Dark Tales

In the Night

Author's Note: This story is based on a true account. 

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"Christie, get in the car," my mom said sharply, placing her car keys and some papers into her bag. "Stop dwadling; we're leaving in five."

"I don't want to go," I mumbled, trying to keep the whine out of my voice. My mom hated it when we whined or were fussy. The truth was, I was still feeling miserable from a cold, and although it was a warm evening, I didn't feel like going anywhere at all. On other days I would have been thrilled to get out of the house just for a breath of fresh air, but today we were going to visit my mom's friend, and it would be boring, and equally dull and stale as being cooped up in the house.

"What was that?" I didn't need to meet her eyes to know that she was frowning at me, daring me to defy her.

"Nothing, Mom."

I joined my brother and sister in the car. My mom followed behind me, and sat in the driver's seat. "I'm hungry," my little brother piped up. No one bothered to reply to that - he was too young to really understand what was going on around him. He was always hungry anyway, even though we just had dinner.

Our destination was a small, run-down cottage located on a rustic road, and it was very peaceful and quiet. We all trailed in to meet Mom's friend and her husband, and while my mom had a chat with them, the three of us amused ourselves by wandering around the house, looking at pictures hung up on the walls.

Mom's friend was a very talkative person, and we would have been in there forever had her husband not stopped her in the middle of a rant about some badger overturning their bins at night. We said our goodbyes, politely declined their offer of staying for drinks, and trooped back to the car. 

Finally.

Mom smiled tight-lipped at us in the rear-view window. "Now, that wasn't too bad, was it?" She took a deep breath. "Let's go for a spin before heading home, okay? The weather's lovely tonight." 

My brother cheered and clapped and nodded furiously, his blonde curls bobbing, but then that was his usual response to almost everything.

We took at detour at an intersection along a route that we seldom passed. The moon hung like a silver plate in the sky, and I wondered if somewhere far away, Daddy was gazing at it too, and thinking of me.

We approached a desolated spot where a river pushed by on one side; and on the other, a field of wild phlox trembled in the breeze. "Is this it?" my little sister asked. She jabbed at a button on the armrest, and the window on her side rolled down lazily, like the curtains of an opening play.

"Roll it back up, geez! Did I tell you to do that?" Mom snapped tersely. My little sister bit her lip, and pressed the button again so that the window rolled up. We all watched the motion in mutual silence, until the window reached the top, sealing all sound and the fresh air from the outside.

"We aren't there yet." My mom sounded calm again, but I could tell that her teeth were gritted. She rooted in her bag for something. "Not yet."

She turned to my brother, who was gazing happily out of the window.

She raised a gun, and aimed for his heart.

How I wanted to stop time at that moment, preventing her from pulling that trigger! But time never stopped, and I witnessed, in wide-eyed terror, my own mother's finger brushing against the trigger. A loud shot split the air, and there was blood. Blood everywhere, splattered like crimson freckles on the window from which his nose had been pressed against seconds earlier, and now the three-year-old kid that was my brother lay slumped in his seat, in a pooling puddle of his own blood.

No one spoke. My sister was rigid in shock, and my arms shook, cold sweat forming on my back.

With deliberate slowness, she turned around from her driver's seat, and aimed her gun at my sister.

In her eyes, there was no mercy, only a cold, steady stare.

She pulled the trigger, for the second time. 

Then she turned to me.