Tales From the Low Roads (WARNING: grisly content).

[Low_Roads]

Title notwithstanding, this series of horror short-stories bears little kinship to my Low Roads fetish comic. It's an older piece, one that I began in the fall of 2001 and continued for two years (104 stories altogether: one each week); and while some of its landscape, situations and minor characters have been adapted into the current graphic work, the tone here is much more grim and realistic (no furry half-animals running around). These stories have been patterned after urban folklore; the style is purposely ungainly to mimic speech rather than writing.

All 104 stories will be presented in this one thread. Don't look for any continuity right off; it will develop slowly as the tales accumulate:

Low Roads Story #1

Meat on the Spit​

In the spring of 1937, work got finished on the Monticello Dam project. The big canal system, the one that made irrigating Gordon Valley and Ross Valley so much more efficient, also ended then. The canals took water from the Putah River, which poured right out of big discharge pipes at the bottom of the dam. In olden days before the reservoir, the river water flowed into creeks, and the farmers would pump creek water for their crops. But after the canals went in, the creek mouths were blocked up to divert it. Valves could open to flush water into them during the winter so the Putah wouldn't flood. But in summer, the creek bottoms could go bone dry if it was hot enough.

So what happened with these dry creek beds was that, it being cooler down there, people started to live in them. Mexican laborers would camp out in the creeks because those systems could stretch far away from the paved roads. They were hard to access, and the Mexicans could dodge Immigration Services that way. Hobos would live there too, so they wouldn't get hassled by the sheriffs. If kids wanted a little adventure, they could go down in groups to explore. Sometimes you could run across an immigrant who had fireworks or girly magazines to sell. Sometimes you could find liquor or drugs to buy. The cops never cleaned these guys out because they moved around alot and it was hard to locate anyone.

There was a story about this one hobo who lived by himself in a really remote branch of one of the creeks. You could never find him anywhere during the day, but at night he would sometimes wander past other camps. He'd suddenly emerge out of the black into the firelight, asking if there were any local kids around. He claimed to have drugs or stolen watches to sell cheap and if anyone was interested they could come back to his camp. This guy was supposed to be a cannibal. He was supposed to have an old steamer trunk full of bones from the people he ate. Since no one ever knew where his camp was, you couldn't be sure if this was true. No one could figure out why the steamer trunk never floated away in the winter, when the creeks were flooded.

So anyway, I guess a couple of field workers actually did disappear one day. A sheriff's deputy went undercover to go down with the vagrants and the Mexicans to see if he could find out what happened to them. He searched alot of the more remote paths where no one liked to go, but he didn't have much luck.

Then after about four days went by, he met with a local rancher who complained about hearing this crazy, raucous singing coming up from the creek that ran past his property the night before. He'd had a look down there the next day, but didn't see anything odd except the ashes from a campfire. The deputy staked out the property and that night he and the rancher went down into the creek. They waited, and finally the wild singing started up again.

They crept toward it and saw that a fire was going. The old hobo was there. He was turning a roasting spit over the fire. One of the field hands was on it. The spit was stuck through his mouth and out his butt, and his arms and legs were wired to his body. The old man must have been eating some every night, because there wasn't much meat left. The deputy called out for him to give up, but the hobo screamed out and tried to run off. The deputy fired and killed him on the spot.

When the rest of the sheriff's department showed up they made a thorough examination of the site. The body on the spit really was one of the guys who disappeared. The other one was never found for sure. After a little searching, they located the steamer trunk behind some bushes. It weighed too much for anyone to carry. When they opened it up, they found a solid white brick inside that filled the trunk almost all the way to the top. It was made out of hammered bone. The sheriff figured that when the hobo threw bones into the trunk he'd smack them flat with a rock until they were fused with the old bones. They estimated that the trunk might have held the remains of fifty skeletons. Anyway, that's why the trunk never floated off in the winter. It was too heavy.


Next: "The Man Who Was Pulled Apart".

 

[His Divine Shadow]

I think I'll enjoy this series. Off to a good start, that's for sure! :happy: Can't imagine what that bone chest must have looked like, though. 😵

 

[Low_Roads]

Thanks HDS! 🙂 The tone here is supposed to recall tales told around a campfire; specifically, the sort of spooky narrative one might share in a Low Roads creek-bed camp (that'll be touched on a little later). While each entry will be a separate entity (obstensively unrelated to the rest), past incidents will be referenced and some of the characters will repeat and interact, creating a loose continuity.

About the bone box... you're right, it would be a tough subject to portray graphically. Happily, I've never had to draw it! :laughing:

 

[Abadon XXX1]

Creepy, but cool ^^

 

[Low_Roads]

Creepy, but cool ^^

Thank you, Abadon! Just the impression I'd hoped to create! Meat on the Spit, being the first story in the series (and thus required to carry the lion's share of set-up information) is a bit less distinctive and outre than future entries will be. Stranger, grimmer creatures than cannibals are waiting in the wings... many of them the heroes of the piece!

 

[Journia]

I liked this story. It reminds me of a story some kids would tell at a campfire in the boy scouts. This also gives me fodder for new ideas and story plots of my own. This is quite magnificent, and I am sure that the next 103 stories will be just as magnificent.

 

[Low_Roads]

Thanks, J! Glad you liked it! I've imagined this as the sort of story kids tell at summer camp (as I've lived on remote farmland my whole life, summer camp is something I'd never had any opportunity or need to attend). At any rate, I've done my best to replicate the tone and cadence of urban legends I've read in Jan Brunvand books. Nothing "urban" about this one, of course... it's sort of a rural urban legend! :laughing:

 

[Journia]

As can be expected from the Littlebighead himself!

 

[Low_Roads]

Low Roads Story #2

The Man Who Was Pulled Apart​

Back in the '60s there was an old farmer who lived on about five acres in Ross Valley. He was retired and his field was mainly brush, but he kept a little plot in back where he'd plant some row crops. It wasn't much, just enough to keep him busy. He'd put in squash, a few carrots, a couple of rows of pole tomatoes, and a little stand of corn. He'd use a garden hose to water them and spent alot of time hoeing the weeds. Some of what he raised he'd sell at Farmer's Market and some of it he'd put up for himself or give to friends.

This old guy didn't have any family. He preferred to spend most of his time alone tending his crops. So it was about a week before anyone missed him and decided that he might have had some trouble. There was a couple who'd get some of his preserves who thought they might look in on him. When they got to his place it seemed deserted. No one answered the door, but they went in anyway. No one was there. They got worried and the woman decided to look out in the field for him. It wasn't too long before the husband heard his wife scream. He rushed to her aid and saw what was left of the old man.

The sheriff and the medical examiner came out and surveyed the scene. The old farmer was out in the middle of his field. His body was in four pieces, spread out equally over about twenty feet. There was hardly any blood around and the body parts looked shriveled. They didn't smell hardly at all. The medical examiner collected the pieces and took them to the coroner's office. There was no sign of how the killing could have happened.

The coroner examined the body. It was in a very unusual condition. The coroner found that there was no blood in the remains. Holes had been bored into the flesh and the coroner believed that the blood had been pumped out through them. He also determined that the body had been pulled to pieces as though it had been on a rack from the middle ages. He was at a loss to explain how this could have occurred.

The sheriff went back to the old man's property. After making a thorough search, he found something very odd. It was a hole in the ground. At first it seemed to be just a gopher hole. It was about the same size and shape. But on closer examination he found that the earth around it was very hard, like cement. He scraped away the loose dirt and saw that there was a tube about a foot across extending into the ground. The sheriff got a crew of men together. They dug down around the tube about twelve feet deep. The tube flared out until it was about four feet across. It was about the same shape as a coke bottle. It was rounded at the bottom and a matt of small, tough roots held it to the earth.

The sheriff ordered that the tube be broken open. A couple of the workers brought a wedge and a sledgehammer and went to work. The hardened cement was tough, but soon they broke through the wall. They broke away one whole side of the tube. Inside was a coiled up object. It appeared to be made of wood and looked like a thick tapered vine. The end of the vine was open and dilated and contracted. It glistened with a milky moisture. Everyone thought it looked like an ugly open throat. The vine was bigger toward the other end at the bottom, about the same thickness as a South American anaconda. The whole thing squirmed very slowly in the sunlight.

The medical examiner approached the vine. He took out a knife and made an incision. Red blood began to leak out. It soon stopped and hardened like it was tree sap. The medical examiner took a sample. Later it was determined that the blood was the same type as the old farmer's. The medical examiner wanted to preserve the plant, but the sheriff ordered that it be burned. Diesel fuel was brought and they set it on fire. It didn't burn very well and they had to keep pouring on the gas. The whole time, the vine snaked around very slowly. Eventually they burned it into ash.

After the vine was dead the sheriff ordered his men to search the whole property thoroughly. They soon found three more holes about the same size. These holes were right about in a line with where the body parts had been located. The sheriff ordered up some dynamite and had these tubes blown up. Then they poured gas down into the cracks and burned up what was left of the vines.

This is what the sheriff thought happened: the farmer had gotten too close to one of the holes. He was old and got tired easy. Maybe he lay down to rest and fell asleep. One of the vines got ahold of him. It burrowed into him and started to pump out his blood. Then the other vines wriggled out and each one grabbed an arm or a leg. When the vines started to pull the body toward their holes they pulled it apart. After all the blood was gone, the vines slid back into the tubes to digest it.

They named the vines "Quarter Vines" because of what happened to the old man. Everyone figured that the vine seeds must have washed down the Putah River from high country and been deposited after the last flood. A big exhaustive search was supposed to have been made, but they didn't find any more. Only I heard that one more vine was found. It was on the old farmer's land, farther down the property than the ones that were destroyed. It was a smaller one. The tube was about six feet long. I heard that men from Travis Air Base took it away. They bred more and took the plants to Vietnam. They were supposed to have airdropped Quarter Vine seeds all over the country to kill the Viet Cong.


Next: "Landing Lights".

 

[Journia]

Ooooh...I like it. Quarter Vines. Reminds me of the old scary stories I used to read from the libraries. You have quite a knack for the Campfire voice Littlebighead. I find it interesting how the military alwaysd wriggle in somehow. Now they put it all over the viet cong. The novel idea.

 

[Low_Roads]

Thank you, J! Glad you like the Viet Cong angle! I figured it would help establish period. Plus, tall tales and urban folklore are genres where unsubstantiated hyperbole actually increases verisimilitude!

 

[His Divine Shadow]

I knew as soon as I saw the title that I'd like this installation. However, I have a question:

But on closer examination he found that the earth around it was very hard, like cement.

The hardened cement was tough, but soon they broke through the wall.

Just happened to see that. Don't know why it got to me. 😛

Those Quarter Vines strike me as a cross between a Graboid, a Sandworm, and a Sarlacc, with a bit of Piranha Plant thrown in for seasonings. Or, with the blood fixation, the omnipresent Audry Jr. Seems I find a bit of that green one in many of your tales, aye aye. Splendid little yarn! :happy:

 

[Low_Roads]

Thanks HDS! Glad the series is clicking with you so far! The Quarter Vine idea is patterned after the ant lion (in that it's a stationary trap predator), so the sand worm/graboid comparison is most apt, both of them being sand critters! The sarlacc, too (one of Lucas' least energetic beasties. I've always thought of it as the "golf cup" monster), what with the groping tendril. But then, the Piranha Plant might be most accurate of all, considering the pipe-like lair...

The "cement" burrow (dirt, actually, hardened by impacting and by infused fluids from the vine) serves as both shelter and ambush cover for its host. The idea came from observation of gopher holes, the bane of ditch irrigation. Water can pour into a gopher hole literally all day long without ever filling it up... makes one most curious about what's really down there...

Indeed, Audry Jr. yet again! No use denying it... the image is indelibly engraved!

 

[Low_Roads]

Low Roads Story #3

Landing Lights​

The town of Fairview is east of the farming land in Ross and Gordon Valleys on the other side of the freeway. Farther east still is Travis Air Force Base. They built the airfield during World War II to guard the coast in case of invasion. Since there was no invasion, it was used mostly for training. The base became even more important during the Korean War and Vietnam War. Alot of the pilots learned to fly the B-52s at Travis.

Most of the civilian employees for the base lived in Fairview. One lady who was a nurse at the base hospital had a young son. She was a widow, so she didn't have any husband to look after him when she was away. She would sometimes have to take her son with her onto the base when she couldn't find anyone to watch him. He was about ten years old. He would hang around the airfield while his mom worked, watching the jets and B-52s take off and land. The big bombers would go for flights of about twenty minutes, making a big circle and then coming back, so the crews could get practice with take-offs and landings. This would go on day and night.

The boy was really anxious to take a flight on one of the B-52s. He noticed that there was a little mesh cage around the landing lights on the underbelly of the plane. It was there to keep birds from hitting the lights while the plane was in flight and breaking them. But there was an access door on the side of the cage so that the ground crew could adjust or replace the lights. You could only reach it with a ladder.

One morning the ground crew found something strange on the tarmac. It was a trail of thick, milky substance, about five inches wide, stretching all the way down the runway. They examined it and found that it was tallow. They trailed the line of tallow to one of the B-52 bombers. Fatty grease was dripping from the cage that covered the landing lights. They had a look in the cage. Inside was a small, sizzled skeleton. It was partly charred and almost all the flesh had been melted off.

The body belonged to the ten-year-old boy. The night before, his mother had had to work late. He was near the airfield watching the planes take off when he noticed a technician adjusting one of the landing lights. The technician left for a minute and the boy sneaked over to the ladder and hid himself in the cage so he could go for a ride. He wanted a thrill. They removed the ladder and the bomber left. There wasn't any problem to start with. It was just a training flight and the plane didn't go that high. But then when it came time for the landing, the lights were switched on. They were really powerful, intense lights that were really hot. As soon as the light hit the young boy, the fat started to bubble out of his flesh. All the meat melted off him, just leaving the skeleton.

The whole incident was hushed up. There was a big air show scheduled to take place on the base in about a week's time and no one wanted the bad publicity. The nurse never did find out what became of her son.


Next: "The Neon River".

 

[Journia]

Dang....Sizzled skeletons and fatty tallow. The makings of a gruesome mystery. Perhaps that will be the next adventure of Habeas Corpus...the curse of the tallow light boy. Fodder for thought if you ask me.
This was short and sweet, fast paced and all too Littlebighead.

 

[Violetta]

Those were so awesomely creepy, dude! I love how these stories don't try to twist or anything. They're just in your face gory. A simple look at how horrific this world is. Can't wait for more. Gotta see just how nasty things can get my #104. 😉

 

[Low_Roads]

Dang....Sizzled skeletons and fatty tallow. The makings of a gruesome mystery. Perhaps that will be the next adventure of Habeas Corpus...the curse of the tallow light boy. Fodder for thought if you ask me.
This was short and sweet, fast paced and all too Littlebighead.

Thanks, J! 🙂 This mystery might prove a tad tame for Habeas (no sinister masterminds like Sunni Agyptus running loose in Tabor County to complicate things... not yet, at least), though I'm sure mom would be grateful for the enlightenment. Or maybe not... the boy's sticky end is an image to haunt the memory.

Those were so awesomely creepy, dude! I love how these stories don't try to twist or anything. They're just in your face gory. A simple look at how horrific this world is. Can't wait for more. Gotta see just how nasty things can get my #104. 😉

Thank you, Sammi! Very pleased you're enjoying the series! And you've cut right to the heart of its approach, which is to purvey a sense of inevitable unpleasantness or strangeness (which is the way urban legends tend to play; also those awful high-school "scare" films, the ones that demonstrate the hazards of drug use, driving too fast or carnal contact), rather than provide an O.Henry style reversal. By the time we get to 104, a few repeating characters and situations will have emerged. The series will have assumed a rough story sense, though nothing too obvious or rigid (the omnibus structure will pervade to the very end).

 

[Violetta]

Would I be right in assuming it takes on a feel like "The Call of Cthulhu?" Where several seemingly unrelated events are recounted by a single storyteller to present, if not a defineable center to the horrors, a motif of related terrors?

 

[Low_Roads]

Would I be right in assuming it takes on a feel like "The Call of Cthulhu?" Where several seemingly unrelated events are recounted by a single storyteller to present, if not a defineable center to the horrors, a motif of related terrors?

That's a pretty good analogy, really; it's been a while since I read "The Call of C'thulhu", but as I recall it's a narrative cobbled together from parts of unrelated newspaper articles and journal entries. The Low Roads narrative is similar, in that each individual story is a stand-alone (the sort of story one might hear around a Low Roads campfire on any given night); they'll only gain a sense of cohesion once they're grouped and correlated. Not all of them will add to any plot sense; the majority will simply contribute to a general atmosphere of dread and uncertainty. The larger story must be gleaned after the fact.

 

[Violetta]

That's a pretty good analogy, really; it's been a while since I read "The Call of C'thulhu", but as I recall it's a narrative cobbled together from parts of unrelated newspaper articles and journal entries. The Low Roads narrative is similar, in that each individual story is a stand-alone (the sort of story one might hear around a Low Roads campfire on any given night); they'll only gain a sense of cohesion once they're grouped and correlated. Not all of them will add to any plot sense; the majority will simply contribute to a general atmosphere of dread and uncertainty. The larger story must be gleaned after the fact.

I'm in the process of rereading it, actually, and that's basically what it is. A lot of bits pulled from different places and then pieced together to point to our favorite citizen of R'lyeh. It seemed the way you described the way future stories would work together at times, that it would sorta build up similarly. Which I find to be really cool that in The Low Roads there's not a single being causing this misfortune, but a feeling like it's simply a god forsaken spot on the map, haunted by strange occurances perpetrated by even stranger creatures at times. So delightfully creepy because (aside from the occassional bogey. 😉) there's nothing to combat. Nothing you can fight against to get away. Just by being there makes anyone a potential victim.

Ia! Ia! LittleBigHead ftaghn! 😉

 

[Low_Roads]

... Which I find to be really cool that in The Low Roads there's not a single being causing this misfortune, but a feeling like it's simply a god forsaken spot on the map, haunted by strange occurances perpetrated by even stranger creatures at times. So delightfully creepy because (aside from the occassional bogey. 😉) there's nothing to combat. Nothing you can fight against to get away. Just by being there makes anyone a potential victim.

I'm delighted to hear that this sense is coming across; it's precisely (like word for word!) what I'd hoped to achieve! While I don't dislike apocalyptic, hierarchical scenarios (I'm a big fan of the Cthulhu Mythos, "Doc" Smith's Lensmen series, Tolkein's Middle Earth and Judeo/Christian iconography), I was eager here to make threats seem more arbitrary. Frequently (as in "Landing Lights") bizarre accident will be involved, without any hint at all of outre forces. The sense should be that bogeys and haunts can be just as prey to misfortune and victimization as the more recognizable humanity. Such ambiguity is meant to saw away any sense of grounding, just as you say so well; any place one chooses to stand may be the fatal spot.

Ia! Ia! LittleBigHead ftaghn! 😉

Great Old One-Speak! Very hip!

 

[Low_Roads]

Low Roads Story #4

The Neon River​

This happened back in the '50s. There had been a drought in the winter and on the following summer the creek beds in Gordon and Ross Valleys had gone bone dry. The next winter wasn't any better. The Putah River was so low that the floodgates that fed the creeks were never opened. Except for a couple of random showers, the creeks never saw any water at all.

That next growing season was a really hot one. The migrant laborers who camped out in the creek beds never even stoked up campfires since it never cooled off. One night, a Mexican in one of the camps woke up to a weird cracking noise coming from somewhere down the way. After that, he saw a blue glow arising from the same direction. He thought it was unusual, but was too scared to check it out by himself.

The next day, when the Mexicans tried to go to work, they saw a big crowd of people staring down into the dry creek about three hundred yards from where they had been that night. They went to investigate. Down at the bottom of the creek bed was a huge tunnel mouth about five feet across. A tall cone of loose dirt was piled around the hole from where it had been pushed through. Out of this tunnel flowed thousands and thousands and thousands of pale blue worms. Each one was huge, about six feet long and five or six inches thick. They didn't resemble earthworms but were slick and oily looking. They flowed out in a flood that filled the whole bottom of the creek a couple of feet deep. The whole scene appeared like slowly flowing, roiling floodwater.

The sheriffs were contacted and they called in experts from the university up north. Soon, animal experts from everywhere came to take a look. News reporters came too, and even a TV crew set up a camera. In the meantime, gawkers from all over had lined the creek bank.

The slithering flood of worms poured non-stop from their hole and down the creek bed for about three whole miles. They flowed under the bridge on Ledgewood Road and past several ranches before disappearing into another tunnel about the same size that they had pushed into the ground.

Around the time the sun began to sink, people noticed that the whole slithering mass glowed with an intense blue light. At night the glow was so bright it blotted out everything else. People who watched were almost hypnotized by the spectacle of the slowly rolling, phosphorescent flood.

Scientists tried to take samples of the worms, but they proved impossible to snare. The experts attached hooks and containers to long poles and dipped them down. The worms would avoid them. If somebody got lucky and did snag one, it would come apart. The worms broke into pieces easily. When this happened, the pieces would just keep wriggling along with the rest, as though they were still alive.

One local guy thought he had a plan to catch one. He got some of his buddies together and they parked a car on the Ledgewood Bridge. They tied a rope to the bumper and he got a plastic bucket with a lid. The idea was to lower him down so he could grab one in the bucket. He must have thought the scientists would pay alot for a sample, for him to take this chance. So he went over the side and they started to back up the car. Well, it must have been one crummy rope. The guy got about halfway down and it snapped. He plunged down into the middle of the worms and they immediately rolled over him. He completely disappeared from sight. People on the bank tried to save him. They stuck poles down where he went in and farther down where he should have been swept, but he never grabbed ahold of one. No trace of him was ever seen again.

After that, the police and the military pushed back the crowds. They set up barriers so no one else would get killed. Scientists kept an eye on the worms, but didn't try to take any more samples.

For three whole weeks the flow went on completely non-stop. Experts who were counting estimated there must have been billions and billions of worms.

Then one night the local folks noticed that the glow had stopped. The last of the worms had slithered down the new tunnel and everything was quiet. The authorities went down into the creek bed to examine it. There was not a trace of vegetation or anything living between the two tunnels. It had been swept clean. The experts took a look at the two tunnels, but the first one was already starting to cave in. No one could be found who was brave enough to go down into the second hole. They took some echo soundings, but didn't learn much.

That winter the drought finally ended and it rained heavily. All traces of the tunnels were washed away in the floods that followed.


Next: "The Man Who Stayed Behind".

 

[Low_Roads]

Low Roads Story #5

The Man Who Stayed Behind​

When they were building Monticello Dam back in the '30s there was a little town by the lakeside. It wasn't much of a town. I don't know what it was called. But because once the dam was built the lake would be four times bigger, the town would be swallowed up by water. The government bought out everybody and moved them away.

There was one guy in the town that nobody liked. He hung around mostly by himself and was always surly if he met anyone. He had a bad reputation and everyone suspected him of crimes. When the rest of the residents moved out he didn't want to go. A crew with bulldozers came in to demolish the buildings and haul away the rubble. Nobody ever saw this man, but a couple of times equipment was sabotaged. He was supposed to hide under the foundations and basements of the destroyed buildings. Sometimes the crew would run across empty cans from the food he ate. The authorities tried to catch him but failed.

So after awhile the demolition work was done and the workers left. The sheriff quit trying to catch the guy. He figured that once the water started to rise, the man would have to move out. People who knew him weren't so sure. There was some speculation that since the lake would rise slowly, he might work out a way to live underwater. That way he could have what was left of the town all to himself. It was a crazy thought, but people took it seriously.

When the reservoir was finally full, it became a popular vacation spot. People would come from all over to swim and water ski. Occasionally someone would drown. Every time this happened the locals would blame it on the man underwater. They were real nervous about the part of the lake where the town used to be. They figured that all the recreation irritated him and he would pull people to their deaths.

So one day a man and his wife came out to do some water skiing on the lake. The woman was just learning and wasn't very good yet. When it was her turn, she lost her balance and fell over. The husband turned around to pick her up, but when he got close he saw a splotchy, greenish hand reach up out of the water and grab her hair. It pulled her under. That was the last anyone ever saw of her. The husband was the only person who had ever actually seen one of the murders happen.

The husband went home. Seeing his wife being killed made him deranged. He ordered some books and learned how to make bombs. He learned how to weight them so they would sink to the bottom of the lake and how to treat the fuses so that water wouldn't put them out.

Not long after that, he went back to the lake. He had brought about fifty bombs with him in a gunnysack. When he had gotten his boat to the spot where the old sunken town was supposed to be, he started chucking in the explosives. People on the shore yelled for him to stop and someone went off to call the police.

But then a figure came splashing to the surface. No one could see it too well, but it seemed to be green and covered with slime. It struck off to get away from the guy in the boat.

The husband steered his boat after the figure in the water, still throwing bombs. When the figure was on the surface, he would shorten the fuse so the black powder would go off sooner. When it submerged, he would leave the fuse a little longer. The thing in the water tried to shake the guy in the boat but couldn't. The chase stretched across the whole length of the lake. Soon, the two of them approached the rope barrier that kept the public away from the Glory Hole.

The Glory Hole is a big vertical concrete tube built inside the dam. It's there so that when the water level gets too high the overflow can pour in and take pressure off the dam. The mouth of the tube is big, about twenty feet across. That year there had been alot of rain. Lake water was pouring down the Glory Hole about four feet above the lip.

Anyway, the boat chased the swimming figure towards this low rope that's supposed to keep boats away. Just before it hit, the creature's hand shot up out of the water and grabbed the front of the boat. It pulled itself onboard just as the boat hit the rope, skipping over it and bumping down both figures. The boat headed straight toward the Glory Hole.

The husband got back up and grabbed an oar. He swung it back and forth at the creature, who swiped at him. The two fought like that even as the motorboat plunged over the edge. They and the boat all disappeared into the Glory Hole.

It took twenty minutes before anybody could get down to the bottom of the dam where the Glory Hole emptied out. By that time the police had arrived. Pieces of the boat were all over the place downriver. All that remained of the boat driver was ground-up pulp. No solid pieces were ever found. The green creature must have been tougher. Its body had washed up on the bank. It was completely battered and all the limbs were twisted up and bent at weird angles. It was obvious that all the bones in the body were broken and the thing was dead.

They pulled the body onto a blanket and looked it over. The skin was creamy white and rubbery, with spots of moss-green all over it. The whole body was covered with at thin layer of greenish slime that seemed to ooze out of its pours. The hands had webs and the fingers had long, rough claws. The face was hairless. The mouth gaped open and slime drooled out of it. The nose was just a bump with no nostrils and the ears were just holes in the sides of its head. The eyes had no lids and were pale like the rest of the body. They had no pupils.

Locals were called over to see if they could recognize the features. No one thought this thing looked like the surly man they had blamed for all the trouble. This creature didn't resemble a human being at all.


Next: "Danger on the Farm".

 

[Low_Roads]

Low Roads Story #6

Danger on the Farm​

To people who live in town, life on the farm must look pretty ideal: lots of fresh air and no worries. But being a farmer can be pretty tough. Every way of life has its hazards, and country life is no different.

Like I remember hearing about a man who was killed in the dry yards. That's where dried fruit is made. Tall stacks of pallets are wheeled on rails into big ovens and then wheeled out when the fruit is done. This goes on night and day during the fruit season. In the daytime a big crew is on duty, but at night only a couple of people are present. Anyway, during the night shift a guy had just wheeled a stack of fruit trays into the narrow oven to be dried. His partner didn't know that he was in there and wheeled in a bunch more stacks, pinning him. It never occurred to the guy on the outside what had happened. He was pissed off because he thought his buddy had deserted him to work alone. In the morning, the new crew removed the dried fruit. They found the man's body. It was mummified by the intense heat of the oven.

Harvest time can be dangerous too. The prune crop is harvested by a machine called a prune shaker. That's a big claw arm mounted on a tractor that grabs the prune tree and vigorously shakes the fruit onto a tarp laid out on the ground. The prune is the only fruit that is tough enough to be harvested this way. Well, it seems that the guy operating the arm got careless and accidentally grabbed one of the tarp crew instead of the tree. When he hit the shaker button, the man was shaken to pieces. Limbs and blood went flying everywhere. I also heard this slightly different. The shaken man didn't come apart. Instead, his insides became liquefied. When the operator saw his mistake and stopped the arm, the man in the claw just sagged there like a bag full of liquid.

Of course, you might expect tractor work to be dangerous. In the spring, you break up the field for planting with a row of discs. Discs are rolling circular blades that you pull behind the tractor. A farmer with a faulty tractor seat fell over backwards and was run over by the discs. They found him in the field, cut into twenty pieces. I also understand that after the man was killed, the tractor went chugging along without any driver. It ran up onto his front lawn where his wife was sun bathing. She had radio earphones on and didn't hear it. The discs cut her up like a baloney as she lay on the blanket. When the kids got home from school they didn't immediately notice that anything was wrong. They decided to play a joke on Mom by pulling the blanket out from under her. When they did it, body slices went flying all over. I don't think I buy that part of it.

Farmers have to use alot of poisons to kill pests. I recall a story about a man who was filling up the rolling sprayer tank with pesticide. His two-year-old son got on top of the tank and fell in through the open hatch. The powerful poison dissolved the boy's body. The man sprayed his son all over his crops without ever knowing it.

Not spraying has its risks too. I understand that a "natural" farmer never used insecticides at all. As a result, the bugs on his ranch became really strong. Some kind of mutant insects started living under his house. One night they swarmed out from under the floorboards and ate the whole family as they slept. In the morning, only skeletons remained. This one seems pretty far-fetched to me, but not spraying will cause bugs to grow strong.

Here's a story I'm pretty sure is true. You irrigate row crops with sprinklers on metal riser pipes. The sprinklers are called rainbirds. The water in the feeder pipes is under intense pressure to keep as many rainbirds going as possible. Once, a farmer went out to adjust a faulty rainbird nozzle. The nozzle came loose before he got there. It was shot off the sprinkler with bullet velocity, hitting the man through the forehead and killing him. Another version of the story is that the farmer is bending over a faulty riser. The riser comes loose from the feeder pipe and the jet of water blows the riser and the rainbird up through the man's chin and out the top of his head. Then, he falls right back down on the feeder pipe and the rainbird starts spraying his blood all over the seedlings. This version of the story doesn't make much sense at all.

So if you live in town, don't get too cocky: you might wind up buying a farm yourself one day.


Next: "Rat Race".

 

[Low_Roads]

Low Roads Story #7

Rat Race​

Back during the Cold War, the military at Travis Air Base was responsible for developing different secret projects. Scientists would work in various closed laboratories, inventing new ways to defeat the Communists. One of these scientists experimented with rats. He worked out a way to make them more intelligent. The plan was to use them to commit acts of sabotage.

Then the Berlin Wall came down. The military budget got cut and there wasn't money for the secret experiments anymore. All the scientists lost their jobs, including the one with the intelligent rat project.

The scientist moved into a house in Fairview. He was very bitter about being unemployed. He was supposed to have destroyed the rat test subjects, but instead he smuggled them off the base. They were kept in a big cage in his living room while he worked out plans for revenge.

Later that year there were several unexplained accidents at Travis. Alot of equipment was destroyed and two men were even killed when a jet crashed. Authorities never got to the bottom of these mishaps, but there were two unusual clues. Folks on the base would complain of a loud buzzing like a big swarm of insects before each incident. No source for this was ever found. Then, lots of thin black rubber marks were found at each scene. There was a big investigation, but it came to nothing.

After all the commotion on the base had died down, a series of robberies started occurring in Fairview. The thefts were coin collections or jewelry or suchlike. Nothing large was ever stolen. No fingerprints ever showed up at the crime scenes. Then, people started getting extortion notes. If money was not paid, they would find their property destroyed later. A break line on a car would be cut or there would be a mysterious fire. No perpetrator was ever caught, but the buzzing noise was heard often.

The scientist was to blame. He had developed his rats until each one was at least as smart as a human being. Since they were trained in sabotage, they had all the skills they needed to pull off these crimes.

The scientist had developed a novel method of sending his little gang on their errands. He got the idea from when he was younger. Back in the '60s he was a big fan of the slot cars. I don't mean the little game tracks you can buy in toy stores. They used to have huge commercial ones back then, extensive enough to take up entire buildings. You could go into these places and see guys racing dozens of these little electrically driven cars side by side.

So, he built electrical cars, about a foot long. They operated just like real cars except that each one ran off a long life battery that lasted about two hours. These cars could go up to about forty on the roads. They were painted black and were very difficult to see at night. They would skip down the city streets just like a bunch of slot cars, dodging automobiles and other obstacles. The rats were skilled drivers and never had an accident. It was the hum of these little motors that people would sometimes hear at night. The rubber marks were left by the cars' little tires.

The smartest rat in the crew was one named Blacky. He was a white rat. That was one of the scientist's little jokes. Blacky had to wear a little miniature black leather jacket so that his white fur wouldn't show up at night. He would lead the others on their exploits. He was sly and knew how to get past locked doors and avoid alarms.

The scientist soon got to be well off because of the crimes. He moved into a really nice house downtown. He was living in luxury, but the rats still had to stay in their cage and eat grain pellets. They were getting tired of the arrangement, so they put their heads together and made up a list of demands.

Blacky knew how to understand English when the scientist spoke it, but he couldn't speak any himself. He only had a little rat mouth and the only noises he could make were squeaks. But he learned how to squeak Morris Code. When he delivered his demands, the scientist either didn't know Morris Code or pretended he didn't. So then Blacky taught himself how to write with a pencil.

The scientist got Blacky's note demanding a better life. There was plenty of money now, enough for all, and the man could afford to be generous. But he wanted it all for himself. He made up a plate of food and put poison on it. He figured that by this time the rats were expendable.

For several days everything was quiet at the scientist's place. His neighbors began to get worried. They had cops force open the door. Inside was the scientist. His dead body was all bloated and purple. Beside it was a note in scratchy handwriting.

The note was from Blacky. It explained everything. The scientist had given Blacky and the others the poisoned food. But by now, the rats were too smart to fall for this kind of trick. They pretended to eat it but didn't. Then, they had turned the tables on him and put poison on his food. The man never suspected that the rats would be more clever than he was. That was his undoing. There was a bag next to the body. In it was the remainder of the ill-gotten money. The rats themselves were gone and so were the little black racecars.

So that was the end of things. Without the scientist to influence them, the gang stopped doing crimes. No one has ever seen them since. But every once in awhile you can hear buzzing on the road. So behave yourself! Do wrong, and Blacky may come after you next!


Next: "Henpecked".