She drove into the countryside on a gloomy Tuesday. It might be a nice change from the city life, she told herself. ANYTHING would be a nice change from so many… people.
The mountains made the air around the road thick with fog. She drove her old Chevy slowly around the bends and over the bumps. It was a retired 1980s auction police car, now painted in a shade called ‘cream puff.’
If only the criminals who had once occupied the back had known who would be driving it one day. Conservative old her, a schoolteacher headed for a mountain town.
Little police car on the prairie.
The rocky edges of the roads made tiny glints of lights for her to follow up and up and then down again. Her cream puff car wound down into the valley town with the coming sunrise. The light played out until she reached her destination: Cross Valley.
It was an idyllic town at an idyllic time. One white church, surrounded by towering trees with sunset-colored leaves. One library, cute and brick and with a large clock tower. One school – her new school – with giant stone steps leading up to it. A few crinkling leaves gathered around the lawns.
And one cemetery, steps away from her new house. She couldn’t help but notice that the largest tree in the cemetery, a weeping willow, was dead. Its tendrils were full of small brown leaves, fluttering and blowing away in the Fall wind.
Fitting, she thought, for a place of death.
From behind the tree, she thought she caught a glimpse of a melancholy girl peering out. But just as soon as she had seen her, the girl was gone again.
Probably nothing – just an early morning mourner. Time to settle in, she thought. Maybe they won’t follow me here.
After all, who could be so burdened in such a small town?
———————————–
A bit of an excerpt from a short horror story I’m working on about lesbians, death and retribution.
I’m working on a lot of stories, for a reason.