Linda and I walk back towards the truck in silence. The temperature has dropped by over 20 degrees Celsius. It's freezing.
Consuela sits shivering in the back of the truck, wrapped in a poncho. She smiles at me to let me know that she is fine, and so I hop into the cab.
"Can you believe how cold it's gotten?" Linda says as she rubs her hands together and starts the car.
A moment later we are on the windy back road that will lead us through the woods and back towards the highway.
"Did you want to have dinner at the hotel with Benny and I?" Linda asks completely nonchalant.
I nod, but then eventually turn to her and say; "Why are you acting like everything is fine?"
It really pisses me off that she brought me here, and that a little old man has given me some bad news and now she's pretending that nothing is wrong.
Linda takes a moment before she responds, "I just don't want to upset you any more than I already have. I thought by coming here that Bob would help you purge some of your sorrow. I didn't think that it would get all creepy like that."
She turns to me and says with complete sincerity, "I'm really sorry. I really really am. I'm sorry that I got you messed up in this whole thing. That ceremony, where you were sleeping -- when Bob was chanting. That's usually good for releasing people's anxiety towards a memory. I thought that -- I thought that it would help you, not make things worse."
Tears start to fall down her cheeks.
I let the moment hang before responding, "You were only trying to help. This whole thing; and I don't even know what exactly it is. This whole thing is so completely upside down and backwards, that I don't even know where to begin." I say and let out a very deep sigh.
Linda nods. I think she gets it.
I can hear Consuela banging on the window in the back of the cab, but I ignore her.
"You know," Linda says after a moment, "I know of some recipes that are suppose to help ward off evil spirits. We can make some when we get back if you like."
In the distance I see a hitchhiker off to the side of the road.
The window behind me bangs even louder. I turn around to see Consuela pointing towards the woods. Her eyes are bulged. She's trying to tell me something, but I can't hear her over the wind whipping around outside. I look to my right to see if I can see what she is pointing to in the woods, but it's difficult. The trees blur together as we drive past them and the night sky masks anything between them.
As we approach the hitchhiker, Linda starts to slow down. It's a man. He looks like a hunter or a fisherman. Middle aged. As my window pulls up in front of him, he gives us a big smile when I hear --
"MIIIIIIIIIIIAAA!"
I look to my right, to see the Caballos Demonios racing out from the woods towards the man.
"Don't stop!" I tell Linda who is completely clueless to all of the commotion.
"What?" she says as I quickly lock my door. As Linda starts to speed up, the man who is only an arms length away from my door yells at us to stop. But an instant later, as I watch from my side view mirror, I can see the Caballos Demonios slip into him.
It's a complete Jurassic Park moment. "Object are closer than they appear" scrolls across the man who has now started to chase after us. He leaps for the back of the pickup truck, but Linda puts on the gas a bit more and we manage to pull out from under his grasp.
He lands on the ground. I turn around in my seat to watch what happens and, as the man stands to brush himself off, the Caballos Demonios exits and races back into the woods.
"Shit," I say and turn around to tell Linda that I think we're being chased.
As we drive away my heart starts to calm down, but I know that the beast is out there; lurking. Waiting. Wanting to destroy me so I won't what? Write a movie? A friggen movie?
I roll my eyes.
Linda can see my frustration, and so she reassures me that after she grabs some ingredients from her guest house, that we can create a protection amulet and potion. She tells me that everything is going to be fine. That I need to not give into my fears, for that will open the door for the beast. And no matter what happens, I am not to stop writing.
"Do you got that?" she tells me very matter-of-fact as we start to draw nearer to the resort.
"Yep," I tell her.
But what I really want to say is why the hell is this shit always happening to me?
Live - Selling the drama by FabCure
