Land of the Lost

“We’re all going to die!” her little brother exclaimed from the back seat of my car. This unnerved me as the one behind the wheel, I did not wish to cause his or her death. While I wanted to write this off as an asinine thing that a kid said unaware that it was inadvertently creepy, there was some merit to the statement. This fog was unlike anything I’d ever seen before. Making it back to the car was enough of a challenge, let alone the two-hour drive I’d have to make to get us all home. My hands tightened on the wheel and my whole body tensed. Amy gave me a reassuring look and put her hands on my knee. “You got this,” she mouthed to me. My anxiety didn’t dissipate completely, but it did help.

She turned toward him. “We’re not going to die, Sam. Jack’s got this. He’s going to get us home safe and sound.” He quieted down, but continued to fidget, looking out the window with a worried look on his face. I did my best not to let on that I was freaking out on the inside. Amy always told me that I’m not very good at hiding the expressions on my face. That made me grateful I was in the front seat, my telling expressions hidden from his view. Amy could tell. She could always tell. She was practically telepathic. She continued to do subtle things to reassure me that everything was going to be ok.

Besides the minute source of illumination my headlights provided in front of me and the lampposts stationed every half mile or so, the rest of the world may have well have been in darkness. It felt unnatural, like more than the weather. It was like a creature, a sentient being that wished to swallow the three of us whole. Despite my limited visibility, every now and then I’d get a glimpse of the woods that surrounded the road, their trees made bare in the cold of winter. These interval sights added to the mystical gloom of the fog.

I saw something out of the corner of my eye. At first, I thought maybe it was just the branches blowing in the wind, but I hadn’t remembered any wind before, only fog. I could’ve sworn I saw something moving through the woods. It was a blur, then it was gone. Amy noticed that I was distracted and I re-focused myself to make sure I wasn’t concerning her. I told myself it must have been another car on a nearby road or possibly a deer. It didn’t feel like it though. It felt like something else. It felt… dangerous.

Whatever I was seeing invaded my every thought and I nearly missed a stop sign ahead of me. Amy gave me a stern look; it was never fun to be on the other side of one of those. I didn’t take it personally. She was just worried about her little brother. I forced myself to pay attention. I looked both ways with incredible concentration and intention before driving into the intersection.

“Wait, Jack, No!!!” Amy screamed.

The still, silent world we had been travelling through exploded with the noise of the crash. The car spun, slid and screeched. My whole body thrashed and jerked at the motion. Their screams pierced my ears. I couldn’t make a noise even though my entire being was flooded with terror. My car finally stopped. The intensity of the sounds faded back into an eerie quiet, the only sound was the dim thrum of the engine still running. Luckily, my car hadn’t flipped over. I wasn’t thrilled we’d been run off the road, but it could’ve been worse.

“Are you ok?” Amy asked Sam. He nodded his head, his eyes wide with a dread I had never seen him display before. The fact that he didn’t give a verbal answer chilled me to the bone. Amy’s voice was calm and measured, but I could tell it was all a façade. It was taking everything in her to not completely fall apart.

“Are you ok, Jack,” she said. I didn’t hear her at first. Her voice sounded far away and under water. Everything felt so surreal. Time was speeding up and slowing down at the same time in my head. I was so shaken up; it was hard to come back to Earth. She put her hand on my knee and I jumped. Her hand remained on my knee and she stayed calm. The expression in her eyes repeated the question, Are you ok, Jack?

“I’m okay,” I said for the sake of her little brother. That was not the truth. I was rattled. There had not been a car, I was sure of it. Even if there had been, what kind of psychopath would be going at that speed in this fog? That was not a car. That wasn’t human. It also wasn’t a deer or some other soft and cuddly Snow-White woodland creature.

“We should check on the other driver,” Amy said. My hands still on the steering wheel, I nodded my head even though I could feel in my gut there was no other driver to check on.

“You stay right here, Ok Sam? Jack and I have to get out of the car for a little while, but we’ll be back. Do you understand?”

Sam nodded his head up and down silently again. He was in shock. I had never seen him be this quiet. Guilt and shame combined with the trepidation I was already feeling that I had let this happen. Sam wasn’t looking at either of us, he was looking out the window covered in condensation. He scribbled little designs into it in his obvious stress. I wanted to give him a hug and apologize.

The more I looked at him and what he was writing into the window, the more disturbed I became. Sam was doing it obsessively. Soon, all I could hear was the squeak, squeak, squeak of his fingers against the window pane. It wasn’t just random. He was writing a message. I made out the first letter, it was a, “W”. Then, the second, it was “e.” The first word was “We’re.” Once he was finished and I saw the complete phrase, I could barely breathe. It read, “We’re all going to die.”

“Jack?”

I turned my head toward the source of Amy’s voice and recoiled in horror at what was in front of me.

Amy’s head was smashed into the broken glass of the passenger side window, blood trickled down her forehead. It dripped rhythmically into the car. Every fiber of my being froze. I gawked at the scene in front of me unable to draw myself away. I teared up in terror and grief. Then, I remembered Sam, I turned around. His body was bent over, limp, the seatbelt holding him up awkwardly. I looked back up at his message.

It had changed: “They’re already dead.” Again, I heard squeaking. I looked around the car, the windows were completely covered in blurry mist. Some invisible force was writing notes to me from the outside. The first one read, “all your fault, Jack.” Then, there was more;

All your fault, Jack

All your fault, Jack

All YOUR fault, Jack

All Your Fault, Jack

All Dead Because of You, Jack

You done fucked up now boy

Fuck up

You killed them all

All your fault Jack

This kept going and going, changing the phrasing here and there, but the core of it was always the same: I had let my loved ones down. They were dead because of me.

I squeezed my eyes shut, worried that this crash had induced some kind of dormant psychosis. Then, I remembered my phone, I grabbed for it. I began to dial 9-1-1. The squeaking interrupted my shaking hands:

Squeak, squeak, squeak on the window shield.

It doesn’t matter, they’re already dead! The mist note demanded.

I ignored it out of desperation.

It rang for longer than I wanted it to, but a voice came on the other end.

“9-1-1 What is your emergency?”

“I’ve been in a car crash…”

“What is your location?” she asked dispassionately.

I struggled to remember, it had been so hard, especially with the thickness of the fog.

“Umm. I don’t remember, we left from… Charmed Woodlands, about an hour away from us?”

There was a long silence that I couldn’t make sense of.

“Hello?” I said, my voice going up a pitch in fear that I had lost the line.

“Does it really matter though?”

The practically robotic neutrality she was likely trained on to keep victims or criminals calm in tense situations evaporated into an eerie, threatening tone.

“They’re all dead Jack, and it’s all your fault” she said mimicking the mist notes, mocking me.

“ All your fault, Jack

All your fault, Jack

All YOUR fault, Jack

Fuck up

You killed them all

All your fault Jack… “

Her voice kept going in the same manner, changing in pitch, tone and accent. At one point she sounded like Johnny Carson, then Johnny Cash, then the Joker, then Harley Quinn, and a myriad of other accents and voices. She/it kept changing what she was saying and the manner in which she said it, but did not stop, it was supernaturally relentless. In dread and rage I threw the phone against my window shield. It ricocheted and dropped to my feet. The voice continued to ramble on, but now it was a murmur. I still heard the phrase and I still was in the car with their lifeless, drooping, stagnant bodies next to mine. I pressed my hands against my face and screamed, then tried to thrust the door open, but it wouldn’t budge. My hand rattled against it but it wouldn’t give.

Squeaking again.

The message changed on the mist notes:

Trapped in here, Jack

Trapped in here, Jack

You’re completely trapped!

Oh, so trapped buddy boy!

The audio of my phone changed to. It echoed the mist notes:

“Trapped In here

Oh, so trapped!

They’re all dead

All your fault

Trapped… “

I snatched up my phone and tried to turn it off, but it wouldn’t react. I slammed it repeatedly against my window and threw it back down again.

Then, the voice changed. It was Amy’s voice.

Wrath replaced my fear as I heard it say what it was saying in Amy’s voice:

“All your fault, Jack

You killed me

And my brother

And it’s all your fault “

“Amy wouldn’t say that! She wouldn’t do this to me!” I screamed at the imposter on the phone.

“Amy’s my rock.” It was a cliché thing to say, but it was true. Amy kept me in place when all I wanted to do was spin out of control.

“All your fault

All your fault

All your fault…

All your fault, Jack.

All your fault, jack

All your fault, Jack….”

As I began to sob in terror and despondency, the voice changed, it was still Amy’s voice, but no longer mocking and cruel:

“Jack, Jack are you there?

Jack?

Jack?”

I picked up the phone.

“Amy?”

“Where are you, Jack?”

“… Where are you? I thought you were dead? Is Sam, okay?”

“Sam’s here with me. He’s ok. He’s safe. Jack, where the hell are you?”

“I don’t know.”

There was the squeaking sound again. The mist note had changed: “The land of the lost.” It repeated the phrase over and over:

Land of the lost.

Land of the lost.

You’re lost, Jack.

You’re in the land of the Lost.

“Land of the lost…” I said more as a question than an answer.

“What? What the fuck does that mean Jack? Where are you?”

“I don’t know. I love you Amy,” I said as if it might be the last time I could ever say it.

“I’ll find you Jack, I’ll find you…”

The line went dead.