by Joe Sullivan
She was forced to accelerate again. The figure seemingly pushed its pace, attempting to match the car’s rising speed. It was able to keep up for a few strides before finally falling in the snow kicking up from behind her tires at the base of the hill.
"Get away!" Casey screamed.
She feared the mounting snow would make her lose traction while she started to climb the hill. It seemed so much steeper than it ever had. She kept glancing over her shoulder and still didn’t feel any safer that thing had once again disappeared in the darkness behind her.
It wasn't enough. Not until she was actually home with the door locked behind her would she actually be in any position to feel secure. Even then, would she really be able to sleep? If this thing had caught up to her on the road twice already, would it really have any problem finding her back at home?
It wouldn't. It didn't make any sense.
Casey kept her foot on the gas, praying for the hill to finally end. Her hands shook on the wheel. The heat still blasted into the car, almost to the point she was sweating underneath her coat.
Finally, she was at the top. From there, it was only a short and mostly flat stretch before it went back down again towards her parent’s house. Soon she might even see some house lights if anyone had cared to leave them on.
Before she got that far, something moved in the corner of her eye. It was something more than hanging tree branches, which had then levelled at the summit of the hill. It wasn’t even outside. It was right beside her.
For one brief moment in time, she saw a dark figure sitting in the passenger seat. Its body was relaxed and unflinching. Long, black, and bony arms extended over its legs scrunched up against the dash.
She screamed. For the second time that night, she slammed the brakes too hard. Her rear tires were in front of her mind could even register. Again and again, the car rotated. The anti-lock brakes kept engaging and making that horrible skidding sound until the car finally came to a stop.
She stopped closer to the ditch than she had before. Her rear. right wheel felt like it didn’t have any road beneath it.
The first thing Casey did when the car stopped was check beside her. The seat was empty and quite frankly always was. Casey figured this time it must have been her imagination playing tricks on her. Like all those times when she was home alone and thought she would hear someone stumbling around in the basement and knocking things over.
She'd had enough. It was time to call her dad to come out and get her. All he had to do was drive up the road a little bit. Maybe she would even try 9-1-1 if he didn't pick up. She was ready to suffer whatever consequences she’d deserved for getting behind the wheel in the first place.
That was preferable a result rather than encountering that horrible thing again.
Casey had every intention of making that call until she found out her phone was already dead. She would have done the right thing had she be given a fair chance.
She whipped the phone as hard as she could into the backseat. She flipped through the channels of her radio, which was still playing the same generic shit while all of the misery was taking place. There was nothing but more awful music, commercials, and radio static.
What was she looking for anyways? Directions to the nearest phone-charging station? Somebody broadcasting they were on their way to pick her up?
She thought back to when her primary concern was sneaking into the house without waking her parents up. She even thought about whether or not she could tip-toe quietly enough to make a little hot chocolate to sip her Advil down in the kitchen before disappearing into her room for the night.
Those problems were manageable. Those were good problems to have.
She looked all around the car again. Still, nothing was there. It was only down a little hill before reaching the stretch of country homes she lived on. It wasn’t even that big, she’d only have to use the brakes.
The tank was almost empty. She pressed the gas. It was time to go.
Casey noticed the difference in storm intensity since she left in the first place. Like the constantly rising inebriation, it raged against the outside of the car without relent. She could see perhaps two-thirds of the distance she used to be able.
There was a silver lining in that. It meant there was less of a chance she would see something she'd rather not.
The road started to descend. Home was so close she could almost feel the warmth from the old water heater next to her bed. Brake. Roll. Brake. She did the same thing over and over, anxiously waiting to see if any houses had their lights on at the bottom.
One of them did. It was about halfway down the stretch of flat at the bottom. She couldn't recognize the shape of the house, but given the distance, she figured that it was the Preston’s. They were only about six or seven houses down from her parent’s.
The hill seemed to last forever, but when finally at the bottom, Casey bounced up and down in her chair. She wondered how she was going to find the courage to get out of her car when she reached the driveway. She'd have to go in through electric garage doors. Waking mom and dad up didn't matter anymore. No way would she risk exposing herself in the open air.
Casey was never given the chance to make that decision. It quickly dawned upon her that she would never reach her parent's house again. For the third time that evening, the figure appeared in her line of sight. This time, it stood at the end of what she thought was the Preston's driveway, right in the tire tracks she’d been following.
It held its lanky arms out. It started to move towards her, this time showing no fear or desire to get out of the way. Casey decided that this time she would comply. She would give it what it wanted. She would present herself to him. No questions asked.
She put all her weight down on the gas and steered towards it. Her eyes bulged; her teeth clenched. In the last moments before she hit it, she found the whole thing rather amusing.
The black figure's weight landed on the hood then went flying over the car. The windshield cracked and she could hear the thud when it landed on the roof above her and rolled back.
The satisfaction of hitting lasted no more than a second. She leaned back while the car went full speed into the row of trees off to the side of the driveway.
Glass shattered. Metal bent. The world went blurry and would come back into focus only in little throbs of pain. Casey suddenly felt so tired. Despite everything that had happened so far, she couldn't resist the undeniable temptation to take a little rest on the giant white pillow which had magically appeared in front of her.
Casey suffered dark dreams for the time that she was asleep. For how long that was, she couldn't say. She would have liked to continue sleeping had she been able. The cold air with had enveloped her wouldn’t let her stay at peace.
The more alert Casey became, the more she realized just how much damage her body had endured. She was crumpled over the wheel and bent into a position she probably couldn't be in if all her bones still in place.
She felt around in the demented car interior until she found the driver door. As surprising as it was, it squeaked open with hardly any push. Slowly and painfully, she pulled herself out. She needed to wedge her damaged legs from under the dash and collapsed into the snow.
She was so cold—colder than she'd ever been. Using all her strength, she propped herself up. She stumbled out of the ditch and up onto the road. The farther she moved, the more she realized the fatal extent of her injuries.
Her body could only last so many staggered steps before she fell again. She had made it back to the road and figured that was good enough. At least there, if there was one more person crazy enough to be driving out in the snow like she did, they would find her. Maybe they would stop and let her in. Maybe they’d even have a crisp blanket to cover her with in the backseat.
If not that, then perhaps they wouldn't even see her and instead run her over. That, she figured, would be better than freezing to death in the middle of a winter storm.
In her last mo
ments of consciousness, she could have sworn she saw a dark figure somewhere farther down the road. It loomed over her, waiting for her to pass.
She closed her eyes and the world disappeared forever.
#
Casey McEnnis's body was discovered by a snowplow operator the next day. According to the report, he described her as looking like nothing more than a small mound of snow he could barely distinguish. He claimed he very nearly didn’t stop.
Less than fifteen feet from where her body was discovered, another lump was raised out of the snow. That one belonged to the body of Henry Burgess. The man who lived in the single country house built in that little valley portion of Maples road.
Authorities quickly gathered that he had been struck by McEnnis's vehicle after two failed attempts to flag her down earlier on.
Casey, who was driving impaired, had allegedly lost control of the vehicle several times. In her attempt to make it back to her parent’s home roughly two miles farther south, she’d spun out, become disoriented, and started heading back in the direction she’d just come from. She’d done it twice. Up one hill, then back down the way she came.
Burgess's wife would later explain that Henry had been unable to sleep after hearing tires screech and seeing a car spin out in front of the house. The tall man had gone outside and had attempted to flag her down three times before finally being struck.
Mrs. Burgess said she'd tried to bring her husband inside, but he was simply unwilling to leave the poor young driver, clearly lost and out of sorts. She’d turned the house lights on, expecting her husband to be back in bed beside her, before going back to sleep.
Instead, she awoke to find that her husband, much like the young Casey McEnnis, had died of his wounds after rolling over the back of the vehicle. With tears rolling down her face, she stated that she would forever regret her decision to leave her husband alone in the dark to die.
J.D. McGregor is a Canadian horror and mystery author residing in Toronto, Ontario. Much of his writing was composed while travelling solo and abroad, something he can often be found doing, working or not.
His works have been published by DimensionBucket and Haunted House Publishing LLC, as well as adapted for audio by the NoSleep Podcast and Scary Stories Told in the Dark. His debut collection The Devil’s in the Details appeared in 2018.
Acknowledgments
We’d like to thank our families, Chad Wehrle, Cemetery Dance Magazine, and the authors who contributed to this collection.