A special thanks goes out to all the writers who entered last week’s writing contest! We wanted horror and you gave it to us! Our winning entry comes from Emily Sauer, whose story was a combination of both real and supernatural terror! We can’t shake the visual of this murderous hitchhiker! Check out the prompt and her entry below!
Prompt:
We’re asking writers to come up with a chilling horror story involving two main characters, a hitchhiker and the driver who stops to pick them up. For an added twist, both of these characters are killers. What type of killer and who ends up alive in the end is entirely up to you.[x_line]
The Hitchhiker
By Emily Sauer
Charlie couldn’t help but smirk as he turned out of the courthouse. They hadn’t been able to find the little girl’s body, he hadn’t confessed, there wasn’t enough evidence, so he was free to go. He remembered the little girl well. Living, she’d been about 5, now she was 13 months dead. She’d been wearing a little yellow dress and bright pink shoes when he found her. She’d been wearing white when he killed and buried her, out in the apple orchard.
Charlie couldn’t help but allow his smirk to grow as he noticed a young woman walking down the street. College aged, he guessed. She was wearing a white cotton dress hover just below mid-calf, and a wide black ribbon around her waist. She was walking barefoot. Something about her was irresistible, the same feeling he had the first time he’d seen each of those little girls, how sleeping in the apple orchard.
Billie walked down the street, humming a song she had forgotten long ago and carefully counting her steps. She had exactly five and half more steps before the sidewalk ended and exactly 3 before she would need to stop and turn. A smile spread across her face as she heard a car slow to her left.
One
Two
Three
Turning to the left, Billie formed a fist and stuck up her thumb, forcing her excited smile to turn sweet. The car she’d heard slowing down came to a stop.
Charlie rolled down the window and called out, “you need a ride?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Where are you going?”
“Anywhere you are, I’ll find my way from there.”
“Get in.”
Billie walked over to the car and felt for the handle, then opened the door. She turned and smiled suppressing her excitement again and forcing a smile as sweet and innocent as child’s. It shocked Charlie as she smiled at him, to see nothing but the whites of her eyes. She softly told him she was blind.
Charlie stopped suppressing his smile. This would make it even easier. It would be his first time graduating from a child to a woman. “What are you doing hitchhiking?”
“Following my destiny,” she smiled again, “thank you for picking me up.”
They drove in silence, at least not speaking to each other; Billie continued to hum. The longer she hummed, the more agitated Charlie felt himself become. Then he remembered. That was the tune to the song the first little girl he had killed had been singing when he had taken her. As he glanced over, he saw Billie staring at him, but she wasn’t staring, she couldn’t be.
Her humming stopped. She started softly clapping her hands. Billie was facing the front window again. She was whispering a rhyme she was sure she’d heard once “patty cake, patty cake.” Charlie remembered quicker this time. That is what the sisters were doing when he’d taken them. He glanced again. Again Billie was staring at him with her blank eyes.
Billie fell silent. She folded her arms as if she were holding something, and then began rocking them. Her head turned down towards her elbow, smiling. The little girl, the one before the last, had been playing her doll. He remembered because the little girl had seemed more upset at not having her dolly than her mommy. Charlie didn’t want to glance back over, but he did. Billie’s arms were down and she was staring at him through empty eyes.
Charlie was ready to stop the car when Billie spoke first, “Would you like to join my tea party?” She held out a phantom teacup to him. Just like the last girl had.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“What do you mean?”
“The humming, the nursery rhyme, the doll, the tea party!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Charlie didn’t respond. He thought it must just be anticipation for the kill. He stopped in front of his house, and then everything went black. When he woke up, he was in his shed, where he’d kept the girls. He could not move.
“Now you know how they felt.”
“Who are you?”
She came towards him, her blank eyes staring into his as she stuck the knife into his belly, as he’d done to the little girls. She began humming softly again and she untied him and dragged him into the apple orchard, to the tree where the little girls were buried. She slit his throat. As he was dying she whispered, “From Heaven you came, to Hell you shall descend.”
Billie stood, her dress stained in blood, and walked away, whistling a song whose name she had forgotten. There were 241 steps to the road, 306 steps before she would need to stop and turn.
[x_line]
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