Southern Fried Rat and Other Gruesome Tales (4 page)

Next came a soldier. He was on his way home for a leave but had missed his plane connection and couldn't get another flight until the following morning.

"I'm afraid the only room we have is haunted, sir," said the clerk.

"I've fought in three wars," said the soldier. "I've seen men die all around me. I don't believe in ghosts."

So he went up to the room. Once again the ghost came out of the closet and waved its hands in the air and moaned, "Bloody fingers. Bloody fingers."

The soldier decided he would sleep in the airport.

It got to be very late, and the clerk didn't expect any more guests. One showed up though. He had long shaggy hair and a scraggly beard. He wore torn Levis and carried a battered guitar case. The clerk didn't much like his looks. So he gave him the haunted room.

The fellow ambled into the room, sat down on the bed, took out his guitar, and began to play softly.

The ghost popped out of the closet and, waving his crimson and dripping hands in the air, moaned, "Bloody fingers. Bloody fingers."

The man kept right on strumming and humming, not paying the slightest attention to the ghost.

"Bloody fingers. Bloody fingers," meaned the ghost more loud!y.

The guitar player barely looked up.

"Bloody fingers! Bloody fingers!" shrieked the ghost.

The guitar player stopped, looked over at the ghost, and very slowly said, "Need a Band-Aid, man?"

—————

Once there was a large and prosperous kingdom ruled by a wise and powerful king. Then disaster struck in the form of a strange plague, which caused people to sicken and die horribly within a few weeks. The population of the kingdom was being decimated. All the physicians in the land were called to the palace, but none of them had any idea of what to do about this new disease.

The oldest of the physicians said that he had once heard that many years ago, when his grandfather was a boy, the kingdom had been struck by just such a mysterious sickness. The pestilence had been ended with a magic potion prepared by an old sorceress. It was said that she was still alive, but her home was in the middle of the Dark Forest.

"The Dark Forest!" everyone gasped. They all knew that the Dark Forest was the most dangerous place in the kingdom. Perhaps the most dangerous place in the entire world, for in the Dark Forest lived the Yellow Fingers, which grabbed a traveler and squeezed him to death. But no one could come up with another plan to save the kingdom, so it was decided that someone had to defy the Yellow Fingers and find the ancient sorceress in the middle of the Dark Forest.

The king called his bravest knight and explained the situation. Without hesitation, the brave knight marched off into the forest and was never heard from again.

The king then called his second bravest knight. This knight hesitated for a moment before going into the fatal forest. But once he went in, he never came out.

So the king called his third bravest knight, who took a bit more persuading. And his fourth, and fifth, and so on. None of them ever returned from the forest. Finally the remaining knights, who were not very brave at all, went into hiding.

The king was reduced to a state of despair. Then one of the king's young pages came to him and offered to go into the Dark Forest and get the marc potion from the old sorceress.

The king was touched by the boy's foolish bravery, but he said, "Don't you realize that the Dark Forest is the home of the Yellow Fingers, and that many of my bravest knights have perished there?"

The boy said that he knew all about it, but he was still quite sure that he would be able to accomplish his mission. In the end the king reluctantly agreed to let the page go. He was so desperate that he didn't know what else to do.

The boy walked off into the Dark Forest, and the king confidently expected never to see him again. Therefore the king was not merely surprised but very nearly hysterical with joy when, two days later, the page came walking out of the Dark Forest clutching the formula for the magic potion that would save the kingdom.

"How did you do it?" cried the king.

The page just smiled, and said, "From now on let your pages do the walking through the Yellow Fingers."

No one could be found to dispute the observation that Buddy Edwards was a bully. Least of all Buddy Edwards. He was quite proud of his notorious reputation. For as long as anyone could remember, he had been a bully. He had always been big for his age, and by the time he was in seventh grade he was almost six feet tall and weighed over 180 pounds.

In school he was a bully, stealing lunch money from his smaller and weaker schoolmates and making them do his homework. The teachers all knew what was going on, but they were afraid of him too. Even his parents were afraid of him. Buddy Edwards was one mean and nasty kid.

He never outgrew his role as school bully. At the age of twenty-three he was still pushing around those who were smaller and weaker than he was. That meant he was pushing practically everyone around. Buddy was no mental heavyweight, but he was smart enough to know how to keep out of real trouble. He didn't commit any big crimes, the kind that might get him a couple of years in the slammer. He was afraid of that. Usually he stayed on the right side of the law—barely, but enough to keep him out of jail. He didn't run with any tough gangs either. Down deep he was afraid of them too. Buddy was always scared when he thought he might be put in a position where someone would be able to push him around. He was not really a criminal, he was a bully. He wanted to dominate others, and like most bullies he was basically a coward.

When he walked, Buddy would somehow take up the whole sidewalk, forcing people into the gutter or up against the buildings. When he came into a restaurant or bar, he took people's favorite booths, blew smoke in their faces, insulted their girlfriends. But his principal instrument of aggression was his motorcycle.

Buddy owned a huge motorcycle. He had adjusted it so that it made more noise than a jet plane at takeoff. It was the loudest motorcycle anyone had ever heard, and Buddy loved it. He would roar up and down the quiet streets at midnight and lights would go on all over town. The police were often called, but nobody was ever willing to sign a complaint against Buddy. They were all afraid he would "get them" later. So he always went free.

He was a real menace to bike riders, even little kids on bikes. He would roar past, nearly sideswiping them, causing heaven knows how many scraped knees and bent wheels as bicycles went out of control and crashed to avoid him. He would sometimes challenge cars—if he knew the drivers—by suddenly cutting in front of them. More than one car wound up in a ditch or crumpled a fender around a pole trying to avoid Buddy Edwards and his motorcycle. And Buddy would ride by again, laughing at the unfortunate driver and making obscene gestures. There were some who wished that they hadn't swerved to avoid him. But Buddy knew, instinctively, that they always would. They didn't have the guts to hit him, and he always took advantage of that certain knowledge.

Charlie Sebring and Roger Platt had, to their misfortune, known Buddy Edwards for many years. Buddy had bullied and terrorized them through school, just the other day he had forced Charlie's car off the road with his motorcycle. It took a tow truck to get Charlie's car out of the ditch. Buddy had watched and laughed.

Charlie was still seething, not merely from his most recent humiliation but from years of torment at the hands of the bully. He was talking in dead earnest to Roger. Both had already consumed a few drinks.

"That guy's no joke anymore," Charlie said "He's a deadly menace. I could have been killed being run off the road like that. One day he really is going to kili someone. Something has to be done about him before he does."

"Sure, sure," said Ralph. He had heard it all before. He had said it all before. "Who's going to do anything? You or me? Even if he gets arrested, it'll be a few weeks in jail and then he's back out on the street, and after us. There's nothing we can do about it There never has been, and there never will be."

"Yes there is," said Charlie. "I've got a plan. It's something I've been thinking about for a couple of days now. We can fix him good, and he'll never know who did it."

Suddenly Ralph was interested. Fixing Buddy Edwards good was something that he had wanted to do for a long, long time. Particularly if Buddy never knew who "fixed him." "Okay, what's your plan?"

"Now, you know where he lives, down by Four Corners. In order to get home he comes down Miller's Hill and over the Black Creek bridge. He comes that way every night. Now, lets say somebody strung a piece of wire across the end of the bridge, just about chest high. When he came to the bridge he would hit the wire and it would knock him right off his motorcycie. Maybe the motorcycle would even be wrecked, and then we wouldn't have to worry about it anymore."

Ralph thought for a moment. "Sounds dangerous. I mean he could be pretty badly hurt, getting knocked off his motorcycle like that."

"Guys like Buddy are too tough to get badly hurt. Besides, does he ever worry about someone getting hurt when he forces them off the road? I could have been killed the other day. He'll just have to take his chances."

"The police would suspect us of stringing up the wire," said Ralph.

"Sure they would. They would suspect half the people in town. And the police don't like Buddy any better than we do. Do you think they would waste a lot of time trying to find out who did something to him?"

Ralph hesitated for a moment, but the memory of a thousand injuries at the hands of that bully, plus the foolhardy courage brought on by a few drinks, confirmed his decision. "When do we do it?"

"Now," said Charlie. "Tonight. I have a piece of wire in my car."

They drove to the vicinity of the Black Creek bridge and parked about half a mile away. They decided to string the wire up where Buddy would be leaving the bridge. They figured that as he crossed the bridge he would have to slow down, and thus he would not slam into the wire at a high speed. "We want to scare him, not kill him," said Ralph.

After putting up the wire, the two men hid in a clump of bushes and waited. It wasn't long before they heard the familiar roar of Buddy Edwards's motorcycle coming over Miller's Hill. They could see the headlight as it reached the crest of the hill and started down toward the bridge.

"He's going awful fast," said Ralph. "He better slow down over the bridge."

But he didn't; perhaps he had been drinking, perhaps he always went too fast. Buddy Edwards hit the wire at a tremendous speed. They saw the motorcycle continue straight forward, while Buddy's body was flung backwards. And they feared they saw something else.

"Oh my God," gasped Ralph.

The motorcycle crashed into a tree not far from where the two men were hidden. Buddy's body had been thrown onto the bridge. At least most of it had.

When police investigated the scene they found Buddy's head was missing. The wire had been strung just a bit too high and instead of catching Buddy in the chest, it got him in the neck, and the impact sliced his head right off.

The police assumed that the head had been thrown into the creek and washed away. It was never found.

This tale and others like it are often used to explain "spook lights"—strange and unexplainable lights that are seen on some local hill or bridge, The light is said to be the headlight of the ghost motorcycle, which must return again and again to the scene of the accident.

On the morning of his fortieth birthday, Stan Crane arose feeling pretty depressed. As comedian Jack Benny once observed, thirty-nine is a funny age, forty isn't. It's all downhill from here, thought Stan.

As he washed and shaved he cheered up a bit. His wife and kids would be waiting for him downstairs. They would probably have a birthday present for him and start singing "Happy Birthday," and that would make him feel much better about being forty.

When Stan got downstairs, his family barely acknowledged his presence. His wife was reading her newspaper. His kids were wolfing down their food because they were late for school as usual. Nobody said a word to him. They've all forgotten, thought Stan. He left for work that morning feeling more depressed than ever because his family took him for granted and barely noticed him anymore. They just don't care, he thought.

At work things were different. Stan's pretty young secretary greeted him with a big smile and a cheery, "Happy Birthday, boss." She brought him coffee and a doughnut, and was exceptionally friendly all morning. That really made Stan feel better.

As noon approached, the secretary suggested that the two of them might have lunch together to celebrate his birthday. Stan jumped at the suggestion, instead of going to the usual place for a sandwich, Stan decided that they should go to a really nice restaurant and have a good lunch. "After all, it is my birthday," he said.

So at noon Stan locked up the office, and he and his secretary went to one of the fanciest restaurants in town. They had a couple of drinks before eating, and some wine with their food. When lunch was over, Stan was feeling very mellow.