Newgrounds.com — Everything, By Everyone.

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Unnamed Forest Road in Eldingdown State Park - P2

The next morning, reeling and nauseous from hangover, he had gone around to the side of Ethan’s jeep and pounded on the window to rouse him. That was when something glinting near the front tire caught his eye. Glass, shattered in the leaves. The front windshield was in pieces.

“Fuck, dude,” Ethan was rolling over; he hadn’t seen the damage yet. “Do you even remember what happened last ni—what the fuck.”

“Dude,” Brandon said, “What happened to your car?”

“Fuck, dude, I don’t know. What the hell? Were we that drunk last night?”

Sobered by the damage, they walked around the car and examined it for more. There was nothing other than the fractured windshield which had shattered outward from a central point centered over the driver’s side of the car. They did a thorough examination of the interior and found that nothing was missing, nothing was misplaced. By now Chris and Eric had risen and come over to investigate.

“Guys.” Chris said, “You got too freaking drunk last night.”

“Shut up, man. How would you know, you slept through half of it.”

Ethan was in a foul mood, so they made a hasty cleanup of their camp while they waited for AAA to arrive. They drove home in the back of the AAA tow truck, spirits low.

That was last weekend.

+++

“A strange story, to be sure.” Father Paul said. “But I sense this isn’t all you came here to talk to me about. The forest road in these dreams you’ve been having. Do you think it’s the same road as the one you took to the campsite?”

Brandon nodded earnestly. “I know it is. And that’s what I came to talk to you about. The dreams are, well they’ve been getting worse. I’ve been trying not to sleep, but it creeps up on you. I told you about the last one I had.”

He had called him at 5 AM, one day ago, in hysterics. “The one with… with Eric on the side of the road.”

That dream had started on the same road, with the same unseeable presence in the passenger’s seat. But that time, something on the side of the road caught his eye in the high beams. He’d driven up on it thinking it was road kill, until he got close enough to see the unmistakable shape of a human spread out on the asphalt. It was Eric. He was dead, and flanked by tire tracks.

“You told me about that one, yes. I agree, it is troubling.”

“Last night, I had the same dream, but I didn’t wake up right away after seeing Eric, like before. And whoever was in the passenger’s seat seemed to be watching me very intently. You know how sometimes you just know when someone is. It makes your skin prickle. So I just drove past him.”

And then something had caught the corner of his eye. A demon mask held in a lap. Suddenly, the paralysis keeping his eyes locked on the road disappeared and he turned his neck to look at her. A human face, just inches away, staring at him with blank eyes from the passenger’s seat.

He had a moment of panic and then he realized. It was not a human face at all. It was stiff as though made of wax. He could see a crack running from its jaw-line up to disappear beneath the hairline. Its eyes were as lifeless and shiny as if they’d been plucked from the skull of a dead man. It was the girl who had joined them at their campsite that night, but her face was a mask.

He was frozen with horror. Where before he couldn’t turn to see what was beside him, now he was powerless to look away as a pale hand reached up and started to peel back the edges of the mask.

And then there was a thump, and the car shuddered and skidded and he slammed his foot on the brake. Whatever spell had been put on him was broken, and his eyes snapped back to the road where he had come to a halt with a spider web of cracks spreading out on the windshield. He opened the door to see what he had hit, but some part of him already knew. It was not going to be a deer.

It was Ethan. The right side of his face had been scraped off by road burn, and his neck was twisted at a right angle to his body. He looked just like Eric had.

Brandon woke.

+++

Father Paul sighed and sipped his coffee, which Brandon could smell through the divider. “A troubling dream indeed. I can see why you would be uneasy about it.” Another sip. “I can’t help but think there’s more to the story of last weekend. Perhaps these dreams are the manifestation of some guilt that’s been eating at you. Dreams are a window into the conscience, and subconscious, you know. And, I can’t help but notice we are meeting in the confessional, instead of in my office or anywhere else otherwise sensible. It seems you need to meditate on what really transpired that night.”

He wracked his brain. “No, there was nothing else. I told you everything I remember.”

“And you’re sure of that?”

No, wait, there was something else, he realized with a pang. It had been in the early hours of the morning, an island of memory between two seas of drunken black. He had opened his eyes to see Eric and Ethan pressing close in to the girl’s lawn chair, cornering her. He remembered the utterly impassive look she had on her face, like it had been made of rubber.

“C’mon,” he remembered Eric saying. He saw his hand tug at her blouse. “Be chill.”

“Yeah,” Brandon had slurred. “Be chill.”

“C’mon, babe. I’ve got a nice warm jeep just over there. Heated seats…”

+++

Brandon went home after his meeting with Father Paul and drank boxed wine and watched Netflix until night came. He started on the fifty Hail Marys Father Paul had prescribed. He left a few messages on Ethan’s cell phone.

Hey dude, I wanted to talk to you about something that happened last weekend. Do you remember—well, do you remember a girl walking up on our campsite? Random, I know. I just wanted to ask about it. Just call me back, man. He waited for an answer, but none came.

He called Eric, who didn’t pick up, and left the same message. He sat on his recliner, feeling more and more uneasy. Eric always picked up.

He worked his way through half a season of Full House and finished his wine. He fought sleep but he was drained, and it came up on him anyway.

+++

For the first time, the dream began not driving, but walking along the road towards the campsite. He knew the road well—it was narrow and winding, wide enough only for one vehicle at some points with old oak trees that grew right up to the side of the road. If it were daytime, he would have been able to see the colors of their leaves changing.

He knew that if he turned around and walked back he would be able to see the body of Ethan spread out on the pavement with his neck at a right angle to his body. And, if he walked further back than that, he would see Eric spread-eagled on the road. But he was powerless to do anything but keep walking forward.

After not too long he heard the sound of a car approaching. He turned around to look at it and saw the distinctive headlights of Ethan’s jeep. But it wasn’t Ethan at the wheel, it was Chris. And he wasn’t looking at the road, he was looking at someone in the passenger’s seat. A woman with a mask for a face, just starting to peel it off.

Before he could see what was underneath, the headlights blinded him. For a moment the world seemed to collapse in on itself as down became up and left and right became meaningless, sight and sound and smell and vision was all the same loud coppery cold sensation of pain. Asphalt rushed up to meet him, but he was still looking upwards towards the windshield, straining to see what was under the mask.

This time, he did not wake.

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Unnamed Forest Road in Eldingdown State Park - P1

The dream always started the same way.

He would be driving a Jeep on a long, narrow forest road. It was Ethan’s jeep, but he was comfortable driving it.
He knew the road; he had driven it before. He had driven it just last weekend. In the dreams, which he’d been having since then, it was always the same. The road was dark, so he had the high beams on. They cut through the clear night but not beyond the edge of the thick treeline.

There was always someone in the car with him, he knew that much. But it was like his head was welded to his spine and he couldn’t turn to look at the passenger’s seat, although he dearly wanted to. He had to keep driving forward. Every night, he got a little farther.

+++

Father Paul met him at the door to the darkened nave at 6:47 AM, with the tiredness he wore around him visible even under the heavy goose-down coat that hung from his shoulders. Brandon apologized for requesting to meet with Father Paul so early.

“Not at all,” said the priest, who produced a key the width of his pinky finger and poked it in the lock to let them into the darkened church. “I’m a morning person, anyway.”

It was the third time they’d met that week, but if the priest noticed his guest's increasing urgency he let it roll of his shoulders as they walked together into the darkened nave. This particular church was in one of the more upper-crust neighborhoods in Brooklyn, so it was a proper 20s-era Catholic church, with granite floors and vaulted ceilings and pews well-worn by a thousand asses, if a little shabby now.

The slot windows let in only a few bands of the morning light, but he was able to follow the Priest’s echoing footsteps down the central walkway between the pews and to the confessional booths near the chancel, where they had met several times before.

“You’re sure you want to talk in here?” The Priest said, gesturing in the direction of his office. The tiredness was audible on his voice, now, but it wasn’t just tiredness from the morning. “My office is just through that door. I have a coffee machine.”

“No thanks, I’m more comfortable talking here.” He chuckled a little bit. “More experience, I guess.”

Once they were both settled and Father Paul had slid the confessional divider open between them so their voices could pass through, he said, “So the dreams. Are you still having them?”

“Yes. Every time I go to sleep.”

“And you tried the herbal tea I suggested?”

“I did, Father. It didn’t help.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

A moment of silence passed between them, amplifying the quiet in the church.

“I’ve been getting farther and farther each time, now. I’m afraid of what will happen if I get to the end of the road. I don’t want to see what’s at the end of it. Last night I—the dream changed. I called you immediately when I woke up.” Another long silence. He could hear Father Paul fidgeting a little in his robes. “I think I need to tell you the story, now.”

“About what happened to you and your friends last weekend?”

“That’s right.”

+++

For the past five years, since they were in their final year of college, Brandon and his three former roommates had been driving four hours to a remote campsite in the countryside for Halloween. Well, it was partly for Halloween and partly in memory of their fifth roommate, Peter, who had died unexpectedly last summer in those very woods. Most of all, though, it was an excuse to make a bonfire and get drunk in the middle of nowhere for no reason, while also feeling like they were doing something meaningful.

So this is where last weekend found them, with Brandon and his three remaining roommates all arranged in the four corners of Ethan’s jeep as they drove down the secluded unnamed back road to their traditional camping spot in Eldingdown State Park.

It was a long drive, but the convoluted road was beautiful, nearly covered over by the long arms of oak trees in blazing colors and flanked by expansive evergreens on either side, and they all knew the road well, having driven it so many times before.

At what appeared to be the end of the road, Ethan made a sharp right between the trees, and they drove right up to the leaf-covered fire pit that marked the camping spot. They got out and stretched their legs, grinning in anticipation, but also somewhat sobered as their last memory of the place had included Peter in it. They unpacked, relieving Ethan’s car of the tent, numerous cases of beer, and the camp chair apiece that they’d packed as supplies.

+++

"I don't mean to interrupt," Father Paul's voice came from the other side of the divider, surprising him, "but I really must pause the story and go get some coffee. Would you like some?"

"Thanks, I'm fine." Brandon listened as Father Paul shuffled to his feet and then into the echoing nave, wondering how he was going to continue the story.

+++

Knowing they would be too drunk to do it later, they had erected their tents and unrolled their sleeping bags and Ethan put the seats down in the back of his jeep and spread out his sleeping bag inside it. They gathered armloads of firewood which Eric, the Eagle Scout among them, ignited into a sizeable fire. Then as it was getting dark they unfolded their camp chairs and were already well on their way to intoxication.

"To Peter," Ethan said, and they all sobered up a bit and raised their PBRs in salute. "May he be wasted with us in spirit, forever."

“Here, here.”

"And may that bitch that made him crash his car into a tree go fuck herself." The other three murmured in agreement to Eric's outburst.

"Damn right."

The evening stretched into night and they didn’t talk again about Peter. Chris, the fourth member of their group and least intoxicated, brought out marshmallows and chocolate (“fuck, I forgot the goddamn graham crackers,”) and they laughed and joked around and drank so much that whatever they talked about was lost to Brandon’s memory.

+++

Father Paul had come back with his coffee and been filled in on the story up to this point. He noticed Brandon’s abrupt transition to silence and said, “Brandon? Is there a problem?”

“Yeah, I’m alright. Just trying to figure out how I’m going to tell this next part of the story without sounding crazy. I’d gotten pretty drunk at that point, really drunk, everyone was.”

“Well, yes. Jesus forgives you.”

“Chris had passed out and we just let him sleep. That dude could sleep through a train wreck. And the other two were wasted out of their minds. So was I. I don’t even know how late it was at that point, whether it might’ve just been a dream. I don’t even know if it even happened or not but this—” he gestured at the darkness of the confessional booth, “—I’ll just tell you what happened. You can think I’m crazy, or maybe not.”

“I’ll withhold judgment until I hear the story.”

“Alright. Well. This woman came up to our campsite. Just out of nowhere. She was wearing a Halloween mask.”
“What was the mask?”

He strained at his drunken memory to bring the image of the young woman’s mask into shape. “I wanna say… I don’t know, it was just a monster mask, like the type you buy from a costume store. Like a demon mask or something. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. So this girl just came out of nowhere, and she wanted to party with us. She wanted to drink. So we gave her a beer and just went with it.”

“And what happened?”

“She was a cool girl. Took her mask off and chilled with us. She seemed normal, if a little bit reserved. Who cares about that stuff when you’re drunk? I don’t think I realized how odd it all was, or wondered where she had come from, until the next morning when I woke up and she was gone. The campfire was out and littered with bottles and Chris was still just passed out in his camp chair. And she was just gone.”

/continued below/

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First time I've entered a writing contest here! I rarely ever put fantasy elements in short stories, so this was a fun exercise for me.

When a Place Forgets (3330 words).