The End: Remastered
Summary: Traveling at night is never advisable, traveling alone much less so.
Genre: Horror, Creature Feature
Words: 3119
My lone car traveled down the dark curvy highway road that was slick with the rain that had long since let up, the road stretched far past even the brightest setting of the headlights of my car. If you were to park and stand in the middle of the road, the darkness would seem never-ending on a moonless night like tonight. To me the pine forests on the side of the road felt almost like a cage of claws bearing down on me from all sides, growing up and up towards the endless inky sky.
It was almost impossible to escape them where I lived, just about everyone had trees either in their backyard or on the baseball field at school.
The summer heat had cooled with the night and the rain, but the humidity was constantly fogging up my windows. The car hummed with the thrum of the engine, and looking at the speedometer I pressed on the gas a little more. The speed limit was 45, but on these back roads just about everybody drove closer to 60 than anything else. So technically speaking, doing 65 wasn’t the worst I could be doing, there were never any police officers around here and if there were, the most I would get would be a warning to slow down.
Besides it was late and I wanted to get home before midnight,
The night was peaceful and still, all things considered, not a drop of rain had been seen since it had stopped earlier that day. The new moon was hidden completely out of sight. It was a dark night, with only the lights of the car illuminating the backroads that I was driving on, there was nothing around, nothing for miles and miles until the next town or city. At least that’s where I was heading, I had been driving for miles, with my stuff piled in the back of the car when my gaze shifted from the sight of the endless road before me.
A part of me liked to imagine shapes along the side of the road as I drove, just as I had always done when I was a kid and it was my parents driving. Be it wolves or whatever, it was always something that followed along the car as we drove these long miles. And so, with the methodical shapes of the trees casting shadows, I imagined those shapes again.With only the faintest slivers of the bright headlights of my passing car making it visible in those split seconds.
That’s when it happened.
In one quick second, the front lights of my car shattered, plunging the road into complete darkness as the rough thump and thud hit my car. There was a crunch of metal before I stomped on the brakes, and swerved, making my car come to a screeching halt along what I hoped was the side of the road and not the middle of it.
The scent of burnt rubber assaulted my nostrils.
“ I.. I hit something?” I wondered aloud as the sinking sensation of dread gripped the bottom of my stomach tight as I hastily spun the wheel as I pumped the brakes, steering his car to what I hoped was the side of the road before getting out. Blindly I grabbed for my phone in the passenger seat he nervously clambered out of the car. “Damn it, I hope I didn’t hit something…” I muttered again, of course my car had to break down where there wasn’t any cell reception, not with the cell towers being far from anywhere out in the countryside.
No way to call a tow truck, no way to call my dad, and no way to google how to swap out a busted up tire.
Would I be stuck here until morning? I suppose that I could use my shirt as a makeshift pillow, and sleep in the backseat until I could walk to the nearest gas station. Although a part of me dreaded just how many miles that would be, and how sore I would be afterwards.
Grumbling sourly under my breath I walked all around my car, looking for any sign of what I could have hit. With my phone’s flashlight, I took in all of the damage. The only thing that I saw that could be wrong with the car was the busted front headlights and the brake lights on the back of the car. Along with the shredded front tire that had completely warped the entire rim into itself, it would be almost impossible to drive it without more damage. All of the lights were completely shattered, the bulbs inside reduced to nothing more than just a few shattered fragments of glass and nothing else. The exposed wires hissed and sizzled with a visible red hot glow, still retaining the electricity from the battery that was being pumped to them.
The only thing in my car that gave off any kind of light was the cabin light that had turned on the moment I opened the door.
I sighed to myself, dragging my hands over my face in defeat. Driving at night with no lights was practically suicide, and with a wheel with that much damage… it would warp the whole frame of the car and basically total it.
That much I knew.
Still, I couldn’t push the ever present question out of my head. Just what did I even hit to cause so much damage?
“Momma? Daddy?”
A voice, a soft child’s voice carried out of the dark pine forest on a breeze that felt neither warm nor cold.
My head snapped up in an instant from where I had been investigating the broken lights of my car. Without a moment of hesitation I turned my phone’s flashlight towards the vast expansive forest that I had stopped beside. In that moment my body felt trapped between my lungs which threatened to stop bringing in air, and my knees that suddenly felt like jello.
I hadn’t had many scary or horrifying experiences that I’d willingly subjected myself to, aside from a terrifying ordeal where I got lost during a nature hike that I’d only gone on to impress my favorite teacher. But the sound of someone calling out from a pitch black forest, with no cell service, and no way to drive out of there didn’t fill me with too much confidence. My lungs caught every breath that tried to escape, with the force of a steel wire trap that suffocated poor woodland animals.
A kid… There was a kid out there. I had to remind myself of that, somewhere there was a kid that was looking for their parents and was lost.
Somewhere.
Shaking away those thoughts, I squinted into the darkness of the forest as if that would change anything.
The kid had at least sounded close by, the very least I could do was find them and maybe get them back to my busted car until sunrise and drive them to the closest town. Broken wheel or not. My dad would chew me out for it later, but… well I couldn’t even lie to myself and say that it was worth it.
“Hello?” Cupping one of my hands around my mouth I called out to the looming trees that acted as a wall between me and the unknown child. I cursed the fact that my headlights were busted, if I could at least turn them on then maybe it could act as a beacon for the kid to come towards. But with my phone light it would basically be like waving a birthday cake candle in a hurricane hoping to light the way.
Taking my first steps towards the wilderness, my footsteps let alone my voice shook at the prospect of taking even a single step forward into the intimidating darkness that laid out before me. Phone be damned, the forest really wasn’t the kind of place that I should be wandering around in the dead of the night. But I couldn’t help but to feel the slightest tingling of worry coursing through his veins at the thought of a young kid being lost out there with no light and no sense of direction.
I was at least an adult, even if I really didn’t feel like one right now.
I hazarded a look back at my car, a small selfish part of me just wanting to go back and sleep in the backseat like I was psyching myself up for just moments ago.
So I made a promise to myself.
“Just a few feet from the road,” I told myself, “If I can’t find the kid I’ll turn right back around and go back to the car and wait until morning and… and I’ll call the police the moment I reach a gas station or a working cell tower.” That was reasonable, that made the nervous jitters in my stomach settle down to a manageable level.
I took a deep breath, and readied my racing heart.
Time to be brave.
“Can you hear me, kid? I’m right here, just follow my voice! Can you hear me?!” I tried again as I walked further away from my car, and more into the forest until I was finally toeing the line of trees that separated me from the ditch and the rest of the forest, my flashlight passed over the dark silhouette of the trees all standing in a row like soldiers at attention, and the branches that stuck out like crooked limbs. If I had been hoping to find even the slightest glimpse of where the child had once been, I was sorely mistaken.
I took another cautious step, and the sound of crackling leaves and shifting nettles met my every footfall.
My breath puffed out before me as the chill of the night air sank into my bones, I paused, letting the cold sink into me.
It hadn’t been that cold a few moments ago.
In fact, I was pretty sure that the temperature tonight was at least supposed to be up in the 70’s, maybe the 60’s if there was going to be rain again. I lived in a warmer state, and it was supposed to be summertime. I shouldn’t have to worry about seeing my breath until the latter end of December...
But the evidence of my breath was there and it said otherwise, as it lingered there for a moment before vanishing from my sight.
The plain t-shirt and jeans that I was wearing would be no help whatsoever to the cold that gripped me tighter and tighter, the longer I stayed in one position the colder I would get. There was no telling what the kid would be wearing, or how long he must’ve been missing from his parents either. An entire night in freezing in the woods was practically a death sentence regardless of how young they could possibly be.
This alone forced me to swallow down the chattering of my teeth that attempted to crack my teeth together.
I shook my head, and stubbornly took a step forward. Now there was no way I was leaving this forest until I found them. I could do it. I would find the kid and then get the hell out of here and never come back to this stretch of road with no service and mysterious bumps in the road.
Maybe I should have moved further south, gone to the Bahamas or Mexico. Then at least I wouldn’t have to deal with sudden cold spells in the middle of a stupid forest at night, or if I was, at least I would have a pina colada in my hands while doing it. I trudged forward, internally grumbling taking the place of the fear I had been feeling just moments ago. Being cold had always made me grumpy, and now even more so.
“Hello? Kid? Yell back if you can hear me! I’m right here!” I moved my light in giant sweeping motions again over yet another fallen log, before waving it high in the air in the vain hope that the kid could somehow see me from wherever he was. “Hello?!”
Just a few more minutes, then I would go back to my car, get warmed up and try again after devouring one of the granola bars I had stashed somewhere in the glovebox.
“Momma? Daddy?” The weeping sound of the kid’s voice piped up again.
There again, I lurched forward. The sound of the kid’s voice sounded so much closer now!
Soon I would be done with all of this.
“Momma?” The kid called out again. Damn, he sounded really scared, and my heart panged with how the kid’s voice cracked with each syllable. “Daddy?” They tried again.
“I’m here!” I called out, relief blanketing my voice and filling my body from the tips of my toes to the roots of my hair. “I’m right here, just come to me. Follow my voice! I’ve got a car, I’ll get us into town so we can look for your parents! It’s going to be okay!”
I jogged forward a few more feet, my eyes squinted with the direction of the light. I looked for any sign of movement, of a smaller body that would mean that I found a child who had somehow gotten lost in a forest miles away from civilization. My light passed over a few logs resting against an old rotting tree, as I moved deeper and deeper into the thicket.
There!
A small shadow to my left shifted, and I swept my light over to it without thinking much of it. The light beam from my flashlight froze a second too slowly, and the beam of light trembled in time with the shake of my hands as I stood rooted to the spot.
That wasn’t a log.
It wasn’t a log that my light had just passed over, and it wasn’t a log that my light was staying on either.
At first inspection, it looked like a weirdly tall deer statue with gangly legs that someone had carved out of wood and just left here. Except deer didn’t have eyes that looked like… that, or the sharp jagged fur that looked as if it was made out of fresh tree bark. Its slender neck was curved, its face turned away from the light shining towards it, towards the moonless sky. To the point that I would have had to get a ladder just to completely see the rest of its face.
I pointed my light to the side, looking at all of the other weird statues that were littered around the forest floor.
How had I not seen all of them until now? Just how deep into the forest had I gone?
The moment I turned my light away, I heard a rustle. Like someone dragging their feet through dry crispy leaves.
The wooden statue closest to me moved.
My mouth jerkily opened to utter a delayed scream that just wouldn’t happen, and the thing’s disgustingly disturbing mouth did the same. Detaching down as if it were no more than an eccentric puppet held together by no more than just a few invisible lines of fishing string, from it’s normal looking deer mouth, down to its stomach, its whole mouth opened up to to show rows and rows of ravenous sharp teeth the gleamed like starlight with slick silvery saliva that dripped underneath its prone body like a leaky faucet.
My body stood frozen, and when it moved I found myself locked in place, the sheer terror rooting me as still as it had once been. Like I was a scared rabbit watching the jaws of a dog getting closer and closer to my throat.
The thing moved, and it moved in quick jerky sporadic movements as if every twitch was cracking the wooden shell it had used to disguise itself. It cracked its head towards my phone, and the flashlight I had illuminating the forest around us, my hands had remained frozen and fixed in place from the very second I had seen the creature. The beam of light wobbled, allowing me to see slivers of the other statues.
They had moved as well the moment that the light was no fixed on them.
The one right before me moved like the shadows, darting out of the corner of my eyes and out of the radius of the light leaving me surrounded with nothing but darkness. It was by far quicker than anything I had ever seen in my entire life.
And it was coming towards him.
Rows and rows of sharp deadly teeth that would have been glinting in the light of the moon, if there had been a moon to illuminate such a thing’s existence. And a maw… a gaping wide jaw that opened in ways that shouldn’t be and so many teeth shouldn’t be.
Within an instant, my phone fell limply from my hand, as the scream finally released from my stomach up to the back of my throat and out of my mouth. It was bloodcurdling and tore at my vocal chords in a way that was full of every bit of terror that a human could feel. I fell back, my hands scrabbling against the fallen leaves and pine needles that felt like razorblades against my skin. My nails scrambled for leverage to get myself up, I could feel them splintering and breaking down to my nailbeds. I screamed and I screamed, as my fingers became slick with blood, and every attempt to crawl and scramble away fell uselessly short of every hope and dream I had once possessed.
I lost track of myself, of which way I had even come from. I didn’t even know if the way I was trying to run was deeper into the forest or towards the winding road that I had just been driving down hours ago.
I wanted to go back to that. I needed to go back to that.
My phone lay face up, the flashlight muted in a bed of leaves.
I screamed again, feeling my throat clog with dirt, blood, and mucus as my leg caught on something and I felt myself getting dragged backwards. It was a terribly short sound, the kind of sound a caught prey makes in the silence of the woods in where no one will ever hear it.
Not as it should be, at least.
“Mommy? Daddy?... H..ell..o..?” A pause, and then in an adult’s shaky but confident tenor. “Hello..?”
The crunch of bones, and a final gurgling wheezy breath that escaped my lips before...
The End.
