[QUOTE=DEMONSKUL;28466437][img_thumb]http://declubz.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/weird-crustacean.jpg[/img_thumb]
WHAT THE SHIT IS THAT?[/QUOTE]
It's awesomeness embodied, that's what it is.
[QUOTE=DEMONSKUL;28466437][img_thumb]http://declubz.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/weird-crustacean.jpg[/img_thumb]
WHAT THE SHIT IS THAT?[/QUOTE]
That, my friend, is a Eurypterid. A large, preditory crab-anscestor that lived around 100-130 million years ago.
:science:
There once was a man from Peru
Who dreamed he was eating his shoe
He woke with a fright
In the middle of the night
To find his dream had come true
:ohdear: I didn't watch Spongebob for a month!
[QUOTE=rosar0980;28467372]There once was a man from Peru
Who dreamed he was eating his shoe
He woke with a fright
In the middle of the night
To find his dream had come true
:ohdear: I didn't watch Spongebob for a month![/QUOTE]
Goddamn dude, that episode was so fuckin' scary, don't even remind me of it.
[QUOTE=The BoxDog;28468342][media]http://somuchdamage.com/stuff/diggcomic.jpg[/media][/QUOTE]
This was the greatest thing I've seen in ages.
Holy shit that was amazing.
[QUOTE={ABK}AbbySciuto;28428898]Dead Space is the exact opposite of creepy. It was okay in the beginning, but after that you knew exactly when the enemies were going to show up and which kind. By the 3rd chapter I was numb.[/QUOTE]
Creepy =/= Scary
[QUOTE=RAWRrrr;28471257]Creepy =/= Scary[/QUOTE]
Correct, as Dead Space 2 isn't scary. I can't actually think of a really scary game similar to those numbered out.
[QUOTE=t h e;28433772]Everyday I see a man staring out the window when I'm heading to the subway
He just glares
its really creepy
he wears a blue suit
i always see him adjust his tie
then after looking at him for two seconds, he turns around and leaves[/QUOTE]
Is it just me, or have you found G-Man?
[QUOTE=Archonet;28473854]Is it just me, or have you found G-Man?[/QUOTE]
I think that that was the joke.
[QUOTE=The BoxDog;28468342][media]http://somuchdamage.com/stuff/diggcomic.jpg[/media][/QUOTE]
That was fucking amazing XD
This forum has more creepy stuff outside of this topic than inside it.
[url]http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-106[/url]
I guess I'm staying up.
[url]http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-517[/url]
nothing was creepy until the very last part
Those SCP articles are really awesome.
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XK4ISbIy-zk&feature=feedf[/media]
I honestly have no idea.
[QUOTE=riceyrice;28492243][url]http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-106[/url]
I guess I'm saying up.[/QUOTE]
he vomits that acid shit on them
[QUOTE=Dance_Commander;28493614][media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XK4ISbIy-zk&feature=feedf[/media]
I honestly have no idea.[/QUOTE]
What. The. Shit.
No seriously, what the fuck? It was entertaining, but what the hell.
It's from Japan, that alone explains everything.
Why is everything on the SCP site super small? I have to use Firefox to view it normally which is annoying.
[QUOTE=thispieiscold;28527176][img_thumb]http://filesmelt.com/dl/1284911326550.png[/img_thumb][/QUOTE]
That was a good one, about time we had some quality creepypasta in here. :D
I think i've seen something like this before...
Also, apparently Kain Pathos Crow of the SCP Foundation managed to turn himself into a dog somehow. Weird.
[url]http://www.scp-wiki.net/kain-pathos-crow-s-author-page[/url]
from a spooky thread on reddit
[quote]I have an odd habit a friend recently picked up on, a habit I developed about a year ago. He noticed that when I enter a room, any room, and shut the door, I turn my face away from it and close my eyes until I hear the lock click. Only after the door is fully closed will I open them. He gave me a hard time about it until I told him where it started. I work for a water-seal company in St. Paul. We produce sealant for exposed wood — decks, boats, that kind of thing. You hear about sealant being a dirty word in the Ashland-Ichor Falls-Ironton area, but not all those companies were part of the infamous “Ethylor summer” that wiped out the local economy in the ’50s. I got sent to an industrial park outside of Ichor Falls on business.
I checked into this dismal hotel, the Hotel Umbra, that looked like the decor hadn’t been changed since 1930. The lobby wallpaper had gone yellow from decades of cigarette smoke, and everything had a fine layer of dust, including the old man behind the front desk. I hoped that the room would be in better shape. Mine was on the fourth floor.
Being an old place, the hotel had a rickety cable elevator, the kind with the double sets of doors: one of those flexing metal gates, and a solid outer pair of doors. I shut the gate and latched it, and pressed the tiny black button for my floor.
Just as the outer elevator doors were about to close, I was startled by the face of a young woman rushing at the gap between them. She was too late; the doors shut, and after a moment the elevator ascended.
I thought nothing of it, until I needed to take the elevator back down for one of my bags. I entered, pushed the button for the lobby, and pressed my tired back to the elevator wall opposite the doors. They had nearly completely shut when again I was surprised by a woman’s face moving towards the gap, staring into the elevator through the gate, too late to place her hand in to stop the doors from closing. This time I sprang forward and held the “Door Open” button, and after a moment the doors lurched and slid open.
I waited a moment. From the opening I could see partly down the hallway: no one in sight. Still holding the button down, I slid open the metal gate and craned my head into the hallway to look down the other direction. No one. No trace of the girl, no recently shut hotel room door, no footsteps, no jingle of keys.
I released the button, but did not lean back against the wall. I stood directly in front of where the gap in the doors would be, in the center of the elevator. After a pause, the outer doors again began to slide shut, to move towards each other until the space between them was the width of a young girl’s face.
In that quarter-second several fingertips appeared, followed immediately by her face again, rushing from around the corner, staring at me as the doors met. I had been watching the gap where I thought she might be, so I saw her — she was about thirteen years old, and very plain, almost homely, with a pale complexion and neck-length dark brown hair that looked mussed or slightly dirty.
I didn’t have time to glance down at her visible shoulder, to see what she was wearing; from her behavior I wondered if she was a runaway or a homeless person who had gotten into the building. She had had a glassy, blank expression, tinged with a little desperation, some distant desire or need. A look that could easily be accompanied by the words “Please help.”
The next time I passed the front desk, I asked the old man if he’d seen a young girl running through. “Heard the stories, then,” he said between throat-clearings, rocking gently in his seat. “Young Maddy has been here a long time. Takes a liking to gentlemen guests. Always been shy. Never says a word, not a word. Just curious.”
I told him I hadn’t heard any stories, and that there had been a girl taking the stairs and standing in front of my elevator on every floor.
“That’s our Maddy,” he said. “She likes you then. Sweet on you. She just wants to see, that’s all, just to see. All she ever does. Curious little thing. Just wants to see.”
I stayed at the Hotel Umbra for three nights. It was a four-night business trip; the last night I tried sleeping in my car. It didn’t help.
Let me tell you about Young Maddy. You only catch glimpses of her, of a face with a resigned look of quiet desperation, dominated by a pair of wide, dark eyes. Locked doors, barricades, nothing made a difference; she gets inside. I never saw her longer than half a second. Every time I laid eyes on her she retreated instantly, only to appear again an hour or two later. An hour or two if I was lucky.
Let me tell you about where I saw Young Maddy.
Every time I shut the door to my bathroom, in my hotel room, I saw her. If I watched as I shut it, at the last possible second I’d see the crescent of her face moving fast at the gap. I’d throw the door open to find nothing. Every time I closed the closet door I saw her. If I watched that gap, she’d suddenly be inside the closet, leaning her head to watch me just as it shut. It’s as if she knew where to go, where to be, so that my eye would meet hers. But there was never an impact, never a moment when she’d make contact with the door or the wall.
The first time I sat at that writing table I saw her. As I closed the large bottom drawer. She rushed at the gap from inside the drawer, her wide eyes pleading for something I could not give. I pulled the drawer from its rails and threw it to the floor.
I did spend that last night in my car, but like I said, it did no good. Tossing and turning on that rental car seat, the back ratcheted as flat as I could get it, I’d have to open my eyes sometimes, and if there was a place for her to dart from my view when I opened them, she did. In the side-view mirror, or peeking over the hood of my car — once upside-down, at the top of the windshield, as if she was on the roof.
I’m back in St. Paul again, and I’ve been back for a year. But Maddy hasn’t stopped. If I keep my eyes open long enough, if I watch a place long enough, I’ll eventually catch sight of movement — near the copier in my office, a pile of boxes in an alley, a column in a quiet parking lot — and my eye will get there just in time to see her eye retreating from view. There’s never anything there when I go to look, so I’ve stopped looking.
That’s how I’ve had to change things since the Hotel Umbra. I’ve stopped looking. I keep my eyes shut when I close doors, when I shut drawers and cabinets, fridges, coolers, the trunk of my car. Not all spaces. Just ones that are big enough.
At least, that used to work. I was getting ready for bed a few nights ago, standing in front of my bathroom mirror, door shut, cabinets shut. Watching myself floss. I opened up wide to get my molars. I swear I saw fingertips retreat down the back of my throat.[/quote]
[quote]Immediately after I left grad school I lived for a brief while with a few other people I'd gone to school with. They were very interesting guys and had wildly disparate personal histories, and one of them had some whispery, joked-about, but apparently very much real connections to the Mossad. Anyway, one of his "friends" stayed with us for just a few days and he was of course completely insane. He was initially meant to stay somewhat longer, but we all grew kind of uncomfortable and agreed to ask him to leave, but he must have sensed our unease because before we got the chance he announced he'd be going. Whether or not he actually worked, or had worked, for the Mossad is something I'll never know, but he acted very strangely and didn't leave the apartment for the whole time he was there.
One of his most interesting traits was the way he answered the door. For one, there was just the fact that he always was the one to answer the door while he was there. He could be in his bedroom sound asleep (he kept weird hours, too) but if there was a knock at the door he would come charging out past whichever one of us was walking over to open the door. He would always stand away from the frame and hold his wallet up to the peephole. After a few seconds he'd actually look through it, and then open it.
All other things aside he was actually a very nice guy and I talked to him a little bit while he was there, and once asked him about this habit. He explained, completely deadpan and to my continuing amazement, that if there was an assassin on the other side of the door, they would be looking for the light shining through the other end of the peephole to go dark, and then they would shoot. They can't actually see if it's your eye or anything else blocking the light, so he always tested with his wallet. It was that kind of candor which make me wonder if he was maybe not actually a spy or anything of the sort, but just literally a little bit insane; surely a genuine spy would be more laconic about his trade secrets?
Either way, to this day whenever someone knocks on a door with a peephole, I do this.
You never know when someone will set assassins on all the world's CS theorists.[/quote]
[quote]I was in Taiwan one year when I was younger, and had travelled to a busy night market (these are popular gatherings that usually operate in the evening). Nearby I spotted a sign for a netcafe in a 5-6 story tall building. Thinking I'd fire off some quick emails, I walked in the dark, small entrance of the building. The building was older and hasn't been well maintained, but it's not out of the ordinary in Taiwan. The entrance just had a dark hallway that led to a small elevator.
I pressed the elevator call button and entered. The elevator was uncharacteristically new compared to the building, but I didn't think much of it. Like some Chinese buildings, there wasn't a fourth floor (it's considered bad luck since "four" sounds like "death"), so it just read 1-2-3-5-6, which was usual. I looked for the floor the netcafe was at-- 6th floor, and pressed the button. It lurched into action quietly and began the ascend. When it stopped, I figured it was my floor so I instinctively began to step out. Right before stepping out, however, the sight outside the elevator stopped me. It was pitch dark, only lit by the light in the elevator, it looked like it hasn't been occupied for decades, with some random pieces of furniture covered with white cloth or similar. It was a small building, so each floor were single occupancy, so I could see pretty much the entire floor from the elevator. Thinking I must have gotten the wrong floor, I checked the light (that indicates which floor you're on). Strangely, there was nothing, none of the indicators were on, but the floor button to the netcafe was still lit so I know I haven't gotten there yet. All this happened within a couple of seconds.
That's when I noticed a figure moving in the distance of the floor-- it was not very visible but I could make out what looks like a person dressed in some kind of gown, moving slowly towards the elevator. I was thoroughly creeped out, so I started pressing the close door button. As soon as I pressed it, the elevator light flickered off. I am this close to pissing my pants, and it's actually kind of freaking me out thinking back to it. The lights flickered back on under a second and the door closed, the elevator jolted back to life. A few moments later it opened again to the netcafe.
I am beyond relieved at this point. I walked out immediately and sat down at a computer. After gathering my wits a bit, I walked over to the cashier's desk and told them what I saw. The girl working there listened and her face turned a bit ashen, so I asked her if she heard of similar.
She told me that she's never experienced it, but some coworkers and occasional customers have brought it up-- basically, the building has 6 floors, and the fourth floor had a history. Apparently the floor used to be a hair salon of sorts, until one of the employees killed herself there for some reason. She slit her wrists over the hair wash station and died. The store continued operations despite stories of weird appearances-- when customers got their hair rinsed the water would look a little red, like the customer was bleeding, little things like that, and a couple people reported seeing someone's figure walking away in the mirror. Naturally, the business closed down a few months later.
The building owner tried to re-rent the place out, but never had any luck. Most businesses are quite superstitious, and no one wanted to rent the fourth floor after someone had died in it, even at a very cheap price. Finally, after dropping the price to nearly nothing, a stationary supplies store wanted to rent. During the renovations of the floor, however, several accidents would happen. Tools would end up in strange places, a mirror from the previous business shattered when no one was near it, and finally a worker had his hand jammed between the elevator doors when it closed on him unexpectedly. The workers refused to continue working and finally, the business left and the building owner finally gave up and shut down the floor. He then had the elevator company come in to replace the panel so that the elevator could not go to the fourth floor.
Let me repeat that-- the elevator was programmed to never go to the fourth floor. It doesn't even have a button. But for some reason, sometimes when people take the elevator, it would go to the fourth floor and the doors would open, and some, like myself, would see a figure walking around in the dark.[/quote]
[quote]In South Africa, we have a lot of hijackings, and for a while the favoured method to stop a car was to play dead in the road. Of course it doesn't take long for people to figure out that stopping to help people on the road is a bad idea and that is where my FOAF joins the story. On his way home from work one night (he lived on a small-holding), he sees a body in the road about 1km from his house. He quickly realised what was up and decided to just drive up onto the pavement (kerb for the Yanks I think), and go around the body without stopping. He got home about 2 minutes later, ran inside and called the police. When he saw them coming down the road, he returned to where he had seen the body to tell them where to start their search. Obviously there was no body, but what they did find was quite surprising. Three dead hijackers hiding in the long grass on kerb, as it turns out, when he had driven up on the kerb to avoid the "dead" guy, he had crushed all of the accomplices.
The "dead guy" was never found as far as I know.[/quote]
[editline]11th March 2011[/editline]
Here's one of the best ones I've read:
[quote]When I was young anything that had to do with archaeology began to thrill me. My mom would take me to the library to do whatever little research projects a teacher gives a 9 year old, or to finish my homework, and I would sneak old issues of National Geographic into my books or under my work. When she wasn't looking I would go back to reading the articles about dead civilizations, the work being done to excavate their tombs and cities, and their superstitions and religions.
So when my birthday rolled around the next year, and my parents asked me what I wanted, I proudly named off several books about archaeology. And, a few days later, I was given my birthday present - three big and heavy books about ancient societies that lived in North and South America, and the Caribbean. It wasn't exactly what I had been expecting. I thought that I had explicitly asked for books about ancient Greece and Egypt. Regardless - this was something new and exciting, and the books were all about these people and excavations that had occurred for each respective society.
Being that I was only about ten years old at the time, I was (and still am, actually) a huge fan of breasts. In one of the books there was an image of a dark figurine that had been carved, presumably, from some dark stone. It wasn't onyx. . .and I can't remember what the stone actually was at this point. But it was a figurine of a pregnant woman with enormous breasts, so I liked the picture. It was missing its head though. On the adjacent page was an image of a pregnant tribeswoman. The book made the conjecture that the figurine was an ancient image/icon of a pregnant tribeswoman. I kept looking back and forth between the two pictures. The figurine was missing its head. It began to unsettle me and, eventually, I became so freaked by the juxtaposition of the images that, during future readthroughs I would skip these pages entirely.
As I grew older, my interest in archaeology diminished quite a bit. My archaeology books ended up in a donation box for the local library and I moved on to other interests, namely fantasy, sci-fi, role-playing games, etc.
Several years down the road, my parents and I went to a bed and breakfast that was owned by friends of my mother. It's an old estate that is next to a main road. There is the main house, where the bed and breakfast is operated, a carriage house, and about 50 yards away another smaller house which is where the owners - my mother's friends - live. The estate is on an enormous old plot of land and, despite being next to the main road, is surrounded by apple orchards. My parents took me up there for my 16th birthday. Just what every 16 year-old boy wants, right? They were going to let me drive up and back though, since I had just gotten my license, so I acquiesced and went with them.
The place was amazing. It was enormous, there were stories of ghost sightings, all sorts of history surrounded the area, the houses on the property were all around 150 years old - and the orchards were awesome. The staff at the B&B was really cool. Everybody was very laid back. One of the cooks was Cerine, a thin black woman, she was very pretty but. . distracted? flighty? . . .and she had this really thick island accent. Regardless, she was very entertaining, and she had an awesome laugh. When we were all hanging out at night she would often turn her eyes toward the orchard and kind of get lost in her thoughts. We stayed there for a little more than a week.
After the first few days I had grown somewhat bored. I asked my mother's friend if it would be okay if I took a stroll through the orchard. "Sure," she said, "Explore as much as you'd like but get back here before sunset, there are coyotes in the area." Awesome! That childish urge to explore had woken up since I was immersed in a place that had some actual history. Something inside of me really wanted to find an old civil war bullet or an arrowhead, anything really, out in the orchard.
The first day I was out there was really uneventful. In fact, it grew old quick. The property was immense, and I had explored for about two hours and all I could see was a treeline somewhere in the distance. And my mom's friend wasn't kidding about the coyotes - I saw prints in some of the areas where the soil was softer. There was one spot where it looked as if a couple of them had bedded down for the night. There was a swath of terrain in between two apple trees that had been tamped down. The soil in the middle was actually devoid of any grass or anything else. At first I thought this was strange, but then I found a giant apple on a limb and plucked it and ate it.
On my way back to the house I got a little lost but I happened to see Cerine in the distance. She saw me and smiled and I caught up to her. She was humming what sounded like a lullaby. I asked her about it and she told me that it was an island song that people in the Caribbean sang in order to calm noisy or upset spirits. We chatted a bit, and she told me that she had been working there for about eight months. She said that the first two and a half months had been atrocious. When pressed she became a bit distant again and said that the spirits of the area were very restless. I asked her how she knew and why she was so concerned. She smiled broadly and said that all of the women in her family had a deep connection with the spirits. She said that, soon after her arrival, she began seeing many of them. And they began seeing her. They began to take quite an interest in her and would bother her incessantly, particularly during the night. "Old men and women," she said, "that couldn't find their way. They get angry. Very angry. And this island song quiets them and soothes their anger." Being an inquisitive, and somewhat amused teenager, I asked, "Are there any spirits with us right now?" She nodded her head and her smile disappeared somewhat. "How many?" I inquired. She stopped in her tracks, all remnants of that smile disappeared and she said, "Boy, if I were to tell you the answer to that, you would pack your things and go." As we started walking again, I told her about the area that I had found where the grass was tamped down and talked to her about coyotes. She had a suspicious look on her face but only said, "I don't think you should go back there, friend. The orchard is big and there are many curious things in it." We got back to the B&B right as the sun started to dip.
The next day we went into town and did a bunch of touristy things that my parents wanted to do. I tagged along. It was kind of fun, but I kept thinking about the orchard. In particular, that one spot in the orchard. We got back after dark and, just as my mom's friend had said, we could hear coyotes howl.
It rained that night.
The next day I asked if I could head into the orchard again. My parents said that it was fine and so did their friends. I headed out in the afternoon, giving the soil a chance to dry some. I took a backpack with me and snuck a couple of beers into it. I also packed a sandwich - I was planning on exploring as much as I could.
I went into the orchard and started making my way through the trees, roughly following the path that I had before. I walked for a couple of hours in one direction and, eventually, got to some sort of property line. It was marked by an old stone wall, the type you see in civil war flicks. That part of the orchard ended there and a thick forest started about 100 feet beyond. I was pretty excited and followed the wall for some time. I dug through some piles of crumbled stone hoping to find a bullet. No good. I did manage to find some arrowheads though. I stashed them in my bag. I stopped along the wall and ate my sandwich and drank one of the stolen beers. Right before I finished I heard a crashing in the woods. I stuffed the sandwich into my mouth, chugged the beer, and put the trash in my bag. The minute I finished I glance over toward the forest and three coyotes emerged. I ducked behind the wall hoping that they hadn't seen me.
I poked my head up and, sure enough, they hadn't noticed me. They started moving, languidly, away from me and traveling along the wall. Occasionally they would stop when they heard something and I would duck behind the wall again. Soon enough, the wall actually ended and I was exposed. The minute I had nothing to hide behind they took notice of me. All three of them, in perfect unison, turned and looked right at me.
We stared at each for a few seconds and then they went about their business and I started heading back into the orchard. On my way back through I got a little lost, again, and wandered around, occasionally checking the ground for civil war bullets or old cans, anything to make my explorations feel a bit more fruitful. Eventually I came across the area that had I had noticed a few days ago. The vegetation was still somewhat tamped down, and the spot in the middle was bare. Something didn't look right though.
I approached the spot and looked at the ground. The way that the grass had been pressed down looked strange. It wasn't evenly flattened, as if a coyote had laid upon it. It was really uneven in parts, it almost looked as if boots or feet had stomped it down. Something caught my eye. There was something dark and smooth protruding from the center where there was no growth.
I thought I had hit the jackpot. I figured this was gonna be part of an old rifle or cannonball or something great. I grabbed ahold of whatever this thing was, and gave it a tug. The ground, still damp, gave way and I pulled it free rather easily. It was covered in mud, but when I cleared the damp earth from it it looked like a figurine of some sort. It was shaped odd and, from what I could tell, looked something like a fat man or woman. But it was missing its head.
Then I remembered the images from my archaeology book. I also remembered the angry spirits.
I started to get a little freaked out so I tossed the figure into my backpack and started moving. I tried to hum the tune that Cerine had taught me two days prior but I couldn't remember it properly. Then I heard something in the orchard. It sounded as if somebody was walking, ever so lightly, upon the ground. It would stop when I stopped. It would start when I started. At one point, about ten minutes away from the B&B, I stopped, dropped to the ground and looked around the orchard.
In the distance, about 25 yards away, the three coyotes watched me intently. They had lowered their heads and were staring at me. When I stood up and began walking again, they started tracking me again. I walked very, very slowly. They walked very, very slowly. I picked up my pace. They picked up my pace.
And then I heard humming.
The coyotes picked up their ears. I saw Cerine in the distance, coming my way. Relieved, I began walking toward her. The coyotes still followed. She saw me coming toward her and smiled. I pointed to the coyotes and she paused and then laughed. "It's okay boy. They're just curious about you is all." I sighed. I approached her and she started walking with me.
"I found the wall today." I told her. "Did you now?" She looked disinterested. "Did you go over it? Into the forest?" "No. But that's where I first saw the coyotes." "And you followed them, didn't you?" She smiled. "Yeah. How did you know?" "They told me," she smiled, "that you followed them because you were curious like their brother wolf. And then they were curious about you so they started following. They also smelled your sandwich. They wouldn't hurt you though."
We walked for a few more minutes, still being followed by the coyotes. I was beginning to suspect that she had been feeding them over the tenure of her employment at the B&B. "Oh," I stopped and dug into my bag to retrieve the figurine, "I found this in the orchard. I guess it had been buried but the rain unearthed it some. It was at the center of that area that I found the other day. You know, where the grass was pressed down? Although I don't think it was the coyotes anymore." I grabbed the figure and brought it forth from my bag. "It looked more like some other animal, or maybe people tamped the grass down."
She took one look at the figuring and blanched. Shakily, she pulled the figurine from my hands. "What have you done, boy?" My heart sank. I thought she would have been as excited as I was. She clenched the figure and it shook a bit due to her anger. Her eyes widened and she cried to me in a hideous, almost guttural, tone of voice: "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?"
"I saw something like it in an old book of mine once. I thought it was interesting. I don't know what. . ." I tried to justify my actions but before I could explain further she ran into the orchard. I looked over and saw the coyotes watching her run off. So I ran after her.
I shouted her name. I shouted that I was sorry. She made it to the circle before I did and dropped to her knees and started digging up the ground in the middle. She was crying, trying to hum the island tune. The coyotes stopped and watched as I got on my knees and dug as well. When we had a large enough hole for the figurine I picked it up, placed it in the hole right-side up and began putting earth back on top of it.
"No, no, no!" Cerine cried. She pulled the figure back up and turned it upside down and put it back in the ground. "Like that." She muttered. She fell back on to her rear and hummed and cried. When I was done covering the figurine up I looked around - the coyotes were nowhere to be seen. Cerine was still crying, humming that island tune. I searched for the right words of apology but there were none. She scooted over, closer to me, and put her arms around me. I began humming with her. Her tears became fierce and her sobs forced her to stop humming. I stopped as well. That's when we heard it.
It started as a sharp keen, far away, by the main road. The keen became the sound of tires wrestling with the pavement, trying desperately to keep hold. And then there was the sudden, sickening silence of the friction between the tires and the pavement being broken. And it was followed by a heart-wrenching, solid crash. No sounds of something being dragged across asphalt or sounds of car parts shattering and skittering across the road like insects. Just a vomit-inducing crunch.
Cerine stopped crying and was silent. She stood up and began to run back to the B&B. I followed. By the time we were at the edge of the orchard, close enough to see the guests at the B&B, my parents and their friends included, standing in groups on the grounds, we heard the sirens and saw the smoke.
The car had, somehow, left the road and hit a tree across the street from the B&B. Cerine immediately went to be with a group of people that worked at the B&B. She put her arms around a large white guy and he held her as she wept more. I found my parents as the ambulances showed up. The fire truck actually pulled into the driveway at the B&B. Everybody was anxious to know if the driver was okay or if there had been passengers and, if there were, if they were okay. My parent's friends went and spoke with several of the firemen and EMTs. When they returned they urged everybody to return inside. The EMTs had informed them that it was rather gruesome, and none of us should be around to witness them extract the body from the vehicle.
I didn't see Cerine again that night. The EMTs and the firefighters worked for several hours. I was watching from the bar when they moved a large black bag on a gurney from the crash to the ambulance. The bag had a very distinct profile, you could make it out even under the material.
I told my parents my story about the coyotes, and they let me off the hook for taking the beers. In fact, they let me have the last one out of my pack because they thought that I was frightened by the accident. When the ambulances began to leave, without lights and sirens, my parent's friends went outside to talk to the few remaining firemen. The large white man came out of the kitchen and entered the bar as I stood by the window and watched. He approached me and sighed, "Terrible thing isn't it?" I looked up at him. "Yeah. I wonder what happened." He grimaced and said to me, "There are many bad things in the orchard." He nodded at me and continued, "You understand that Cerine's upset, right? You know why?" I shook my head. "The spirits will be very angry now. Very angry." I nodded. "Tell her I'm sorry?" He considered it, and before turning to leave replied, "The orchard is big and there are many curious things in it. But curious boys don't belong there." He left the room as my mom's friends returned. "That's a horrible thing, to hear." Said Scott. "Tragic." His wife, the other owner, replied. My parents stared for a moment. The firetruck had left. "What happened?" My dad asked.
"A pregnant woman was beheaded and died in the crash." I said from the window. They turned to look at me.
"How did you know?" asked my mother's friend.[/quote]
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