Dropping Off - A Short Horror Story

The evening was turning into night when Ethan walked out stiffly into the open parking lot. He looked back to see his friends, Derek and Irene, following him out of the hospital building. It was the middle of January, but the cold of December still lingered in the air and reinforced itself in the dying hours of the evening.

“Wow, Ethan, you must have eaten a lot,” Irene said in a polite, friendly, teasing matter as she noticed how odd his gait looked.

Derek, though, was more direct. “Did you forget bringing him that second helping from the buffet table, Irene?”

“She also brought you a second helping too, did you forget, you ogre?” Ethan countered, smiling.

“Well, mine was minuscule. Yours was overflowing,” Derek said, exaggerating.

“Hey, the food was great,” Ethan said. “Anyway, it made up for the function."

Their friend Irene worked in a non-profit organization, and today, they had held their anniversary in one of the lecture halls of the hospital. However, it was a special occasion. Irene was told she was going to be promoted to vice-president of their specific branch, and she had invited the two boys to accompany her to the function.

Both Ethan and Derek thought it was going to be a very boring event with some very old people (which they were right for the most part except for the presence of the winner of a local beauty pageant who was strikingly tall and wore high heels which looked suitable for anything other than walking), but for their friend’s accomplishment and for the food after the function, they agreed.

“Yeah, food was great,” Derek said.

It was dark now, and Ethan and Derek went to find their scooters with the light from their cellphones while Irene conversed with some of the people who were also leaving the function.

“Will you take Irene home or should I?” Ethan asked.

“Let’s both go and drop her off, and after that we can go together towards our homes,” Derek said.

“Alright, our houses are close,” Ethan said, putting on his helmet. “Yo, Irene? You coming?”

Irene said her goodbyes and climbed up with Derek. As Derek led ahead, Ethan followed behind. Soon, the night grew very dark and they had to use their headlights. They left the spacious area of the parking lot for the avenues of the campus and finally the narrower streets and rectangular buildings of the city.

“Huh, no lights on the poles,” Ethan said, noticing the pitch black on the road. If it wasn’t for his scooter’s headlight, he couldn’t have seen a thing. “Must be a load shedding.”

Irene looked back. “Maybe they are doing some kind of electrical work somewhere in the city?”

“Must be,” Ethan said. “So, vice-president, is there no salary upgrade?”

She laughed heartily, and Derek answered in her stead. “It’s a non-profit organization, dude.”

“Still,” Ethan said. “Effort should be appreciated.”

“Well, they did give her that trophy,” Derek chimed in.

“I like it,” she said.

“It is a small Buddha statue right?” Ethan asked as he had not got a good look at the prize.

“Yes, very well made even.”

The three friends drove for some time without speaking. Ethan looked around the city. It was so dark. He could feel the darkness stifle him. The buildings looked grim from the little light that fell from their headlights on the walls, yellowish and desolate. Only the engines made any sound but the din unnerved him more. He decided to break it.

“Hey, Irene, you are not afraid of the dark, are you?”

“Don’t, Ethan,” Irene warned, looking back.

“Think if suddenly Ethan’s scooter is not there anymore but only blackness,” Derek said.

Irene hit Derek’s shoulder. “Not you too!”

Derek and Ethan laughed while Irene told them not to try to scare her.

“Hey, Ethan, we are approaching the junction at the main road,” Derek said, and they saw the road ahead lit up by passing vehicles and the din of their exhausts. “I think we should go to the inner streets on the other side or else we might come upon the traffic police.”

“When are you going to get your license?” Ethan asked.

“Soon, man. Come on, let’s get this over it,” Derek said and revved up the accelerator.

“Hey, wait,” Ethan called, but Derek was already out of earshot and speeding away. He throttled his scooter but was forced to stop at the junction when a continuous chain of trucks rolled up the main road with horns blaring like a stampede of elephants. Derek and Irene were lucky enough to get to the other side before the trucks came up, but Ethan had to wait. When the trucks had passed, he saw that the red taillight of Derek’s scooter was no longer there.

“Ogre didn’t even wait for me.”

Ethan crossed the junction before any more cars or trucks came up and went into the inner streets. He knew the way to Irene’s house; it was only a matter of catching up with them.

“Ethan!” a familiar-sounding voice called him out. He whipped his head to the left and saw the red lights of Derek’s scooter meditating on a different road. He wondered why they were on that road. It didn’t lead to her house as far as he knew.

“This way,” the voice which he now recognized as Irene’s said. The red light flared up with the start of the engine and it started to move. Ethan followed behind them at an even pace. “Hey, are we taking the longcut to your house?”

“No, this is the right way,” Irene replied without turning back.

“Heh?” Ethan said, furrowing his brows. “I may not go out much and not know the city inside as out as most people do, but I am pretty sure this just takes us farther from her home.”

“She changed houses again,” the voice of Derek said from the front.

“Really? Since when?”

“Many days ago,” Irene said.

“Oh, okay,” Ethan said. Irene had changed housing before as she lived on rent, but she had told them that the last place was very cheap and also very close to her office. The one they were going to now was much farther than any house she had lived in before; it certainly would give her a good workout to reach her workplace.

This place must be extremely cheap, Ethan thought.

The sound of the automobiles from the main road faded away, and only the engines of the scooters hummed in the eerie quiet of the night.

Ethan tried to pull up his scooter alongside Derek’s, but Derek sped up ahead.

“Yo!” Ethan said as he fell behind. “Slow down.”

“What happened?” Irene asked but didn’t turn back. It started to annoy Ethan.

“Just wanted to ride beside and talk as we went.”

“No,” Derek said, firmly. “Another vehicle might come up on the road and cause an accident.”

“The road’s empty, man.”

“Precaution is better.”

Ethan snorted. “You and ‘precaution’? Since when did you start worrying about ‘precaution’?” He had said it jest, but inside his mind, he was deeply unnerved. Derek was somewhat of a daredevil who sped up when speed bumps came upon the road. For him to be concerned this much with safety on an empty road was very out of character. And his voice…

Nervousness came over him. He glanced at his radium wristwatch where the sickly looking greenish hands showed the night was nearing ten. His parents would start to ring him up if he didn’t come home soon enough.

“How much farther is it?” Ethan asked.

“Just a little bit,” Irene said. She didn’t look back.

Ethan said nothing and kept following them. As more and more time passed by, he started getting impatient. “How much more now? It’s been ten minutes.”

“Just some more,” Irene said.

Ethan kept going and kept looking around him at the total darkness. Is the power not going to come back tonight?

 “How much longer now?” Ethan asked again.

“Be more patient,” Irene said with a slight edge in her voice.

“Okay, no need to be angry,” Ethan said, surprised. Irene never used such kind of tone with him. He could now hear his heartbeat in his ears now. It was dull and low like it was afraid to be heard.

Why am I getting afraid? A thief won’t ambush two scooters.

As Ethan tried to keep his increasing fear in control, he didn’t notice that the buildings were getting fewer and fewer as they went until a cloud of dust made him look up, and he saw that they had come to a very strange place.

“What?” Ethan said as he saw that the road ahead was ending into a rocky terrain. They were upon the shore of a dried-up river. “Is this where she lives? Where are we even?”

“It’s near now,” Irene said, and Derek’s scooter cut across the river, lurching on the rocks.

“Hey, wait! Where is this place? I have never seen this place.”

But his words fell upon deaf ears.

Ethan stopped his scooter. Where are they taking me? Is this really the way to Irene’s house or are they… woah there! What am I thinking? They are trying to kill me? Stupid imagination. I am going to be a laughing stock.

Though as he chided himself, he didn’t move. Far ahead, he saw Derek’s red light dimmed and waiting. He took a deep breath and slowly made his way across the stretch. The river looked like a stone quarry with large dunes of stone placed over the area. He pictured them as mounds under which people were buried.

As he reached the other side, he tried again to ride beside them but Derek moved forward out again.

“Now it is very clo—”

“Shut up!” Ethan said, his face hot with nervousness and anger. “'It’s a bit farther’, ‘it’s near now’, ‘we are almost there’. You know I hate being lied to like this. You could have just told me from the beginning that it would take so long. Look! It’s past eleven now. My parents must be furious with me right this moment.”

Ethan’s pocket vibrated. “Speak of the devil! Look, here they are calling me. I am going to get it now all because of… you…”

Ethan looked at the caller screen, and his body went ice cold. It was not a call from his parents. It was Irene who was calling him. He looked ahead and saw her hands nowhere her phone. He looked at Derek’s hands. They had not left the handles of his scooter. He accepted the call and put the phone to his ear.

“Ethan, we have been trying to call you. Where are—”

He cut the call. He started to sweat and his heart pounded in his ears. He slowly backed up his scooter, turning the handles.

“Ethan, where are you going?” Irene’s voice asked. Now that he focused, he knew it was not Irene’s voice.

“Ethan,” the fake voice of Derek called out to him and echoed throughout the river.

Then suddenly, their heads turned back to look at him. Ethan screamed. They didn’t have eyes but large, black, empty sockets, and their jaw distended down to their chest showing giant, inhuman teeth and a slithering, slobbering tongue.

“Ethan! Who said you could leave us alone?” they said in a nightmarish voice, the likes Ethan had never heard in his life.

Ethan turned the accelerator to the max. The back wheel of the scooter rotated and slipped on the stones and throwing them everywhere, but it slowly turning towards the way he had come. Meanwhile, Irene jumped off the scooter and started to run towards him at full sprint, now smiling.

“Ethan! You can’t leave!”

“Oh, God!” Ethan cried in terror, but then the back wheel found a stone that didn’t budge, and the scooter flew away as the creature’s hand nearly grabbed Ethan. He sped away on the rocks, nearly crashing down on the loosened rocks.

Behind him, a cacophony of his name kept being recited. He even heard Derek’s scooter start again.

“Oh God, save me! Oh God, save me!”

Ethan drove his scooter never looking back. He didn’t know where he was going but he knew he needed to keep going. He could hear his name recited behind him.

It was morning when the police found Ethan. He was unconscious and bleeding at the side of the road from his head, and his arm was bent in a gnarly way, but he was still breathing. His scooter lay smashed, the headlight glass broken, his rear mirrors missing, and the front wheel dislodged.

They rushed him to the hospital where he came to consciousness hours later. Friends and family came to see him, but he refused to see Irene and Derek. When the authorities asked if they had done some foul play with him, Ethan denied it as adamantly as he refused to see his friends.

The case was reported to be a high-speed accident and dropped with Ethan’s license revoked though they did not find any trace of alcohol in his body. He stayed for several months in the hospital recovering from his injuries. His mother stayed by him through the nights because he begged her to be by him. When he fully recovered, he went home and it took him two years before he could sleep by himself in his room, but he never slept in complete darkness for the rest of his life. He always turned a dim light no matter what, even put a candle and a lighter by his bedside.

He drifted apart from his friends. He never answered their calls and never wished to see them again in his life.

He didn’t want to see what their faces looked like.

He didn’t want to hear how they recited his name.

***

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