It was already past 1 in the morning and raining heavily when Dad finished packing up.
“That dumbass of a weatherman lied to us.” Dad grumbles as he places our tents and gear on the back of the truck.
“Dad, come on, you know better than to trust the weatherman! The guy doesn’t even know half of what he says all the time.” I tell him with a hint of exasperation as I went and sit inside the truck.
Dad started bringing me to his camping trips back when I was six – I never really liked camping then. But camping – for Dad – is like a religion. Come rain or shine (as long as it’s not raining heavily like this), there must be at least one camp night for every month. And if you are forced to camp with your dad on a monthly basis, it kind of grows on you. I’m already 19 and I never missed a camping trip with Dad every month; and surprisingly, I kind of enjoy it.
“Al, go fetch me the map. I found out a shortcut yesterday after planning our hiking trip for tomorrow. I marked it on the map and I need you to tell me if we are on the right track, aight?” Dad said as he starts the truck.
“Sure sure.” I say. “We should be taking a left on the first intersection that we come across instead of the usual right turn we do.”
As we approach the intersection, we see a figure walking in circles around the middle of the road, and when we reached about twenty yards from the figure, I can see that it was actually a lady wearing a dirty and muddied night dress. The creepiest thing about her is not the fact that she’s outside in the middle of nowhere at 1:00am wearing her sleeping clothes and walking in circles as it rains heavily. No. It’s her build. She looks really thin. Skeleton thin.
“Son, you see that thin, frail lady right there in the middle of the road?” Dad asks me.
“Yeah…” I say but something about this situation makes me feel uneasy and I can feel every bit of my body yell “GET THE HELL OUT OF THERE!!!”
“Should we go he-”
Dad stopped as the lady turns her head towards our direction and I can see that her eyes are all black as charcoals and she has this wide smile on her face. Talk about smiling from ear to ear… Literally. She starts walking towards our direction and as she gets closer, we can hear her… giggle. Dad and I both had enough horror stories shared during campfire to know that this would not end well for us if we did nothing. I shared a look with Dad and he punched the gas. Hard. We managed to make a sharp left without hitting that crazy skeleton lady and we managed to stick to the shortcut.
I took a look back and to my utter horror, I saw the crazy skeleton lady running after us and b***h is gaining ground. I told Dad to punch it and it only takes him a single look on the rear view mirror to do as I say. As the crazy skeleton lady gets smaller and smaller and finally disappeared out of sight, we breathe a sigh of relief and I get back at giving Dad directions.
“Huh. Weird.” I mutter under my breath as I review the map. “Hey Dad, why didn’t we find out about this shortcut after all this time?” I asked him with a doubtful look on my face.
“Meh…” He mutters as he shrugs.
Typical Dad. I rolled my eyes and told him that we should just stick to the highway for 30 miles and then we’ll pass this bridge and we’ll be back to the street that leads back to our house. Travel time would take about less than an hour.
About 15 minutes of silent travelling we see a faint light up ahead, and as we get closer, we see that it was a dimly lit gas station. To my surprise, Dad parked the truck, killed the engine, and started to get out of the truck.
A knot started forming in my guts and I feel cold. I started to say something about how weird I’m feeling and this is probably NOT a good idea when Dad cut me off.
“C’mon son, I’ll just take a quick piss and I’ll be back, aight?” Dad said as he closes the door. I guess the encounter with the crazy skeleton lady took a toll on his bladder. Oh well, I sighed. I started going through the map again but the knot in my guts seemed to tighten and I’m sweating so much right now. Something doesn’t feel right. And then I hear a familiar giggle. I looked up from the map, turned to look around while on my seat and the same freakin’ crazy skeleton lady was looking directly at me from outside. If it weren’t for the glass window of the truck we’d be face to face. I let out a quick scream and a few choice curses to the crazy skeleton lady and I grabbed my hunting knife and unsheathed it.
I can feel the crazy skeleton lady try to open my freakin’ door and when she couldn’t, she went to the other side of the truck and tried opening it (good thing Dad locked it before going out) and then I thought – “DAD!” I quickly honked the horn to warn him. Suddenly, the crazy lady did a hundred eighty degree turn with her head in a split second and slowly moved away from the truck – and then it hit me. The b***h was going after my dad! I just hope that Dad had with him his hunting knife as well.
Silence.
I lost track of time, I found out that three minutes just passed by but it seemed liked an eternity or two. That’s when I felt the knot on my gut tighten to the point of pain. I’m sweating heavily now and getting all paranoid when suddenly this crazy skeleton lady appeared outside of the truck on the driver’s side. WELL S**T. I gather all of my courage and prepare to face this b***h that had been f*****g with us ever since we first saw her.
“B***H WHERE IS MY DAD?!?!” I shout as I pour out all of my anger, fear, frustration, and doubts to this f*****g lady and she’s still f*****g smiling. She raises her right hand and suddenly all of my courage vanished as she lifts up my father’s decapitated head.
My brain is so f****d up right now and I’m searching inside the truck looking for a way to get the hell out of here when suddenly, I hear the b***h laugh. LAUGH. I look at her and she’s still holding up my father’s head but this time she raises her left hand… I couldn’t make out what she was holding at first but then I heard the sound of small pieces of metal clanking together. That’s when I realized she was holding Dad’s car keys.