Story 2 – Brake Lights

It had been a good gig, they all agreed. Sheena had done the most headbanging of them all and had thrown herself into the circle pits which formed. Rachel had hung back from the crush and sung along so much that she was only speaking in a hoarse whisper now. Liam wasn’t as big a fan of the band, he only really knew a couple of their bigger hits, but he’d enjoyed the atmosphere. Pete had moshed, screamed along and generally had a complete ball. Which he was now regretting as the others dozed in the car, he still had to drive them all home.

His legs ached and he was glad to be out of the city so that he didn’t need to keep changing gears among the traffic.

Once they’d hit the motorway and he could cruise, it had felt a lot better. His left leg did keep threatening to cramp and he was worried how long he could go before he needed to give it a good stretch. Cramping up at 70 was a serious worry.

Now that they were off the main roads and into the twisting back roads, he thought it would be a good time to a quick break. Rachel would probably complain, he felt she would be complaining even now if it wasn’t for the fact that he was snoring on Sheena’s shoulder in the back.

Pete kept his eyes open for a lay-by or short turn off that would be safe to stop in. His leg was threatening to tighten up and if he didn’t see somewhere soon, he’d just pull over to the side and hit the hazards while he got out.

He couldn’t see them now, in the darkness but he knew that there was nothing but hedges lining the road to protect the fields behind them. The big open expanses that made this part of England look like a patchwork blanket from the air.

The road here wasn’t narrow exactly, but he didn’t really fancy meeting a lorry coming the other way in the dark.

Before the tightness got too bad, he spotted a gated entrance to the fields, the gate was set back enough so the road to it would make a fine temporary lay-by. Pete pulled the car in, set the hand brake and turned off the engine.

Sheena woke up as the interior lights came on “Are we home?”

“Not yet. I need to get out and stretch my legs, bit too much moshing.”

“Oh. Ew, she’s dribbled on my shoulder.” Sheena shoved Rachel off, waking her up.

“What’s going on?” Liam asked without opening his eyes.

“I’ve stopped to stretch my legs. Any of you lot want to have a piss while we’re here.”

“No.” Liam thought about it “Actually, yes. Apparently I do.” He got out of the car and strolled over to the gate as Pete gingerly climbed out.

The girls also stepped out as Pete stretched his leg, rubbing his thighs and calves to ease the tightness.

“Where are we?” Asked Rachel.

“On the back roads, nearly to the hills. Should be home in about an hour.” Pete told her.

Rachel rubbed her arms in the cold night air, she hadn’t brought a coat and just had on her band T-shirt and black jeans “Too cold out here. I’m getting back in.”

“Yeah, wipe the drool off the seat while you’re there would you.” Sheena called out as she headed off towards the bush before slipping her leggings down and crouching. “Don’t you two watch me. Perverts.”

Liam dramatically averted his eyes by turning his whole head up to the sky, and promptly walked into the side of the car.

Pete just concentrated on working his legs, stretching and easing. Hoping this would be enough to get him home and then he could stretch out properly.

Before long they were all back in the car.

“Can you stick the heat on, Pete?” Rachel asked.

He started the engine and flicked the fan on and upped the temperature. “Should be nice and toasty in a minute. Everyone got their belts on?”

The other three blew raspberries at him.

“Good, then let’s crack on.”

The road twisted up into the hills and the hedges were replaced by a border of trees on either side.

Liam changed the cd.

“Hey, driver’s choice on the tunes.” Pete remonstrated.

“You had your choice and we’ve listened to it three times already. Plus, I’m putting on one of your cd’s, it’s not like I put on some poppy shit.”

Pete let it go, the change wasn’t bad and there wasn’t much he could really do about it anyway without stopping the car.

As he turned his attention back to the road he saw brake lights flare in front of him and stamped on his own brakes, quickly shifting down so the car didn’t stall.

“What was that for you bloody maniac. Its only music!” Liam yelled.

“Jesus, Pete, you weren’t drinking at the gig were you?” Rachel asked.

“Of course I wasn’t drinking. It was that idiot in front, slamming on his anchors for no reason.” Pete was furious at the accusation of drinking, he wouldn’t drive even if he’d only had a pint. They all knew that.

“What idiot in front?” Sheena asked, leaning forward to peer out of the windscreen.

Pete accelerated “The one that’s already shot off. Quite frankly, if he’s going to piss about like that, I don’t want to catch up to him.”

“There was no car in front, mate.” Liam told him.

“Yes there bloody well was.” Pete fumed. Now Liam was making it sound like he was seeing things. “You lot are still half cut and mostly asleep. I’m driving, I know what I saw.”

Bunch of piss takers the lot of them. God knows how many each of them had drunk, and now saying they were more with it than him, the only sober one in the car. Pete had half a mind to dump them on the side of the road. But that was his anger getting in control again. He’d been working hard on not letting it do that.

Suddenly his headlights lit up the back end of a white Audi, its brake lights flaring hard again. Pete stamped down on his own brakes, throwing the others forward as the Audi sped away into the darkness again.

“Did you see the prick that time? Some fucking rudeboy in an Audi.”

Rachel touched his shoulder “Why don’t you pull over, Pete?”

“Why? And there’s nowhere to pull over at the moment.”

He heard her voice shaking “Because I was looking that time. There was no car in front of us.”

“Oh, piss off.” She was really winding him up now.

“I was looking too, mate, there was no car.” Liam said, with what sounded like forced calm.

Unbelievable. Actually unbelievable, the pair of them.

“What about you, Sheen, you think I’m seeing things too?” Pete did, however, ease off the accelerator, letting the speed drop to under forty, which was slow on these roads, just to chill them out.

Sheena was quiet, he could see her in the mirror biting her lip.

“Come on. You think I’m seeing shit too, don’t you?”

“Well, I wasn’t looking. But I did try to see when you braked and I didn’t see anything. I mean, they could have just gone off. The road’s a bit twisty. But, I didn’t see their headlights, Pete.”

Now that gave Pete a moment’s pause, he hadn’t seen lights either, just the sudden appearance of brake lights and the rear end of the Audi suddenly fa too close to them for safety.

“You know what, Sheen, you’re right. That dopey prick doesn’t have his headlights on. He’s either out here fucking with people like us or his lights are buggered and he keeps getting scared. Can’t say I blame him for that, if we had no lights, I’d pull over. The way this road bends and the drops off some of the sides, we’d be safer parked in the middle of the road with our hazards on.”

Pete glanced at the others for some sign of agreement.

Liam was thoughtful, unwilling to commit, as usual. No wonder Rachel was still waiting for him to ask her out, properly. “They could be driving without lights.”

“Really? What sort of lunatic would do that?” Rachel, sceptical again, why was he not surprised.

“I don’t know, Rach. Not one I really want to come across again. Look, I’ve got the beams on full, I’ll drop it down to thirty so I’ll have plenty of time to see him coming. It’ll make us late home, but rather late than dead, yeah?”

Liam and Rachel agreed, Sheena wasn’t happy about it.

“I’ve got to be up for work at six. What time will we get home at this rate?”

“Probably gone half two. Sorry, Sheen, what do you want me to do? I’ll drive normal and keep an eye out, but I can’t do that if you lot are going to be in my ear about how I drive the whole way.”

“I say go normal. We’ve been going for what, ten minutes since you saw him? Little wanker is probably long gone.” Sheena said.

Liam was shaking his head, Pete could see him out of the corner of his eye.

“That’s a no from Liam then. Rachel, deciding vote.”

Silence, that was a shocker. He’d expected her to vote on the go slow straight away.

“I’ve got to be up early too, and I guess Sheena’s right. He’s probably long gone. Probably.” Pete could almost hear her fear arguing with her desire for bed. “Sod it, take a chance. But if he shows up again, you go slow.”

“That sounds fair.” Pete accelerated back up to sixty, the full beam of his headlights lighting up the archway of trees that lined the road.

For twenty minutes, the journey went as smoothly as it had before the first incident with the rudeboy racer. Sheena managed to drift back off, he could hear her quiet snores. Liam was snuggled up against the door, eyes shut, responding in grunts as he tried to go back off. Only Rachel stayed awake, Pete guessed her fear response was stronger than the others. She tried to make small talk with him about the gig, which song had been better live, which was worse.

A long, climbing straight was ahead of them and Pete saw a pair of brake lights flash at its pinnacle.

“He’s up there, did you see him?” He called back.

“No, where was he?”

“I saw his brake lights as he crested. That’s a good half mile ahead of us, but I’ll slow down as much as I can as we get to the top, see if we can spot him on the downslope.”

“OK.” Rachel’s voice was quiet, afraid. She still didn’t believe there was another car out there did she?

“It’ll be fine.” Pete told her, keeping even pressure on the pedal as they climbed the hill, they were back to low hedges on the sides here, but he knew on the other side of the climb was a long downslope into a series of S-bends, lined with trees and steep drops in parts. When he was younger, him and Liam had taken great joy in racing these roads, hammering it down the hill to get the speed up before braking hard and trying to take the bends as fast as possible.

They’d never done it this late, always making sure they had some daylight to see by. Pete could imagine the guy, it had to be a guy he was certain, was doing the same thing. But at this time of night? OK, so you don’t get much traffic to spoil your fun, but your line of sight was much less. And if the little tosser was doing it without lights? It would serve him right to smack into a tree and write his car off.

They crested the hill and Pete eased off the accelerator, Rachel leaned forward between the driver and passenger seats to get a better look.

Pete thought he saw the flash of red at the bottom of the hill as the road made the first twist into the bends.

“You see it? At the bottom of the hill?”

“No, I wasn’t looking that far down.”

“It was only a flicker, like he tapped the brakes before accelerating into the bend. I’ve done that, but I would’ve had my lights on.”

“If you say so.” Still not sure. Pete was getting convinced she’d only believe him if they ended up crashing into the fool.

“I do, so we’ll take it easy on the way down. It’d be just our luck to go round the bend and find him spun out in the middle of the road otherwise.”

Pete did exactly that, decent speed, but well below the limit on the way down, searching round the bend as the car took it to make sure there wasn’t a white Audi blocking their way.

There wasn’t.

Feeling slightly more confident, Pete let the speed climb again, not all the way, he didn’t trust the Audi to not be crashed in a dangerous place for them.

First bend, nothing.

Second bend, nothing but road.

Pete began to relax.

The Audi wasn’t on he third bend.

Fourth bend, the road was clear.

Fifth bend, brake lights flared right in front of him and Pete stamped on the brakes, making the car skid.

They were too close.

They had to hit the Audi.

Pete braced for the impact.

The car rocked to a stop.

“How did I miss him?”

Rachel punched him on the arm, hard. “Miss who, you fucking lunatic? I was looking the whole time. The road was clear ahead of us, not another car on the road and you just stamped on the brakes and nearly crashed us into that tree!” She was pointing to the large tree less than a foot from the rear passenger door, if they had hit it, Sheena could have been seriously injured, Liam probably would have taken a hard blow too.

“How did you not see him? I was certain we were going to smack into him this time.”

Rachel yanked open the door and got out, Liam looked around groggily and Sheena, somehow, kept snoring.

“You’re a fucking head case, Pete. You’re seeing shit that’s not there. I am not driving another inch with you at the wheel.” She pulled out her phone “I wonder if I can get a taxi this time of night?”

“Jesus mate, what did you do now?” Liam asked.

Pete gestured helplessly a the empty road “It was there. A fucking white Audi, stopped dead in the middle of the road. It was there.”

“Course it was, mate.” Liam got out as well “Rachel’s right, I ain’t driving any further with you tonight. You should see someone, or maybe you just need sleep.”

He slammed the door shut, which finally woke Sheena up “We home?”

“Not yet.” How was he going to explain this then?

She looked at Liam and Rachel outside, took in how close the trees were to the car and how it slewed across the road.

“How close were we?”

Pete could only shrug “I don’t know if there even was anything to be close to.” He put his face in his hands “I swear, Sheen, I’d swear that we nearly hit a car braking hard right in front of us. Looked as real as you and these trees do. But Rachel was looking too, and she saw nothing. She’s pretty mad at me.”

“I don’t blame her, but are you alright?” She placed a tender hand on his shoulder.

“I don’t know. I’m seeing things. That’s not good, is it?”

“Maybe you’re just overtired. How long have you been up?”

Pete thought about it. He had had a long day, work, then the drive up, the moshing and then driving home. But that shouldn’t be enough to make him hallucinate, should it?

Liam yanked open the passenger door “What car did you see?”

“What?” Pete was shocked.

“The car you kept seeing, what was it?”

“An Audi, white. Saw it clear as day, but…” Pete waved at the empty road again.

“Definitely white?”

“Liam, what are you doing? Don’t mess with him.” Sheena scolded.

“I’m not. Seriously. Mate, get out of the car and come with me.”

Pete got out of the car and walked around the front to Liam “What’s this about?”

“Just come with me.” Liam took hold of his elbow and guided him across the road, talking as they went.

“You know what I get like if I sleep in a car. I wake up and me bladder suddenly decides that’s it, got to be emptied. So I walked over here to take a piss and have a think about what to do with you. I got out my phone so I could see where the hell I was walking with the torch, and look.”

Liam pointed his phone’s light through the trees and Pete could see the world sloped away quite dramatically not two feet from the edge of the road.

“Down there, you see it?”

Pete peered where Liam was shining the light, down the slope, something was reflecting the light.

Something large.

Something white.

“Oh shit. Did I shunt them off?”

Rachel was at his side in a moment “No, Pete. Look at the trees, the plants, everything there. They aren’t damaged, no tracks in the mud. And we didn’t feel a bang. You didn’t hit anyone.”

Sheena joined them, looked down to where the light illuminated and gave a most un-Sheena like squeal “Oh God. Pete killed someone.”

“No he didn’t.” Rachel pointed out the lack of damage.

“This doesn’t make any sense. Look at it, there’s no way it was…” Pete trailed off.

“I’m going down to take a look.” Said Liam. “You coming, Pete?”

He was. He had to.

The two of them made careful progress down, lit by the torches on their phones from ahead and the headlights of his repositioned car from above.

At twenty feet away, it was definitely a white car

At ten feet, it was definitely an Audi.

At five, they could see it had smashed into a thick tree at a high enough speed for the trunk to slice all the way through the bonnet and into the dashboard.

“No one walked away from that.” Liam whispered.

“They’ve been here months. Look, the plants are growing through the bodywork and the wheels.”

Pete felt oddly calm. He should have been scared, he knew that. He had seen this exact car on the road above not ten minutes earlier, even though there was no way he could have. That should have terrified him, but it didn’t. Instead he felt a sense of relief, not from within him, but coming from the car.

A realisation struck him that made him feel intensely sad.

“No-one knows they’re here.”

“What are you talking about. It’s an old site, I’m sure it was just too much trouble to get the car recovered.” Liam said.

“Nah. Think about it, if we hadn’t stopped right there, we’d never have seen it. Not at the speed we were doing and even in daylight, there’s no chance. That’s not a survivable crash. They never got to call for help.” The thought process came to its conclusion “They’re still in there. Or wherever they landed if they got flung out.”

Liam leapt back a step as if stung “Jesus.”

Pete kept moving forward.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m going to see if there’s any identification inside to say whose car this was. The number plates are gone.”

Liam stayed where he was “If you’re right, that means a dead body, or bodies. I can’t, mate, I can’t see that.”

“It’s fine. Go back up to the girls. Ring the police, or the fire department. I don’t know who’d deal with this. I’ll see if there’s an easy way to tell who it is.”

Liam left without saying anything else.

Pete kept the light from his phone pointed at the car as he approached it, all the doors were shut, it didn’t look like anyone had climbed out. Now he could see how the metal had crumpled, bent and warped from the impact. The rear windscreen was intact but the side windows were spidered with cracks, except for the driver’s side, which was just gone.

“I guess that’s the way in then.” He said to himself.

He should be scared, he should be apprehensive. He should be anything but this state of zen calm he found himself in.

He smelled the driver before he saw them, the decay of rotting flesh. He gagged and covered his mouth and nose with an arm. For the first time, he paused, what was he doing? The police could do this.

“Please.”

The voice was quiet and timid, but in the silence of the night it was shockingly loud and unexpected.

Pete jumped away from the car. They couldn’t be alive, could they?

But if there was a chance…

Not letting himself think about it any more, Pete looked through the broken window.

A corpse sat alone in the driver’s seat. The face was barely recognisable as human, the clothes had started to rot as well, exposing more decaying flesh. Pete couldn’t even tell if the tracksuited figure was a guy or a girl.

He shone the torch around, looking to see a wallet, ignoring the little voice asking him who had said please.

“Right pocket.” A whisper from around the car.

Pete wanted to leave, but not from fear, just overwhelming sadness.

Shining the light on the corpse’s right hip, he saw a leather wallet sticking out from a torn pocket.

Gingerly he reached in, desperate to not make any contact with the rotting flesh.

He teased the wallet out with two fingers, slowly, slowly. Until he could get a better grip on it. Then he lifted it out, bringing some of the smell with it.

Trying not to gag, he stepped back from the wreck and opened the wallet.

In the plastic sleeve was a driving licence.

The face of a young girl looked out at him. The driver was a girl?

He checked the name.

Laura Gorse.

It didn’t ring a bell. She obviously hadn’t made it into any of the National or local news that he’d seen.

He checked the date of birth. If she was still alive, she would be twenty now.

Twenty, the right age to drive like you were immortal.

“I bet your Mum is sick she doesn’t know what happened to you, Laura. Don’t worry about it, I’ll make sure she finds out. It’s got to be better than not knowing.”

Pete turned away from the car and started back up the slope.

“Thanks.” The voice was stronger, clearer and definitely a girl’s.

Pete spun back and as his light washed over the car, it briefly illuminated a figure with long hair tied back and a sad smile on her face. He moved the light back, but no-one was there.

Pete nodded in acknowledgement before turning his back on the car for the last time and climbing back up to the road.

© Robert Spalding 2020