Oh, I never pass up a chance to tell a good story. I've got one, only a few of my friends have heard it. A memorable night in the hills to say the least...

I went to school in a bleak, rural area of northern Montana. My graduating class was barely 30 kids and there wasn't much for us to do except drive around, drink, and shoot things, which we did often. I had this buddy who had just bought an AR-15, a semi-automatic wet dream. He called me up one evening and we hopped in his beater of a truck with a big thirty-aught-six Springfield, a .22, and his brand new AR-15, and headed out to the hills to shoot the shit and shoot shit. He had that old truck for so long the odometer rolled over dead. This was back when I was a junior in high school.

Halfway there we stop at a pile of used-up tires and tested out the AR-15. The thing fired off easy and the power was scary. We got bored quick though and decided to head out further, deeper into the hills.

The Chinook winds that came down from Glacier Park and flowed through Browning howled in our tiny hometown at a constant pace, but out here in the hills, it was even louder. Sharper. In the cold October night it bit your skin and whipped it red. My buddy and I didn't mind much at all though, seeing as we were used to it just as much as anyone else who was shacked up in the area. But when you're out in the wide open space surrounded by those dark hills, it starts to affect you a little more.

We set up the thirty-aught on the tailgate of his pickup aimed down at a mucky pond in a steep coulee below. The thing kicks like a mule, which is why we've got it set on the back of the truck. It's hella loud too, like a cannon. I'm up and I get behind the old gun and aim right in the center of the pond. Squeeze the trigger, wait for the impact of the butt. A huge splash like an artillery shell was just aimed at the pathetic little pond. The eruption of sound carries even further in the wind, out here in the middle of nowhere.

We talk for a while longer and spotlight a few rabbits and soon it is very late. It was a Friday night so we had nowhere to be but we were both freezing and our ears were ringing. We both hop back in the truck and my buddy turns the key.

Thick fog on the way back. So thick and heavy that the brights on his pickup do practically nothing and in the pitch black we're just driving by the feel of the bumpy dirt road and the wide turns around the foothills. Him and I had made this drive a thousand times before but we're both on edge. There's no cell service out here, and if you get stuck or your car doesn't start or you get in a wreck, tough luck. You're on your own. That's just the way it was out there. Little white crosses posted on the sides of the road, marking spots where drunk drivers had died or where someone had been murdered long ago.

After some slow driving we're out of the hills, back onto the flat rancher country that will take us back home. The fog is still dense but we've both settled down a bit as we get closer to civilization. At least what we called civilization. The both of us start to loosen up and talk about our girlfriends and school and sports and all the things teenage boys talk about.

So we're driving along, just talking, when in the three feet that I can see in front of the headlights an old woman's wispy white hair and black eyes appear.

"Yo!"

My buddy punches on the break and rips the emergency handle. I'm sent flying forward and my head hits the windshield, bounces off. We're in a full slide, the loose dirt and gravel sending the pickup careening out into the low ditch and brambles off the side of the beaten road. The guns on the rack behind our heads slam into the side of the window and crack the glass.

Things are still. The pickup has done a near 180 at this point. Our headlights are pointing directly at the old woman, who still stands still as ever dead center in the dirt road. She didn't even flinch. When I saw her face before my buddy hit the break I thought we were about to kill her. I thought for sure, she was dead. Road kill. But for a woman who just about had her face rearranged by the chrome grill of my buddy's pickup truck, she looked calm as a Hindu cow. Her skin was withered and her eyes were black as the night and she was draped in a loose nightgown. Barefoot. What was left of her snow white hair was all over the place in a rat's nest. She didn't move.

The both of us sat still in the pickup as the dust settled. The woman still won't move a muscle. My skin crawled. I didn't dare breathe. My heart about to explode. I reached back and gripped the wooden stock of the Springfield. Now my friend is opening the door.

"Are you out of your mind?"

But he keeps going like he didn't even hear me, keeps walking slow toward the motionless woman. It was like something out of a horror film. The sense of dread I felt was swallowing me up. My grip on the Springfield tightened. My buddy grabs her by the hand, and starts to lead her back to the truck. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I scrambled to the other end as they walked closer, the woman quiet as ever, taking slow, deliberate steps toward me and the pickup.

It turns out, this woman was the wife of a rancher that lived out there raising cattle. She was suffering from Alzheimer's, and was known to wander out alone at night in the flatlands and the hills that surrounded their ranch. My buddy, ever the country bumpkin, knew a few of the ranchers and just so happened to know this very woman. The three of us sat in the truck with her in the middle and we drove her back to the ranch. She never spoke.

I hear that she's dead now. Succumbed to that terrible disease. But I could never get it out of my head how terrifying that night was and how terrifying the idea of this elderly woman walking around all on her own in the pitch black where the coyotes roamed. Could you imagine? Out there alone in the wide open darkness with that wind just howling. Not so much as a streetlight for miles. Just the thought of it sends a shiver up my spine. And sometimes I wonder if her spirit or whatever still roams around the hills at night... Maybe I could hear her voice in the wind? Ah... But she never said a word. Not one.

God just writing about it creeps me the fuck out.