El Ángel de la Muerte by Amanda Ong “Why do we have to help hand out Halloween candy? I wish we could go to a haunted house and do something scary and fun.” Lucia and her younger sister were mourning the fact that they were stuck inside with their grandma. Their grandma, Salma, feeling empathetic, let them have a break inside while she told them a spooky tale about El Ángel de la Muerte. The girls begrudgingly gathered around Grandma Salma as she recounted the tale of Veronica Y. Sanchez. Veronica Y. Sanchez was 15 when she began her infatuation with cars. So at 17, when she saw this rusted, abandoned Chevrolet truck in the city’s junkyard, she knew she had to have it. She fixed it up, and the next day, she was driving wherever she pleased. Most of the time, she was giving her best friend rides. On Halloween night, Vero and her friend decided to take an hour-long drive to a nearby city that was having a scare fest. On their way to the fest, Vero kept telling her friend that she could see a man in a cloak in her rearview mirror. Vero was freaking out and telling her friend that the man was getting closer. To calm her down, her friend advised that they stop at the gas station. At the gas station, Vero got
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out to get fresh air as her friend pumped gas. “When did you get a customized license plate?” Vero’s friend asked. Vero looked confused, and walked around to see the license plate. She stared with a surprised face at the plate that had her exact initials. VYS, Veronica Yvonne Sanchez. “Huh, I never noticed that, how ironic!” They continued on the road after, but Veronica started mentioning the man in a cloak again. She grew frantic and began to yell that he was right in the backseat, but her friend couldn’t see anyone. She began to lose control of the wheel as though someone else was controlling it, and swerved straight into a tree. “CRASH!” Veronica’s friend dizzily woke up and saw Veronica limp in the driver’s seat. She stared in horror, and called an ambulance. Help arrived at the scene to assist Veronica’s friend with her injuries, but nothing could be done for Veronica. She was pronounced dead at 9:37 PM. As EMT’s carried Veronica's body from the truck, she couldn’t help but notice the numbers on the truck’s license plate. 9-3 -7, the same time that Vero died. The numbers, the initials, the man in the cloak, something didn’t sit right with her. She began to feel sick to her stomach and then she saw him- a man in a cloak. She couldn’t make out any features, but she finally believed Veronica. The next day, she came back to the scene of the crash, and set the truck to drive into a lake. She didn’t feel comfortable with the truck being around
