Suddenly, the trees came to an end and I found myself back on the road. Where my car should have been.
My car that was now gone.
Stolen. Or towed. Who knew which one?
“This is so not what I need right now.” I turned around in a circle, but my car didn’t magically appear. I quickly clicked my heels together three times, but that didn’t do it either. “Damn Dorothy bullshit. That stuff from the movies never works.”
My phone was in my pocket. All I had to do was make one call, and Dad or Andy would come pick me up. But that would lead to several problems. First, I’d have to explain the whole “I’m not really at a movie” thing, but more importantly, I’d have to explain why I’d driven to woods that were two hours away from home to try and track cannibal Girl Scouts on my own.
That, I definitely did not want to do.
“Please, won’t you come play with us?” a voice said, from the trees on the right.
“We want to play with you,” said another, on the left.
Close. Too close.
I couldn’t let them see me panic. That was Dad’s number-one rule. So, I yelled back, “Don’t you know you’re not supposed to play with your food?”
One of them giggled.
The giggle was what set me off. It made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and I started running down the road.
When I finally saw headlights, I knew it had to be divine intervention.
I waved my arms wildly to flag down the driver of the black SUV. Stealing a glance at the woods behind me, I was sure that I could still hear them giggling and grunting.
“Hurry, hurry, hurry,” I chanted, as the driver rolled to a stop and opened his window.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
“My car broke down. Can you give me a lift?” Already, I was opening the back door.
“Okay, sure.”
I climbed in, surprised to see that there were three other people seated inside. “Go, go,” I urged the driver. “Just get out of here.” I tried to look out the back window, but it was tinted. So darkly tinted that I couldn’t see anything.
“Is something chasing you?” the driver asked, shifting gears. “Was it a bear?”
“Something like that.”
The doors were all safely shut now, but I wouldn’t feel better until we were moving again. “If you can just take me to the interstate, that would be great. There’s a movie theater at the second exit. I can get a ride home from there.”
“Headed that way ourselves.”
He hit the gas pedal and we moved away from the woods. Not fast enough for my liking, but at least it was in the right direction. Away from them.
The inside of the car was dark, but my eyes were adjusting and it was then I started noticing what my traveling companions were wearing. Feather boas. And . . . corsets. With high heels and fishnet stockings.
Then I noticed something else. The smell.
It’s a very unique scent, and hard to describe what it is exactly. Dad has this theory that it’s the chemicals given off by a body when it’s slowly starting to decay. It takes years to be able to hone your sense of smell to even be able to recognize it.
But I knew what it was.
That smell, plus the tinted windows and the boas could only mean one thing: I was catching a ride from a car full of vampires in drag.
“So,” I said casually, putting a hand down by the top of my boot. I always carried an extra stake in there. “Where are you guys going?”