Let's Not Meet: A Collection

in the hills no one can hear you cry

This is actually my step-mom's/ her best friend's story. I have my own but I'm so hesitant to drag some of them up I'm hoping telling someone else's will open me to it a little more. My step mom didn't like us much, but she told my sister (3 years older) and I this experience growing up to scare us out of being stupid. It was my family's "stranger danger" story.

My stepmom (we're going to call her Macy) grew up as a kind of a privileged teen in the 70's and her mom had moved their family over here (the states) from England when she was about 9. She went to a pretty nice high school in a really nice town. There, she made friends with a girl ("Lily") who didn't exactly run with Macy's type of crowd (popular, stereotypical, etc.) They really hit it off, and Lily would take Macy out to do her type of stuff: hiking, fishing, sailing (there's even a hilarious set of pictures of them camping. My stepmom has raccoon eyes and looks like she hates everything.) Anyways, because of Lily's influence, the two of them would do stuff like that a good amount.

One Sunday they decided to go hike in some hills about an hour away. Macy put on what I'm sure were her extremely expensive hiking shoes and the two of them drove off to the hiking trails. Lily parked in this big clearing with makeshift parking spots (you know, like a piece of wood marking the head of a space) but there were no other cars there. This was only important in hindsight.

They started hiking up the hill, off the path because Lily fancied herself as something of a badass. The hike was nothing extraordinary (if you asked my stepmom she would just lament for fifteen minutes how sticky and buggy it was.) Anyways, they reached the top of the hill and my stepmom was done. The polished, pampered side of her was coming out and she groaned until Lily (begrudgingly) said ok, they would rest and then walk down again, slower.

They had been heading down the hill for maybe ten minutes when Macy started bitching again. Lily conceded to walking down the side of the road instead of the rough hiking trail. So there they are, probably looking like a couple of tools geared up for hiking and walking down a crappy road, and after not even five minutes, a truck pulled up next to them.

It was red and rusty, and just generally looked like a clunker. The guy driving rolled down the window and the girls looked in through the passenger's side window. He had a big beard, a baseball cap pulled down, and long brown hair. He greeted them and even smiled through his beard, asking if they needed a ride. Macy described him as charming, and even cute. Lily still says the moment he greeted them her hackles went up. Despite her better judgment, my stepmom convinced her to get in the truck. "It must only be a ten minute drive down to the car, tops."

The two girls opened the passenger's door to this rusty old thing, and the guy directed them behind the seat to get into the back. They settled in and the truck started rumbling forwards. Lily always says that was the point it hit her what a mistake they had just made. The backseat was clean enough but there was a rope on the floor behind the drivers seat and four boxes of saran wrap half hanging out from under the passenger's seat. It seemed creepy and weird, but Lily didn't want to freak my stepmom out so she just kept her mouth shut.

After ten minutes, the woods didn't look any clearer, and they hadn't seen another car the whole time. Lily asked how long he thought it would be. He said he was taking a different route down the hill and had to stop somewhere to get something first. That was it. The girls were 16/17, and Lily didn't want to press the issue. She was scared. She can remember his hair because she was sitting behind him. He looked like a woodsy guy, but his hair was super tangled and dirty. She noticed crusted mud on his collar and tried to find something identifiable about him, but just got scared the more she picked up on little details. He was young-ish, strong looking, and had a 1' on both of them. So they didn't ask any more questions, and he didn't offer any information, and they drove on.

Several minutes after that, they reached a tiny shack/log cabin looking place right there in a clearing of trees. There was an old stump where someone had been chopping wood and a huge axe stuck into the log. Lily was definitely on red alert now. The guy turned off the truck and slipped out of it, saying, "I'll be right back. Don't get out." And he disappeared into the house.

Lily tried to talk to my stepmom about how she was incredibly uncomfortable but she mostly just dismissed it. Lily started begging, increasingly freaked out and finally put her foot down, demanding Macy exited the truck with her. So they got out and walked around the front of the vehicle. The house was about 50 yards in front of them (why this guy would have left two young girls in the truck alone while going into the house is beyond me) and they wandered around, looking at it, hesitantly. If this guy really was decent and just trying to give them a ride, it would be super rude to just run off right? My stepmom had this strict upbringing when it came to manners and a public persona and she saw it as an issue of that nature, so she actually started to head back to the truck, opening the front door to climb in behind the driver's seat. Lily was pissed off and followed her to yell some more.

On the driver's side floor, half hidden under the seat, there was a big hatchet. It had dried red/brown stains covering the blade and stuck to the floor under it. Lily understandably lost her shit and seeing it, my stepmom started getting hysterical. They decided that leaving was by far their best option at this point, and just booked it off the side of property into the trees. They bumbled around in the trees for a little while until Lily was fairly confident they were on their way back down the hill. My stepmom cried all the way down. Lily felt bad about it, but was also completely freaked out that he would heart it and kept trying to calm her down.

When they finally got back down to the bottom and saw the old wooden fence that surrounded the original parking area, they were relieved. But as they got closer they saw it. The truck. It was parked on the other side of the gravelly makeshift lot. Just sitting there, facing the other way innocently. They couldn't see if anyone was in it and of course Macy wanted to run for the car, but Lily was super hesitant. She managed to calm my stepmom down; saying she wanted to wait before running out into the open, to see what was out there. Remember, this is the 70s. No cell phones. There was no ranger station or anyone around. The parking lot was big and empty and open and who knows what would have happened if they decided to stroll across it.

Thankfully Lily convinced my stepmom to chill and the two of them hunkered down against a big tree, hidden by bushes and other trees and waited it out for what was seemed to be a couple of hours, when dark started to fall. All the animals started coming out and making noises and my stepmom (predictably) started getting antsy about this and bothering Lily, who was tired and moments away from giving in. She was just planning their dash to the car when they heard a "clunk." Across the twilight-lit lot, they watched as one of the back doors of their car swung open. And the bearded guy slid his way out of the backseat.

He got out, shut the door, looked around at the surrounding woods for several moments, and then walked back to his truck. The truck lumbered past their car and out of sight. Several minutes after watching him drive away, they sprinted to their car as fast as they could, jumped in and peeled out before they had even shut the doors.

If this guy is still alive he's really old, but still, lets just not meet.

EDIT : Hey, thank you guys so much for enjoying my recounting! It really makes my day to know that this made LNM a little more interesting for some of you. Lily fans: she grew up to be a badass adult, too (she does stuff like hike mountains and stuff- but with her dogs now.) Also, my (ex)stepmom grew a brain at some point in her life and isn't as derpy or terrible as she was (sheltered.) And thanks to her, I always check my backseat before I get into my car.