# She’s coming back. again.  Adult Horror. 2,000



## hvysmker (Dec 26, 2014)

"We there yet?" Jennie shook long red hair violently, bouncing around in the backseat as her mother drove.  "I'm hunnnngggrrryyy."

"You'll have to wait," Mary Edwards told her. "And you get back in that seat and buckle it up.  We can't afford a ticket if a cop sees you back there."

"Aw, Ma.  It's too small and hurts my butt, and I can't see out so good."

"If you don't, and right now, your butt WILL hurt.  Now do it.  I see flashing lights ahead of us, so hurry up."

A divorced mother, and out of work, Mary had been talked into staying with a relative in Virginia.  Her aunt had promised to give her a job in her rural dry-goods store.  

Besides, it would get her and Jennie away from a bothersome ex-hubby, John. He'd been bugging her ever since she'd told him about getting a divorce.  Mary figured he'd never find her out here in the sticks.

"The buckle too?"

"Christ, yes. The buckle too.  Cops always check it."

"Okay ... I got it."

Cops didn't bother Mary, what did were all those mountains they'd had to cross.  Her ramshackle Ford would be puttering uphill at twenty or thirty while large trucks passed her, with a drop-off of a million-feet on one side.  And then, other trucks passing from the other direction forced her to drive right up to the guardrail, when there even was a guardrail. To a city resident, it was scary as hell.

Well, according to the map, this was about the last one.  And now, there was some sort of accident or disturbance up ahead.

"Will you look at all those people out there,"  Mary said, seeing only two police cars but a crowd of people milling around, as well as cars backed up in both directions. At least, she thought, she didn't see any ambulances.

As she came closer, Mary saw a lot of guns.  Now what the hell, she thought, is going on here.  As she slowed down, Mary looked at the dashboard clock and saw it was almost 10:30 at night.

"I can't see any people.  Can I unbu...."

"Shut up, Jennie. You can see them when we get there, and keep that thing buckled."

As she pulled up behind the last car, Mary could see a horse-trailer way up where the mountain road started upward.  Two horses, without saddles, were being unloaded.

As they sat waiting, a car drove slowly past her Ford in the other direction.  Then the one ahead of her advanced.  Once things started, they moved somewhat steadily forward.  Obviously, to her, the cops were checking cars.  During one of the frequent stops, she got her identification, auto title, registration, and insurance card out.  Anything to get it over with, she thought.

While waiting, her memory went back, back to the last time John had beaten her....

***

"And just why don't we have any food on the table?  Bitch."  He grabbed Mary, slamming her back against a kitchen wall. "A man gets home, he has to fucking eat."

"I had to work late." She rubbed her head with one hand where he'd banged it, the other on the kitchen table. "You saw me come back.  I couldn't help it."

With her hands out of the way, he slapped her cheek.  "Yes, and that bastard Peters was driving.  The kid's fucking father."

"That's not true, and you know it, John.  You're the father.  Don't, please."  She saw him unbuckling his belt, knowing there was only one reason he would.  "Please.  Not again.  You know Jennie's yours."

He glared at her, one hand on her full breasts as the other pulled the belt from its loops.

"Bullshit.  Neither of us have red hair in our families.  And she has his features, not mine."

Clasping his hand tight on her blouse, he threw Mary across the table, ass in the air as salt and sugar shakers went spinning.  Her forehead hit the butter-dish, gashing her head on a raised edge.  The dish-cover was in the shape of a chicken.

Holding her down with one hand, John jerked her jeans down, chaffing already scarred thighs from the last beating.  He hit her with the belt until his own arm was sore.  Then, being titillated, he pulled out another -- more fleshy -- tool and raped her.

"Bitch," he grunted, fixing his pants afterward. "Clean up this fucking mess and fix me some supper."  

Ignoring Mary, as well as Jennie crying in the bedroom of their crummy three-room apartment, he grabbed a beer from the fridge.

John then left for the living room and the television.

That was when she called the police.  They took one look at her and hauled his ass away.  The next day, before he could bail out, she moved in with her mother and started divorce proceedings....

***

"You sure you're buckled in?"  Mary turned around, as much as she could with her own seat belt on, to check.  She only had one car in front of her.  The end was in sight.  Jennie looked at her daughter, red hair framing an innocent face, hands spread across the car-seat buckle.  "Take those hands away so I can see."

A polite knock on her window brought Mary's eyes to the front again.  A cop motioned her to roll it down.

"Where you headed, ma'am?"

"Pott's Creek, officer.  What's the problem?"

"Nothing to worry about.  We have a problem on the mountain and want to warn people going through.  Please don't stop on the way, especially for strangers or hitch-hikers.  Oh, and you will be checked again on the other side of the mountain, so you can expect it."

"I see.  An escaped prisoner or something.  Is that it?"

"Something like that, ma'am." He smiled and waved her forward.

As Mary drove on, slowly through a crowd of armed residents, she noticed the horses were stationed on each side of the other line of cars, sticking their heads almost into the vehicles.  Shrugging, she started up the winding road.

The trip across the mountain was almost uneventful.  With vehicles only using the road at staggered intervals, the driving was easier.  She did stop once, when Jennie insisted she had to pee, both of them doing it in thick bushes on the side of the road.  

As she squatted, the woman felt a cold breeze hit, then pass her.  The way her daughter shuddered beside her, she knew Samantha also felt it.

"Ooh! My butt's cold, Mama."

"Then hurry up and pull your pants up."

The trouble started on the other side.

Mary again pulled up behind a short line of cars, that one being checked by another two horses while men with guns stood around, drinking what looked like beer from cans or steaming coffee out of thermos bottles.

***

"What did Officer Daniels say, son?"  Jeff Andrews asked his son, Paul.

"None of the other checkpoints got the witch yet."

"Christ, Paul.  I hope it's someone else.  We caught her three years ago and I still can't sleep right."

"I hope it is my turn, Pa.  Someone has to get her, and I can take it.  Ain't like it's killing a real person.  The woman is already dead by the time she gets here."

"At least we think so.  We'll never know, though.  All we know is that the witch is in control.  Since she easily changes bodies, we can't take any chances."  

Jeff Andrews shuddered at the thought.  If the host body WAS still alive, it was still better to kill it than let the witch through.  

According to legend, it took only a minute or so for the monster to switch to another female.  Which was why there weren't any females among the assembled residents, not even the horses.  But, for all they knew, she might go to a female mouse or something.  If given the chance, which they didn't intend to give her.  

Jeff wasn't as superstitious as many mountain people, except for this.  The witch had to be kept on the mountain or half the town might die.

"Ain't there any other way to tell but horses, Pa?  I'd think modern technology would do it.  Some machine or computer?"

"Might be, but we can't take chances.  The entire county, maybe all of America, would be in danger if we failed.  No.  We have plenty of horses and know they work.  They can sense a witch in seconds."

"But why this certain day, Pa?  Why not next week, or last month?"

"When it started, back in seventeen-seventy-something or other, she was driven up this mountain, and swore to come down every year on this exact date.  We in Wanker county have been watching ever since.  She tries, and we kill her, every fucking time.  Only God and the Devil knows how many times she's gone over that cliff."  He pointed to a nearby drop of about a hundred feet or so, along the edge of the road.

***

Seeing a couple of men coming, shotguns down at their sides, Mary opened her window, identification ready. 

"Only take a minute, ma'am," one of them told her.  "Please open the passenger window so that horse can sniff you."

"Why the hell should I let a horse sniff me?  Christ, man. Do you guys know what the hell you're even doing?  It's fucking crazy to stop for a fucking horse to 'sniff' me.  I don't have any illegal drugs on me."

"Please.  It won't take long," one of them told her again while the other raised his weapon, aiming slightly above her head.  Was that a fucking threat? she wondered.  She rolled down the other window, simmering as she waited to pull forward.

As Mary came even with the pair of horses, they seemed to panic, pulling away from their handlers and whinnying in fear.

Immediately, several men reached in, pulling Mary from her car.  Before she could get over the shock enough to protest, she was jerked across the road and thrown over the cliff.  As she fell, Mary heard shotguns blasting and whooping of the natives.

When Mary woke, she was still in shock.  From a localized pain, she knew at least one leg was broken.  Trying to rise, she felt a sharp and insistent pain in her abdomen.  Reaching down with shaking fingers, Mary found a large sharp bone impaling her to the ground.  Looking sideways, she found she was embedded in a field of human bones, a skull rolling away downhill as her hand brushed it.  The squeaking of rats caused her to at least try to rise, but she couldn't move her back.

Weak from loss of blood, she tried to scream, knowing there was no chance of rescue.  It came out as a loud moaning sound, life slowly fading away with her blood.

***

"Hear that, Paul?"  Jeff asked the quaking boy, himself having to lean on the witch's car. "It's both the sign of another witch, and something to keep us awake for even more years.  A normal person would have died from the fall, but a witch keeps on crying for hours."

Father and son stood silently, lost in their own fearful thoughts while watching the other townspeople leaving for their pickup trucks, to go home and try to sleep for another year.  The horses were loaded into a trailer and, brake lights flashing in the moonlight, driven away.  The only sound was crying and moaning from the bottom of the cliff.

Then sounds of crying came from the backseat of the car.  In their excitement, nobody had noticed the child. 

"We better take the kid back with us," Jeff said.  "The mayor will do something with her."

Paul unbuckled the little blonde girl.  Picking her up gently, he carried her to their pickup truck, where his father was already grinding the engine to life.  

Someone else would come to tow the Ford away.  Behind her tears, Samantha smiled.  She was back.

The End.
Charlie


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## SolaInk (Jan 3, 2015)

Good bones to a good story. Reminds me of an X-Files story; the one about the werewolf. Sometimes, the characters share conversations that make vague references to events a reader would know nothing about. If you're going to mention these events, especially ones that are integral to the story, I recommend adding a little more to those conversations so readers are not left confused or without enough information to understand the story. Obviously, the back-story to the witch's origins is important to the present events. SPAG needs tidying but that can be worked on later. There are a lot of free online programs available where you can just cut and paste your work and it'll pick up most of those (general) errors and point them out to you to fix (not fix them for you). 



hvysmker said:


> "What did Officer Daniels say, son?"  Jeff Andrews asked his son, Paul.
> 
> "None of the other checkpoints got the witch yet."
> 
> ...


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## hvysmker (Jan 4, 2015)

Thanks for taking the time to crit, SolaInk. I'll make some changes, but I didn't want to explain completely.  Jeff Andrews and his son, for instance, wouldn't bother explaining the situation completely to each other in a normal conversation.

I'd rather let clues drop in during the story, enough for the reader to understand a witch's actions and personality through a plentitude of other stories.

Since a witch could quickly move from one female to another, they gave Mary no time. Once the male horse identified someone in tha auto as a witch, they quickly threw her over the cliff.  Their mistake was in ignoring the kid, another female, who was the real host for the witch.

You must have missed the way the little red-headed girl named Jennie had morphed into a blonde named Samantha.  I left plenty of clues.

Charlie


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## bazz cargo (Jan 6, 2015)

Hi Charlie,
I liked this a lot. Easy to read and interesting, not as bloody as I expected and for that I thank you. 

I caught the hair change reference and the horses as witch detectors was a clever device.

Good use of 'voice' felt quite natural.

Thanks for the share
Bazz


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## hvysmker (Jan 7, 2015)

Yep. Poor Potts Creek, now a hole in'na ground.

Charlie


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## Noth (Feb 25, 2015)

Nice story. Or IS IT? Yea, it is. Maybe. Yes. No. No really its great, liked it a lot.


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## hvysmker (Feb 26, 2015)

I wouldn't exactly call this a "true" story, Noth, but I do think I've met that witch ... and several of her sisters.

Charlie


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## pyroman182 (Feb 28, 2015)

I would like to start by saying that I loved this story. I don't know if you plan on doing something more with it, but I think it would be great for the start of a short story or even a novel. What did I like about it:
- you managed to paint a very good image of your main character. 
- the dialogue is well written, it reads like real people talking
- the plot elements like the horses and the mountain are well riddled throughout the story.
- personally it grabbed my attention and made me want to read it until the end. Made me a little sorry that there was an end.

The only negative thing I would have to say is that I would have liked to see more of a transition from her memory of her last beating back to "now" time.

Apart from that, nice story, good plot, very well drawn out characters especially for the short length of this writing. Good job!

Pyro


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## hvysmker (Mar 1, 2015)

Thanks for commenting, pyroman.  This was written with a word limitation for another site.  Mary's beating was by her husband, nothing to do with the witch.  When the horse reacted to the car, the mob thought Mary was the witch and killed her. Actually, the kid had been taken over, not the mother. Clues  were the color of the kid's hair and how I changed her name at the end.

Charlie

Charlie


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## pyroman182 (Mar 2, 2015)

Yes, I loved the part where the colour of the girl's hair changes. Very subtle. And I very much enjoyed Mary's recollection of her past. Puts depth to the character.


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## Noth (Mar 2, 2015)

hvysmker said:


> I wouldn't exactly call this a "true" story, Noth, but I do think I've met that witch ... and several of her sisters.
> 
> Charlie



Now I got to go read something holy after that. . .


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