As a young girl, I spent most of my time with my three best friends. Every weekend, we were at each other’s houses engaging in the usual teenage girl activities: boy talk, sneaking sips of our parent’s booze, talking to creeps in chat rooms. Real rebel type stuff. As a group, we were untouchable. It was like we were a pack. If one of us was in danger, the others followed close behind, and we survived school, breakups, and family drama by sticking together. However, we didn’t know that this time, it was going to be surviving a life or death situation.
It was a Friday night and we were at Macy’s house. We ate dinner and scurried up to her room. In the early 2000s, we are definitely rocking the goth look, so we spent a lot of time doing each other’s makeup while listening to Kittie. We donned our tightest fishnet shirts and heavy eyeliner then decided to go on a walk. There was a gas station not too far from Macy’s house, and we needed snacks for the movie we were going to watch later that night.
We convinced Macy’s parents that a quick walk to the gas station wouldn’t be unreasonable if we stuck together. They sighed and let us go.
It was one of those October days when you wore a t-shirt during the day, but had to throw on a sweatshirt when the sun went down. The moon hung bright and high over the tops of the trees acting as a sort of guide as we made our way down the winding country road. We joked with each other and laughed boisterously like we always did. Our laughter drowned out the crickets, frogs and other nighttime noises you always hear in the south. Even the cows in the pastures were quieted by our cackling.
I guess we drew too much attention to ourselves, because when we stopped at a tractor crossing sign to see if we could take it home as a souvenir, a figure appeared behind us. The four of us somehow missed where it came from. It was in street clothes: jeans, black hoodie pulled up to it’s face and around it’s head, and black boots. There was no outline of a face that I remember. I do remember the baseball bat it was carrying though. And now it was talking.
“Do you guys want to go to a party?” it asked. We jumped away from the tractor sign and turned toward the figure. The four of us looked at each other and collectively replied, “No.” The figure then dragged the baseball bat on the paved road, but it made a disgusting sound and we noticed there was a can attached to the end of the bat.
“Are you sure? It’ll be fun. Come with me,” the figure whispered. Carelessly, we start to back away from this thing, and its strange weapon, in the opposite direction of Macy’s house. The figure raises the bat and takes a step closer. Then we take off in an all out sprint. “We don’t want to go to your fucking party!” one of us screams behind us. I grab hold of Macy’s hand while we are running since it is extremely hard to keep balance in the unpractical platform boots I decided to wear.
You know that trope in horror movies where the victim is running and the killer is walking, but somehow still manages to keep up with them? That’s exactly how this next part plays out. We are running as fast as we can, holding on to each other, and every time we look back, the figure is right on our heels. I felt like we were never going to shake him, and that winding road was never going to end. The gas station, our original destination, seems like it’s a million miles away. We start down a hill and before the figure could see, one of us yells “bushes!” Theatrically, the four of us jump into bushes of a vacant house that is for sale in the neighborhood.
The road is obscured by hedges and limbs that jut out unevenly, creating shadows all around us. My friends and I are stunned that this was actually happening to us. Our hearts are beating fast, and I am very close to having a full blown attack. They calm me down and we wait quietly in the darkness. It seemed like hours, but it is most likely a few minutes after we hear the dreaded noise from the baseball raking the road. We cover our mouths to silence our breathing, our hearts beating rapidly. “You girls don’t think I know where you are. Ha Ha Ha stupid girls.” Our eyes get wide and we look at each other, but not daring to make a move. Several minutes passed in terrifying silence.
It was time for a plan now. There was no way we could stay crouched behind these bushes all night. Macy’s parents would start to worry and call the rest of our parents. We HAD to get home as soon as we could. We decided that this figure couldn’t take all four of us down at once. There are strength in numbers and we would be more than capable of disarming him. The four of us leap out of the bushes at the count of three ready to fight. There was no figure in the road. We didn’t waste time looking for him and took off as fast as we could towards the safety of home. There was no sign of the figure on our way and we quickly, but quietly, rushed into Macy’s house and locked all of the doors behind us. One after another, we bounded upstairs to the bedroom and locked that door behind us as well.
My friends and I sat quietly for a long time while trying to catch our breath. The silence is broken by one of us asking, “Did that just happen?” I believe we were all asking ourselves the same question. Morning finally came after a sleepless night, and we all went back to life as normal. Our parents didn’t know about that night until years later. The figure never showed itself to us on York Road again, and to this day, we don’t know if it was a ghost, demon, or a real life human being. When the story gets told, we refer to it as a figure, and still have to remind each other that the strange October night was real.
-Brittany Fernandez (Twitter)
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