Tennessee Terror

by Brian Kessler

My name is James Ferly and My wife Laura and I was driving through Tennessee in my 1968 Camaroe. It was June 3, 1976 and a pleasant day for a drive through the mountains. We just got married and were going to stay in a hotel in Nashville for the honeymoon. We figured it would be about a two hour drive and started off right after the wedding. It was a big wedding. This was her parents choice; she wanted to elope. She had been to more than enough big weddings between her four brothers and three sisters who got married before her. She had two other sisters and one other brother not yet married. There was one more sibling on the way. Her parents were Catholic and did not believe in birth control. She was nineteen and I was her first love. She was also my first love. I had been seeing her for the past three years and finally decided it was time to get married. Because of her beliefs, physical contact was extremely limited... we are talking holding hands and the occasional hug. I really did not like the arrangement, but I felt she was worth it. I could not wait to get to the hotel room.

I was fantasizing about all the great fun I was going to have when there was a rock slide. A big boulder nearly hit my car. I swerved to avoid it, only to find a larger boulder which made contact with the car. Ignoring the thousands of dollars worth of damge that struck the car, I checked to see if Laura was alright. She was pinned down and the waist and bleeding heavily. She was still alive, but she was no longer conscious. I decided to go get help. I remembered seeing a shack about 3 miles up the road.

I walked it in forty-five minutes without incident. I began walking toward the house, planning to knock on the door and explain my situation.

In the doorway stood a man about six foot five and covered with dirt. His hair, or what was left of it, was brown (not necessarily by nature) and curly. His jeans were ripped and it was not the fault of the manufacturer in order to justify a price increase. His shirt, plaid was also ripped. His hands and feet were bare, scratched and calloused. There were only four toes on each foot and four fingers (including the thumb which is technically not a finger) on each hand, probably the result of a genetic flaw come to light after several generations of inbreeding. His face had a nasty scar going down the left side, starting right above the eye-brow and ending at the bottom of chin. His left eye remarkably escaped the accident. He took one look at me and said "Ed, think your din's here; bet'r get da shot gun quick."

After taking a quick look around, I realized he must be refering to me. I noticed a head looking out the window, looking nearly identical to the man in the door's minus the scar, staring straight at me. In his four-figured right hand, he held a shot gun and was aiming it at me. I turned to run. Upon looking at a nearby tree, I saw that the first shot missed me by mere centimeters. A second shot went off. I did not see where it hit, so I turned to look and to my amazement I discovered the gun had backfired. The man in the doorway, casually said "Bill, Ed's your sup'r. Burt, you bet'r go catch yours quick! By da way, who fa'got to clean da gun?"

At this point, it finally clicked that these inbreeds were not only genetically deficient, rude, and lacking in morals, but also outright insane. I decided that trying to talk to them would not be good for my health. Likewise, it would be counter-productive to show them where Laura was, since they would look upon her as food, and, even worse, they would be just the type to play with their food.

Running as frantically as I could, I reached the main road, turned in the opposite direction from the car, continued to run, hoping to lead them away from Laura and praying someone would soon pass by. As luck would have it, a truck was coming towards me, but this turned out not to be luck at all and it was certainly not good. It was a rusty pickup truck, nearly half a century old and was driven by the man from the doorway. Riding shotgun and holding one out the window was someone I could only assume was Burt. Three more inbreeds sat in the back of the pickup. I must apologize for not being able to describe them, but when someone wants to gun you down and has a shotgun pointed at you, common sense tells you not to stick around to study their features. Besides, my legs were not about to let me stick around if I wanted to.

Even though the truck and/or the driver would not exceed twenty miles per hour, that was more than enough speed to over take me and I did not have that much of a lead to begin with. I decided that running on the road was running into a literal dead end, even though the road would not end for another few hundred miles, after being given the choice of several exits. They would probably be more familiar with this forest than I and I did not have much experience with hiking any ways.

I decided that my best bet would be to climb down the mountain side which was at least a one hundred feet drop. I did not have any experience at mountain climbing and I lacked a safety rope, but being caught by the inbreeds would probably be less pleasant and no more safe. I slowly went down the mountain, hoping that they would be too lazy to follow and hoping that I would not panic and fall; the view from up here was beautiful and I did not want to spoil it by painting it in shades of blood red; besides the surgeon general probably warned that falling from a height of one hundred feet could be hazardous to your health.

I slowly went down the mountain, taking it one very small and careful step at a time. I was silently praying to non-existent, invisible supreme entities that climbing this mountain would be illegal and a ranger's helicopter would spot me and arrest me. Obviously their non-existent, invisible ears did not hear these unspoken prayers since they only sent non-existent, invisible helicopters, which did a hell of a lot of good.

When I was about ten feet down, a rope was dropped down beside me. I looked up to see a inbred starring down at me. He shouted, "I think you need one of these." Not sure whether this was one of the inbreeds from the pickup, I decided to assume they were not, hoping they would come to my assistance. If they were the enemy, I could always make a quick death for myself by jumping. I grabbed the rope. As I climbed up, he assisted me by hoisting up the rope. When I reached the top, I saw an old rusty Ford with the engine running. There were no other inbreeds.

I said, "Thanks for the lift. Mind if I ask what you are doing out here and how you noticed me?"

He said, "Don't t'ank me just yet; I came out here to eat sup'r with my cous'. When I arrived hungry and ask'n where din' was, they told me climbing down da mount'n."

I said a series of words, that should not be said in front of the young kids who know worse or the self-righteous moral majority who think worse, and decided to try stealing the car. I then kicked the inbred in his unmentionables and as he bent down in pain, ran to the car door and climbed in.

I drove as fast as I could, which turned out to be five miles an hour. In five minutes the car reached empty and in another minute, it stopped dead. I continued to walk down the road, hoping I left all the inbreeds behind me. I came to another place where there was a recent rock fall, again on top of a car. I decided that two separate rock falls on two separate cars and no rock falls on no cars was too much to be a coincidence. Someone was doing this for sport. I checked the car and found two dead bodies. They were dead for not much more then fifteen minutes, since rigor mortis had only just began to set in.

Deciding that there was not much I could do for them and trying to convince myself that Laura was still alive and in desperate need of help, I climbed over the fallen rocks and continued down the road. After walking a half hour, I could walk no further. I was working on my seventh wind already. My stomach was empty and my mouth dry. Lactic acid was taking its toll. In desperation I slowly continued to awkwardly force my legs to move forward. In another half hour, civilization still not in sight, I fell flat on my face. I felt a sharp pain in my nose: it was broken and badly bleeding. The pain caused an adrenalin rush and I started on my eighth wind.

I continued on my way and saw a ranger station below me ten minutes later. I decided in this condition, trying it would be fatal. I had no way to signal them. I judged it to be about thirty feet away, and if I was lucky, I might make it down twenty feet and survive a ten foot fall. I was lucky. I climbed down about twenty five feet and only dislocated my left shoulder when I fell. I did not want to move. I looked to the ranger station, still somehow thirty feet away for inspiration. I went about twenty five feet, fell again, and I started using my good arm to drag myself.

I slithered to the door and pounded on it with all my might three times. After an eternity, a ranger answered "Can I help you?"

Without looking up at him, "Laura, wife, hurt badly, rock fall, several miles down road, hurry, might be too late," and passed out, ready to die, feeling triumphantly complete, yet not quite satisfied.

Much later, having no idea how much later, I woke up lying in a bed. My left arm was missing, possibly amputated. A woman, possibly a nurse, who was out of my line of vision, saw I was awake and said, "Hold a sec, I'll get my bro, he will want to see ya."

About fifteen minutes later a man stepped in front on me. He said, "Glad to see ya finally awake." I looked up. It was the inbred with the scar and he was eatting my arm. Again I passed out. This time I did not wake up.