Vacation horror story.

​     My family and I took a Caribbean cruise just before the pandemic hit. We drove to New Orleans to meet our ship. 

     We got a little sidetracked by the map built into our SUV. It hadn’t been updated in a couple of years. When the cursor showed us driving through a field, I switched to my Google maps app on my phone. 

     Now that we were lost in a rain storm, the shortest route to our hotel was a line of paved horse paths barely wide enough for one car to pass. Add thunder, lightning, and no streetlights to complete the horror movie ambience. 

     Have you ever ridden a roller coaster?  The scariest ones take you up a hill and suddenly drops you at a steep angle giving you the illusion of falling.  Imagine that same effect on a road. 

     I climbed a hill and turned left at the very top. The road disappeared as we came down the hill at 40 degrees almost immediately after turning. It would not have been so bad had I not been blinded by a lightning strike just a few seconds before. 

      We came up to a flooded road and had to back up a few hundred yards to turn around. We drove for half an hour, and then the rain became  a torrential down pour.  The windshield wipers could barely keep up. 

      “I believe that most horror movies start like this,” Lori said. 

      “Yep,” I said. “I’m just waiting for the guy in black to show up beside the road” 

      Lightning struck seconds later, and night became day for a moment. In that moment, two horse riders dressed in black riding black horses appeared on either side of the road. A high pitched scream tore through the interior of the vehicle. 

      “Is everyone okay,” I asked. 

      “Are you okay?” My wife asked. 

      “Yeah, why?” I asked. 

      “The way you screamed, I thought you were having some kind of fit.”

       “Just get me to the hotel, please.”

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