The Fairground Predator
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What is the narrator’s childhood memory of the county fair?
G'day mates, it's BBuster here. And before the episode begins, I would just like to let you know that Be Scared, which is produced along with Studio 71, features scary stories from around the globe on a weekly basis that aim to fuel your nightmares with a smile. And if you enjoy the podcast, it would be great if you could hit that subscribe button and drop a review. But thanks for listening guys, and without further ado, let's begin.
Anything. I've um never really told anyone about what happened to me when I was nine years old. Mostly because my family moved out of Ohio a few months later, and my brain spent years trying to convince me that I had just misunderstood a completely innocent interaction. But I'm twenty-one now, and looking back at the mechanics of that night, I still feel a cold and hollow weight sink into my center whenever I think about just how close I came to stepping off the map. It was late August of twenty fourteen. My hometown was hosting its annual county fair, a massive muddy spectacle of neon carnival rides, diesel tractor pools, and grease-soaked food stands. In our community, the fair was treated like a giant communal backyard event.
Parents would buy their kids a wristband for the rides, hand them a twenty dollar bill for some cakes, and basically just let them run wild in packs, without a single shred of adult supervision until the gates closed at midnight. My dad was volunteering at the local high school's booster club tent that evening, flipping burgers over a massive iron grill, which meant that I had several hours of unmonitored freedom. By 9.30, a heavy summer thunderstorm had rolled through, turning the dirt midways into thick, sucking sludge. The crowds they started thinning out, and the air smelled heavy of wet livestock and fried dough, I had wandered away from the bright, noisy center of the Ferris wheel, and ended up behind the animal exhibition barns, near the edge of the fairgrounds property.
This area was dead quiet, and On one side was the windowless corrugated metal wall of the swine barn, and on the other was a dense unlit tree line, separated from the fair by a rusted chain link fence. Running parallel to the fence was a deep concrete drainage ditch, completely filled with pitch-black rushing rainwater from the storm. The only light came from a single flickering bulb, mounted high up in the barn's eve, casting long jittery shadows across the mud. I was standing near a stack of wooden livestock pellets, trying to scrape clay off the heels of my sneakers, when a woman stepped out from the dark space between the two trailer beds, and She didn't look like any of the local farm mums too.
She was wearing an incredibly oversized, grease-stained yellow raincoat that swallowed her frame down to her shins, and her dark hair was absolutely soaked, clinging to her skull in thin, stringy patches. But it was her face that really made me catch my breath. She had this tight, unblinking glare, her eyes darting frantically from my face to the dark tree line behind the fence. Her jaw twitching a bit. The second that she saw me look up, her expression snapped into a massive jagged grin. That looked completely unnatural, like someone forcing their face to mimic happiness. Oh, thank goodness, she gasped, her voice high, thin and breathless. Hey there, sweetie. Can you do me a really quick favor? I desperately need a little helper, um
I was a very quiet and compliant kid growing up, conditioned to always respect adults, but So I took a step forward and nodded. What's wrong, ma'am? She pointed a hand down into the deep, shadowy concrete drainage ditch, right where it disappeared into a heavy corrugated iron culvert pipe beneath the fence line. It was totally dark inside of that pipe, and the sound of the water rushing through it was a low and hollow gurgle. My little girl was playing with her favorite silver bracelet, and it slipped right down into the mouth of that pipe. The woman said, leaning over so close that I could now smell the sharp chemical reek of cheap lighter fluid and damp wool on her clothes.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the narrator’s childhood memory of the county fair?
0:00–16:36
2
How does the mysterious woman in the yellow raincoat ask for help?
16:36–31:44
3
What does the girl hear inside the dark drainage pipe?
31:44–37:07
4
Why does the girl realize someone is already waiting in the pipe?
37:07–38:29