Hi guys, it's e J. Miller. I'm the writer, creator,
producer, editor, and I perform a majority of the voices you've heard thus
far here at the anthology series that is Fast Food Horror. I want to
take a minute, though, before we get into this installment of the anthology,
to give you all the heads up about the story you're about to hear,
because the story isn't entirely my own. You see, growing up,
my father used to take great enjoyment telling my brothers and I different stories on
long car rides, mostly for our entertainment, sometimes for his own. A
majority of the stories that he told us were stories his grandfather told him.
This is one of those stories. Not entirely. I took nice little pieces
of it and changed it a day up to it, and I hope made
it a little more entertaining and a lot scarier. Again, thank you so
much for choosing Fast Food Horror, and I really really hope you enjoy this
installment from our anthology. And now, without further ado, your MC your
Master is Ceremonies, Igor Frederick Igor, take it away. Thank you EJ.
For that lovely introduction, and welcome to Fast Food Horror. In this
installment of the anthology, some hunters go trapsing off into the woods and find
themselves face to face with something they have never con sittered that they are no
longer the predator, but the prey. In this installment titled The Things in
the Valley by Eve J. Miller, there is a long history of tales
and fables of bogeymen and monsters and things that go bump in the night,
told by fireside, much like this one, to frighten young children from wandering
too far into the wood. Elders and townfolk weaving wistful lies into so much
bullocks held together by nothing more than youthful imagination and smoke, all in an
effort to keep those same youth from danger, whether imagined or real. I
tell you this now not to frighten you, but to give you something the
very means you may need to survive should you encounter them in the wood.
So pay attention. Our family has been hunting these wood for many a generation,
boy, and the wood has been good to us for most years.
Dear and pheasant, rabbit and squirrel. The wood has given us much and
allowed us to survive. There was a time, though, when I was
your age that we also to the valley, the area over the ridge beyond
the fence. I know you've been told to stay clear of that boundary,
not to cross over the border, because it's government property, with warnings of
unstable ground due to sink holes and geothermal vents full of toxic fumes and scalding
steam of some such. But it's time to set you straight, to prepare
you, especially since tough times have come. Food and game is scarce,
and we need you to cross into the forbidden land. In the fifties,
our all knowing government had run out of places to hide their sciency garbage.
They had taken to disposing their radioactive waste and other nasty chemical trash in the
valley, sinking them in barrels in the lake there. Oh, of course,
the townfolk was never told what they were doing. When they were doing
it, we were blissfully unaware. We fished and swam there, hunted the
valley where the animals that drank from that very same lake. They did this
all in the dark of the night. This went on for a few years.
Barrel after barrel of doctor Cheko Frankenstein, concoction of who knows what sunk
to the bottom. It was the fall I turned thirteen. The nights were
getting colder, but the days were still warm, the seasons unwilling to change
from summer and give into Autumn's chilly embrace. I was working at mister Vivick's
diner, helping him prep for the hunters to come in for their coffee in
late breakfasts. As nine a m. Passed to eleven, the normal time
the diner would be bustling with hunter orange mister and missus Vevick became concerned as
the diner remained empty and the streets too, no pickups full of hunters coming
back to town, just the blaring silence. Vivick's diner was the traditional meeting
spot for all the hunters to come in and brag about what they saw,
missed or hit and refueled before going back out, but it sat empty.
The quietness was deafening as we stared out the restaurant's large window that looked out
onto the stark streets. At noon, the town's fire whistle blared, marking
the hour, startling all of us at the diner. Still no hunters.
Mister Vevick sent me home as he closed for the day. I made my
way down Main Street towards home on my red swim, taking the emptiness in
when the fire whistle blared again and made me jump, nearly causing me to
crash. Multiple police cars then raced past me, with the town's ambulance at
their heels, sirens and lights flashing. I watched as their lights disappeared over
the bridge and around the bend, heading toward the wood. I was thirteen.
I had no responsibilities. I had a schwin and a lot of curiosity.
I pursued peddling with all the energy a curious thirteen year old had.
I crossed the bridge in record time and had passed multiple empty pickup trucks of
the hunters that had gone off that morning in my race to catch wherever that
they had gone. With youthful energy, I continued on my way and made
it around the long bend to the clearing outside the wood at the edge of
the ridge where the police cars and the ambulance had converged. There I found
them, the four officers standing in an unnatural row, staring at the line
of tall pine like sentinels that stood guard before you entered their forest. I
looked past the officers and I saw what they were focused on, What had
their concentration and full attention. It was that mist, the mist about the
tree line, abingion flowing at the wood's edge, that black mist, black
as pitch, an ebony blanket that hovered and flowed just above the wood's floor,
the likes we had never slept. I stood just behind them. They
never even turned to acknowledge me. We all just watched that inky thing.
My focus was snapped back as I heard a scream from behind me. Ebanating
from the ambulance. Slowly, I made my way to the back of the
ambulance, Drawn by the screams and panicked conversation, I found the two paramedics
strapping down a hunter to a gurney, trying to calm him down, their
eyes wide and fearful. The hunter, mister Morrissey, was in a frantic
state. I could see cuts and lacerations over his arms, his legs,
his face, jagged rips of flesh. His orange vest, sheens and flannel
were all torn and warm, long ragged strips. As mister Morrisey began to
calm down, though the sedatives doing their work, he began to whisper and
hushed nervous tones about what he encountered in the wood. He said that he
had entered the wood with his cousin's fore just as dawn broke the sky.
They proceeded from the clearing over the ridge and made their way down into the
valley towards the lake. They noticed how early quiet it was, no birds,
no scurrying of smaller animals, but it was early the wood not yet
awake, and dismissed it. As they neared the lake. That's when they
noticed the mist, that unnatural thing rising from the surface, making its way
through the tree line. They stood there, transfixed something none of them had
seen as town lifers, as regular hunters and visitors to these woods. Their
silence was broken with the softest of twig breaks as they heard the scurrying about
the brush to their rear. All turned and raised their rifles. They prepared
to take aim, and saw them darting between the shrubs in groups of three
and five, no more than a foot high, with feathers and skin of
ebony, black slim bodies and almost glowing red eyes. They peered at them
from behind the bushes, small turkeys, but their black exterior and red eyes
not to mention. Their unnatural, diminutive stature was unnerving, and what was
even more so was their beaks, a curved, sharp thing that protruded from
its head and on its feet long talons at the end of each turkey toe
four inches long. No longer did this bird resemble prey, but predator,
mister Morrissey said. One of his cousins shot his rifle into the air,
causing the little turkeys to disperse. More than twenty ran off into the woods
from near by bushes out of view. We watched them, mister Morrissey said,
as they disappeared into the thicket, chirping angrily as they fled into the
wood. Mister Morrisey said they noticed then that the mist had started to encroach
further from the lake and was now mere feet from where they stood, yards
away from the shore. After seeing the turkey like things, they decided to
call it a day and proceeded back towards the clearing on their trucks. They
had made it no more than fifty yards in when they heard the crunch of
branches and leaves breaking with quick successive footfalls deer dogs. It was something bigger,
not the tiny turkeys they had seen just moments earlier. Whatever was coming
had more weight and longer strides, breaking through the trees to their right.
He said they saw them coming, black with red eyes, standing four feet
tall in a full sprint, bigger versions of the turkey like things they had
seen earlier, with the same curved, sharp beak and unnaturally long talons,
with sleek bodies. They seemed to be charging at them with intent. Mister
Morrisey said he figured the little ones were easily scared off with a gun shot,
so he raised his rifle and shot it into the air. They stopped
and stared at one. Fifteen creatures in all raised their heads higher and turned
so they could see mister Morrissey and his cousins better. With their glowing red
eyes. They did not seem frightened in the slightest by the discharge of the
gun, but appeared to be sizing them up, trying to figure out their
next move. Long seconds passed, the tension grew. Mister Morrisey sensed the
flock was about to charge again when a deer broke through the brush along their
right side, startling both the flock and the hunters. The flock seemed to
have been distracted and quickly forgot about them. They let out a collective chirp
as they turned their heads towards the deer, now sprinting away, and darted
after it, pursuing it into the wood. He said. They picked up
their pace at this point, almost double timing it to get out of the
woods and back to the safety of their vehicles. It was unspoken they were
all scared between the mist, the little ones, and now the bigger ones.
They wanted out. After an hour, he said, they could see
the clearing and their vehicles. Mister Morrisey said he let out a whoop,
which he reflected was probably a mistake, because from behind a bush twenty yards
ahead, they heard a loud exhale, followed by a chirp. They each
took aim at the bush and waited, and it didn't take long for the
source of the sound to make itself known. It raised itself up to its
full seven feet. He said, they had to look up to meet its
glowing red eyes, a massive, sleek black frame like its little brothers,
a rapier beak with the long talons at each end of its toes. He
said he was about to give it a taste of his rifle when it let
out a chirp, opening its beak to reveal two rows of tiny pointed teeth
in that large maw of a mouth. Its chirp was replied to by four
other chirps, two on each side of the hunters they were lying in wait,
he said, he fired directly at the one in front, which sent
it to the ground in a heap. Then they all sprinted to their vehicles
amidst the chirping coming from either's side, then behind them. Then that was
the last time mister Morrisey said he saw his cousins. There's definitely more to
the story, so join us again next week for the second part of the
Things in the Valley. M