A black bird smashed into my windshield while a Baptist preacher and an Atheist comedian battled on my radio. Horror ensued.
The party ended when I walked out the door, threw my long curly wig to the ground and screamed, “I’ve had better punch at a Jim Jones reunion.”
Angrily sober, I climbed into my SUV from the rural home where the party was in full swing and left with a cloud of dust in my wake.
Deep in the
Mississippi woods on Halloween, my vehicle careened down dark roads hollowed out decades before from the piney forest. The trees arching overhead obscured all moon and starlight from my view. Headlights stabbing forward, I took the twisting turns as I always had, slow going in and accelerating out.
I hooked my MP3 player to an FM transmitter in the dash. The transmitter sends out a transmission that overrides the vehicles radio when tuned to the right station, just like the newer drive-in movies tend to do. Until the transmitter finds a clear station, though, often a real radio station will bleed through.
The podcast from my MP3 player began a battle with a Baptist preacher from the low end of the FM dial. Jokes of biblical misconceptions and inconsistencies mixed with shouts of hellfire and brimstone. I found the two to be a delightful mix.
The road opened out into a long stretch of ground, field on my left and a deep line of trees on my right. I took the opportunity and looked down to adjust my radio.
When I looked up, a black figure slammed into the windshield. I slammed on the brakes and cursed, the seatbelt pulling tight.
The SUV came to a stop. I held the steering wheel tight, my breath ragged and adrenaline giving that burning surge through my stomach. I looked at the windshield and saw a red stain. A single feather drifted down and landed in the blood as it began to pool and run down toward the wipers.
My hand reacted, turning on the mist function. A gentle spray of water and a single wipe smeared the blood across the glass. With three more wipes, the blood was gone.
I should have waited until my breath slowed completely, until I calmed down. Then I should have left, driven toward the lights of town and counted myself lucky I had not driven into a ditch.
I should not have backed up the vehicle.
I leaned over the driver’s seat, one arm on the passengers, and backed up the SUV until I saw a dark shape in the red glow of the lights. It was still moving.
“Shit,” I said. Again, I thought of leaving, but my heart went out to the suffering animal. I am by no means an animal lover. I grew up on a farm, I know that accidents happen and things suffer. But I also knew that to prolong that suffering is wrong and in the wild, and injured animal has nothing but suffering.
I unhooked my seatbelt and got out.
With the car still running, the red rear lights cast more than shadows. Pools of blackness seemed to spawn and die around me. I approached the animal.
The shape lurched a bit as I grew near. Wings flapped and it rolled on one side. Blood pooled from deep inside the feathers, mixing with the dust on the road. The beak clicked over and over and a gentle squawk came from its throat.
I turned back to my vehicle and opened the rear hatch. Bright white light burned my eyes as the door opened. After a moment of searching through the camping equipment, I found what I was looking for.
The tent stake hammer was not heavy. The object was about a foot long, the head padded with a yielding hard plastic. I gripped the wooden shaft and turned to the bird.
As soon as I began to close with the hammer, the bird began to shake and lurch away. Wings spread, beating so fast it almost looked like four instead of two. Black feathers began to fly in the air as the creature retreated from me and the light from the SUV and into the shadows.
I took two more steps and heard another caw to my left. Then another. Then one behind me.
Just on the side of the road two large black birds crouched. The light shone off their feathers as they twitched and dipped their beaks down into the grass. I spun and found another perched on the hatch of the SUV. Each of them looked at me in turn, heads bobbing and turning. Their eyes were all blood red.
I screamed in terror. The birds backed away, spreading their wings as they did. I rushed the one near my car and he flew off into the black trees behind the other crows. In my terror, I followed him, swinging the tent hammer as I did. The other animals retreated as well, blending with the darkness and cawing.
The spot where they had been pecking was full of meat, blood and bone. A human skull shone up at me, gleaming with liquid red.
A scream, a high human scream came from behind the bushes. I heard shouts and cries, horrible wails of panic and fear. Then the hollow sound of manic laughter.
I ran.
I threw the hammer in the back of the vehicle and slammed the hatch. Back in the driver’s seat, I roared the engine pushing the gas before I realized to put it into drive. The SUV lurched into gear and the tires spun pebbles and dust into the air.
I did not force myself to calm down. I rode the wave of panic and fear and forced it down into my legs and into the SUV, urging it forward and faster.
I did not see her until almost too late. A figure in white appeared from around a corner. I swerved to miss her, over corrected and drove sideways into a ditch. Unlike the last time, my seat belt did not catch me and I felt my nose and head connect with the windshield. The crack of safety glass roared in my ears and I pulled back.
More blood on the windshield, I thought, before absently flicking the button for the mist and wipers. The gentle spray of water spread over the large spider web glass and the wipers jammed under the small dome my head had made.
My brain kicked back with fresh adrenaline as the image of the lady in white drifted through my memory. I scrambled for the door and ran, my head throbbing with every step as I crashed through the trees and brush.
The tree line was not very deep. I fell out of it and into the fresh air. In the distance, I noticed a line of lights and the image of a small house.
I held my head for a moment before hearing another scream from the distance. I jumped to my feet and began running for the lights.
The lights seemed to retreat from me, bobbing up and down in my vision as I stumbled through the field. Behind me I heard the cawing of a bird, the flap of wings and wind at my neck. My imagination broke as visions of flocks of carrion eaters followed me, picking me apart just outside of the protection of the light.
Blind and hurt, I ran into a dark shape looming before me. Humanoid, head to toe blackness crashed to the ground with me. I rolled to one side and noticed more shapes running toward me. The one I had crashed into reached out, but I slapped away the arm and kicked him in the stomach. I thought I heard a surprised grunt, but I was up again, running toward the light with the black shapes chasing me.
The lights were just ahead when the blood red pit opened before me. Coming up a slight rise, the red light shining from the earthen pit surprised me, made me gasp. I only had time to see a red robed figure before I tumbled down.
“Oh, my god, what the hell?” a female voice came from under the red robe, “Who the hell is this, Bobby?”
I crawled away from the figure as it crawled away from me. I stood, staring as the red robed figure pulled at the mask and hood hiding her features. Blonde hair spilled out in curls as a pretty little girl looked at me in disgust.
“We don’t know, Suz,” said a male voice, “He just kinda ran up on us. Is he okay?”
“Is he okay? What about me, he almost knocked me over? Get me out of here,” she said.
The girl moved to the side of the pit where a ladder was concealed. A large boy decked out in all black, now missing his black hooded mask, helped her up and began to climb down.
“He was in a wreck,” another female voice said. I looked at her direction and saw the white lady from the road. Except now I could see she was a bride with fake blood splattered liberally across her front.
“He came around the corner real fast, almost hit me,” she continued, “I was out fixin the signs those boys ruined.”
I saw the sign she held in her hand. It had the words “Terror Trail” written on it. In her other hand was a plastic human skull painted red. I fell back to the earth, a sigh of relief on my lips, and closed my eyes.
“Don’t let him fall asleep,” I heard Suz say, “He could have a consumption or something. My sister’s a nurse.”
My mind drifted and I heard the sounds of birds cawing in the distance.
