The Showers - Reddit Scary Story

2.3

It was seven in the evening when we came upon a small, but thick forest. I use the term lightly, but for Nebraska, this place was like an oasis. The trees were full and thick, shrouding most of its insides in darkness. The sun was setting and even though we had run into a few of these random crops of trees, we agreed that this one showed more promise than any of the others. There wasn't really a road, but there looked to be a path where a dirt road might have been at some point, so we drove along that. If the car was able to handle the Rocky Mountains, a dirt path in Nebraska would give us no trouble.

We moved slowly and carefully along this trail, making sure to clear any fallen trees in the road or rocks that would render the car useless, when the sun finished setting. It was pretty dark in this place during the day, but when night came, it was something else entirely. I had an inkling at this point that we had found the right place, but I didn't want to jinx it, so we continued onward. I didn't realize it at the time, but the little bits of light that managed to penetrate the canopy in this miniature forest actually did make it look as if the tree branches were trying to grab the car, just like Mr. Mays had mentioned in the story. I'm still convinced that he made up the part about the animal eyes, though; the most aggressive creature we saw in the woods was a dead rabbit on the side of the trail. It didn't have any obvious signs of death; it just looked like it had simply lay down and never bothered to get up.

We drove around in the darkness for quite a while before we found a clearing. We had to move several smaller clusters of branches out of the way before, but right in front of our exit was a giant, dead, monster of a tree. There was no way we were moving this one, so we got out and turned on the bright headlights in the hopes that it would illuminate the area in front of us. There was a feeling of excitement mixed strangely with fear when I saw what lay fifty feet beyond the clearing.

There, lit partially by the headlights from the car and the little bit of light from the crescent moon, was what appeared to be an old barn house. This wasn't a typical farmhouse, it was larger than the barns that I had seen in films and didn't have any sort of crest. It basically looked like a small warehouse. I wasn't entirely sure at this point if this was the place we were looking for, but this was definitely the closest we had come.

I moved through the brush until I was roughly twenty feet from the entrance, at which point all of the growth seem to stop. I don't know if the owners had done something to the soil, but the whole structure had a border around it that was clear of any sort of plant life. I approached the entrance to the building, a large sliding door, as Steve came up behind me with two flashlights in hand.

"So you were just going to run off into that place in the dark?" he laughed.

I gave a half-hearted chuckle and grabbed one of the lights from his hand. Mine was a little, but pretty bright flashlight; it was the kind that hikers would most likely fasten to their backpacks, just in case they were stranded at night. It worked well enough. I grabbed the metal door with both hands, holding the flashlight with my mouth, and gave it a tug. It moved slightly, creaked a little bit, but there was no way I was doing this by myself. Steve came up from behind, set his flashlight on the ground, grabbed the door, and said "one, two...three!"

We pulled at the door with all that we could muster. Once we had managed to move it a couple of inches, it must have latched back onto its track because it slid very easily, stopping hard with a loud and echoing thud when it was completely open. Steve picked up his flashlight and walked behind me; I had already moved inside.

The inside of the structure was exceptionally bare, almost troublingly so. I wasn't entirely sure how far we were from the nearest home or small town, but there wasn't even the slightest bit of evidence that anyone had been in this building for years. There were no broken beer bottles or empty bags of chips; there weren't even any animal droppings or eager plants that managed to grow here. The room was expansive, larger than your average farm, but not the warehouse-sized monstrosity that I believed Mr. Mays had described in his story. I was sure that it was simply a holding area for farming equipment or something similar at some point.

Disappointed, I wandered near the entrance while Steve ventured into the expanse of darkness. As I was running over the details of the story in my mind, something struck me like a sack of bricks; in Mr. Mays' story, there was a silo near the barn. I ran outside, my eyes adjusting easily because at the very least it was brighter outside. I looked in all directions, running around the perimeter of the building. Surely, if there was ever a silo near this place, there would be some evidence of it somewhere. But, despite my hopes, there was nothing but a cluster of thick bushes on one side, brush and dirt everywhere, and the forest that we had come from.

I walked back into the building, frustrated and tired. Steve was still excited, eagerly running around the inside of the building. "Even if I could just find a showerhead or a pipe," he said. "Then we'd know it was true. Just keep looking with me." I didn't want to ruin his excitement; I had told Steve the story several times, but obviously he didn't realize that this just wasn't the place. The building was weird, yes. It was out of place and oddly pristine, but it wasn't the location of The Showers. I let him explore for a little bit before I called him over.

"This was probably as close as we are going to get, man," I said. "But this isn't it. Remember the silo?" His face went from excitement to disappointment in an instant, much like a young child who didn't get the presents he wanted on his birthday. I patted him on the shoulder. "This is still pretty cool, though. I mean, we could still tell people that we found it." I was reverting back to my old habits quickly.

Steve laughed. "Yeah, man, I guess we could. It is definitely creepy enough. We should get some pictures as 'proof,' you know?" I agreed with him. "I'm gonna go grab the camera really quick," he said as he bolted out the entrance of the building. I was left alone in the building.