Deer in the Headlights

Chapter 1

I buried my face in my pillow, trying to find temporary solace from my pain in sleep, but sleep would not come. My mind jumped from one thing to another, turning over memories and information like pages in a book. Out of all the things my brain was trying to process, there was one thing it kept returning to. The fact that one moment my brother was here, and the next he was gone, never to return.

I swallowed. Even worse than that was how he had died. For the hundredth time that day, I relived that moment that I'd had the horrible misfortune of witnessing.

I was walking along the side of the winding country road, my dog Ruger right beside me. I watched him as he busied himself sniffing every section of ground we covered, no doubt finding plenty of animal scents.
This made me wonder about the recent events that had been all over local news. Three car accidents this month, with no specific cause. They had all simply run off the road and either flipped or hit trees. Around here, accidents caused by deer were common. But those accidents would almost always leave the deer injured or dead on the side of the road and were rarely fatal to the people involved. So if they weren't caused by deer, what could they have been caused by? None of the drivers were drunk or otherwise impaired, and it was too much of a coincidence for them all to have had a medical emergency. It seemed like a mystery that may never be solved, and it fascinated me.
Ruger suddenly perked his ears and lifted his head to the road. A black Ford truck was rolling down the road. My brother was headed back from work. I waited happily for him to come closer so I could hitch a ride back home. It wasn't too far back, but it was getting dark and I was excited to tell him about my day.
I was just about to lift one hand to wave him down when a dark shape lunged out of the woods ahead of me and barreled into the road. The shape stopped right in the middle, mere yards away from the oncoming truck, and for a brief moment I could see it clearly outlined in the truck's headlights. It was a buck deer: large bodied, but with only one long spike on one side of his head. He turned his head and his eyes met mine, sending chills down my spine. I could've sworn they narrowed and glinted with malice, but it was hard to tell for sure with everything happening as fast as it did next.
The squeal of brakes. The skidding of tires on pavement as the truck swerved. The crunch of metal as it met its match in a big oak tree. My open-mouthed horror. And most importantly, the one antlered buck walking calmly off into the forest on the other side of the road.

What had happened next was all a blur, and I couldn't bring myself to work through it. All I knew was there were ambulances, the hospital, and a funeral. I'd been asked so many questions, yet I couldn't give the people what they wanted to hear. I'd received so many regrets and deepest sympathies, but I couldn't bother to respond to them. My life was numb to all but one thing. The buck with one spike that killed my brother.

As many times as I told myself it was just a regular deer, just the kind of accident that happens in rural areas, my mind kept flicking back to the three deaths prior to my brother's. They were so similar. In fact, the only real difference between them and Mike's accident was that Mike's had a witness...

No. I told myself I wouldn't think like this again. I'm just trying to find something to blame for my brother's death besides some stupid animal that couldn't find a better time to cross the road. It was crazy to read too much into this. Or was it?

I couldn't forget the way the buck looked me dead in the eyes before the truck swerved. What animal does that? If anything aren't deer usually blinded by the headlights and stuck in a daze? Why did this one turn to stare at me? Why were its eyes so...full of hatred? And how on earth did it walk off from the scene as if it were just taking a stroll through a sunny meadow instead of almost getting killed? Finding no answers, I finally felt my eyelids grow heavy, and I drifted off to a restless, nightmare-ridden sleep.