Devil In A White Dress

Sixty One

Brianna listened carefully to the low rants as she crept towards the cabin of the black man and girl she saw on the boat. To her utter horror, what appeared to be a father-daughter relationship now sounded like the angered conflict between a distorted couple.

Could it be the father was a complete incestuous pedophile?

Austin, on the other hand, ignorant as always, stripped naked up to his underwear and took a dive into the lake. His presence remained undetectable to Brianna. With the phone in her back pocket, the teen crawled past the vines and wedged herself onto the wooden door. Left ear pressed tightly as she eavesdropped on the ranting.

The noise was now jumbled up with that of chairs and tables being hurled and tossed about. This very moment reminded her of Mrs. Summers' tales she told centering on her abusive mother. How each day, her head was slammed hard against the glass window or hands getting pounded by the roller pin twenty-seven times.

When teenage Mrs. Summers was caught sneaking in the house through the windows, it was her Mama who'd deliver unto her the sinister and uncanny beating of a life time. When teenage Mrs. Summers couldn't take any more of the whacking and decided to run away from taking care of blind Papa, it was Mama who'd search and find her with the red SUV then drag her sorry ass to the house of prison.

But instead of beating her child, she'd rather beat herself up. Smash her head with the large clock several times and force her child to watch this senseless self-harm as punishment. Crazy Mama. She was the first of the family to begin this self-inflicting injury charade, then transfer it to a woman who now barely remembers her name.

Brianna heard another form of noise. He was banging at the wood with an instrument. Maybe a hammer. He was probably harming the poor child stuck in there with him.

How the hell could Brianna stop this man from killing his own "daughter". The bangs on the wall was getting louder, as well as Brianna's heart skipping. Shaking, her hand almost wrapped itself around the door knob and phone was being slightly ejected from the back pocket. In her mind, she wanted the evidence via photo, so she could file the abuse and assault report.

She wanted to be the hero.

But then Austin catches her off-guard. "Jesus Christ. Go away, you idiot", Brianna hushed him quietly.

"Do you think I'm racist, Brie?", Austin asked unbelievably.

"What?", she shot back wildly, eyes fixated and bulging with fear at the shock that the abusive man would easily step out of the cabin with a loaded rifle and blast both of their brains out.

"Do you think I'm a racist, Brie? You remember back at the dinner hours ago I just racially profiled Muslims for being terrorists. I don't want to be a racist...I mean, I just.... that was my view on the negative side of Muslims but......"

"Austin. Shut the fuck up," Brianna hushed, "The man in there will hear us."

"Who?"

Brianna forced her patient side to work, unaware of the phone falling out of the back pocket, "There is a man and girl that I saw at the lake. He was big and scary looking. The girl, I'm sure she's his daughter. He was being very aggressive and I think...."

"Think what?", Austin asked. Brianna stopped because her eyes caught something else. Boldly carved and written on the wooden floor were the words, "DEVIL IN WHITE".

"What is this?", she asked herself, but the phone had already dropped, and silence fell at once.

"GO", Brianna hushed, as she grabbed the phone, she and her brother made it out of there in haste. The black man hurled the door open, but was instead armed with a Browning Hi Power pistol. His eyes red, pulsating and filled with hate. The kids had been lucky yet again.

"What? What did you see?", Austin stammered as his heart skipped beats. The siblings ran into the deeper part of the woods, unaware of who had been hiding behind the shadows listening.

"I don't know....", Brianna said while panting, "There was a... some kind of writing on the floor....it said Devil in WHITE or something, I don't know. I got distracted...."

It got darker at approximately 7:14, right when Timothy and Toby had lost Carl in the woods but refrained from venturing further due to their "specific reasons", Austin and Brianna were bothered with two issues; how they would escape the nightmare or how they were going to risk leaving their parents with an abusive sociopath in the cabin next-door.

The crows started evacuating from the trees and this time, the snapping of twigs was getting louder. She came from nowhere. Behind Austin where they were actually talking to each other, Emma Woodburn emerged from the dark of the woods, armed with what appeared to be an axe. Her face entirely concealed, but her rage was felt by Brianna from a distance.

Within the nick of time, Brianna grabbed her brother by the shirt and pulled him forward as they both ran. Emma raised the axe in the air, following the siblings into a hasty chase around the woods. She didn't have time to scream, neither did Austin, who'd hardly looked back at the attacker. Emma whacked the axe from left to right during the chase and the sound of the blade ripping into the air echoed in their ears. Hearts skipped six beats when they realized that this was reality. It was peculiar, and utterly weird. No shouts or yells during the chase. It's like she's enjoying this, Brianna quickly deduced.

Austin's pants and heaving jumbled up with Emma's rapid footsteps, as well as the axe being swung in the air. Terrified, the need to ask his sister where the hell they were running to in the dark woods was no more.

Putting in much more than any effort they had, Brianna and Austin dashed back to the area of their cabin and one scream for help would easily alert the family. Brianna looked back and Emma vanished.

The siblings rested against the Jay Flight and remained breathless for some time before words were forced out.

"Brie. Was it the man that you saw chasing us right now?", Austin inquired.

Lie, Brie. She muttered to herself, just lie. You didn't see anything.

"No," she confessed in fright, "I couldn't see her well. It was some...woman.... I don't know."

"It was dark," Austin said, sort of backing up her lie, "We shouldn't have ventured deep like that. They're definitely lots of creepy things out there. It must have been a false alarm."

"Yeah," Brianna replied in a shallow state.