Car Keys

By Destiny Bradfield

One night, a father and his daughter were driving down a deserted country road. They were returning home after visiting the girl’s mother in hospital. Listening to the sound of the rain drumming on the car roof, the girl began to doze off. Suddenly, there was a loud bang that woke her. Her father struggled with the steering wheel, but the car skidded off the wet road and slammed into a stone wall.

     After checking that his daughter was uninjured, the man got out of the car to survey the damage to his vehicle. Both front tires had large punctures, and the right fender was crumpled against the wall of an abandoned stone building. The rest of the car seemed to have survived unscathed.

     “We must have run over something on the road,” the man explained to his daughter. “Whatever it was, it blew out both of the tires,” he said rubbing his hand against his eyebrows.

“You can fix it right?” asked his daughter, shaken by the accident.

“No,” replied her father, shaking his head. “I’ve only got one spare in the boot. I’m going to have to walk into town and find somebody to tow the car. It isn’t that far from here; you wait in the car while I’m gone,” he said, staring directly at her as to read her reactions.

“Okay,” she replied reluctantly. “But, please, don’t take too long. I don’t like the looks of this place.”

Her father could see a glint in her eyes telling him that she was frightened. “Sit tight, I’ll return as soon as I can,” he responded, as he slammed the car door.

     His daughter watched in the rear-view mirror as he trudged off down the road in the pouring rain and disappeared into the night. More than an hour later the girl had noticed that her father had still not returned, and she began to worry about what may have happened to him, as he should have been back by now.

     Just then, she glanced into the rear-view mirror and saw a figure in the distance walking towards the car. At first, she thought it was her father, but when she turned to get a closer look, she realized that it was a strange man. He had a big, wild beard and was carrying something large in his left hand, swinging it back and forth.

Something about this stranger made her feel uneasy and as he approached, she stared out the back window, squinting her eyes. In the dim light, she could just make out what he was clutching in his right hand. It was a large, sharpened butcher’s knife. Thinking quickly, she rushed to lock the doors in the front of the car, her hands shaking as she did. She then clambered into the back seat of the vehicle to repeat the process. When she looked up again, she saw that the man had stopped dead in his tracks and was staring directly at her, tracking her movements.

    With a dirty yellow smile, the man raised his left arm, and the girl released a blood-curdling scream. In his left hand, he was clutching her father’s severed head. She just kept screaming and screaming until tears streamed down her terror-filled face. She couldn’t stop herself as her heart pounded and it became difficult to breathe.

     The grotesque expression on her father’s face was horrifying to behold. His mouth was hanging open and his eyes were rolled back in his head. When the man reached the car, he shoved his face right up against the window and glowered at her with crazed, bloodshot eyes. His hair was wild and entangled with dirt; blood layered the side of his face. He was covered in deep scars everywhere the girl’s eyes could see.

     For a moment, he just stood there in the driving rain grinning at her like a madman. Then he reached into his pocket, took something out and slowly raised it so the girl could see.

       He was holding her father’s car keys.