Just a little ghost story for you-
Midnight Rider
By
M.A. Kropp
That
was a great party, Tom thought, as he drove through the quiet late night
streets. But then, Gordy’s family always
did go all out for Hallowe’en. Worth the trip out here. Tom shifted
slightly to a more comfortable position behind the wheel, and turned the volume
on the radio up a notch. He had at least a forty minute drive ahead of
him.
The compact blue sedan left the
residential streets and turned onto a two lane county road. It was a perfect
Hallowe’en night: clear, dark skies sprinkled with stars, and a nearly full
moon just visible through the stark branches of the trees lining both sides of
the road. The air was crisp, with the fall smells of wood smoke and dry leaves.
Tom slowed the car as he approached the intersection.
“Don’t take the Fuller Road cut on
your way home tonight,” Gordy had said as Tom was preparing to leave. “I know
it’s shorter, but that road is haunted. There’ve been fatal accidents every
year on Hallowe’en since that guy ran off the road five years ago. Go the long
way, ok?” Tom had said he would, but now, faced with the lateness of the hour,
he was thinking again.
It’ll
cut at least fifteen minutes off the drive, Tom thought. What the hell. What am I going to run into?
A headless horseman galloping through the woods? Tom turned the car onto
Fuller Road. There were accidents along this road all the time. It was narrow
and twisty, with sharp embankments on both sides. Late nights, people driving
home from parties. You didn’t need ghosts to know that added up to accidents.
He drove along, nodding his head in
time to the music, watching his speed on the curves. As he rounded one,
something in the road ahead made him hit the brakes. There was someone in the
road, hands outstretched as if to say “Stop!” Tom flicked on his high beams,
and chuckled. It was just an old tree, limbs bare of leaves and hanging out
over the road. In the dark, with the angle of the curved road, it had looked
like a person.
Gordy’s
ghost stories have got you spooked, Tom said to himself. Get a grip. He sped up again and passed
the tree, waving at it as he did.
“Happy Hallowe’en!” he said. He was
settling back into the drive when he saw headlights in the distance ahead of
him.
“Someone else had a late night,” he
said to no one, as the lights got closer. Then, he sat up straighter and stared
hard out the windshield. The approaching car was in his lane! Tom leaned on the
horn, the blaring noise cutting through the silence of the night. The other car
didn’t move. It just kept coming, straight at him, and it looked like it was
speeding up. Tom swore out loud, and pulled his car into the other lane. The
second car, a long white sedan, moved with him. Tom hit the horn again, a
longer blast.
“Shit, buddy, this is no road to be
playing chicken on!” Tom shouted. He jerked the wheel back into his own lane,
feeling his rear wheels fishtail a bit as he did. He got the car under control,
but the white sedan was bearing down on him, its headlights blinding through
the windshield. Tom swore again, and spun the wheel hard, trying to make the
shoulder of the road, while he braced for the impact he knew was coming.
Except it never did. Tom expected
the grinding sound of metal folding on metal, and to be thrown against the
interior of the car. What happened was time seemed to stretch and slow, he was
moving through a rapidly streaming thick gray fog, and it was cold. Tom tried
to pull the car back onto the road, but his wheels were skidding on the gravel
shoulder. He felt one wheel slip over the edge of the embankment. He spun the
wheel and hit the gas desperately, but only caused the car to slip more. He
knew the car was going over. As it spun and slipped downward, Tom saw the white
sedan, sitting on the road, surrounded by an eerie, almost shimmering light. He
stared into the window. The driver was clutching the steering wheel, his face
covered in blood. Two glowing red eyes were the last thing Tom saw as his car
fell down the steep slope.
The next morning, as they waited for
the tow truck to pull the small blue car up to the road again, the county sheriff
turned to the state police officer standing next to him.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe we
should just close this road down on Hallowe’en next year.”
The
End
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