I hit the brakes, but it was hopeless, of course. Everything seemed to happen at once. There was a horrible squealing noise, and I remember getting a brief glimpse of the kid’s terrified face just before the two cars made impact. Then came the shock of the crash.
The Jag hit the Edsel broadside, smashing into the driver’s compartment at seventy. Then it spun away into the guard rail, and came to a stop. The Edsel, hit straight on, flipped over on its back in the center of the road. I don’t recall unfastening my seat belt or scrambling out of my car, but I must have done so, because the next thing I remember I was crawling on the roadway, dazed but unhurt.
I should have tried to do something right away, to answer the cries for help that were coming from the Edsel. But I didn’t. I was still shaken, in shock. I don’t know how long I lay there before the Edsel exploded and began to burn. The cries suddenly became screams. And then there were no cries.
By the time I climbed to my feet, the fire had burned itself out, and it was too late to do anything. But I still wasn’t thinking very clearly. I could see lights in the distance, down the road that led from the exit ramp. I began to walk towards them.
That walk seemed to take forever. I couldn’t seem to get my bearings, and I kept stumbling. The road was very poorly lighted, and I could hardly see where I was going. My hands were scraped badly once when I fell down. It was the only injury I suffered in the entire accident.
The lights were from a small café, a dingy place that had marked off a section of the abandoned highway as its airlot. There were only three customers inside when I stumbled through the door, but one of them was a local cop.
“There’s been an accident,” I said from the doorway. “Somebody’s got to help them.”
The cop drained his coffee cup in a gulp, and rose from his chair. “A copter crash, mister?” he said. “Where is it?”
I shook my head. “N-no. No. Cars. A crash, a highway accident. Out on the old interstate.” I pointed vaguely in the direction I had come.
Halfway across the room, the cop stopped suddenly and frowned. Everybody else laughed. “Hell, no one’s used that road in twenty years, you sot,” a fat man yelled from the corner of the room. “It’s got so many potholes we use it for a golf course,” he added, laughing loudly at his own joke.
The cop looked at me doubtfully. “Go home and sober up, mister,” he said. “I don’t want to have to run you in.” He started back towards his chair.
I took a step into the room. “Dammit, I’m telling the truth,” I said, angry now more than dazed. “And I’m not drunk. There’s been a collision on the interstate, and there’s people trapped up there in….” My voice trailed off as it finally struck me that any help I could bring would be far too late.
The cop still looked dubious. “Maybe you ought to go check it out,” the waitress suggested from behind the counter. “He might be telling the truth. There was a highway accident last year, in Ohio somewhere. I remember seeing a story about it on 3V.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” the cop said at last. “Let’s go, buddy. And you better be telling the truth.”
We walked across the airlot in silence, and climbed into the four-man police copter. As he started up the blades, the cop looked at me and said, “You know, if you’re on the level, you and that other guy should get some kind of medal.”
I stared at him blankly.
“What I mean is, you’re probably the only two cars to use that road in ten years. And you still manage to collide. Now, that had to take some doing, didn’t it?” He shook his head ruefully. “Not everybody could pull off a stunt like that. Like I said, they ought to give you a medal.”
The interstate wasn’t nearly as far from the café as it had seemed when I was walking. Once airborne, we covered the distance in less than five minutes. But there was something wrong. The highway looked somehow different from the air.
And suddenly I realized why. It was darker. Much darker.
Most of the lights were out, and those that weren’t were dim and flickering.
As I sat there stunned, the copter came down with a thud in the middle of a pool of sickly yellow light thrown out by one of the fading lamps. I climbed out in a daze, and tripped as I accidentally stepped into one of the potholes that pockmarked the road. There was a big clump of weeds growing in the bottom of this one, and a lot more rooted in the jagged network of cracks that ran across the highway.
My head was starting to pound. This didn’t make sense. None of it made sense. I didn’t know what the hell was going on.
The cop came around from the other side of the copter, a portable med sensor slung over one shoulder on a leather strap. “Let’s move it,” he said. “Where’s this accident of yours?”
“Down the road, I think,” I mumbled, unsure of myself. There was no sign of my car, and I was beginning to think we might be on the wrong road altogether, although I didn’t see how that could be.
It was the right road, though. We found my car a few minutes later, sitting by the guard rail on a pitch black section of highway where all the lights had burnt out. Yes, we found my car all right.
Only there wasn’t a scratch on it. And there was no Edsel.
I remembered the Jaguar as I had left it. The windshield shattered. The entire front of the car in ruins. The right fender smashed up where it had scraped along the guard rail. And here it was, in mint condition.
The cop, scowling, played the med sensor over me as I stood there staring at my car. “Well, you’re not drunk,” he said at last, looking up. “So I’m not going to run you in, even though I should. Here’s what you’re going to do, mister—you’re going to get in that relic, and turn around, and get out of here as fast as you can. ’Cause if I ever see you around here again, you might have a real accident. Understand?”
I wanted to protest, but I couldn’t find the words. What could I say that would possibly make sense? Instead, I nodded weakly. The cop turned with disgust, muttering something about practical jokes, and stalked back to his copter.
When he was gone, I walked up to the Jaguar and felt the front of it incredulously, feeling like a fool. But it was real. And when I climbed in and turned the key in the ignition, the engine rumbled reassuringly, and the headlights speared out into the darkness. I sat there for a long time before I finally swung the car out into the middle of the road, and made a U-turn.
The drive back to San Breta was long and rough. I was constantly bouncing in and out of potholes. And thanks to the poor lighting and the treacherous road conditions, I had to keep my speed at a minimum.
The road was lousy. There was no doubt about that. Usually I went out of my way to avoid roads that were this bad. There was too much chance of blowing a tire.
I managed to make it to San Breta without incident, taking it slow and easy. It was two A.M. before I pulled into town. The exit ramp, like the rest of the road, was cracked and darkened. And there was no sign to mark it.
I recalled from previous trips through the area that San Breta boasted a large hobbyist garage and gas depot, so I headed there and checked my car with a bored young night attendant. Then I went straight to the nearest motel. A night’s sleep, I thought, would make everything make sense.
But it didn’t. I was every bit as confused when I woke up in the morning. More so, even. Now something in the back of my head kept telling me the whole thing had been a bad dream. I swatted down that tempting thought out of hand, and tried to puzzle it out.
I kept puzzling through a shower and breakfast, and the short walk back to the gas depot. But I wasn’t making any progress. Either my mind had been playing tricks on me, or something mighty funny had been going on last night. I didn’t want to believe the former, so I made up my mind to investigate the latter.
The owner, a spry old man in his eighties, was on duty at the gas depot when I returned. He was wearing an old-fashioned mechanic’s coverall, a quaint touch. He nodded amiably when I checked out the Jaguar.
�
�Good to see you again,” he said. “Where you headed this time?”
“L.A. I’m taking the interstate this time.”
His eyebrows rose a trifle at that. “The interstate? I thought you had more sense than that. That road’s a disaster. No way to treat a fine piece of machinery like that Jaguar of yours.”
I didn’t have the courage to try to explain, so I just grinned weakly and let him go get the car. The Jag had been washed, checked over, and gassed up. It was in prime shape.
I took a quick look for dents, but there were none to be found.
“How many regular customers you get around here?” I asked the old man as I was paying him. “Local collectors, I mean, not guys passing through.”
He shrugged. “Must be about a hundred in the state. We get most of their business. Got the best gas and the only decent service facilities in these parts.”
“Any decent collections?”
“Some,” he said. “One guy comes in all the time with a Pierce-Arrow. Another fellow specializes in the forties. He’s got a really fine collection. In good shape, too.”
I nodded. “Anybody around here own an Edsel?” I asked.
“Hardly,” he replied. “None of my customers have that kind of money. Why do you ask?”
I decided to throw caution on the road, so to speak. “I saw one last night on the road. Didn’t get to speak to the owner, though. Figured it might be somebody local.”
The old man’s expression was blank, so I turned to get into the Jag. “Nobody from around here,” he said as I shut the door. “Must’ve been another guy driving through. Funny meeting him on the road like that, though. Don’t often get—”
Then, just as I was turning the key in the ignition, his jaw dropped about six feet. “Wait a minute!” he yelled. “You said you were driving on the old interstate. You saw an Edsel on the interstate?”
I turned the motor off again. “That’s right,” I said.
“Christ,” he said. “I’d almost forgotten, it’s been so long. Was it a white Edsel? Five people in it?”
I opened the door and got out again. “Yeah,” I said. “Do you know something about it?”
The old man grabbed my shoulders with both hands. There was a funny look in his eyes. “You just saw it?” he said, shaking me. “Are you sure that’s all that happened?”
I hesitated a moment, feeling foolish. “No,” I finally admitted. “I had a collision with it. That is, I thought I had a collision with it. But then—” I gestured limply towards the Jaguar.
The old man took his hands off me, and laughed. “Again,” he muttered. “After all these years.”
“What do you know about this?” I demanded. “What the hell went on out there last night?”
He sighed. “C’mon,” he said. “I’ll tell you all about it.”
“IT WAS OVER FORTY YEARS AGO,” HE TOLD ME OVER A CUP OF COFFEE in a café across the street. “Back in the ’70s. They were a family on a vacation outing. The kid and his father were taking shifts behind the wheel. Anyway, they had hotel reservations at San Breta. But the kid was driving, and it was late at night, and somehow he missed his exit. Didn’t even notice it.
“Until he hit Exit 77, that is. He must’ve been really scared when he saw that sign. According to people who knew them, his father was a real bastard. The kind who’d give him a real hard time over something like that. We don’t know what happened, but they figure the kid panicked. He’d only had his license about two weeks. Of all things, he tried to make a U-turn and head back towards San Breta.
“The other car hit him broadside. The driver of that car didn’t have his seat belt on. He went through the windshield, hit the road, and was killed instantly. The people in the Edsel weren’t so lucky. The Edsel turned over and exploded, with them trapped inside. All five were burned to death.”
I shuddered a little as I remembered the screams from the burning car. “But that was forty years ago, you said. How does that explain what happened to me last night?”
“I’m getting to that,” the old man said. He picked up a donut, dunked it into his coffee, and chewed on it thoughtfully. “Next thing was about two years later,” he said at last. “Guy reported a collision to the cops. Collision with an Edsel. Late at night. On the interstate. The way he described it, it was an instant replay of the other crash. Only, when they got there, his car wasn’t even dented. And there was no sign of the other car.
“Well, that guy was a local boy, so it was dismissed as a publicity stunt of some sort. But then, a year later, still another guy came in with the same story. This time he was from the East, couldn’t possibly have heard of the first accident. The cops didn’t know what to make of it.
“Over the years it happened again and again. There were a few things common to all the incidents. Each time it was late at night. Each time the man involved was alone in his car, with no other cars in sight. There were never any witnesses, as there had been for the first crash, the real one. All the collisions took place just beyond Exit 77, when the Edsel swerved and tried to make a U-turn.
“Lots of people tried to explain it. Hallucinations, somebody said. Highway hypnosis, claimed somebody else. Hoaxes, one guy argued. But only one explanation ever made sense, and that was the simplest. The Edsel was a ghost. The papers made the most of that. ‘The haunted highway,’ they called the interstate.”
The old man stopped to drain his coffee, and then stared into the cup moodily. “Well, the crashes continued right up through the years whenever the conditions were right. Until ’93. And then traffic began slacking off. Fewer and fewer people were using the interstate. And there were fewer and fewer incidents.” He looked up at me. “You were the first one in more than twenty years. I’d almost forgotten.” Then he looked down again, and fell silent.
I considered what he had said for a few minutes. “I don’t know,” I said finally, shaking my head. “It all fits. But a ghost? I don’t think I believe in ghosts. And it all seems so out of place.”
“Not really,” said the old man, looking up. “Think back on all the ghost stories you read as a kid. What did they all have in common?”
I frowned. “Don’t know.”
“Violent death, that’s what. Ghosts were the products of murders and of executions, debris of blood and violence. Haunted houses were all places where someone had met a grisly end a hundred years before. But in twentieth century America, you didn’t find the violent death in mansions and castles. You found it on the highways, the bloodstained highways where thousands died each year. A modern ghost wouldn’t live in a castle or wield an axe. He’d haunt a highway, and drive a car. What could be more logical?”
It made a certain amount of sense. I nodded. “But why this highway? Why this car? So many people died on the roads. Why is this case special?”
The old man shrugged. “I don’t know. What made one murder different from another? Why did only some produce ghosts? Who’s to say? But I’ve heard theories. Some said the Edsel is doomed to haunt the highway forever because it is, in a sense, a murderer. It caused the accident, caused those deaths. This is a punishment.”
“Maybe,” I said doubtfully. “But the whole family? You could make a case that it was the kid’s fault. Or even the father’s, for letting him drive with so little experience. But what about the rest of the family? Why should they be punished?”
“True, true,” the old man said. “I never bought that theory myself. I’ve got my own explanation.” He looked me straight in the eye.
“I think they’re lost,” he said.
“Lost?” I repeated, and he nodded.
“Yes,” he said. “In the old days, when the roads were crowded, you couldn’t just turn around when you missed an exit. You had to keep going, sometimes for miles and miles, before you could find a way to get off the road and then get back on. Some of the cloverleaves they designed were so complicated you might never find your way back to your exit.
“And that’s what happened
to the Edsel, I think. They missed their exit, and now they can’t find it. They’ve got to keep going. Forever.” He sighed. Then he turned, and ordered another cup of coffee.
We drank in silence, then walked back to the gas depot. From there, I drove straight to the town library. It was all there, in the old newspapers on file. The details of the original accident, the first incident two years later, and the others, in irregular sequence. The same story, the same crash, over and over. Everything was identical, right down to the screams.
The old highway was dark and unlit that night when I resumed my trip. There were no traffic signs or white lines, but there were plenty of cracks and potholes. I drove slowly, lost in thought.
A few miles beyond San Breta I stopped and got out of the car. I sat there in the starlight until it was nearly dawn, looking and listening. But the lights stayed out, and I saw nothing.
Yet, around midnight, there was a peculiar whistling sound in the distance. It built quickly, until it was right on top of me, and then faded away equally fast.
It could have been a hovertruck off over the horizon somewhere, I suppose. I’ve never heard a hovertruck make that sort of noise, but still, it might have been a hovertruck.
But I don’t think so.
I think it was the wind whistling through the nose of a rusty white ghost car, driving on a haunted highway you won’t find on any road maps. I think it was the cry of a little lost Edsel, searching forever for the exit to San Breta.
THE SECOND KIND OF LONELINESS
JUNE 18—My relief left Earth today.
It will be at least three months before he gets here, of course. But he’s on his way.
Today he lifted off from the Cape, just as I did, four long years ago. Out at Komarov Station he’ll switch to a moon boat, then switch again in orbit around Luna, at Deepspace Station. There his voyage will really begin. Up to then he’s still been in his own backyard.
Not until the Charon casts loose from Deepspace Station and sets out into the night will he feel it, really feel it, as I felt it four years ago. Not until Earth and Luna vanish behind him will it hit. He’s known from the first that there’s no turning back, of course. But there’s a difference between knowing it and feeling it. Now he’ll feel it.
Dreamsongs. Volume I Page 11