A Dangerous Mistake
by Raymond Vogel
As far as we can tell, this is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Copyright © 2015 Raymond Vogel
All rights reserved.
Because, sometimes, an author’s gotta step out of his genre a bit.
Nothing good ever comes from a comfortable writer.
A special thanks to my wife, Jennifer. Her feedback and ideas turned this story from a near-debacle into something worth reading.
Not long after midnight, I-24 South turns into rush hour for big rigs and mac trucks. And idiots like me, who take the last flight into Nashville on a Friday, are stuck playing real life Frogger the whole way. My Altima is no match for them, and they know it. As if on a whim, one of these lovely road hogs suddenly decides my lane will be the easiest way around another truck, and I have to break hard to keep from getting pushed off the highway. It drags the whole interstate down to 60 miles per hour for about 10 minutes. I turn off the radio and slam my wrist against the steering wheel in frustration.
I know I should have taken Highway 41 to save myself the headache. I just never think of it until it’s too late. Andrew McGreeny, Mr. Andrew “Answer-For-Everything” McGreeny, once said it was the repetition. The autopilot problem. You get tired from the week and the travel, and then you forget that you’re supposed to do something different than you usually do. Unless you set a special alarm or reminder, that is. Maybe he’s right. But I bet he jumps on the interstate every time just like the rest of us.
An opening appears in the right lane, so I jump over – only to find out that it wasn’t an opening after all. I ease back on the accelerator to avoid colliding with an even slower-moving truck and slam my hand against the steering wheel again. We’re coming up on Exit 97, which sounds good enough to me, so I get into the exit lane as soon as it appears. I know the way through Beechgrove to get to 41 easily enough.
The problem with Highway 41 is that it’s hard to see at night. When it’s foggy like tonight, without any streetlights to guide you, you’re just as likely to hit a deer as to make it home. I try my brights at least four times in that dark ten mile stretch, each time hoping the fog has let up enough for them to help, but they just do more harm than good. I only see one other vehicle on the road, an old white utility van sitting on the shoulder that I narrowly avoid hitting. It’s the creepy windowless kind that you could write “FREE CANDY” on the side in black spray paint without changing what everyone thinks you do for a living. This one has more than its fair share of scratches and rust spots, like it’s been driven through a soapless, waterless carwash that had coat hangers in place of the soft brushes.
As soon as I hit Manchester, I pull into a gas station in search of caffeine. I could probably make it the rest of the way without stopping, but the stress of driving is wearing me thin. It’s a well-lit place with a wide spread of pumps for handling trucks and a bright sign declaring it the “Busy Corner Truck Stop & Market.” I have plenty of gas, so I just park near the store entrance and head inside.
The sign over the coffee pot promises it’s made fresh every hour, which is at least a lie I can choose to accept. I pour myself a cup and set it down on the checkout counter. The woman behind it is old, almost elderly, and she gives me a warm smile. Her nametag says she’s “Martha.” I reach down for my wallet.
“Evening. That your sedan out there?” Martha asks.
“Hmm?” The sound comes out raspy, and I realize I haven’t spoken a word since the security guard at the Phoenix airport. I cough at the discomfort. I look up to see that she’s turned to face the exit door, and my car.
“The sedan. It yours?”
“Sorry, yes,” I say. My voice sounds clearer this time.
“Your right headlight’s gone out. Might want to be careful on the road.”
“Oh, thanks.” I smile and pay her in cash. No wonder the fog seemed so bad.
I thank her again and head back to the car. I back out of the spot and flip my brights on to be sure I’ll be visible to other cars. It’s not ideal, and I’m sure it will aggravate a few folks, but at least I can make it home in one piece.
I move forward, back toward the highway, and flip my right blinker on. I’m about to pull out when I stop short. Coming out of the fog like a ghost is the creepy van. I let it pass in front of me, my headlights reflecting back at me from a thick racing stripe of rust that runs all the way down the passenger side of the van. The light catches the metallic ceiling above the driver’s seat, which is fringed with the ancient tatters of ceiling padding. But I’m too close for my lights to reach down to the driver, who remains covered in thick darkness, and I can almost feel him watching me as they pass. It leaves me with a cold feeling.
The moment passes quickly, and then I’m facing the side of the van. I notice there are faded letters etched into the white that could have once said “Joe’s Plumbing,” if it wasn’t for the scratches. The racing stripe lights up with two glowing spots from my headlights as it slides by. The stripe is about the same height as my side mirror, and I wonder if a close brush with a sedan a few years ago had been the cause.
I pull out behind the van after he passes and give him plenty of room, hoping the headlights aren’t making it into his rearview mirror. It must not be working, though, because he pulls over onto the shoulder as soon as we pass over I-24. He flashes his left blinker twice to indicate that I should go by, and I take up his offer gratefully, even offering a wave of thanks in case he sees me.
The six miles into Manchester are slow going. My brights shine back at me from the thickening fog, hurting my eyes after a while and limiting my field of vision. The van keeps close to me, which at first I attribute to the fog. Following closely makes sure that the car in front of you is the one that hits the animal. Then I start to imagine that it might be something more. I think through the last twenty minutes, trying to remember if I’d noticed a license plate or a face behind the wheel, but nothing comes to mind. Even with my rearview mirror dimming the bulk of the light, I can’t lean in any direction without being blinded further. Maybe the driver is upset at me for using my brights earlier. Maybe they get their kicks running late night drivers into ditches and telephone poles.
For what feels like forever, the van floats behind me, surfing the lit edge of the fog like a wave. A wave that dips and rises and curves with the road. A worn, pale ghost with searchlight eyes that scan the ground for the terrified car it’s tracking with uncanny dedication. I watch each intersection with baseless hope, willing the van to turn off to another destination or another car to slide in between us. At each such pass, I slow down before and speed up afterward to create the right distance between us. But each intersection is as dark as the road behind and before me. There will be no help, and the only two cars on this lonely stretch of road are mine and the ghost still tracking my scent.
Then, without warning, the van is gone. Swallowed by the fog behind me, the bright light of the headlights replaced with the dull red of my Altima’s taillights. Had it finally turned? Or broken down? It doesn’t matter. I don’t know what I was so worried about, working myself into a fit over nothing. And, in my moment of relief, I finally notice that I’ve been speeding up. I ease back from the gas petal quickly to get back down to a safe speed. If the van wanted to follow me, it would have kept up better. My relief is nearly complete as the familiar sights of Manchester welcome me home. I can just make out the outline of the rec center to my left, and then I’m passing over Little Duck River and moving into downtown. We may have had higher crime rates than the rest of the nation for the last six years, but it�
�s still a small town full of good people that I know and trust. There’s no place like home, as they say.
Not long after I take my right onto Spring Street to head into my neighborhood, a familiar pair of headlights emerge from the fog behind me. As if they were waiting to get me alone again. It takes all of my willpower to keep from leaning forward hard on my accelerator. I’m already going 35 in a 30MPH zone, and any faster would just get me pulled over. Besides, it’s probably nothing. I’m sure the creepy van from the side of the highway about fifteen miles back just happens to live in my same neighborhood. Right. My heart’s pumping loud enough to sound like it’s playing Jamaican music on my eardrums. I’m watching the rearview mirror almost as much as the front window.
My turn onto West Short Street is approaching quickly on my right, and I decide at the last minute to miss it. I’ve seen enough movies to know that you don’t go straight home or you might as well pull over and hand your business card to the serial killer. I’m close enough to my house as it is. Instead, I just continue going straight, picking up speed as much as I can stomach. I’m alternately leaning forward, straining to see through the fog, and sitting up to stare back at the ever-present danger in my rearview mirror. I almost just wish he’d hit me and push me into a ditch already, so it would all be over. What is he waiting for anyway?
I focus my attention forward in time to notice the stop sign, my eyes bleary from staring in my mirror. No, it’s a construction sign. What the hell? The construction sign is in the middle of the road, coming toward me fast. And it has legs and a head.
It takes me only a fraction of a second to comprehend what’s happening, but it’s the longest moment of my life. My right foot transfers to the brake petal, and I propel it downward with all of my strength. My hands are locked to the steering wheel as if I had just learned to drive yesterday. Even as I pull down on one side of the wheel, my eyes are glued on what I now know to be a child. A young teenager maybe. Just a kid playing with a construction sign in the night. I watch his expression change slowly from carefree delight to suspicion to fear and, as my car comes barreling toward him in the fog, to outright terror.
And then the Altima is spinning. My headlights flash through the fog across a small construction sight and then mailboxes and garbage cans and front porches. The screeching of rubber against asphalt fills the air. And, just before the car finally jerks to a stop, there’s a thump.
Oh god. There was a thump.
My right leg stiffens, my foot pressed tightly and permanently against the brake petal. My hands are frozen in place, my knuckles white in their rigor mortis. I can’t turn my head or do anything except allow my heart to continue its thunderous beating. I’m facing down the driveway of a small white house with black faux shutters and a covered porch, my lights shining into their living room windows. The driveway leads back behind the house to a matching white garage, where the dead headlights of an old black Accord look back at me accusingly.
The headlights remind me of the van. The ghost van in the fog that was right behind me. There wouldn’t have been a thump if there hadn’t been a van. But where is the van now? Vanished into the fog with its work complete? Did I imagine it? No, I didn’t. And it enrages me to think of the dark figure behind that wheel, goading me into pressing my luck too far on this dark road. The anger, combined with an outburst of adrenaline-fueled will power, finally releases my right hand, which I use to throw the lever to the “P” position.
With the car in park, my body finally begins to move. The memory of the thump sound ricochets’ around my mind. The movement of each limb and joint sounds like an echo of that thump. By the time I finally get the driver’s side door to open, the thumping memory is keeping time with my beating heart. There is nothing else but the thump.
Finally released from my frozen position in the car, I’m now moving at superhuman speed into the street. I need to get to the kid. To see if he’s okay. If I’m okay. Oh god, please be okay. There’s nothing in the street that I can see right away, and it takes spotting the construction zone for me to finally get my bearings.
But before I can look back down the street the way I had been driving, where I know the kid should be, I hear the muffled growl of an engine. It’s a rattling and screeching sound, as if the engine is cracked and one of the pistons is clacking against the casing and scraping its way back on every third strike. I don’t have to be watching to know what’s coming. Two ghostly headlights emerge from the fog, moving fast. Bearing down on me.
And then, just as fast, they’re gone. I take stock of my hands, feeling my fingers and knuckles curl around each other as if trying to decide whether or not I’m still alive. But I am, by some miracle. I turn to watch the red taillights fade away in the other direction until the fog swallows them again. As they do, the sound of the thump comes flooding back.
I frantically search the street near my car, finding nothing. There’s no broken construction sign, no blood on my car, no kid under my wheels, nothing. I walk up and down the street for a hundred yards or more without hearing a sound or seeing any signs of an accident other than my car. The thumping sound is subsiding now, becoming a vague memory. And with no one lying in the street for it to cling to, even the memory begins to feel like a hallucination.
Finally, with no luck, I get back into my car and sit shakily behind the wheel again. I fumble for my seatbelt, my eyes still scanning the road for an imagined body. And then the van is back, this time coming from the other direction. The lights emerge from the fog like two great white eyes, the pupils distant and unseeing at first and then suddenly aware of me and full of blame. It fills me with the kind of dread that I think only those nearing the end of their lives ever have to feel.
I watch in horror as the lights slow down to a crawl, the growling engine sputtering and cracking as it loses momentum. They face directly at me the whole time, forcing me to lift my hand over my eyes to block some out. My skin is crawling with wave after wave of tiny shivers made of anxiety and fear. Spots fill my vision, and I force myself to look away and blink. And when I finally get the courage to look back, the van is gone again. I spin around in my seat to catch another glimpse, thinking it might have passed me by, but there’s nothing. The fog and the night have consumed it.
The car’s still running, so I put it into reverse and ease back onto the road, facing in the opposite direction of the van. The sound of the thump is still there, but it’s far enough away for me to ignore. I switch the car to drive and roll forward into my lane, heading back toward my house.
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