by Tom Frye

When  my best friend, Craig Cline and I were 13, we were riding our dirt bikes on the trails near Salt Creek. There before us, seated on his own bike, was 18-year-old Dennis Grant, a friend of ours from the neighborhood.

Grant gave us a warning, saying, “Beware of the shotgun-toting witch who will shoot kids who trespass on her land. Her name is Bloody Mary. Behind her old haunted house, lives Pigman.

“Pigman will only shoot you with his salt-loads from his double-barrel. But Mary will shoot to kill. One night, my friend Mike Douglas was out there pranking Mary, when Pigman shot at him with his double-barreled shotgun, scoring a direct hit with his salt loads into Mike’s butt!

“When Mike admitted to his mom that he’d been out there pranking Bloody Mary, his mom drove her tweezers into his butt with savage fury, making each burning fragment she tweezed out of his tender butt, hurt like holy hell!”

“See, in 1966, Mary Partington, a retired school teacher, who lives alone out here in the country, shot and killed 27-year old Eldon Hill, who had been climbing through her kitchen window. Mary killed Eldon Hill and became a legend.”

While Grant told us this, we sat at a deep ravine known as the Fat Lady’s Nightmare, for the fact that a fat lady would have a hard time making her way between the trees grown close to the side of the trail.

Grant told us, “This is the very spot where Bobby Morgan launched himself into legendary eternity. 16-year-old Bobby Morgan went full throttle on his dirt bike at 60 miles-per-hour down this straight away here, believing he could jump the thirty feet of empty air between the two banks.

“Bobby and his dirt bike plunged at a rapid rate of speed down into Salt Creek sixty feet below. Bobby died upon impact.”

Right when Grant finished that story, he shouted, “Cop!” Suddenly, the three of us heard the deep rumble of a  Harley coming from the opposite side of the Nightmare.

We watched as this cop on his fully dressed 1200 Harley rolled out of Bloody Mary’s woods on the opposite side of the ravine. The big cop spotted us and started down the opposite slope.

The cop eased his massive machine down the steep trail. But the moment he set his sights on us and started up the slope, we sped out of there.

I looked back to see the cop hit a dip in the trail, lose complete control of his massive Harley, and crash to the ground with the bike on top of him. He began struggling to pull himself out from under that Harley. He even gestured at us to come back down the trail to help him. But we were not about to chance getting a trespassing ticket. So we sat there, watching him work his way free.

When he finally managed to pull himself out from under that beast of a bike, foul words exploded from his mouth and he gestured at us to come back to him.

Dennis flipped him off, and we just spun our bikes around and tore out of there.


It was that evening, gathered around a huge campfire in a wooded area near the cycle trails, that we talked about the event of the day.

The place was known as the Woods, and it was there that I met bikers from clubs like the Screaming Eagles, the Association, the Outlaws, the Gypsies, and even an ex-Hell’s Angel.

At 13, my goal then was to become a biker. I began wearing my cut-off jean jacket with the American Flag on the back, and I began to write a 900 page story I named Wings like Eagles.

About two hours into our woodsie, a big mountain of a guy named Geno snatched up a twelve pack of root beer and urged me and Grant to follow them to the top of this hill fifty yards away from the camp fire.

It was just starting to get stormy. Lightning zigzagged through the sky. Thunder rumbled above us. A perfect night for those two to scare the crap of me.

Geno said, “Did you hear about that animal some scientists bred up at Ag. College. It was part baboon and part dog. It had the face of a demented baboon with long sharp fangs.

“Then, one day it escaped from its cage up on campus. It attacked this security guard and fled, making a path right through our neighborhood. It left behind a whole slew of mangled cats and even some guy’s black Lab!

“The creature then made it’s way out here to the Woods, killing coyotes and rabbits, even feasting on Pigman’s pigs! One night, Bobby was riding through here and he saw these green glowing eyes, and then the face of the Salt Creek Creature!

“It lunged out at him! He said it was a baboon with the body of a deformed dog! Bobby gunned his bike and popped a wheelie, and tore out of here!”

It thundered. Lightning streaked across the sky.

I shivered as I asked, “Then what are we doing having a woodsie out here? I mean, if that thing is loose out here?”

Thunder boomed. Lightning flashed .

In that next flash of light, we all three looked down to the southern edge of the Woods, and there just near the pond we saw a large, dark shape all hunched over near a tree.

Geno and Grant sprang to their feet, peering in disbelief at the crooked, dark shape. I just sat there, my mouth hanging open and my eyes gone wide. Very wide.

The lightning receded, leaving the pond at the edge of the Woods in darkness. When another burst lit up the night, the dark, hunched over figure appeared to be heading right for the hill where we were.

I don’t know which one ran first, but before I knew it I was seated there alone with a 12-pack of root beer and the Creature shambling its way over to the hill where I sat, having been abandoned by my two brave friends. When the lightning came again, I peered down at the bottom of the hill and caught one glimpse of a hunched form standing there, peering up at me.

I completely forgot about the beer as I raced back to the fire in the center of the Woods.

By the time, I got back there, Geno and Grant were telling everyone about what we had seen.  
Grant looked at me and said, “Did you bring that 12-pack with you? If you didn’t, go back and get it!”

I snorted, “Hey, you want that root beer, then you go back and get it yourself! Because you saw the same thing I did out there, so go screw yourself!”

Which, had I said the same thing at any other time in my life, Grant would have beat the crap out of me. Both he and Geno simply exchanged looks with each other, and then peered out into the darkness of the Woods. Neither one went back to get the root beer.

Over the next year, us little guys never went camping out at The Woods without having our guns and our dogs with us. About one month after we’d spotted the creepy thing trying to stalk us, Craig Cline, Kim Stava and Donny Hensler and I went camping out there.

Kim, Craig, and I had our .22 rifles, and Donny was armed with a Crossman BB gun. We had Tiger, Kim’s black Lab, and Princess his other mutt, and Dexter, Donny’s horny humping dog, who humped your leg if you didn’t swat him away from you. There in the realm of the Woods, the four of us young boys sat beside a campfire, staring in awe at the blue mist rising above the nearby pond. At that moment in time, we were 13-year-old boys, camping out in the country, trying to remain unafraid of the darkness as blue moonlight turned the wooded grove into a mystical wonderland.

The howls of coyotes erupted in the distance. Ghostly shadows gathered beyond our campsite. I waited. One second. Two seconds. Three. Four. The coyotes howled again.

I then said, “They called her Bloody Mary, because she blew some kid away with a shotgun. One
blast to the face and he was dead. A damned serious consequence for a stupid prank. Kids had harassed her for years. Shooting her goats. Hooting at her from their cars. Sneaking up to her house to bang on her windows. Just bored kids driving out to the country to scare the defenseless old lady. Someone had a real dumb idea that night. Sneaking into her house would be the ultimate prank. Halfway through her kitchen window, the kid froze in terror as Mary pointed her shotgun at him. She then pulled the trigger, and that unlucky kid was blown into the next life. The thunder of that blast echoed across Lincoln, and a legend was born. And no one screwed with Bloody Mary after that.”

Pausing for several seconds, I then said, “Mary had a guardian, though. Some thing that stalked the banks of Salt Creek near the Woods. Two kids on dirt bikes claimed they saw it one July evening. Glowing green eyes. Gleaming white fangs. The face of a demented baboon. The deformed body of a massive dog. Rumors soon began to spread that it was a beast bred by scientists at Ag. College. And seen or unseen, it was no longer fun to go anywhere near the old lady’s house. Someone named it the Salt Creek Creature, and . . . another legend was born.”

There we were, seated around our campfire, with me telling ghost stories. The second the train whistle blew down by the train bridge half a mile away, the coyotes started howling like crazy. It sounded like they were closing in on our campsite inside the Woods, so we all sat there on our wooden stumps, aiming our guns toward the darkness outside our fire light.

It then became deathly quiet.

The train roared off into the night. The coyotes ceased howling. Pretty soon, all we could hear was the crackle of the flames before us. We heard a howl come from the Woods behind us.

All four of us spun around on our log seats, aiming our rifles at the trees to the north.

A second later, twigs snapped to our left, so we spun around, aiming our guns to the east.

An owl hooted from the west, so we spun around, aiming our guns in that direction.

A second later, Donny ripped a blaring fart, and Craig, Kim and I spun around and aimed our guns at him. Donny held up his hands and fell backwards off the log, shouting, “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”

Craig snarled, “That was actually the loudest fart I’ve ever heard in my life!”

Kim said, “Gawd, it sounded like you shit your pants, Donny!”

A few seconds later, we spotted bright lights moving slowly through the sky over the Woods. We all four looked up in wide-eyed shock as the V formation of lights began to move slowly above us. “Damn!” Craig gasped. “It’s true! There really are UFO’s!”

“But,” Kim said, “couldn’t they just be planes? Sometimes planes fly like that, don’t they?”

Craig shook his head. “One–two–three–five–eight–nine . . . whoa, there are ten lights all flying in formation! When have you ever seen airplanes doing that?”

I nodded. “He’s right. And they are just like hovering there. If they were planes they would be moving through the sky.”

“Maybe,” Donny said, “they are up there looking down on us! Maybe they are observing us!”

The moment he said this, four lights on either side of the arms of the perfect V, veered off and flew in different directions. “Gawd!” Donny wailed, dropping to the ground and clutching his gun. “They’re dropping their little green men!”

Then, one-by-one, the lights simply vanished. I swear this is what we saw out there at the Woods between Bloody Mary’s and Cornhusker Highway on that hot July night back when we were thirteen. I am not making up any part of this story. Even now, I still do not know what we saw that night.  

But as they vanished, Kim said, “I thought we were about to be abducted!”

“Yeah,” Donny gasped in relief, “rectal probes and all!”

Craig laughed. “They’d do a rectal probe on you, Donny, all you would have to do is fart and hell, they’d dump your sorry ass overboard.”

Donny ripped three really loud ones right after Craig said that, and relieved laughter erupted from our mouths. Kim said, “Better check your pants, Donny. I think you crapped them.”

I nodded in agreement as Craig muttered, “I think we all about crapped our pants when we saw those lights!”


My biggest dose of reality came one day while Craig and I were riding our cycles past Bloody Mary’s house. She was seated out there in a rocking chair, with what we just knew to be shot-gun in her lap. Always ones to tempt fate, Craig and I raised our hands and gave her the finger.

A second later, this tall, lanky guy came off her porch and started running out to the road to cut us off. Craig and I clamped on our brakes and skidded to a stop, practically running the man over. He smiled down at us and pointed toward the pasture beyond Mary’s barn. “See those horses?” he asked us. “I’d like you to chase them around with your motorbikes, tire them out, and herd them into the corral by the barn. You do, and I’ll give you five bucks.”

The two of us gave a quick glance up at Mary seated in her rocker, staring silently at us. We just knew the moment we started chasing her horses, we would feel the sting of buckshot from her shotgun. But we rode out there, and had a great time, chasing and herding those three horses. After we finally got them captured inside the corral, the guy came and closed the gate, then paid us five dollars a piece.

It was as we drove away that we got the biggest shock of our young lives.

Mary stood up from her rocker, holding a broom in her hands, not a shotgun. And she actually waved at us and smiled.

From that day on, every time we rode by her place we would wave at her and smile, too.

Later, as a young writer, I was at the Arts Council Conference when Fran Reinhaur (a friend of mine) released her book, Bloody May, Gentle Woman. Fran was up on stage answering questions from the audience. Someone asked her if she had actually ever had a face-to-face with Mary Partington when she was researching her book.

“No,” Fran said, “unfortunately, I didn’t, but there is a young man seated in the audience today who chased her horses for her back when he was a kid. Tom? Stand up and tell us that story, will you?”

I did so then. Later down the road, when I was starting work on my own book about Mary, I called Fran shortly before she passed away. She told me I should write a follow-up book about Eldon Hill, the 27-year-old man who was shot and killed by Mary. During her research days for her own book, she spoke several times with Eldon’s mother, and she learned about his troubled past, including two stays in mental wards in Nebraska and Iowa. Fran said, “Eldon had a story all of his own to be told, before Mary ended his life in a foolish prank gone wrong.”

Before ending our conversation Fran remarked about the missing car keys from Mary’s place the night of the shooting. Eldon’s car was found parked in the driveway, but his car keys were never found during the investigation that followed. Police speculated that Eldon had not been alone that night, that someone else had been with him when he boosted himself up to climb through Mary’s window. Fran and I both wondered who that might have been.

I jokingly said, “So, one night some guy drinking down at Arnold’s is going to make the confession of his lifetime and drunkenly blubber, ‘I was there that night. I was there when that shotgun blew Eldon out of this life. That could have been me that Mary shot. Oh, by the grace of God, go I . . .”

Who knows? Stranger things have happened.