Short horror stories

Story 9. What I saw on the country road

While in University, I loved finding snakes (I was a biology student). So a friend from herpetology club showed me this road that he would "cruise" for snakes. Cruising is when you drive slowly down old back roads after dark looking for snakes that have slithered onto the warmer road to heat up. The road we took was about 4 miles and had around 4 houses on its entirety. We had taken a few laps on this road, and we were making our final pass. There are two houses near the beginning of the road, one at the end and one near the middle. We were getting close to the center house when we see movement on the left side of the road. There are a lot of animals (obviously) on this road so we aren't surprised to see this. However what shoots out is this kid, probably around 8 or 9 in torn blue jeans and a ripped dark t shirt.

He takes one look at us, and his face is a mix of fear and pain. He looked back really quickly from where he had come out of then booked it across the road. The guy I'm with gets out of the car chasing to see if he's alright and I pull the car up to the point where the boy went into the woods. Im starting to get out of the car when my friend walks quickly back from the trail and just says, "lets go, now!" We hop in the car and tear out of there. He says there is a grave yard about 10 yards into the woods where there are 5 grave stones with the same death date. They all had the same last name, and one was a boy who was 9. We never came back the rest of the summer to that road (we usually would go out once or twice a week).

The next year when my friend had graduated I took my girlfriend out to the road. We had gone early to try to find different types of snakes (different snakes tend to move at different points of dusk/night). We got to the house near the graveyard and theres 3 men doing some yard work. I rolled down the window explained what I was doing and asked them about the graveyard. Apparently their Dad's brother's family had all died when their space heater caught fire around 20 years ago. I kept pushing and asking about it, and they told me the firemen or whoever does it had found all the bodies in the rubble except for the youngest son but they assumed he was too far burned. I asked if they had a little brother, and the 6'4″ 250 pound man said he was the youngest. When I gave the description of the kid I saw and they all went white.

They all have individually seen the kid I was talking about. And he always runs to the gravesite. I have never been down that road again.