True Story, Original Fiction Horror Tale
Title: True Story
Type of entry or media: Fiction
Member: Game_byrd
Genre: Horror/terror
Fandom: Original
Rating/Warnings: PG, scary scenes
Length: 1,700
Summary: A true story from my youth, where my cousin and I found more than we expected when we explored my parent’s land.
Let me tell you a true story. I grew up in rural Oklahoma. There are places more remote and backwoods than where I grew up, but it was pretty isolated nonetheless. We lived on a gravel section line road in a trailer home. Eventually my parents would build a nice brick rambler on the property, but to start with we were just trailer trash, with a barn, a dog pen and a bunch of fighting chickens.
The land was ten acres situated not far from the Caney River bottoms, but not quite on the prairie. It was mostly flat, with a one acre pond whose water was always dark, still and mysterious, surrounded by tall, graceful willow trees and full of perch and catfish. The highest bit of land was at the rear of our plot and featured a ring of black locust trees some hundred feet wide, surrounding a clearing of the same diameter. So the woods were something of a donut, with this strange, empty area in the middle and no obvious evidence of why nothing taller than grass grew within that space.
My family moved to Oklahoma when I was just starting second grade, so I had all this new space to explore and learn about. The cleared spot in the woods was like a natural cathedral with the dome of the sky above me, with the trees rising up to shield me from the outside world. I felt like I was in my own little pocket reality there, performing on a stage with the lights up so I couldn’t see the crowd. I played out my fantasies of mustangs and Indians, settlers and cow horses, thinking about the time when the land was new and the battles between the natives who lived here first, and the civilized folk who claimed it for themselves.
I lived a pretty lonely life. The nearest house was a quarter mile away and the nearest house with kids was a quarter mile further. We had a party line phone I was discouraged from using and my mother rarely visited town. When she did it was all business. I had a sister, but she was years older than myself and very girly. I don’t think she ever strayed more than a few hundred feet from the trailer. Running through the grass or hiding in the woods wasn’t her style and my endless imagining of exciting and dramatic events on the land didn’t interest her. It was a kid’s fantasy.
Every now and then, my cousin Rodney would visit. He was within a few months of my age and an active explorer like myself. We made jokes that he was the brawn and I was the brain. He lived in town, in a neighborhood surrounded by other kids, so the wide-open spaces and simpler social dynamic was a brisk change of pace for him. He loved it and I adored his visits.
Together, we investigated every corner of the acreage. We swam in the pond. We climbed the trees. We brought a shovel up to the woods and dug holes, finding bits of shattered porcelain (was this a cup handle?), a blackened spoon (is this silver?) and twisted pieces of metal buried under the thin soil of the clearing. We were fascinated by these discoveries! Buried treasures awaited our eager explorations!
We combed through the woods themselves, looking between the gnarled roots of the trees and the scattered rocks. Over here was a patch of irises and over there was another. They were lovely, beautiful flowers that only grew in people’s gardens. What were they doing up here in the woods, a place that had been empty for so long?
Rodney and I discussed this at length. We searched again, looking for foundations or some sign of a house, for surely someone had lived here. We found none, but I tipped up a large, flat stone in my search, to discover that the opposite side bore writing! I was very excited and called him over immediately. Together we turned the stone over and brushed it off, reading the indentations. There was a rough date that we worked out to be July 8, 1874 or 1879, and bits that must have been a name, but we couldn’t make it out. They looked to have been carved into the rock with no more than a nail, but the gouges were deep enough to have endured while everything else had crumbled.
We were thrilled! Now that we knew what we were looking for, we hurried to the other stones nearby and began to shift them, finding marks on two others, but on both of those, the sandstone flaked and dissolved almost as soon as we lifted them. We returned, inevitably, to the one stone that had survived with the lettering intact. Days passed while our excitement and imaginations ran away with us. There was a great tension between us because we’d found something very important. By mutual agreement, we didn’t tell my parents.
On the next to last day of Rodney’s visit, we took up the shovel that we technically weren’t supposed to have at all, for my parents had forbidden us to take tools up to the woods, thinking we’d abandon them there to the elements. We went to the spot we’d now identified as a graveyard from more than a hundred years previous, and we began to dig.
I can’t really explain why we did this. The phrase, ‘it seemed like a good idea at the time’ comes to mind. It’s a bit trite, but accurate. We were endlessly curious and we wanted to know what secrets were buried beneath the dark soil. We were just a pair of kids.
A shovel made for an adult is very difficult for an eight year old to use. We were both slender and light. The soil was surprisingly rocky and interlaced with a webbing of roots from the stubborn, thorny locust trees. In the end we did more of the digging with our hands, like savage animals, than we managed with the shovel, but even then, hours of work gave us a shallow pit and we still didn’t have anything to show for it but broken fingernails and dirt-clad bodies.
The sun began to set. We knew my mom would be calling for us to come in soon, but we were loath to stop. In the morn, Rodney would leave and neither of us wanted to continue such an important project without the other. We’d formed a pact. The discovery would be ours together and so we continued, becoming frantic in our efforts to uncover something meaningful before it was too late.
The woods became dim and still. We paused in our efforts, both of us remarking on the strangeness that had taken the air, the gloaming of impending dusk heavy around us. There was a creeping anticipation in the land, like some great horror was holding its breath. We turned to the pit and for the very first time, we considered the folly of what we were doing.
For all the long days before, we’d been high on tales of adventure and challenge, where people faced great threats and overcame them, but there were other stories we’d both heard about, where the outcome wasn’t so sanguine. Those stories were whispered in the darkness and followed by someone grabbing someone else with a shriek, and then there was laughter because it was all fake. Yet just as those heady adventures were based on fact, what if the tales of horror had some basis in reality as well?
We stood over a partly open grave, a couple young kids, tired and dirty and hungry. It had been a long day and the deepening gloom heralded its end. We could no longer see the bottom of the hole we’d dug - not that it was so deep, but that it was so dark. The blackness there seemed to be taking on a life of its own. We perceived a malevolent presence of the disturbed dead. These silent woods had been passed up as a home site for over a hundred years. It occurred to us that perhaps our parents had known something we did not, for this was truly the best place to build a house - a commanding view, the pond near to hand, established trees all around to offer shade, even a ready-made flower garden! - yet no one had dared live here in a very, very long time.
When it’s dark enough, one’s mind will see whatever one thinks is there - or at least that’s what I tell myself today, as I sit in my library in the morning light, knowing that in a few short minutes I’ll leave to go to work. Today I tell myself that what I saw so long ago was just the product of an overactive imagination, as Rodney and I looked into that grave and saw the blackness take form and rise up before us, as we saw it swell huge above us until it loomed over our heads and blotted out what little light was left. The fear that clenched my chest harder than it ever had before was just that - fear, an emotion born of false perception. The shock that ran through my system, like lightning in my blood, and that had the both of us screaming and running all the way home … yes, I try to tell myself it was all a fabrication and proof that the superstitious recesses of the mind have a grip on even the most rational of us.
I try to tell myself that.
Type of entry or media: Fiction
Member: Game_byrd
Genre: Horror/terror
Fandom: Original
Rating/Warnings: PG, scary scenes
Length: 1,700
Summary: A true story from my youth, where my cousin and I found more than we expected when we explored my parent’s land.
Let me tell you a true story. I grew up in rural Oklahoma. There are places more remote and backwoods than where I grew up, but it was pretty isolated nonetheless. We lived on a gravel section line road in a trailer home. Eventually my parents would build a nice brick rambler on the property, but to start with we were just trailer trash, with a barn, a dog pen and a bunch of fighting chickens.
The land was ten acres situated not far from the Caney River bottoms, but not quite on the prairie. It was mostly flat, with a one acre pond whose water was always dark, still and mysterious, surrounded by tall, graceful willow trees and full of perch and catfish. The highest bit of land was at the rear of our plot and featured a ring of black locust trees some hundred feet wide, surrounding a clearing of the same diameter. So the woods were something of a donut, with this strange, empty area in the middle and no obvious evidence of why nothing taller than grass grew within that space.
My family moved to Oklahoma when I was just starting second grade, so I had all this new space to explore and learn about. The cleared spot in the woods was like a natural cathedral with the dome of the sky above me, with the trees rising up to shield me from the outside world. I felt like I was in my own little pocket reality there, performing on a stage with the lights up so I couldn’t see the crowd. I played out my fantasies of mustangs and Indians, settlers and cow horses, thinking about the time when the land was new and the battles between the natives who lived here first, and the civilized folk who claimed it for themselves.
I lived a pretty lonely life. The nearest house was a quarter mile away and the nearest house with kids was a quarter mile further. We had a party line phone I was discouraged from using and my mother rarely visited town. When she did it was all business. I had a sister, but she was years older than myself and very girly. I don’t think she ever strayed more than a few hundred feet from the trailer. Running through the grass or hiding in the woods wasn’t her style and my endless imagining of exciting and dramatic events on the land didn’t interest her. It was a kid’s fantasy.
Every now and then, my cousin Rodney would visit. He was within a few months of my age and an active explorer like myself. We made jokes that he was the brawn and I was the brain. He lived in town, in a neighborhood surrounded by other kids, so the wide-open spaces and simpler social dynamic was a brisk change of pace for him. He loved it and I adored his visits.
Together, we investigated every corner of the acreage. We swam in the pond. We climbed the trees. We brought a shovel up to the woods and dug holes, finding bits of shattered porcelain (was this a cup handle?), a blackened spoon (is this silver?) and twisted pieces of metal buried under the thin soil of the clearing. We were fascinated by these discoveries! Buried treasures awaited our eager explorations!
We combed through the woods themselves, looking between the gnarled roots of the trees and the scattered rocks. Over here was a patch of irises and over there was another. They were lovely, beautiful flowers that only grew in people’s gardens. What were they doing up here in the woods, a place that had been empty for so long?
Rodney and I discussed this at length. We searched again, looking for foundations or some sign of a house, for surely someone had lived here. We found none, but I tipped up a large, flat stone in my search, to discover that the opposite side bore writing! I was very excited and called him over immediately. Together we turned the stone over and brushed it off, reading the indentations. There was a rough date that we worked out to be July 8, 1874 or 1879, and bits that must have been a name, but we couldn’t make it out. They looked to have been carved into the rock with no more than a nail, but the gouges were deep enough to have endured while everything else had crumbled.
We were thrilled! Now that we knew what we were looking for, we hurried to the other stones nearby and began to shift them, finding marks on two others, but on both of those, the sandstone flaked and dissolved almost as soon as we lifted them. We returned, inevitably, to the one stone that had survived with the lettering intact. Days passed while our excitement and imaginations ran away with us. There was a great tension between us because we’d found something very important. By mutual agreement, we didn’t tell my parents.
On the next to last day of Rodney’s visit, we took up the shovel that we technically weren’t supposed to have at all, for my parents had forbidden us to take tools up to the woods, thinking we’d abandon them there to the elements. We went to the spot we’d now identified as a graveyard from more than a hundred years previous, and we began to dig.
I can’t really explain why we did this. The phrase, ‘it seemed like a good idea at the time’ comes to mind. It’s a bit trite, but accurate. We were endlessly curious and we wanted to know what secrets were buried beneath the dark soil. We were just a pair of kids.
A shovel made for an adult is very difficult for an eight year old to use. We were both slender and light. The soil was surprisingly rocky and interlaced with a webbing of roots from the stubborn, thorny locust trees. In the end we did more of the digging with our hands, like savage animals, than we managed with the shovel, but even then, hours of work gave us a shallow pit and we still didn’t have anything to show for it but broken fingernails and dirt-clad bodies.
The sun began to set. We knew my mom would be calling for us to come in soon, but we were loath to stop. In the morn, Rodney would leave and neither of us wanted to continue such an important project without the other. We’d formed a pact. The discovery would be ours together and so we continued, becoming frantic in our efforts to uncover something meaningful before it was too late.
The woods became dim and still. We paused in our efforts, both of us remarking on the strangeness that had taken the air, the gloaming of impending dusk heavy around us. There was a creeping anticipation in the land, like some great horror was holding its breath. We turned to the pit and for the very first time, we considered the folly of what we were doing.
For all the long days before, we’d been high on tales of adventure and challenge, where people faced great threats and overcame them, but there were other stories we’d both heard about, where the outcome wasn’t so sanguine. Those stories were whispered in the darkness and followed by someone grabbing someone else with a shriek, and then there was laughter because it was all fake. Yet just as those heady adventures were based on fact, what if the tales of horror had some basis in reality as well?
We stood over a partly open grave, a couple young kids, tired and dirty and hungry. It had been a long day and the deepening gloom heralded its end. We could no longer see the bottom of the hole we’d dug - not that it was so deep, but that it was so dark. The blackness there seemed to be taking on a life of its own. We perceived a malevolent presence of the disturbed dead. These silent woods had been passed up as a home site for over a hundred years. It occurred to us that perhaps our parents had known something we did not, for this was truly the best place to build a house - a commanding view, the pond near to hand, established trees all around to offer shade, even a ready-made flower garden! - yet no one had dared live here in a very, very long time.
When it’s dark enough, one’s mind will see whatever one thinks is there - or at least that’s what I tell myself today, as I sit in my library in the morning light, knowing that in a few short minutes I’ll leave to go to work. Today I tell myself that what I saw so long ago was just the product of an overactive imagination, as Rodney and I looked into that grave and saw the blackness take form and rise up before us, as we saw it swell huge above us until it loomed over our heads and blotted out what little light was left. The fear that clenched my chest harder than it ever had before was just that - fear, an emotion born of false perception. The shock that ran through my system, like lightning in my blood, and that had the both of us screaming and running all the way home … yes, I try to tell myself it was all a fabrication and proof that the superstitious recesses of the mind have a grip on even the most rational of us.
I try to tell myself that.