Kindle Edition
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Category:
Mystery/Suspense
Publisher: Veni Vici Books
Type: Fiction
Pages: 50
Copyright: July, 2013
ISBN-13: 9780988018945
Price: $5.99 (eBook)
A very real and frightening experience in a very real Ghost town led to this fact and fiction account of a search for a gas station in the wilds of Utah and discovery of that ghost town which
had more than abandoned buildings. Much more...
The first part is really biographical. I had started to simply record my experience. In that Ghost Town we found an ancient gas station run by a very scary and strange old lady. Some unexplained power pushed me to continue with the story in fiction that felt as if I had actually experienced it.
Excerpt
At the entrance to the freeway Drew saw what looked like a familiar figure; a tall, slim young man with flaxen hair. He was really tall; about 6:2 or more. He was practically a double for Greg Simmons, a schoolmate of one of his own sons.
Drew wouldn’t have dreamed of picking up a hitchhiker for the past twenty years; people just didn’t do that anymore, but this kid was different. And suddenly Drew realized he longed for some company... Without further thought Drew pulled off to the shoulder and stopped. His windows were open. The young man came to the window and Drew asked, “Where are you headed?”
“Wichita!” The youngster smiled brightly.
“Hop in! I’ll drop you off in Denver. I go north east from there.”
The kid dropped his backpack in the back seat and settled in the front. “Thank you, Sir. I’m Billy Welch,” he grinned.
“Don’t call me ‘sir,” said Drew, “it makes me feel old. The name is Drew. What are you doing way out here?”
“Just finished a summer job. I’m in Geology.”
“Is that so?” said Drew, somewhat surprised. “One of my best friends teaches Geology in Erie, Pennsylvania. I’m from Cleveland. My friend visits now and then. Bud Myers. Ring any bells?”
“Nope. I go to school in Texas. I might teach for a while when I graduate,” said Billy, “but I like being out in the field.”
“What were you doing?” asks Drew.
“Seismic work.”
“Yeah, I know about that,” said Drew, “You drill holes and blow up charges and meters tell you what’s down there, right?”
“More or less,” chuckled Billy.
They found more and more to talk about. Drew was really happy to have picked him up. Time rolled by quickly. In no time they both felt some hunger. It was noon and there was a little town with a restaurant. Drew felt downright festive as they entered the restaurant. He’d been on his own for the past couple of months and now he had some family. Billy could have been his son except for his height. Billy was a half-head taller than Drew; taller, in fact, than all the men in the Harris family.
When alone, Drew was usually well organized. In his mind he would carry “To Do” lists and he would mentally cross off chores as he finished them. In good company, however, he just enjoyed the moment and ignored responsibilities.
On the road, a prime responsibility is frequently checking the gas gage. They had had a fine lunch in Green River had got onto some new subjects and continued their gab fest like two enthusiastic teenagers. At one point, Drew looked down at the gas gage and uttered a low, “Shit.” He pulled off on to the highway’s shoulder, and got a map out.
“Oh, my God,” said Billy who now also looked at the gas gage.
“We don’t have enough to double back,” said Drew, “And there doesn’t seem to be anything on the map until we get to Colorado.”
“Oh, my God,” repeated Billy. “We were talking and laughing…”
“And we were out to lunch,” Drew finished Billy’s sentence.
Drew was the sort of man who compulsively would try to solve problems, to do something about whatever the problem was. It never occurred to him to be patient and let problems solve themselves. The idea of just stopping and putting up a sign “out of gas” never occurred to him. It didn’t occur to Billy either.
Drew studied the map and saw Moab south of the I-70, perhaps 30 miles or so; probably a greater distance than what they could reach with what they had left in gas. But Moab rang bells with him. Anything with familiarity brings comfort in moments of stress.
There was the Biblical Moab, of course, East of the Jordan River in the Holy Land. And Moab in Utah, Drew recalled, had become the Uranium capital of America in the early 1950s. It ran just along the Colorado River and he’d seen some pictures of very picturesque rock formations in that area.
Drew mumbled these thoughts to assure himself that things might not be as bad as they looked. There was a little unnamed spot on the map, maybe just eight miles south, right off the UT-191 that led to Moab. There would have to be a gas station around that spot.
“Hell, we’ll be fine,” said Drew cheerfully and started the car. The cutoff was a few hundred yards away and the UT-191 was fine, paved and all.
“We’ll get to see some real country for a change,” said Drew to young Billy who craned his neck in every direction to take in the scenery. It was gentle rolling hill country, dry as a bone, with marginal desert scrub brush here and there. It had been a hot and dry summer and everything was shades of brown.
As they came around a gentle curve in the road behind a low hill, they were greeted by what looked like a Hollywood movie set.
“Oh, My God,” said Billy, “Where is Tom Mix and the Lone Ranger?”
“Wow,” said Drew as he began to giggle childishly, “A real ghost town!”
The view that faced them was incredible; ancient, weather-beaten, wooden shacks with broken windows; some with remnants of rags that once served as curtains, blowing in and out of the windows. The shacks were spread over a number of little brown hills. The odd rusted car and car part and rubber tires rested here and there.
Neither Drew nor Billy had ever seen anything like this fascinating piece of history. Drew stopped the car and they sat there, spellbound, forgetting for the moment that their quest was a gas station, not an unattended museum, a remnant of, perhaps, a once thriving mining town.
Drew nodded toward one of the old rusted cars. “Look at the wheels on that one. The tires look as good as new and they must be decades old. Billy looked and shook his head, “You’re right. That’s strange.”
The road between these low hills and shacks was unpaved but well packed and Drew moved the old Buick forward slowly as they checked out the shacks in different states of deterioration.
Coming around the next corner, Drew’s eyes widened as Billy looked on in puzzlement. Here, in front of what looked more like a former home instead of a store, was a concrete pad on which stood two historic gas pumps that had glass cylinders.
In the 1920s and ‘30s these were often topped by a round glass globe that carried the gas company’s brand; Texaco or Shell or whatnot.
Later models, Drew recalled, would have the glass cylinder surrounded by metal mesh for safety. But these were primitive and private without mesh, or any protection, or branding.
Drew reached out to touch Billy’s arm. “I haven’t seen anything like that since my childhood in the 1940s. These are pre-war gas pumps. They’d be worth a small fortune on the collectible’s market.”
And then in shock Drew tightened his grip on Billy’s arm. “Look, for Christ’s sake, Billy, look! There is gas in one of the cylinders!”
Drew now recalled how the gas looked bright red in the cylinders and one of these cylinders here was half filled with red liquid.
Was this a joke by someone or a mirage?
Drew shook his head to rid himself of any false visions. He felt as if he had zipped through a time-tunnel of some thirty-forty years, and here in the middle of nowhere in a ghost town which might have been abandoned decades ago was a gas pump with gas!
“Let’s get a closer look,” suggested Billy. Drew automatically started the old Buick moving toward the pumps. He pulled up in front of the pumps and got out of the car as he would have done had this been a real, functioning service station.
The shack behind the pumps didn’t have the totally abandoned look of the other houses on the low hills surrounding the area. There was an unbroken window and an open door. The interior was pitch-black but the ground between the shack and the pumps looked swept. Drew stepped closer to the pumps. The red liquid in the glass cylinder looked very real to him.
This was crazy. There couldn’t be anyone here. What would they do? How would they survive? Billy, in a daze, also stepped out of the car on his side.
Drew called out with a loud voice, “Hello? Is there anyone here?”
The only response was the low pitched whistle of the wind which wound its way through the tired board shacks.
“Hello,” Drew repeated loudly, “We need some gas! Anyone here?”
Not a single human sound could be heard.
Drew now walked around the car which gave him a view of the side of the shack behind the gas pumps and there stood a little old lady facing the side of the shack. She seemed frozen, more like a comical statue, a Mammy Yokum out of the old Li’l Abner cartoon, or Granny Moses from the Beverly Hillbillies.
The look of this strange creature automatically prompted a “country sound” in Drew’s voice. He liked and got a kick out of country folk and the chameleon in him automatically went into gear.
“Howdy, M’am,” he drawled, “Didn’t want to bother you none but we need some gas.”
The old woman, alas, was not comical. She was strange. She continued to stare at the side of the shack without acknowledging Drew. There was a tense quality about her, somewhat akin to a threatened animal that mixed fear with anger.
“How much you want?” she finally spat out without looking at him.
Drew bent over backwards to sound friendly and accommodating. That old woman and the whole environment made him feel very uncomfortable.
“Well, Ma’am, I’d like to fill the tank,” he drawled, “but I’ll take whatever you can spare.” Drew started to sound real country.
The woman slowly walked along the sidewall of the shack toward the pumps without looking at Drew or Billy. She slowly pumped the gas.
Drew looked at her and at the open door to the shack behind her. He got a choking feeling, a sense that there was someone in the shack with a gun aimed directly at him.
He looked away, afraid to peer into the interior to perhaps set off whoever was in there to squeeze a trigger.
The old woman stopped pumping gas after perhaps two or three gallons. Gas was averaging about fifty-seven cents per gallon that year but she said, “That’s ten dollars.” Drew had no intent to challenge her. He could feel the sweat on his neck even in the dryness of the desert. He handed her a ten dollar bill and murmured, “Thank you, Ma’am.”
Billy had slipped into the passenger seat and Drew slowly, carefully pulled the car away. Neither of them said a word until they came around the other side of a hill, out of view of the gas pumps.
Drew stopped the car and turned to Billy. “That was the God-damnedest, weirdest scene I’ve ever lived through.”
Billy wiggled a hand with a limp wrist, “I’ll be fucked. I had the weirdest feeling.”
“Do you know what I felt?” asked Drew with a hoarse voice. “I had a feeling that there was a son of a bitch standing inside that house in the dark with a gun aimed right at my head. Maybe I’m crazy, but that’s what I felt.”
Billy let out a yelp of a laugh, “That’s exactly what I felt, too!”
The two men high fived each other and burst out in laughter.
“Jesus Murphy,” said Drew, “I’m glad you were with me. All alone I might have soiled my drawers!”
Billy giggled hysterically, “I damned near peed my pants; I got so nervous. Let’s get out of here.”
Drew looked around, “But you know, aside of all that weirdness, this place is unique. It’s like a museum.”
He put the car in gear and headed for the highway. But after only a dozen yards they hit a bump and there was a loud bang. A bar that stretched across the dirt road had suddenly popped up. It had teeth like those barriers that prevent cars from entering one-way lanes, and it had flattened the two front tires of the old Buick.
“What in Hell?” shouted Drew as he jumped out of the car.
Just as quickly, three men stepped out from behind three widely separated items - a broken down outhouse, a rusted wreck of a truck and a bush, so that, in effect, they surrounded Drew and Billy. The men were thin, wiry, dirty and ugly, and they pointed ancient rifles at the shocked Drew and Billy. They said nothing but waved their rifles indicating that they wanted Drew and Billy to walk toward a larger wreck of a house at the top of the hill that faced them.
Drew’s anger peaked. He confronted them with hands on hips. “Who in hell are you guys and what do you want?”
A shot rang out and dirt flew up inches from his feet. Billy raised his hands and waved to Drew to cool it. That shot convinced Drew that this wasn’t the time to get tough. Drew and Billy started up the hill slowly, in shock and confusion.
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