Graffiti glistened in the beam of the car’s headlights, wet from days of unrelenting rain still thrumming like anxious fingers against the hood.
Fuck you—the name of the fucker had been smeared into a gray blur that reminded Sarah of a tornado. In the rain, it seemed to gyrate.
“Someone pissed off the wrong bitch,” Aaron said. He cut the engine and flicked off the lights to her car. Sarah hugged her biology book closer to her chest, taking bizarre comfort in its solidity.
“Where are we?” she asked, reaching for the keys.
Aaron shoved them into his pocket and held a flashlight to his face, illuminating too-pale skin, a grotesque claw-like nose, and long, yellow teeth. “A spooky cemetery,” he chortled. “Mwah-ha-ha!”
“You said we’d go straight to class. We’re already late and—”
He put a hand across her mouth. “You worry too much.”
Not for the first time that night, Sarah regretted letting him help her. With a shiver, she recalled the jaunty way he’d approached her car, a thin black tear against the torrential curtain of rain.
“You’ve got a flat,” he’d said, as if she didn’t already know, wasn’t already lifting the car up onto the jack, tears running down her face and blending with the rain.
“I’m Aaron,” he said. “We’re in bio together, right? I was gonna walk, but this weather…heh.” He’d shrugged his shoulders against the rain. “Change your tire for a lift? I’ll even throw in some cigs,” he said, tossing her a slightly soggy, mostly empty pack.
She didn’t recognize him from biology, but it was a big lecture class of at least 100 students and his features were dulled with rain, unremarkable.
Now, he peeled her fingers off her biology book one by one. Sarah was tempted to close her eyes against her impending doom, but she kept them open. A streak lightning revealed the wooded landscape to the driver’s side, the wall on the passenger’s, and the cemetery beyond it.
“Come on,” Aaron said. She pulled away but he followed her, his body the looming walls of a trash compactor, pressing closer. “I said come on.” He reached past her and opened the passenger door that she’d been squeezing against. Sarah tumbled out into the mud and rain. As she scrambled to her feet, she tucked the biology book under her shirt. She didn’t want it to get wet. She was already late for class.
The driver’s door opened. Forget class. Move. Her body wasn’t doing what her brain ordered. It was too dark. Where would she go? The door shut and she heard footsteps on the gravel through the pounding rain.
Lightning lit the world again. Past Aaron’s approaching figure, Sarah saw a something move in the woods.
A hand grabbed hers as the world went dark again. A roll of thunder grumbled. The hand was hot, wet, and rough.
The hand tugged her toward a firm body. She heard the click of an opening umbrella. The rain stopped smacking against her cheeks. “There. Don’t want to get wet.” His voice was the un-tuned thrumming of a bass. “You ok?”
Sarah shivered. “Thought I saw a deer.”
A flashlight clicked on. Aaron pointed it past the cemetery wall, toward a slash of black etched against the gray sky. “I want to show you that mausoleum up the hill.”
Neither spoke as he pushed through the rusty gate and into the graveyard proper, holding Sarah tight against him under the cover of the umbrella, as if the rain might melt her away from him.
As they walked, Sarah wanted to keep her eyes to the flashlight’s beam, but the darkness pulled her gaze. On the crest of a hill was the jagged outline of a tree, and something else, vaguely human, crouched beside it. A flash of lightning came, revealing nothing but the tree.
She heard a step, not theirs. Someone else. Someone else!
She jerked her arm back, out of Aaron’s grasp and began to run down the hill. She slipped in the mud. The flashlight clicked off. She felt her hands connect with oozing mud as darkness swallowed the world. Her biology book slipped from her grasp. She could hear him, breathing close to her ear. She could smell his cloying breath, sweet like lilies with a sour hint of formaldehyde.
“Let’s. Go.” His hands were rough shackles on her wrist.
She reached for the book with her free hand and grabbed something rough and heavy, which she swung at him. He let go with a hiss. She started to run to the car, but stopped.
He had the keys. There was nowhere to go. She turned around to face him, still clenching the rock in her hand.
Lightning revealed him, a few feet from her, dripping in the rain. Behind him was another figure. The light vanished and there was only darkness and thunder.
“That was very stupid.” His steps squelched as he walked toward her.
Another lighting flash and Sarah saw her clearly, a goddess etched in bronze with black hair that flowed around her naked form, nearly touching her cloven feet. She smiled at Sarah and brought a finger to her lips. The world went dark. Thunder exploded. Sarah heard a scream. The rock in hand was sticky.
The next flash revealed an empty hill, save the umbrella, which lay torn and lifeless on the ground. The flashlight rolled to Sarah’s feet. She reached into her pocket and felt the jagged edge of a car key. She let the bloody rock fall to the ground as she bent down to pick up her soaked text book.
She got in the car and started the engine. In the beam of the headlights, she caught a doe sprinting toward the woods.
She lit a cigarette and gave thanks as she drove to class.
