Creepy flash fiction

It’s there in the woods.

Dark grey, almost black, hulking yet skeletal, hunched yet clinging.

What does it want? Why is it watching?

I see him every day, when my little car climbs the steep hill and the autumn sun is blinding me through the fragmenting canopies of dying leaves.

I see him hunched and waiting, always watching, dark holes for eyes and something bright and sharp that forms a mouth.

I just get glimpses, just fragments of seconds. I can’t take my eye of the road for too long. I can’t neglect to respect the vehicle in front of me.

Perhaps that is what it wants…

To distract and dismay, to terrify and intrigue. Look its way for too long and you’ll lose your way, get distracted and drawn in, get lost. Maybe that is what it waits for. For the screech of brakes and the smell of burning rubber. For the skid marks on the road, for your dying hand lifting and falling. For scattered glass and broken bones.

The thing in the woods is impossible to fathom or classify. Is it ragged or smooth? On different days, in different light, I see one thing then another. Is it bony or fleshy? Are they folded wings on its bony spine or something else? Some growth or protrusion?

Is it scaly skin it wears, crumpled and dry, or is it matted fur I spy when I glance its way? There is a flash of something in its eyes, sometimes red, sometimes yellow. I know I’ve seen the hole that forms its mouth yawn and gape. I’ve seen silver flashes inside that dark chasm. I’ve sensed movement, something wriggling.

Its hands curl around the trunk of a silver birch tree. Sometimes the thing in the woods is further back… a shape in the background, a glint from its eyes, and sometimes it is almost at the roadside. But always it is clinging to a silver birch tree. Always it is upright and watching.

Always it is waiting.