Well now, don’t you all look fancy with your gadgets, your gear, and your matching shirts. You all must be the folks from that TV show that’s got people around here all in a tizzy.

No, sir, I don’t reckon I’ve ever watched your little scare show. Don’t have time for much television what with my busy schedule of sittin’ here on this stool and drinkin’ Erna’s coffee day after day. Sounds awful silly to me, but I ain’t one to judge. People have got to make their living somehow. So what can I do for you, strangers?

The Zimmerdales? Why do you want to know about the Zimmerdales? You folks aren’t headed up to the Old Bridge Motel, are ya? Hell, no wonder no one else in West Boo-foo wants you all around.

Well, for starters, Robert and Alice Zimmerdale were two of the kindest, gentlest people this town has ever known, and that ten-year old daughter of theirs, Haley, was just about the sweetest. It was a horrible thing that happened up there, and there ain’t a one of us in this town that wants to live through that again. That probably won’t stop you, will it? Well, all right. Erna? I’d like a slice of the chocolate silk pie, please. These folks will pay for it.

Now no one seems to be able to recall exactly what happened to that child. Some folks’ll tell you, if they’d talk to you, that she went swimmin’ out where she wasn’t supposed to, cut her hand on a rock, and the wound got infected. Others say she got bit real bad by something she ran into out in the woods. Some damn fools, mostly drunks, will say she got sick after messin’ with that meteorite that fell around here ‘round about the time all this started. I say, who cares? Don’t reckon it matters much. Either way, it took that little girl from her parents. That in itself would make any parents go a little crazy, if you ask me.

No wake. No funeral. No memorial. The Zimmerdales closed themselves up just like they did the motel for weeks after. Then, one night, a tall fence appeared around the property and the sign came back on. The Old Bridge Motel was open for business again. That’s when the disappearances started, I reckon.

They say that Robert and Alice were the ones that did the killing, but it just ain’t true. Neither one of them had it in ‘em. They might of knocked those victims out, tied ‘em up, maybe even bludgeoned ‘em, but they couldn’t kill anyone. In a way, that was sort of the problem.

Police say they stuffed the rooms with the bits and pieces. Turned the air conditioning way down to try to keep decomposition down. Alice must have filled each room with those little twisty air freshener things to keep the smell down, too. Heh. That’d be just like her. Was hell on the officers to have to identify all those bits, though. Out of the 40 rooms available, only 4 of them were empty. One of those had a family from East Juices staying when the cops busted in. Can’t imagine they’ll be coming to West Boo-foo again anytime soon.

They found Robert and Alice in the basement of the office. Shot ‘em cold dead when, according to the official report, they came at the officers with some axes they were using to chop up another body. Thing is, according to that same report, there wasn’t any blood on either of‘em. In fact, the investigators figure those axes were used to free whatever small creature they had chained to the wall down there. They never did find out what happened to her. Excuse me, I meant to say “it.”

You know, that fence around Zimmerdale’s hasn’t been opened in the over twenty years since. Do me a favor, will ya, TV man? If you all go up there, you just make sure you lock that gate behind you, you hear? After all, folks like you who go lookin’ for trouble are probably liable to find it. Now leave an old man to his coffee and pie.

Wear this shirt: to a zombie movie marathon.

Don’t wear this shirt: if you’ve ever made the mistake of carrying a black light into a motel room.

This shirt tells the world: “I know it looks a little rough, but the room service is to die for.”

We call this color: I Will Turn This Car Black Around This Instant

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