The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Willa Wisp
by Mary Ann Peden-Coviello

We was drunk. No excuse, yeah, but we was. Got thrown outta the bar ’cause Jimmo made some kinda crack about the barmaid’s backside. Well, she shoulda been able t’take a friggin’ joke, shouldn’t she?

Was it our fault the half-witted lumberjack tendin’ bar with her was her brother? Was we supposed to know that? Even the weird broad in the shadowy corner was givin’ us the stink eye.

Yeah, maybe we shoulda. Ever’one else did. Pssssh.

So we headed out toward our deer camp. Jimmo swore he knew the way, but it’d got foggy while we was puttin’ away the Buds and the Busch’s. Jimmo claimed he’d just got turned around, but Bobby said we was goin’ in circles ’cause we’d just passed the same bloomin’ tree three times. He knew ’cause of some mark or another he saw on the trunk. Jimmo took some exception to this and whaled on Bobby a right smart while.

Good thing they was both drunk as skunks, so no real damage was done ’cept to their prides. They both fell to cussin’ each other out. Dumb asses.

Then Mikey seen a light up ahead. “Hey, guys, look.” He pointed down the trail.

Half-hidden by the fog, a woman was walkin’ up ahead – the weird broad from the bar, I thought – goin’ away from us, a dim lantern or somethin’ in one hand.

“Yo! Lady! Can you help us? We’s kinda lost,” Mikey called.

The weird broad stopped and glanced back over her shoulder at us. I shuddered. In the dark and the fog, she looked even weirder than she had in that shadowy corner of the bar. My fingers twitched. I wished real bad I had my .30-.30 with me, but I’d left it back at the deer camp.

Jimmo said, real quiet-like, “I heard some of the locals back in the bar say she was bad luck. Called her Willa Wisp or somethin’ like that. She only had the one drink all night, too. Gimme the creeps. Don’t think she’ll help us. Don’t trust her.”

But Mikey had already started down the trail after her. Bobby called him, but Mikey wasn’t listening. It was like that Willa Wisp, or whatever her name was, had cast some kinda spell on him.

Next thing I knew, my feet was traipsin’ after Mikey, Jimmo and Bobby right behind me. My mind was gettin’ as foggy and dark as the woods around us. All I saw was the flicker of the lamp in Willa Wisp’s hand. Then, after a bit, I ain’t saw nothin’.

In the Will o’ the Wisp bar the next afternoon, no one talked about the four deer hunters who’d abandoned their camp, their weapons, and two perfectly good pickups to vanish into the woods without leaving a single trace of their going.

(Will o’ the wisp = mysterious lights or pixie-like creatures who lead lost travelers astray.)

 

Fiction © Copyright Mary Ann Peden-Coviello
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com 

More from Mary Ann Peden-Coviello:

Fright Mare-Women Write Horror
Short Story: One Hour Before the Dark

Women write horror and have written it since before Mary Shelley wrote FRANKENSTEIN. This anthology is to highlight the fact women write great horror and to kill the fallacy that they aren’t in some way up to standard. They are. Read here stories by Elizabeth Massie, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Lucy Taylor, and a plethora of other great writers as they work on your nerves, get inside your head, and bang out some of the scariest tales written today. I’m proud to present these women for your consideration, as Rod Serling might say, as I ask you to step into FRIGHT MARE. Lock the door and windows, put on a light, and remember, it’s not real. It’s not real. Midnight awaits, monsters scheme to take you away, the strange and weird wait in the shadows, but it’s not real. Is it?

Edited by Billie Sue Mosiman, the author who brought you the SINISTER-TALES OF DREAD collections and her latest suspense novel, THE GREY MATTER.

Available on Amazon!