The phone call came with violence, on a windy night, at the end of a cold November.
My phone vibrated loudly on the table, shaking the glass of water beside my bed, sending droplets over the sides. I woke with a start, turning over to grab my phone. I read the name running across the screen. I put the phone to my ear.
“Hello?” I answered groggily.
My brother was on the other end of the line, crying, and there was screaming in the background, loud, like someone was dying. The screams would pause, then start again, louder than before.
“Jason! Jason, are you there?” He said, panicked, sobbing. His voice kept drifting in and out. I could barely hear him over the screams.
“Eddie, what’s wrong?” I replied, rubbing my eyes. I sat up in darkness, flailing for the lamp switch. I flicked it on and climbed out of bed. The screams kept getting louder. It sounded like Jason was right next to whoever it was.
“He’s dying, I think he’s dying.”
“Who’s dying? Eddie, what’s going on?”
“I hit him. I didn’t see him coming. He just came out on the road.”
Eddie started to sob uncontrollably. The screams turned into a high-pitched wailing. There came a point when I couldn’t distinguish which was which. I put the phone on speaker and set it to the lowest volume. I got dressed quickly, taking my keys and wallet with me. I headed out of my apartment and the wind hit me with full force. My hands turned numb quickly, my face and fingers burning from the cold. I ran to the parking lot and got in my car.
“Where are you at?” I asked, starting the car. My hands were shaking against the wheel.
Eddie was still crying, panting on the phone, on the verge of a panic attack. I was surprised he didn’t have one already.
“Eddie,” I repeated. “Take a deep breath and listen to my voice.”
He began to calm down, his sobbing dying down to a steady crying. At some point on the walk to my car, the screams had turned into whimpers. I could barely hear the man in the background. He wouldn’t be alive much longer.
“I’m here,” Eddie said, sighing. He sniffed and shifted the phone to his other ear.
“Where are you?” I asked.
“I’m on Hollow Creek Road.”
I swore softly and shifted the car into reverse. Of course, it was Hollow Creek Road. It couldn’t have been anywhere else, perhaps on the highway or in a neighborhood. No, it had to be that road. It was just my luck. This would be all over the papers, stirring the whole town again into panic and excitement.
Let me explain:
Hollow Creek Road is a back road on the outskirts of town. It’s commonly known not to drive there, especially at night. Reports in the paper and word of mouth from locals have been spread around for years about the place. From strange disappearances, UFOs, and bigfoot to even shapeshifters, the road is a place of local legend all around the holler. But if you asked me, I think most of it could be chalked up to mass hysteria. Most unusual circumstances have normal explanations. But, living in one of the smallest towns in Virginia, locals can’t help but want some bit of notoriety, some small drop of excitement or attention every once in a while. Point Pleasant, West Virginia, and the legend of the Mothman is a great example of this. My town, and the local legend of Hollow Creek Road and its occurrences, is no different.
“Okay, I’m on my way,” I said, stuffing away my annoyance.
“Thank you, thank you, Jason,” Eddie replied, crying steadily still.
“You need to call 911; can you do that? If the guy is dying, he needs an ambulance.”
Eddie was silent on the other end when suddenly, the phone call ended without any forewarning. I didn’t believe it for a second until I checked my call history. I tried calling back, but it was sent straight to voicemail.
“Shit,” I said. “Shit.”
I put the car in drive and sped into darkness.
-–
The drive couldn’t have been too long. I didn’t check my phone the whole time; not as much as I should have, at least. I was speeding down empty roads, taking turn after turn. After a while, it becomes a blur of light and darkness. The white, dotted lines merge into one. The double yellow lines seem to disappear into the pavement until there’s a blank road full of space. This is what I think is so terrifying about any kind of back road at night. There are no lines on those roads; it’s just space. Driving there at night, with only your headlights and the trees around you, God knows how you’re able to keep track of where you are, what is real, or what is an illusion. Every back road has those qualities; a sense of complete isolation, smoke and mirrors, thinly veiled to hide something much more sinister behind it.
I turned onto Hollow Creek Road and drove at a steady pace. I kept my high beams on and went slowly around the corners, keeping my eyes on the woods for deer, and toward the road ahead for any other drivers. For a while, there was nothing but forest and road. For a moment, I stopped in the middle of the road to finally check my phone. Nothing. No notifications. No service, either. Of course, I could always use the emergency SOS call on my phone if we needed that much help. For a moment, I considered it, staring at the red swipe. I took a deep breath, shut my phone off, and drove on. Looking back on it now, I should have known how bad it was going to be, with the way that man had been screaming. But I can’t blame myself for things that could have been, only with things that are now.
And there are a lot of things now, I can assure you.
After what seemed like hours, I eventually came upon the crash, though it didn’t look like much of a crash from my view. Eddie’s car was in the middle of the road, seemingly parked there. I couldn’t see anything in front of it, not from my view at least. Eddie was nowhere in sight either. I pulled off to the side of the road and stepped out. The wind hit me again harder this time, nearly toppling me to the ground. I steadied myself on the hood of my car and walked over to the scene.
At that moment, the driver-side door of Eddie’s car popped open, and he stepped out awkwardly. He stumbled toward me, crying, saying my name. He crashed into my arms and I held him there. He smelled like blood, like pennies, and it was in his hair and, on his clothes. There was a musky scent on him too, like he hadn’t washed in days, which wasn’t normal. Eddie was a clean freak.
“Jason, Jason.” He whispered. He shuddered under my embrace.
“I’ve got you,” I said, holding him. I ran a hand through his hair and kissed him on the head.
Holding his head in my hands, I asked him, “Did you call the police?”
He shook his head, “My phone is dead. That’s why the call cut out.”
I looked at him, into his eyes. He stared back at me, shivering. For some reason, he looked vacant. Like his face had been molded to look the way it was, not controlled by muscle or ligaments like it was sculpted somehow.
“Listen, I want you to get in my car,” I said, giving him my keys. “Get warm, take my phone, and call the police using the emergency SOS.”
Eddie nodded, taking my phone. His hands, I noticed, were bloody too, the fingernails cracked and caked in dirt. I wondered how he’d let them get that bad.
“After that, just stay in the car while I go take a look. Okay?” I added.
He nodded, “Okay.”
“Okay, I love you. It’s gonna be alright, I promise.”
I gave him a final hug and handed him my keys. He took them and sauntered over to the car, struggling to take hold of the handle. He fell into the passenger and closed the door slowly. The car started up and then I made my way over to the crash.
-–
Where the car had stopped almost seemed like it had been staged. The car had skidded sideways, with black tire marks behind it, in a last-ditched effort to stop. The headlights were still shining, and when I walked around to the driver’s side door, I could see what lay in the road in front of the car. It was a man, completely naked and covered in blood. There were cuts all over his back, open like bloody mouths. I half expected them to be embedded with rows of teeth. Blood ran out from all of them, like fingers running down his skin. He was pale in the light, and the red shone out almost in a pink tone. The man wasn’t moving. There were no screams or whimpers.
I walked over to him slowly, crouching close to the ground. I avoided the puddle of blood all around him, no longer steaming. The wind blew harder and almost knocked me again to the ground as I squatted next to the man. I touched his back and it was frigid. I was afraid if I touched the blood my fingers would stick there like a tongue to a metal pole. The giant cuts were numerous. The accident couldn’t have caused this. Something wasn’t right.
“What the fuck?” I muttered, prodding the body.
I didn’t want to see him from the front, afraid I might be sick, but also to honor some memory of this man. But I was also curious to see, if it was horrid from the back, how much worse it could be from the front. I bit my knuckle and breathed into my hands. My breath hovered around me like a thick fog when I let my hands go. I finally moved around to the front.
His arms and chest were covered in the same cuts, slashed hither and fro, across one another diagonally. It had to have been an animal of some sort. His genitals had been removed entirely from the body and weren’t anywhere in sight. The man’s head was under his arm, and his face was turned toward the pavement. From the puddle of blood that lay under there, I knew there wouldn’t be much left of his face anyway. But I had to see. I needed to know what he looked like.
The wind howled against the night, blowing the trees against one another. They creaked and struck one another, rattling like bones. Chills ran across my body, up to my neck where my hair stood on end. I crouched closer to the man, reaching out my hand for his arm. My fingers enclosed around his wrist, which didn’t seem as cold, considering they were near his mouth. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I lifted his arm and threw it to the side. I opened my eyes.
-–
What I was seeing didn’t make any sense. There was no possible way it could. My breathing stopped, and slowly I stood up and backed away from the body. The face was all cut up, the mouth open, and teeth and part of his gums missing. One of his eyes had been plucked out and lay on the pavement like a golf ball in play. It was surprising to me that I could even recognize a face amongst all that gore, which should have been the last thing on my mind, considering I knew exactly who it was that I was looking at.
It was Eddie.
It was the face of my brother, smashed into the pavement, frozen blood seeping through his lips. My brother, completely still, and dead on the ground.
My stomach flipped and I felt a tug in my throat. There was nothing to throw up. I dry-heaved and kept walking back, away from the headlights. Everything had turned upside down now; the phone call, the drive there, the interaction with Eddie.
Eddie?
Whoever I’d talked to on the phone and in person, and who now was sitting in my car, wasn’t my brother. Why hadn’t the cops arrived yet? I stuck my hands in my pockets for my keys, and then, I remembered. He had them. I almost laughed at the awfulness of it; the sheer shock nearly sent me into fits of laughter. You see it in every horror movie and read it in every horror novel. No phone, no keys, no way out. It’s just you, and whatever it is that’s left.
And whatever was left there for me wasn’t my brother.
“Jason?”
The voice that called me came from the woods. It was a whisper, low and hoarse. It ran against my skin and ears. I cringed and stepped away from the headlights, speed-walking to Eddie’s car. I tugged at the handle. Locked. Fuck.
“Jason, please?”
The voice pleaded, like a child. It sounded just like Eddie, as he had sounded when he was a boy, calling for his older brother to save him.
I didn’t answer. I hid behind the passenger door and closed my eyes. I opened them and looked around me. I didn’t see anyone or anything. But I did see a few rocks on the side of the road, large in size, with jagged edges.
“Jason? I love you, Jason. I need you.”
“That’s not you, that’s not you, that’s not you,” I whispered repeatedly.
Then the voice laughed coldly, and it vibrated through the wind, carrying it across the road and everywhere around me. I shivered beneath the weight of it.
“Just come out.” The voice whispered delicately.
I leaned forward on my knees and crawled toward the edge of the road. I picked up the largest rock there was, and then a smaller one beside it. I held them in my hands and leaned back against the car again softly. I hoped it hadn’t seen me.
“You know I love you.” The voice tittered, in a voice that sounded like Eddie’s, except it was broken up. It merged from older Eddie to younger Eddie in quick succession.
In one motion, I lifted myself on one foot and crouched around the side of the car. The headlight blinded me for a moment and then I could see clearly across the road to where my car sat. The passenger side door was open, and muddy footsteps trailed on the pavement, leading toward the forest, into the dark. Beyond the car, I could see a figure in the woods. It was still, slender, pitch black even in the darkness. I couldn’t tell if it was watching me. But I had to take the chance that it didn’t know yet.
I threw the smaller rock at the side of my car, near one of the back windows. Immediately after, I stood up on both feet, lifted the other rock, and smashed the passenger seat window. It cracked but didn’t break. I heard the swift patter of footsteps from a distance. I panicked and hit the window again, and it shattered. Frantically, I reached my hand in, cut my fingers on the glass, and pulled on the handle from the inside. The door opened, and I leaped in.
I climbed into the driver’s seat and fumbled for the ignition. I felt the keys sitting there and started the car. I looked out the window next to me, and for a moment, I saw what looked like Eddie standing on the driver’s side of my car. He was watching me, emotionless. Then he smiled, revealing large rows of needlelike teeth. His jaw unhinged and gaped open at me, and he laughed, a shrill laughter that pierced the night and my ears.
I screamed, put the car into drive, and sped off down the road, ignoring everything else. I screamed for I don’t know how long, cried, wept, and pounded the steering wheel. I turned on the high beams and kept driving, not slowing down.
When I did slow down, I stopped in the middle of the road. I took a deep breath and kept my hands on the wheel.
And I lifted my hands, burying my face into them, and sobbed.
-–
The few days after I can hardly remember. At some point, I got home. I awoke in the back of Eddie’s car in the parking lot next to my apartment. As the memories started to come back to me, I wept for days, coupled with constant nightmares and panic attacks.
Eventually, I filed a missing person report after my mom called me about Eddie. She had been worried sick, unable to reach him.
“Have you seen him?” She asked. Her breathing was quick and panicked.
I clenched my teeth, holding my breath, “No, I haven’t. He hasn’t called or texted me back.”
“Fuck.” She hissed, hanging up on me.
A few days after that call, they found my car parked on the side of the road where I’d left it. They checked all sorts of cameras, none of which were near Hollow Creek Road, considering how rural it was outside of town. The only footage they could find was of my car speeding down the roads in the middle of the night.
In the car, they found blood and skin matter, all of which was Eddie’s. They questioned me of course, considering it was my car with his blood and skin, with Eddie’s car outside of my apartment, and the footage from that very night.
And the answer, at least with what I gave them, was truthful to them after the questioning:
“In a fit of unknown panic or mental distress, Eddie had driven to my apartment, unable to reach me due to me being asleep in my apartment. He left his car and took mine for unknown reasons. Considering there was hardly any gas in Eddie’s car as it was left there. It’s possible he ran out and panicked, but this wasn’t certain. As for the broken window and a few missing things inside the car, it very well could have been a robbery. And somehow, he ended up on Hollow Creek Road, with his blood and skin matter in the passenger seat of my car, and a trail of blood leading to the forest.” To clear up any wrongdoing on my end, I added in a quick lie that, “my brother had been suffering from some high stress due to his college classes, combined with his part-time work. He also,” I told them, “had a history of mental health issues, as did the rest of my family,” which was true to some degree.
Not knowing if this would clear my name, I left it at that.
They never questioned me again. They moved to other things.
There were no mentions of the broken glass on the road. They told me they had found no bodies near the scene. The road was clear of blood or anything that could have been chalked up to evidence of Eddie’s remains.
They told me, not word-for-word, that after he’d walked into the woods, he’d vanished without a trace. There were search parties for days, weeks even. Nothing.
Eventually, it all faded into dead ends.
And for a long time, the town was silent.
-–
It’s been years since then, and the disappearance of my brother has settled down into the long, mysterious history of Hollow Creek Road. The talk has settled down, and other strange things have occurred there since, but that’s not to distract from the frenzy it caused after it happened. There was talk everywhere, as I mentioned earlier, like what happened the night he vanished, and what kind of creature had gotten ahold of him to cause all that blood. But this talk never leads to conclusions, only speculations of attention-desperate townsfolk.
Even though it’s been so long, I don’t go outside anymore. If I do, the local residents will immediately know me and bombard me with questions.
“Were you there that night?”
“When did you see him last?”
“They saw your car on the stoplight cameras; were you going to see him?”
“What happened to Eddie, honey; where is my son?”
And I cannot answer them and never will so long as I live. Sometimes, I struggle to answer these questions, even though I know the answers. I cannot grasp the truth they might reveal to me or anyone else who hears it. It’s too much to bear. I might be crushed beneath the weight of it, smushed against a cold back road in the middle of the night.
I’ve kept a handgun on my nightstand since then, of course. Just in case it comes back, or even worse, comes for me. I’d like an easier way out if anything.
Sometimes, I wonder what my brother had been thinking in his final moments; if he knew what it was if he accepted his fate or had fought. I like to think it was quick for him like a candle being blown out. Other times, I don’t think it was that easy. I imagine the screams I heard and can’t help but wonder if that was him. Maybe he felt that thing tearing into his back and stomach, shattering his teeth and ripping out his eyeball. At this point, I don’t like to ponder it anymore. No good comes from it. The only memory of my brother now exists in Wikipedia pages and newspaper articles. I’m sure a documentary will be made someday, and his name will pop up somewhere in the mix. They might try to interview my family, and they might succeed. But they won’t get to me.
Whatever it was that took my brother, that turned into him, is burned into my memory, and I do everything in my power to keep it as far away from me as possible, and every single thing that has followed since.
Except, that’s not possible.
Because on nights like this one, when it’s dark and cold, with the wind blowing against my apartment windows, whistling beneath the seals, it visits me. It’s always in the form of my brother, always. I’m sure it has other forms, other people it could morph into, but it always chooses Eddie. And sometimes, it’s nice to see him. Because for a moment, I can pretend it’s him, staring back at me from the street outside my apartment window, waving at me. I never wave back despite my temptations.
The wind never blows his hair out of place, never topples him over, never makes him shiver. He stares at me, and I stare back. It’s like a horrible game of who can look away first. It’s funny when I think about it sometimes. Eddie and I used to play that game as young boys. I wonder how it knows that. It makes me want to smile even more.
And I almost smile every time.
Until it smiles back at me, jaws unhinged, darkness beyond them, with white rows of needle-sharp teeth and eyes, light blue, that glitter like jewels in a treasure chest.
And then, it laughs.
And laughs, and laughs, and laughs, and laughs.