When I was in high school, I went out driving with my girlfriend at the time to try and find a quiet spot. We headed out of town for like thirty minutes and found a spot in the desert to pull off on an access road. Lauren killed the headlights but left the motor running. She drove a shitty Ford SUV she called "Timon" that had no cabin insulation left, and she always played the same shitty pop punk mixtapes when we cruised so at this point I'd lost track of how many ropes I launched in her mouth while listening to Good Charlotte or some other shit-tier band. Lauren undid the top of her plaid shirt and bit her lip at me.
This girl, Lauren, was weird. She told me she could see ghosts, which, yeah, alright sweety you're special and gifted and unique, but fuck me it got spooky. The first time I went to her house I heard someone come sprinting down the stairs so I freaked out and started putting my shirt back on before her mom came in. Then I remembered her mom was gone and we were in the house alone. I looked down at Lauren and she just giggled before telling me it was Georgia, the ghost that lived in her house. Another time I was with her and I heard every door on the bottom floor of the house unlatch, swing open, and slam shut at the same time. Lauren smiled and said Georgia was mad.
We couldn't go certain places because Lauren said she saw people who died there. She told me she was bipolar and seeing a shrink. I later found out she was schizophrenic, and they doped her up to normalize things. Schizophrenic with seizures, they said. I saw one of those "seizures" when I was with her, and I watched her deep brown eyes turn a glassy blue while she went totally rigid and stared at the wall. They came back to normal when the seizure was over.
Anyway, I'm trying my absolute hardest to get into her tight little jeans on the side of the road when I realize Lauren is staring straight ahead and not paying any attention to me. It's the same stare as when I saw her lock up and change eye color, but this time she's just staring open-mouthed at something when she lets out the smallest, shakiest whimper I've ever heard. I turned to look and, fuck me, I still don't understand what it was.
Past Timon's hood, past the edge of the dropoff we were parked on, about 100 yards away, I could see a ring of human shapes. They're all wearing black, and I can see peaks on their heads like pointed hoods. Honestly, my first thought was that it was a klan meeting or something with slightly different costumes. It looks like they're carrying torches. In the center of the ring there's a figure in white cavorting wildly and bending at the "waist" every second or so. I can see the shapes in black bending too, but all together and rhythmically, unlike the wild and violent gestures from the figure in white.
Lauren, though, isn't moving at all. She's still staring. I start to ask her something, but then she whispers to me: "Can you hear that?" She lunges forward and turns down whatever garbage was on.
Over the throaty rumble of the V8, over the sand being whipped against the sides of the cabin, I can hear chanting of some kind. It's a warbling treble that doesn't seem to have a real melody to it, but all the hair on my body stands on end.
As I start to ask Lauren what's going on, she slams Timon into reverse and peels out backwards. I pitch into the dashboard before getting launched into my seat as Lauren jerks the SUV into drive and punches it. Timon roars with everything he has and hurls us into the night, still with no headlights. It feels like minutes before Lauren turns them back on, and when she does the faded dashes of the center line are a solid streak of sunflower yellow.
We never talked about it again.
What the fuck did I see?