Short Story Horror – A Drive with the Diablo
Photo credit: chelle from morguefile.com
It was a cold windy night of January. The year was 1978.The sky was covered with clouds and a storm seemed imminent. Judith and her boyfriend were on their way home to Surrey. It was her birthday tomorrow and she was visiting her parents. It had been a long time she had seen them.
“Prowler” was playing on the radio. It was a song by a newbie group….some “Iron Maiden”. It was the beginning of heavy metal or so they said. But Judith wasn’t actually listening. Her mind was wandering. It had started drizzling and the driving rain brought back to her mind pictures of her childhood. How her father would drive them to the moors with Judith and her sister in the backseat and she would look out of the window into the nothingness all around her. The sight and sound of the moors had enthralled her even then.
Well, it had been a long time now and the small girl in frock had grown up to be 18. And here she was with her boyfriend in the middle of nowhere in the middle of a ghastly night. It was more creepy then romantic. She felt a shudder run up her spine for no apparent reason.
She turned to her boyfriend. He was fast asleep. She too was feeling drowsy. It had been a long drive from Guildford. Her mind was cluttered and she feared that she was no longer awake. Suddenly she heard a loud thud. Was it her mind again playing tricks on her? No not this time. They really had crashed!
She had apparently overlooked a crevice and her car had bumped off it onto a roadside tree. All the drowsiness vanished from her eyes. All of a sudden she was sitting erect on her seat. She loathed herself for being so careless, for that tequila shot at her friend’s which had made her so dizzy. Oh, what a fool she had been. If only she had known better.
She was thinking about a thousand things when suddenly she felt someone moving beside her. She gave a start only to realise that it was her boyfriend. The crash had woken him up.
But how did they survive the crash? She looked at her hands and feet. Nothing wrong with them. Her boyfriend didn’t seem to complain either. It was a miracle. Some divine blessing had saved them. She really was lucky…….or so she thought. What a fool she was. If only could she have looked ahead to even an hour later, she would have cursed her luck, she would have cursed the day she was born. She would have cursed her God and that tequila and that damned midnight drive of theirs. But well, ignorance is bliss or so they say.
The guy stepped out of the car and had a look at it. The bumper was damaged beyond repair and a tyre had burst. And they were in the middle of nowhere and it was……..damn! his watch was broken. Well at least that was all they had lost in the crash so far. He looked up at the sky trying to comprehend what time it might be. The rain had stopped and now the moon peeped out of the clouds. He hadn’t even noticed when the rain had stopped and the wind had given way to a soothing calm all around. Wasn’t that a night of miracles! He smiled to himself at the preposterous occurrences of the night .Then he remembered there was someone else in the car. He had forgotten his girlfriend and had got lost in his thoughts. The wild cry of a night bird brought him back to the earth.
Judith looked at her boyfriend. He was looking at the sky seemingly lost in some deep thought. Well the sky was getting clear after all. But suddenly, he turned towards her (as if something had shaken him up from his slumber) and comfortingly said to her,
“Don’t worry dear, I’ll be right back. I’m just going to go out for some help. Lock the doors, though.”
“Some help” in this God forsaken place? He must be dreaming she thought. But then the night bird was crying incessantly and the wails of the wolves seemed to be coming closer with every passing second. Well getting some help was their only respite no matter how dubious the idea seemed.
Though unwilling at first, she finally gave way and let her boyfriend go. She locked the doors and sat restlessly, waiting for her boyfriend to come back. They were in the middle of the woods. The moor was far behind them now. Suddenly, she heard a cry…….a cry that was distant and yet seemed so close. It was not just a cry of help but a desperate cry of a man, a cry of despair. It seemed as if someone was wringing his heart out and he cried out as a last respite. Even the most tough skinned of men would have shivered at that wail. It seemed to come from satan himself.
But strangely, that voice seemed familiar to her . Could it be him? She shuddered at the thought. Some minutes had passed and she had begun to believe that her weak nerves were playing games with her. It might just have been the beasts of the night. She was trying to comfort herself and feigning to laugh at her ignorance when out of nowhere, she saw a shadow fall across her lap. She jerked up on her seat and looked up to see… not her boyfriend, but a strange, crazy looking man. He was swinging something in his right hand.
He stuck his face close to the window. God pity the soul who set his eyes upon such a sight. His eyes were protruding out from his gigantic head and there was a hollow where his nose should have been. He seemed to be whispering in some gibberish tongue that no human spoke any more and his teeth glistened in the silvery moonlight.
Judith was so horrified by his face that she had not noticed the rest of him yet. But a slight movement turned her attention to his right hand. He slowly lifted it up. In it was her boyfriend’s decapitated head, twisted horribly in pain and shock! And his eyes were turned right at her.
She shut her eyes in horror and tried to make the image go away. She prayed to the Gods and evoked the saints. How she wished that someone woke her up from this nightmare. Someone surely would have, but there was a small problem……it was not really a nightmare. Judith was wide awake and it was indeed David’s head.
When she opened her eyes, the man was still there, grinning psychotically. He slowly lifted his left hand, and he seemed to be holding something in it. What was it? The moon had vanished in the clouds once more and the storm had started brewing again. It was hard to make out in that darkness. Judith strained her eyes and tried to fathom what it was. She looked closer. It was her boyfriend’s keys… to the car!
__END__
