story-ghostof

The Ghost of Gunderson Road

(Part 1 of 2)

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“Thanks for giving me a lift.”

“Of course,” I said. “No problem.”

“I know it’s late,” Beth said.

Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Beth’s pale hands twist the strap of her canvas bag.

“I lost track of time,” she said. “And then I realized the bus had stopped running, and then I saw you coming out of Starbucks, and I recognized you from Chem class…”

“It’s fine,” I said. “Really. I don’t mind.”

I didn’t remember Beth from Chem class. The faces at school were still a blur of strangers. Names hadn’t stuck yet. I heard them and they slipped out of my head immediately. Still, it was weird that I didn’t remember Beth, because Beth was pretty memorable. She was waxy pale, her dark hair hanging lank around her face, a chunk of it scraped into a halfhearted ponytail. She looked like she hadn’t slept in a week. Or, like she was sick. Maybe that was it. Maybe she’d been out of school.

I realized the silence had stretched into awkwardness, and I said, “Ready for the test tomorrow?” My voice came out brittle and too bright. I winced, and then I felt like an asshole for wincing.

“It’s almost tomorrow already,” Beth pointed out.

The clock on the dash of the Camry read 11:45. I laughed, and Beth laughed with me, and I felt better. We weren’t entirely strangers anymore.

“Don’t worry about getting back to the highway,” Beth said more cheerfully, as if she felt the same way I did. “It’s easy. You’ll be home in twenty minutes, tops.”

“Okay,” I said. “Good to know. Thanks.”

Beth had probably lived in Ashfield all her life. I’d been here less than a week, and I was still fumbling my way around town. Driving down the winding two-lane road with the empty fields rolling by, the bright lights of civilization seemed very far away.

She was quiet, and I couldn’t think of anything to say. Darkness streamed past the headlights, like my Camry was a deep-sea submersible.

“So…” Beth said softly. “Anybody told you about the girl in the red jacket yet?”

“Oh no!” I lifted one hand off the steering wheel and flapped it at her.

“No no! Don’t you dare start with the scary urban legends!”

“It’s a classic,” Beth protested. “Everyone needs to hear about Ashfield’s very own ghost.”

“Is there any way I can stop you from telling me this story?”

“Aw, come on.”

I huffed. I didn’t want to hear this story, but I wanted to be included. I didn’t want to be the new girl anymore. Bad enough that Dad lost his job in Boston, and we had to move here to his hometown in the sticks. Everybody at school thought I looked down on them, because I used to live in the big city. I wasn’t stuck up. I was shy.

Beth said, “Sooner or later, everybody in Ashfield hears about the girl in the red jacket.” She put a hand to her chest. “I just want you to feel like you’re at home.”

“How charitable of you,” I said, making it come out all wry and sarcastic, but I suddenly, stupidly wanted to cry. I guess it hadn’t really sunk in until now, how alone I was.

Beth said, “So, there’s this girl. Just about our age.”

“Uh-huh,” I said.

“She’s new in town, and she doesn’t know many people.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. That’s how the story goes.”

“I told you not to tell me, remember?”

“One dark night, she’s driving home. She doesn’t know the back roads.”

“You can get out and walk, you know.”

“She gets in a terrible crash at the intersection of Gunderson Road,” Beth said. “Maybe she’s speeding. Trying to get home fast. Nobody knows. It’s late at night, and a deer comes running out of the woods. Right in front of her car. She hits the deer, and totals her car. They don’t find her until the next morning. She’s dead, pinned inside the wreck. Maybe she died instantly. Maybe she screamed and screamed for help. Either way, nobody heard a thing. It’s lonely out here.”

A chill crawled up my back. It was lonely. Very lonely.

The road dipped; the headlights of the Camry flared on asphalt, and then up at the sky as the road rose again. At the crest of the hill, the road curved, then descended once more, toward an intersection. My heart did a little fear-skip, but the street sign read Polk Road.

“And now her ghost haunts this lonely road for all eternity?” I said.

“Maybe,” said Beth.

“That’s not much of a story. No offense.”

“I’m not finished. When they find the girl the next morning, her face is destroyed. Everybody who sees her says what a terrible tragedy it is. They say it’s the worst thing they’d ever seen.”

“So, now people driving at night see her horrible face, and they crash and die?”

Beth said, “She wears a red jacket, with the hood pulled up to hide her face. One side of her face, the side of her face that you can see, is the worst thing you’ve ever seen.”

“What about the other side?”

“Oh,” Beth said quietly. “Here we are already.”

Another intersection loomed in the headlights. Gunderson Road. The pole holding the street sign leaned back over a weathered wooden fence, as if a car had struck it. My heart began to pound, and my fingers tightened on the steering wheel until the cold plastic bit into my palms. One tire hit a pothole in the road and the car jolted sharply. In spite of myself, I gasped.

Nothing happened. No girl in a red jacket appeared in the road ahead. Gunderson Road slipped into the darkness behind the car.

I expected Beth to burst out laughing. She’d gotten me good. But, she was silent.

“Beth?” I asked.

“My house is up here on the right,” she told me in a strange, faint voice.

The companionship I thought had started to grow between us, was gone. We were strangers again.

“Are you okay?” I said.

“Fine,” she replied. “Thank you for the ride.”

I slowed the car. “Where’s your house?”

“You see the mailbox? My house is back from the road a bit.”

I pulled over at the shoulder, the car’s tires crunching over sand and gravel. The mailbox was dented, dangling from a crooked wooden post. The door hung open like a surprised mouth, and the little red flag stuck up.

“Are you okay walking alone in the dark?” I asked her.

“It’s not far,” she said in that same dull voice.

I squinted past her into the dark. I couldn’t see a house. I couldn’t see much past my headlights. Beth popped her seat belt, and opened the passenger side door. The overhead light came on, illuminating her pale face and the dark smudges under her eyes. Not looking at me, she fumbled with her bag, tugged on her gloves, and pulled up the hood of her coat, shadowing her face. I shivered, in spite of myself.

“Great story,” I said. “Really spooky.”

“It’s always a different story,” she murmured. “Even though it ends the same way.”

“Huh?” I said, frowning.

“Thanks for letting me tell it.”

I couldn’t tell if she was screwing around with me again, but I wanted her gone. She was freaking me out. “I’ll see you tomorrow at school, okay?”

Beth grabbed my arm. “My parents are dead,” she told me, her voice swift and urgent. “I moved here to live with my aunt and uncle when I was five –”

I yanked my arm out of her grip. “Get out of my car!”

“Everybody in Ashfield already knew about the girl in the red jacket. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I had to tell somebody.”

She scrambled out of the car and slammed the door, plunging me into darkness. She ran past the lonely mailbox and she was gone.

She’d never told me how to get back to the highway. I swore and slammed both hands on the steering wheel. Stupid Beth, and her stupid ghost story. It was past midnight, and it was effing cold out. Was there even a house out there in the fields beyond the mailbox?

I locked the car doors, then dug around in my bag, and pulled out my phone. No reception. Of course not. There was nobody I could call anyway. I didn’t have Beth’s number, and my parents would already be asleep.

I decided to backtrack along Route 17. It’d be the long way into town, but it was easier than trying to find the highway. I pulled away from the curb and headed back the way I’d come, toward Gunderson Road.

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Go to Part Two