Scary Stories...

Route 66

NO CORY RIGHT INFRINGEMENT INTENDED

“Curse you, you treacherous heap of nuts and bolts! I curse you straight to the Devil‘s lair! 

The furious man shouted, as he kicked at his broken down automobile. “This is the last time you’ll strand me! When the tow truck gets here I’m going to have it haul you straight to the crusher! 

I curse the day you ever rolled out of Detroit!” 

It was turning out to be a miserable year for Daniel White. Everything that could possibly turn sour for him did. 

His work let him go due to downsizing, forcing to sell his house to appease his creditors and finally his wife ran off with the neighbor. All the things he’d worked so hard for were gone, filling him with bitterness and confusion. His only possessions were a suitcase filled with clothes, a gold watch and the used automobile he’d purchased with the pittance the vultures missed. 

The car transported him many miles in their brief time together and it also broke down many times since it’s purchase. The car came “as is, with minor problems”, said the salesman. This turned out to be a blatant, deceptive understatement on the dealer’s part. The automobile sat disabled, along the roadside now, billowing steam and making loud hissing noises from the hot water escaping through a large hole in its radiator, where the evidence of Bars Leaks oozed out. The dealership obviously applied a “quick fix” to the cooling system. 

The autumn air held a crisp bite to it today and it was the twenty-seventh of October. Fall was starting to 

surrender to winter, the landscape lay covered in a beautiful spectrum of vibrant fallen colors where the dead leafs 

littered the ground. In two weeks, Daniel would turn thirty four years old and he felt hollow and drained inside, with nothing to show for the last ten years of his life. Storm clouds rolled ominously overhead causing a noticeable drop 

in air pressure as their water laden bodies cast huge shadows, shaped like manta, which appeared to swim across the earth in an ocean of sky. The sun randomly flickered from a break in their cover giving off a strobe light effect. Its 

strobe effect caused Daniel to shield his blue eyes with his forearm, as his dark brown hair fluttered in the breeze. 

Scanning toward the horizon Daniel calculated the distance to the nearest place he might find help. 

The road he’d been traveling was an offshoot of the late, great route 66. Daniel wasn’t sure just how far back in the woods he’d driven, but realized at least one hour elapsed since leaving the major highway. He did remember seeing 

a gas station, about two miles back and also seeing an old wooden farmhouse, with what appeared to be headstones in its backyard? One rarely saw a house with its own private cemetery. Churches yes but not houses. Daniel 

remembered families once buried their dead right on the property where they lived but that practice stopped long ago, after local and state legislature banned it due to health regulations. What the exact reasons were Daniel wasn’t

quite sure. 

He’d been dwelling on that very thought when his automobile began to sputter, hiss causing him to pull off the 

road. Suddenly he was overwhelmed, with feelings of hopelessness. 

Even after his car coasted to a complete dead stop the house with the graveyard remain in his thoughts. 

Its facade was in severe disrepair and years of the sun’s intense light bleached the last hint of painted color from its clap-board siding. There was also a tall, wrought iron fence surrounding the old cemetery, this caught Daniel’s eye too. The barriers menacing looking speared rods amazingly still held their jet black color, without any hint of giving way to the rust surely plaguing the metal day after day, year after year. They appeared to have just been painted. Based on the modest amount of architectural knowledge Daniel possessed and what he’d observed