Ghost Riders in the Halloween Sky

Then a horse galloped up alongside. The horse's eyes weren't the only thing that were on fire. It was as if it was totally made of fire. A man in a Devil costume was riding it. He reached over into the truck bed and smiled at Shirley. "I am not here for you, innocent one," he said softly and touched her in the center of the forehead. Then he touched the Jeep.

"Damn," Delia said as the engine coughed and the white Gladiator slowly rolled to a stop.

"What is that?" Tawleena yelled, pointing out the window at the huge herd of cattle that now surrounded the Jeep.

"It's just some cattle," Delia said. "This is open range."

"But you can almost see through them," Susana said. "And their eyes are on fire."

"That's my herd," a gentle voice said from just outside Delia's window. "Cowpokes that end up coming to me spend eternity trying to round them up."

"What?" Frederika almost screamed as she saw the man in the Devil costume.

"But I have kept up with the times," the Devil said. "Now my fellow demons and I also have fun chasing naughty girls like you across the sky."

Four fiery horses galloped up to the side of the Jeep. "These are your mounts," he said with a wide grin. "As you can see, I have taken special care that you don't fall off. There are three saddle horns. One in the regular place to which I will tie your hands. And then two in the center of the saddle." He laughed loudly and said, "I think you know where those horns go." Then he pointed lower on the horse and said, "And of course, your feet will be bound in the stirrups."

"This can't be," Delia said angrily.

"Oh, yes, it can," the Devil said with another laugh. "Normally it would take years for stupid bitches like you to firmly bind yourselves to me and end up here. But you have insisted on using powerful magic every Halloween. And this year you doubled the magic by using it for pure evil and doubled it again by using it against an innocent one and then doubled it once more by using it against one of your own blood."

Suddenly there were dozens of men in the same Devil costumes pulling the four girls from the Jeep. The witches costumes were quickly stripped off of them and thrown back into the Jeep. Then four demons grabbed each of the girls and lifted them up onto one of the fiery mounts. When they were tightly secured, the demons disappeared and the huge Devil called out, "Ride! Ride like you are running from the worst punishments the Devil can give you... because you are!"

He then laughed very loudly and slapped Delia's horse on its flaming haunch. It and the other three horses galloped off into the night followed by the Devil and his band of demons whooping and yelling.

***

The San Bernardino County Sheriff received several reports of a white Jeep Gladiator with a screaming girl tied in the back racing through Desert Center. They notified Arizona authorities in case the Jeep made it to the state line and sent deputies Ruiz and Sanchez to try to intercept. Just short of the Rice Desert Signpost, Deputy Ruiz saw the mangled remains of the Jeep a couple hundred yards off the road. It had evidently gone through one of the dips at a very high rate of speed, went airborne, and rolled several times.

He keyed his radio and said, "We've got an off the road with probable fatalities one-quarter mile west of Iron Mountain Road."

"I'm only a few minutes out," Deputy Sanchez replied. Her voice sounded tight. She had seen a lot of vehicle deaths in her years with the Sheriff's department, but off the roads in the desert were always bad.

When she pulled up Deputy Ruiz walked up to her cruiser. "What's what, Rudy?" she asked.

"Nobody in the vehicle," he said. "We will need lights for a body search. God knows how far they might have been thrown."

That's when they both froze as a scream rent the night.

"Someone's alive," she said as they both ran toward the wreckage.

"There was no one in the vehicle," Deputy Ruiz said adamantly. "I checked it."

"Did you check the back?" She asked. "Reports said a naked girl was tied in the bed."

The crumpled remains of the Jeep was sitting upside down in the sand and gravel. Shirley's feet and legs were visible when they looked into the upside down truck bed through the open tailgate. Sofia Sanchez crawled into the tight space and loudly said, "Dios Mio!" followed quickly by "I will cut her hands free. You get her legs loose."

A few minutes later Shirley was lying on the side of the road wrapped in a blanket, awaiting an ambulance.

"This doesn't make any sense," Rudy said as they waited for the ambulance to arrive. "There are no other bodies... anywhere. And no blood in the Jeep. Just four horny witches' costumes tangled in the seatbelts like they evaporated out of them." He nodded toward Shirley and said, "And this one keeps talking about ghost cows and the Devil riding a flaming horse."

"I think some of this should stay out of the reports," Sofia said softly. "And I especially don't think either of us wants to mention that." She pointed down at the highway where a very clear set of horse's hoof prints were burned deeply into the asphalt leading up to the scene of the crash.

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