A Visit to Little Valley

Albert, my sometimes roommate, who also happens to be a bear, and I, swap stories upon occasion. He has some doosies. Recently I told him a story of Little Valley, the place where I grew up. It's essentially the same story I had told to another friend of mine back in college, while we were trying to hitch (hitch-hike) our way back to our college campus. The difference between the two tellings is that my college friend, Jim, and our evening in the Valley, was now included in the story that I related to Albert.
Alan, another college friend, along with Jim and I, had a number of adventures in my early college years. We went on quite a number of little roadtrips, although very few ended up being overnighters. Usually we travelled in my old (1962, if I remember correctly), but still running VW bug, or it's eventual replacement, a completely unreliable SAAB. 
Anyroad, on this particular night, whatever car I owned at the time was not running, and I'm not sure where Alan was at the time, but it was just Jim and I. I don't remember how we got to my Mother's house, but it was a common destination when we wanted to run away from studying, particularly when we were hungry. My Mother's snickerdoodles (cookies) were famous among my friends.
On the evening when this story unfolds, we left my Mother's house around the Witching Hour (midnight). We did catch a ride for the first couple of miles, to the other side of downtown. Little Valley is rather a tiny town, and most of that distance was from my Mother's house to the center of town. Our luck went bad after that first ride, however, and we ended up walking all the way out of the town limits (borders). 
After passing the last house, and street light in the residential section of town, there are a couple of miles of dark and lonely road. Very few residents of Little Valley ever leave town, unless absolutely necessary, so we didn't see any headlights as we hiked along. Jim made a comment about the spookiness of the setting we were in, and I told him he didn't know the half of it. And then I told him about the Gladue brothers, Joe and Steve. 
No one knows where they came from, but there had been Gladues living in thier big, gloomy house for as long as anyone could remember. The house itself was a rambling and run-down place out in the middle of nowhere. It was the only house on Under The Mountain Road, and it was set back in the woods. Under The Mountain Road was a popular place for the young and wild, or those who wanted to seem like they were wild. At least, those who had their drivers licenses, or a friend who did. If you wanted to make out (fool around: mostly kissing, but other things will happen), or drink some beer, maybe smoke a little reefer (marijuana), then Under The Mountain was the place to go. At least until kids started getting scared by strange noises and sights. 
There were the sounds of something large crashing through the woods on several occasions. Someone claimed they saw a bear, but the howls that were heard by more than a few people sounded nothing like a bear. If anything, they sounded like some kind of large wolf, possibly on steroids. All this took place over the course of one summer. That fall, two girls disappeared. They had driven out to Under The Mountain to meet some friends, including the boyfriend of one of them. They never met up with their friends. Finally convinced by the boyfriend, and the parents of both girls, the town Sheriff and his only deputy, drove out there the following morning. They found the car, with both doors open, blood on the seat and steering wheel, but no sign of the girls. 
That night, the boyfriend convinced some of his friends, with the help of some dutch courage (liquor), to go calling on the Gladues, who had a bit of a bad reputation. At least according to Town gossip. So, Tim McDonald (the boyfriend), and five of his friends, against the advice of everyone else they talked to, went back to Under The Mountain Road to pay a visit to the two brothers. No one saw the six of them alive again.
With another dozen parents on the Sheriff's back, he felt obligated to go look for the additional six missing youths, and to have a word with the Gladue boys. And being of some small intelligence, even though he was quite the spooky guy himself (but that's another story), he gathered some twelve or fifteen guys, armed and deputized them, and headed off in a caravan of cars. 
So, this is how I heard it. They did find the car the six hotheads had gone out there in the night before, but there was not a sign of the six. When the Sheriff, and his not so merry band of men, arrived at the Gladues' haunted version of a residence, they did not get a response after banging on the door and hollerin' the Gladues' names. They told people later, that when they busted the door in, the smell almost knocked them over. The inside of the house was one big, disusting mess. They found no one on the first floor, but when three of them went upstairs, they ran into Joe, who was hiding in a back bedroom with a 12 gauge shotgun. He opened up (fired) at the three deputized men, and killed one of them. The other two emptied their guns at Joe, and killed him in turn. Some of the men who went out there, later said that Joe didn't look normal. They said something about his jaw being a little too long. And his eyes seemed set back in his head too far. There was also some mention of his having hair in places he shouldn't.
The last place they searched was the basement. None of them wanted to talk about what they found down there. But one of 'em was heard to mutter it was like horribly messy, and completely unsanitary, butcher shop. But what was being butchered wasn't what you would expect to find at your normal deli counter. Oh, yeah. It was mentioned that they did find some meat stuck in the teeth of Joe Gladue. It was human. 
As for Steve Gladue, they never found him. Kids still go out to Under The Mountain Road, but not often, and usually only on a dare. And yeah, every once in a while someone else goes missing. But no matter how long anyone searches, they don't turn up.
So anyway, it took me most of that dark stretch of road to tell that story to Jim, who actually looked kind of anxious to be past it, even before I was finished. Between us, Jim and I that is, we just call it a ghost story. I think he was happy to think of it in those terms. Gave him a bit of peace of mind. But after that, whenever we spoke of going to my Mom's place, he always had to check to make sure we wouldn't be doing any walking. Especially, in the dark of night.   
Albert, on the other hand, had no trouble believing the story. But then he has had some experience with the strangeness of Little Valley, as well as some truly bizarre experiences of his own. Like I said, he has some rip-roaring tales. But I believe those would be for some other time.