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The Crossroads

“Seriously, Doug!?” Angela Martens nearly yelled at her boyfriend who she recently discovered was cheating on her. That would be bad enough on its own, if it weren’t for the fact that the object of his desire happened to be Angela’s ex-best friend and current number one enemy, Abigail Thornton.

Abigail and Angela had been best friends for life (or BFFs, if you want) since kindergarten. They shared everything, from lollipops to fashion taste to secrets to matching bracelets. And then, there came boys. Unfortunately, Abigail and Angela also shared the same taste in boys. It all started with Abigail asking Riley Morgan out, while Angela had confessed to her friend earlier on the same day that she thought she had feelings for Riley. When Riley accepted Abigail’s proposal, Angela felt heartbroken and betrayed, not as much because her crush happened to like another person more, but mostly because that other person happened to be her best friend. That’s when the competition really started.

Although it was obvious to Angela that her ex-BFF actually had feelings for Riley Morgan, she didn’t stop at nothing to get her own paws in the boy, much to his delight. Turns out that Riley enjoyed having two women fight over them, and that he was never really interested in either one of them. Typical. But although one would think that would be enough for both girls to make up, that wasn’t the case. They just brought their little competition to the next level. When Angela was dating someone, Abigail went to the other end of the world and beyond to ruin that relationship. When Abigail found a new BFF – Lissa Simmons, a cute girl with a plain face and braces but with a bubbly personality and a vast array of friends – Angela stopped at nothing to keep them apart. She told the most hideous lies about Abigail, and even blurted out a few of the secrets they had shared with each other over the years, like about Abby’s parents’ divorce, or Angela’s terrible claustrophobia. To make a long story short, they could hate and hurt each other as easily as they had befriended and loved each other before.

This was just another episode in the large game of Abigail vs. Angela. Abigail had seduced Angela’s new boyfriend, Douglas Neil, and had dropped the bomb at a party they both attended earlier on this evening. Angela felt furious and hurt, but not because her boyfriend had cheated on her. Douglas was notorious for his player status, an almost obligatory trait for a star football player. No, she felt hurt because her ex-best friend had succeeded in hurting her and publicly humiliating her again. The problem was that Angela couldn’t really blame Abigail anymore. So maybe Abby had started it all, but it was Angela who had blown their quarrel over Riley Morgan out of proportion.

And look at them now. Riley Morgan was a forgotten memory, yet they continued to make each other’s life miserable every day. It was her ruined friendship that brought Angela to tears now. It was the enormous guilt she felt at purposely hurting a girl she had been friends with for over ten years, and the terrible pain at the thought that her best friend was doing the same to her.

“What do you want me to say, Ang?” Douglas asked, his voice thick and tired. Obviously he had been drinking too much, but that was hardly an excuse. It only angered Angela more, because he was driving. She had trusted him to be sober or at least sober enough so she wouldn’t have to worry about getting into a freaking car accident. Obviously, that wasn’t the case.

“I want you to say sorry, Doug,” Angela continued. “Sorry that you made out with the girl you know hates me more than anyone else in the entire universe. I can’t even believe you fell for that. You do know the only reason she made out with you was to hurt me, right?”

He nodded slowly, angering Angela. Why was he so damn slow? Did he not understand anything? Was it mandatory for jocks to be extraordinary stupid as well?

“And,” she continued, barely masking her anger, “I asked you to remain sober, so you could drive me home safely. It’s obvious that you’re drunk. So pull over and let me drive before you hit a tree or something.”

Douglas shrugged and waived her off. “Stop overreacting, babe. I’m not going to hit a tree. I know what I’m doing.” She had to hand it to him. He was good at pulling the confident, couldn’t-care-less attitude. But he didn’t fool her. She wasn’t one of those timid, socially-awkward girls who did everything their boyfriends told them to, or who just shut up whenever their boyfriend asked them to. She could be really stubborn and right now, Doug wasn’t going to win this argument.

“First of all, don’t call me babe. I’m done with you. Did you honestly think I’d take you back after you cheated on me?” She raised her eyebrows, but when she quickly continued, it was obvious she wasn’t expecting an answer. “Now I’m being serious, Doug. Pull over and let me drive. You’re drunk. Even if you’re sure you won’t hit a tree, we could still get pulled over by the cops and you know what happens then.”

Reluctantly, Douglas sighed, but he did pull the car over to the side of the road. As he stopped the engine, he looked at Angela with the most sincere look he had given her so far. “Alright, babe, you can drive,” he said then, smiling at her. “But let’s not argue about Abby and what happened anymore. I want to be with you. I need you, babe. Who else is going to help me pass math?”

Angela’s expression hardened. “So that’s all I am to you, really? A tutor to help you with math?”

“That’s not what I mean,” Doug continued. “But…”

“Never mind it, Doug. You can drive yourself home.” Angela roughly opened the car door and nearly tumbled out of the car. “I’ll walk,” she stated bravely as she grabbed her purse from the passenger seat and slammed the door shut.

She began walking in the direction of her home, realizing that it was still ten miles away and she should probably call her parents to pick her up instead. She saw Douglas’ car speeding off – obviously he was as angry with her as she was with him – and realized only then that she had left her cellphone in his car. Her heroic departure from her now ex-boyfriend’s car seemed far less glamorous now she was stranded on an abandoned road in the middle of the night.

Relax, Ang, she told herself. Doug is going to notice that you left your phone behind, and he isn’t stupid enough to think you could walk all the way back home on your own. Or he’s going to feel sorry and come get you. Then you’re going to keep your big mouth and get into the car with him, and let him take you home. Drunk or not drunk, everything is better than spending another hour in this cold.

She walked a bit further, and paused when she reached the sign of the Lincoln Street Crossroads. On those crossroads, Lincoln Street and Faraday Lane, she was likelier to catch someone also coming home from the party. She could signal them, they’d pull their car over and then they could take her home. And if she had to wait for Doug’s return, he’d obviously notice her if she stayed here. There was a lonely lamppost brightening the crossroad sign. Angela sat down on a small rock, careful to remain in the light of the lamppost so cars driving by could easily notice her. Right now, potential murders driving by were the least of her concern. The small forest surrounding Faraday Lane and Lincoln Street was a lot more threatening right now.

Angela was not one to scare easily, so she remained remarkably unmoved when she waited for someone to drive by and rescue her from a cold night outside. The worst thing that could happen - that she could think of - was her having to spend an entire night outside or having to walk home. If only she was wearing more comfortable shoes, she probably would have made it. But in these high heels? No way.

Her hopes went up when she heard the engine of a car in the distance. She jumped up, took the universal hitch-hiker’s pose and waited for the car to drive by. But when it eventually did, it was filled with drunk people coming from the party, who could think of nothing else but to throw some obscene remarks her way. Angela sighed, put her hands in the pockets of her hoodie, and sat back down. Maybe she’d have more luck next time. These roads weren’t particularly well-travelled, but with most party-goers needing to go in the same direction as her, chances were steep at least one of them would be sober enough to pull over and rescue a damsel in distress.

Suddenly, Angela noticed something. Or rather, someone. Unfortunately, that someone was on foot as well, and looked just as stranded and unlucky as Angela did. The latter narrowed her eyes to take a better look at the person she just spotted. She was standing on the other side of the crossroads. Although Angela’s couldn’t see her that well in the darkness, it was obvious the person was a woman.

“Hey there!” Angela yelled, without really thinking about it. “Hey!” She yelled again, got up and started walking across the street. The woman remained unmoved. Only when Angela was almost next her, did she slowly turn her face from looking at the street, and did her eyes meet Angela’s.

“Hello”, the unfamiliar woman greeted back, nodding her head politely. “Are you stranded here as well?”

“Yes,” Angela replied confused. On the one hand she was glad to meet someone out here, so she wouldn’t have to wait on her own, but on the other hand she felt sorry for this woman to be stranded out here as well. “My boyfriend cheated on me with my ex-best friend,” she blurted out.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” the woman replied. Her voice sounded remarkably calm for someone outside at a deserted crossroad around midnight on a surprisingly cold night. Although she said she was sorry, it obvious didn’t sound like that in her voice. Her voice seemed detached, odd and distant.

“My name is Angela,” the young woman introduced herself.

“Nice to meet you, Angela,” the other woman replied, with a politeness that seemed almost just as foreign and strange as the woman herself. “My name is Carol Ann.”

“Nice to meet you too, Carol Ann,” Angela remarked, choosing to ignore how strange the woman was. Angela felt inclined to trust the woman. She may have never seen her before, but that didn’t mean anything. The town was big enough that not everyone knew everyone, and she had always been happy for that. She didn’t want to live in one of those obscure little villages where everyone knew all there was to know about everyone else and gossip spread like wildfire.

With a sigh, Angela sat down on the ground. The grass was wet, and this would probably ruin her jeans, but she couldn’t care less.

“And then,” she continued her story, “we got into an argument, I got out of the car, and he drove off, leaving me here. Just like that. I was stupid enough to forget my phone in his car, so I can’t even call anyone to drive me home.”

“That’s unfortunate,” Carol Ann replied in the same detached, emotionless voice.

Angela suspected that she was going to say something more when both of them heard the obvious sound of a car coming closer. The young woman jumped up from the ground and eagerly awaited to see the car.

When the car appeared in sight, the woman dryly remarked: “Never mind. It's a woman driving.” The comment made Angela raise her eyebrows, but she temporarily forgot about the woman’s strange loathing against female drivers, when she noticed the woman driver in question was none other than Abigail Thornton, her ex-best friend. The latter looked at Angela with a look that could only be interpreted as regret and sadness. But Angela wasn’t ready to give in just yet. Abigail had severed the last bonds of their friendship when she had made out with Ang’s boyfriend in the middle of the party, publicly humiliation her in the process. That Angela was stranded here at night was Abigail’s fault. Shooting her the most uncaring look she could muster, Angela turned away from Abigail’s car, and gazed off in the distance of the abandoned street. She vaguely heard Abby’s car gaining speed. Abigail had been driving by very slowly, probably to talk to Angela or something. She may have even picked her up and brought her home if Angela herself hadn’t been so stubborn as to basically ignore her. Angela regretted her decision of ignoring Abby the moment she made it, but it was too late to do something about that now.

Only when Angela turned around and looked at the strange woman again, did she wonder what the latter had meant with her earlier comment.

“What did you mean with ‘it's a woman, don’t bother’?” Angela asked her, walking towards her newfound friend sitting back down on the ground.

“You should only accept when a man stops to pick you up,” Carol Ann explained in a matter-of-fact tone of voice. “Never when a woman stops. You shouldn’t hurt them. Eventually they’ll all be put through the same kind of pain we’ve been put through.”

“I’m not sure I know what you mean,” Angela told the woman. “I don’t care if it’s a man or a woman, as long as they take me home.”

The strange woman shrugged. “Alright then, if that’s what you want.” It was obvious that she wasn’t very pleased with Angela’s reaction, although her tone of voice didn’t change one bit. Her eyes looked darker though, more threatening and less friendly than just minutes ago. For the first time, Angela started wondering what exactly this woman is doing here, late at night.

“And how did you end up here?” she asked, trying to keep her tone light and casual. She wasn’t a good actress, but the woman doesn’t seem to realize the suspicion in the teenager’s voice.

“I’ve been here for a while,” Carol Ann answered. For the first time, Angela actually heard emotion in the woman’s voice.

“My husband…” she began, “I loved him so much. And I’m confident that, in the beginning at least, he loved me as well. But then, things changed. He had to work more for the same wage, and we barely made it through the month with his income alone. We had two kids go, two little boys, twins, so it wasn’t like I could find a job as well. He loved them so much, those two little boys. Jonathan and William.” She looked so sad when she regarded Angela while speaking, that the letter felt like hugging her. She knew instinctively that this story did not have a happy ending.

“Anyway,” Carol Ann continued. “My husband began to stay away from home all night long. At first, I thought it was the economy, the extra hours he had to work. But then, I began to suspect something. So one day, I followed him.” She sighed deeply. “Turns out he had been cheating on me for a while. I…I lost it. I don’t even remember how I got home that day. And then…the children. They reminded me of him. I couldn’t stand to look at them anymore.” She shot a meaningful look at Angela, but the latter had no clue what the woman was talking about, so she just nodded briefly. Putting things in perspective, Angela’s sob story of how her boyfriend of one month cheated on her with her ex-best friend seemed like a cheap alternative for Carol Ann’s, which was an actual heartbreaking story. Angela couldn’t even imagine how it must feel like to find out your husband, with whom you have two children, is cheating on you. Devastating, probably.

“So then,” Carol Ann continued, “I couldn’t stand to be in my house any longer. I ended up here. It's not so bad here. Lonely, quiet. I enjoy it here.”

“Sure,” Angela replied. “But I’d like to get home eventually, you know. Especially considering that it's night. And God knows what’s out there in those woods,” she added, nodding in the direction of the forest across the street.

“Nothing for you to worry about,” Carol Ann remarked. “And don’t worry about getting home. I’ll help you pull over a car, and then you can let them drive you as far as you can go.” She smiled friendly at the young woman. Angela smiled back, although she thought the comment ‘as far as you can go’ was sort of weird. Didn’t she mean as far as the driver would go, or something like that?

At first, Angela had considered herself remarkably lucky to run into another stranded person here in the dead of night. But the more she looked at Carol Ann and her behavior, although seemingly friendly at first, she began to question how lucky she actually was. She was out here, in the middle of night, at a deserted crossroad, with a curious woman who seemed nice enough but occasionally made remarks that made her sound like she walked straight out of a lunatic’s asylum. Granted, Waverley Hills, the local asylum, was a fair amount of miles away from here, but that didn’t mean a thing. Maybe she was a lunatic on the run who had been hitch-hiking her way to here, and who saw a potential victim in Angela.

For instance, take Carol Ann’s dress. She wore a long, beige dress. But it was stained and filthy, like she had gone through a terrible ordeal or had walked a long distance. Apart from that, it also looked old-fashioned with rims and fringes, like Carol Ann had walked straight out of a historical fiction novel. And those stains…They reminded Angela vaguely of how pig’s bloodstains looked, something she gathered from working at the local butcher’s store during as part of a summer job. She hadn’t noticed that at first in this darkness, but now the moon was at its highest point, she could swear the stains on Carol Ann’s dress were blood.

Angela tried to keep an expressionless face. “Don’t you want to go home then?” she asked Carol Ann.

The woman’s expression saddened. She looked grief-struck, and Angela almost felt guilty for asking, especially considering the fact that she now thought the woman to be some sort of serial killer, whereas Carol Ann had been nothing but nice to her. Bloodstains? What kind of twisted imagination did she have? Now she looked at those stains again, they looked more like wine stains. “I can’t go home,” Carol Ann replied eventually, her voice the epitome of sadness.

“Why not?” Angela asked.

“They’re still there. And they won’t let me come home,” the woman answered, sniffing.

“Who? Your husband and his mistress?” the young woman asked, immediately feeling sorry for the older woman, who might have been chased out of her own home by her cheater of a husband.

“No, no, you don’t understand,” Carol Ann said, shaking her head. “My sons. My boys. They won’t let me come home.”

“What? Why the hell not?” Angela asked. For some reason, the way Carol Ann had described her twin boys, she thought the two of them were still young children, maybe five or six years old. Children that age don’t decide if someone can come home or not, especially not when that someone is their own mother.

“Because of what I did to them,” Carol Ann replied, too lost in her own suffering to notice the confused look on Angela’s face. “So even if I get someone to drive me home, they won’t let me come in. They won’t even talk to me. They’re so furious, but they don’t understand that it’s not me they should blame, but their father…He made me do that, it wasn’t…otherwise, I would have never…”

“How old are your children?” Angela asked, feeling a mixture of different emotions inside her. The most prominent one was anger at the children of this grief-struck woman, for being such stuck-up brats that they wouldn’t even talk to their own mother. The second emotion she felt was still confusion, because half of the things Carol Ann told her still didn’t make sense. But she easily classified that as being normal due to the stressful situation Carol Ann’s in, with her husband’s obvious betrayal and her children’s as well.

“Six. They’re six years old,” Carol Ann answered, sniffing even more.

“But then, how can they keep you out of the house? Just walk in, and tell them to behave or something. I’m sure you’ll be able to explain to them then about what their father did to you. Eventually they’ll understand.”

“You think so?” Carol Ann asked. “Even after what I did to them?”

“Yes,” Angela replied, not paying much attention to Carol Ann’s last question, but instead forming a plan in her mind. “I can come with you, if you want. You shouldn’t have to face your cheater of a husband – sorry to put it so crudely – on your own. Where do you live?”

“Welsh Street, 12,” Carol Ann replied.

Angela, who was already doing as she always did whenever she had a plan of action – walking around nervously to work out all the details in her mind – stopped dead in her tracks.

“Welsh…Street?” she asked slowly, barely cloaking the fear in her eyes.

Welsh Street was barely a street. It was a long, rocky road with only three or four houses along it. The last house in the street was number twelve. It was a notorious house to say the least. Old and abandoned, with wooden shelves pinned to the half-rotten door so intruders couldn’t get in, all windows broken and the roof only covering half of the property anymore. Although the ideal place for local kids to break into or to hold illicit parties, hardly anyone actually dared to enter the old Welsh House. It was called ‘the old Welsh House’ by all village people, like it was the only house on Welsh Street to begin with. No one dared to enter it because of two reasons, and the fact that the roof might collapse wasn’t one of it – teenagers looking for a thrill don’t usually stop and bother about that kind of immediate danger. Reason one was that the place had a particularly awful atmosphere. It was one of those few places in the world where people instinctively felt the urge to stay away from. It looked like a decaying corpse of the house it had once been, and it gave off the same vibe as well. The vibe of things rotten, things decaying, of an evil so great and overwhelming that walking inside that house alone was enough to awaken the slumbering evil again. The second reason was the local legend. The legend of crazy Ann and her axe.

Angela didn’t usually listen to scary stories, but even she had heard of crazy Ann and her axe. As the legend has it, one night crazy Ann went crazy and chopped her two twin boys, both age six, to pieces with her axe. When she realized what she had done, she ran all the way to the crossroads at Lincoln Street and Faraday Lane, bloodied dress and all, and hung herself from the nearest tree. It is said that every day on her death day, she still haunts those crossroads and waits until some innocent driver offers to give her a ride home. Although a legend, five years ago they did discover the body of local football player Darren Miller was found at the Welsh House, bitten and stabbed several times.

Although a rivaling football player, Christian Fames, had been arrested for the crime, the latter had always insisted that he had nothing to do with it. And if she recalled correctly, three years prior, the body of Harry Jones had been found near the Welsh property as well. Drugs overdose, the local newspaper had said, but Harry’s friends had testified that he didn’t do drugs.

Angela knew all those legends and stories, but she had always thought they were just that. Stories. And because they had conveniently left out the “Carol” part of the name Carol Ann, she hadn’t made the link with crazy Ann from the urban legend.

She gasped as she gazed at the woman, who still regarded her with the same, sad look, and nearly fainted as she realized what exactly was going on. If this woman really lived on Welsh Street 12 and really was crazy Ann with the axe, that meant that she was talking to the ghost of a woman who had died here, on this exact spot…over twenty years ago.

“You’re…dead,” Angela managed to say, as she put a step back. She could slap herself for not noticing before. The old-fashioned dress, the weird comments, the bloodstains, the coincidence of also being stranded here in the dead of the night, the location and especially the rope marks around her neck which became all the more visible when Carol Ann put a step forward, into the soft light of the moon. Worse than that, she was even partially see-through, like an actual ghost.

This was not Angela’s mind playing tricks on her, although she desperately wished it was, and this wasn’t something induced by alcohol or drugs. This was real. She had been talking to a real, actual spirit. And an evil one, at that.

“Yes, I am,” Carol Ann replied, like it was the most normal thing in the world. “Wait…” She then continued, raising her eyebrows as she glanced at Angela with the most menacing look she had shot at her so far. “You mean that…you’re not?”

Angela shook her head, as the vengeful spirit advanced on her. She was glued to the ground, so terrified that she was frozen. The ghost looked at her with a threatening and murderous glare. Angela was pretty sure the ghost of Carol Ann was ready to make an exception to its ‘I don’t hurt women’ rule for her, considering that it might regards this as a breach of trust as well. But it didn’t matter. Angela couldn’t move anyway. Fear paralyzed her, and all she could do was wait there until the ghost made its move.

The thing that saved her was a car horn. The sound was really close to her, and really loud, and it startled both her and the ghost. She was no longer paralyzed by fear now, she only looked startled at the car of her ex-best friend parked roughly beside her.

“Get in!” Abigail urged, her eyes glancing at the ghost in pure terror. “Get in, Ang! Now!”

Angela didn’t need any more encouragement. She pulled open the car door, threw herself into the car, and shut the door again as Abigail speeded off, leaving a most unhappy ghost behind.

“Why…why did you come back?” Angela asked, as she pulled herself up from the backseat of the car and breathed heavily, both due to adrenaline and fear. She quickly looked behind her to see if the ghost was following them, but the road behind them was empty.

“That’s what friends are for,” Abigail said grimly. And that day, Angela swore that, no matter what, she would never hurt or betray Abigail on purpose again. Because it takes a real friend to rescue one from the claws of a vengeful spirit.