park bench.

All of a sudden I hear “baaaaah!” and the clatter of hooves.

“SCOTT! LOOK OUT!”

Too late. This fucker hits him full speed, and knocks his ass against the back of the car.

“IT’S BITING ME!” he screams, and we run over to see it tear the back pocket off his jeans. It turns to look at us, and Nagle runs away.

“BAAAAH” OH SHIT! I go running away, and the fucker’s chasing me as I climb on top of the picnic table with Nagle.

Scott’s stumbling away from the car when the fucker charges him and hits him in the nuts.

“HURTS, DON’T IT!” I yell from the safety of the top of the picnic table. Nagle glares at me, and pulls me over. The fucking demon goat is gone, and we start dragging Scott over to the picnic table.

Man, my nuts hurt.

“Oh fuck, look!” Nagle says.

The goddamn thing is standing on top of my car, eating one of Nagle’s bras. When we start walking toward it, it jumps on my hood, which goes “SPROING!” and then hits the ground runnning, head lowered, at us. We climb back on top of the picnic table, and it trots back over to my car, and climbs back up on the hood.

“Ummm, I left the door open.” Nagle says.

It jumps off the hood and trots around behind my car.

“Let’s make a run for it!” Scott wheezes.

“And go where? We’re fucking in the middle of asshole Washington!” I whisper back. I can see the goat’s horns, it’s on the other side of my car.

“Hey, what’s going on?” We all yell. Fucking John.

“Man, I had to take a monster shit.” He says, climbing up on the table. “What are we doing?”

“Playing Goddamn Twister, what do you think?” Nagle says.

“Oh. I’m gonna get my cigarettes.” He gets down, even though we’re all trying to convince him to stay on the picnic table. He gets about 10 steps when the goat trots around the side of the car, sees John, and stops.

“Hey, a goat! Cool!” John says. “Think it’s wild?” He’s looking at us, and with a clattering of hooves, the demonic nut busting son of a bitch runs at John.

“LOOK OUT!” Nagle yells.

The thing reaches John, and in some weirdo Texas Hick Kung Fu he’s got the fucker by the head and slings it head first into the water fountain. It backs off, shaking it’s head, then charges John again, who’s laughing.

“This rocks!” He yells. Another kung-fu move, and he’s got the goat on the ground and is holding it’s legs together and sitting on it. I run up, and grab Nagle’s half eaten bra, and he ties it’s legs real quick.

We get in the car, and wheeze out of there like a crippled bat from the demonic goat.

When we get to Olympia, and to Nagle’s mom’s house, my poor car is dicked.

$2,500 worth the damage, and 2 days in the shop. New hood, new back window, 2 side windows, new radiatior, and structure damage to the front end.

And nobody would believe us about the demonic nut-killing goat.

”The Great Road Trip (cont)”
We get to Nagle’s house a couple of hours after dawn, and we go in and meet her parents, who seem nice enough. I tell Nagle I need to take my car to a mechanic and body shop and get it fixed, that I don’t think it’s going to make it to Rochester to get it fixed, but she wants breakfast first. Scott and John go in and go to sleep in the frontroom after Nagle’s dad goes to work.

After breakfast, Nagle ropes me into going into the back yard and helping her get her car running. Apparently it was her sister’s car, but her dad let her have it after her sister died and she turned 16. I figure it is going to be some heaping piece of shit, and reluctantly agree. We uncover the car, and I stare in shock.

It’s a goddamn 70’s Camero. A fucking chrome blower sticking out of the hood, mag wheels, jacked up in the back. Painted hot pink, with hot pink dingleberries in the back window, and a fuzzy stearing wheel cover. We pop the hood, sweep the debris off the engine, and I pull my car into the back yard to jump start the fucker after checking the oil and the water. It starts up with a roar, and she agrees to lead me to a mechanic so I can get my car fixed.

When we get to the mechanic, I go to jump in and stop. In the back of the fucking car are school books, a fucking backpack, and a goddamn Six-Million Dollar Man lunchbox.

“What the hell is that shit?” I ask, getting in. “You leave for the Army in that big of a hurry that you left your shit in the back seat?”

“It’s my sister’s stuff. She left it in the car, and Mom and Dad won’t let me take it out. It has to stay in the car.”

Now I’m officially fucking freaked out, but Nagle and I first pick up John and Scott, then go and visit my aunt and uncle for a few hours, then go to the mall, then go get some dinner and go and see a movie before heading back to Nagle’s house to spend the night.

Spending the night at Nagle’s house was interesting, but REALLY creepy. Her mother hadn’t changed her room in over 5 years, after she left home for the Army, and I’ll tell you, laying in that room with Nagle blowing me was just weird. All those stuffed animals staring at me with their soulless eyes, the dolls leering at us. She couldn’t figure out why I kept going limp in her mouth. That goddamn Barbie doll collection were all looking at me like they were going to make an Ant skin barbie outfit as soon as we went to sleep.

And when did My Little Pony get all creepy and flesh eating looking? Plus, Eric Estrada was staring at me in his cop uniform like as soon as I went to sleep he was going to step out of the poster and anally master me. All of those eyes staring at me made it REALLY hard to perform. When her and I were going at it, I swear to God, Kermit the Frog jumped me. One minute I’m grooving it, just going to town, and the next minute Kermit is on my back, sailor suit and all, and I just fucking freaked.

To top it off, Nagle’s sister had gotten killed in the mid-80’s. She apparently had been hit by a train, and like Nagle’s room, it hadn’t been touched since the death. Nagle and her sister’s rooms were attached by an adjoining door, and of course, she had to open it and point out her sister’s room. I kept seeing her room out of the corner of my eye, and just knowing it was some kind of freaky shrine to a dead teenage girl freaked me the fuck out.

So I just knew there was some fucking dead bitch in the next room plotting my death.

That first night, I kept hearing noises from Nagle’s sister’s room, and she kept telling “Oh, it’s OK, her room always has weird noises coming from it.” OOooookay. The worst part was when John comes running in the room, just barging in, runs up by my head, and yells some Texas hick accented bullshit about cold hands feeling him up in the middle of the night. I’m trying to get him the fuck out of the room, when Scott comes running in.

“Ummmm, am I interrupting?” I look down, and I’m naked with a hard-on, Nagles naked and yelling, and I’m trying to shove John, whose in his boxers, out of the room, so God only knows what it looked like to Scott.

“WHAT?” I yell.

“There’s someone out in the frontroom fucking with me.”

“No there’s not.” I snort.

“Seriously. I went to take a piss, and the light turned off. When I went back into the frontroom I could smell perfume, and when I was laying down I heard a girl giggle.” He’s serious.

“Bullshit. Go back out and get the FUCK OUT!”

“HEY! SHUT UP!” Nagle’s dad yells. So we all seperate. Me and Nagle finish, and I go to take a piss. In the middle of pissing, I hear a little girl giggle, and the light turns out.

OKAY! THATS FUCKING IT!

I run out of the bathroom, open the bedroom door, and suddenly realize….

I. Am. In. The. Wrong. Room.

There’s no way to describe how creepy this room was. Everything had stopped in this room. The posters were all of early 80’s bands and mid to late 70’s bands. There was the obligatory “Hang In There, Baby!” poster, stuffed animals and dolls everywhere, open makeup, and even fucking homework on the bed! Raggedy Ann is staring at me and leaning like she’s starting to get up, the Village People are all staring at me hungrily, and Steve Austin (The Bionic Man) is looking at me with a leering grin, his track suit already partially unzipped and ready for action.

Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit.

I turn around, grab the doorknob, and of course…

The fucking door won’t open.

I run over to the other door, and yank it open, diving under the covers with Nagle. She’s giggling, thinking I’m all excited about her, and I peek out and stare at the room door, which is slowly shutting until it is just open a crack.

I try to explain what happened, and she tells me not to be silly, that her sister haunts the rail road tracks.

Oh, yeah, that makes me feel better.

So we finally go sleep, and I wake up freezing fucking cold, and Nagle is shivering and scooting closer to me, and I can just feel someone petting my flat-top hair cut. I just squeeze my eyes shut and pretend I can’t feel an icy cold hand petting the back of my head and the back of my neck.

The next morning, we go out, and I get cornered by Nagle’s mom, who gives me a 20 minutes fire and brimstone speech about sin, her youngest daughter, more sin, how babies who are born out of wedlock are cursed, more sin, and how I better not break her daughter’s heart.

Break Nagle’s heart? Nagle has all the morals of a fucking alley cat. I’m not even her boyfriend, just somebody to fuck, according to her.

On my way to the kitchen, I get cornered by her father, her practically recites the speech verbatim, and creeps me out even further, since he has me pinned against the door of the dead sister’s room.

I just know she’s in there, listening to me get sermoned by this balding guy with the crazy eyes. Her mangled body all torn up from the train wreck, old black clotted blood covering the wounds. Her eyes are empty sockets, her head deformed from behing smashed by a train, her limbs grotesquely bent and twisted, and she’s pressing the side of her misshapen head against the door, her bare skull against the wood, and her still lungs full of grave mold, clotted blood, and the breath of her last scream.

Her dad probably thought that I was sweating because of him. No, I was terrified the door was going to open and I’d fall backwards, and Nagle’s dead sister would devour me while I kicked and screamed and her teeth tore at my living flesh.

After breakfast, I tell Nagle that there’s no way in fucking hell I’m staying there another night, and she laughs at me, and the four of us pile in Nagle’s car, John scooting so far away from the dead sister shrine in back seat he’s practically sitting in Scott’s lap, and we head out to my house.

Figures. Nobody is home. My mom and dad’s house is a fucking wreck, like always, and of course, Nagel wants to see the property. My Mom and Dad own an acre, and I didn’t live in the house, I lived in the shop on the property.

We go in, and the place is fucking trashed. All my books are rat chewed, or missing, or dropped on the floor. My bed is all fucked up, there’s cobwebs everywhere, and my clothing is all on the floor.

“Dude, your room is fucking gross.” Scott tells me. “Don’t you ever clean this pig sty?”

“Hey! Eat shit!” I snarl, and start digging around. The four of us spend the day fixing my old room, and I drag the two cots out of the barn for John and Scott to sleep on, then spend time fixing the power to my room.

My parents get home, and as always, my dad is fucking drunk. My mother is, of course, disapproving of Scott, thinks Nagle is a slut (Hey, it’s not nice to just come out and say it! Besides, she wasn’t a slut, she was just generous to close friends like me!), my little sister is acting all snooty like she owns the goddamn place, and my younger brother is complaining because of something.

Depressed, we go to my room, and hit the rack. BUT, we have something to do tomorrow.

”The Great Road Trip (cont)”
OK this trip was full of bad luck, weird shit, and just plain downright creepy fucking times.

We still talk about it and laugh now and then over a lot of shit, including the Hair Man of the Mountiains, the Killer Goat From Hell, and other stuff.

But enough of that, on with the show!

”The Property I’ve Never Seen…”
All but the BAQ (which went to support my kid that I’d never seen), and $400 went to my parents, with instruction for them to buy property whenever they could. Now, it may sound stupid, like not much money, but this was in an undeveloped area, and 1992, so a couple grand could do a down payment on property. My parents had bought me three properties, two of which they paid off with my reenlistment bonus and then the massive amount of pay I racked up during Desert Shield/Storm and the tax returns I always sent them. Personally, to be honest, I’m surprised my fucking Dad didn’t drink it all away, but I guess even drunks have scruples.

I’ve got 3 pieces of property to check out. My dad’s already drinking (It’s 9 AM), my siblings are in school, and my Mom doesn’t know where any of it is. We load up some tools in the car, crowbar, axe, 12 gauge pump shotgun, chainsaw, shovels, you know, necessities. So we go into town, go to the Realtor, and get directions.

OK, a house in between Centralia and Rochester, property up in the fucking hills have eyes area, and a house out past Chehalis, out past the Industrial District. Fucking great. We get directions, copies of the keys, and head back to my parents house.

“We can’t take the Camero, there’s no way it’ll make it.” I tell them, and we walk to the back of the property where there’s about 15 old cars and trucks. I’m digging my key ring out of my pocket, while Scott and John are getting the crap out of the trunk of the car. There’s my older brothers Z-210, my sister’s Vega, my Dad’s old cars and trucks, and my two vehicles.

A 1968 Ford F-150 pickup, and a GMC Travelall. Me and Nagle pull the batteries from both of them, and lug them back in the shop. My dad’s buzzed, and tells me to go ahead and use the big battery charges to charge the batteries, plus, bonus of bonus, he actually deigns to allow me to use the tools. We grab some tools and start working on the truck and the travelall.

John and Scott look around at all the forlorn vehicles. The sky is gray, there’s a wind that’s picking up, and the world feels flat and cold. The old Ford pickup is the first one we get to fire up, the Travelall has cracked pipes leading off the engine and the shifter is jammed.

We load all the tools in the truck, Scott and John climb in the back and sit in the bed, and Nagle gets in next to me, and we head off for adventure.

”The Stillson House”
When we pull up to the first house, I almost groan. 5 acres, and a “fixer-upper” is what the realtor had told me. For some reason, it was ringing a bell, but I couldn’t think of it. We piled back in the Creepy Pink Camero, and off we went to the back roads. We’re not talking normal back roads, we’re talking creepy Washington State you know there’s fuckers from the forest version of the Hills Have Eyes out there back roads.

We get to the gate, and bust off the lock with the crowbar, and it takes all 3 guys bitching to get the old wooden gate open and leave it, hanging on one broken hinge, to the side of the trail. There are trees to either side of the dirt road, and we have to stop a couple of times.

“Fuck, it’s the Old Stillson place.” I groan. It’s a 2 story wood house, complete with chimney. I suddenly regret all the times I’d thrown rocks at the windows as a teenager, since now I’d have to replace them. Ain’t karma a bitch? The place is brown, the roof is covered with moss, the walk to the front door of the covered porch is covered in leaves, and I can see the newer looking “NO TRESPASSING” signs nailed up on the doors and on some of the board covered windows.

“I’m not going in there.” John tells us, and sits down on the hood of Nagle’s sister’s car. I remember that, like a doofus, I left my pistol under the front passenger seat of my car. Instead, I grab out my old 12 gauge and hand it to Scott, who grins and poses.

Man, the place was fucking creepy! Several trees were grown close to the house, there was a covered front porch with holes in the screens, there were boards on the windows and over the front door, and I had to literally kick off the front porch door. There were dead old plants, a funny smell, and a rotting rocking chair on the front porch. The front door was boarded up and padlocked, and we had to use the crowbar to get off the boards, the door lock, and to break open the door.

The first thing we smelled was rot. The front room was still furnished, rotting furniture, piles of refuse, and a lot of beer cans and bottles. With more than a little shame, I realized that the beer cans from my last weekend before I joined the Army were still there.

“Man, what a shithole. Tell me you didn’t actually pay money for the place.” Scott says, looking around.

“The house came free with the property.” I told him, shining the flashlight around. The more I saw, the more depressed I felt. How drunk had my dad been to agree to buy this place.

“Hey, it got weird out there…” John says, Nagle shrieks and I jump.

“What?” John looks around. “Hey, they left their furniture here.”

“Yeah.” I mutter, and we go into the kitchen. There’s broken dishes around, the glass in the front of the cupboards is broken out, and the sight of the old refrigerator makes me shudder.

“Nagle, open the fridge, will you?” I ask. She gives me a weird look, but she does it. It’s full of crap, and I use the crowbar to pry to door off and immediately feel better. We explore the rest of the downstairs, and pry the boards off the stairwell door and break open the door.

“What the fuck, man?” John asks when the second bedroom still has the dressers and shit in them.

“Old Man Stillson.” I tell them, turning around and heading back downstairs.

What the fuck were my parents thinking, buying this place.

“OK, Ant, tell us. What the fuck happened here?” Scott asks, when we’re in the dining room. He’s looking up at the electric overhead near-chandelier, and I’m drawing in the dirt and grime on the table.

“All right, fine. Listen up…” Everyone gathers close, and I tell them.

“Old Man Stillson came back from World War II a little odd. Nobody knew why, but he went back to work at the sawmill and kept to himself. The friends he left behind he wouldn’t really talk to. He quit going to the bar, and retreated to his house.

“PTSD?” Nagle broke in. John and Scott hushed her.

“He went to church religiously, as did his wife, and had four kids that lived, two stillborn. His elderly mother and his elderly father, who had gotten gassed in World War I, moved in with him about 1950. Everyone once in awhile people going by would see Old Lady Stillson standing by the gate, dressed all in black, staring at them. The road out front wasn’t even paved, and a lot of people out here still used horses and buggies.

“You shitting me. Seriously?” Scott interjected. Everyone else hushed him.

“One night, October of 1959, he got in an argument with the foreman at the sawmill, and in front of everyone, he killed the foreman, went out, got on his horse, and rode back home. Nobody stopped him, but they did go get the Sheriff, since when they called, the Sheriff was at the tavern. By the time the Sheriff had gotten there, he was already home.

“Oh shit.” Nagle breathed. By this time we’d gotten to the frontroom, and I reached out and took the shotgun from Scott.

“So he came home, went right over there to the fireplace and got his shotgun.” I pointed at the fireplace, then started walking toward the stairs. “He loads it, it’s an old double barrelled shotgun, and he climbs the steps.” I start walking up the enclosed steps. It feels dark, still, and almost… expectant in the stairwell, and the door is still open. “He walks into the first bedroom, where his father and mother are, and goes to the end of the bed.” I walk up to the old carved wood bed, and lift the shotgun to my shoulder. “BOOM! BOOM! He kills the old man and old lady, and stands here reloading his shotgun.”

“Fuck.” John whispers. I mimic loading a breech loading shotgun.

“He steps out in the hallway,” I brush past them and step into the hallway, which is only lit by the two windows at each end. “He sees his wife standing there, pregnant again, in her nightgown, raises the shotgun to his hip,” I mimic it. “He pulls both triggers, killing his wife and his unborn child. He stands there in hallway, his wife dying, and reloads.” I mimic it again, and start walking down the hallway, stopping and going into the bedroom.

“He sees his baby daughter in the crib, raises the shotgun, and shoots, blowing apart the crib and killing the baby.” I mimic it, pointing at the torn up and stained wall paper, and mimic firing the shotgun. “He turns around, walks out, and goes over to the first bedroom. His oldest son is in bed, he lifts up the shotgun, and kills his teenage son.” I mimic shooting at the next bed. “He stands there, reloading, then turns and goes back into the hallway. His oldest daughter is running down the hallway, toward the stairs, and he shoots her in the back, then walks up and finishes her off.” I walk to the end of the hallway, mimic shooting someone, then start walking back.

“He reloads again, and walks to the last bedroom. He opens the door, and goes inside.” We walk into the last bedroom, which still has a dresser, debris, and a bed in it. “He can’t see her, but can hear her crying. He walks up to the closet, and opens the door.” We walk to the closet, which is missing it’s door. “He looks in, and sees his daughter inside, huddled up and crying, raises the shotgun, and shoots her too.”

“Fuck.” I think it was John.

“He walks back downstairs…” We head back downstairs, “…and goes out to the front porch and sits down in the rocking chair. He smokes his pipe, and waits, the shotgun across his lap. When the Sheriff gets there, he goes and stands behind the screen door, in the dark. The Sheriff gets out of his cruiser, and walks up to the front porch, raises his hand to knock on the door…”

“And Old Man Stillson shoots him in the face through the screen.” I mimed it, then turned around and walked back into the frontroom, pointed at some wreckage in the corner, and mimed loading the shotgun. “He came back in here, smoked his pipe for a little while, put the shotgun under his chin, and BOOM! Blew his fucking head off.”

It was that moment that a cold breeze moved through the broken windows of the house and we all shivered.

“Shit.” John said, looking around. “Do we have to hang out here?”

“No. Fuck it, let’s go to Chehalis.” I said. Everyone nodded and we headed out the door. We climbed into the truck, I fired it up, and ground the gears as we backed out. I got one final look at the house as I pulled onto the street and tried for a moment getting it into first gear, gave up, and shifted into second.

The house looked malevolent, and I could hear Old Man Stillson’s ghost laughing.

”The House That Hate Built”
The truck barely made it to 65, the old straight six howling as we took the last exit. The candy factory off the exit filled the truck with the smell of peppermint, which made Nagle smile. We drove through Chehalis, and kept going, eventually clearing town and passing the Industrial District. The roads were all tree crowded, and we passed mobile homes here and there, heading out to where the second house my parents had bought for me was.

When we pulled up, it was confirmation of something I had always suspected. My parents hated me.

The house was two story again. What was with my mother and two storied houses? Did she want me to get drunk and fall down the steps or something? I recognized the house right off the bat, Lord knows I’d gotten drunk here often enough on the weekends during parties. To top it off, it looked like it had been awhile since someone had had a party there a few days before, judging by the age of the empty beer cans, and the beer bottles scattered around the big ass lawn. There were old rusting cars in the yard, and half the garage had collapsed around an old car in there.

Walking around the house, yup, the old bulldozer, the two old semis, and the old farming equipment was still there. I’d gotten 14 acres and a falling down house with a partially collapsed garage for about $35K. I got ripped off.

“Ummm, before we go in, what’s the deal on the Amityville house here?” John asked, pointing at the house.

“You don’t wanna know.” I told him. He grabbed my arm, and for a minute I thought he was going to hit me with the axe in his hand.

“Fucking tell me now, Ant.” he growled.

“Old Lady Carson.” I told him, like it answered everything. He gave me blank look. I sighed, and continued.

“Widow Carson is another legend around here…”

“Fucking figures.” Scott grunted.

“The Carson’s always argued and fought. The husband was a drunk and a woman beater. It wasn’t uncommon to see Old Lady Carson in church with a black eye, and their kids were always dirty and bruised and a little flinchy. One day, back in the 60’s, Old Man Carson just vanished. Nobody ever saw him again, and everyone just figured he ran off with a barmaid, or Old Lady Carson had finally killed him. The kids had all left, so it wasn’t any big deal for the Widow Carson to live out here by herself.

“Back in the 70’s Widow Carson’s granddaughter came back with a black baby. There was quite a stir around Centralia/Chehalis, and nobody saw her or the baby much. Well, one day the grand daughter disappears, and old Widow Carson wandered around town, haunting the bars where he granddaughter used to hang out and pick up loggers. There’s probably an old Chevy in the garage, under the wood, she used to drive it drive it around all the time looking for her daughter, with the baby in her lap.

“You’d drive by here, and often see the old lady standing out at the gate, holding the baby, and staring down the road like she was expecting the granddaughter to come walking back. I remember driving by here as a kid, my dad used to make us boys come out here and cut firewood, and she’d always ‘take tea’ with my Mom in the kitchen, and ask us boys if we’d seen her in town, or at church, or at school.

“One day the old lady and the kid just fucking vanish. No note, no letter, nothing. Just fucking vanished.

“Why doesn’t this surprise me.” Nagle mumbled.

“So they searched the house, didn’t fine anything, and gave up. Well, come the 80’s, you know teenagers, we started coming out here and partying.

I shrugged my shoulders.

“About three times in high school, we’d have parties out here, and someone would just fucking vanish. The Sheriff would come out here and search, the parents would yell at us, but we always figured they’d run away from home.

“Finally, my Junior year, this girl vanishes, and everyone goes out looking for her. We’re drunk and laughing, and someone yells they can hear her screaming, then he suddenly screams and vanishes. Well, we all ran back to the cars, only time I ever drove drunk, we drove back, flagged down a cop, who told us he’d go out and look for them.

“Come the next day, the cop car is still in the driveway, but the cop’s gone. No goddamn answer, they can’t find him, and the place is off limits. If you’re caught here, it’s straight to juvie. No warning, no nothing.

“There was a realtor, always trying to sell it, but he vanished too one day. The couple who were going to buy it found his car, but he never showed back up again.

I looked at all of them.

“So that’s what happened here.”

“We ain’t going in.” Scott says, and John and Nagle nod.

“It’s just an old fucking house. If we stay together, we’ll be OK.” I tell them.

“Look, no offense, Ant, but just because you want to live in the killer haunted house don’t mean we want to help you.” John says.

“Fine. Let’s go.” I shrug, and head back to the truck.

As we were driving away, I looked in the rearview mirror, and it seemed like there was someone on the second floor, staring at us out the window.

But it was probably my imagination.

Of course, now I know what happened to all those people, but that’s for later, toward the end of our time in Washington.

”Ever Feel Like Someone’s Watching You?”
The next place is to hell and gone. 20 miles from Oakville, which is about 20 miles from I-5 and pretty much nowhere. It takes us about an hour and a half to get there. Nagle’s nice enough to blow me, since all there are is trees and those get boring after awhile. John and Scott are in the back drinking beer and making gestures as they talk.

We find the dirt road, about a mile past the tumble down red ban but before the bridge over the dry creak, just after Nagle sits up and wipes her mouth. I swerve onto the dirt road, throwing up a plume of dust, downshift to third, and hit the gas. We start climbing the hill, and I tell Nagle to keep an eye out for a lightning blasted oak tree.

After a little while, we aren’t passing houses any more. I take a right on the next dirt road, downshift again, and we start climbing the hill. We cross a bridge made of old logs and packed dirt, and the ground levels out.

“You gonna live in any of those, Ant?” Nagle asks suddenly. The radio hasn’t worked for about 10 miles, so her voice is kinda shocking when the only noise is the bouncing of the suspension and the roar of the engine.

“Probably, if I live long enough to get out. I figure I’ll do my 20, and have enough scratch left over to renovate them both. I’ll rent one out, and live in the other one.” I shrug. “It’s just a house.”

“Yeah.” She looks out the window, crossing her arms and shivering. “There. Is that it?” She’s pointing at a scorched and blackened tree up ahead. It has an old blue surveyor’s ribbon still tied around it.

“That’s it.” I look for a clear spot between the trees, see one, slow down, drop it into granny low, and bounce onto the property. 48 acres of nothing. When the logging industry went tits up in 80, Warehouser sold a bunch of property, this was one of them. Never been logged though.

I shut off the truck and climb out, reaching into the cab and pulling the shotgun off the gun rack.

“Stick close. I haven’t been here before, and I don’t think anyone else has.” I tell them. “There’s bears up here, along with coyotes that will attack you, and all kinds of forest fuckers.” All three of them nod.

“Let’s go check the property out.” John says, hefting an axe.

We start walking through the trees. It’s a blustery Washington day. Leaden skies, cold wind, and wan sunlight. The sunlight only seemed to deepen the shadows as we began walking back into the property. Six acres wide and eight deep, the far line is supposed to be a cliff, and according to the shitty little surveyor map I have, there’s supposed to be a pond and a small stream on the property.

We’re pretty much quiet, but Scott’s carrying the beer, and we drink in silence as we walk. For us, it’s no big deal, we spent so much time bullshitting around in the woods in Wildflicken that it’s not like we’re afraid of the forest.

“No creepy story, is there, Ant?” John asks me when we take a break and sit down. Nagle’s sitting on a stump, and I’m admiring the tight jeans over her ass when John interrupts my train of thought, which is mainly centered around Nagle.

“No. It’s just old woods.”

“No killer lumberjacks? No man eating bears?” John asks.

“Nope. Just bobcats and bears.”

“Fuck you.” Scott says, looking around. “I’m telling you, there is just something I don’t like about this place.”

“It’s just fucking woods, you goddamn pansies.” I tell them both.

We finish the beers, and pile up the empties at the stump. I figure they’ll make a good marker on the off chance we got lost on a couple dozen acres. We head back off, and pretty soon find the pond and the stream.

“I thought you said there wasn’t anyone out here.” John says, pointing at the same thing I’m staring at.

“There fucking isn’t.” I tell him, cocking a round into the shotgun and taking it off safe.

There’s… well… a shack, for want of a better word. Plywood, pallets, pieces of corrugated metal, cloth, a chimney made of stones and mud, and a roof covered with a ragged plastic tarp, rocks, and what looks like dirt.

“On me.” I tell them. OK, I’m no super military hero, no goddamn urban assault high speed motherfucker, not a steel toothed Ranger or a killing machine SF Operator, or a high speed bad assed Navy SEAL. Don’t get me wrong and think I’m claiming to be Audie Murphy reborn or something though. I mean, I’m not a pussy or anything, I can fucking fight, but something about this place…

I’d seen all the Friday the 13th movies.

I felt stupid, saying that. “On me.” Like I’m fucking Rambo, but the others spread out behind me. I realized I was playing the point man. Best way to get fucking killed.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” Nagle whispers. God her voice sounded like thunder.

Speaking of which, a low rumble of thunder sounded, far off and quiet, but enough to set our nerves on edge.

“No.” I keep moving up on the house, if that’s what you called it. I’m trying to be quiet, but it’s like sticks and dry leaves are suddenly appearing under my feet, and I can hear all of us breathing.

Thunder rumbles again as we get to the edge and all flatten against the shanty wall. We can all smell a foul odor, and Nagle gags, a sound I’d never heard from her before. Scott’s got out his fucking combat knife that he won in a poker game, John’s holding the axe like he’s about to star in a Texas Chainsaw remake, and Nagle has a big rock and looking grim.

I kneel down and peek around the corner. I can see the door, closed. Out front there are bones in the grass, an axe in a stump, and nailed to the wall are 2 deerskins.

“Clear.” I tell them, and scoot around the corner. I glanced at the woodline, didn’t see anyone, and moved up to the “door” and pressed myself close to it.

What the fuck am I doing? For all I know the asshole is right behind the door with a fucking spear gun or a pitchfork or a scorpion tied to the end of a stick.

Then it suddenly dawns on me. What’s he going to do, fucking kill me? So goddamn what? Fucking good. I won’t go down without a fight, but what the fuck am I worrying about? Death? Bring it on.

I stand up, hand the shotgun to Nagle, and just pull open the door.

That’s when the fucking stench just rolls out. I found a dead deer when I was a kid, like most country bumpkins, and this smelled a million times worse. It made my eyes water, and I took a step back. Not only was it the stench, but there was this clinging, humid warmth that wrapped around me like a rotting blanket and covered my skin with a slick feeling.

Ever seen “Wrong Turn”? Remember the inside of the shack? Yeah, pretty much. Cloth strips over gaps I figure were windows, a nasty table with part of a deer carcass on it, an old fridge that makes my skin prickle up, a cot with moldy old blankets, deer antlers on the fucking wall, beer cans everywhere, and a stench that would make a New York hooker gag. There’s even chunks of unidentifiable meat hanging here and there, dripping blood on the floor.

“Holy shit.” Nagle chokes, looking past me. I’ve stumbled back a few steps. I mean, what the fuck?

“Let’s get the fuck out of here!” John says after one look.

“NO!” I yell. “FUCK THAT! I’ve left two goddamn properties behind because you assholes are afraid of some old fucking tales, I’m not fucking leaving!” I’m suddenly pissed off. I’m not leaving because of some claim jumping hill billy.

“Ant, come on.” Nagle’s looking around squinting, the shotgun held ready.

“No. You guys can run, just leave the shotgun.” I tell them, walking into the cabin.

“Are you fucking crazy?” John asks. “Have you finally fucking lost it?”

I’m looking around. It’s obviously a squatter’s shack. There isn’t shit worth anything in here. No guns, no bows, no fucking spears, just a bunch of oiled traps in one corner. The stench is horrendous, but I realize I couldn’t fucking care less.

This is my goddamn land.

“Ant, come on.” Nagle hisses.

“No.” I come outside and start walking around the place.

“ANT! OH FUCK! ANT!” I hear John yelling, and I come tearing ass around the shack. All three of them are standing by the stump with the axe in it, staring at the ground.

“What?” I’m still fucking annoyed.

“Are those… oh my god…” Nagle’s got her fist in her mouth, and I run up next to her and look down.

“Are those human hands?”

There’s bones scattered at the base of the stump. Fingerbones, the long bones of the hand, and the small bones at the wrist.

“I think so.” John says, and Scott nods jerkily.

Thunder rumbled again, and it started raining.

”Watch This, Fucker!”
“Are those human hands?” Nagle is still staring at the bones. There must be 20 or thirty sets in the grass around the stump. John steps back, glancing around.

“Yeah, I think they are.” Scott says.

“Let’s get the fuck out of here.” John says.

“You guys are so goddamn gullible.” I say, and start laughing. “They aren’t human hands, and the fuck who stays here is a goddamn poacher.”

John whirls around, and for a second, his eyes are red in the dim light.

“Are you laughing at me, Ant?” He growls, hefting the axe.

“Yeah, I am, John. What of it?” I growl back. I’ve had it.

He looks at me for a long moment, then steps back.

“It’s not worth it.” He says.

“What’s not worth it, John? You got something to fucking say to me?” I ask, stepping forward. I’m smiling, a big smile.

“No, nothing, Ant.” He says, looking away.

“Drop it, boys.” Nagle says. We’ve heard that tone before, so we step back from each other and I hold up my empty hands as she continues. “What do you mean they aren’t human hands, they sure as shit look like human hands to me.”

“They’re bear cub hands. The asshole who squats in this shack traps bear cubs, then cuts off their hands so he can skin them.” I start laughing. “God you guys are fucking gullible.”

“Are you fucking serious?” Scott asks, bending down and looking closer at one. “Hey, these do look different!”

“Yup. Lots of people mistake them all the damn time.” I wave at all the other bones littering the grassy area. “Fucker probably skins them, cuts the meat, and sells it all in town. Hell, he might even take the bear meat up to Chinatown in Seattle or Portland, bear meat gets a nice price from what I’ve heard.”

I grab the axe, pull it out of the stump with a grunt, and start walking away, waving at them to follow me.

“Come on. We’re staying here for a little bit, but there is something we’re gonna do.” I’m whistling and swinging the axe as we head back the way we came. The others catch up, and the rain is filtering down through the trees and starting to spatter on us.

“He’s gonna come back, it’s raining.” Nagle says.

“Good. I’ll be able to tell him to get the fuck off my property in person.” I laugh. “Man, I’ve always wanted to say that. ‘Git offa mah propurty, ya heah now?’ That makes my fucking day.”

John chuckles, and everything is OK between us again.

“Think he’ll come back?” Scott asks.

“Oh fucking yeah he will.” I tell them as we pass the stumps and the beer cans. “He’s fucking hoping I don’t catch his ass.”

“Why?” Nagle asks, trotting up and catching me hand to hold it in hers. Her hand is small, but nice and warm and fits mine comfortably.

“If he can stay here seven years, Ant loses his claim on the land.” John pipes up. I agree, and he continues. “Federal law states that if the land is unoccupied, and you stay on it, you can claim squatters rights, fill out a form, and the land is yours.”

“Yup. The fucker is probably hoping I wouldn’t come back in time, or not find his shithole shack, or get whacked by some fucker.” I added.

We walk in silence till we get to the truck. I reach in the back, and grab the gas can out of the back, then grab my jacket out of the cab.

“You’re not…” Scott says.

“Yeah, he is. I’ve seen that look before.” Nagle answers for me. It’s raining pretty good.

“Not yet. I want to go hunting for something.” I tell them.

“What?”

“You’ll see. I’m feeling like an asshole right now.” I tell them, and set down the can of gas, pull on the jacket, and head out onto the road after grabbing the sledgehammer out of the back of the truck.

The others catch up to me as I hang a left and start walking further up the road. The road bends, and as we go around it, it curves back the other way.

“What are you looking for?” Nagle asks, the shotgun bouncing on her shoulder.

“You’ll see.” I tell her. Up ahead I see a gap in the bushes and trees. As we get closer, I can see the ruts from someone pulling a vehicle into the trees. We get to it, and I head after the tracks.

“Oh shit, here he goes.” John says. Nagle snorts a laugh.

Up ahead, we find exactly what I knew we would. An old broken down car, a pickup truck with a tarp over the hood and plastic on the windows, and an old Jeep with a tarp over the inside and a bumper winch on it. Whistling, I walk up and look at three vehicles.

“He’s up here. He knows we’re fucking here too.” I say. I grab the sledgehammer, tighten my grip, wind it up, and bash in the front grill of the truck. Water pours out of the radiator as I yank the sledgehammer out and wind it up again.

“WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?” Nagle yells.

“Teaching this cocksucker a goddamn lesson!” I yell back, bashing in the front headlight and tearing off the fender. “This is my goddamn land!”

“Fuck yeah!” John yells, and starts beating the shit out of the car with the axe. By the time we’re done, the three vehicles are fucked. All the windows broken out, the tires all flat and the rims fucked up, the interiors torn out, the roofs smashed, the hoods torn free and the engines just fucked up. I even took the time to hack open the gas tanks with the axe.

It’s pouring down rain when I reach in my pocket and pull out my lighter.

“You wouldn’t.” Nagle says.

“You won’t be able to haul them out of here if you do that.” Scott tells me. “You could get them out on a flatbed now.”

Damn it.

“You’re right. Now let’s go do some home renovations.” I answer, and we walk back to the truck. I sit in the cab for a second to light a cigarette, it’s raining pretty fucking good.

Perfect.

I grab a baseball cap out from behind the back seat of the truck, then lock the doors and get out, slamming them shut. I hand the sledgehammer to Scott, grab the can of gas, and start walking through the woods, whistling.

I’m got no sympathy for squatters and poachers. The goddamn land is posted with signs by the realtor, “NO TRESPASSING” and the fuck pulled them down and used them to build his fucking shanty. Yeah, I’m an asshole, but that’s never in fucking doubt.

When we get back to Shantytown USA, I set down the gas can and go back inside. It doesn’t take me long to find the NO TRESPASSING signs from where he used them to patch holes in the walls. There’s a backpack in one corner, and I grab it, the blankets, and drag them outside into the rain, then walk back in with the gas can.

Some for the table. Some for the cot. Some for the shit filled toilet. Some more for the cot. Some for that corner, and some for that counter. Then a nice trail out the front door. Sweet, I’ve still got half a can of gas left!

I grab the bucket of paint against one wall, and go back outside. I take the sledgehammer from Scott and use it to knock a good sized piece of rotten plywood off the side of the building.

“Lemme see your knife, Scott.” I ask. Scott hands me the knife and I pry the lid off the paint. It’s chunky, but it will work. I set the can of paint on top of the stump, drag the plywood by it, and walk back over to the front of the shanty.

“Are you sure?” Nagle asks. I grin, light up another cigarette, and toss it into the house.

It hits a puddle of gas and goes out.

FUCK!

I walk over, grab a chunk of some shit, and light it. It takes a minute, but it finally catches, and I drop it in the spatters just inside. The whole place goes up in a WHOOSH and I stumble back from the fire, cursing.

The place is on fire merrily, and it doesn’t take long for the roof to collapse. I walk over, grab some leaves, and paint on the plywood.

“GET THE FUCK OUT, SHIT HEAD!” in nice foot high letters. I prop the sign up on the stump, and go back to watching the house shithole burn down. Every once in awhile we have to go and stomp out grass that dries enough to catch, but the rain keeps my property from burning down.

It took about an hour, but the fire went out, and the clearing smelled nicer. I’d spotted a plastic bucket in the weeds earlier, and got water out of the pond to finish drenching down the ashes, coals, and crap that didn’t burn, until I was sure it was out.

“Now we can fucking go.” I told them. We started walking back to the truck.

“Won’t you get in trouble?” Nagle asked.

“Nope. Place was a fire and a health hazard, it’s within burning season, so I burned the fucker down. My goddamn property, that makes that my fucking shanty.” I said.

We get to the truck, and I unlock the doors and get in. We all pile in, Nagle sitting on John’s lap. I put in the key, and turn it.

Click.

Goddamn it. I should have thought of that.

“What’s wrong?” Nagle asks.

“Dunno.” I tell her. I get out, open the hood, and look at the engine. Scott looks in, and so does John.

“Yup, we’re fucked.” John says.

The wire from the distributor cap to the coil is gone.

”Escape From Hillbilly Mountain”
“Shit, what do we do now?” John asked, looking around. “We’re fucked.”

“No we aren’t. Relax.” I told him. “Nagle, come with me, Scott, John, you guys guard the truck.” Nagle handed John the shotgun on his insistence and we started walking up the dirt road.

“Aren’t we going the wrong way? The main road’s back that way.” She asked.

“Don’t sweat it, I got an angle.” I grinned, doing my best Captain Stern imitation, which was, to be truthful, pretty bad. She just smiled, and we kept heading up till we got to where we’d torn the shit out of the three vehicles.

I walked up to the truck, looked around the engine for a second, and grabbed the distributor wire off the engine, waved it at her, and we walked back. A quick thirty second fix, and the truck fired right up.

“Whatcha got now, bitch?” I yelled from in front of the truck. “You’re fucking stuck out here, and if I see you, I’m going to fucking shoot you! Be a fucking man and come on out here!” I really really wanted the squatting poaching fuck to show up, but only the low rumble of thunder answered me.

“CHICKENSHIT!” I yelled. “Come on! No arrows? No spears? No chainsaws? YOU SUCK!” Still no answer, but I knew he was out there, I could feel him watching.

While everyone else sat in the cab of the truck, I went and nailed the signs back up. By the time I get back, the cab is toasty warm and everyone is ready to go. I’m not quite ready to go though, I’m still pissed off that the guy had the balls to pull my coil wire, but not enough to come out and face me. After some cajoling by my friends, I get in the warm cab of the truck with everyone else.

We pulled out, and drove back to my parents place, getting there just in time for dinner. I tried to tell my dad what had happened, but he was more interested in the bottom of the bottle of whiskey and the baseball game on television, and my mother just flat out told me to shut up.

After dinner, we decided that we’d go back and get my car in the morning, and spend the evening trying to figure out what to do. Gathering in my so called bedroom, we sat down and discussed the three properties. Scott and John and Nagle all three hated the woods property, Scott and Nagle hated the old Stillson place, and John and Scott hated the old Carson place.

We’d check out the old Carson place again the next day if it was raining, just stick to the house, and if it wasn’t raining, I’d pay a tow truck to come up with a flatbed and get rid of the three junkers on my property and we’d hang out up in the woods.

We’d finished a case of beer during our decisions, and we all crashed out on the cots or on the bed. Nagle woke up screaming in the middle of the night, freaking John out, but I got her calmed down pretty quick and we all went back to sleep.

The next day was cold and rainy, so we piled into the Camero and headed out to the Carson place. We moved the wet tools from the back of the truck to the trunk of the Camero, and left the shotgun on the rack in my bedroom.

When we pulled up, the house looked sad and dilapidated, windows and doors boarded up, and the rain didn’t help. We were pretty quiet as we got out of the car and grabbed various tools. I grabbed the splitting maul, and walked up to the door. It was boarded up, probably by one of the realtors.

John came up with the crowbar, and wrenched the boards free with a shriek of rusty nails coming free of wet wood, and it took a little bit of work to get the front door off. I was all for kicking the fucker in, but Scott pointed out that it might not be very easy to get back on afterwards.

“So what do you think happened to all the people?” Nagle asked as we walked into the frontroom.

Unlike the old Stillson place, the Carson place hadn’t been as torn up by teenagers looking for kicks. The chairs were still there, there were some scraps of lace on several of the walls, and a table. By the chimney was a wood stove and some wood, and John looked hopeful as he opened the stove and started stacking firewood in there.

“I don’t know. To be honest, I don’t really care.” I told them.

“You trying to burn the place down, John?” Scott asked.

“What? Why? I was just going to warm it up in here.” John’s voice was a little defensive.

“We don’t know if the chimney is clear. If there’s leaves, sticks, or an animal nest in it, the sparks from the fire will burn this whole fucking place down.” Scott told him. Damn, I hadn’t even thought of that. Well, that’s why Scott was a goddamn genius, and I was just a glorified stockboy.

“Shit.” He turned away from the stove and started wandering around the front room kicking at debris.

We searched the kitchen, Nagle admiring the old and dirty silverware that had nice patterns on them along with the plates. I checked the pantry, and found the stairs into the root cellar quick enough.

“Shit, it looks like Evil Dead down there.” John said, looking over my shoulder.

“Anyone bring the flashlight?” I asked. A chorus of no’s, and John went to get the flashlight. When he came back, he handed it to me, and we went into the root cellar.

Old canned fruit, mold, and dirt. The support beams looked good though, and that was what counted. If the beams were gone, I might as well burn the place to the fucking ground.

“Well, they aren’t down here.” Scott says as we walk up the stairs. “Maybe she killed and buried everyone in the dirt down there, it sure smells like it.”

“And what, got tired so she took a fucking dirt nap?” John sneered.

“At ease that shit. The place isn’t haunted.” I told them. “People just vanish, there’s a difference.”

The upstairs wasn’t much special, just a bathroom, four bedrooms, and some old furniture that had been slowly rotting away for 20 years.

“Man, your house sucks, Ant. You oughta get a maid.” Scott grinned, kicking at the bathtub. I told him where he could shove his maid, and we finished checking out the other rooms. The old crib, all tumbled down, was a little depressing in the dark, but hey, it wasn’t my kid. There were still scraps of children’s clothing in the corners.

Downstairs, we found the bathroom, and the laundry room. The rain had eased up a little, and I wanted to walk the property boundaries. It completely slipped my mind to remind everyone to stick together, to not let each other out of the their sight.

I was standing next to the bulldozer, looking at it and remembering running one about the same size in Saudi Arabia to help build the berm for the company. World’s most boring war. Six months of jerking off, 90 hours of turkey shooting, 2 months of jerking off.

I heard Nagle scream, and bolted around the front of the bulldozer, the memories scattering. Goddamn it, nobody had been watching her, and now whatever it was that haunted the old Carson place had gotten her. Was it tearing her apart, feasting on her flesh?

“Nagle!” I yelled. Please let her able to call out.

“Ant!” I could hear her, she was close. John came running up, holding the crowbar ready to crack fucking heads.

“What happened?” He was trying to look everywhere at once.

“sssshhh. Nagle!” I called out, hoping to hear her again.

“Ant, hurry!” She sounded like she was crying, and desperation filled her voice. I waved at John to move out to the right, and Scott to move to the left.

“Nagle! Keep yelling!” I called out. When she yelled again, I pointed forward and slightly left, John pointed toward Scott, and Scott pointed between John and I. We moved up real quick, and found Nagle holding onto a rusted pipe, missing up to her waist into the grass.

Her face was pale, and she was crying. Her waist vanished into the grass, and I could see the broken end of a board pressing against her side. As I watched, she slipped a little further down the rusted end of the pipe, and she cried out, staring at me with big, wide eyes.

“Scott, don’t fucking move.” He stopped suddenly. “Walk back, and make a big circle back behind me, or you and Nagle are both fucked.” John was nodding and moving back behind me as I moved forward and grabbed Nagle’s wrists. She let go of the pipe and clutched onto my forearms so tight she left bruises that lasted for several days.

It took three tries to heave Nagle out of the hole she’d fallen into. She came loose with the cracking of the board, which vanished into the dark hole that had been revealed by pulling her free.

She grabbed onto me, kissing my face and squeezing me tight. She was crying as she told us what had happened.

One second she’d been looking around, the next she’d been falling and managed to grab ahold of a rusty pipe sticking out of the ground. She heard the debris hit far far below her, and knew if she fell, she was dead.

“Mark it.” I said, holding Nagle while she calmed down. John took the crowbar, jammed it point first into the ground, then tied the OD green cravat he always carried around the curved end.

“Let’s go get the Sheriff.” I said. The others nodded somberly, and we walked back to the Camero.

“You got lucky, honey.” I told Nagle. Scott nodded, and John hugged her real quick. We stopped at the first occupied house, and borrowed their phone to call the Sheriff’s department.

At the bottom of the well that Nagle had almost fallen into, were the bodies of the missing people. Four decades worth the odd and end people. The place was a police area till after I left for Fort Hood again.

Instead of going back up and getting my car, we sat in my room and drank whiskey, talking in low voices with long spaces of silence.

”The Oregon Run & The Gang Splits Up”
The next day, I had a load of forms to fill out for the Sheriff and everyone else. The county planned on going over the property pretty thoroughly, and needed me to give permissions and all kinds of stuff. We headed up to Fort Lewis to go see JAG and make sure everything was OK, and JAG advised me to have them sign a waiver against any and all death or injury incurred while searching, so we added that, dropped off the paperwork, collected my copies, and went and got my car.

Back at Nagle’s house, we sat on the hood of the Camero and my Ford and decided that Washington was pretty much played out. I didn’t like staying at my house, Nagle’s parents didn’t want us there another night, and frankly, what little we’d done was pretty boring. Nobody wanted to stay at the Old Stillson Place, the place gave everyone, even me, the fucking creeps. I wanted to spend the night and see if the Wild Man of Washington wanted to play, but that got vetoed.

We decided we’d head down to Oregon. Nagle and I both had relatives in Medford, and Scott was from Ashland, so with that we packed both cars, and away we went. John wanted to drive the hot pink Camero, and Nagle let him. He looked like an advertisement for the gay pride parade, but we didn’t say anything. Although he did mention he got a lot of “compliments” at one of the truck stops down by Roseburg.

When we got to Medford, John ended up going with Scott to Ashland to hang out, Nagle was welcomed warmly by her Aunt and Uncle, and I made the phone call and told everyone I’d be spending time with my Aunt and two cousins.

Liar

Nagle agreed to drop off Scott and John, since her Aunt and Uncle lived in Talent, and we all hugged in the parking lot of the gas station. We exchanged the phone numbers of where we would be, made a date to meet at the gas station in four days if nothing else came up, and got into seperate cars. I watched them pull out, and I could see that they were laughing aobut something.

Sighing, I sat in my car, lit a cigarette, and stared out the windshield. I finished the cigarette, thinking dark thoughts, started the car, and headed toward the west side of Medford.

When I pulled up to my Aunt’s house, it looked almost the same, just more run down. The front porch with the strawberries in planters, the wild overgrown shrubbery in the front yard, the half collapsed green house in the side yard, and, of course, just like a lot of my family, the rusting out cars in the back yard, visible from the street.

The windows were dark on the second story and attic, and I repressed a shiver as I got out of the car and looked up at the old house. Bad things had happened here, and my Aunt, a silent suffering woman, had borne the brunt of and been the cause of many of them.

The flagstones of the walk were cracked, and weeds had grown in between many of them, whispering the laments of dead grass against my jeans as I walked up to the bottom step of the porch. The brass knocker, which my Aunt had always kept shined and polished, was as dull as the rest of the brasswork on the door. The doorbell button was cracked and unlit, and for some reason I had the urge to turn around, get back in my car, and find a hotel to stay the next few days in. I’d just lie about what a good time I’d had in Oregon. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d lied and told everyone I’d had a good time with my family.

I wrapped my Levi jacket a little tighter around myself, and used the knocker to bang on the door with dull thumps. A few cars went by on the street behind me, probably heading towards Jacksonville, and I was almost ready to leave, to walk away, when the door swung open and my cousin was standing in front of me.

My God you’ve gotten fat. shot through my brain before I could stop myself.

When we were little kids, she’d been a freckle faced skinny little girl, with perpetually scabbed knobby knees, scabbed elbows, mussy hair, and boys clothing. During our early teens, she’d been pretty if kinda Olive Oyl looking, and had a friendly open face.

Now her eyes were almost hidden behind the rolls of fat, her arms were heavy with flab, and her gut was hanging over her sweatpants, exposed beneath the edge of the stained T-shirt she was wearing. Her hair was matted with grease, and I could smell old sweat and unwashed female strong enough to make me wrinkle my nose.

“Hey Ant.” was all she said before she turned and waddled back into the house.

From the doorway I could see the shadowed interior of the house I’d spent a lot of time at during the summer. Gone were the open windows, the immaculate interior, the plastic sheeting on the couches and chairs, the crosses and plastic Jesus figurines.

Instead there was laundry on the floor, scattered pizza boxes and styrofoam containers everywhere. The television was on, but the screen looked grimy and filthy from where I stood. I could see my other cousin, Davey, laying on the couch. He was two years older than me, and had always been athletic, fast, and strong.

Now he took up the whole couch. I could hear him breathing from the doorway. His mouth was open, his eyes closed, and he had a copy of a porn mag laying on his chest, held by one hand. The other was jammed underneath his sweat pants.

“Don’t leave the door open.” Came my cousin Mary’s voice from inside. Just looking at the interior made my skin crawl, but I didn’t want to be rude to my family. That would rocket through the family telegraph before I got to the end of the walk, and most of my family would just put another check box next to “ungrateful asshole” under my name.

Things crackled, squished, and crunched underneath my feet as I walked across the sea of dirty clothes, blankets, and towels. My Aunt’s cat Pepper stared at me from atop the television, his fur moth eaten, one glass eye missing, but radiating patheticness with more depth than I expected from a cat who’d visited the taxidermist.

His sole eye seemed to regard me with a plea to take him away from all of this, to take him and run.

I passed Davey, who took no notice of my presence in his stupor, and walked through the doorway and into the dining room. Where once my Uncle had held court at the head of a large mahagony table that gleamed with polish applied by trembling hands, with solid chairs that could handle even his bulk and plates that were clean, gleaming, and held steaming food, my cousin sat in her father’s chair before a table festooned with pizza boxes, half eaten food, glasses half full of unidentifiable semi-solid liquids, and clothing strewn about. The window shades were closed, a mortal sin that earn a child a few stripes with a belt a mere five years before, and the room felt close and confined.

“You gonna sit?” My cousin’s voice was harsh, and her breathing seemed labored just from walking to the front door and back. I nodded, chose a chair without much in front of it, and knocked the clothing off the seat before I saw down.

I’d burn the pants later.

“How ya been, Mary?” A good way to open a conversation.

“Fine.” Her voice was less harsh. “The State finally paid the property tax for us so we don’t lose the house.” She sounded somewhat triumphant.

“Really?” Actually, I should have finished it with “I Don’t Care.” But I was being polite to her.

“Yer Mom said you needed a place to stay for a little while.” She snorted. “She said you had some squinty stuck up bitch, a dumb hick, and a tall retard with you.”

Ahhh, my mother. Always looking for the best in my friends. That would Nagle, John, and Scott, in that order. I could only imagine what she’d say about me.

“Just for a couple of days, but probably less.” I admitted. “My friends had other things to do, and I told them I’d meet up with them when they were done.”

“Yer gonna hafta buy food, and I don’t cook.” She told me. I figured that meant she ate the contents of the packages raw, because she sure as shit hadn’t missed any meals in the last few years I’d been gone. The fact she’d gone from skinny little girl to morbidly obese whale in less than 5 years boggled my mind.

“That’s fine.” I looked around, taking in the fact that there were cobwebs over the entire ceiling, wrapping around my Uncle’s prized genuine Bavarian crystal chandelier that was worth at least a couple grand, and covering the nooks of my Aunt’s oaken writing desk.

“I’ll show you where you can sleep.” She told me, heaving her bulk out of her father’s chair. The delicate carvings in the wood were completely obliterated by the grime that had built up.

We went upstairs, skirting the dirty clothing on the steps, and she led me to one of the five bedrooms upstairs. I remembered it as the room where my Uncle had kept the Westerns he loved on neat bookshelves, the walls covered with western paraphernalia he’d picked up during his life.

It took two tries by my cousin to shove open the door, and she squinted and blinked when the sunlight coming through the window hit her in the face. It was then I noticed that her whole face was covered in pimples and blackheads, what wasn’t inflamed was red or pockmarked. I’d seen prettier noses on boxers.

“You can stay in here. Just don’t be wandering around at night snooping.” She told me, shoving by me and taking my breath away when her bulk crushed my against the wall. Then she was gone, leaving me alone in the hallway.

The room was bad, and one look made me wonder just what the fuck had happened here after my Uncle and Aunt had passed away. Scrawled on the walls were “FUCK YOU!” and “BURN IN HELL!”, the books were scattered about, torn up and thrown everywhere, and the western stuff was either missing, or broken and scattered around the room. The window shade had fallen off the window, and I walked through the debris and looked out of the window.

The edge of the roof sloped away beneath me. That would be the pantry and the kitchen below me. The cars in the back yard included my Uncle’s prized little speedster, my Aunt’s pickup, my Uncle’s pickup truck, one of my Dad’s cars, and a few other junkers I didn’t recognize. Those ones differed from my Aunt’s and Uncle’s vehicles in that they had intact windows and bodies. My Aunt’s and Uncle’s vehicles looked like the ones John and I had taken an axe and a sledgehammer to.

“What the fuck happened here?” I wondered aloud, as I started picking stuff up and piling it in the corners. When I found the large brown spatters on the rug, and smelled the sharp smell of old shit, I decided that there was no way I was staying in the house.

I drew the line here. Creepy shrines to dead children? All right. Deserts full of scorpions, snakes, and killer Arabs? No fucking problem. Old German forests full of dipshits like me armed with automatic weaponry? Cool! A room where someone had shit on the floor repeatedly? No fucking way.

I could hear the phone ring as I navigated the stairs, heading down for the kitchen. A muffled voice began talking as I entered the kitchen and got a good look at the room I’d passed through before.

Gone were the shining racks of dishes, the carefully hung mugs, the little knick knacks on the walls and tops of the shelves. Replacing them were piles of dirty dishes, paper plates, Styrofoam cartons and plates, plastic and real dinnerware, and cups and glasses of all different kinds. Even the steins my Uncle had collected had been used, and I could see two of them broken on the floor.

“ANT! AUNT SHERRY WANTS TO TALK TO YOU!” Mary yelled from the dining room.

Great. More shit from my mother.

I walked in, took the phone from my cousin’s hand. I noticed that under her fingernails was black, and the skin was unhealthy looking.

My mom bitched at me for about a half hour about how I needed to help out my cousins, how they suffered from depression, how they were disabled and on disability, and how they hadn’t had anyone to take care of them since my Aunt and Uncle had died. How I had to help out those poor kids, and make sure they were OK before I left.

She finished with telling me that “that ugly looking whore left her underwear in your room. Didn’t I tell you not to hang around with sluts?” and slammed down the phone when I asked her why she was in my old room.

I couldn’t believe it. I’d gotten roped into cleaning my cousin’s house for them, because they were disabled “kids” and someone needed to take care of them. No mention of the fact that we were roughly the same age and I’d been taking care of myself since I’d joined the Army. Hell, before that, when I was working at the meat packing plant I was taking care of myself.

“When Big-D wakes up he’ll be hungry, so you might wanna think about that.” My cousin told me loftily, and returned her attention to the book she was reading. Big-D? What the fuck, was he a rap star now, or just nicknamed after his huge size?

“I’ll pick up the kitchen.” I told her, hanging up the phone and walking into the kitchen.

My God, it was goddamn disgusting. It took me two hours to seperate dishes that could be saved from ones that had to be thrown out. First I had to find the trash can beneath layers of garbage, and haul it outside in plastic bags. Once that was done, I had the sink clear, so I washed a few dishes, cleaned off the stove, and opened the fridge. Inside there was nothing but rotted food, mold, and some kind of strange liquid that I think tried to mentally possess me when I went to clean it up from the bottom of the bins at the bottom of the fridge.

The whole time Mary sat there reading a book, and Davie AKA Big-D slept on the couch surrounded in his own filth.

Four hours, and Mary came waddling in, looked at the clean counters, clean table, and the floor I was mopping, and snorted.

“Can’t eat this clean shit. Got the food yet?” Yeah, like you can’t miss a meal.

“Not yet.” I told her.

“Here, go get some food.” And she threw down a book of food stamps. “And none of that light shit, it tastes nasty.”

I grabbed the food stamps, and left through the back door, casting a nervous glance at the piles of stained boxes on either side of the trail to the back porch door and hoping they didn’t collapse on me.

I bought two shopping carts worth the food, loaded them into my car, and headed back, pulling into the driveway and all the way up to the back porch door. Mary stood in the clean kitchen, picking her nose and devouring the treats she discovered or wiping them onto the top of the formerly clean table, while I brought in the groceries, stacked them on the kitchen table, and then put them away.

“I’m not sleeping in that room.” I told her, grabbing a sponge, sprinkling some Pine-Sol on it and wiping off the top of the table.

“What, too good for it?” She snorted at me recleaning the kitchen table.

“Fucking right I am. There’s no fucking bed. I’ll just leave, head on to California if you can’t provide me with decent sleeping arrangements.” I stared straight at her. “I don’t owe you shit, don’t think I’m going to fucking stay if I don’t have to.”

She grumbled, and went up the stairs, her ponderous footsteps causing the stairs to creak loudly, and I really really wanted the stairs to collapse and kill her. I heated up a pan, poured oil into it, and sliced peeled and washed potatoes into the pan. I’m a passable chef, and potatoes, eggs, and sausage slices was a quick and easy to make meal.

After the grease on the stove caught fire twice, I abandoned that plan till after I finished cleaning the stove. By that time the food was grease soaked, cold, and had to be thrown out and started again.

Mary was still missing, but by the thumps I heard from upstairs, she was either having a siezure in slow motion, or was actually making a room for me.

I busied myself with tackling the final part of the kitchen, the little coffee nook, while the food cooked. The plants had grown wild, then died, there were old newspapers, porn mags, and worse lying around in there, but nothing a few dozen trash bags, a broom, some Mr. Clean, and a mop couldn’t handle. I even scrubbed the little table and the chairs.

When I finished, I swapped out the pan and began cooking rice and vegetables, and went over and washed another couple loads of dishes, making sure I washed them twice. Once in bleach and hot water, then soap and water, rinse, soap and water, rinse.

Anything plastic I threw away. Anything tupperware I threw away.

I could still hear thumping coming from upstairs, so I made sure the rice was covered, turned down the steaming vegetables, and navigated the stairwell to the upstairs hallway.

Silence greeted me, and I began peeking in doors to see where Mary had gone.

Each room was worse than the last, but I found her in the third one.

She’d gone to fucking bed! She was laying on a bed covered in clothing and crap, burrowed under a filthy comforter, snoring, her matted hair pressed on a stained pillow. Pissed off, I stomped back downstairs, and vaguely considered pissing in the rice.

More thumps from upstairs.

What. The. Fuck?

Then the sound of running footsteps, as if a small child was running down the hallway upstairs.

I decided I really didn’t care, rolled up my sleeves, and took on the back porch.

The boxes proved to be full of my Aunt’s arts and crafts magazines, more of my Uncle’s westerns, boxes of their clothes, and boxes marking “worthless shit” that I didn’t bother opening. The old shop was still pretty much the same as it had been the last time I visited, except the tools hanging on the hooks were almost rusted to oblivion, and I stacked some of the boxes in there, and others in the growing trash pile.

Beneath all the boxes I found a working washer and drier, laundry detergent, and old fashioned washing sinks. I went through and began taking the clothing that wasn’t rotted, and throwing it in the washer machine.

Above me there was more clattering, and the sounds of footsteps too small to be my cousin Mary. Too light, if you get my meaning.

When I went back into the kitchen, Davey was up, and shoveling the potatoes, sausage and eggs into his mouth. Mary was sitting next to him in a dirty nightgown that looked like someone had wiped their ass with the back, stuffing her face full.

“This stuff tastes like crap, Ant.” Davey said, grinning at me with a mouthful of food. His complexion was for shit, and he looked like the last time he’d brushed his teeth was right before his Mom died.

“THEN DON’T FUCKING EAT IT!” I yelled, grabbing the little breakfast nook table and upending, sending the dishes crashing the to floor. “Fucking starve!”

Rather than get up in my face, both of them flinched and cringed away from me, their shit eating grins replaced by looks of total fear.

“Pick that shit up! Go take a goddamn shower, both of you nasty fucks, and put on some clean goddamn clothes!” I yelled, kicking the table. “You two worthless shits could at least show some goddamn respect to the person putting fucking food on the table.”

Both of them got down on their hands and knees and started picking up the dishes, and I turned away at the sight of my cousin’s pimple festooned and red rashed full moon when her too small nightgown exposed all of it and more. I felt like that guy from Dahli paintings, like my face was going to melt.

I went back on the back porch, leaned up against the dryer, and lit a cigarette. When I’d stomped off, Mary and Davey both were sobbing, and I chided myself for losing my temper. I could still feel my pulse pounding, and I wanted to go back into the kitchen and just kick the living shit out of both of them.

“Ant, Aunt Sherry wants to talk to you.” Mary told me, sticking her arm out the back door and onto the back porch. I took it wordlessly, put it up to my ear, and started the ass chewing with the simple phrase:

“Hi, mom!”

Didn’t I know how hard those kids had it? I had no idea how tough it was to live with abusive parents, or a drunken father, I needed to try to find a little sympathy. They were disabled, and their father had beaten them. Their mother had just let them, or often beat them, and didn’t I remember the time my Aunt threw me down the stairs and broke my wrist? How could I treat them that way? Who did I think I was slapping Mary like that? Didn’t I know Little Davey had a bad back, what was I thinking pushing him down like that? I better replace all those old dishes my aunt used to have that I’d smashed against the wall screaming at them. If I left before I was done ‘helping’ them, she’d sell as much of my stuff as she could and burn the rest. She’d call my company commander and tell them I’d been abusing my disabled cousins. She’s tell my company commander I was hanging around with a whore.

I set the phone down on the shelf across from the sink, turned my back on it, and stared out the window at the sunlight. Two more cigarettes before I heard her yell at me to answer her.

“No, mother, I’m sorry.” Was all I had to say, and she slammed down the phone without even a goodbye.

Neither one of them were in the kitchen when I went back in. The table had been righted, and all the dishes were in the sink. I dumped the food into the garbage, threw away the burned rice, pan and all, and followed it with the almost liquefied steamed vegetables.

I washed my hands, put back on my Aunt’s old rubber dishwashing gloves, and waded into the dining room with a broom to sweep away the cobwebs first, then plastic bags for the clothing, more plastic bags for the garbage, and finally taking the dishes into the kitchen and piling them into the sink and on the counters.

More bleach, more dishwashing. It was getting dark when I got done, and Mary and Davey finally made an appearance. Wearing dirty clothing, their hair still nasty, and both of them still stinking to high heaven.

“There’s clean clothing on the table on the back porch. Go put it away.” I told them, putting away the clean dishes.

“My back hurts, I have to go lay down.” Davey told me, and lumbered off toward the front room, the shit stained ass of his sweats the last I saw of him as he rounded the corner.

“My blood sugar is too low. Did you get any cookies?” Mary asked, opening and closing the cupboards where I’d put the food. Disgusted with my stupidity at not buying her cookies, she mollified herself by making a butter and sugar sandwich and eating it with her mouth open.

I ignored both, till they wandered away, tackling the dining room. Eventually I finished, and went back into the kitchen, lighting up another cigarette. Shit, my last one. Shrugging, I headed outside to my car, got another pack from the two cartons shoved under the seat, checked on my pistol, and then noticed something.

My car was leaning weird.

I about shit when I realized that two of my tires were flat. No fucking way! I’d gotten all four replaced at Costco before I’d left Texas, they were brand new $150 each tires! No fucking WAY two of them had gone flat.

I turned around and glared at the house, and my attention was caught by something on the second floor.

A little boy in a red and white striped shirt was staring out the window at me, smiling and waving. He had blond hair, a bandage on his head, and a sunny smile as he waved excitedly.

Who the fuck was that? I glanced at my car, shut the door, and looked back up, and the kid was gone. There was nothing but grime on the window, and the shutters were falling off from the sides of the house.

I trudged back into the house, heated up a pan, and started frying pork chops. I figured I’d better cook for all of us, so 3 for each of the behemoths, one for me, one for the kid. Baked potatoes got thrown in the oven, and I put three cans of green beans on to cook.

I had to take a piss, but one look at the downstairs bathroom almost convinced me to go out and piss in the back yard. There was a fucking mannequin with a wig, wearing lingere, in the goddamn shower, as creepy topper to the fucking filth that was everywhere. I decided I’d just hold it.

When I went back in the kitchen from the bathroom, the food was gone, and my two cousins were slobbering down the food in the freshly cleaned dining room. The baked potatoes were there, so I drug them out, got a little pan, and made gravy real quick. When I was getting a plate, Davey rumbled in, speared two of the potatoes, and rumbled back into the dining room. When I turned around, Mary was taking the last two, along with the pan of gravy, back into the dining room.

I walked into the dining room and looked at the two of them.

“Why didn’t you save any of that for me? That’s twice now.”

“I already told you you’d have to buy your own food, Ant. You can stay with us, but you aren’t freeloading off us.” Mary told me.

“This is our food.” Davey said. “You used our food stamps to buy it.”

A door slammed upstairs, but I ignored it, just staring at the two of them.

“Don’t do anything stupid, I’ll have to call Aunt Sherry again!” Mary cried out, when I’d stood there for a few moments in silence. Upstairs, there was a loud thump.

“My car has flat tires, I can’t go buy some food.” I told them. I knew I was getting red, my ears felt hot, and knew I was on the edge of losing my temper again.

I pulled out my wallet, yanked out a $20, and threw it on the table.

“There. I’m going to make food for me and that kid upstairs.” I told them, and went back in the kitchen. Two cans of green beans, more potatoes, and some more pork chops. This time I kept an eye on it, then loaded up a plate for the kid and headed upstairs.

I was wondering whose kid it was. Who had hated their kid enough to send them to stay with the two subhuman creatures that were downstairs even for a single fucking night. Was the State that goddamn stupid that they left a kid in the house?

“Hey, kid! Kid! I got some food here! Want some food?” I searched the rooms, even pulled down the attic access and looked up there.

Nothing. Just boxes, dress making dummies, and old furniture. All the mirrors were broken, the dresser drawers pulled out, and the boxes tumbled down. Someone had even broken open the top of the hope chest that my great grandmother had brought west on a covered wagon.

Curious, but figuring the kid was just hiding, I set the plate down at the head of the stairs and headed down into the kitchen.

My goddamn food was gone again. I turned and looked in the dining room, and my cousin Davey, AKA Big-D, he of the atomic wedgies, noogies, and Indian burns, gave me the finger with a huge grin as he shoveled another fork full of mashed potatoes into his grinding maw.

“Enjoying my dinner?” I asked, walking into the dining room.

“Our dinner. Our food.” Mary told me sweetly, smiling.

“So now I’m paying you twenty bucks for the privilege of cooking for you?” I stopped at the table and kept smiling. They’d just shoved their empty plates into the middle of the table, they didn’t even bother taking them into the kitchen. The gravy pan was empty, and had scorched the pledge I’d coated the table with.

“It’s rent for staying here.” Davey said. “We saw all that money, you can afford it.”

I kept smiling, nice and gentle, climbed on a chair, and reached down and unzipped my pants. They were just staring as I whipped it out right in front of both of them and kept right on smiling.

“Here, have a drink on me.” I told them.

As I pissed all over the table, the food, and whatever else got splattered. I made sure to get some in their glasses as I emptied my over-full bladder all over the goddamn table.

“Enjoy your dinner and free drink.” I told them, tucking myself away and climbing down.

Both of them were just staring at me in shock, their faces wet.

“One of you flattened my goddamn tires, thinking I’d stay here because of that. Tomorrow I’m calling goddamn Triple-A, and they’ll gladly come out and fix my tires, since I’m a goddamn member. When they fix my fucking tires, I’m goddamn out of here, and you’ll never see me again.” I pointed at the front room. “I’m not cleaning that goddamn pig sty, I’ll clean one fucking bedroom, and that’s where I’m staying. If I catch either of you in it, I’ll throw you down the fucking stairs just like your mother threw me.”

They both just stared dumbly at me. Upstairs there was another thump and more running footsteps.

“And who the fuck is that little kid?” I yelled, pointing up.

“It’s a ghost.” Mary blurted out.

“Bullshit.” I told them.

“Seriously. It showed up about a few years ago. We thought it was you. Your mom said you were dead.” Mary said, finally wiping her face.

My mom had said what?

“Really! It’s always breaking things, running around, and sometimes yelling.” Davey told me, wiping his face with his sleeve. “When your mom told us you’d been killed overseas, we figured it was you!”

I turned around and walked away, climbing the stairs. The food was still where I had left it, except now it had some flies and ants on it. I picked up the plate, went downstairs, and when I saw that the table was empty, I gathered up the dishes from the table, dumped all the food in the nearly full again garbage can, and washed the dishes.

That done, I wiped off the table, ignoring my two cousins who were watching television, and headed back upstairs.

Ghost, huh? Well, I’d seen the kid. No denying he was real. Could it really be a ghost?

I checked the upstairs bathroom first. It was filthy, but not insurmountable like the downstairs one. More hauling crap out, and I wore the gloves while I removed about 12 layers of used tampons, pads, and bloody socks, as well as bloody panties and bloody crotched sweat pants. Those went in the trash, the rest of the clothing that might be salvagable went into the bins next to the washer and drier. The crusty, wet, and slimy (how the FUCK do you combine all three?) porn mags went into the garbage too.

The whole time, I kept hearing thumps from other rooms, and twice someone ran down the hallway.

I left the lime-away on the shower tiles, the sink, the bathtub, and the toilet, and went into my Aunt and Uncle’s room. One look told me that I wouldn’t be staying in there. More “FUCK YOU!” and “BURN IN HELL!” written on the walls, and there was caked shit on the bedspread from where one or both of my cousin’s had shit on the bed.

The little bedroom my Uncle used to lock me in when I came to stay for a visit was amazingly pretty clean. Mostly full of boxes that I carted up to the attic, or down to the massive garbage pile. I took the blankets and the sheets and headed downstairs. Sheets in the laundry first, then back upstairs to spray Raid on the little mattress. I managed to pry open the window to air the little room out, went out, and cleaned the shower, the bathtub, and the toilet.

The bathroom looked like it used to. Bright, gleaming, and almost happy.

Someone giggled in the hallway.

I went back to the little bedroom, picked up the ball I’d found under the bed, and threw it down the hallway after I walked to the head of the stairs. Grinning, I ran to the bottom as fast as I could, and waited.

Sure as hell, the little ball came bouncing down the stairs and into the kitchen.

The most fun I’d had all day.

“Aunt Sherry wants you to call her.” Mary told me from the front room.

“Next time you call her, tell her I said to get fucked. Better yet, remind her that I’m dead.” I snarled, and went out to get a change of clothing and a towel from my car. On the way back I switched the laundry, admiring the once gray sheets that were now a bright white when I put them in the dryer.

Ah, the wonders of bleach and Tide.

I picked up the ball from the kitchen as I passed through, went up to the little clean bedroom, and dropped my stuff off on top of the little dresser. Curious I opened the drawers, and saw the old clothes I’d left there the last time I visited. Old torn Levi’s held together with wire, paper clips, and safety pins, Iron Maiden, Metallica, and Quiet Riot t-shirts, swimming trunks, and tighty whitey underwear.

None of that had been allowed in my Uncle’s house, and my dad and him had gotten in a drunken fight in the front room, and we’d left without grabbing any of my stuff.

In the hallway, something thumped, as I pulled the last drawer out of the little dresser and peered into the darkness.

My old notebooks were still there.

My hands shook slightly as I opened them. Right where I expected was the little game my old girlfriend and I would play. I’d write a sentence, she’d write one, and we’d just ramble on for page after page giggling. The rule was, you had to use at least two of the words from the previous sentence in your sentence. A silly, stupid game, but one that had made both of us smile. Some of it was nonsense, some of it was perverted, some of it was loving, all of it was almost a decade old.

It sounded like someone was crying in the attic.

I set the notebooks on top of the dresser and replaced the drawer.

I lit a cigarette and stared out the window, watching it get darker. Medford was where it all happened. Where I got dark and strange. Where my life got ruined. What was I thinking coming back here? I should have called Aunt Jenny, she still lived out on Applegate, and my cousin I wrote back and forth at least twice a month. She was going to SOU and lived in Ashland with her boyfriend. She’d told me she stopped talking to Davey and Mary a few years ago, but had never told me why. Now I knew.

Something thumped in the attic, but I ignored it.

I stood up, and headed downstairs to switch the laundry. I grabbed the sheets, put the first blanket in the dryer, and put the next one in the washer. When I got back in the kitchen, the little blue rubber ball was on the floor. I smiled, grabbed it, and headed back upstairs after grabbing the baking soda out of the fridge. It was new and fresh, I knew it because I’d bought it.

A little baking soda on the bed, then the clean sheets, and the room smelled and looked a lot better. While I was putting the sheets on the bed, I’d seen the little marking on the wall. “ANT + BETH 4EVER” inside a little heart with an arrow in it. The sight of it made feel good, and when I headed back downstairs, I tossed the ball behind me and down the hallway.

As I was leaving the kitchen, the ball came out of the stairwell and bounced across the kitchen.

In the front room, my cousins were still watching television. Well, watching TV and reading. Mary was reading her book, and Davey was reading another porno mag. Both of them looked rather startled and guilty when I walked in.

“I’m going to take a shower in the upstairs bathroom. When I’m done, it’s clean up there, and there’ll be clean towels in the cupboard.” I told them. “Do us all a favor and actually take a shower this time.”

I ignored both of them yelling at me, went onto the back porch, grabbed the stack of towels, and went up to the second floor, grabbing the little rubber ball as I went.

I put the towels away, went back and grabbed my clothes, and set the ball in the middle of the floor. I was smiling as I went into the bathroom, and got in the shower.

The water was hot, the soap was slick, and the steam filled the bathroom. My favorite kind of shower, where you can just let the water pound the tension out of your shoulders and let your skin tingle to the steam. I was relaxing under the water when I heard the bathroom door open.

“The ball’s on my floor, I’ll play with you after my shower.” I said, not opening my eyes. I figured it was the ghost kid, or the runaway kid hiding in the attic, or a younger version of me, or whatever it was.

“I have to use the bathroom.” The door shut.

“Jesus, Mary, get the fuck out!” I yelled.

“I can’t, Big-D is taking a shit in the downstairs bathroom, and I have to go really bad!” I heard the toilet lid being lifted, and squeezed my eyes shut on the off chance I’d catch a glimpse of her massive nakedness through the glass and melt like I’d just looked into the Arc of the Covenant.

“Get the hell out!” I yelled again.

Mary answered with a massive fart that seemed to go on and on and on, followed by what sounded like someone pouring a bucket of chunky water into a toilet.

I banged my head against the tile. What the hell was wrong with these two?

There were more noises that probably sounded a lot like what Blind People Hell sounds like, with the corresponding water-buffalo-ish gruntings from Mary. In the attic, something crashed a couple of times.

“Where’s the ass wipe?” Mary asked through the stench that had filled the room.

“There isn’t any! Christ, Mary, get the fuck out!” I hoped for the best.

“Fine.” The toilet flushed, and I waited for the door to open. It finally opened, shut, and I breathed a sigh of relief and almost choked on the stench. There was a banging upstairs as I turned off the water, got out, and about lost my fucking mind.

Mary had wiped her fat ass with my clean shirt. Turn abouts fair play I guess. I’d pissed on dinner, she shit on my shirt.

Grumbling, I got dressed, except for the shirt, and went down to my car to get another shirt. It was full dark outside, and out of curiosity, I looked up. Sure as hell, there was the kid, still wearing a red and yellow striped shirt, still smiling and waving at me.

I put the shirt in with the next blanket after rinsing it off in the industrial sized back porch sink, and carried the clean blanket upstairs to the little room I was going to try to spend the night in.

Fucking sick bitch.

I waited till the second blanket was dry, then went to bed, not bothering to get undressed. I kept hearing weird noises as I drifted off to sleep.

Something tickling my feet woke me up, and first reaction was that a rat had climbed into bed with me out of fear of the rest of the house. I jerked up, yanked the covers off my feet, and didn’t see anything.

Just a dream.

I laid back down, and sighed, snuggling up in the warmth of blankets. I rolled over and looked at the end of the bed.

There the kid was. Shadowed, but I could still make out the lines of his shirt.

“Hey, kid.” I said. The kid waved. “You doin’ all right?” I could make out his nod in the darkness.

“You stuck here?” I asked. The kid held still for a moment, then shook his head. “Good, I’d hate for anyone to be stuck here with those two.” There was a giggle from out in the hallway, but the shadowed kid seemed to shake with laughter.

Holy shit. A real fucking ghost. I owed Nagle $20.

“Mind if I go back to sleep?” The kid shook his head. “Sorry I’m too tired to play ball, maybe later, Okay?” The kid seemed like he was smiling.

I was really sleepy, warm, comfortable, and not the least freaked out. Part of me pretty much figured I was sleeping and dreaming, which is probably why I didn’t panic or anything like that.

Right before I drifted off, I mumbled: “Tell you what, kid, you can hang with me if this place gets too bad.”

”Ant Bails Out of the House On Two Flat Tires”
I’d drifted back off to sleep, my brain wondering if the kid I’d seen was a ghost, a runaway hiding out in the house of shit, or maybe a younger version of myself. My dreams were of when I was younger, and my tyrannical Uncle ran the house with an iron fist and wide leather belt.

I woke up with a full bladder, and according to my watch it was only midnight. I’d only been asleep about 3 hours, not counting the time I spent conversing with the ghost, but still, I really needed to piss.

I put on my socks and shoes, knowing better than to walk down the hallway with unguarded feet, then quietly opened the door and headed down the hall to the bathroom. My bladder empty, I figured I’d go downstairs and get a glass of milk, microwave it for 15 seconds, add a sprinkle of cinnamon, and make myself a glass of liquid comfort.

Upstairs there was a crash followed by running footsteps. I grinned at the thought of the little boy jumping off the dresser and running across the attic and tackling one of the dress making dummies. I’d gotten my ass whipped with a belt for tackling one of the dress making dummies when I was a kid by my Uncle, but it had totally been worth it.

The kitchen was still clean, and so was the dining room. I was pretty surprised, but finished my milk and put the glass in the sink. A quick trip to the back porch to rescue my shirt from the dryer, and everything was cool.

Just before I started heading up the stairs, I realized the television was still on. Well, what the hell, I’ll try doing something nice, so I headed out to the front room to turn the TV, or maybe engage in a little polite late night conversation with my cousins and patch up what had been a pretty fucking rocky start.

What I saw was horror upon horror. Something from the pages of the Necronomicon. Something from the twisted mind of Lenin’s barber. A thing that should not be. A crawling, hunching, gasping monstrosity from the depths of the Midnight Sea.

Mary had her night gown hiked up around her neck, was sitting on “Big-D” and was grinding back and forth on him, groaning and pawing at herself.

My brain just shut the fuck down with a sizzle and a pop as my synapses overloaded, the axioms just flared out, and my optic nerve was mercifully clubbed into a near fatal coma by my personality center in a desperate attempt to save my higher thinking functions. The sight of one of my cousins on top of my other cousin just made my thought processes seize up to such an extant that in my memories there is just a slide that says “FOOTAGE MISSING!” when I try to recall it.

“WHAT THE FUCK?!?!?!” I yelled at the top of my lungs.

Mary screamed and leaped up, and my memory just blurs out what was revealed and my optic nerve shivers in remembered trauma. I’m unable to describe it, since all that remains in my memory is a sudden explosion of puppies and kittens from where the two of them met, and then a memory of how Daffy Duck and I blew bubbles in the park while unicorns shot rainbows out of their asses and free money and cotton candy fell from the bright purple sky!

“ANT!” both of them yelled at once.

“You two are fucking sick!” I yelled, turning around and heading upstairs, holding tight to my shirt. Behind me, I could hear them yelling at me. Denials at what my brain had refused to see, accusations, explanations, who the fuck knows. Who the fuck cares.

I grabbed my shit and started stuffing everything into my little bag, notebooks first, when the door to the tiny little room burst open. I whirled around, holding tight to the bag and my jacket half on.

Once again my brain flares into a cerebral version of blowing all the pistons out the top of the engine at 200 miles an hour, my short term memory screams and tries to hide behind my Id, which takes one look and passes out on top of my ego, which is screaming in pain and fear as my brain stutteringly tries not to process the image before it. My corneas shriveled up and tried to detach to save my shattering mind from what was revealed, but to no avail.

Mary stood completely naked in front of me, kind of leaning on the doorjam, fluttering her eyes, and my brain fizzled out again. From the attic came a blood curdling scream that I wholly agreed with. I’ve heard of hysterical blindness, and I think I came pretty goddamn close to it. Everything started going gray, my vision tunneled down to the zits across her forehead, and I suddenly knew that I was about to have a stroke and die right here, only to be devoured by the Incredible Incestuous Beasts.

“You’re next you know…” Mary started cooing, but I was already yanking open the window. She called out for me to wait as I lunged through the window, took two steps across the roof while pulling my keys from my jacket pocket, and jumped. I twisted my ankle when I hit, but didn’t care as I scrambled to my feet and limped to my car as fast as I could.

Mary yelled something out of the window as I unlocked my car, threw my bag in, and slammed shut the door, hitting the power locks. A light came on in the kitchen, and I fired my poor car up, threw it in gear, and backed out of the driveway on two flats.

Fuck them. I’m out of here. My mom wants their house cleaned so bad, she can fucking do it!

I crippled the car down the road about a mile, further than the two of them could walk combined, and finally stopped. No wonder the ghost banged shit around, screamed, and all that shit. Was it Kid-Hitler trapped there? I mean, what the shit does a little kid have to do to get stuck with THAT in the afterlife.

I popped the hatchback, rummaged around until I found the cans of Fix-It, and used 2 of them to reinflate the flat tires. I was going to save them, I always kept a 4-pack in my car just in case, but there was no way I was going to wait to be “next”, whatever the fuck that meant.

I felt a little bad abandoning the ghost kid to that hell, but hey, maybe it was the ghost of a midget serial killer that had eaten babies and shit in sleeping nun’s mouths? I mean, he HAD to be fucking evil to be trapped there, right? Not just normal evil, but boiling puppies in the blood of betrayed orphans while wearing a suit made of the skins of virgins strangled on their wedding night evil.

My tires good enough to cripple to the next gas station, I throw the car back in gear, and away I go, lighting a cigarette with shaking hands and seriously thinking about just pulling over, digging out the whiskey bottle, and drinking till my brain is full of enough liquor that I can jam the cigarette up my nose and cause my brain to explode.

Before I find a gas station, I see a bar. The bar right off the race track, and whip into the parking lot almost sobbing in terror and pain. Thankfully I’m not having traumatic flashbacks of the horror I’d seen, otherwise I probably would have just rammed my car into a bridge support or something, but when I get to the bar I open the door to my car and just puke right in the parking lot.

“Hey, are you all right?” A woman’s voice. NOT Mary’s voice, so I’m safe.

“No.” I say, leaning back into the car and covering my eyes.

“You aren’t drunk, are you?” The voice is getting closer.

“No, just sick.” I tell the nice voice.

“Wow, you look really bad. Can you drive?” The voice asks, I can hear gravel crunch, whoever it is is right next to me, but I’m afraid to open my eyes.

“I’m not sure yet.” I tell the voice. “I kind of don’t have anywhere to go.”

“Really? Do you need somewhere to stay?” I open one eye and look, already cringing in anticipation of horror.

Instead is a little pixie-like blond woman with a shaggy blond haircut, a hemp shirt with a pot leaf on it, and lightly done up makeup. She’s actually kind of cute, and is looking at me with concern.

“I was just going to get a motel room.” I admit. She takes the cigarette out of my hand, takes a drag, and hands it back.

“No, I don’t think that’s a good idea. Why don’t you let me drive?” She says, and I find myself nodding dumbly. I’m not thinking too well, for some reason, my brain skittering away from any kind of thought or images like a gun-shy deer confronted by a cannon.

She helps me out of the car, around to the passenger side, and makes sure I’m buckled in.

“You’re burning up. You’re not going to hotel.” She tells me, sitting down next to me. I hear the seatbelt click, then the engines fires up.

“Tires need air.” I say, and slump against the door. She’s right, I really don’t feel good. I’m blazing hot, and paw for the window switch.

“No you don’t.” She tells me, and I hear the window lock engage. We’re driving, and I hear the ding ding of a gas station. She tells the guy she needs air in the tires, and checks my forehead.

“I’ve got some herbal remedies that will make you feel better.” She tells me. “Unless you want a hospital.”

“No hospital.” I tell her. What am I going to tell them? I’m going into shock because I saw the Thing That Should Not Be?

“Good, hospitals are bad for you.” She tells me. We’re in motion again.

“I’m going to have one of your cigarettes, Ant.” She tells me. “My name’s Holly, do you remember me?” She turns on the radio, and she switches it around till we get the old Sixties station.

“No. Gotta puke.” She pulls over and I lean out the door and puke.

“Figures. I’m surprised. You still at the Hood?” She asks me when I’m done vomiting up stomach acid.

“Texas. I’m in the Army and stationed in Texas.” I tell her.

“Well, seeing as you’re sick, I’ll let the fact you can’t remember me slide, but you’re sick.” She tells me, patting my leg. I start trying to pull off my jacket, but she stops me.

“Feed a fever starve a cold, Ant.” We ride in silence until I hear the turn signal clicking to tell everyone watching we’re getting off I-5. She parks my car, and helps me out.

“You’re really burning up, Ant.” She helps me to door, and we go inside. The light is bright, and hurts my eyes, but it’s a cute little condo, and best of all, it’s clean! No mess, clean carpet, and it smells of roses and lemons.

“Let’s get you in bed.” She tells me. I try to tell her I’m fine with the couch, but she half carries me upstairs. “Shower first.” she tells me with a chipper tone.

I’m drug, half conscious, into the bathroom. It’s cream colored, clean, and smells nice. She pulls off my clothing, and pulls me into the shower with her.

“Your fingernails are infected, and you’ve got some infected cuts on your hands, Ant.” She tells me. “I’ve told you to stop biting your nails.”

“Open wounds.” I mutter. Shit, I must not have been careful enough. A wound will go septic pretty fucking fast if you aren’t careful.

She drags me out of the hot shower, pulls me to a bedroom, and lays me on the bed, patting me off with a towel. She tells me not to go anywhere, covers me up with a blanket, and comes back a little later and starts messing with my hands. Whatever she is doing stings, and I hear her go tch tch tch a couple of times.

She finishes up, and the next thing I know she’s sliding in next to me, pulling me close, petting my non-existent hair, and telling me to go to sleep. It’s not to hard to drift off to sleep.

I dream of Mary and Big-D chasing me, they’re stark naked, we’re running through the woods, they are armed with forks and knives while I’m covered in BBQ sauce, and the only places I can hide are the Stillson House or the Carson Place.

”The College Coed, A Blast From the Past, and The Graveyard”
I woke up slowly, feeling thirsty and nauseous, and a little confused as to where I was. Unlike most times, I didn’t start into wakefullness, but instead crept up on it like a thief in the night.

The room smelled of spices, a little cigarette smoke, and sweat. I could tell the rank odor was coming from me, and that I’d been sick, and worried about what I’d see, I opened my eyes and stared.

Sitting in the middle of the carpet, her clothing folded nicely behind her, sat a pregnant pixie. Well, how about a pregnant woman in good shape with a pixie cut, a smattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks, and across those monstrous breasts that slowly rose and fell as she breathed. She was in a lotus position, completely relaxed, and humming an aimless tune as she absorbed the sunlight like some kind of freckled plant.

I hadn’t stared at her long before her eyes popped open. Green eyes that reflected her smile a moment before it blossomed on her face, lighting up the whole room and making me feel warm even inside the blankets.

“Good morning. I bet you’re thirsty.” She told me, unfolding gracefully, despite the massively pregnant belly, and moving over to me. She bent down, scooped up a water bottle, and sat on the edge of the bed.

“Holly.” I croaked. I remembered her. Holly Crom, she was in Charlie Company in the same Battalion as me before she took a pregnancy chapter back before we’d gone to NTC, the National Training Center at Fort Erwin. She’d been gone a couple of months, but it looked like pregnancy and Ashland had agreed with her.

“Yup.” She smiled and tilted the water in my mouth, and I drank greedily. “It’s been two days, you know. How do you feel?”

“Like shit.” I told her. She laughed, and gave me some more water before pulling it back and putting the cap back on it.

“Easy there, Ant.” She picked up a damp cloth and rubbed it across my head. “You never went above a one oh three, but you were pretty delirious.”

“What happened?” I asked, trying to sit up. She pushed me back down, and I suddenly realized I was naked. I could remember being in the shower a few times, being rocked back and forth.

“Infection. Really bad infection in the cuts on your hands and forearms, and where you’d chewed your nails bloody. I gave you some antibiotics I had laying around, kept you hydrated, and debated on whether or not to take you to Rogue Valley Medical Center, but your fever broke last night, and the wounds are clean.” She held up my hands, where the small cuts from cleaning my cousin’s house were bright red and angry looking. “Plus a nasty respiratory infection.”

She looked down at me serious.

“And herpes.”

“What?” I blurted out, and she began laughing.

“Just kidding. You bounced back pretty well.” She rubbed my short hair. “Ew, let’s get you back in the shower again.”

“Ummm…” I started to protest, but she whipped back the covers, and laughed when I tried to cover myself.

“Ant, I’ve seen you from head to toe, scrubbed you down, and held you while you vomited on me. It’ll be OK.” She told me, reaching down to pull me up. I blushed, but followed her into the bathroom. The fact that she was stark naked was not lost on me, and I tried to hide my reaction.

“Get in the shower, Ant.” She told me, and I obeyed, still trying to hide my reaction. She smelled good, she looked good, and she’d been a close friend when she’d been in the military. She glanced down and smiled. “That’s a good sign you’re on the mend, don’t worry.”

The soap was lathery and slick, the water hot, and having her scrub my back made the shower go from good to fantastic. She had me sit down so she could scrub my hair, telling me it would make me dizzy, and she was right. She toweled me off, and helped me back to the bedroom. I sat there in a chair while she changed the blankets and sheets, smiling at me and making small talk.

Finally I asked the question that had been bugging me.

“How did you find me?”

She laughed, and pointed at a picture on her dresser. She stood there, wearing an SOU sweater, with her arm around my cousin Wendy. Both of them were smiling at the camera, and snow covered the ground behind them.

“Remember when I asked you if you knew anyone in Medford who might help me out?” She asked. I nodded, and she smiled. “You gave me your cousin’s number, and she put me up on her couch for the month before my GI Bill kicked in. Apparently, you caused some kind of scene at your other cousin’s house, and Wendy called me and asked if I knew where you’d go if you were all pissed off.”

She wrinkled her nose.

“Wendy didn’t sound like she believed your other cousin, but it was pretty easy for me to figure out where you’d go.” She smiled again. “I simply went to the bar nearest your cousins, and there you were, passed out in the car like you’d been drinking.”

“I hadn’t…” I started, but she just waved it away.

“Ant, I know you well enough, we were friends in The Hood, you don’t get behind the wheel drunk, and I sure as hell know that you get rowdy when you drink. I knew something was wrong when I saw you trying to open the door and unable to.” She smiled at me and then pulled me over to the bed to lie down.

“I called your cousin, let her know you were all right. Then I went through your pockets, found Nagle and Scott’s numbers, and called them to tell them you’d be staying with me for the next couple days to help me out.” She made her eyes get big, and let her lower tremble. “Because I’m pregnant and need help.” She laughed and wrapped the blanket around me.

“I gotta say, Ant, I missed you.” she leaned forward and kissed me on the forehead, and when she sat up, something warm hit me in the face.

“What the hell?” I asked, and suddenly realized where it was coming from. “Ummm, your boob just sprung a leak.”

She blushed and jumped up, grabbing a sports bra and pulling it on, then she grabbed two circles out of a box and shoved them into her bra.

“Milk pads. I’m about 8 months, and apparently I’m a damn cow.” She said, still blushing. She sat back in her chair, folded her legs up, and rubbed her swollen stomach. “Not too long now.”

I yawned, and she smiled.

“Sleep for a little bit, and then I’ll give you some soup.” I nodded and fell asleep, watching her close her eyes, turn her hands upwards, and begin humming that aimless tune.

I could have sworn I saw the baby kick right before I slipped out and into dreamland.

——————

When I woke up, it was dark, and she was snuggled up against me. I felt the baby kick me in the back, and smiled to myself, burrowing under the covers and relishing the warmth of her. She fit nicely, taller than Nagle, whose nose usually sat between my shoulder blades, and her gentle snoring was tickling the hair at the back of my neck.

When I moved, she woke right up, and insisted on helping me to the bathroom, then back into the bed. It was dark outside, and she watched me eat smiling.

“That little boy belong to you?” She asked suddenly.

“Huh?”

“I found a ball in your jacket pocket, left it downstairs, and it was in the upstairs hallway the next morning. Last night, I saw a little boy standing at the end of the bed.” She told me.

“Oh. Oh shit.” I told her.

“Don’t sweat it. It’s not uncommon. I gets lost people coming through all the time, he just seemed kind of interested in you.” She looked out the window and into the darkness. “Sometimes it’s worse than others, but except for your little boy, it’s been pretty quiet the last week or so.”

I got up, grabbed the fluffy pink bathrobe she’d left beside the bed, wrapped up in it, and walked over next to her. I felt pretty good, a lot better than I had earlier in the day that was for sure.

Outside of the window was a graveyard, painted in hues of gray and black from the steely light of the moon. Holly moved against me, and I wrapped me arms around her out of habit more than anything else.

“Sometimes I swear I see them walking out there. Sometimes they come in here.” She shivered. “The first time I freaked out, called 911 that there was an intruder. The cops came, checked the house, didn’t find anyone, and didn’t say anything mean to my face.”

“That’s gotta suck.” I kicked myself. That sounded really lame to my own ears.

“Yeah.” She pulled away and sat back on the bed. “How come you have a little boy following you?”

“I’m not sure. I think I thought it was real kid, stuck at my cousin’s house, and told it that it could hang out with me.” I told her.

“That’ll do it.” She smiled.

“When did you become the expert on ghosts? I thought you didn’t believe in that stuff.” I said, flopping back into the chair and wrapping the fuzzy pink robe around me. It had a embroidered Tinkerbell on the breast.

“I’ve always believed in ghosts. When I was a kid my grandmother had one that would knock stuff off the shelves and the counters, you’ve got a little boy following you, I live next to a graveyard. What’s not to believe.” She said it with a smile. “I just don’t go around blathering about it.”

“Fair enough.”

She got up, gave me my clothing, which were clean, and got dressed herself.

“Let’s go for a walk.” She told me more than asked, and together we walked outside, to her back patio. While she opened her back gate, I lit a cigarette and admired her back patio furniture. It was nice stuff.

The gate opened up directly to the graveyard, and she led me through it, pointing out the more interesting headstones. Eight months pregnant, and she just skipped along through the grass in front of me, her dress twirling around at one point when she raised her arms over her head and spun in a circle.

Two graves looked as recent as I could tell. Unweathered headstones, fresh flowers, even a small little bouquet on one of them. She pointed both of them out, told me how she watched a little old lady come to one every weekend, and the other had a professional florist come out every two weeks.

I was more interested in watching her dance as the wind started to pick up, but when she saw me shivering, she bustled me back inside.

I went to sleep pretty quick after some hot chicken soup, another warm shower, and being tucked into bed. She was sitting in her chair in a lotus position, reading a book I couldn’t quite catch the name of, looking happy with a sprig of grass behind one ear.

I remembered her all right. She was a medivac medic, with the 13th Evac Hospital in Desert Storm. It seemed strange that someone so military, someone who reminded me in a lot of ways of Margaret Houllihan off of MASH, would spend her time dancing in the wind, meditating, and laughing.

I woke up to something tickling my feet, and she was snuggled against me. My side was sticky where she’d been leaking, and she was snuggled up tight, one arm thrown across my chest, breathing in my ear.

At the end of the bed was a short, shadowy figure. I could dimly make out red and yellow stripes.

“Decided to come along?” I muttered drowsily.

He nodded.

“Be good. She’s pregnant.” I said, then closed my eyes and went back to sleep.

yoslow

My computer is located in the basement right under the living room and the kitchen which is connected to the garage. On more then one occasion I have heard foot steps above me of someone walking around when no one else is home. Simple foot steps can be chocked up to a number of things such as the house settling or maybe the vents. I usually brush them off but a few times there has been incidents that suggest something else is going on..

On one fine afternoon I was sitting at my computer after school looking stuff up when I distinctly heard the door to the garage open, the alarm beep and foot steps, the usually sounds I hear when someone comes home. I thought my mom or dad must be home so I went upstairs to see them. While walking up the stairs, I called out “Oh your home early” and as I turned the corner into the kitchen where I had heard the footsteps coming from, I found no one. I thought maybe they went back outside to the car, so I opened the door and looked out. There was no car in the garage, the light that goes on when the garage door opens wasn’t lit up. No one had come home.

Another incident was very similar to the one above. But this time I know I heard what sounded like a womans voice along with the door opening, and footsteps. I was completely convinced my mom came home and went upstairs, again no one was home. This time I was a little freaked out, the other times could have been imagination and the pipes but I know I heard a womans voice. What was worse is that this time, it was already dark out so when I walked upstairs the entire first floor was black.

Xzoto

Anyways, I saw an actual ghost (or was it?) and it happened to be a LIVING family member at the time. It was my own mother. I was around 5 years of age or younger and I was about to go for a nap. Mother had already fallen asleep right next to me (so I knew she was there right with me). Anyways, as I was about to sleep, I looked at the bedroom door (the door was open) and I saw her walk by, take one look at me and kept on walking. The freakiest part about this is the fact she was wearing her wedding dress.

Right before this incident too, I was setting my jacket on the floor next to me since I was too lazy to put it away or hang it up. I had earlier bought some jawbreakers and put one or two into the coat pocket. As I put the jacket down, a jawbreaker rolled out of the pocket and I went to grab it and it disappeared. Right after this happened (within a minute), the incident with my mother walk by happened.

ViceroyFizzlebottom

I work at the oldest bar in the town where I reside. It originally opened as a bar in 1878, but closed down during the Prohibition. When it was not a bar, it was a dressmaker’s shop and a barber shop. I recently found the newspaper article about the barber who shot three people. He shot his wife, a friend of his wife, and shot and killed his wife’s lover. After he did this, he went to the barber shop he owned and committed suicide. This was in 1932.

In 1934, the bar opened and has remained almost the same for 73 years. A few months after I started there, I was informed about the ghost of this killer barber and have heard several encounter stories. One girl said that she heard the game machine take a quarter and play through a game with no one there, and that his ghost broke a bottle of liquor.

The only thing to happen to me that had my psychologically pants-shitting were the footsteps. I have heard footsteps whilst in the basement on several occasions. Now, there is a bar next door, and a pizza place on the other side of my bar, but these footsteps were unmistakably directly above me. Whenever the door opens and closes it can be heard, but each time there is no door opening or closing. This has even happened to me when the front and back doors are closed and locked. I also HATE having my back turned to the rest of the bar, i.e. when I’m closing out the tills or filling out paperwork at the end of the night.

There was another incident that had all us girls freaked out. The only people who have keys to the bar are myself, one other bartender, and the cleaning guy. I went into work one night to have the other key holding bartender take me into the basement and show me the opened door to the office. It looked as if someone had been looking for something in that cluttered office because there were things scattered outside the door. That office hasn’t been used since I think 1982 and has sort of been a storage area. The cleaning guy has no reason to go into the basement and is probably the honest person I know; he puts wallets, phones or anything he finds in the alley on the bar as well as pennies and anything he finds on the floor.

Stuntcock

”Ooh, do have I a NEW Ghost story for you… +Bonus Material…”
Last night, I was derailed from seeing a movie by a pal of mine ‘J,’ who needed a ride to a barbeque, with an invite as barter. Damn right I could see the movie another time!

We arrive at Lindsey’s house, where her roommates were all running about, organizing the former contents of 11 grocery bags; meat here, condiments there, booze here, etc…

I’d noted to Lindsey that I liked her new home, it’s much bigger, roomier, and safer than her previous one, to which she looked a little puzzled.

“You… you must be referring to the house on ‘Nashville St,’ because you never saw…”
“…the other one,” Lindsey’s roommate Emily finished.
“So… you don’t know the story of the place in between the place you knew us to live in and this one, right?” Lindsey asked.

I just stood there, curious of all of the wide-eyed, uneasy looks, making myself wordlessly obvious that I’d not a clue. They called in the third roommate, Brianne, followed by J.

They took turns adding in their ‘two-cents,’ confirming little details, adding others, to which they all agreed upon as the story progressed. Rather than make this a back-and-forth story of four people interjecting, I’ll tell it to you third-person.

–

In New Orleans, Lindsey had parted with her previous roommate, and got together with two girls from school she didn’t know so well, Brianne and Emily, and got a decent place on Carrollton Avenue. The place in question was rather roomy, in a good location, and, above all, a hell of a bargain. This house, like most in the neighborhood, is nearly one hundred years old.

When Emily and Lindsey arrived to move their belongings in, they saw a note on the door of the furthest room from the front door, there was a note by Brianne, saying that she’d already claimed it, which annoyed the other two girls.

A blessing in disguise.

”Brianne’s Mad Dash”
Within the first week or two, Brianne and the girls were all in the house together, Lindsey and Emily supposedly asleep, and Brianne up all night, determined to finish the book she was reading. At somewhere between 2-4am, she reached the last page of her text, closing the book, and settling into bed to see if she was actually tired enough to sleep. Note that the book was NOT a mystery/horror book, and that she had an elated feeling about what she’d just read.

She was replacing the book back on the shelf, and general before-bed tidying up, when the light above her started flickering, then went completely out. Brianne then turned off all of the lamps around the room, leaving the one near her desk on.

She soon found out she couldn’t sleep, so she sat up again, and turned on the television, putting in a cartoon DVD, in the hope it’d tire her out before the sun came up.

She heard a rapping-knock in her room, and suddenly stood, not knowing if it came from her door or her wall. Brianne lowered the volume on the TV, fearing it woke up a roommate, and approached the corner of the room where the noise was coming from. It wasn’t the door, it wasn’t the wall, it was coming from the closet.

What Brianne didn’t know at the time was that her deep closet shared a wall with Emily’s equally deep closet, not Emily’s wall.

Brianne assumed it was Emily who was knocking, and crept back to bed, in silence. Again, the rapping coursed through the room, so Brianne got up, exited the room, only to find Emily fast asleep in her own room, her body splayed nowhere near the wall in question. She checked on Lindsey, who was also fully asunder, her room too far for her to have knocked on the wall, to do so would be loud enough to gain Brianne’s attention would have woken up the whole house!

Confused, and a little wierded-out, Brianne returned to her room, closed the door, and turned off the TV and remaining lamps, and reached for the desk lamp, which turned off before she could hit the switch. She retracted her hand in surprise, and the light flickered back on; she then reached forward again, and she successfully managed to turn it off, the desk lamp having given up on a life of its own.

Suddenly, light flooded the room, the overhead light had blasted into life; perhaps it wasn’t the bulb that broke, but simply a loose socket?

Brianne, in the few seconds it took for her to turn around, and head towards the light switch, became uneasy. Sure, it was scary, and the visual impact of the overhead light flickering like crazy was intimidating enough, but it wasn’t without the realm of reason that this old house had loose bulbs, sockets, even wiring, to which she’d have a chat with the landlord about investigating before a inner-wall fire could occur.

Brianne consoled herself with such thoughts, as she approached the light switch in the strobed room, to finally turn it off, and put an end to this ordeal for the night. However, she began to believe the strobing effect of the light flickering on and off maniacally was making her see things… or not, for once she got to the light switch…

The light switch was been frantically flipping up and down on its own.

She jumped back in panic, as the strobing continued for a full few seconds, then suddenly stopped. Following a few moments later, in the darkness, the knocking making a re-appearance, but much, much louder than before.

Brianne grabbed what she could, and got the fuck out of there around 5am, not only not looking back, but too scared to even inform the other girls of what went on.

”The Wireman”
It took a long time for Brianne to be coaxed back into the house, since no strange events had occurred since, yet Brianne wasn’t going anywhere NEAR that room, so, she slept elsewhere in the house. It was suggested that Brianne sleep on the second floor, since the weather was good, and the only reason it wasn’t used was that the landlord had yet to repair the AC/Heating units up there. Brianne refused. As tall-tale hauntings go, Brianne reasoned, she was going to stay away from an attic as far as possible, despite the fact that all of the happenings occurred in the downstairs back bedroom that she once claimed.

Weeks passed, and Emily had some visitors come over on one occasion, and Lindsey had some of her own on another; neither group of visitors slept more than one night in that house, citing that they had ‘strange dreams’ that they refused to discuss, and they had an unnatural apprehension from going down the hall past Emily’s room.

Lindsey decided to investigate a bit, and entered Brianne’s room during the day, finding nothing out of order. However, upon inspecting the closet where Brianne heard pounding noises, she discovered that not only did the back of the closet share a wall with the back of Emily’s closet, there was a sizable hole cut out of it, enough for a child to pass back and forth. Upon even closer inspection, the wall was shared, yes, but was hollowed, there was three feet or more difference between the two panels in the back of the two closets. Lindsey shined a light on the little space, and found a large spool of ‘industrial’ wire. She turned the light upward, toward the ceiling, and discovered this little ‘hollow’ went straight through the second floor, and into the attic, she could see a large beam stretching across, far above.

Lindsey kept this discovery to herself for a few days.

A night or two later, Emily was looking rather haggard, and explained that it was due to lack of sleep, since recurring nightmares kept jolting her out of slumber. The other two girls pressed on the contents of the dreams, the result of which much to their shock.

All three girls (and one overnight guest) had the same dream, as did the two previous guests, when contacted and insisted upon the details:

A very old, bald man was suspended above them, from wires somehow attached to his back, reaching up into the blackness; his arms were slung down, locked at the elbow, as to reach as far down as he possibly could; his arms began as skin, muscle, and sinew, but gradually terminated into a cluster of wires. The Wireman dangled above the dreamer, waving/scissoring his arms back and forth at locked length, as if trying to wipe past the faces of the startled dreamer. Finally, the man would buckle, as if a few inches of slack was granted from above, and the Wireman would immediately and eagerly grasp the sleeper’s throats with its wire-hands, and choke them vigrously. They could hear him smiling. The dreamer would suffer and die in the dreams, before awaking.

The vast majority of these factors were shared with the dreamers, without deviance.

”Call in The Calvary”
The profusely apologetic Landlord didn’t question the girls’ fright (obviously there’s something he knew they didn’t,) and offered to send in an exorcist. Apparently, Exorcists are few and far between, so the girls popped down to some of the (very few) reputable psychics that were marvelously expensive; she got three to come on half-pay, half-favor. Remember, this is New Orleans, even I know of 1000 ‘Psychics,’ but I only believe in 3 or 4 of them.

It should be noted that Lindsey was smart about this, she didn’t mention anything about the room, dreams, or actual location of the house, and should the psychics wish to investigate before they come to the site. Lindsey convinced them to accept the job with as very little info as possible, and all of the girls were there when the psychics showed up, offering them nothing, but listening to everything.

The three psychics entered the house and all of its rooms, feeling nothing, until they got to the last room of the hall, where all three of them looked at each other in discomfort. One began crying. They backed out of the room. Lindsey took them into Emily’s room, and showed them the ‘little room’ between the closets (obviously from the ‘safe’ side,) and directed their attention upward. Soon after, the band of explorers would find themselves in the dreaded attic, and had found the crossbeam in question.

It had a deeply-etched groove of wear from a once-taut wire, and was indeed centered directly above that little hole.

The Psychics soon joined the girls in the living room, and discussed what they felt.

Apparently, a long time ago, a woman had run off from her husband, and little boy. The husband refused to let the child go outside, thinking that he’d run off, and the only way the mother would return was if the child was there, she’d surely not come back if it were just the father remaining.

One day, tired of the wait, the father locked his son in his bedroom, and hung himself (with wire, we’re not 100% certain, in the little room? Not 100% certain) until, of course, he died, assuming that the mother would soon come for the son. She didn’t. The little boy died of dehydration in his room.

While this didn’t explain a good half of what went on, the Psychic went on to say…

“Well, there was some sort of torture… perhaps self-torture, but I don’t know if the preceded the man and his boy, or if it involved the man and his boy… we threw down many tarot cards, and, despite the meaning of ‘The Hanged Man’ that we all accept, it came up every damn hand… we use 108 cards, it came up EVERY three cards after a thorough re-shuffle. I think it’s demanding a new meaning, perhaps an obvious one? We don’t know, we don’t normally do this, but certain impressions are undeniable.”

”Fallout”
The Landlord offered a second property, bigger, better, and cheaper, to which the girls took, and presently live.

The girls, when they think of it, did a little investigating, and here’s what they came up with:

(1) Neighbors had seen six sets of tenants come and go in the last two years alone.

(2) Their pal, Brian, who had several nervous breakdowns (including crying in class, and walking around bug-eyed,) in the year previous turned out having lived in that very house, in that very room, for six months. Brian was mortified when the girls admitted they stayed there. He even recalled the ‘Wireman’ dream with eerie clarity and description. Apparently his state has improved in the time he’s been out of that house.

(3) The house is currently unoccupied.

tennbjj

”Baptist Church Ghost”
I posted this originally at ObiWan’s Ghost Story page. I have made a few changes(like the size of the church) to reflect inaccuracies from my original story. This is a completely true story of a building I will no longer enter, and am scared to drive by after dark.

A little background on this story: I grew up in a southern baptist church in Tennessee. As you may or may not know, it is very common for a preacher to be at a Southern Baptist church from his 20s until the day he dies without switching churches, leaving etc. This was the case with every church in town, except ours. From the time I was 7 until I was 18, we had 5 different pastors, which is VERY VERY unusual in the Southern Baptist Association. And to top it off, quite a few of them left under mysterious circumstances. One pastor’s wife became mentally ill, and she accused multiple men(including deacons in their 80s, 90s) in the church of raping her. Another pastor’s wife(who was working as a secretary) more than once claimed she was pushed down some stairs in the church, resulting in multiple broken bones, dislocated hip, etc., even though she was working in the church alone at night.

Anyways, the church itself is a fairly old building, built in 1924. It is a very large church, with two additional wings built on to accommodate the growing church membership.

My family was very active in the church, and growing up I spent a lot of time there. I had seen very odd things going on like lights turning off and on(mostly while looking back at the church from the parking lot at night), although now I accredit that to it being an old building with poor wiring, as well as a general feeling of creepiness anytime the church wasn’t inhabited by multiple worshipers. When I reached “youth group” age, we used to take several trips a year, to places like Six Flags, Myrtle Beach, etc. To make sure everyone would be on time, typically all of the teenagers would sleep over at the church in the “youth room”, and leave the next morning. When I was 16, about 40 of us were staying in the youth room one night before a missions trip, and decided to play hide and seek in the church. Now, considering the church is a 50,000 square foot plus building, this was gonna be one heck of a game. I was a little wary of walking around in the church at night. I had done so in the past on previous overnighters, and had heard and felt things I couldn’t explain. Strange noises, almost like a piano playing, but you had to strain to hear it, and that general feeling that “something isn’t right”, when I was in certain parts of the church. This is what really creeped me out. Parts of the church were OK, except for the dark, but certain rooms and hallways autmoatically made the little hairs stand up on the back of my neck.

My friend Andy and I were chosen as the seekers in the game.

We stayed in the youth room about 10 minutes whilst everyone went and hid. When the time was up, Andy and I ventured downstairs to the main level of the church and started searching the church chapel, in between the pews, in the balcony, etc. to no avail for the hiders. We checked the offices that weren’t locked, Sunday School rooms, bathrooms(both M and F), but no one was to be found. We took a quick peek outside to make sure no one was playing a trick on us, but the outside was as still and calm as inside the church. Finally, we worked up the courage to go downstairs into the basement to find the hiders. I say “worked up the courage”, because the basement was truly a scary place. Due to either some supernatural presence, or perhaps just poor building design, the basement was overbearingly humid. You literally could sweat just standing around, even if it wasn’t hot. Now, the basement had a LONG hall that ran the length of it, and the hall was flanked on either side by classrooms, and a large “fellowship hall” and kitchen area. The hall wasntt lit, save the emergency exit light on each end, and the dim emergency lights common in big buildings.

Andy was on one end of the hall, and I the other. We decided to start walking down the hall, checking each classroom, as surely this had to be where the hiders were. As I said “Ready Andy?”, we heard footsteps. The footsteps I presumed were hiders trying to move around and find better hiding spots from us, but I had the distinct impression the footsteps were in the hall. The sounds were loud and clear, not muffled at all by a door or walls. Andy asked “Do you hear that”, and I answered “Yes”, rather sheepishly. The footsteps were now coming towards me, getting louder, and moving faster. I froze in place, unable to move, speak or react. About 5 feet or so(it seemed) in front of me, the steps stopped when Andy yelled out “What the hell’s going on” I was able to answer back ” I don’t know”, when suddenly they started again, this time running away from me at a very fast pace towards Andy. Right as I was getting ready to say “Lets go back”, Andy’s body hit the wall rather violently. After a moment’s pause, I was able to move, and I ran down to see if he was OK. Andy said, “Who the hell just pushed me?” I told that I had seen nobody, just heard the footsteps. When I said that, a look of fright came over his face that I can’t describe, nor have I ever seen again on a human face. We both had the same thought, and bolted upstairs back to youth room. When we got there, we found all 40 of the others, waiting on us, asking where we had been. Andy was too ruffled to talk, so I asked “Who was hiding in the basement?”. Everyone, almost simultaneously answered that the basement was far too scary, and they wouldn’t hide down there alone. 12 years later, Andy won’t acknowledge the event, and will not step foot in the church

I was young at the time most of these things happened, and actually didn’t find out about the rape charges until I was in my 20s(well past the time of the incident).

As far as I know, there was no public acknowledgment of any sort of supernatural goings-on. The rape charges are chalked up to mental illness by all who still attend the church, and the pushing-down-stairs incidents are brushed off as coincidence.

My parents still attend the church, and to this day get very angry if I mention the church being spooky or haunted. I don’t know if it’s because they are so religious and protective of the church, or because they too believe something is there that isn’t right. I’ve talked to friends who attended the same church as a youngster, gathering other various “spooky” tales from it, including Diana.

Diana has told me her father(a senior deacon) and a number of other Church elders have had exorcists(remember, this is a Baptist church, not Catholic) come in to take a look at the church. She also related this story to me:

”Diana and the Church Organ”
As in my previous story, I mentioned that being in my home church was a spooky experience. Sure, all large, old buildings have a certain spookiness to them, especially after dark, but it was different with the church. It had an ominous, mean-spirited tone when inhabited at night, as if trying to run you out while it slept.

My friend Diana, two years younger than me, was also at the sleepover which produced my only personal encounter with something other-worldly. She was one of the hiders during our game, and didn’t experience the creepiness Andy and I did that night, however, one night she and several other girls had their own encounter with the angry church.

It wasn’t uncommon to hear faint music playing in the church after dark. Have you ever thought you heard something, and had to REALLY strain to try and hear it again? Thats what it is like in this church when the lights go out. One night at a church sleepover, Diana was laying awake at around 1:30am, unable to fall asleep, most likely due to the inordinate amounts of sugar consumed at church gatherings. As she lay on her sleeping bag, she thought she heard music playing downstairs. She couldn’t quite make it out at first, but after focusing, she was able to recognize the tune to “Amazing Grace”.

For Christians, it is actually a spiritually moving hymn, with meaningful lyrics. However, at 1:30am in a known-spooky church playing on what Diana thought was the old pipe organ, it was unsettling. The next morning, she told three of her friends about the occurrence, individually. All three of them responded that they had dreampt about the exact hymn, being played by a tall, thin man in a dark suit, with long, white fingers on the church’s pipe organ.

Diana swears to this day she was awake when she heard the tune, and that all three of her friends told her individually and without prompting about their dreams. She visibly shakes and starts to tear up when she talks about the story, and will only mention it to very close family or friends. I asked her once what would have happened if she had gone downstairs to investigate. She turned pale and said “I wouldn’t be sitting here, answering your question”

”JD and the Stairs”
Like I said in earlier posts, I grew up in a spooky, almost angry church. People were hurt, scared and driven out by it. My friend Diana heard spooky music at night(as have I), and other friends growing up have told me other tales, some more believable than others. The following is a tale by my high school buddy JD, who grew up in the church as well. JD is a no-nonsense kind of guy, and the simplicity of his story, along with the church’s reputation makes it believable to me. An earlier story by another goon telling of the spooky stairway in his old house growing up reminded me of this one.

JD’s mom was the church’s social hostess. Although not an official title, she was always the lady putting together the parties, social gatherings, dinners, etc. which were held often in the church body. As a result, JD’s mom(and by proxy JD) spent a lot of time at the church, especially on Saturday nights preparing rooms/food/decorations/etc. for Sunday morning events – Men’s Bible Study Breakfast’s, Birthday Parties, etc.

Southern Baptist churches all have a large room, usually known as the “Fellowship Hall”. It is used for large dinners, get togethers, etc. It was in this room(and adjoining kitchen) that JD and his mom spent many hours, late into Saturday nights, setting up for Sunday morning. Unfortunately, the hall was located in the basement, the God forsaken overly-humid and hot basement of a church that didn’t like night time guests. JD told myself and other friends of strange noises and weird things happening – Plates falling off of tables no one was near, chairs re-arranging themselves when JD and his mom left the hall and came back in the morning, etc. When questioned, JD’s mom used to tell us that the Church is just “old and grumpy”. I now agree 100%.

JD’s weirdest story(s) was about the stairs leading down to the basement. As I said, this was a large church, and there were 15 steps in a two-flight staircase leading down to the basement, on either end of a long hallway. JD used to pass the time waiting on his mom to decorate by running up and down the hall, timing himself(JD was a high school running back later on), and also climbing up and down the stairs. The stairs themselves didn’t appear to be anything special, just old wooden, creaky stairs. One night when JD was around 12, he was waiting on his mom, and he walked up the steps of each flight, counting 15 steps each. Kids sometime have this obsession with doing the same thing over and over, so JD climbed up and down the stairs for nearly 20 minutes. Something was wrong though…

His first count up the stairs produced 15 steps on each flight of stairs to the main lobby of the church. On the way back down, he counted 16 steps each. JD said at that point he figured he must have just counted the “floor” as a step both times and messed up. Progressively, however, there were more and more steps as the 20 minutes went by. At one count there were 47 steps, 20 in the first flight and 27 in the second. Now, JD was just a kid, but a 12 yr old can count to 30, without adding seventeen additional numbers. This went on for a few more minutes, until JD’s mom called him to go. According to JD, the stair count happened on at least three other occasions, with steps being continually added and taken away as he waited on his mom.

Not a particularly “scary” story, but every time I think about it, it just gives me chills. I wonder what would have happened, had JD kept going up and down the stairs? Would there have eventually been so many steps, as to not let him out of the basement?

”Gina and The Old Mirror”
Our church growing up had an old Hall Tree/Large Desk furniture piece which sat out in the vestibule.

It was used for piling devotional tracts, church bulletins and the like on top of for worshippers to pick up on their way in. I personally don’t remember anything particularly spooky about it, but Gina claims to have had more than one encounter with it.

Gina, like most of the kids, spent a good deal of time in the church. Whether there for services, parties, choir practice, whatever, we all spent hours on end hanging out in, exploring, etc. the innards of the church. The piece of furniture in question was an antique, brought over from the old church building that had been used in the 1800’s, before the new church was built in the 1920’s. There were many similar pieces throughout the church, but this one was the most prominent as it sat in the large entranceway to the church.

The one striking feature about the piece was the mirror. Sort of cloudy and warped like a lot of old mirrors, it had that funny way of distorting images it reflected, like a carnival mirror. On more than one occasion Gina says she had walked by the mirror, glancing at it in passing, and catching the reflection of what appeared to be an old man in a dark suit. Almost like the tales of “shadow people”, where you ctach them just out of the corner of your eye, and they’re gone, Gina was never able to stand in front of the mirror and see anything clearly. Until one night. . .

Gina was to sing a solo one Sunday morning in the worship service, and she and the pianist were staying late practicing on Saturday night. Gina was the last to leave the church and was walking through the vestibule on her way out to the parking lot. “I don’t know why I did it” she wrote to me, “But I just had to look in the mirror.”

As she passed by the mirror, she looked straight into it and saw five doors. Now let me explain, there are two huge “double doors” in the entryway to the church that swing inward, and were clearly visible in the mirror. They are separated by about 7-8 feet, with nothing in between them but wall. However, when Gina looked in the mirror, an extra door was now between them, where a door shouldn’t have been. The door was an old gray wooden door, the kind that “You’d see on an old cabin”. It had no distinct markings, but a pale yellow light could be seen outlining the door, indicating something behind it. Gina stared at the door for several seconds, aware that it should simply not be. When she turned to look at the doors, the fifth door was now gone, replaced by the familiar wall.

Gina tells me she never looked again in that mirror. She comes in and leaves the church by side doors to avoid coming through the main entrance to this day, nearly 14 years after her experience with the mirror.

ccb2386

I also have never experienced anything too paranormal, but thought i would share this story one of my good friends had. All the crazy shit that happened was told to me by my friend who i will call “Jeff.”

Jeff’s parents were divorced, and his mom kept the house so his dad had moved out. His dad is the type of dude who buys a shitty house, then fixes it up really nice and either lives in it or turns it over for profit. So he had just purchased a pretty crappy house, and was going to fix it up and likely move into it. During the time he spent fixing it up though, he had to rent an apartment. The house he rented was on a main street in my town, and was one of those really old huge two story houses that are converted into apartments and then rented out. blah blah blah, old and creepy basically.

His dad lived up on the second floor of this place, and also had access to a portion of the basement (which was also extremely creepy from what i hear, bunch of random drains and shit on the floor and nasty lookin walls). So anyways, Jeffs younger sister (4 year old) primarily stayed with their dad. One evening, shortly after moving in, Jeff’s dad was taking a shower. He had the door to the bathroom closed, and Jeff’s sister was asleep in her bedroom. So Dad is in the shower, and sees what appears to be a hand press into the shower curtain at about the level the 4 year old sister would be at. Thinkin its his kid, he whips back the shower curtain to make sure everything is alright since she was asleep in her bedroom. When he pulls the shower curtain back, he sees that the bathroom door is open. When he looked out into the hallway from the shower, all he saw was the tail of a wedding dress dragging on the floor away from the bathroom door towards his daughters room. He runs out into the hallway and nothing was there. When he checked on his daughter, she was sound asleep.

There were a bunch of other small little freaky occurrences that went down after this one as well, none as crazy though.

So slightly freaked out by all of this shit, Jeff’s dad looked into the history of the house and such. Turns out the house was an old funeral home, and the bodies were all embalmed in the basement…hence all the drains and stuff down there. His dad moved out asap because the 4 year old was too freaked out to stay there anymore.

Reason

The house I lived in for the most part of my life was built on farmland, my dad had actually had the house built so my family are the first to have lived in that particular house.

The first thing about the house was the little stuff, you would be looking for something, but you won’t be able to find it at all and then hours later you will find it in a place you were pretty damn sure you looked. One time my mom put a cup of tea in the microwave, and when she heard the timer go off it was sitting on the counter. Thinking that she started the microwave, but forgot to put the tea in she picked it up to find that it was hot.

”The Door”
One time I was sitting in my living room, with a clear view of the front door, but it was just out of the corner of my eye. I was sitting there watching TV when I heard the knob turn or jiggle, and the front door opened up. Thinking that maybe someone had forgot to shut it all the way I walked over and slammed it shut and made sure it was locked. On the way to front door is the entrance way to the room we called the “media” room and I looked in to confirm my family were all in there watching a movie and they were. I asked them if they’d gone out the front recently and they hadn’t so I just dropped it and went back to the living room where I was watching TV. A little bit later the door handle made the jiggling/opening noise and the door popped open again. At this point I’m thinking someones trying to break into the house, so I yell “DAD, someones getting in the front door!” and run to the kitchen and grab a knife because I’m kind of scared now. I get back to front door before my dad (he was a little slow getting up, I’m not sure he believed me) I flipped on the lights for the outside area and ran out yelling, I’m convinced someone is there trying to break in or play a trick on us and I’m trying to scare the crap out of them. My dad comes out behind me and we peer out into the darkness, but we can’t see anything out there moving. Our conclusion was that despite being locked from the inside, wind had somehow blown it open.

”Something in the Hallway”
Our bedrooms were situated in a t with my sisters room at the top, and my parents room and my room on either side of the hallway, but all our doors were about four steps away from each other. One morning, while my sister was out, I was laying in bed s little hung over and not wanting to get out when I heard something run from my sisters room down our hallway and out into our living room. It sounded like maybe the size of a small dog or a child. I sat straight bolt up in my bed, and yelled for my dad and we both investigated together, but we found nothing.

Nothing ever really truly scary happened inside the house, if there was something there, I think it could be described as mischievous or friendly. On a somewhat related note to Monkey’s story, our light bulbs lasted very very short periods of time, maybe something to do with the wiring or whatever, but in places where only one light bulb could light up an area we would just leave the other ones with dead bulbs because it just gets frustrating having to replace them so often. This left parts of the house like the hallway to our bedrooms and the other hallway to our laundry area pretty creepy and dark.

”Civil War Dude??”
This one was kind of weird, it was snowing and as such we were looking for a good place to go sledding, there weren’t any hills around that we knew of so myself and a couple of my friends decided to go off into the woods in search of a good sled area. We wandered out in one direction for quite a while, finally deciding it was a waste of time and that we would never find any areas out here to sled and we were about to turn back when we came to a clearing that had an old fancy looking house in it. We’d never seen the house before, but the clearing might have some hills around it so we decided to leave the forest and left the forest to go look, but pretty much the instant we did that a man comes out of the house in full civil war era custom, the hat, the wig, the coat and yells at us. I can’t remember any words or anything out of what was said, but it ended with us leaving in a hurry with a weird, creeped out feeling.

”Creepy Kid”
Near where I lived there were lots of logging roads, I had a jeep and I loved to take it up there and drive around on the dirt roads. I’d often purposefully try to get lost and come out on the other side or whatever. One time I was up there driving around and up ahead on the road I see this kid walking along slowly. I think that maybe this kid needs help or something, because as far as I know there isn’t anyone around for miles besides logging trucks and other people cruising around off road. So I slow down and roll my window down a bit and ask this kid if he’s ok. He just stares at me, doesn’t say a word at all. Maybe I did the wrong thing, but I wasn’t feeling that this was a good idea so I rolled my window up and got out of there.

”Nightgown Ditch Lady”
This one happened near my house at night. I was driving home or out to go party or something, I can’t really remember where I was going, but I was at this curvy S road type deal and I always slowed down in it because I was always afraid I’d get into an accident, so I slowed down and as I rounded the S curve my headlights went over some chick in a nightgown laying in the ditch, and shes just staring out at me from that ditch. No way in hell was I going to stop for that.

”People in the Woods”
This one is my newest one. Last summer I went home from college and my family went camping. With the exception of my step mom we love camping and my dad always makes sure to find a good spot to go. This time we were in a camp ground, but the camp ground had two sections, a main one and then a way out in the middle of nowhere one. The main camp ground was pretty packed, but the area we’d gone out to only had a couple other people and the surrounding sites were all empty. The first nights were uneventful we sat around and told stories and ate and drank before bed. But the night before we left we were sitting around our fire telling ghost stories. I was telling them two stories from here, The Rake and The Intruder, which are two of my favorites, and so we were all sort feeling that on edge feeling you get when you’re really into telling and hearing each others stories. Suddenly I could hear noises coming from the camp site next to us and I see shapes running through the trees, I bolt jet up right and shine my light in that direction, its hard to see because I had been looking at the fire. My dad had heard them too and he seemed a little nervous about it which made me uneasy. There wasn’t really anyone here, the people in the other two occupied campsites had gone to sleep. I hadn’t seen any flashlights, and I wasn’t sure about what I saw at all, just what looked like a dark shadow or two running through the woods and disappearing when it got to the roadway.

York_M_Chan

1.
An ex-girlfriend, Lara, of mind would have dreams that she was talking with some who had died (her first time was with Kurt Cobain… I know, I know) But it would be a perfectly normal conversation nothing prophetic at all, and the person wouldn’t know that they were dead and my girlfriend wouldn’t tell them that they are dead. After this dream Lara went to her mom and told her about it and her mom said that she had a chat with Lara’s grandmother (who was dead) that night, as well. Lara’s mom then told her to wait 2 weeks before she would explain what was going on. Two weeks later Lara’s cousin announced to the family that she was pregnant. Apparently, all the women in this family have a dream they are talking with a dead person on the same night and 2 weeks later someone in the family finds out they are pregnant. I stuck around long enough to see this happen. It is freaky.

2.
I never in my life heard or saw a ghost. But one night I was sleeping in my childhood bedroom after 15 years of not sleeping in it. On this night there were voices everywhere. I thought I was going insane because I felt the pressure of their voices on my eardrums – this wasn’t in my head. I remember they said my name, but it was calm. They weren’t calling to me, but using my name just to let me know that I was part of the conversation. I have tried to sit in silence for extended periods of time in other places to see if these are just in my head, but it has never happened since. Also, I wasn’t scared. I didn’t want to open my fucking eyes, but I remained calm.

3.
A friend of mine told me about his half-brother who is, apparently, cursed. The kids mother was estranged from her gypsy-esque family and she refused to let them see him. They told her that for her impudence the boy would be cursed. When the boy was old enough to talk he would tell his parents about the Raccoon man that would visit him at night. When he got older he was able to break it down a little bit more. My friend explained to me what the creature looked like and two nights later on Coast To Coast AM there was an episode on Shadow People (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_people) – the description was dead on. Once the kids grew up a little bit more and he realized it wasn’t normal to be visited at night by Mr. Raccoon, he became afraid of the visits and this pissed Mr. Raccoon off.

I wish I could remember more episodes involving Mr. Raccoon, and I am going to call my friend now and ask him to remind me. Perhaps I will post an update because I remember that Mr. Raccoon was not a nice being at all.

4.
If you live in Chicago then you probably know about the “Red Lion” – reportedly one of the most haunted spot in Chicago. Well my wife, a few friends, and I all went to the bar for some fish n’ chip and then headed up to the (more haunted) upstairs.

There is a tiny bar in this portion and we ordered our drink and joked with the bartender about the hauntings. He basically said that the more drinks into the night you are the more likely you will “see a ghost”. We were only 1 beer into the night when my wife excused herself to the bathroom. At the time we only knew that the bar was haunted, we didn’t know about, as one web-site puts it, “…a strong presence in the upstairs women’s restroom”.

2 minutes go by and my wife comes out of the bathroom, white as a sheet – and for a polish girl to be noticeably more pale than normal is a feat – and demands that we leave the bar. Once safely at a Baskin-Robins down the street she said that she unlocked the stall door and when she tried to open the stall door there was a massive force behind the door holding it shut. The lights went out and something pushed her down towards the toilet. The lights came on and the stall door casually swung open.

atheist

”Top of the World”
First off my mother and I ride horses with a group of rather adventerous people and when we get together we’re all prone to do stupid stuff like go to places that are haunted in our area. Second off all I’d like to say that I am not the type of person to be easily spooked or upset by the supernatural. In fact I posted earlier in this thread about the ghost I am currently living with, whom does not bother me with its antics (unless of course I’m reading HM’s vampire nazi ghost story oh god that was scary).

Anyways one day last summer we all decided to go the the Cuyahoga Metropark to the site called Top of the World. There used to be a house and barn up there but the house was demolished in 2003 I believe. According to legend, the farm was built on top of an indian burial ground (how cliche), which somehow caused the first owner to go mad and murder is family and then hang himself in the barn. These details seem a little sketchy to me and I’m already skeptical about this place, but the rest of the party wants to go and I don’t want to miss out on anything. Looking back I’m not sure if that was a good thing or not.

So we get there and my friend Barry whips out his camera to take pictures becasue it’s a nice summer day and supernatural or none it’s really pretty in the parks. but it’s a no-go becasue the batteries are dead. Not a big deal or anything significant, he just forgot to check them at home right? Well Barry is the most anal retentive person I know, hes like a freaking boy scout being always prepared and whatnot. So he starts making a fuss about how the batteries were new and what bullshit it is there dead and so on. I figure he’s going to be on this tangent for a while so I go off to poke around for awhile so everybody can calm down. I circle the outside of the barn, it looks like somebody has been taking care of it so I figured metroparks was going to start using it for storage.

I walk around to the back of the barn and lo and behold theres a little path into the woods. I love the woods so I decide to walk down it for a little while and enjoy nature. This turned out to be my mistake.
As i get deeper into the woods I start to notice two things: one, it has gotten considerably darker and two, the woods are completely silent. I dont get upset though because I figure the foliage has gotten thicker and it’s probably silent because the animals percieve me as a predator and are being quiet. Stupid Stupid Stupid me decides to go on.

The path suddenly turns and around the bend I find a dead racoon. This is when I start to freak out because it looks freshly dead and there are no marks on it like you would usually see if it had been killed by another animal or been shot. It looked like it had just dropped dead on the path. But it didn’t look old or look like it had any other reason to just drop dead.

So Im standing there looking at it and I start to become filled with this sense of dread, like something does not want me there. I go to turn around to make my way back to the clearing when I see a man standing in the woods about 50ft. to my right. He was dressed in a white shirt and a black jacket with a black wide brimmed hat. The really strange thing about him was his eyes. Even though I was far away from him I could see that they were yellow, like a cats. I stare at him with an overwhelming horror, and he tells me in a deep gravely voice “Get away from this place, atheist” I run like hell back up the path and to the clearing to where the rest of my group is still arguing about the damn batteries. I get there and I start to bawl.

After calming down and telling them my story, the group want to check the path out. And because I did not want to be left alone i reluctanly went with them. We go down the trail to where it turns, nothing. No dead coon, no wierd cat eyed man. It’s bright and the birds are chirping. At this point the group thinks i’m lying and start to make fun of me. I get pissed and insist it’s true, arguing with them all the way back to the car. My mom’s the only one who believes me (thank you mom), until we get to a restuaruant for lunch and Barry’s camera starts working again.

Yeah, that was a fun day.

Plasma1010

anyway this is my personal experience that happened in like 2002 it was during the summer of 10th grade, oddest thing to happen in my life to date …

At around 3am in a very secluded area of Nissequogue, NY, 3 others and I decided to venture to the bottom of a decently long, pitch black driveway of another friends house from his house to the main road. We were awaiting a friend who was coming from maybe a mile up the main road. This town of Long Island is forcefully residential, development is banned and contains no street lights in the entire town EXCEPT in front of the police station and fire department only. His driveway happened to be between the fire department and police station giving off a little light to the right and left of us.

(we did not do drugs or drink in 10th grade)

About a half hour into our wait we were looking to the right of us and talking nonsense. A man literally appeared out of nowhere and was pacing at a decent speed up the road. (right to left) There were a few odd noticeable faults in this man. If by chance he didn’t just materialize and the 3 people including myself had made a mistake, it doesn’t explain the following: He was void of any colors or features, he floated along the ground and a faster speed then he was moving his legs to walk, and he did not once change his posture or look at us while conversing with myself. I said “Hey” as he walked by and he said “Hello”. I asked him where he was going? (because damn) It’s late to trek 2.5 miles to any civilization at 3am. He said “My wife kicked me out of the house, I’m going to the hotel up the road”. I responded with something along the lines of “Oh, okay see you later” and he said nothing but literally faded away as he went towards the police station.

About 2 minutes after the encounter my friend came into view and was rushing towards us at a high rate of speed, out of breath, white faced, before we could even speak he said “A man appeared in front of me, said ‘Hey’ as he was passing, I was startled and I said ‘Oh, hey’ then I turned around and he was gone” At this point we explained our story as all 4 of us rushed up the driveway.

The next morning my mother picked me up from my friends house. The one question I had on my mind besides the paranormal aspects of the story was “What hotel was he talking about?” I told my mother the story as we were driving up the road we had seen the apparition on the night before and she replied “There used to be a hotel at the top of this road, but it burnt down in the 70’s”

Senior Woodchuc

Something odd happened in my high school’s black box theatre during the fall of my senior year (1999-2000). I did not personally witness any supernatural events; as such, I can only relate the facts I know. However, they add up to one of three conclusions:

1. A small number of people, perhaps just one, got a strange feeling one night during a show, and what followed was a case study in copycat syndrome.
2. My school’s entire theatre group embarked on a rather complicated and drawn out plot to make fun of me for being a genre nerd.
3. We were visited by something or someone from beyond the realms we know.

Before I begin the story proper, allow me to post a pathetic MSPaint blueprint of the Black Box:

My senior year in high school was probably my favorite of all the years I spent in public education. I turned 18, blew the doors off of the SATs, got my first kiss, wrote college entrance essays on Watchmen & Preacher, saw Dogma (still one of my top ten favorite movies), and was cast in the fall play alongside six of the closest friends I’ve ever had. But that last milestone carries with it a darker subtext. Something happened during the run of that play, not to me, but to a number of the people around me, and I found myself a supporting character in an entirely different drama: one of the unexplained.

There were about thirty kids in the theatre group (International Thespian Troupe 311 represent!) that fall, along with our well-established director and avuncular tech director (who bore a slight resemblance to Sully from Monsters, Inc., but that’s neither here nor there, especially since the film had yet to be released at the time). All of us, in one way or another, worked on the show, which was cast in late August, began rehearsals and set-building in September, and ran the final two weekends in October (Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights, with an all-night cast party following the set-strike on the final night). The show was an obscure 1980s peace about the troubles in Northern Ireland, by an author who had seemingly dropped off the map shortly after its first, and as far as we knew, only performance. But it was a damn good play nonetheless, and we were all proud to be taking part. For the seniors in particular, it was a culmination of the years of work we’d put into the program and our skills. Spirits were high, and as we moved through Bloody Saturday towards opening night, the air was filled with that pervasive energy you only get as a collaborative creative endeavor finally begins to cohere into a whole that is more than the sum of its parts.

Everything went off without a hitch, I thought. Some nights were less oomph-y than others, but you get that in every show. The run was marred (if you want to call it that) by only one thing: one of the assistant stage managers, a girl upon whom I was rather sweet but later started dating one of my best friends, collapsed outside the furniture room during a performance. She did so silently, and recovered quickly after a brief lie-down in the inner office. She’d recently had a bout of mono, so we all assumed it was a relapse and thought nothing more of it. After closing and strike, preparations began for the winter show, and with the spring UIL One-Act-Play competition looming after that, my mind quickly moved on to other things.

As the weeks progressed, though, I found myself being approached by a number of the troupe with singularly odd questions. I had spent a lot of time waiting backstage during the show; had I felt anything weird? Didn’t the Box seem colder than usual for that run? I liked to sort of “Zen out” while waiting for my cues; had I wandered into the shop at all during that time? Did I believe in ghosts?

Even for this group, I was always kinda the weird one. I liked genre fiction and comic books, and I’d argue the side of any outlandish thing like UFOs or faerie abductions for shits and giggles. I’d taken to quoting Shakespeare’s “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio” line as an argument that we’re never really sure about anything, just in possession of the best guess our limited senses and knowledge can make. If I’d been a D&D poster at the time, I’d have been insufferable. But I was open-minded, and wouldn’t make fun of people for relating strange experiences. Which, in one way or another, contributed to people coming forward to me.

Slowly, over the period between January and March, I pieced together the story: A number of the troupe, mostly girls, had experienced odd feelings of sinister cold backstage, especially near the furniture room and wood shop, during the performances. A few who had tried to go into the shop had been unable to, citing again the strange cold, along with a terrifying “wrongness” in the air. Many said they felt uncomfortable sitting in the furniture room during downtime, and none had stayed there much longer. The girl who had collapsed had felt a very sudden and paralyzing cold come over her right before she fell. Some of the guys said they had felt a bit uneasy at times, but most of the stories came from the girls. One in particular bothered me, as the girl who told it was, well, rather butch. Not in the sense of full-on lesbianism, but in the sense that she was very strong-willed, tough to freak out, and not given to flights of fancy. She had been one of the girls who was terrified of going into the shop, which shocked me since she was unofficial “shop matron,” and had literally spent entire nights there during long working weekends.

In almost every instance, someone came to me alone. Once, four or five of us discussed it while sitting around in the Box rather than going to a pep rally. Another time, about ten of us were watching movies, drinking small amounts of liquor, and bullshitting long into the night one weekend when someone’s parents were out of town. In every case, the stories were identical. In every case, they were limited to the performances; both before and after the show’s run, the strange coldness and feelings were absent. To my knowledge, they never arose again. The Black Box is now entirely a woodshop following the building of a full auditorium on campus, and no strange events have been reported to this day.

There are, as I have said, several explanations. Superstitious groupthink, a prank at my expense, good old fashioned science. But there’s one thing I’ve subsequently learned that makes me wonder what really happened backstage during those performances. It’s a fact that, as far as I know, only I was ever aware of, and that only several years after the fact.

In college, I was bored-ly websurfing in my room one afternoon when I decided to google the play we’d been performing, and the playwright. There, I learned a fact that, perhaps only because of my imaginative nature, caused a brief chill to run up my spine.

The playwright died in 1992 without ever writing another play. To my knowledge, the play has only been produced three times, ours being the most recent.

I don’t know, and I doubt I ever will, if we had an unseen, uninvited member in our audience for that run. But if we did, I hope he enjoyed what he saw.