PART 2 -- A RUNNING HALLOWEEN STORY

This is the conclusion of the true scary running story I posted yesterday. VERY IMPORTANT: If you didn't read part 1, please scroll down to the post below this one and read it first.

Everyone have a happy and safe Halloween!

The Chair (part 2 -- the conclusion)

 

I swiveled my head back and forth. “N-n-no. I’m not gonna sit on it.”

“Ah come on, Joe,” Bruce said. “Don’t be a chicken.”

I backed away, still shaking my head.

Mike hooked his thumbs in his armpits and flapped his elbows. “Buck-buck-buck-buck-buck-buck-buck.”

Their taunting didn’t faze me. I wanted to go home. "Come, guys. It's getting late. Let's get out of here."

"You're such a wimp," Bruce said.

Jogging along Scotch Ridge as we passed through the shadows of the night, I heard rustling noises coming from the woods. “Do you hear that?” I asked.

“Yeah, I hear it,” Mike said.

When we stopped to listen, the rustling stopped. “Must be our imaginations,” Bruce said.

We jogged again, this time slightly faster, but the noises followed. “Hold up, guys,” I said. “Bruce, shine your light into the woods there.”

When the ray crossed the greenery, a dozen eyes lit up and barking exploded.

“Run!” Mike screamed.

Although Mike and Bruce were great distance runners, I had more speed. With adrenalin streaming through my body, my legs churned under me like the Roadrunner with Wylie Coyote on his tail. If Coach Gordon Downie had been there with his stopwatch, I would’ve broken the school record in the 440-yard dash. After several hundred yards, I couldn’t hear my friends’ footsteps behind me, only blood curdling screams and barking.

Finally, I halted, turned and stared into the blackness. The barking trailed away. Wild dogs. That’s what’s been killing the livestock on this ridge. A pack of wild dogs. For more than a minute I leaned on my knees, catching my breath and imagining the gruesome fate of my buddies. They shouldn’t have sat on the Chair.

Then, softly at first, I heard footsteps and huffing coming toward me. My heart rattled in my chest like an outboard motor with a few screws missing. Emerging from the black shadows into the moonlight, Mike and Bruce ran at a good clip.

“You guys all right?” I hollered. As they neared I noticed they held something in their hands.

“We fought ‘em off with rocks,” Mike said and then dropped his stones to the ground.

“I’ve never seen you run so fast, Joe,” Bruce said. “If you’d run that fast at the District Cross Country Meet, we’d qualify for the State Championship.”

“You’re hilarious,” I said. “Let’s go home.”

 

 

Epilogue

 

After graduating from college and teaching a year in northern Indiana, I returned to my hometown of Martins Ferry to take the art position at my old high school. Eventually, I became a Commissioned Lay Pastor for the Upper Ohio Valley Presbytery. Many Presbyterian churches in the Ohio Valley needed pastors, and not enough ordained ministers were available.

In the summer of 1990 I got a call from a farmer named Paul Pickens who wanted me to fill the pulpit at his small country church, the Scotch Ridge Presbyterian Church. The name of the church sounded familiar. When I arrived at the bottom of the steep driveway, I knew I’d been there before—on a late October night in 1973.

I pulled my car into one of the few parking spaces, stepped out, and saw the Chair. My friends’ taunting echoed in the back of my mind: Don’t be a chicken. Buck-buck-buck-buck-buck-buck. That morning I preached to eight elderly members of the Scotch Ridge congregation, members who had been faithfully praying that their fellowship wouldn’t die out. Soon after, they hired me to be their lay pastor.

For the last twenty-three years the Chair has greeted me every Sunday morning, but we’re still alive and well at Scotch Ridge. Mike and Bruce haven’t succumbed to the Chair’s curse either. Bruce recently received the honor of induction into the Ohio Valley Athletic Conference Hall of Fame for being a four-time state champion. Mike and I get together occasionally and talk about the glory days. We're a lot slower than we used to be. One thing hasn’t changed since that October night in 1973. I still haven’t sat in The Chair.

 

The End

 

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