Chapter 10: The last song of Mrs. Wilkes

Mrs. Wilkes's hands trembled slightly on the steering wheel. The night was dark, and the intermittent glow of the streetlights barely illuminated the winding road that led her home. Her heart pounded, still feeling the echoes of the chaos of the Halloween party at Black Hollow High School. It had all happened too fast: the fire, the screaming, the mayhem...

She sighed and turned on the car radio, looking for a distraction.

"Now on WZ-2340, the sound of doom... with a song appropriate for the highway:'Dead Man's Curve'by Jan and Dean."

A chill ran down her spine, but she ignored it. She gripped the wheel and kept driving. She didn't notice that up ahead, a milk delivery truck was slowly crossing an intersection. Nor did she notice the loose lid of one of the rear boxes, which came loose with each bump.

Another pothole, and the lid opened wide enough for a glass bottle to roll off and land right on the asphalt. The bottle shattered, scattering across the road.

A cyclist pedaling a few meters behind rode over the broken glass. His rear tire exploded, knocking him off balance. He tried to regain control, but his handlebars swung sharply and hit the rearview mirror of a parked car on the side of the road.

The rearview mirror hit the ground, and at that moment, a black cat hovering nearby became frightened and ran into the street.

Just then, a pickup truck was speeding toward the car. The driver saw the cat and braked sharply, causing the vehicle to skid slightly and crash into a trash can on the sidewalk. The impact caused the lid to fly open, and a bag of trash fell onto the street.

One of the items inside the bag was a broken bottle of cooking oil, which began to spill onto the asphalt, right in the lane where Mrs. Wilkes was about to cross.

Inside the car, she didn't notice anything. She hummed the song, trying to distract herself.

"Won't come back from Dead Man's Curve..."

Her tires spurted oil and the car lost traction. Wilkes felt the steering wheel lighten. She tried to correct it, but the car skidded slightly into the oncoming lane.

Up ahead, the now-empty delivery truck was parked on the side of the road. The driver, unaware that the parking brake was released, got out of the vehicle and walked toward a nearby convenience store.

A few seconds later, the truck began to move slowly downhill.

The almost imperceptible movement caused a stop sign on the side of the road to vibrate slightly until its loose base gave way. The sign fell to the ground with a thud.

Wilkes didn't see it.

The truck continued sliding, gaining speed.

Ahead of her, a man in a pickup truck stopped when he saw the truck spinning out of control. With no time to react, he honked his horn and slammed on his brakes, but his pickup truck was carrying a stack of metal pipes loosely secured to the roof.

The sudden braking caused the pipes to slide forward and detach from the front of the truck. One of them slammed hard into the windshield of a sedan crossing the intersection, causing its driver to swerve to the left.

The sedan lost control and crashed into the side of another car, pushing it onto the main road.

Mrs. Wilkes didn't have time to react.

Suddenly, she saw lights ahead of her. She opened her mouth in a silent scream as she tried to swerve, but the oil from the road still affected the grip of her tires.

The impact was brutal.

The front of the sedan slammed into the side of her car, pushing it against the guardrail. The inertia caused Wilkes's body to slam into the steering wheel, and her nose burst with blood from the impact of the airbag. But the worst was yet to come.

The final blow came when the unbraked truck ended its trajectory, hitting Wilkes's car and crushing it against the guardrail. The impact forced her head violently forward, smashing into the windshield frame.

Mrs. Wilkes's skull fractured immediately, but the pressure of the impact didn't diminish. Her bones crunched, her face was crushed with such force that her teeth flew out like projectiles. Her eyes bulged, her skin tore, and her skull compressed like an empty soda can.

Everything went eerily silent.

The radio, incredibly, continued to play.

"Dead Man's Curve, it's no place to play... Dead Man's Curve, you best keep away..."

Smoke rose into the night, and Mrs. Wilkes's blood dripped slowly onto the dashboard as her lifeless body remained trapped in the twisted metal.

Death had taken its toll.