Compilation Of Horror Stories

44: The Shoe In The Riverbed

The Shoe in the Riverbed

This happened a few years ago. I had been through a tough divorce from my highschool sweetheart, and my best friend (let's call him Al) distracted me by going on random road trips with me. One morning, we decided to just jump in my car and drive to Carlsbad, New Mexico. At this point in my life, I always had a digital camera with me. I liked to take pictures at random, thinking of myself an amateur photographer. Along the way we stopped at a small roadside gas station/souvenir stand and picked up some cherry cider.

When we got to Carlsbad we saw that they had dammed off a small local river and pumped it so they could work on the bridges. We found a spot at a park nearby and parked. Drinking the cider and snacking on some treats we bought before, we decided to explore the dried river bed. We weren't the first to decide this as there were obviously footprints everywhere. There were people's foot prints dog's and cat's footprints, and even what looked like javelina tracks.

Then I started to feel an odd sensation like we were being watched. I looked around and figured it was probably someone in one of the back yards facing the area we had walked to. Then Al caught my attention. "Hey," he said waving me over, "look at this.". There was a bone on the ground. It looked like a spinal column, but from what we couldn't tell. "What do you think it belongs to?", Al asked as we stared at it. "Probably a beef or pork bone of some kind.", I replied as I took a snapshot, and then kept walking, thinking nothing of it.

As we continued, we found a strange rust colored rock jutting out of the soft sand. Al and I walked closer to it—sticking out of the sand, half buried, was a girl's shoe. "I am going to kick that shoe.", I told my friend as I walked back a few feet and started running at it.

I stopped dead in my tracks when I heard a little girl's voice shout, "No! Don't, please!" I looked around, but didn't see anyone, and Al was looking at me confused. "Why did you stop?", he asked as I looked for the source of the voice. "Didn't you hear that little girl?", I asked.

Not seeing anyone around us in the early afternoon light. "No one said anything," he replied, and we shrugged it off and walked farther.

Now I felt like more people were watching me. It was so heavy that it almost felt like a slight physical weight. Al stopped dead in his tracks and pointed ahead. "There is another bone," Al said, pointing to what looked like a broken femur laying on the sand. It had some foot prints around it, but other than that it looked undisturbed. We looked at it, and Al whispered to me, "Let's go. I think that is a human bone." I agreed.

The weight I was feeling was becoming overwhelming, and the this bone did look too human. I took another picture, and we walked back to the car, and Al called the non-emergency police number for Carlsbad. We told them what we saw, gave them our information, and were on our ways home in no time. I had forgotten all about the bones and the rust colored rock until a week later Al called me back.

He had gotten a call from the Carlsbad Police. The bones we found were indeed human, and though there were plenty of footprints around no one else had reported it. They were indeed human bones, and after finding them they started an investigation. Al told me that the police had started an investigation and had questioned them. They asked about the rust colored rock, and how we found the bones. After, they explained that it wasn't a large rock, but the remains of a pickup truck that had disappeared along with a family of three. A man, a woman, and their daughter.

Upon investigation of the area, they found a shoe sticking out of the sand. Inside it were the skeletal remains of a girl's foot. Thinking back to it made my blood run cold. Was the unseen voice I heard that of the dead girl's? My thoughts were interrupted as Al finished what he was saying, "Anyways, we helped close a cold case from the 80s. So good job there.”

-tauntauntom

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