Southern Fried Rat and Other Gruesome Tales (5 page)

As Stan and his secretary were driving back to the office, she said that since they had to go past her apartment building, they might stop off there for another drink. Once again Stan jumped at the suggestion.

Up in the apartment she fixed a couple of drinks, and then she excused herself, saying that she wanted to slip into something more comfortable. When she was out of the room Stan thought, By God, I'm not so old after all. I've still got the old sex appeal. He began taking off his clothes.

Then he heard his secretary's voice from behind the bedroom door. "Are you ready?"

"You bet I am!" shouted Stan.

The bedroom door was flung open, and there stood the secretary holding a big birthday cake. Behind her were Stan's wife and children. "Surprise, surprisei" they all yelled. It sure was a surprise, because by that time Stan was wearing nothing but his socks.

—————

Mrs. Lowery was in the basement doing the wash. Her hair was up in rollers, and the overhead pipes were leaking. Looking around for something to protect her hair, she spotted her son's football helmet and put it on.

As she was putting the clothes in the machine, she noticed that the housedress she was wearing was badly soiled. Impulsively she took it off and put it in with the other dirty clothes.

There she stood wearing nothing but a football helmet when she heard someone cough. She turned around to see a man staring at her. It was the plumber her husband had called to fix the leaky pipes.

"I hope your team wins, lady," said the plumber.

—————

David had become engaged to a wonderful girl whom he met in college. He didn't know her family, but from what she told him they were pretty straitlaced people. Naturally, when he was invited to dinner at their house for the first time he was very nervous and wanted desperately to make a good impression.

Dinner seemed to be going fairly well, but about halfway through David glanced down and saw to his horror that his fly was unzipped. No one else had noticed, so very carefully and slowly, without looking down again, David managed to zip it up. What he didn't notice was that he had snagged the edge of tile tablecloth in the zipper. When dinner was over and he got up to walk away from the table, he pulled the tablecloth and sent all the dishes crashing to the floor.

—————

Mrs. Gardner came home from the grocery store and saw her husband working under the car. All that was visible were his legs and the lower part of his torso. She laughed and reached down and unzipped his fly. She was still laughing to herself as she walked into the house, but her laughter turned to shock when she saw her husband sitting in front of the television.

"Who's out under the car?" she cried.

"Oh, that's Harry from the garage. I couldn't figure out what was wrong with the car, so he said he'd come over and take a look."

Then Mrs. Gardner told her husband what she had done, and they both went outside to see what Harry's reaction had been. They found him still under the car, unconscious, with a huge gash in his head.

He had been so surprised by what had happened that he tried to sit up and banged his head.

—————

Grant and Madene Berger had been on a two-week camping trip. They had been having such a good time that they had delayed their return to the last possible moment, and Grant had to drive all night. By morning he was exhausted. They still had a long way to go and couldn't stop. Grant asked Madene to take over the driving while he went into the back of the camper to take a nap.

Grant knew that it was illegal for anyone to ride in the back of a moving camper. He also knew that Marlene was not a very experienced driver with this vehicle. So he told her to drive slowly and not make any stops if she could help it.

Grant got into the back of the camper for his nap. It was hot in the camper so he stripped down to his shorts. Still he was not able to sleep soundly. Every bump woke him up. He was worried that Mariene would be flagged down by the police. Then he felt the vehicle come to a dead stop. He got up, opened the door, and looked out to see what had happened.

Marlone had merely stopped for a light, and when the light turned green she started up again, but since she did not shift gears smoothly the vehicle started with a lurch, which knocked Grant right out of the door onto the road.

There he stood in his shorts, watching his camper disappear down the highway. A few moments later the police arrived.

How am I going to explain this one? Grant thought.

—————

Willis owned a camper trailer, but he never drove it farther than the family campsite, about thirty miles from his home. The large spare gas tank that came with the trailer was useless to him. But Willis was a frugal fellow who hated to see anything go to waste, so he converted the spare gas tank to a holding tank for the camper toilet.

He was asleep in the camper one night when he thought he heard some strange noises outside. In his semiconscious condition Willis decided that the noise was nothing more than a marauding raccoon, and so he went back to sleep.

The next morning when Willis stepped out of his camper, he found that the noise had not been made by a raccoon. Someone had been trying to siphon gas out of his spare tank. There on the ground lay a siphon hose abandoned by the would-be thief, plus unmistakable evidence that after trying to suck the "gas" out of the spare tank, the thief had been very, very ill.

—————

Dr. Gray had seen a lot of strange injuries in his time, but nothing quite like the one suffered by the patient who now lay before him on a table in the emergency room.

"How did it happen?" asked the doctor.

The patient, who obviously was in great pain, merely groaned and turned his head away.

"How did it happen?" repeated the doctor. "You can tell me."

"Well," said the man. "My wife saw a spider in the toilet bowl. She's deathly afraid of spiders, so she tried to kill it with her hair spray. She sprayed the toilet bowl full of the stuff.

"I didn't know anything about that and a couple of minutes later i went into the bathroom. I was just sitting there smoking a cigarette, and I dropped the lighted butt into the bowl. It exploded and blew me halfway across the room."

All of these embarrassing tales and scores more like them are funny. They make you laugh. But they are not jokes—that is, they are not obvious fiction. They are almost always told as true stories, and they are widely believed, even by people who should know better. Accounts of a man in his shorts found wandering around on the highway have frequently appeared in newspapers, and the story of the nude surprise party once popped up in Ann Landers's column.

John Reynolds and Ross McRaye from Philadelphia were going on a long-planned camping and hunting trip to western Canada. For two weeks they would get off into the wilds, far, far away from civilization. They were going to a place where they didn't have to worry about running into a lot of other campers or hunters.

John had heard about a little town on the edge of the forest that they could use as a jumping-off place. When they got to the town, they found it was barely a town at all, more like a trading post where the local Indians would come to buy whatever supplies they needed. Though John and Ross were experienced woodsmen, they knew that they would need a guide to take them into the rugged country.

They thought it would be easy to hire a guide, but they soon discovered that it was nearly impossible. Though the Indians were very poor and quite obviously needed work of some sort, when they were asked about becoming guides they always came up with an excuse as to why they couldn't. Either their wife or mother was sick, and they had to stay behind to attend her. Or they were waiting for another party that they guided every year and could not disappoint. Or they had to go somewhere else and didn't know anything about the woods. These excuses were all transparently false. What was clear was that the local Indians didn't want to go into the woods, no matter how much money they were offered. After hanging around the trading post for a couple of days, John and Ross discovered the real reason. The Indians were afraid to go into the woods because the woods were said to be inhabited by the Wendango.

The men from Philadelphia were not quite sure what the Wendango was supposed to be—some sort of real creature or a demon or spirit of the woods. But whatever it was, it had the Indians of the area terrified. They said that no one who had ever seen the thing remained alive and sane.

The Wendango worked in strange ways. It would pick out a particular person in a group. The person would begin to hear strange noises and smell strange smells that no one else in the group could hear or smell. Sometimes the man who had been chosen as victim by the Wendango would say that he could see the creature's eyes glowing in the darkness beyond the firelight. But no one else was ever able to see the glowing eyes.

Finally the Wendango would begin to call to its victim, and that would be the end. No one could resist the call of the Wendango. The victim would rush out into the woods and never be seen again—or almost never. A few of the Wendango's victims had been found later. What had happened to them? When asked that question, the Indians would just turn away. They did not want to talk about it. It was too horrible.

Now, John and Ross regarded all of this business about the Wendango as ignorant superstition, and they didn't want to have their trip ruined because of it. They persisted in trying to find a guide and finally they found one. He was an Indian named DaFago, who was desperately in need of money. When they offered DaFago twice the usual guide's fee, he reluctantly agreed to take the men into the woods.

DaFago was silent most of the time. He marched grimly through the woods ahead of his charges and communicated mainly by pointing, or with an occasional grunt. After they had been in the woods for two days, DaFago's manner changed. From time to time he would stop suddenly and look around, as though he had heard a strange noise. John and Ross heard nothing unusual. Then DaFago would put his nose in the air and begin to sniff, as though he had caught the faint odor of something strange. John and Ross could smell nothing unusual. When they asked the Indian what was going on, he would not answer.

The hunters had been out for a week, and each day DaFago's actions became stranger and stranger. He never seemed to sleep but sat up all night listening and watching. But for what? He said nothing. John and Ross became genuinely concerned for their guide's sanity and for their own safety, for they would be lost in the woods without him.

Then one evening a snowstorm hit. Such storms were not uncommon in autumn in that part of Canada. Though they might be violent, they usually didn't last too long.

The men built a fire and prepared to spend the night. DaFago assumed his usual attitude, sitting by the fire listening and watching, but this night, in the storm, he seemed to be more tense and alert than ever.

The wind was howling through the trees, and the noise kept John and Ross awake. As they listened to the wind, it began to sound as if it was a voice in the distance calling, "Da-Faaaaaay-go! Da-Faaaaaaaay-go!"

"Do you hear that?" said John.

"No I don't," said Ross, "and you don't either. It's just the wind. You can't let your imagination get the better of you. We're in enough trouble already. We're in the middle of the woods in a snowstorm, and our guide is going nuts."

The two men finally fell asleep. They were awakened again by a scream—not an imaginary scream but a real scream, very close. They crawled out of the tent and saw DaFago standing by the fire with his hands over his ears—and screaming.

Then from out of the woods, the wind, or something, called: "Da-Faaaaaaaay-go! Da-Faaaaay-go!" Out there in the darkness John and Ross thought they saw two red glowing eyes. Or was it just an illusion?

DaFago gave one more scream. "My feet are burning! They are fiery wings and I must fly!" Then he rushed off into the darkness.

John and Ross were terrified, but they knew there was nothing they could do until the sun came up. As soon as it did, they tried to follow DaFago's trail in the snow.