“What in the name of Jesus is that?”
Austin’s eyes were glued to that thing on top of the hill over the pine trees. Then he started glancing at me through the corner of his eyes every now and then to see if I had any idea, which I hadn’t; I was just as clueless and surprised as him, but not stupid enough to get my eyes off the rocky, bumpy, muddy road in such high altitude, so I had to shake him back to reality.
“Babe. Babe…Austin! Austin, watch where you’re going!”
Vision through the windscreen was actually getting darker as we approached that thing, and Austin started frantically trying to turn on the headlights again, but in vain.
“Bree. Bree! I want you to reach under the seat and grab the flashlight for me. Ok, dear?”
I rolled down the window and tried to make some illumination so my husband could at least see where he was going, but it seemed like the damn thing had little battery as the light was barely touching the ground a foot in front. Liam started panicking and crying as it got darker, and I could see Breanna was getting anxious as well.
“Amanda, you get to the back seat and take care of the kids. I’ll handle the road.”
“For God’s sake, Austin. Be careful, ok? Go slowly. We can’t even see the road anymore.”
As the truck was jumping and shaking from the increasingly uneven dirt road, Liam started crying louder and louder, and it started to irritate Austin.
“Mom, where are we? What is that thing? What is going on outside?”
“Hush dear. Let’s not distract daddy, ok? Look, play peekaboo with your brother.”
The damn thing was only a hundred feet away from the car now, and we literally couldn’t see anything else. Like, it was almost pitch black outside except for…whatever that thing is.
Suddenly it started blaring, like…, like a really loud, ear-piercingly loud, shrill, and irritating siren. The sound was getting higher and higher pitched as we got closer, too.
Austin started freaking out.
“Oh, fuck’s sake! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! What is that?! What the fuck even is that?! What is that Amanda?! What the hell is that sound, that thing, what are they?!”
He started punching around, hitting the steering wheel, the door, the window…
“Ahhhhhh! What is that?! What the fuck is that?!”
“Babe…, BABE! Baby calm down. Austin! Austin what are you doing?”
“Goddammit Amanda! I told you to shut that motherfucking kid’s mouth. If he keeps crying like this, I will break his fucking neck and throw him out the window! I will break his bones! I will rip the veins out of his skin! Ok?? Ok, dear? I will do that I swear! I will run this knife through his gullet and drink the fucking blood! I will tear our little baby to pieces. I will tear him to a million pieces if you do not make him SHUT. THE. FUCK. UP! AAAHHHHHHHHH!”
He started hitting himself in the head and trying to cover his ears. The siren was getting louder and louder. Breanna started shrieking and crying as well. It all happened in the blink of an eye.
The next thing I know is; the car slipped on the mud and tumbled down the cliff. We were falling from an insane altitude. Everyone was screaming their bloody lungs out. Then, silence…
I opened my eyes but could barely move my limbs. I shuffled around with my hand and managed to grab the flashlight, which was surprisingly still working. I took a look around and the sight was absolutely horrifying. The large pickup truck had folded like a carpet. Blood was oozing out of my forehead and my face. A metal pipe was piercing through my leg and a bone was piercing out of my left arm.
“Austin? Austin…?”
I panned the flashlight around only to see his bloodied, torn-apart corpse with metal rods going through his head and neck. His broken ribcage was clearly visible inside his ripped-apart torso. Then the terrifying realization sank in and I looked behind.
There was no one in the back seat.
I must have been going in and out of consciousness at that point because I vaguely remember looking around, pulling the rod out of my leg, maybe even managing to get out of the truck somehow, and walking/crawling a few feet away despite my injuries. And I remember the kids being nowhere to be found. Though I still do not know to this day, how much of it I had imagined and how much of it was real, at that state, back then; I vaguely remember, though not as close, hearing the siren still, with all its eerie gloom, before my body gave in to shock and blood loss and I passed out.