Hedgerows [OOC]
Nov 22, 2022 23:39:07 GMT -5
Post by withswords on Nov 22, 2022 23:39:07 GMT -5
Something I was considering throwing to the collab board but it's probably better suited here.
Title: Hedgerows
Author: Jonah Tennant
Genre(s): supernatural mystery
Summary: A woman walks back out of the hedgerows.
Content warning(s): N/A
Author: Jonah Tennant
Genre(s): supernatural mystery
Summary: A woman walks back out of the hedgerows.
Content warning(s): N/A
I walked out of the gap in the hedge, and onto the street. Here's the problem: I don't remember walking in.
It was purple evening, and I was standing there in the grassy kerb, looking up at the silhouettes of the branches overhead. When did it get so late, I wondered? My phone battery was dead. I never normally let it run all the way down in case of an emergency, like the one this was shaping up to be, but I had no other choice but to hoof it.
That was the other problem. I didn't know where I was. For a while I was too dazed to be scared, until something soft crackled from the hedge behind me. I paused and slowly looked back, to the gap I just walked through. Nothing but dark trees.
The sound had my hackles up. I jogged a little faster away, checking back over my shoulder every minute. No street lights around. But even as it started getting dark, there were no animal noises from the woods around me, just wind rattle and the occasional soft crunch. Sweat gathered on my temples and my back. Where the hell had I gotten to?
The moon was up, giving a sickly glow to the blue-black world, when I heard the car coming up from behind. When I turned back I couldn't see the gap in the hedge anymore. It had vanished around the bend I'd been running. I waved like I was drowning until the headlights blazed over me. The driver stopped. I must have been a sight because he let me in without a question beyond asking if I was alright. At that moment, getting back to civilization was more important to me than thirty something years of being told not to get in a car with a stranger.
The only other thing in my wallet aside from a driver's license and a debit card was a room key for some hotel I've never heard of. I asked if he could take me there, and he seemed surprised, but said it would be no problem.
'Havens Inn.' After what had to be miles, the hedge lined back road connected to the main street. Points of orange glow dotted the empty landscape ahead. Desolate with no other cars around. The guy had his phone GPS going, but it hadn't been working right since I got there. Suddenly, like he'd come out of a dead zone, it snapped back into order.
In the car, as the daze and panic wore off, I was suddenly exhausted. Everything was sore from my shoulders to my feet, not just like I'd been walking for a long time, but maybe climbing or crawling, or carrying something heavy. Taking inventory of my body, my hiking boots were pristine, way too clean for walking in the woods anywhere. My arms below the cutoff of my t-shirt were scratched up.
We had to drive another couple miles through the dark to get into town. On the GPS it was called Havenrand. It looked like mostly farms, a gas station, a Piggly Wiggly- I remembered what that was. I thought he was going to drop me off and drive on, but he got a sort of embarrassed look on his face and pulled into the hotel parking lot. The hotel, the Inn, it was a decent sized place, three stories, and it was the only hotel I'd noticed in the sparse town. A little run down, though it looked more from sheer years than from willful neglect. Lit up by the newish sign out front, the building itself could have been going on a hundred years old. We both got out and walked to the entrance.
My rescuer went right for the stairs. I didn't get his name. I wanted to talk to the reception desk, because I realized the moment I walked in the door that I didn't know if I even had a room here still, let alone which one it was.
The girl behind the counter was a little too friendly. I don't think she'd looked away from me once since I walked in. She had on one of those phony customer service smiles that make people look like androids and it didn't waver an inch as I tried to ask as normally as possible which room was mine. She rattled off my room number without having to look anything up, and I tried to tell myself it was because they don't get many people passing through a little town like this, except that as I tried to extricate myself and head for the stairs, she blinked and asked me:
"Did you have any luck today, ma'am?"
Against my better judgment I stopped and asked her what she meant.
"Out on the hedgerows," she said politely, like that explained anything.
I said no and excused myself. I'd have bolted up those stairs if I wasn't so exhausted.
There was barely a sign of life in the hotel. They had an ice machine up there humming, but that was all the noise I could hear. Not even a TV going quietly in another room. The hallway was long enough to give me vertigo; it hit me then what a big hotel this was for such a little town, given every other room but mine and the driver's on this floor seemed unoccupied. His was the only door other than mine on this floor, I guessed that had a do-not-clean do-not-disturb hanger on the handle. He had the room next to mine. He was shuffling around in there, maybe having dinner. My stomach churned.
I went to put my keycard in the door. Something whirred from inside. I put my ear to the door. From inside there was that wind-through-the-branches rattle I'd heard out on the hedgerows, and I couldn't remember what that meant, but I knew suddenly that I had known what that meant once.
I didn't have the guts to go inside. I went next door and knocked; after a minute, the driver answered the door. He looked just as tired as I felt, his eyes red and shadowed. But he didn't look angry at me. Concerned, if anything.
Holding my card to keep my hands from shaking, I asked if I could come in. His face turned very grave. He nodded and stepped aside.