Issue #177 : For Them To Find
“Have you really not been back here in ten years?” Michelle asked.
Davis nodded. “Yeah. I came close a few times but I never had any reason to go through with it.”
“Not even to visit the family?”
Family. The word had a lot of connotations, but mostly it implied a relationship with his parents that was much closer than it really was. “No,” he said, shaking his head as he did so. “Never had a reason.”
“So why come back now?”
“My grandfather. He was the one who got me to leave town when I did, convinced me that I was better than any of the people holding me back there. I don’t know if anyone is going to want to see me at the funeral, but I figured I owed him the respect to at least show up.”
They drove on in silence and Davis watched the landscape, starting to look familiar. He turned on the stereo and used the volume of the music as an excuse to not carry on the conversation.
He wasn’t sure how much time had passed when Michelle turned the music down. “Can you pull over?”
“Why? Got to pee?”
“Gross. No. My legs are cramping and I need to walk around a bit.”
“Because I’ll totally watch if you–”
“Shut the hell up, sick bastard. Just pull over.”
Davis grinned as he slowed and began angling for the side of the road.
“If you think I would go out there in the dark and squat down over God knows what, you don’t know me that well.” She slammed the door and began striding away from the car. Davis smirked at the sight of her.
“Hey!” He turned at the sound of her voice, already nearly a hundred feet from the car. She was gesturing wildly for him to come over. “Check this out!”
Davis got out and approached whatever it was she was pointing at. It was a full moon that night so it was more than bright enough to see. At first he took it for being no more than the remains of someone’s campfire. But the fragments he saw in the ground didn’t look like wood. He bent down to pick one of them up, frowning at it as he examined it.
“Is that what I think it is?” he asked.
“Those are teeth, what else could it be!” Her voice verged on hysteria. He put a hand out to try and calm her down.
“Okay, take it easy, there has to be a reason why these are here, or at least they’re probably something else. What difference does it make anyway?”
Her shrieking laughter in response made him shiver. “Come on. You find fucking teeth in the remains of a fire and that’s all you can say. What about all that?”
Davis looked up and saw that she was pointing to the side of a nearby shed. There was something on the side and from the darkened colors, he supposed it looked like it could be blood. No way to know for sure though. Whoever had written on it had smeared it away, making it impossible to read.
“Why do you think one has anything to do with the other?” he asked. “You don’t even know what it said, don’t you think you’re reaching a little bit here?”
“Sure. Totally normal. You probably see stuff like this every day.”
“Michelle, I’m just saying you’re overreacting a bit. Can we please get back in the car and get going?”
“We need to call 911 or something. Someone has to get out here and investigate all of this.” She was already pawing around in her pockets, forgetting that her phone was still sitting on the charger in the car.
“You’re going to call 911 and tell them what? That you found someone’s teeth in the leavings of a campfire along the highway? When it’s probably something completely innocent or some kind of a prank?”
“You don’t know that, you have no idea where–“
“Neither do you! You’re freaking out for no reason. Don’t you think there would be more in the fire than just the teeth?”
Michelle let out a breath and shook her head, marching to the car and getting in, behind the wheel this time. He stood there staring, waiting for the engine to fire.
Instead, what he heard was a series of rapid clicks from the engine.
“God dammit.” Davis groaned and let his head drop. He wouldn’t hear the end of this. The battery had been on the verge of giving up the ghosts. He had decided to roll the dice and get the battery replaced when they got to Conner’s Mill, instead of doing it before.
And she had left her phone plugged in to the charger.
But her phone was at least somewhat charged. They could call for a tow. Assuming service out here was good.
It took several moments after the thought fully articulated before he realized how much worse their situation was.
Thirteen figures approached them, walking slowly in body length robes of indeterminate color. They must have come down from the hills but he couldn’t understand how he hadn’t seen them until now.
The silence as they approached ran a chill down his spine. He didn’t know what to say as they flowed around him, half the group moving on towards the car. Vaguely, he heard the door slam, followed by Michelle’s diminishing sobs as she tried to run.
“Is there a problem?” He finally found his voice as the figure in the center stepped forward without responding.
Davis wasn’t sure what he took notice of first. The sound of Michelle’s moist cry of pain that was cut off, along with a sound like dry wood snapping. Or if it was the sensation of the knife plunging into his stomach and driving up into the center of his heart.
