The summer of '90, like every summer before, I spent my days with a friend of the family. Nana introduced me to some amazing movies like THE LAST UNICORN that I love to this day. Her granddaughter and I were inseparable during those short months. This particular summer, while the adults were grilling out, we were bored with the swing set, the dogs, my brother, and everything else available to us. We decided to go explore the woods behind the house. There was no path into the woods at Nana's house, but we could see a path over on the neighbor's property. It was 1990, before people really went up in arms over wandering children being abducted by every freak in the zip code. We didn't hesitate. We barged over into the neighbor's yard like we owned the place and disappeared into the woods before anyone knew we were gone.
The path was worn smooth by years of use. We walked for a few minutes until we came to a little arching bridge that let us travel safely over a wide creek. I remember looking over the bridge and wondering what would happen if we fell into the swollen waters. A little further on, the trees were taller in that part of the woods. They were wider too. Ancient roots broke up through the path and we had to walk around them to keep from tripping over them.
We spent so much time watching out for roots that we didn't realize the path ended just ahead of us in an old clearing. My little friend was the first to notice. She became very still and squeezed my hand really hard. I looked up and saw that ground here was covered with dry leaves, odd since it was summer. Under the leaves, stones stood around a huge well flesh with the ground. I was looking into this well, contemplating yelling to see if my voice would echo, when my friend started crying. She pointed to a stone and whispered, "That is a grave stone like Mommy has."
Her voice startled the person kneeling at a grave on the other side of the well. This person wore a dark robe that covered his/her face when they stood up. I don't remember turning around to run away, but suddenly I was running back along the path. Just before the bridge, I tripped over one of those damn tree roots and skinned my knee really badly. My friend pulled me to my feet and dragged me over the bridge and out of the woods. I don't think either of us had ever ran so fast in our lives.
We ran straight to her Papaw. He was in the yard digging up a flowerbed. My knee was pouring blood. We were both crying rivers, in hysterics, and as near to passing out as I had ever been in 6 short years. We told him about the person that chased us from the cemetery in the woods. He took us into the house and sent Nana to deal with us. They didn't think we could hear him when he told Nana that there was no cemetery in the woods. He'd know since he hunted that whole property since he was a little boy. Nana hushed him and suggested that we were "pretending" or that we'd fallen asleep and had nightmares. My friend and I knew, deep down, that they were wrong.
The next summer, after listening to my story, my oldest male cousin went with us to Nana's house. My friend refused to go in the back yard. In fact, she never went in the back yard again. Papaw had to move the swing set to the front yard just to get the girl to go back outside. My cousin decided he wanted to see this cemetery for himself. He and a few of the other older boys formed a posse and led an expedition into the woods. I nearly wore a hole in the carpet waiting for those boys to come back. They made it back just before sunset and oh boy were they angry. My cousin said they walked every inch of those woods. Not only was there no cemetery, there was no well, no stream, no bridge, not even a path like we described. I wasn't swayed. I refused to "admit" to lying because I wasn't lying.
It has been over 20 years since the events in those woods. I don't speak to that little girl anymore. I haven't spoken to her since the summer after. I still cannot think of what happened in those woods without a little chill running down my back. My knee has a scar where I fell. It is much lighter these days but it is there. And in those 20+ years, not a single detail in that story has changed. I still see the entire event with the clarity of 6 year old eyes, from the same point of view. I can tell you the story now and 6 months from now, I can tell it again and the story will not change. There is a lot I don't remember about it (like if the robed stranger really was chasing us or just chasing us away from that dangerous open well) too. And then, there is the parts that I can't explain- like the entire cemetery, clearing, pathway, river, and all, disappearing over an 11 month span.
As I got a little older, I took to telling the story to my friends on the bus ride home and forgot that lesson I learned about lying. We sat in the back and I had that coveted little seat in the back that everyone wanted. I enjoyed the attention it brought when I told my classmates the story. After a few retellings though, they grew bored with it and I lost the spotlight. I had to find a new story and fast. I didn't have to look very far.
I spent a lot of time with Mom's current boyfriend's kids. They were a few years older and watched me and my brother while Mom and their dad went on dates. We walked the country roads a lot out of boredom. On one of those walks, we went past this old broken down barn along the road. Part of the roof caved in, the door hung inward, and half of it looked as if it had barely survived a fire. I wanted to explore it. The boy, eldest of our group at 13 years old, said no. He didn't say it was a death trap just waiting for the wind to hit it wrong. Instead, he said it was haunted. I immediately wanted to know the story.
Back in the 60s, this barn was party central. Teenagers would come here to sneak cigarettes and beer, listen to loud music, and dance. One night, four teenagers went in and were never seen again. The police searched the barn but they never found any evidence that they had been there and they decided those kids must have ran away from home. Except, more teenagers went missing that summer. All of them had went to parties in the barn before.
Finally, the police got tired of kids going missing. They set up a hideout in the farmhouse over there [across the road] and waited. Sure enough, that night a huge group of kids pulled up around midnight and took radios, beer, and lights inside. The police waited for a bit. The kids plugged in the radios and turned on the lights. The party was going on while the police waited outside. Before long though, the police realized something was wrong.
They couldn't hear the kids singing along anymore. They couldn't hear them jumping around, bumping into the walls while drinking and dancing. In fact, they only heard the music. The police busted down the door and couldn't believe what they saw!All those kids were dead. The girls were all naked, laying in a pile on the floor and the boys were naked too, except they had hooks in their chest and they were swinging from the ceiling! Blood was everywhere. The police walked through the murder scene trying to figure out what happened. No one left the party. The police would have seen them. And the clothes... those were just gone.
While they searched the property, they heard a noise up in the rafters. They all fired their guns but the noise kept on. A shadow crept toward the officers. They saw it and backed away. A bird hopped out of the shadows, one of those vultures that eats dead animals along the road. It wasn't making any noise, because it didn't have a head. Just a bloody stump of a neck. It was full of bullet holes. It flew a few laps through the rafters but it kept hitting the wood and falling down. They shot it some more and it finally fell over dead.
The people came to take the bodies of those dead kids and one of the police saw that every one of them had been burned or cut on. The number six was burned or cut into each of their hands and on their foreheads. The officers agreed that whoever killed those kids, it was at least 2 people. No one person would have had time to strip the kids, burn or cut them three times each, pile the girls up, hang the boys up, and then disappear with all the clothes between when the kids arrived and the police came in.
They were cleaning up the crime scene when they figured out where the killers must have went. Under the hay by the girls' bodies, a trap door went down into the cellar. It was barred from the inside and nothing the police did could make it open. One of the officers called his brother, a former Army man that knew about explosives. They wanted to blow the door off the cellar and get in there. When he got there, he couldn't go inside. As he started in the doorway, a voice yelled out from everywhere, "Get out!" The guy was thrown backwards, out the door by something he couldn't see. The officers ran out of the barn, freaking out.
They finally called a priest. They couldn't think of anything else. The preacher refused to step off the road. He said the ground and the barn were damned, property of Satan and his disciples. The police did the only thing then that they could think of: they set the barn on fire. It wouldn't start up at first, but when it did, they heard that scary voice laughing. As the smoke built up, they all saw the horned face of Satan appear and the laughing came from the mouth of the smokey face.
It took all those officers getting on their knees and praying with the preacher to get rid of Satan. A rain came through their prayers. It put out the fire and cleansed the ground of Satan's influence. When they went back inside, the cellar door opened easily. Inside they found a Satanic bible, evidence of human sacrifices, and the bodies of four people- the Satanic disciples that worshiped Satan by sacrificing young teenagers on an altar hidden in another part of the barn.
Even though God cleansed this place, it is still a bad place. The cry of those murdered kids echos when the wind blows right and on clear nights, you can see the shadow of that headless vulture flying overhead.
I was 10 and I knew that boy was a natural storyteller, even if I didn't know what to call it back then. And thanks to him, I found my story. Only, I had to change it a little. A word here. Add a detail here. Change this and that. And the most important part, I had to put myself in the story somehow. It took a few days of working out, in which time the story changed a bit. But I finally made it so I was in the story, and the star of the story no less.
Out by my Mom's boyfriend's house, there is this barn. It is usually party central. Teenagers go there to sneak cigarettes and beer, listen to crappy music, and get naked. One night this past summer, four teenagers went in and were never seen again. The police searched the barn but they never found any evidence that they had been there and they decided they must have ran away from home. Except, more teenagers went missing.
The police got tired of kids going missing. They set up a hideout in our house across the street and waited. That night a huge group of kids showed up at midnight. The party was going on while the police waited outside. I hid down behind a police car so I could see what was going on. Before long, the police realized something was wrong. It was too quiet. Even the music seemed quieter. The police busted down the door and I couldn't believe what we saw!
All the kids were dead. The girls were all naked, laying in a pile on the floor and the boys were naked too, except they had hooks in their chest and they were swinging from the ceiling! Blood was everywhere, including all over a table in the middle of the barn. They couldn't figure out what happened. No one left the party. The police would have seen them. One of the officers saw me and told me to leave. I told him no, that I wanted to see what was going on!
While they searched the property, they heard a noise up in the rafters. A bird flew laps around the ceiling, one of those vultures that eats dead animals along the road. It wasn't making any noise, because it didn't have a head. Just a bloody stump of a neck. It flew a few laps through the rafters but it kept hitting the wood and falling down. They shot it some more and it finally fell over dead.
The people came to take the bodies of those dead kids and one of the police saw that every one of them had been burned or cut on. The number six was burned or cut into each of their hands and on their foreheads. The officers agreed that whoever killed those kids, it was at least 2 people. No one person would have had time to strip the kids, burn or cut them three times each, pile the girls up, hang the boys up, and then disappear with all the clothes between when the kids arrived and the police came in.
They were cleaning up the crime scene when I figured out where the killers went. Under the hay by the table, a trap door went down into the cellar. If I hadn't been there, those police officers wouldn't have seen it. It was barred from the inside and nothing the police did could make it open. One of the officers grabbed a grenade from his car. They wanted to blow the door off the cellar and get in there. When he got back, he couldn't come inside. As he started in the doorway, a voice yelled out, "Get out!" The guy was thrown backwards, out the door by something he couldn't see. The officers ran out of the barn, freaking out. They nearly left me alone in there.
Mom called a priest. They couldn't think of anything else and she said it wouldn't hurt. The preacher refused to step off the road. He said the ground and the barn were cursed. The police did the only thing that they could think of then: they set the barn on fire. As the smoke built up, we all saw the horned face of Satan appear and laughter came from the mouth of the smokey face.
It took all those officers, my Mom and her boyfriend, and all of us kids, getting on our knees out on the road and praying with the preacher to get rid of Satan. The rain started. It put out the fire and purified the ground. When they went back inside, the cellar door opened easily. Inside they found a Satanic bible, human skulls and hearts, and the bodies of four people- the Satanists that sacrificed teenagers on that table.
I can still hear the cry of those murdered kids echo when the wind blows and I can see the shadow of that headless vulture flying overhead on clear nights.
It didn't change much from one retelling to the next but it worked for my little friends. I was back in the spotlight. For a few weeks. And then they were bored again. This time though, they actually noticed that the details changed from telling to telling. One time, I stood at the doorway of the barn and saw the murdered kids. One time, I saw the bible and skulls. One time, the headless vulture flew over the house, not the barn. The storytelling changed because it wasn't the truth.
I'm not saying that the story the boy told me was the real truth. It could have been for all I know. He was dead serious when he told me about the barn. Or he could have just been making up stories to try to scare me. I took what could have been a riveting story on its own and made a huge mistake: I put myself in the story. Not only did I put myself in it, but I made myself a near-victim in the story. It changed the entire tone of the story!
At a young age, I started my journey toward becoming a storyteller. By mixing real experiences and influences with imagination and fantasy, it is possible for a storyteller to come up with a whopper of a tale. But, as I learned quickly, be wary of the ego that involves putting yourself into situations that are far too fantastical for your relative experience level. It might be an interesting story but it has little cohesion and will fall apart very easily if not done carefully with purpose!
Love is love, no matter the back story. <3 DS
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