Southern Fried Rat and Other Gruesome Tales (9 page)

By the way, don't be tempted to try these tricks yoursell. As I said, these are very well known stories, and teachers, who once were students, know them as well as students. If the tricks ever worked in the first place, which is doubtful, they certainly are not going to work anymore.

Joe Linet wasn't afraid of anything—at least to hear him tell it. He bragged about the time he went swimming in shark-infested waters. And about the time he had taken a loaded gun away from a burglar. And about the time he had calmly stepped into a burning barn to rescue a frightened horse at the risk of his own life.

His friends, or at least the people who knew him, for nobody really liked him, doubted most of his stories. But there was no way to prove him wrong, no way to shut him up. They just had to endure those endless, and probably untrue, stories.

As Joe was winding up a thrilling (to him) account of how he had spent one vacation diving off the high cliffs at Acapulco, Pete Judson, a member of his captive audience, said: "I guess there isn't much that you're afraid of."

"There isn't anything I'm afraid of," said Joe.

"You're not afraid of ghosts?"

"I don't even believe in ghosts," said Joe. "And I'm certainly not afraid of them."

"Then I suppose you wouldn't be afraid to go into the graveyard at midnight, and lay to rest the ghost of Charity Hawthorne."

"Huh?" said Joe. He hadn't expected that.

"You know the old part of the cemetery. The part where they have graves from a hundred or two hundred years ago."

Joe didn't, but he nodded his head yes anyway.

"Well, if you go into the cemetery," continued Pete, "you'll find that it's pretty crowded with graves. But there's one grave that is set apart from al! the others, up on a little mound. You can't miss it.

"That's the grave of Charity Hawthorne. She died back in the 1820s, and everybody said that she was a witch. Now, they weren't burning people as witches then, but that's not to say there weren't a lot of people in this town who wouldn't have liked to have seen Charity Hawthorne burned. She was an old woman with an evil reputation. It was said that she could cause people and animals to get sick just by looking at them. They said that she had the evil eye. People said a lot of other things about her too. That the devil would visit her in her house. And that whenever a child disappeared, the child wound up in Charity's cooking pot."

"You don't believe any of that superstitious nonsense," protested Joe.

"I'm not saying I believe it. I'm just telling you what a lot of people around here did believe back then. They couldn't prove anything against her. So when she died, she had every right to be buried in the graveyard along with everybody else. Still, people saw to it that her grave would be set well away from the others, so that she wouldn't contaminate them after death.

"Now, here's the point. It was said that Charity was pretty angry about the way she had been buried, and that on many nights she gets up out of her grave and walks around the other tombstones."

"I've never heard that," said Joe.

"You weren't born here," said Pete. "People here don't like to talk about it to outsiders. They're afraid they'll be laughed at."

"Anybody should laugh at that silly story."

"If it's just a silly story," continued Pete, "then you won't mind going into the graveyard and putting an end to it once and for all. According to the story, the only way to keep Charity's ghost in its grave is to go into the cemetery at midnight, kneel down on her grave, and plunge a dagger into it."

"Piece of cake," smirked Joe.

"I'm not through yet," said Pete. "You have to do this at midnight. If you don't do it just exactly at the stroke of twelve, Charity Hawthorne's bony hand will reach up from out of the grave, grab you, and pull you under."

Pete said those last words with such conviction that Joe shuddered slightly. But he was committed, trapped, by his own bragging.

"Piece of cake," he repeated, but with somewhat less assurance than before.

"You can do it tonight," said Pete. "We'll all go to the graveyard with you. But we'll only go up to the fence. You'll have to go in by yourself. Maybe we don't believe in ghosts either, but we don't like to take chances." The others in the group nodded in agreement.

Joe really didn't believe in ghosts. And he was no coward. On the other hand, he was not nearly as brave as he pretended he was. Like most of us, he was afraid of ghosts, even if he didn't believe in them. The idea of going into a graveyard at midnight, kneeling down, and plunging a knife into a grave made him more than a little nervous. Just to make things worse, it started to rain. Joe hoped the others would call off the expedition. Of course they didn't, and at eleven thirty they were all at his front door waiting for him. Joe put on his rain sticker and went out.

"We had better hurry," said Pete. "If we get there after midnight, Charity will be able to get her hand out of the grave."

At the entrance to the graveyard the others stopped. "You'll need this," said Pete, handing Joe a flashlight and a large, old-fashioned dagger. "Now, don't waste any time. If you get there late it might be dangerous. We wouldn't want to be responsible in case anything happened to you."

In the dark and rain it was harder for Joe to find the grave of Charity Hawthorne than he had expected. And by the time he spotted the one grave that was set apart from the others he could already hear the church clock striking midnight. He rushed to the grave, fell to his knees, and plunged the dagger into the wet earth just as the final stroke of midnight died away.

Thank God I was in time, he thought. Now I had better get out of here.

He tried to rise but found that something was pulling at him, holding him on the grave. It's the hand of Charity Hawthorne! he thought with horror.

Outside the graveyard, Pete and the others were having a good laugh.

Of course, there had never been a ghost, or a Charity Hawthorne. Pete had just made the story up because he was sick of all of Joe's bragging. When Joe returned and they told him about the joke, everyone would have a good laugh.

But Joe didn't return, and after about half an hour they began to wonder what had happened. So they went into the graveyard to look for Joe. He was still there, right on top of the grave where he had knelt. He was dead. In his haste. Joe had plunged the dagger right through the bottom of his rain slicker, so when he tried to get up, it seemed as if someone were pulling him back down to the ground.

Poor Joe had died of fright.

Johnny lived in a little town in the South. He was like most of the other kids in the town except that he was known to have an exceptionally active imagination. He would wander off for hours, and then he would come back with the most amazing stories about having been kidnapped by gypsies or meeting a flying saucer or something wild like that.

Johnny's mother wasn't terribly surprised when one evening Johnny rushed into the house shouting, "Mommy, Mommy, I saw a dinosaur in the swamp!"

"That's nice," said his mother. "But I hope you didn't play with it. Dr. Brown says that dinosaurs have germs."

Johnny was rather disappointed at the cool reaction, because this time he wasn't making up a story. He really had seen a dinosaur in the swamp.

Johnny tried to tell other people in the town. The reaction was just about the same. Some said, "You should stop telling big lies like that." Or, "Sure, sure you did." Others just snickered and walked away. Now, Johnny was more than disappointed, he was humiliated and angry. He decided that he was going to show everybody in town that he was no liar.

Johnny decided that he was going to make friends with the dinosaur, and then he would make all those people who didn't believe him pay. When he went into the swamp the next time, he took a bag of peanuts with him. When he met the dinosaur he asked it if it wanted a peanut. The dinosaur shook its head to indicate that it didn't.

"That's good," said Johnny, "because then I can eat all of the peanuts myself."

Naturally, as soon as the dinosaur heard that, there was nothing in the world it wanted more than a peanut. It whimpered and begged until Johnny very reluctantly gave it a peanut, and then another. But first he made the dinosaur promise that if he gave it peanuts, it would do everything he said.

When Johnny went home that evening, he once again told his mother that he had met the dinosaur in the swamp.

"You shouldn't play with dinosaurs," said his mother. "Dr. Brown says that dinosaurs have germs."

"Well," said Johnny. "Dr. Brown shouldn't say such things about dinosaurs. It might make them mad."

His mother ignored the last remark. Later that night when the family was asleep, Johnny snuck back to the swamp, where he found the dinosaur waiting for him. He led the dinosaur to Dr. Brown's house.

The next morning Dr. Brown's neighbors awoke to find that the doctor's house, garage, and lawn had all been stomped out of existence—and Dr. Brown along with them. The only clue that the police were ever able to find was a couple of peanut shells.

After that, Johnny began having the dinosaur stomp out the town a block at a time. On one particularly good night he had the dinosaur stomp his school flat, while a PTA meeting was going on.

Pretty soon there was nothing at all left of the town except the house in which Johnny and his family lived. One afternoon the family were all sitting on the front porch, and Johnny happened to mention that he had seen the dinosaur in the swamp again.

"Well," said Johnny's mother. "I hope you don't play with it, because the late Dr. Brown said that dinosaurs have germs."

Johnny whistled. The dinosaur came bounding out of the swamp. Johnny threw it a peanut and said, "Step on Mother first."

This rather nasty humorous anecdote comes from the collection of folklorist William Koch of Kansas. It has been slightly adapted.

Lucy was driving to the shopping mall to do some last-minute Christmas shopping. She was in a hurry and was distracted, so she didn't notice the cat trying to cross the street until it was too late. She hit it, and the instant she did she knew she had killed it. Lucy, who was a cat lover and normally a very careful driver, felt absolutely horrible.

She stopped the car and rushed back to the spot where the cat lay. There was no doubt it was dead. Her only consolation was that the poor animal had probably not even known what hit it. Lucy turned to walk back to her car, but the thought of that poor broken form on the side of the road stopped her. She had killed the cat, and even if she had not meant to, she was still responsible for it. She couldn't just leave it lying there by the side of the road, nor at Christmastime.

Lucy went back to her car and found a bag that had been left in the trunk. It happened to be a Bloomingdale's shopping bag. Gingerly she put the dead cat into the shopping bag and put the bag on the back seat of the car. It seemed heartless to put the poor thing in the trunk. Lucy said to herself that she would take the cat home and bury it after she went shopping. This thought gave the anguished Lucy some comfort.

Lucy pulled into the shopping mall parking lot. It was crowded with the cars of holiday shoppers, but she found a spot. Then she headed for the mall. As she reached the entrance she saw a large sign posted on the door. Did You Remember to Lock Your Car? it read. In smaller print the sign warned that during the holiday season there was always an increase in the number of thefts from parked cars, and that the management of the mall was not responsible for such thefts, and so on.