Creepypasta: Nightmare Fuel

41: Frogs Are Good Luck

Frogs Are Good Luck by Alan Larkin

I grew up in Northern Nevada, and have always had a love for the macabre side of things. Interested in ghost stories and the town's folklore, I often found myself searching for haunted locations around the city. All through high school, I never found one that was truly haunted, and it let me down. I began to think that there was nothing in the city that was weird enough for me, so after I left high school, I went to college in Washington, in a town that I thought had much more history to it. I had only learned about the real dark stories of my home town when I came back to visit at the beginning of this summer...

During vacation I was working the summer at a sushi restaurant that had employed me a few years before, I only really got the job because most of my friends were still working there too. I was up talking with the sushi crew and they invited me to hang out on north fifth and talk about life and probably smoke a little. North Fifth is a street that leads (as you would guess) out the north side of town. If you follow the nicely paved road out far enough you will come across a cattle guard and the pavement will give way to sand and dirt and rocks. The roads are lined with gnarled sagebrush, the kind that grows everywhere in Nevada like a cancer. I felt like I hadn't seen my friends in ages and I didn't want to spend the night indoors so I agreed to go.

Once the clock struck 9 P.M. all five of us busted our asses out of the restaurant and headed up Fifth Street. My friend Liam and I were in his jeep, following behind Jay, Austin, and Jay's girlfriend Danielle. We passed the cattle guard as we were following our friends, and Liam turned to me.

"I hope we don't go out too far." His eyes darted around his face, almost in a fit of paranoia. I had no idea what provoked that statement, but I felt like it would lead to something terrifying, so I bit down and swallowed the bait.

"Why shouldn't we go out too far? Ghosts?" I chuckled as I spoke, because I was a supernatural junkie. There isn't anything like the rush of encountering something that felt like it wasn't totally there. We waited in silence for a moment as I watched the weeds pass the jeep while we got deeper and deeper into the desert. I'll never forget how my friend looked when he replied, like there was a history. Like there was something out north fifth that Liam had run into before, and never wanted to see again.

"I'll tell you later." His voice had turned cold. There was only fear present in his words.

"Why?" I probably sounded angrier than I wanted. Admittedly, I was irritated and confused at Liam's dodgy attitude.

"They don't like it when you talk about them."

My head was jumping from thought to thought, I was trying to delve into my subconscious and remember what my family and friends used to say about the desert. My brain never stopped thinking, I was coming up with all kinds of monsters in my head. After a while I began to think that I wasn't going to get any sleep when I got back home tonight. That was par for the course though. As a matter of fact, my brain was often the cause of my sleep loss, and I hated it. Of course, if there wasn't a piece of me that loved the adrenaline from this supernatural, paranormal terror, I wouldn't have been driving out North Fifth in the middle of the night to begin with. I seek it out. I loved that feeling. I don't think I will anymore, though. A few minutes passed, and Liam spoke again.

"Just be respectful. We're coming out to smoke and talk. We won't be destroying anything. We should be okay if we are respectful." Liam's words confused the hell out of me, because I wanted to know exactly what it was that he was talking about. Of course, he wouldn't tell me. I wanted to respect his fear as much as possible. Even if I had to spend the next couple hours in a blind confusion.