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

[His Divine Shadow]

Well you two have already said about all I thought of. Oh poo. 😛 I suppose I'll reiterate some so as to not appear too worthless ...

Indeed, a much more vile LBH! He has all the skulking sneakery of the Low Roads comic version with a vampiric twist! Good for Blacky and his vigilante squad. I'd agree with the sentiment of the narrator at the end; he may need to feed monthly but that is with activity. With no mischief to make he might be able to sleep for a long time ...

I look forward to more inclusions of past characters! The arrival of Blacky and his crew was a surprise.

 

[Low_Roads]

As if the HDS could ever prove worthless!

"Vigilante Squad"... that's the perfect way to put it! I intended Blacky and the rat pack as a law unto themselves, interfering whenever they saw fit and not beholden to an sort of authority. It's quite pleasing to me that their entrance into this story came as unexpected (as long as it didn't seem out of left field). The whole point of making them silent assassins was to grant them a sort of brooding omnipresence... a bunch of roving deus ex machinas in little fur suits (well, it better not be that cut and dried!)

Thanks to the skipping-around nature of the Low Roads timeline (from the '60s, to turn of the century, to present day, etc.) many Tabor County menaces will enjoy story involvement even after their demise: past events and a smoldering atmosphere of evil legend will secure their involvement as surely as incarnate presence. This flexible scheduling will be of critical importance to the story's denouement (which, of course, is still a few years away. I hope everybody's taking notes now XD!)

 

[Journia]

Well, I have seen it, and now, I am commenting...

Littlebighead is a sinister creature, and pretty messy too, leaving a lady's blood to wash about her bed and the floor, bound to the bedposts...for shame...
I liked how the story went, the description of the little mutant, the curiosity tent, and the carnival itself. It reminded me of the comic so much..brings back memories. Then the return of Blacky and the Rats of Fairview, their doing away with the evil Littlebighead, and finally, restoring peace and tranquility to the land. All in all, it was everything I was waiting for, without any strings attached! Can't wait for the next one.

 

[Low_Roads]

Littlebighead is a sinister creature, and pretty messy too, leaving a lady's blood to wash about her bed and the floor, bound to the bedposts...for shame...

Yeah, that's something that would never play well in the comic! The fetish Little Big Head needs a modicum of sympathy to be effective (if only so dominants can project themselves into his place), and this one just doesn't rouse a scrap! The untidiness would sink him for me in nothing else did... I can't abide clutter!

Thanks for the nice review, J! Another chapter coming up in a couple of weeks (I have to submit the Low Roads twice as frequently as anything else, as there's so much more of it).

 

[Cbarton]

Now the character build up starts to make itself known. Hmmm...wonder if the kids in the water tower are any kind of kinfolk to this LittleBigHead character...perhaps like a cuckoo replacing it's eggs in the other bird's nests? Will be fun to see how many of these characters link up...

 

[Low_Roads]

That's mighty sly speculation, Hawk! I've been intrigued by the idea of offspring substitution ever since John Windham's The Midwich Cuckoos... if it doesn't occur somewhere in the Low Roads, it should have!

While a few repeaters are already worked into the mix (Blacky, as you've seen... and he will be back for more), very few of the continuity elements have been introduced yet. In terms of development, I'm afraid this series is going to be glacially slow; it was going to be a long hall regardless, what with the number of individual stories, but alternating it with the Vintage Scripts and Pokemon Poetry will likely double the time it would have taken (every bloody project I start seems to stretch out till the crack of doom! There's special charm in being succinct, but that's work for someone else!)

 

[Low_Roads]

Low Roads Story #14

The Hunting Mist​

Up near the town of Blue Powder is an asylum for lunatics. This is the same asylum that the Cow Hide man escaped from. There's one inmate up there who had an interesting tale to tell.

This guy seemed so rational, alot of the keepers didn't think he was crazy at all. He didn't complain about being locked up. He seemed to prefer it.

He used to live in Fairview. He was a construction worker. He and his friends were a pretty rowdy bunch. They would do most anything to get their kicks. Going up into the country roads and driving over a hundred miles an hour was nothing to them. They would stop on tall bridges and jump or dive into the water. You could never be sure how much liquor they had taken in, although none of them ever got caught driving drunk.

There was one stunt that they'd pull a couple of times a year. They'd have done it more often, but one of them was picked up by the cops once and spent a week in jail and had to pay a fine. That made them more careful.

The activity was this: on really foggy nights, the lot of them would grab their shotguns and head out for the tulle marsh south of Fairview. The marsh was far enough out of town that gunshots would not be heard easily. Then they would split up and beat the bushes, trying to scare up waterfowl or something else to shoot. Wandering all over the marsh with shotguns was dangerous enough. Doing it in the fog was worse. But doing it at night too was really a bad idea. They were really lucky they never ended up shooting themselves or anyone else out there. But that's the way they liked it.

One innovation they came up with over time was to buy walkie-talkies. That way, if one of them got spotted by the cops, he could warn the others to lie low for awhile.

One fall night, before the rains had started and it became too wet, they decided the time was right for another hunt. It was a cold evening and a good fog had settled in. The booze flowed freely that night. The man and his four friends grabbed their guns and piled into their cars, ready for trouble.

They pulled way off the main road to avoid detection and started out into the marsh. The man followed a trail he was familiar with and his pals chose their own paths. It was quite a striking scene. Sometimes the mist would be so thick you couldn't see more than a few feet ahead of you. Then, it would drift by and clear, and you could see the moon for a few minutes. The marsh was beautiful at midnight, with the full moon making the rolling fogbanks glimmer with silver highlights. From time to time he would hear a shotgun blast and the raucous hoots of his friends.

He had just come to a piece of high ground above a clearing. Then he noticed that one of his friends had just entered the clearing. He ducked down. Hiding from each other was part of their little game. He'd get points for this later.

Just then he noticed something. It was a strange phenomenon he'd seen before. Others in the group had commented on having seen it too. It was a patch of mist that seemed separate from the rest of the fog. It seemed whiter and thicker. It didn't drift with the rest of the fog.

This piece of fog was about the size of an auto. It was just to the right of the man in the clearing. The man on the hill watched fascinated as the mist started to snake toward his friend. It swirled around the guy before he knew what happened. Then the man on the hill saw his friend start to thrash around. He immediately got on the walkie-talkie to find out what was going on. The man in the fog didn't answer. Others called in to find out what was the matter, but the man in the fog never said a word. After awhile there wasn't any more movement. The mist drifted away, leaving the clearing.

The man edged his way down to investigate. When he came to the spot, he made a gruesome discovery. His friend's body had been liquefied. Only his sopping, tarry clothes were left.

The man called up his buddies to give them the frantic news. Everyone thought it was a big joke. The whole point of going out there was to get a thrill, and they just figured he'd come up with a new way to do it.

But then another of the crew called in. He had spotted the fog and it was heading for him. The others were starting to get concerned now. The hunted man was in a panic. Everyone tried to talk at once and it got pretty chaotic. The man on the hill tried to listen to the sounds of the marsh around him, but noise seemed to come from all directions. Finally they all heard the hunted man scream out, and no one could raise him anymore.

The three remaining men decided it was time to join up and get out. Trouble was, no one could tell where anyone else was in the murk. They all started wandering about aimlessly, trying to find each other. They stayed in contact and speculated about the hunting mist. One of them thought it was a patch of acid pollution released by a factory. The man disagreed. He thought it was an unheard of marsh creature that hunted under the cover of real fog.

Soon, another of the men screamed that the mist was stalking him too. Everyone started running around blindly, screaming for help.

The man never did find out what happened to his remaining friends, because after a stumble he lost his walkie-talkie. By pure chance he found himself at the mouth of the creek bed that fed the marsh. He took off into it, anything to get away from the monster.

He chanced a look behind him. To his horror, the mist was slithering through the creek after him. All the alcohol was gone from him now. He sprinted down the creek bed in a blind panic.

Suddenly up ahead he saw a Mexican camp. He stumbled through it, waking them up. The half-awake Mexicans started cursing him, but the fog rolled over them. This gave the man a chance. While the monster was occupied, he struggled thirty feet up the bank of the creek and hid himself in some brush at the top. Before too long, the mist rolled into the space where he had been. It stopped at the spot where he had climbed the bank. It seemed to be trying to sense him. The man kept quiet and prayed. Soon, it gave up. It snaked its way back towards the marsh.

When the man told the authorities this tale, they didn't believe him. Instead, they committed him to the asylum. He didn't seem unhappy to go. The farther away from the marsh, he figured, the better.

The only times the man ever actually acted like he was crazy was when there was a heavy fog outside. He would scream that the mist was trying to get in to kill him. It wanted to finish the job.

One foggy night he got especially violent. He pounded on the door to his cell and claimed that the mist was creeping in through a crack in his window. The attendants were used to his games and didn't even check in on him. Before long, he quieted down. The next morning, they went in to feed him. Not a trace of him was to be found. Only his sticky clothes remained. But this part of the story is only rumor.


Next: "Indian Ears".

 

[c_tickler]

I've read the first two stories LBH and thought they were very X-Files like........ You really have a talent for writing creepy scripts - no wonder you did such a good job of Funghi and Fungals,
Excellent writing friend keep it up.

Ps. I may ask for your help with my Tickled Raiders II project (if thats ok?) i'm sure you would come up with some excellent short stories 🙂

 

[Low_Roads]

I've read the first two stories LBH and thought they were very X-Files like........ You really have a talent for writing creepy scripts - no wonder you did such a good job of Funghi and Fungals,
Excellent writing friend keep it up.

Thank you, CT! Very glad you're enjoying this series! The X-Files comparison is apt, as these stores are meant to be taken individually, though continuing characters and situations will provide a rough continuity. Creepy themes are the kind I naturally gravitate to; I grew up reading Edgar Allan Poe and watching The Outer Limits in a lonely, cloistered farm house miles from the nearest neighbor... probably wouldn't have been normal if all that spooky material didn't leave an impression!

Ps. I may ask for your help with my Tickled Raiders II project (if thats ok?) i'm sure you would come up with some excellent short stories 🙂

This is a most intriguing notion! Thanks so much for considering my involvement... I'll send you a PM to find out more!

 

[c_tickler]

Wow really???? i didn't know that............ i gotta say living in a really hectic city in the UK open farm land and fields are rare for me - the closest i got to farm land is a tiny farmland close to my house where as a kid we'd play run-off (hide n' seek) and other silly things like en-voking the devil in a silly part of the woods where they reckon it was cursed - BUT looking back that field is tiny but still brings back so many memories of my younger days LOL
Anyway time to stop day-dreaming and mention I've PM'd you back - Thanks for your interest hope to speak with you some more regarding the matter.
CT.

Thank you, CT! Very glad you're enjoying this series! The X-Files comparison is apt, as these stores are meant to be taken individually, though continuing characters and situations will provide a rough continuity. Creepy themes are the kind I naturally gravitate to; I grew up reading Edgar Allan Poe and watching The Outer Limits in a lonely, cloistered farm house miles from the nearest neighbor... probably wouldn't have been normal if all that spooky material didn't leave an impression!

This is a most intriguing notion! Thanks so much for considering my involvement... I'll send you a PM to find out more!

 

[His Divine Shadow]

Reminds me of the later seasons of Tremors: The Series it does! A similar all-consuming mist was on the loose, although it needed not cover of mist and knight to do its dirty work. A truly horrific monster; how can one defend against the formless?

 

[Low_Roads]

\

the closest i got to farm land is a tiny farmland close to my house where as a kid we'd play run-off (hide n' seek) and other silly things like en-voking the devil in a silly part of the woods where they reckon it was cursed...

Good lord! The devil?! That's spookier than anything I ever went through as a kid! Hope he never showed up... you might find yourself with very few options on Doomsday!

Reminds me of the later seasons of Tremors: The Series it does! A similar all-consuming mist was on the loose, although it needed not cover of mist and knight to do its dirty work. A truly horrific monster; how can one defend against the formless?

Someone made a Tremors TV series!? I never would have guessed (cable, I"ll bet. I never know what's happening on the cable stations!) How on earth does anyone get a series out of Tremors! Seems to me the worms provide only so much mileage... I can see why they chose to introduce further threatening creatures! At any rate, I so agree with the HDS about the terror of a formless foe! Locking him out won't work, not so long as there's a crack under the door or an air vent... you'd only be boxing yourself in! Here's where cartoon logic becomes invaluable! Think a mist monster would ever stymie Bugs Bunny? He'd simply suck it up with a vacuum cleaner and freeze it in an ice box (Acme! The solution to every dilema!)

 

[Low_Roads]

Low Roads Story #15

Indian Ears​

This is the story about a man who brought an Indian curse down on himself without even realizing it.

The Indian tribes who used to live in Tabor County must have had a pretty hard time. I guess things were all right before the Europeans moved in. But then Spaniards came along and made the whole area part of Mexico. They forced the tribes off the good farming land and took it for themselves. The Indians were forced to move into the remote hills where life was harder. Then the United States took over, but things didn't get any better for the Indians. They did worse and worse, until finally all the tribes in the area went extinct.

Today, if you watch the ground carefully in the spring when farmers are irrigating, you can find Indian artifacts. The water washes dirt off the obsidian arrowheads so you can see them gleam. The Indians used to go fifty miles to Glass Mountain just to get obsidian for their arrowheads and tools. Also there are plenty of shell beads around. The shells had to come from the seashore, of course. I guess shells were valuable trade goods back then. It's possible to find stone mortars and pestles too, but they show up more seldom.

There was a man a few years back who bought forty acres of farmland in Ross Valley. His plan was to grow row crops to sell alongside Rockville Road to people heading for Tabor Lake. Rockville Road saw alot of vacation traffic, especially on the weekends.

This man had two choices of how to get water for his crops. The first way was to pay the irrigation district for canal water. Tabor County had a real good canal system, supplied by the lake. If you didn't want to pay for canal water, the other option was to sink a well and pump well water. If you did that, you had plenty of water even if there was a drought.

The farmer decided he wanted to have a well. A professional crew came in with an auger and started drilling. What nobody knew was that the land on the man's farm used to be an Indian cemetery. The crew was drilling right through a grave. The bit ground the buried bones into powder. When the well was finished, bone dust must have gotten into the water table.

The first crop the man put in was a big stand of sweet corn. He figured picnickers would want plenty of corn-on-the-cob for barbecues. The corn stalks grew well, and two months later the corn was ready. After the first picking, the farmer stripped the shuck off an ear to examine his harvest.

A stunned expression crossed his face. The kernels of corn presented a base relief mosaic of an angry Indian face! It scowled right out at him from the corncob.

The man shook off his surprise. It was a shock to see the angry face, but he figured it was just some freak of nature. It might make for an interesting curiosity, but couldn't affect his business. He stripped back another ear.

This ear of corn had the same face! He shucked another ear and another. Every ear of corn had a face.

The man was at a loss to know what to do. The face was really sullen and off-putting. He figured no one would ever want to eat this corn. It turned out he was right. Travelers who stopped at his roadside stand were horrified. Nobody even bought any for the novelty value. He tried calling it "Angry Indian Corn", but no one thought that was very funny.

The farmer's brother was a rather rash man. He thought that if people saw someone eat the corn they would get over their revulsion of it. He cooked up a big pot. Something strange happened to the corn when it was cooked. The pale kernels that made up the face turned red. After that, everyone warned the brother not to eat any, but he did anyway.

He ate three of the ears of corn. After awhile he fell sick. He had to go to bed for several days. Before too long, his family noticed blood on his forehead. The man developed bleeding along his whole hairline. Doctors treated him, but nothing helped. Soon his hair sloughed off in one piece and fell on the floor. He didn't die. Skin transplants saved him, but he was never right in the head again after that.

The farmer raised another stand of corn. This time he used canal water. The corn turned out all right, so the ranch was saved. He went on to grow all sort of vegetables, but never used any of the well water again.

I've heard that some of the Indian ears got preserved in alcohol. If you're lucky, sometimes you can see one in carnival freak shows around the country.


Next: "The Shadow"

 

[His Divine Shadow]

Indian graveyard had me thinking of a completely unrelated Aqua Teen Hunger Force episode. There wasn't even an Indian graveyard involved; I believe it was elven. Don't know why I though of it.

ATHF aside, a somewhat less gruesome tale than the rest, but one with more supernatural tones. A face etched into corn ... well, people always see Jesus in the most innocent of foodstuffs, so who knows? Not I, certainly. 😛

 

[Low_Roads]

An elven graveyard... that's disturbing, the idea that elves die off (all three LoTR films, and it didn't strike me that elves can die!)

It's true... Indian Ears is rather more low-key than the usual run of Low Roads. Not even a death (if one doesn't count the Indians), though we did come close. Our own ranch is located on a centuries-old Indian camp site, the detail which inspired this story. Back when we grew row crops, irrigation water was forever uncovering broken obsidian arrowheads and shell beads. Also fragments of painted porcelain bowls from a later Chinese camp. Then as now... a residence built on landfill!

 

[Cbarton]

Well conceived tale, LBH. Nothing like a metaphysical scalping to make you leave the ancients alone!

 

[Low_Roads]

Thank you, Hawk! It's so true; we ought never to hassle our elders, especially deceased elders! They have access to all the insidious revenge mechanics that terrify us most!

The Tabor County tribe will feature in a few more Low Roads tales, though (alas) always in the past tense. Of course, that doesn't mean they won't be active...

 

[Low_Roads]

Low Roads Story #16

The Shadow​

There are a couple of dry yards in Tabor County. You preserve fruit there by cutting them in half, bathing them in sulfur to kill the mildew, and then laying the cut fruit on wide trays. The trays are stacked on wheeled platforms until they are about seven feet high. Then the stacks are pushed on rails into the big drying oven. The oven is over a hundred feet long and is made up of a row of chambers that just fit the width of the trays. Each chamber holds about ten stacks.

One of the dry yards is up in Gordon Valley. The other is located on Green Valley Road. It's really close to Fairview, just on the other side of the freeway. This dry yard is notorious because a man got killed in there once.

He had got trapped in a chamber behind some stacks of pallets and had to stay there all night. The heat from the oven dried all the moisture out of his body. It turned him into a mummy. He was killed, of course. I heard that his body got sold to a carnival, but that may not be true.

So one fall, a young Mexican laborer who worked at the Gordon Valley dry yard was ready to return home. I mean he was ready to go back to Mexico with the money he had made up north in the United States. He had family to support in Mexico and all the work up here was finished.

He had heard about the other dry yard near the freeway, though. Before he went away, he was curious to see this notorious death scene. He wanted a strange story to take back home with him.

There was a chain-link fence surrounding the place. All the work here was done too, so the gate was locked tight. But that didn't stop the young Mexican. He was determined to have a look at the death chamber. He hopped the fence and headed for the oven.

He had been told which chamber it was. All of them were filled up with stored stacks of pallets, so there wasn't much to see. Soon, the young man had had enough and was ready to leave.

It was then that he noticed something strange. It made him jump when he saw it. The sun behind him threw his shadow on the ground. But not too far away was another shadow. The Mexican thought that someone else was there, maybe a guard, and he had been caught. But no other person was anywhere around. The shadow came right out of the ground in front of him, but nothing was casting it.

The shadow was of a spidery thin figure. It seemed to be someone just about his height. It wore no clothes, but he could see that the body was covered with coarse hairs. The head had thin features with a prominent hooknose and swept back hair. The face seemed to leer at him.

The man watched in fascinated horror as the shadow approached his shadow. When it seemed to be standing right in front of him, he waved his hand where the figure ought to be. He touched nothing but thin air.

Then the shadow stretched out its arms. Its hands clutched his own shadow by the neck. The man suddenly felt his throat close down. He clawed for choking fingers, but there was nothing to grab. He struggled, but felt held in place.

The Mexican knew if he didn't do something he was going to die. The oven building was still close. With a mighty effort, he hauled himself toward it. He was on the point of passing out when he made it. As soon as the shadow of his head fell within the oven's shadow, the pressure stopped. He fell backwards, gasping on the ground.

The phantom seemed enraged that its prey had escaped. It stalked in an angry way along the border of the building. The man was safe now. But to his horror he saw it would not last for long. As the sun crossed the sky, it would wipe out his sanctuary and he would be vulnerable again.

The dry yard was in the middle of a pear orchard. This gave the Mexican an idea. It seemed to be his only hope to escape.

There would be a couple of hours before he had to move, but the Mexican was a man of action. As soon as his plan was made, he took off. He headed right for the chain-link fence. The shadow immediately followed. The man's adrenaline was high. He cleared the fence with little trouble and headed for a pear tree.

He looked behind him, but was dismayed to see his pursuer pass right through the fence like it wasn't there at all. It had gained on him a little, but he was still in front.

He reached the shadow of the tree. Again, the phantom couldn't touch him. The pear trees were planted about thirty feet apart. He chose a zigzag course, running from tree to tree. Since the man could put the tree shadows between him and his enemy, he had the advantage. The phantom still pursued, but grew more and more frustrated.

It got to be late. The tree shadows got longer and longer. Soon they started to intersect. This helped the man even more. His enemy had to find paths of light, but they were growing fewer and fewer. Eventually it found itself cut off on all sides. It was trapped.

The phantom paced inside its little box of light, but its time was limited now. Dusk was on its way. Soon, the great shadow of the Twin Sisters peaks washed out all the remaining sun's rays. The Mexican held his breath. He half expected something bad to happen, but there was now no trace of any danger.

The man spent a restless night. He didn't hardly sleep. He dreaded the coming dawn. In the morning, he scanned the ground anxiously. He seemed to be safe, though. No hint of the killer shadow was anywhere around, so he started on his way back to Mexico. He really had a strange tale to tell now.

This wasn't the first time the shadow has appeared, but most other men who ran afoul of it were killed and have no details to relate. It doesn't show up every year and has never been known to appear twice in the same year. You might encounter it anyplace in Tabor County, but it seems to prefer the farmlands. No one has ever figured out what it is really of why it comes to do murder.

 

[Low_Roads]

Low Roads Story #17

Why the Cars Disappeared​

Rockville Road only crosses the western creek in one place. That's up in Gordon Valley, pretty near the end of the county line.

A young boy lived in a house that was close to the creek. Late one night he was roused by something passing by outside, heading toward the road. He had trouble falling asleep again. About a half hour later, he heard a splashing sound, like big footsteps, returning. He got up to take a look. To his surprise, two beams like car headlights came straight down the creek. The lights weren't down in the creek bed but level with the bank. Soon they passed out of sight. None of what the boy saw made any sense.

Later, there was an article in the local paper. An automobile had disappeared off Rockville Road, right in that area. This was a minor big deal, because several other cars had vanished in the same way over the past two months. Everyone assumed a theft ring was at work.

The boy thought back to what he had seen. The idea bothered him. At school the next day he talked it over with his cousin, who lived in Ross Valley. They decided no one would believe his story, so they should investigate themselves.

That evening, the cousin came over to spend the night. The two boys made preparations to explore the creek. They gathered two flashlights and brought out their slickers. They also brought their pellet guns. These probably wouldn't be much use, but they felt safer holding firearms.

After everyone else had gone to sleep, they sneaked out of the house and climbed thirty feet down into the creek bed. It was October and not too cold yet, but there had already been a few rains and there was a couple of feet of water in the creek. The boys rolled up their pants and wore ratty old tennis shoes that they didn't care if they got ruined. They switched on the flashlights and started their trek.

There were some awful rumors about the western creek, and the boys were nervous. The water moved slowly and never got too deep, but they proceeded slowly so they wouldn't splash too much. It was pretty dark. The sky was angry and threatened rain. If there was a cloudburst, the boys could be in for big trouble.

An hour passed and the two had gone a couple of miles. They were starting to get tired of their adventure and talked about turning back, when their flashlight beams glinted off metal. They hurried up to the spot and found that it was one of the missing cars. The roof was all caved in with big pointed dents. There was no sign of any driver. Neither boy could figure out how the car had gotten there. The mystery inspired them to go on. A little farther ahead was another of the cars. More were farther along still. All the cars were in the same condition, with the strange dents in the roof.

They finally came to the last car. It sat half submerged in front of a huge cave mouth in the creek wall. The boys had never seen any cave like this before. The bottom of it was level with the creek bed, and water flowed in like it was pouring down a hole at the end of the cave. The cave mouth was about fifteen feet high. It was craggy and hung with drippy moss.

The boys tried to see inside with their flashlights, but they were afraid to get too close. Something odd happened then. Two lights started to shine out of the cave. They looked just like car headlights and the boy knew this is what he had seen before. The lights moved themselves out of the cave and stared at the boys.

They belonged to some kind of huge animal. When it got out of the cave, it reared up and was about as tall as the creek bank. The headlight eyes were so bright you couldn't make out many details, but it seemed to move on two pillar legs. No other limbs were visible. It took a massive step forward. The boys screamed and shot their pellet guns at the blazing eyes. There was a terrible, deafening roar and they got the impression of multiple rows of huge, wicked teeth.

They dumped the guns and ran like mad. It was the wrong direction, away from the house, but they probably couldn't have run all that way anyhow. They never turned around to look, but the pounding splash of the ponderous feet could be heard, and the eyes still lit them up from behind. Strange to say, in spite of its huge size, the thing wasn't as fast as the desperate boys. They soon opened up a good lead, but the monster didn't give up.

Before long, they saw that they were approaching Thompson's Store, a long abandoned old building. They were so desperate they decided to risk the climb out of the creek. By the time they got to the top, the thing was close again. The windows on the old structure were all boarded up, but some kids had kicked one in and they clambered through just in time. They hid beneath old tumbled down tables and shelves as the headlight eyes burned in. The monster peered here and there, casting weird shadows all over the place. It gave an angry howl and then stalked around the building in frustration. They were afraid the thing would break in to get them, but it never tried.

Then they didn't hear anything for awhile. They didn't stir though, because they thought that the thing might be trying to trick them. They just lay stark still in the darkness.

The old Thompson's Store was miles from any other buildings. It wasn't a store originally, but some kind of cathouse. The structure was real old. It shouldn't even still be standing. It did burn down later, but at this point it was still around. Bad rumors existed about the old place, like it was some kind of haunted house.

The more the boys waited, the more nervous they became being alone in this place. At least outside they could move around. Nobody liked the old building, even in the daylight. Then, they thought they heard sounds from the second floor. It seemed to be footsteps, heading down the stairs. That was more than they could take.

They went for the window. Nothing seemed to be outside, so they slipped back into the night. They wanted to get as far away from the old store as they could.

They wanted to get back home, but they didn't know the best way to go. The road to the store went in the wrong direction. They didn't want to go the other way along the creek. It was pretty wild and overgrown, and if the monster surprised them on that route, they would have trouble getting away. And they sure didn't want to go back into the creek. They finally decided that the road would be best. You could use it to get back to Rockville Road. It was the long way around, but it seemed the safest. So, off they went.

But no sooner had they started, than the thing came pounding around the other side of the building. It had been waiting for them all the while. So they started running for their lives again.

They had gone about a half-mile and the monster wasn't giving up. They were both exhausted. Then up ahead they saw a culvert going under the road. They crawled into it, hoping the monster hadn't seen them. It did, though. The culvert emptied into the creek, and the monster climbed down so that its face was right by the opening. The bright light from the eyes was blinding. The wind from its breath was terrible. They were afraid they were going to be sucked into that giant, slavering mouth. Every time the thing roared, they felt like their ears would shatter.

Then, of all things, it finally started to rain. It wasn't too bad at first. But in time, the cloudburst became more severe and the water began to gush through the culvert. It became slick in there. They were afraid they would slide out and be devoured.

The cousin must have gone a little crazy, because he screamed and crawled out of the culvert and ran off. I guess his nerves just couldn't take any more. The thing immediately left to chase after him. The boy hoped his cousin would get away, but doubted it would happen.

He shivered all the rest of the night in that pipe, not daring to stir. He was so exhausted, he actually managed to fall asleep.

When he woke up, there was light in the sky. The rain was still coming down so heavy it looked like a wall. He crawled to the end of the culvert and looked into the creek. He was shocked to see that it was three quarters full of roiling brown floodwater. They must have opened the river floodgates all the way. He climbed out and got back on the road. If the monster showed up he was finished, but he was so sore and tired he didn't much care. He just walked mechanically in the direction of Rockville Road.

A sheriff’s car finally picked him up. His folks had had the law out looking for him for hours. He told his story, but no one believed him. They thought that his cousin had been swept away in the flood and that he was lying to cover some guilt. His cousin was never seen again.

The rain never stopped for two whole weeks. All the creeks overflowed in the worst flooding anyone could remember.

It was decided that the cousin's death was a terrible accident. The boy stopped telling about the monster just to get people off his back. He did have to go see a psychiatrist for awhile, but he handled her all right.

The next summer, the creeks dried up as usual. The boy went down to check on the cave. He didn't want to, but he felt it was something he had to do. He went in daylight this time. The floodwater had carried off all the cars. When he got to the spot where the cave entrance had been, it was completely gone. It had collapsed during the flood and completely disappeared.

 

[His Divine Shadow]

How can I not enjoy a story titles "The Shadow?" T'would be a crime! A scenario I'd never run across, no siree, what with a shadow trapped by the shadows around it. Most tales involving a malevolent umbra tend to see them empowered by other shadows. Most interesting to see a tale of one restrained!

A monstrous collector of cars! Reminds me of Jay Leno, amusingly enough. 😛 But, is it a monster car or a car monster? Headlight eyes indicate some vehicular qualities but I don't know of many trunk-like legs on automobiles. Perhaps so crazy prototype. I do suspect, however, that this is not the last we've heard of old Thompson's Store. A haunted shack in the middle of nowhere, with things on the second floor, is hard to leave be!

 

[Low_Roads]

How can I not enjoy a story titles "The Shadow?" T'would be a crime! A scenario I'd never run across, no siree, what with a shadow trapped by the shadows around it. Most tales involving a malevolent umbra tend to see them empowered by other shadows. Most interesting to see a tale of one restrained!

Thank you, HDS! This idea was inspired (very loosely) by the Ambrose Bierce short story, "The Damned Thing", which likewise plays with perception. Initially, I'd planned to write this as a conventional short story... a man in a decrepit, deserted house is surprised by a shadow cast by no source. It was meant to be creepy and disturbing (rather than the action scenario found here), but I could never get it to write out the way I wanted. So, it sat dormant until my need for 104 different tales drove me to adapt everything I'd even vaguely considered over the years!

While in a magical elemental sense it's logical that a shadow force should draw strength from other shadows, the approach to this story was a bit more didactic... in reality, when one shadow enters another it ceases to exist. The Low Roads stories strive for the simplest explanations possible... if I had to keep a lot of abstruse rules in mind, I never would have finished the blamed thing! XD

A monstrous collector of cars! Reminds me of Jay Leno, amusingly enough. 😛 But, is it a monster car or a car monster? Headlight eyes indicate some vehicular qualities but I don't know of many trunk-like legs on automobiles. Perhaps so crazy prototype. I do suspect, however, that this is not the last we've heard of old Thompson's Store. A haunted shack in the middle of nowhere, with things on the second floor, is hard to leave be!

I think the beast's heavy jaw may have put you in mind of Jay Leno! XD I intended to be vague about the creature's precise nature (hence the headlight eyes blazing into the kids' faces and dazzling them), so that any questioning about "car-monster" or "monster-car" is to be expected. Really, there's nothing much more profound at work than sympathetic association between victim and prey (the original purpose was solely to set up the mystery).

This particular story idea first saw life decades before writing... my pals and myself would spin yarns about a monster dog which haunted the local creeks (something about the size of an elephant) and would snatch cars off the road occasionally. When it came time to memorialize the concept, I wanted something more outre than a king-sized pooch; this auto-monstrosity fit the bill, but lost in high-concept what it gained in novelty. I'm still not entirely sure that the compromise works.

Heartiest congratulations, though! Your intuition about Thompson's Store in dead on-target... we'll journey back that way as soon as story #21, with numerous lesser mentions to come! Quite right... if one has a handy haunted house, it's a sin not to explore it!

 

[His Divine Shadow]

I think the beast's heavy jaw may have put you in mind of Jay Leno! XD

I actually associated the monster's penchant for car's with Leno's own passion for automobiles. http://www.jaylenosgarage.com/ I suppose, though, that a monster of that size could have a chin of equal proportions. 😛

 

[Low_Roads]

Oh right! I forgot that Jay was a big-time car collector (I knew he was crazy for motorcycles, but I didn't know that extended to all autos generally). Nice site; thank you! I want one of them new Can-Am Spyder bikes! Very spiffy... looks like the sort of thing we'll all be driving 30 years from now!

 

[Cbarton]

just read the next two (sorry for the delay...been on a hiatus for a while). Very cleverly done...

 

[Journia]

Low Roads Story #14

The Hunting Mist​

Up near the town of Blue Powder is an asylum for lunatics. This is the same asylum that the Cow Hide man escaped from. There's one inmate up there who had an interesting tale to tell.

This guy seemed so rational, alot of the keepers didn't think he was crazy at all. He didn't complain about being locked up. He seemed to prefer it.

He used to live in Fairview. He was a construction worker. He and his friends were a pretty rowdy bunch. They would do most anything to get their kicks. Going up into the country roads and driving over a hundred miles an hour was nothing to them. They would stop on tall bridges and jump or dive into the water. You could never be sure how much liquor they had taken in, although none of them ever got caught driving drunk.

There was one stunt that they'd pull a couple of times a year. They'd have done it more often, but one of them was picked up by the cops once and spent a week in jail and had to pay a fine. That made them more careful.

The activity was this: on really foggy nights, the lot of them would grab their shotguns and head out for the tulle marsh south of Fairview. The marsh was far enough out of town that gunshots would not be heard easily. Then they would split up and beat the bushes, trying to scare up waterfowl or something else to shoot. Wandering all over the marsh with shotguns was dangerous enough. Doing it in the fog was worse. But doing it at night too was really a bad idea. They were really lucky they never ended up shooting themselves or anyone else out there. But that's the way they liked it.

One innovation they came up with over time was to buy walkie-talkies. That way, if one of them got spotted by the cops, he could warn the others to lie low for awhile.

One fall night, before the rains had started and it became too wet, they decided the time was right for another hunt. It was a cold evening and a good fog had settled in. The booze flowed freely that night. The man and his four friends grabbed their guns and piled into their cars, ready for trouble.

They pulled way off the main road to avoid detection and started out into the marsh. The man followed a trail he was familiar with and his pals chose their own paths. It was quite a striking scene. Sometimes the mist would be so thick you couldn't see more than a few feet ahead of you. Then, it would drift by and clear, and you could see the moon for a few minutes. The marsh was beautiful at midnight, with the full moon making the rolling fogbanks glimmer with silver highlights. From time to time he would hear a shotgun blast and the raucous hoots of his friends.

He had just come to a piece of high ground above a clearing. Then he noticed that one of his friends had just entered the clearing. He ducked down. Hiding from each other was part of their little game. He'd get points for this later.

Just then he noticed something. It was a strange phenomenon he'd seen before. Others in the group had commented on having seen it too. It was a patch of mist that seemed separate from the rest of the fog. It seemed whiter and thicker. It didn't drift with the rest of the fog.

This piece of fog was about the size of an auto. It was just to the right of the man in the clearing. The man on the hill watched fascinated as the mist started to snake toward his friend. It swirled around the guy before he knew what happened. Then the man on the hill saw his friend start to thrash around. He immediately got on the walkie-talkie to find out what was going on. The man in the fog didn't answer. Others called in to find out what was the matter, but the man in the fog never said a word. After awhile there wasn't any more movement. The mist drifted away, leaving the clearing.

The man edged his way down to investigate. When he came to the spot, he made a gruesome discovery. His friend's body had been liquefied. Only his sopping, tarry clothes were left.

The man called up his buddies to give them the frantic news. Everyone thought it was a big joke. The whole point of going out there was to get a thrill, and they just figured he'd come up with a new way to do it.

But then another of the crew called in. He had spotted the fog and it was heading for him. The others were starting to get concerned now. The hunted man was in a panic. Everyone tried to talk at once and it got pretty chaotic. The man on the hill tried to listen to the sounds of the marsh around him, but noise seemed to come from all directions. Finally they all heard the hunted man scream out, and no one could raise him anymore.

The three remaining men decided it was time to join up and get out. Trouble was, no one could tell where anyone else was in the murk. They all started wandering about aimlessly, trying to find each other. They stayed in contact and speculated about the hunting mist. One of them thought it was a patch of acid pollution released by a factory. The man disagreed. He thought it was an unheard of marsh creature that hunted under the cover of real fog.

Soon, another of the men screamed that the mist was stalking him too. Everyone started running around blindly, screaming for help.

The man never did find out what happened to his remaining friends, because after a stumble he lost his walkie-talkie. By pure chance he found himself at the mouth of the creek bed that fed the marsh. He took off into it, anything to get away from the monster.

He chanced a look behind him. To his horror, the mist was slithering through the creek after him. All the alcohol was gone from him now. He sprinted down the creek bed in a blind panic.

Suddenly up ahead he saw a Mexican camp. He stumbled through it, waking them up. The half-awake Mexicans started cursing him, but the fog rolled over them. This gave the man a chance. While the monster was occupied, he struggled thirty feet up the bank of the creek and hid himself in some brush at the top. Before too long, the mist rolled into the space where he had been. It stopped at the spot where he had climbed the bank. It seemed to be trying to sense him. The man kept quiet and prayed. Soon, it gave up. It snaked its way back towards the marsh.

When the man told the authorities this tale, they didn't believe him. Instead, they committed him to the asylum. He didn't seem unhappy to go. The farther away from the marsh, he figured, the better.

The only times the man ever actually acted like he was crazy was when there was a heavy fog outside. He would scream that the mist was trying to get in to kill him. It wanted to finish the job.

One foggy night he got especially violent. He pounded on the door to his cell and claimed that the mist was creeping in through a crack in his window. The attendants were used to his games and didn't even check in on him. Before long, he quieted down. The next morning, they went in to feed him. Not a trace of him was to be found. Only his sticky clothes remained. But this part of the story is only rumor.


Next: "Indian Ears".

This kind of reminds me of this old movie where these scientists were working in a lab and they made this cloud of sorts, and it killed people. It was an old gray movie, from the thirties. I think. The kind of sound the cloud made was like a vacuum cleaner. Maybe Littlebighead knows?

Anyhow, this piece was well written, but I was a bit disappointed at the end, I didn't want it to end!