From The Inside

"Cowboy towns are something of myth. Something people dream of or dress up as. Some fantasy place people use as the meat of scary campfire stories. They were once real, sure. But even that fact is questioned as time moves on. Were vigilante shootouts and saloons with drunken golddiggers too good to be true?

Well, allow me to let you in on a little secret. They are not too good to be true."

These are the words my grandmother told me hours ago. Before she passed out in the passenger seat of my 2001 Toyota Corolla, hurdling down the freeway at unsupervised speeds. This was how all of my road trips through the Montana wilderness usually went. Except this trip would be the exception in a heartbeat.

My grandmother Hannah was with me, which was strange in and of itself because we almost never saw each other. Never spoke. But today, she was the reason for me driving past the windy cattle-strewn plains of White Fish. We were on a mission you see. Me, the skeptical granddaughter. Her, the wise old woman convinced she was going to convert me. To what you might ask? To the aloof religion of ghost stories. I had somehow let it slip that I didn't believe in them - and the look on her face said it all. Brought a chill to my bones but I would never admit that. Still, enough curiosity overcame me that I let her take me out here. To the middle of nowhere, where I do believe serial killers would gravitate to if they wanted to disappear for good.

Grandma Hannah had fallen asleep so long ago I thought for a second she died. Funny on one hand, but when the panic set in I had to do a little controlled swerve. Just to listen to her groan of disapproval. I sighed with relief when she sat up—smacking her lips. "You kids these days don't know how to drive -" She croaked.

"I know." I stared back ahead. I let my hands relax around the wheel, unaware of how tight they had become. Grandma Hannah looked out too. Nothing but wide open wheat fields as far as the horizon line. A few dots of black cattle, a couple of old leaning fence posts. I glanced at the clock. One hour and twenty-seven minutes since we had seen another car.

Grandma looked over at me. Those glossy eyes were especially weary.

"Almost there." She whispered.

I felt something unusually tingle inside of me. Fear, but not quite. It was more of just an unease. Unease in the way she had said those words. Besides... how did she know? There were no mile markers. No signs or posts or turnoffs...

"How do you know?" I ventured. Not wanting to know the answer, but not wanting to sit in that awful silence.

She hesitated. I could feel it. For long enough I didn't think she would answer.

"Somethings, somethings you just don't forget."

Now I can confirm the second she said that it was indeed fear knotting up my stomach. All in an instant regret became a very real thing in my mind... maybe we should turn back. Maybe we should have brought a gun...

Still, this woman is a fiend with timing. She pointed a nobbly finger to the right. Told me to turn. And sure enough, there was a long long long dirt road. Half grown over with wildflowers and dead wheat.

I turned. Slowly.

We must have driven down that road for another hour. It never seemed to end, a constant loop endlessly chugging towards the blue horizon. My anxiety only grew, especially watching my grandma's eyes stay pinned to a particular spot. One that slowly came into view, inch by inch.

I stopped the car suddenly, slamming the brakes. And I could hardly hear my Grandma protesting through my heart pounding in my ears. I could hardly hear anything - see anything - other than that monstrous sight before us.

I had dead-stopped the car about two hundred yards in front of the house. If you could even call it a house, that is. The thing looked older than our country, weathered beyond recognition. Nothing but bones and framework standing in a forty-five degree against the wind. Everything around the house was either dead or dying. Aside from some sickly-looking plants eating up the west half of the house. Worse still was the front door. Thrown from its hinges, resting in some suspicious dirt pile nearby. Every window was shattered, glass sparking in a twenty-foot radius.

I looked over at my grandmother. She was smiling.

"You found it." She said, delighted.

I couldn't find the words as she exited the vehicle. Marched towards the ungodly sight. I fumbled with the keys. And closed the car door behind me. My legs felt like lead, and I couldn't tear my eyes from the house. A cool breeze brought goosebumps to my whole body. And the air seemed thin. Everything smelt like it had been rotting in frozen time for centuries.

"Come!" My Grandma beckoned from the porch. I swallowed, hard. Approaching. She slipped inside and my heart did more backflips than a teenage boy in middle school.

Now. The reason that persuaded me to come to this hellish ruin was to show myself I wouldn't be swayed into believing in such childish things and ghosts and lore. But I had already failed. Listening to the porch moan when I stepped upon it. Touching the burned wood door frame.

Seeing bullet shells riddling the dirt floor. Bones of all kinds - hanging from the ceiling rafters.

"Let me tell you a story, granddaughter."

I felt my whole body shiver. As my Granma Hannah painted a most gruesome picture, of the very room we were standing in. I listened and listed. As she threw her hands around. As she pointed and cried and glared out the window. My heart both ached and shook with absolute horror. By the time she finished, I felt physically sick.

In my absolute state of fear-paralysis and my Grandma, hypnotic storytelling - neither of us paid attention to a few crucial things.

The first was the sun which had just set.

The second being just how loud coyotes can be. The closer they get.

And of course, what would fit this adventure better than a little bit of life or death on the line?

It would appear we had walked ourselves right into a real-life ghost story. Because in our snap of panic, in our running outside to get in the car - we found something that horrified my Grandma Hannah herself. Who I thought couldn't be phased by anything in the genre.

We stared blankly at the spot where I had parked my little grey 2001 Toyota Corolla - which was now gone. Into thin, thin air.