Shadow People – part 1
There is a road I used to take on the way home at night. The shadows moved strangely there, getting out of the headlights just before I got to them like people moving quickly across the street. One night, one of them didn’t move fast enough.
My tires screeched as I jammed on the brakes, but I was way to late for that. The thump and crunch sounds as I hit the man I will never forget. The soft but solid thump of his body being hit by my car sounded like someone hitting a large plastic garbage can. The crunching snapping sounds of my car’s bumper being smashed in happened at the same time, but seemed much less important than the living thing that I had just hit; so the impact of the body sound louder in my mind even today. I barely felt the car slow.
I wasn’t trying to hit anyone, I was actually being fairly careful; since deer and other animals cross that road often at night. Even though I had my eyes out for those, the man surprised me. As soon as the car stopped, I turned off the car, set the hazards, and jumped out, trying to see if I could help, but knowing that hitting a person at 45 miles an hour, it was probably impossible that someone could survive. I was right, unfortunately.
The man lay there, dressed in a dark hooded overcoat, blood streaming from his head and face. His legs didn’t look right, and to be honest, I was surprised he was conscious. He looked in pain, but didn’t scream out, or even moan. He made nearly no sounds at all. He seemed surprised to see me, when I looked him in the eyes. His mouth opened to say something, but he only choked a bit. The sound of his cough loud in my ears. Blood dribbled out of his mouth, and his eyes rolled up into his head. I lurched forward to help him, careful not to let him move in case it would hurt him more. When I touched him, my hands sank through, into, the back of his hooded head, and into his shoulder, then turned cold as ice in a moment. That’s when the man’s eyes locked onto mine, snapping back from his near seizure. They grew wide, and then he dissappeared.
Yeah, you heard me right, dissappeared. Like a cloud of dark smoke, his body just popped. I knew he was dead, I don’t know how, or at least back then I didn’t, but I knew. As the last wisps of smoke floated away, a great contrast to the violent hit earlier, I looked into the broken headlight of my car, seeing for the first time the blood on the hood. It wasn’t much, and I might have missed it normally. As wired as I was though, it seemed to stand out like a neon sign. It was then that I felt like I was being watched, that something bad was coming my way.
It was then that I got in my car and sped away.
Originally posted at Virtual Thoughts from eRoom-D
Tags: David Moore, serial fiction, Shadow People
[...] Shadow People – part 2 The original fiction serial by David Moore continues. Click here to read part 1. [...]