It was a beautiful late summer day in rural North Carolina. Myself and two of my buddies were on route to Atlanta to catch the Summer Ollympics. We were all recent college graduates who were all going to be headed in opposite ways after this summer so we took this as our last real chance to take a road trip without the hassles of work, family etc.

It had been a rather long night before we headed off and none of us were quite clear of the copius amounts of alcohol we consumed but in comparision I was the clearest headed. Coming from a small midwestern town on the Ohio-West Vriginia border we weren't intimidated by driving through back country mountain roads.

Two hours into our trip we had just passed into North Carolina from our motel stopover last night and I had heard about a huge traffic jam on the only major highway. We anticipated how long it would take after pulling into a small town diner in whatever little town we were near. After ordering breakfast and watching my buddy Steve flirt with the cute country waitress I pulled out the map and tried to find an alternate course.

I read through all the nearby roads and saw no option which looked enticing. All the major roads intertwined with the major interstate and was sure to be congested from people coming off and thinking it would be quicker. I slapped my forehead in aggrevation before a road caught my mind. I overlooked it at first because it looked like it was lightly drawn on the map.

I looked over at my buddy Case and asked him if he saw the same road I saw. As he looked at the map a strange old man who looked like a monnshiner turned around from the booth behind me and spoke in a high pitched tone which shocked me.

I turned around and saw the haggled looking man and smelt the whiskey on his breath, just great a old drunk to contend with.

"Young fellas I must warn ya on somethin. Stay on the main road if you know whats good for ya."

I looked at the old man and was perplexed, firstly this guy was obviously a drunk. How had he known my intended path and why did he care? " Ok first of all who are you?"

"Just a old feller who has lived here my whole life youngin."

I chuckled as this obvious old fool was trying to get me frazzled. He must have seen my plates and realized we were out of town. My buddy Case who believed in ghosts and wendigos looked up and asked the old man why we should avoid the little road.

" Fellers have gone down that road before and their vehicles have been found near the road abandoned.There's a rumor of a covenant of backroad witches who were abandoned as children and turned to magic to survive."

"Wait right there bud, witches? Come now you must be pulling our chain."

"Feller I wish I was doing just that but I have seen things that still haunt my dreams and i'm tellin ya there's evil back there on em roads. "

Case looked like a frightened child as he was eating all of this up and Steve had gone up to the diner bar and started chatting up the waitress. I was the one who had righted these knuckleheads and maintained a stable head.

"Ok thanks bud, I think we'll be fine." I turned around dismissing this tale of hocus pocus from some Willie Nelson wannabe.

" Allright feller don't say you weren't warned."

Case looked at me wild eyed. "Peter I really think we should pay heed to the man. He's a local after all."

"Oh yes Case I guess we should watch out for the black eyed children and the woman in white too. Oh maybe we should head back home because of those hicks in delivereance too." Several diner patrons gave me a dirty look as they heard me insult their town.

I motioned for Steve to head back and paid our bill and ushered him and Case out.

Despite numerous protests I decided to take the hidden route which caused Case to retell the story to Steve in an attempt to persuade me to turn around.

"Are they hot witches?"Steve asked which elicited a chuckle from me and a groan of disgust from Steve.

After a few miles of bickring I turned off onto the rural road and noticed how beaten it looked and thought most people must have avoided it and so had the city road keepers.

"OOOOHHHHHHHH here we go Case, lions and tiger and bears oh my. "

"Douchebag"

I continued prodding Case as I drove down the road asking him if he had seen any monsters. He was sitting in the backseat not answering while I took my eyes off the road to playfully slap him when all of a sudden a woman ran right out in front of me. "Shit!" I tried to swerve safely but at over 70 miles per hour I turned too hard and began spinning out until my tires popped almost as if I ran over a spike strip.

I hit the brakes as we span out of control making four complete turns until we stopped miracously unscathed. Steve Case, and myself all trie to gather our thoughts when we noticed the flat tires after exiting the vehicle.

"What was that?" Steve asked

"There was some girl in the middle of the road, you didn't see her?"

Steve shook his head no. Case began panicking as he noticed we were surrounded on all sides by deep forest and mountains. I looked around and saw him breathing heavily."Cal down man it's just a popped tire."

He went white as he looked 8 feet ahead and pointed. I looked over and went white as well...there was a police strip in the middle of the road. What was a f@##in spike strip doing out here?

Steve walked up to the strip and kneeled down inspecting it. Staring at it for a few tense moments the meathead studied it and discovered something odd about it. He motioned for us to come over and we did slowly.

"Do you see that?"

I looked down at it and noticed something very very odd about the strip. It appeared normal except for a few strange details. Firstly the spike strip contained what looked more like a crudely made substance than steel and secondly it appeared to contain what looked like a human tooth! In the center looked like a silver filling.

Case was freaked out and turned away. "What the hell man"

Steve looked at me and for one of the first times I had known him he looked freaked out. "Its a tooth dude a f122in tooth!"

Case looked towards the side of the road and screamed aloud. "Who are you and why are you hiding?"

I asked him why or who he was yelling and he simply whispered "There's someone out there. I saw movement."

"There's bears out here dude"Steve said.

"No it's a person, a woman I saw her.

I was starting to get angry and a little scared as I began piecing together the events leading up to here. First a woman appeared in the middle of this abandoned road, second a spike strip made crudely and having a human toot and now a woman spying on us. Was the old man right?

I joined Case as he screamed causing Steve to look at us both as if we were lunatics. After screaming for over three minutes our voices were starting to turn ragged and we stopped.

I scanned the forest area and swore I saw something move. "Who's there come out now!" The figure turned and ran deep into the forest.

I motioned for Steve and Case to join me but they resisted and urged me to just put on the spare tires.

I noticed that the sun had begun to set and I decided it was best to comply. After jacking up my car and changing the tires like a Nascar pit crew I felt as if something was watching me. If you've ever felt the hairs on the back of your neck stand up you know how eerie it could be. I quickly took out the jack and we all got into the car and sped away in the opposite direction.

We exited the abandoned road and checked into a old motel which ironically was owned by the hagrid old man and his wife. He eyed me suspiciously and noted the scared looks on our faces. He just nodded but said nothing.

As I drove in front of our room I was glad to have several other patrons around me. As I lugged my belongings into the motel I heard Steve said he was gonna get some food to go from the diner we ate at that morning. As I heard the engine turn over I heard him yell at me like I forgot something.

I asked him what it was and he said it was a VHS tape. Odd I thought I didn't pack any VHS tape but I took it as he handed it to me before driving off. I carried the video in my hand and noticed our room had a VHS player which I found odd but decided to pop in the tape and maybe catch some porn that Case had brought.

Case had called his girlfriend and told her he had planned on being back next week. He went into the bathroom and took a shower. I watched the tape as it began like a poorly grainy video, still thinking it was porn I was greeted with a young woman who was staring directly at the tape recorde. Her face contained a few odd features. She was attractive but she had two distinctive tatoos on both sides of her eyes. It looked like a crucifex on one side and and six sided star on the next. Her eyes appeared dark and almost black. In the background it looked like she was in an old cabin.

After staring at the camera for about ten seconds she spoke in a twangy voice. " Hello I would like you to see something. Bring him in girls."

There behind her were four other girls and the original one appeared to grab the camera and move to the center of a very rustic looking room. Was this some kind of bondage tape?

In the center of the room was a middle aged man in a buisness suit. His jet black hair was disheveled and he had cuts all over his face. Weird fetish dude I thought.

As the man was forced to sit down the four girls who all seemed to have tatoos on their face like the first surrounded the man who began panting loudly. They all clasped hands and began chanting something foreign.

The buisness man tried to stand up but each time he was pushed back down by some sort of invisible hand. I began to feel very odd as I noticed that the man who at first seemed to be much taller than the girls when he came in was now shorter than him as he stood up.

Weirdness ensued as the women continued chanting faster and faster! The man began screaming a terrible scream getting higher pitched with each passing moment.

Soon the man had seemed to shrink down to the size of a Ken doll. The four girls all stopped chanting and I heard the twangy voiced camerawoman instruct the girls to complete the ritual.

What was I watching? I didn't know but I was intrigued and nervously started biting my fingernails.

One girl pulled out a wicked looking knife and watched as the other three picked up the screaming doll sized man. I heard a frightening mix of laughter and screams as the man was now being pinned down and strapped down by duck tape rendering him helpless.

The girl with the knife instructed one of the girls to do step one. The girl approached the tiny man who had a mask of pain on his face. She slowly began to disrobe revealing her flesh which was not matching her near flawless young face. Her body had burn marks on it and groteque looking carvings all over her.

She began to lower her burnt like flesh onto the man and I heard screams of pain as she lowered her ass on top of him causing him to scream and cry. She gigled and smiled a sadistic grin as she began gringing the man below her ass crushing him and rendering him a mangled mess. Nearly two minutes of this went on before she got off hi revealing a bloody but still alive man.

She took one of his arms and took the ugly knife to it. The man was too weak to scream as she took the knife blade and sliced off his right arm. Blood splattered as his arm came off. The took the arm and brought it to her lips and put it in her mouth before swallowing it whole. "MMMM tastes better than chicken."

After the arm slid down her throat I heard an inhuman sound as she groaned as her body processed the arm. She looked down at her burnt flesh and screamed as it began to peel away revealing flawless skin underneath.

She groaned in delight before taking a look at her now prfect skin. The other three girls squealed in delight as they took turns feeling her new smooth skin.

What was this shit?

As the video progressed I watched as the other three girls took their turns stripping and revealing similar like skin except one had what looked like scales while the others looked like decomposing flesh. They all took their turns crushing him beneath their gross looking skin before slicing off the other three ligaments and digesting them. As with the first girl their skin shed and underneath rose a new flawless layer.

The now limbless male was nearly dead and still as he was now almost unrecognizable as a human as he was flattened mangled and limbless. He weakly asked them to just kill him.

The four girls ignored him as they all complimented each other. The man was ignored until the original girl handed off the camere to one of the four girls and loomed over the pitiful little man.

She spoke to him unlike her friends. " Well we thank you for your sacrifice and we won't ever forget you." She opened her mouth revealing sharp like teeth before taking off not only all of her clothes but peeling her skin off revealing the most disgusting looking skin of the girls. She looked like a combination of a alligator-zombie as her skin had scales and rotted skin even revealing bone underneath.

She began to lower her rotted behind to the mangled man and landed down on him rougly crushing the remains of his bones and squeezing all but a minute fraction of life from him. Her disgusting rotted flesh ground him to paste before standing up and taking the knife to his neck.

She took the knife and sliced off his head before popping it into her mouth and swallowing. Within moments she had grown a new flawless layer of skin before revealing bigger boobs and a more muscular sized ass.

She rubbed her hands over her skin and the video went black.

I was silent as I had no idea what I had just seen, I thought about all the rational ways this could be an elaborate hoax by Steve but it looked far too real to be anything he could have rigged.

I just sat there trying to process what I had seen when the still running video tape flashed and a grainy screen appeared. Was it on a loop?

I began to walk over to the tv before I witnesses something terrifying. A moving shot was being filmed and what I saw shook me to my core. There in the distance was what looked like a road similar to what we had been on earlier tonight. As the camera zoomed in I nearly crapped my pants as it zoomed in on my face before locking onto Steve and finally Case.

The camera then swiftly turned around and the girl from the first clip looked at the screen and licked her lips, but not with a human tongue. No no no what I saw looked like a forked tongue which was not human!

The girl continued staring into the camera before flashing her eyes once and they became totally black. No not just her pupils but her entire eye!

I felt my stomach lurch but was unable to move, who or what was this?

The girl seemed to be staring right at me as those cold creepy eyes never blinked once and she began to speak not in the twangy voice from before but a distorted raspy way.  "I hope you enjoyed the show....see you soon."

The screen went black and I rushed up to the tv and yanked the video tape out before taring out the tape and burning it with my ciarette lighter.

I ran into the office and confronted the old man as he was watching a Red's-Brave's baseball game.

He heard the door swing open and as if he expected me said hello. I told him about what I had just seen and asked him if he knew about this.

The old man took off his Red's cap and spoke softly. "Son what you discovered today was a lesson not many live to take advantage of. You see in thsi world where there is undeniable good and people who like me follow the words of Jesus there is a darker more sinister side of people who embrace the world of darkness." The man got quiet and teary eyed as he pulled out a golden cross and handed it to me.

"That belonged to my boy Wilbur who was a little older than you when he never returned from those trees on that road. I have seen good and believe in people but I have also seen the personification of evil."

I took the cross and he instructed me to put it on. I was never a real religious person but I know if there must be evil there must also be good.

It's been over fifteen years and I now have a family of my own. Steve and Case have long since  broken regular contact with me as we're spread across the globe. I run a advertising agency in Seattle and Steve owns a construction company in Jacksonville. Case is living in England where he teaches kids with learning disabilities. We all have kids in their early teens and great wives.

We've talked about getting together again soon if time allows but I doubt it. We all share an experience we refuse to talk about but i'll tell you  this I  now do two things. I have attended church every Sunday wearing that same golden cross and I never...ever will take back roads again.