26. Stranger at the Door

There were bodies perched in the trees. Arms, legs, blood everywhere…so much blood! “Oh my God! Oh my God! We’re all gonna die,” Jemma yelled and continued screaming as we stood in front of the carnage. “We’re never getting out of here! We’re gonna die here!”

“Jemma calm down alright, panicking is not going to help this situation,” Abby spoke in a calming manner to try and get her friend to stop all that damn yelling. The only thing I could think was oh great, just like in a horror movie the scared bitch is about to bring the monsters towards us with her screaming. God; why the hell did I come out here?

I felt Ro’s hand slip into mine and turned to look at him. He pulled me away slightly until my head bumped his chest and he held me against him. I could hear his heartbeat pounding away in his chest; he was just as scared as the rest of us and trying to keep a brave face for me. “We’ll be ok Evian. I’m not gonna let none of this shit come down on you I promise.”

I nodded my head against him and watched as Knox and Zach moved closer towards the wreckage. “What the hell are they doing?” I asked as Knox jumped inside the bus and Zach moved around the bodies checking the corpses.

“I don’t know, probably lookin’ for somethin’ to help us.”

“But, it’s a graveyard; they are disturbing their souls,” Abby remarked as she and Jemma came closer to us and watched.

Knox tossed a few bags down to Zach and he rifled through them looking for anything useful. Shaking his head towards us, him and Knox finally moved away from the accident scene with bowed heads. “The few cell phones we found the batteries are dead but I don’t think we would have gotten signals; mine is still a blank.” 

“No food or weapons anywhere either,” Knox added.

“How long have they been sitting there…?” Jemma asked, staring at the drying corpses with wide eyes threatening tears.

“There’s no telling. The bodies are so old they don’t have a smell and look almost petrified,” Zach explained.

“That makes no sense! This was the road we drove up when we were coming to the camp. How could they have been sitting there that damn long and nobody came to help or clean up the area? And a better question, how could we have missed this on the way here? No there has to be another explanation.” I asked shaking my head at his estimation. For a pre-med student he didn’t seem to know what the hell he was saying. A body couldn’t have petrified in just a few days. No way.

“This road is cursed!” Knox blurted out and everyone turned to look at him. “I thought it would be cool to come here for Halloween and scare each other because of what they say happened on this road but…I’m sorry. I never believed it was true.”

“What? What the hell are you talking about?” I looked up at Ro who seemed to have the same expression as Zach, anger. It was as though they knew something they weren’t telling the rest of us and now that shit had caught up to them. “Knox? What the hell is going on?” I asked realizing I wasn’t gonna get the truth out of my own boyfriend.

“There’s a legend about this road. It’s the reason why I chose the campsite that I did. My dad used to bring me and my brothers up here to fish and stuff when I was younger and he used to tell me stories about how the road was haunted and very few people ever traveled it.”

“Supposedly there was like this dude who was fucked up in the head. He escaped from that Fox Hill asylum just a few miles up the road and once out he used the woods as his new home, coming out only to feed. Well during the next ten years several strange accidents occurred similar to this one, trees falling randomly into the road causing pile ups, hitchhikers were brutally mutilated, some half-eaten, campers would be harassed and assaulted, some were butchered, some went missing and others severely beaten.”

“It got to the point the police shut down long stretches of this road so they could pursue their suspect and keep more people from falling victim to him. One night, there was a huge shootout. The cops finally pinned down the location of the escapee and opened fire. He made it out into the road before he finally died, vowing to keep this place his eternal hunting grounds and killing anyone who set foot on his land again. It was Halloween.”

“Listen, did you hear something?” Abby asked and turned towards the end of the street.

“Oh my God!” Jemma screamed again and we all looked. Standing just in the smoke near one of the wreckage was a man holding a large weapon in his hands. He had a wicked grin on his face and as he took one step towards us I ran.

“Evian!” I heard Roland call after me but there was no fucking way I was about to stop. I could hear heavy footfall behind me as I moved and if they had any sense it was the rest of the group!

“Alright I’m heading out. I should be back before Mom and Dad but just in case, do not open the door under any circumstances,” Ricky told his siblings before heading out on his date. They were 13 and 14 and had been left home alone numerous times before so he didn’t think anything of it when Francine called and told him to come over. Although his parents told him not to leave his younger siblings alone, he couldn’t say no to Francine! 

Max and Henry were watching TV and not paying very much attention to their older brother. About an hour after he left, there was a knock on the door. At first the two ignored it, thinking it was just Ricky coming back early and a little drunk. After a while the knocking stopped but no one came inside. Henry shrugged and Max peered out the peephole but didn’t see anyone outside.

Growing tired, the children retired to their room to sleep but were awoken at once with another knock on the door.

Knock, knock, knock. The noise seemed to go on forever. Finally Max decided to check the door again while Henry lay in bed. He told him to be careful before he disappeared in the hallway and lay there listening as he once again checked the peephole. 

“Who is it?” he asked his brother. When he heard nothing for a few minutes and Max had not returned, Henry became worried and a little scared.

He decided to go to his neighbor’s house and quickly jumped out of the bed, rushing over the fence in the dark. When he got to the neighbor’s he found them awake and explained everything that had just happened. Relieved to see him, they told him they had just heard on the news that an escaped convict had been spotted just a few blocks away and were glad he was safe. 

The next morning Henry’s parents discovered Max’s body. He had been stabbed to death and shoved into his bedroom closet; a discarded knife was stabbed into Henry’s bed.

Continue---->