We piled in. Joel drove, his knuckles white around the wheel, his eyes fixed straight ahead. Nobody said a word. The rain pattered against the windshield, masking the sound of our ragged breathing. Every mile back to the hotel stretched like a lifetime.
When we arrived, we entered the room wordlessly. No one touched the food left from earlier. No one undressed. We each lay down, eyes open, staring at the ceiling, the floor and the wall, haunted by the scream of the old woman, the weight of her small body struggling to free herself in her last moment, and the child who had seen us in the hallway.
Morning came, gray and unkind. None of us spoke more than a few practical words, only what was needed to function. Communication became mechanical, stripped of warmth. We drove out, returning to the clearing where Joel's broken car had been hidden.
The mud clung to our shoes as we hitched it to the truck, dragging it along the dirt road. To avoid suspicion, we bypassed the closest town and pushed further, another town over, where no one would recognize us.
At the repair shop, we paid extra, too much, for the car to be fixed within the month. It was reckless, but we didn't care. All we wanted was for the car to disappear from sight, to erase one piece of evidence from the trail of blood behind us.
The excuse was simple. Joel's car had broken down far away, and we had no choice but to leave it there for repair. Clean, simple, believable. By Friday night, we had returned to the same lodging.
It was late, 11 p.m. The air inside was stale, the silence heavy.
"I still… can't… believe I…" My voice cracked, my throat dry, the words barely forming. "I just…"
"Forget it," Vanz muttered, not meeting my eyes. "What's done is done."
James sat stiffly in the corner, his voice shaking. "You know… let's pretend none of this ever happened. We're going back home."
Joel only nodded, slow and silent.
That night, none of us slept. The forest pressed against the lodging walls, the wind moaning through the cracks, carrying with it the echoes of the old woman's scream. I lay with my eyes wide open, trembling, each sound dragging me back into the moment.
I could still see her face, contorted in terror, still feel the struggle in my hands, still hear the silence when her breath stopped. And the boy, the child wandering into the hall, my mind wouldn't let me forget that either, those terrible memories respark the suppressed memory of the decapitated deceased crashed victim, one of them was headless and the other one was twisted in such a way i couldn't figure out which part of the body was visible, those images haunted me all night, I could only sleep for a moment in that timeframe I had a nightmare relating to the events.
Morning finally came, gray and lifeless. We went back to our houses, but nothing was the same. The weekend passed in silence. No calls. No messages. Just isolation. Monday arrived, and none of us went to school. Tuesday, James and Vanzz forced, themselves back, hollow-eyed, walking like ghosts.
Me and Joel didn't show up. By Wednesday, we all crossed paths again, but something about us was broken. Our eyes were sunken, our voices drained. We looked like boys who had gone to war, and left pieces of ourselves behind.
The group gathered in the dimly lit room, the air heavy with exhaustion. Faces pale, eyes half-lidded, shoulders slumped. We all moved like shadows of ourselves, drained, sleep-deprived, energy-less. Silence lingered for a moment before anyone spoke, a fragile truce between us and the chaos outside.
"It… it's just weird," Vanzz muttered, voice hoarse. "How is there… nothing? No news about the crash victims. It's like they… never existed. Their families… shouldn't they be searching for them… I mean, people would've been talking, right?" His hands fidgeted, drumming nervously on the edge of the table.
Joel rubbed at his eyes. "Yeah… it's like… they never existed. Like they got… erased. And that guy who just… left? Like it was a glitch in reality, was he just some crazy guy. Something made him walk away. It wasn't normal."
I sat rigid, heart hammering in my chest, mind spinning. I thought about the old woman. The defenseless, frail woman whose life ended by my hands. "What got into me, why did I do that, I can still hear her scream" …? The memory churned in my stomach like acid. I swallowed hard. "It's like something got over me, you…. Guys know me i would have never done that…. It must be a bad dream right, right ???" Vanzz and James nodded nervously trying to comfort me, Joel stared in silence.
"And… the container," Vanzz continued, almost whispering. "The… thing… that… thing. It's ridiculous. Totally insane. Nothing makes sense anymore. Like… like we're dreaming… not living in reality" He trailed off, staring at the cracked floor.
Joel's mind whirled, Dream? No. It's all real. I touched her. I… killed her. It was all too real…. I can still feel the sensation of strangling her… I still feel and …. Visualize how she slowly lost her breath.
I was in a state of delirium," and… and the boy too… why did he just walk downstairs and ignore us… it's like we were a ghost at that moment… thank God they thought the granny died of natural causes.. I just hope the best for the boy."
James' voice broke through the spiraling thoughts. "Maybe… we just… I don't know… get some drinks. Get hammered. Forget it, at least for a while."
Vanzz grinned weakly. "Yeah… yeah… let's do that."
Joel looked at us eyes wide open "Guys….. we are forgetting something…. " he swallowed
I look at him confused, "forgetting what?"
Joel replied with a nervous look, "How did we even survive the crash ? The other car it was completely battered, that car … it was definitely larger with a better tough build, yet our car sustained significantly less damage… isn't that out of logic and out of physics… the back of the car should have been blown apart and Vanz who was in the back should have been heavily injured or worse, and logically we would have most likely ricochet from the impact and fall off from the cliff, yet.. yet we survived with minimum damage relative to the other car…. This doesn't make sense, not one bit."