That little rhythmic sound you've been hearing. Oh, that's just me. Crouched in the corner, holding my knees, whimpering, hoping to make it to dawn. I don't think it's ever going to be safe to go outside.

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Flash forward 6 hours, the Robberlings are wide awake and staring at the door as they hold onto each other.

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seriously man... short stories in magazines, something... this page alone is more interesting than any editorial/'story' i've read in an actual car mag for years!... think of the possibilities my friend!!! i'm *not* joking... there are businesses that PAY for this stuff....

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Thanks GRAVEROBBER, you never cease to entertain us!

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$5,500 seemed like a steal for a numbers-matching Fury in such nice shape, and I thought the seller must be crazy to be letting it go for that. When I called about the car, my suspicions were confirmed.

At first I thought he was being wary, and maybe was planning to sucker me in and then try and take me to the cleaners. He seemed distracted, only answering my questions with monosyllabic responses and occasional grunts and whimpers that really set my teeth on edge.

None the less, he did agree to show me the car, and I did manage to get out of him that while he didn't want to sell the car, he needed to, for his health. He also managed to give me his address, and agree to a meeting there. I planned on taking cash, and hopefully driving the Fury home that day.

I made the trip up to his place with a buddy of mine. He agreed to stick around and give me a ride back if things went south, or if the car was a total turd bucket.

When we arrived at the address, it was late afternoon, and the sun had lost its fight with the graying clouds in the late October sky. As we got out of the car and headed up the brick walk, my friend commented that it was "pretty quiet around here." I noticed it too, not a bird chirped nor dog barked, only the dry, fall leaves blown by the wind broke the heavy stillness.

Repeated knocks on the door went unanswered, the bell seemed not even to work, but we pushed it again and again. Peering in the windows revealed a dirty, disheveled living room, but no sign of the inhabitants. "Geez," I said. "I told him we'd be here, what a flake!" My buddy looked to the double-car garage at the end of the property, leaves and newspaper pushed up against the old wooden door. "Maybe it's in there?" he said, pointing to a second, walk-though door at the side. "Let's check it out."

The knob of the side door was old, tarnished and rubbed smooth from use. It turned easily and the door swung open revealing a dark coolness and something else. A smell emanated from within. We both instinctively covered our noses and went inside. The Fury was there, situated in the ride-side bay of the garage. As our eyes adjusted to the dim light provided by a lone four-pane window opposite us, we noticed that It appeared to be in as-described shape; good body, wheel covers and stainless side trim intact. Then a noise, a scraping like that of a ship on a dock, the stretching of rope and we found the owner. In fact, we found his whole family.

There were three of them, An older-looking man, a woman who looked like life had not been too kind, and an overweight kid who appeared to have been in his early twenties. They hung from the main transverse rafter, angled from the corner of the garage nearest the roll-up door. Their heads were canted to the side, and were purple and bloated. The wife, who had been a plain woman in life, took on the caricature of a clown in rigor, with purple face, and mousy hair thrown forward from the jolt hitting the end of the rope. The son's neck, pulled by what looked like a good 300 pounds of weight, was already stretching, elongating and separating the lumbar vertebra, the toes of his sneakers nearly touching the floor. The owner looked the most life-like, if you can call it that. His eyes were open, and fairly bulged from their sockets, his tongue likewise appeared as though a macabre radish shoved between violet, swollen lips.

Beneath each was a kitchen chair which appeared to have been dragged into the garage for this intended purpose.

"What's that in his hand?" my buddy asked leaning forward and grabbing a crumpled piece of paper from the dangling hand of the swaying owner. Opening the folds, and smoothing it out it read: "TAKE THE CAR, TAKE THE DAMN THING BACK TO HELLS OWN FIRES." In the center, held in the fold, was a single pentangle key.

We tried to call the cops, but our cells wouldn't work. Cursing T-Mobile and our luck, we looked at each other and at the car. My buddy suddenly let out a long, low giggle. Not a happy one, but a nervous, kind of creepy one. "What the hell was that for?!" I demanded, appalled at his obvious disrespect for the deceased family not more than three feet away. "Nothing man, I, I mean, I don't know." He looked at bodies. "We need to get out of here."

Now, I don't want you to pass judgment on my morals or anything, but we took the car. I don't know what was compelling me, but the decision seemed out of my control, as though I was being driven by an external force, compelling my actions. The car fired up, the garage door went up, sending the bodies swaying into one another like sides of beef, and away we went. I took the lead in the Fury, and my buddy, who it seemed couldn't stop giggling and had started to get a little wild-eyed followed in his car.

We got out of that dead neighborhood and out on the highway and I started to feel a little better. The 318 really had torque in every gear, and the car felt tight and willing when you put the spurs to it. Traffic was light, and I was cruising along doing 65 when I saw a light-bar in the rear-view. I let off the gas, not only didn't I want to get popped for speeding, but I hadn't quite figured out how to explain why I was driving a dead man's car. As I slowed, the highway patrol cruiser pulled up next to me. I could see, out of the corner of my eye, his glances over at the dark, ominous car. Shifting to the rear-view again, I saw my buddy pulling in behind me, and pacing the Fury. He had a panicked look on his face, having seen the black and white slipping through traffic like a mako shark through the breakwater.

I decided to play it tough and turned to give the cop a cold, confident stare. He wasn't looking at me any more he was looking ahead and turning his head from side to side, as though trying to extract something from his ear. Shaking his head, and rubbing his eyes he floored it, lifting the nose of the cruiser and shooting ahead of me.

The highway patrol car began weaving back and forth across all the lanes, "doing a traffic break" I thought. The cars started bunching up behind im, and what was previously sparsely filled became four cars wide and three deep. As he crossed the lanes he also slowed, until we were traveling at a crawl. I looked in the rear-view, but my buddy was no longer there, having moved into the number two lane next to me. I looked over and he gave me one of those "WTF" shrugs as we came to a complete halt.

The cruiser in front was now stopped dead center of the highway, and door was opening. A tall, leather boot emerged, followed by a pale, long-fingered hand on the door jam as the officer arose from the car. He was tall, and wore the expected mirrored aviators. His wide brimmed hat further obscured his continence, and I couldn't tell what he was doing. "There wasn't anything in the road right here, why had he stopped?"

He seemed to be regarding the Fury, and my heart nearly froze. He's here because of me! I thought, and my skin went cold. I got out of the car, and stood sheepishly behind the door. Starting to formulate excuses in my head I barely noticed him drawing his service revolver and grasping it in both hands. Something in my head, some baser survival part from the past brought me back to reality just before the first shot rang out.

I twisted instinctively to the right to see where he was shooting, just in time to see the windshield on a celica spider and explode in blood as the Toyota driver's head received a ballistic assault. The cop was now in one of those stereotypical poses you think only happens in the movies; knees bent, both arms out, popping off round after round- Bam, bam, bam. The F150 behind my buddy, jacked up on big tires, must have made a tantalizing target as he put two rounds into the cab, the driver slammed against the back window twice, the second time shattering it before he was thrown forward and onto the floor boards. I shouted to my buddy to "get the hell out of there!" but it was too late. I could see the recoil pushing the cop's arms back and up as two more bullets were unleashed, and heard the familiar sound of my friend's car horn. Looking over, I could see his head slumped on the wheel, and a fountain of crimson flowing from a hole behind his ear and rivering down the door.

The cop, crazy as a shit-house rat, was shooting from slow lane to fast, and I knew that I was next if something didn't happen. I saw the almost imperceptible shift in his targeting system as it locked onto me. I knew he only had one or two shots left in the gun and started to dive for the floor of the Fury when I heard what sounded like an atomic bomb go off, and saw the F150 that had been 20 feet away, go sailing over my head in a cartwheel. My buddy's car was likewise smashed and pinwheeled out of the way, as a 6-axle cane truck smashed through the stopped cars at 80 miles per hour. The cop, concentrating on me, didn't have time to jump out of the way, as the flat, steel plate bumper caught him at mid-hip, tearing him in half. His legs went down fast, and trailing internal organs, got caught in the undercarriage of the 10-ton beast, bouncing and rending apart. The rest of him looked like a fly on the windshield for an instant until the truck smashed into the cruiser causing a fireball to erupt into the sky and immolating the insane arm of the law. Hitting the cop car caused the crane to sway off its mount, throwing the truck off balance and tipping it up on 3 wheels before rolling completely over with an sickening clang.

I got back into the Fury and threw it into gear. My hands were shaking, and I thought I may very well have shit myself, but I managed to keep it together long enough to get the rest of the way home, and get the car into the garage, where it sits now.

What could have caused this insanity? First the mass suicide of the previous owner, then that cop going off the deep end, and I think my buddy may have been losing it there too, what with the giggling and it being his idea to steal the car. The Car. That car. That's what I keep coming back to, it's the connective tissue between these psychotic episodes. Maybe it is cursed. Maybe it holds the souls of those too weak to resist its evil incantations. But that's crazy. I'm not crazy, it hasn't affected me in any way.

I'm going out there now, out to the garage. I need to confront this car, need to face whatever it is that's causing this, put and end to it. I'm taking a gun; I don't trust the car. I don't know the car. If I start to feel anything I'll know what to do. And if you should find this note, you'll know too. Be careful. It knows what your thinking. And it knows what makes you afraid. I may not come back, but if I don't be, forewarned. And for the love of God, don't follow me. . .

Happy Halloween everybody.

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I hope tonight of all nights our Graverobber is out robbing graves, or getting his grave robbed, or whatever it is that keeps his hippie hydroponic organic maple syrup commenter brain generating these gems. Perhaps we could take up a collection to buy him some Ketel One and sodium cyanide? He'd prolly like that.

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/joke

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And, get a job.

Also, I secretly envy you.

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