I could feel the van behind us as we drove deeper into the wilderness.
At first, I thought it was my imagination. I’d glance back and see the odd car in the distance, but nothing that looked like the old blue van I’d seen the day before or again just a few minutes earlier at the gas station. As the morning stretched on, I looked back less frequently, my mind slowly being consumed with the other worries and fears crowding each other for the spotlight.
Was Dad crazy? Had he hurt Mom? Did they really have some weird secret life they’d kept from us?
Or was Sharon lying or just wrong? Maybe she had misinterpreted some things or imagined parts of it. Maybe she really did have a problem with drugs or some kind of mental issue. She seemed fine overall, but how could I be sure when she was saying such crazy things?
I glanced back again, the breath catching in my throat as I focused on a small blue speck in the distance. Was that it? It was too far to see clearly, but I somehow knew it was.
Turning back around, I thought about saying something to Dad or Sharon about it, but I held back. Sharon was back in the front seat again, and the couple of times I’d texted her since the gas station, she hadn’t responded. She was actually talking to Dad some, and while on the surface it sounded like a fairly normal conversation, I could hear the tight cord of tension thrumming through every word.
She was trying to see how he acted. Trying to see if he said something suspicious or insane. And trying to keep him from catching on that she was doing it.
I dug my fingers into my thighs until the pain made me stop. I wanted to scream at both of them, to get away from the van, to do something to make everything stop and go back to normal. I looked back again, hoping that I was wrong and that the blue speck had been something else.
But no. It was much closer now, within a hundred yards and gaining. I could see the broken chrome of its grill waggling as it rushed forward, reminding me of shining teeth hungry for their next meal. I spun around, my voice loud and keen in my ears as I called out to my family.
“The van! It’s back! It’s chasing us!”
Dad looked up in the rearview mirror, his eyes dark as he glanced at me and then past to our pursuer. He muttered “Goddamn fuckers” and then stomped the gas, pushing me back into the seat as the SUV lunged forward. What was he doing? Did he know them? Why wasn’t he calling the police? But Sharon was already ahead of me.
“What the fuck is going on, Dad? Do you know them?”
He glanced in her direction, his expression hard. “Not now. I have to focus on this.”
I saw Sharon shaking her head as he spoke. “No. Fuck that. What’s going on? What happened to Mom? Who are these fuckers?”
As he went to respond, I saw the van coming up beside us. As they passed, I saw an older woman yelling something through the open window. At first I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but as she pulled even with Dad’s partially opened window, I could make it out.
“…found you again, you bastard! Just give her back! Don’t hurt her and give her back, and you can go!”
Sharon turned to look back, and as our eyes met, I felt a wave of sick fear roll through me. I thought back to what she’d told me in the bathroom. About how I’d been “adopted” and how strange they had acted about it. About how we’d moved not long after I came home. About all the secrets they had from us.
“Dad? Daddy? What is she talk…”
I was interrupted by thunder. The man I called my father had rolled down his window the rest of the way and pulled a gun from under the seat. I didn’t have time to consider the strangeness of seeing my father holding a gun before it was cutting off my words with a booming finality that seemed to shatter the air around me. He fired three shots into the van, and I only had time to glimpse the woman shuddering from the impacts before the van veered off onto the far shoulder and slowed.
“What the fuck! What the FUCK!” Sharon was screaming now, but Dad ignored her. He was focused on the sideview mirror, and I knew from his expression that the van was coming back again. This time, I could hear the screaming of the man who was driving before the van even reached even with us again.
“You fucker! Give me back our baby! You fucker! Give me back our girl! I’ll fucking kill you for what you’ve done!”
Dad fired two more shots out the window, but the man in the van seemed to expect it and dropped back before slamming into the side of our car. Cursing, Dad dropped the gun as he desperately clutched at the steering wheel and tried to maintain control. He fought the wheel for a moment, managing to keep us on the road before straightening out and picking up speed again. I glanced back and the van was coming back for a third time.
I had a moment to see the man behind the wheel—maybe in his late forties or early fifties, he looked like he was crying and screaming, and I could see that the right side of his face seemed to be thickly speckled with what was probably blood. I felt a strange pang of sympathy and loss at the sight of him. I turned to tell Dad that we should stop this. That we should try and talk to this man.
But then the man was gone. Dad had slammed on the brakes, causing the man in the van to swerve to the left to avoid ramming us from behind. That’s when my father steered into the van as it passed, sending it spinning off the road and into the trees as our own car came to an uneasy stop at the edge of the shoulder.
“Oh God, what was that? Who was that? What’s going on?” I could hear the panic and the accusation in my voice, but I didn’t care. The world had gone crazy in the past two days and I needed it to stop. He was going to give us
“…answers right fucking now, or I’m taking Tree and we’re leaving. I’ll call the cops, they can come get us, and you can do whatever the fuck it is your planning without us.”
When our father turned around to look at us, his expression was strangely serene. “You girls can’t leave. We’re on our family road trip, and we haven’t reached the end of it just yet.”
I felt myself starting to cry, but I pushed it down. We had to make him see reason. “We just…Daddy, you just killed those people. We have to call the cops, right?”
His smile chilled me because of how normal it seemed. It was a smile that said how he loved me, how he indulged me, how he spoiled me. I might have been asking for money for a school trip or a new computer—the smile would have been the same.
“No, pumpkin. We need to keep going. We’ll be safe enough soon.”
Sharon was undoing her seatbelt. “Fuck this. You’re crazy. Theresa, let’s g-“
He shot out his arm in an instant, his expression never changing as he slammed her head against the passenger side window once, twice, three times. I saw the dark blood spreading across the spiderwebbed glass and started to scream. My panic and fear slowed me only for a few seconds, but it was enough. He was climbing back, putting his weight on top of me, keeping me from freeing my seat belt while he pulled plastic zip-ties from his khaki pants. He secured my wrists to the shoulder strap of my safety belt and my ankles to each other. I cried and begged for him to stop, but he never responded, and within a matter of moments it was done. He opened the door and climbed off me before going back around to get in the driver’s seat again.
Turning, he gave me another of his warm smiles. “Try to buck up, pumpkin. I know this is hard, but it’ll all be over soon.”
Sharon didn’t stir as we drove on that afternoon, and despite my continued begging and pleading, he wouldn’t stop to check on her or get her help. After the first couple of hours, I had given up any hope of her being alive. The only comfort I had was the knowledge that I probably wouldn’t be far behind.
But then I saw the twinkle of blue ahead of us. Not a van this time, but the rotating flash of police car lights. It was some kind of road check or something, and I knew it was our last chance to get help. I expected Dad to turn off or to roll up the window when I started screaming for help as we got near, but he never did. Instead, he pulled up casually next to the officer and greeted him.
“Where are you headed, sir?” The officer’s eyes flicked to Sharon’s bloody, limp body and then to me screaming at him for help from the back seat, but his expression never changed.
Dad’s voice was relaxed and warm as he responded. “White Creek Bridge. Got to get there before dusk, you know.”
The officer nodded. “You’re cutting it close, but this detour we’ve got set up should see you there in time.”
My father chuckled, gesturing to the damage on his side of the SUV. “Yeah, ran into an issue on the way, but I think it’s smooth sailing from here.”
“Please. Please help us. Please.” I had stopped screaming now. I could see that neither this officer or the other two out there had any intention of helping us, that they were clearly in on whatever was going on, but I had to try. One last effort to beg for our lives. “Please.”
My heart fluttered with hope when the officer looked back at me and met my eyes. He seemed to waiver for a moment before looking back at my father. “Have a safe trip, good brother.”
We had turned down a side road at the police check, but while the road was curvy and less maintained than the highway had been, we still sped along as we moved deeper into the wilderness. Hurrying to get to this bridge they were talking about before dusk, for whatever insane reason. I spent the next hour dejected and hopeless and largely silent aside from softly crying. I was exhausted, and while I still didn’t understand what was going on—not really—I knew enough to know it was going to end badly and there was nothing I could do to stop it. So I just sat and stared out at the passing trees, thick with webs and shadows.
Yet when we rounded the last bend and the White Creek Bridge came into view, something changed in me. The wood of the bridge seemed so clean and bright that it almost seemed to glow, a sharp contrast to the small green river that ran beneath it and the various dark shapes dotting the bridge’s road like ticks or scabs on a beast’s back.
We were still some distance away, but I could make out not only people, but tents and various stands. There was a small wood structure to one side and what looked like a large stone table just past that on the other side. But it was what lay at the center of the bridge that finally caught and held my gaze.
It was a massive bonfire. The sides of the bridge itself went up probably twenty feet, long, spindly skeleton hands reaching up for the sky, and the bonfire went up to nearly the same height. It was already burning, but it was also clear that it had been lit recently, in preparation of what was to come.
It was almost dusk, after all.
Something broke in me at the thought. All my fear and worry and sadness seemed to burn away in the face of my anger—a bright, hungry, hopeless anger that wasn’t about survival or understanding. It was simply about making them pay. Making him pay.
Dad had zip-tied my hands snuggly, but not snuggly enough. The addition of the seatbelt inside the plastic loop gave me just enough wiggle room that if I was willing to hurt, to lose skin and blood, I could maybe pull myself free.
I was willing.
Bending down, I tucked my legs up enough to put my feet against my ankles and the ziptie binding them. I had no hope of breaking the belt or even the ziptie, but I could break myself enough to get free. So I did. I pushed with my legs while pulling with my arms, I yelled as my right wrist gave way and skin peeled off as the plastic band dug into my flesh. But then I was free.
Popping my seatbelt with my left hand, I lunged across and forward to tackle my father from behind. This all happened very quickly, and I caught him by surprise, but I knew he was too strong for me to subdue once he knew what was happening. That’s why I took the moment I had to grab his seatbelt and yank it against his neck.
Sliding the belt down, I hooked it at my bent elbows as I leaned back. I pushed against the back of his seat with my knees as my arms burned with his efforts to pull the belt away from his neck, and I had the errant thought that it was like riding a bull inside of a bull—he thrashed and choked as the SUV picked up speed and wove back and forth on its journey to White Creek Bridge.
He almost slipped free once, but I dug in and pulled him back down, and as we began plunging through tents and people, headed into the middle of the now-blazing bonfire, I saw him look up in the mirror. He found my eyes and I found his.
And I smiled.
“And that’s what happened. The next thing I remember was being in the ambulance. They checked me out, brought me here, and then you asked to speak to me.”
I watched the deputy as he jotted something else down in his notebook before glancing up and nodding at me. He had been largely unreadable as I’d told what had happened, just occasionally nodding and taking notes as I went. I knew my story sounded incredible, but there should be plenty of evidence to support what I’d said. Either way, that wasn’t the most important thing.
“Is Sharon…is she alive?”
The deputy looked away for a moment. “No, I’m sorry, Theresa, but she’s been declared dead. If it’s a comfort, they think she died from the head injuries well before the crash at the bridge.”
I wanted to cry, but I was too dried out and hollow. Just a husk that needed to know, but wasn’t able to really feel any of it yet. “And Mom? Did you find her? Was she really a part of all this too?”
He looked back at me and shook his head slightly. “We don’t have all the answers yet. She’s not been located.”
I nodded numbly. Just then, another deputy came in with a Styrofoam cup and gave it to the man interviewing me. The deputy glanced at me and then back at him.
“Everything going okay? Either of you need anything else right now?”
The interviewer shook his head and then glanced at me. When I shook my head in turn, he looked back to the other deputy. “No thanks, Pete, I think we’re good for now.”
Nodding, the other deputy opened the door and started to leave. “Okay, well I’m heading back out to the bridge. Jerry and Alex are out here if you need anything.”
The interviewer turned back to look at me, his face now lit by a small and secret smile. “Thanks, Pete. Have a safe trip, good brother.”
I let out a gasp as everything around me suddenly changed. I was sitting up now instead of laying in a hospital bed. And the room was different. There was a woman next to me that…I knew her, didn’t I?
“Sharon?” I blinked, focusing on her sad eyes as I tried to push through the fog filling my brain. No, Sharon wasn’t right. Her name wasn’t Sharon, not really. She wasn’t my sister, not really. Her name was…”Jenna?”
The woman smiled slightly and nodded. I went to say more, but then I realized there was someone else in the room. Another woman that I didn’t know as well, but I’d met before. A woman named Swan.
She grinned as I turned to face her, my heart filling with a new kind of dread.
“Congratulations, John. You’ve completed Night Three of the True Horror Movie Experience.”
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Credits
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