Poverty Flat

Poverty Flat
Photo by StarVapor

"What do you want to do?"

"I dunno Justin.  We only have 35 minutes till I have to be home and it's a 20 minute drive." I reminded him.  

The movie was over and our friends had headed off in their own directions.  

"Hey, have you ever been out to the roller coaster?" I asked.  The roller coaster was a south county amusement and Justin lived in the north.  

"No, what is it?"

"Oh, you'll love it!  It's out on Poverty Flat, it's a road with some great bumps.  If you get going right it feels like a roller coaster." Now I knew what I wanted to do.

"I don't know, I don't want to beat my truck up."  Justin had a 15 year old two wheel drive truck he had fixed up himself.  Pretty paint, fast engine, lowered front end so it looked even faster than it was.  It was a fun street truck, but not great on a dirt road.

"It won't hurt your truck.  It's a decent road.  Lots of people use it every day.  It's close to my great grandpa's farm.  Let's go! It's even on our way back to my house." I could see he didn't really want to, but we had nothing better to do so he pointed the truck south.  

We reached the turn off to a sandy, sagebrush flat and by then we had some music on and were laughing at my story of a classmate who had wrecked her dad's new truck on the roller coaster.  I directed Justin toward some small hills and a wash.  

Even if it hadn't been pitch dark out, there wouldn't have been much to see. Sagebrush and tumbleweed scrubbed along the ground just a couple feet high because the soil was so poor.  There were a few cool patches of basalt, but unless that's what you had come for, who cares about that?  

We came to a fork and I told Justin to take the north one, that it looped over a little hill and we'd come out just where we were.  

As we approached the top of a rise, we could see something in the road.

"What the hell is that?" Justin asked.  

I peered into the darkness and Justin slowed the truck.  

"It looks wet." I said.

Justin said "It looks like guts."

By then were were at it, and it did look like a big pile of guts.  We inched the truck a bit closer.

Yup.  Definitely slimey, bloody, intestines from something fairly big.  Justin looked and looked and finally said "Where in the hell did those come from?"

Poverty Flat really was a well travelled area.  Lots of people passed through to sheep pasture or farm ground with better soil. Lots of kids went out there to goof off and party.  There were cool petroglyphs in a little  arroyo that was perfect for a hidden bon fire.

"Probably some jerk killed a sheep or deer or something," I decided.

"No, that's more guts than would be in a deer.  Maybe two deer.  What are the odds someone would poach two deer here on the same night?" Justin asked.  

I thought the odds were pretty good.

Justin was freaked out.  

"Let's get out of here," he said.

The guts pretty much covered the road and though he could have driven right over them, Justin turned his truck off the road into the loose dirt, brush and rocks, risking hitting a small pile of boulders. 

He drove rather fast through the roller coaster, but we didn't get a kick out of it. Our night had soured.  When we got back to the fork, we both looked to the north.  

Up on the rise was a dark shape, a figure.  It was moving down the hill quickly.  Justin spun the wheel to the road we'd come in on and hit the gas.  I looked out the back window.

"Oh my God Justin.  It's coming!  It's coming!"

"What the hell is it???"

His driving was scaring me, but so was what ever the figure was.  

In what seemed like seconds, it was even with the truck.  It paced us.  We panicked.

Justin kept going faster, though we both knew that was not good on a dirt road.  I started jabbering, trying to understand what was happening.

"It's just a shadow.  It doesn't even have a shape," I said.  "I don't even think it's solid."

"I don't care!  It's freaking following us!"

Finally we reached the highway and Justin swerved on to it, heading for my house.  The figure did not cross on to the pavement but disappeared.  

We were fewer than ten minutes from my house.  I looked frantically out every window, reassuring myself it was not there.  Justin kept driving hard.

Less than two miles from my house, I looked out the back window and screamed.

"It's there!  Oh my God!  It's there!"

Justin reflexively hit the brakes and we stopped.  He turned back to see the figure crossing the road, about 100 yards behind us.  It was under a farmers yard light but was still as black and shapeless as before.  

Justin hit the gas.  I realized we were exactly west of where we had first seen the shadow and the guts in the road.  I was grateful then I lived a just a little farther south.  Whatever it was had walked right through my friend Kelly's front yard but if it continued due west wouldn't be near mine.  

Justin slid into my gravel drive so fast I was thankful it was my mom, not my dad, waiting up for me.  (My dad would have kicked his ass for driving that way.) There were no long goodnight kisses or tight hugs.

I pecked his lips.

"Be safe," I said.  Then I slid from the truck and bolted into my house.  I cranked the lock as Justin peeled back onto the road.

I told my friends about it at school on Monday.  One of them went out to the roller coaster during lunchtime and declared me crazy.  She insisted there were no guts, nor any sign of them, in the road, though she could see where Justin had driven into the brush.  

Justin and I never really talked about it, other than we always, always took a different road between my house and his.

I never, ever went back to Poverty Flat.