The Showers - Reddit Scary Story

1.3

I lived in that town for another couple months and then was rapidly moved halfway across the country to Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

I twisted the story around and told it around campfires as I got older, and it was always a hit, but I always changed the ending, letting the friend die of blood loss or from being dragged away by the children.

It wasn't until college that I got a chance to talk to Mr. Mays again.

I went to college in northern New York, not for any reasons associated with this story. College was a fun time for me; I continued being the same ham that I had always been. It wasn't until sometime around my junior year that I ran into Mr. Mays at a bar that I frequented.

Initially, I couldn't be sure that the person I saw laying with his head buried in his arm at the bar was Mr. Mays. The only trait that grabbed my attention was a sweater that he used to wear on his birthday during class. The shirt simply read: "I'm the birthday boy!"

I told my group of friends to grab a table and that I would join them in a second, then walked over to the man at the bar. "Mr. Mays?" I said, and the man looked up.

The man took a second too look at my face before he smiled, put a hand on my shoulder, and said, "hey there, son! How have you been?" I could smell some strong whiskey on his breath, and his cheeks were flushed. The look in his eyes told me that he was three sheets to the wind and probably had no idea who I was.

"Mr. Mays, its Jack. I was a student of yours for a couple semesters about six or so years ago." His face changed a bit, and a genuine look of recognition set in.

He took a calmer tone, smiled, and said, "How've you been, Jack?"

We talked for a solid twenty minutes. I told him what I had been doing for the last several years, and he told me. Apparently he was still teaching at the same school doing "the same old shtick," as he called it. I asked if everything was alright, and he said that they were as good as they ever have been or were ever going to get.

It took me a while to realize that I was an adult that was having a conversation with another adult.

Every time I had spoken to Mr. Mays previously, I had been in the student/teacher relationship; but now, I was just a guy having a drink with a friend at the bar.

My friends eventually left, and I continued to drink with Mr. Mays. He told me all about his divorce and his kids, things that I never would have asked or cared about previously. But now, I cared; he was a real person to me, not just an idol anymore. This was a guy who had real problems, not the infallible teacher that I once thought he was.

It had been several hours before I even brought up his story about "The Showers." I told him all about my history with urban legends and scary stories, and he just laughed. When I mentioned the story that he had told us years ago, he almost seemed uncomfortable. He finished his whiskey, signaled for another, and then turned to me and got very serious.

"Listen Jack, I don't know why I kept telling that story, year after year." His words were slurred, or my hearing was messed up; we were both sufficiently blitzed at this point. "That was what my therapist told me to do when I was younger. I had to tell people it, to come to grips with it, or some shit." He took a big swig of his drink.

"Wait, your therapist?" I said.

Mr. Mays laughed heartily and looked at me, "of course, Jack. You think that something like that wouldn't fuck a person up?"

I was confused, but smiled nonetheless. Things had just gotten very strange.

"But, I mean, you said you were all on drugs or something, right? No one was too terribly hurt. You were all okay, right?"

He got almost cartoonish with his sadness in the next several seconds. "Of course we didn't, Jack. Why do you think I'm here right now?"

I was puzzled, quickly filled with a thousand questions that I wanted to ask him, but I let him carry on.

"Tim fuckin', he didn't make it, Jack," he laughed; his laugh turned suddenly to tears. "Fucking took him, they did. I don't even know. Cops told us we were just drunk, that he wandered off and got taken by the wildlife. He didn't know. He didn't see it, Jack."

I was absolutely stone-faced at this point. Mr. Mays was carrying along like I knew the actual story, but I didn't. His friend disappeared. I didn't know.

"I wish they'd have found the body, though. Then we could have shown them," he sighed. "That's a bad place, Jack. I don't know anything else to say. It's a bad place."

He carried on for a couple minutes more about his friend and the fun that they had before they went on that trip, and I let him talk. It was only a few minutes later that his phone rang.

"Hello, sweetheart," he whispered into the phone. "I'll be out in a second. I l-" he gagged. "-ove you, baby." The person on the other end hung up the phone, and Mr. Mays got up to leave.

"It's been nice seeing you, Jackie. You've gotta good head on your shoulders, boy. Make sure you use it." He began to walk out of the bar.

"Mr. Mays!" I yelled after him.

"Yeah, Jack?" he turned back towards me.

"Where'd you say all that showers business took place?"

"Where? Hell, didn't I mention it? It's somewhere outside Broken Bow, Nebraska. Fucking Hell on Earth, if you ask me."

Mr. Mays walked out of the bar after waving to me, running into the wall before eventually finding the door.

That was the last time I would see him. I'd never be able to tell him the impact that he had on my life, or rather, the impact that his story had on me. He'd never know about the trip we took after graduation, almost mimicking the one he and his friends had made. He would never know that the things he saw at that place were real. Why? Well, he died about a month later. His liver failed on him. It's alright though, because his family was with him in the hospital room. He got to die around people that cared about him, and that is all I can ask for a man like that.

I experienced that place too, several years later. That is where my story turns. The following is the story of how I came to find "The Showers," and why I will never, ever go anywhere near Nebraska ever again. I'll finish this story when I'm sober. The memory is clear enough.