Date:         Fri, 29 Oct 1999 21:36:52 -0500
Reply-To:     Joel Walker <jwalker@URONRAMP.NET>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Joel Walker <jwalker@URONRAMP.NET>
Subject:      FFFFrydaye Fan Tasses
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another story for All Hallow's Eve .... :)



An Old Tale from the Deep South

It was a dark and stormy night.  The strobing flashes of lightening darkened
the already deepening shadows inside the old Volkswagen camper. The flames
of the small campfire flickered, like the tongues of snakes, as the soft
moaning of the wind increased. The trees bent over the campsite, their limbs
draped in Spanish moss like old scarecrows in the tattered remnants of
clothing long gone out of style.

The little camper rocked slightly in the wind.  The old fellow at the gas
station hadn't mentioned any storm. He only spoke about how this campground
was haunted by the spirit of Jean Pierre Bapaume, one of the original
explorers of this area, who accompanied Iberville on his trek through the
swamps of Louisiana, Mississippi, and lower Alabama. Somehow the story
didn't seem quite so laughable out here in the dark.

What was it he had said? Bapaume had been hung by the others from one of
these very trees, and swore vengenance on any who dared seek refuge here?
The old fellow never did say exactly what it was that Bapaume had done to
deserve hanging.

I looked at my watch. It was nearly midnight. I hadn't realized it was so
late ... the sky seemed strangely light, almost like twilight. Suddenly, out
of the corner of my eye, I saw an armadillo walk out of the bushes along the
road and head straight for the fire and me. I threw a rock in its direction,
but it kept coming. As it reached the light of the fire, its eyes glowed
greenish-yellow, and their gaze seemed fixed upon me.

"Are you to be here when Jean comes?"  The voice startled me, a high-pitched
squeaking voice, with a terrible accent.  I stood up from my lawn chair and
looked around, wishing I had brought some sort of weapon.  There was no one.
Only the armadillo and myself. Then the armadillo stood on its hind legs,
looked straight at me, and the voice again said, "Are you to be here when
Jean comes?".  It was the armadillo speaking.

I stared at him for a few seconds, then decided the storm and the beer were
playing tricks on my mind. I threw a beer can and hit the armadillo on the
snout ... he vanished.  No smoke. No noise. No nothing. He just wasn't there
anymore. The beer can went right through him ... or rather, where he had
been ... and rattled down the dirt road.

Now I was sweating. I got the flashlight and walked around the campfire,
shining the light on the dirt, looking for tracks of some sort. There was
nothing there. No sign that anything had walked over that ground in the last
two hundred years. I didn't like this turn of events. I looked at my watch
... it was exactly midnight. The wind was now only a soft whisper in the
trees, stirring the tatters of the Spanish moss.

I turned off the flashlight and started to walk back to the camper, when I
noticed a rather large possum, sprawled out in my lawnchair. Like some
bloated lifeguard at the beach, but with eyes that were glowing red in the
firelight. His eyes flickered somehow, as if glowing from within instead of
reflecting the light of the campfire.

"Are you to be here when Jean comes?"  The voice was deeper than before, but
the accent was just as bad. It was definitely the possum speaking ... I
could see his mouth move as he struggled with the English words. And he
shifted his weight in the chair as he gestured with one of his forelegs.

He apparently took my shocked demeanor to be misunderstanding, so he
repeated his sentence, pausing slowly at each word, and speaking louder than
before.  I swallowed, and replied, "What do you mean?"

"I wish to know you still be here, when Jean comes", he croaked. "Jean do
not like you to camp here. Jean do not like people at all." As he said this,
a twisted sneer of a smile played upon his features. If a possum can smile,
that is.

Geez, I thought, now I'm talking to a possum in the swamps of Alabama! How
old was that beer? I picked up a stick and walked around the campfire,
intending to defend my lawnchair, when the possum just faded out of view. He
hadn't run away, or even moved ... he just faded out of sight.  I carefully
felt all over the chair, but there was no warmth, no smell, no hair, no
nothing.  Only me, the crackling of the fire, and the whispering of the
wind.

"Are you be here for Jean?" This voice was deep, very deep. My spine grew
goosebumps the size of golfballs. The voice was behind me, on the other side
of the fire. I looked at the windows of the camper, to see any reflection of
what was speaking, but there was nothing reflecting but me, the fire, and
the woods beyond.  I turned slowly around.

An alligator, about ten feet long, was lying on his side, picking his teeth
with a claw.  He looked at me with bright blue-green eyes that seemed to
steal all your willpower to resist. I looked away quickly and stared at the
fire. The gator raised up on his rear legs, and sort of sat there, using his
tail as a prop. His pale white belly glistened in the firelight.

"I mean," he said, "Do you stay til Jean comes?"

"Man, if you ain't Jean, I'm GONE!!" I shouted over my shoulder as the Land
Speed Record was broken by a 1971 Volkswagen Campmobile.


I don't drink much anymore. I don't camp at places without at least three
other campers there ahead of me. And I NEVER stay up past ten o'clock.