ScreamingRoot
Originally uploaded by Zzzzt!Zzzzt!"Hey, man, look at THIS!" said my youngest brother Les, who had accompanied me today on a photocruise out searching for interesting cemeteries in Central Texas. Late in the day, we had found this odd and isolated little red-dirt cemetery and had just walked through the main gates... No one was around, but the place felt strange, not the usual peaceful vibe we got. I had just stepped past a particularly Disney-esque tortured graveyard tree that seemed like it had been hit by lightning a few times and was on my way to investigate a peculiar sight... lichen had grown on the front of an tall narrow headstone in the shape of a human silhouette..."that's mighty odd, I say to myself", just as Les called out to me with excitement in his voice. He was standing by that twisted ugly tree I had just passed and was pointing down at it's roots. "What is it?" I called, intent on my own investigations, but walking back to see. "Look", he said again. I did and there at my feet, something, not quite a branch, more like a root about 10 inches up from the base of the tree, was stretched out about a foot from the tree... it was twisted and bent and at the end of it was a round ball like structure... on the end of that was the face you see in this picture. "My, God, man, it's a f___ing SCREAMING ROOT!" I tell him. I am never really scared or nervous in cemeteries as I find them peaceful and beautiful, if a little sad. But I felt a cold chill run up my back and some hair started to stand up as I photographed this thing... first in b&w and then in color. "You see it too, right, a screaming root?" I ask Les nervously. "Hell, yes!" He says, "straight out of some bad horror movie". Absolutely amazing I mutter, and start to get that cold rush again and feel like something is watching behind me... I can't resist turning around and what I see is that grave with the lichen silhouette on it... but for one moment, I hallucinate that it was a stranger standing there! "Shit!" sez I. Then I notice some odd cracks in the earth... deep ones in this red dirt... traveling like trails through the cemetery; at one point traveling up to an above ground box or crypt that is cracked completely in two along that same line... Weirdness... I mutter. I start to notice other strange things, both in the cemetery and around the edge... little piles of stones that seem to have been burned...almost as if something flammable had been poured on them and lit. And not just ordinary stones, but beautiful pieces of quartz, flint, fossils, petrified wood chunks (the kinda stuff I would pick up and save if I noticed it elsewhere) and such... "What the heck was this for?" asks, Les. I shake my head and start to say "no idea" when the wind suddenly picks up, and starts swirling that red dirt around... it immediately gets darker and the clouds start really moving as if a storm is coming, coming now! "Damn, Les," I say, " we better go." As I head for the car I look at that "Screaming Root" again and get the willies, big time. We get in the car and take off, and get down the road almost to the end of the cemetery fence when we see a pickup truck coming our way. I keep going and the truck passes us. I just get a glimpse at who is driving, but I wish I hadn't.. This person seemed to have no face. It's as if they had been in some horrible fire and were badly burned... it was red and scarred and almost featureless, but it was driving. I accelerated a bit and we both said at the same time, "What the F__K was that!?". I hit the main paved road and accelerated towards home, as it started to rain hard... I have never been back there, but I still have the pictures I took that day.
