Horror House Presents

A Whisper in the Woods

In the twisty and remote roads of the Scottish Highlands, a single, small Mini Copper, with its three young occupants dives lonely down the abandoned strip of tarmac.

"We took a wrong turning Dwayne, look no woods insight here," Jess shouts from the back seat of the car at the male driver, her voice light and feminine. Jess is nine-teen with brown hair and looks and the body of someone a few years younger than her age. Been the only girl of her three that sometimes is a disadvantage, well with Dwayne anyway. With Tom, the other male sat in the passenger seat it doesn't matter. Jess finds him the sweeter of the two guys. Surely the better looking too, even though he is shorter and slimmer he makes up for that in his dazzling blue eyes and stylish short hair. Growing up in Cornwell it's a style Tom chose to stick with, which is reflected in the bright surfer t-shirt donning his chest.

"Damn it, girl I am the man here, I know where I am going," Dwayne replies, not hiding his sexist views of women in his voice. With his neatly cut hair and toned body, in his mind a perfect cocktail to pull any woman he wishes in. Only one has slipped his grasp and that's Jess, it's not due to a lack of trying either, she just doesn't seem to be interested in him. All three of them met at a party held by a mutual friend and he tried to hit on Jess. Her slim body and small breasts caught his eye and he knew he wanted her that night. But as hard as he tried she just wasn't interested, and he knew she had no boyfriend. At one point when he was watching her across the room he thought she was with a skinny, surfer wanna-be, who turned out to be Tom, who she only met that night too. And that was the start of their friendship, three years ago, which lead to them now all lost on some Highland road in Scotland.

" I think Jess is right, we must have taken a wrong turning. All that's out there is hills, fields and mountains. As beautiful as the scenery is we need to get to the woods to set up camp when there's still daylight. Are you sure the directions your dad gave you are reliable? I mean we could have looked on google to have double-checked." Tom says, trying to calm things down before Jess started another twelve rounds with Dwayne over his sexist comments. All too often in their time as friends, he had to step in between his two comrades, and today he knows isn't the time for such an argument to break out.

"Sure? Am I sure? Damn it, man my dad grew up around here, just because he's lived in England for over twenty years, doesn't mean he doesn't know the land. No, if he says it's this way it must be."

Tom looks back at Jess in the back seat and smiles, and she smiles back, the smile she always does to say thank you for sticking up for her. Tom and Jess both know she doesn't need him to but they both understand why he does it. Tom seems to be the only one to calm Dwayne when he goes off on one and he doesn't mind taking the bullet for Jess in the process. And to be honest, Jess doesn't mind either, she's not soft but Dwayne can be nasty and a few times she's gone to Tom crying about what he's said. She knows he doesn't always mean it and it's just him, the joky part of him but it still hurts. At first, she had a go at Tom for doing it but now she just smiles and thanks him.

For another hour they drive in silence, Jess with her headphones on blaring out various rock music from the likes of Muse to The Offspring. Tom sits in silence, looking out the window taking pictures of the scenery which he finds just breathtaking and too arrestable to snap pictures of. Dwayne on the other hand sits ever more nervously trying to decipher what his dad wrote down for him to what he sees around him. Damn it, he mumbles to himself, throwing the paper down to the floor of the car. Out of the corner of his eyes, Tom sees the fury in Dwayne.

"we lost then Dwayne?" tom asks sympathetically, doing his best not to sound like he's mocking his good friend.

"Yeah" Dwayne admits, his voice only slightly above a whisper. "What we going to do now? It's not even like we can call my dad and ask him, I haven't seen a signpost in over an hour. Even the sat nav isn't working."