Night out with the guys

About a year ago, I organized a night out with four friends. We met at my house in Australia and walked 5km to dinner as the evening cooled. Our route went through middle-class neighborhoods with little crime before entering a poorly maintained bush shortcut. The 1.5km path sat between hills in an old, dried-out creek bed with a fun, steep dip I biked down as a kid when the path was better maintained.

As darkness fell, I got my phone's light out in case of snakes. My friend Tom playfully shoved our mate Connor, who did the same, causing me to slip on the red dirt. My cheap knockoff blue Adidas cap blew into the bush when it fell off. We continued to the restaurant and didn't drink since our Muslim friend's birthday.

Around 9:20pm, we started the dark walk back with some breakfast groceries, again taking the bush path. Discussing religion and politics made one jumpy mate nervous, so when we heard a rustle, I gave him a shove that made him jump and laugh. But five seconds later, a woman’s blood-curdling scream made my hair stand on end. Silently walking faster, we couldn't explain the scream, so I tried to ignore it.

Before the steep dip, I looked back and saw a flickering phone light in the trees, quickening my pulse. Casually asking if anyone else saw it, they hadn’t. The light followed at our pace before disappearing, leaving an uneasy feeling that something lurked in the suffocating darkness. Every leaf rustle made me jump and glance back.

Approaching the dip, I slowed, senses alert that something was off. Then the same raw, despairing scream echoed ahead, coming from someone in unimaginable agony who had lost all hope. I stumbled back, gasping to leave. But a suffocating malevolence thickened the air as an agonized, empty-eyed woman emerged, making me scream in primal terror. We answered questions all night about our haunted encounter before finding my lost cap mysteriously in my mailbox, leaving me hoping to forget that unholy night.