The Scratching

It was was Chad’s parent’s anniversary so they went out for dinner and left Chad at home. They told him he couldn’t have any parties or “get togethers”, which was what he usually called his parties, but they said he could have one person over, but no more than that. So he called his best friend, Nick.
They watched a movie, listened to music, did some homework, and watched the news because there was nothing else on. There were a couple stories that caught their attention: a shortage of cocoa beans which means there’ll probably be less chocolate this Halloween, an orangutang that spelled his own name using a tablet, strange stories of four people being killed on separate occasions up by Lookout Ridge without leaving evidence as to what happened, and a snake found that might be a new species unknown to scientists. By the time they were done playing the X-Box, it was only a few minutes past 6:00. So they decided to go out and eat. They went to a fast food restaurant, but they ate inside to kill time.
When they were done they just sat in the car, not knowing what to do. Chad sat in the driver’s seat of his new, black, 2002 Mustang his parents bought him a month after he got his license. Nick, who was still 15 and without a license, sat in the passenger seat and admired the glare of the sun on the the smooth hood of the streamlined sports car.
“How about we go up to the hills and I could drive around a little” suggested Nick.
They lived in a small town at the edge of a valley right next to a small mountain range. The foothills had long roads that almost nobody drove on. Everyone in the town calls these foothills “the hills”. Although Nick didn’t have his license, he had his permit.
“It’s not like there’s gonna be anyone up there to ...

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..., was his best friend hanging limp and lifeless. His clothes were torn and stained pure red. His right arm was bending in three different places and was tangled around another branch. His left arm was hanging down, and his left hand was almost without skin and four fingers were missing. And that left hand, without any explanation, was swaying back and forth and back and forth. There was no wind or anything else there to cause his arm to sway like that, yet, it did. And, the one remaining finger reached down to the roof of the car. As the fingernail scraped across the surface, it caused the scratching sound that Nick had heard all night.
Terror stabbed at him like a thousand knives, piercing his soul, and caused him to faint. The whole time he was out, he dreamed about Chad’s body hanging from a tree and his hand swaying non stop, causing an endless scratching noise.