The Witch Wood Demon, by H.A. Handy

The Witch Wood Demon
By H.A. Handy

Copyrighted material. Do not reprint without express permission from the author.

A strand of dark brown hair flew out from inside Angelica's coat hood and taunted her around her eyes. She couldn't put it back because there was a small rise in the road and it was taking all her strength to pull the card hood, and the man on it, over it.

Everything around them was quiet, blanketed by the snow and cold. The man hadn't made any sounds for the past several minutes. Just as soon as they were over the rise, Angelica promised herself, she would check on him and make sure he was still alive.

She didn't look up, she didn't keep her eyes from the snow ahead of her. One foot plowing into the snow on the road after the other was all she could concentrate on. That and not letting go of the jumper cables she was currently using as ropes to pull the car hood with it's heavy load. When they reached slick spots where there was more ice than snow it was far easier to pull, but up the rise with all of the snow and occasional icy patches, it felt as if she had been straining and trudging for centuries.

At the top of the rise, Angelica stopped. The car hood was pulling back on her hard, so she went on a couple more feet before her legs collapsed and she ended up face first in the snow just starting over the little rise. The car hood was perched precariously on the very top. If she remembered correctly, there weren't any more little hills between here and Wilmington's outskirts.

On hands and knees, Angelica crawled around to the hood and uncovered the man's face. The huge gash on his forehead had stopped bleeding. Actually it had frozen. He was breathing in shallow fits, but still breathing. That was good. The stench of alcohol came off him in waves, making her empty stomach want to empty itself even further, if that was possible. "Not here, not yet," she told herself. "Not much farther though." That was true wasn't it? It really wasn't that much farther to town?

Angelica had traveled these roads pretty much all her teenage years and every summer when she was in college. She knew them like the back of her hand. Since Uncle Greg had died she hadn't really been back to Wilmington, Virginia that much. There were always some excuse to keep her away. It was surprising to realize it had actually been three years since she had returned. Still, as she turned off the highway and on to the back spur, everything looked as if it hadn't changed at all since she was in high school.

The mountain roads had been just as curvy, and there was snow everywhere, since it was December. Wilmington always seemed to have snow. No matter if the rest of the world was ninety degrees Fahrenheit, Wilmington would always have snow, and a lot of it, for Christmas and New Year's, right up until February. It was just something everyone had come to accept, and expect.

Angelica had been driving carefully, her truck loaded with all it's necessities for winter driving when the car came around a curve on her side, lost control and crashed into her. He was drunk as a skunk and yelling he was dead. Both legs were broken so there was no walking for him, and he also seemed to have a couple of broken ribs. Hopefully he wouldn't have a collapsed lung by the time she got him to Wilmington.

The hood of his car had flown off, it looked to have been tied down with a bungie. She got him onto that and started trudging. She couldn't leave him there. He would have been frozen stiff by the time someone had been able to get back to him. Besides, you didn't leave a neighbor in trouble. Isn't that what Uncle Greg had always said?

Something moved in the trees up on the hill to Angelica's right. Sitting still, Angelica slowed her breath. Her eyes and ears alert. Nothing moved again.

"Rest period is now over class," Angelica said to the man, who was unconscious and uncaring. "We will continue now." Angelica went around to the double set of jumper calbes and picked them up again. The grade on this side of the rise was just a little steeper than she expected it to be. Nervously she glanced back at her passenger. Exactly how was this portion of their trek going to play out?

To be continued....