part0045

The wind shifted directions, so instead of walking against the wind, it started to propel me forward, pushing my hair, my coat, the skirt of my dress, all forward. Something grazed the back of my head and by the time I realized it was my witches’ hat, it was too late; the hat had flown too far ahead for me to catch it.

How strange that it would fly away from me and then whack me in the back of the head again. The wind kept shifting, switching directions.

An eerie feeling soaked through me with the bitter cold. I raised my arm higher, squinting at my screen for any change in status. And then I looked ahead. More dark, more road, more leaves blowing, and nothing else.

I was beginning to question my decision to walk. Maybe I should’ve stayed in my car.

I glanced back, too far from it to see the car now, and strangely, the road behind me seemed to be bendy when I was sure it had been straight.

I shook it off, deciding I had to be wrong. Maybe it was a mind trick, an illusion of the dark, as I could’ve sworn I’d been on a straightaway and approaching a bend. But it was straight up ahead, and the road was bendy behind me. It all seemed switcheroo’d around.

I switched my phone off and then waited for it to power down, so I could try it again, hoping the reset found a signal for me.

A clopping sound approached from behind me. I glanced over my shoulder and saw a small covered wagon, pulled by a horse, coming from a straight road. A straight road? It was just bending a split second ago.

Ahead was a bend. I gave my head a shake, but didn’t have the chance to dwell, because I was relieved to see someone else.

I stopped and when it was about fifty feet away, I waved.

The wagon didn’t slow. At all. I saw the shadow of gloves holding the reins but couldn’t make out whether it was a male or female driving. I waited for them to slow, but they just kept going. I stood there, mouth wide open, shocked.

“Wait!” I started waving frantically, calling out, “Excuse me? Help? Help!”

They either couldn’t hear, or they ignored me by choice.

Darn. I stopped and frowned at my predicament and at them .

Who would see a woman alone on a dark night like this and at this late hour and keep driving? They would have passed my car and that would’ve made it clear that I’m stranded.

I scrunched up my face and realized I wouldn’t get anywhere if I stood still like that. I debated between going back toward my car, and continuing on forward. It was getting colder by the moment and I felt it bone-deep in just a thin jacket and this black broomstick dress that was quite gauzy so not doing much to keep me warm.

I had on thin striped Wizard of Oz witch-style tights and under my dress I wore a one-piece black Spanx-like shape bodysuit. I’m not overly curvy (though I’m sure not a size zero, particularly with all the fun-sized Snickers bars I’ve been chomping on the past few weeks in preparation for Halloween), but this worked wonders for covering up my most important parts under the semi-translucent black gauzy dress.

An eerie feeling prickled the back of my neck, like the feeling you get when you’re being watched.

I stood on the soft shoulder of the road, holding my phone, flashlight on, and then I realized I was down to 48% power, so this flashlight app was definitely draining my power. I wanted to switch it off, but I was concerned that I might be under the watch of some predator near low but dense bushes that lined both sides of the road.

Was an animal watching me? If so, what kind of an animal? There was a big difference between a harmless looky-loo, such as an owl, and something more ominous, something more carnivorous. I decided that maybe I should head back to my car.

My mind was racing, my flight or fight senses on the edge, because everything felt… off.

I twirled and picked up pace, heading back where I came from, glancing at my screen and seeing that there still wasn’t a signal. Shit. 36% power. 11:58 PM. It just said 48!

I turned it off as I walked, figuring I’d turn it on again to try to search again.

Nothing in terms of signal and it was suddenly at just 23% power.

It was getting colder. My teeth chattered, and my hands felt like ice.

It even seemed darker, somehow more ominous suddenly as I came to a bend in the road that had forked in two directions. I definitely wasn’t here before.

I got closer and saw a tulip tree, lying there, looking like it was yanked by the roots, the giant bulbous root system on display in the dark. There was a smashed pumpkin beside it. The tree didn’t block the road, had fallen the other way, so I stepped over the pumpkin, feeling a strange sensation, like your funny bone, but it was my whole body getting that odd buzzing / tingling sensation.

Nothing looked remotely familiar. The ground beneath me, it dawned, wasn’t paved. When did it switch to dirt? I spun around to look behind me and the landscape seemed like it narrowed into thickening woods, rather than the side of the country road. My world tilted; I had a strange spinning sensation. I thrust my fingers into my hair and my phone thudded to the ground. I gave my head a shake and reached for it and that was when I heard the whinny of a horse.

Did the wagon circle back out of guilt at leaving me on the side of the road? The road that disappeared…

I looked up and saw that on the other side of the tulip tree was a wooden bridge, bridging what, I couldn’t tell, as it was too dark to see what was under it, but then the ground rose up a winding bright pathway leading to the top of a hill. My eyes must’ve been playing tricks on me as the landscape again looked completely different.

On top of the hill sat a horse. But there was no wagon this time; instead, a rider was on it. Just sitting there. Watching me.

There was no sound other than the wind and leaves rustling, but really… it felt like dramatic music should’ve started playing.

Fear prickled the back of my neck with more intensity and the chill factor in the air seemed to simultaneously increase. The horse and the rider were both so very ominous-looking.

The horse huffed, and mist blew out of his nose and seemed to move in slow-mo, snaking toward me, like more fingers.

Reflexively, I took a step back as a flashback played on the reels of my mind of the book I’d read that day, where a decapitated horseman rode on Halloween night to seek out both the solider that blew his head off with a cannonball as well as find himself a new head.

I glanced down at the smashed pumpkin by my feet next to that felled tulip tree. The tree must have fallen recently, the tulip flowers still in bloom.

How odd for them to be in bloom at the end of October. And what a shame that it’s down. The trunk’s circumference was absolutely massive. It must be a very old tree.

My mind flitted over the fact that I’d read that story aloud to the seven-year-olds, who were rapt with attention, but I was thinking it was all kinds of wrong to read that sort of a story to small children who would likely go home and have nightmares about it.

Those kids were rabid for the story and they told me that they had all heard it the year before, as well. The story’s setting was Drowsy Hollow, so my guess was that it was a local author, who had written a story for their home town and that was why every child in the school wanted to hear the story every Halloween.

Drowsy Hollow was a very small town, just a few thousand people. If the book was popular, it would put the place on the map. I had no idea whether it was popular; I’d never heard of it before that day. Then again, like I said, I shied away from the darker elements of my favorite time of year.

It was nice that the locals celebrated Halloween by reading about their local area, but that fictional tale certainly wasn’t appropriate for six and seven-year-olds and it also wasn’t appropriate for me, because it had evidently gotten into my head and freaked me out, making my mind play tricks on me.

At the end of the storybook, the horseman caught a poor man traveling in the woods alone near a tulip tree and claimed his head as his own. This would satisfy him until the following year, at which time he’d need to obtain a new head, so the old head would transform to a pumpkin and he’d discard that when he saw a new head to claim. The moral of the story warned that the man shouldn’t have gone out during the witching hour on Halloween. He knew the tale and chose to be a skeptic, and thus, it was his demise.

I was unhappy at reading it, yet the story’s epilogue said that a family of friendly witches cast a spell to protect the area around the headless horseman’s haunting grounds so that no one could enter them on the night each year that he came out to hunt. At least that bit of the story would give comfort to the children who read it.