Ghost Shadows

by Thomas M. Malafarina

  But the creatures who resided in the forest knew the old cars were there, hidden by the impenetrable underbrush. The hollowed out battered skeletal remains had become the perfect nesting places for a varied assortment of wildlife. This automotive condominium of sorts was so vast in magnitude that both predator and prey could be found living somewhere within the ruins. A fox or coyote or feral mountain cat might have its den inside a ’53 Cadillac Fleetwood, while only a few hundred feet away, a family of rabbits might reside in a ’63 Ford Falcon.

  This particular graveyard was located in the woods, just off of Route 51, on the winding range of hills between the community of Mountain Springs and the town of Franksville in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania. Where there had once been a dirt and gravel access road nothing remained. Its original appearance was impossible to distinguish from the rest of the overgrown woodland.

  If you were able to pinpoint what was once the road and then took it upon yourself to locate and unearth the metallic vestiges they would ascertain the most recent vehicle in the macabre collection, which was also the uppermost car on the stack, was a 1965 Mercury Monterey 4-door sedan. If you were then to investigate the history surrounding this particular vehicle in greater detail you would discover it had once been the property of one Anson Middleton of 1255 Race Street, Franksville, Pennsylvania.

  Had you chosen to learn more about Mr. Middleton, you would have found that Middleton and his vehicle had been involved in a catastrophic automobile accident resulting in Mr. Middleton’s death and the complete destruction of the Mercury. A similar story could be said about every single one of the cars on the massive pile of decomposing steel. Each car in the automotive graveyard had been involved in an accident that resulted in a fatality. And like Mr. Middleton’s Cadillac; every vehicle had its own story to tell.

  Who created this mountain of past sorrows remains a mystery as does the reason the collector might have chosen only to include those specific cars that had been involved in fatal accidents. Perhaps if someone were to question a few of the local old-timers they might be lucky enough to discover the answer. However, that would be unlikely, as few if any of those older folks who might still be alive would care to speak of the place.

  Back in the 1960s the location was well known among the local bar patrons and had been discussed for hours on end until it eventually attained a status akin to legendary. At one time, the barflies might have actually known the name of the person responsible for the automotive necropolis and might even have understood his reasons for creating it. But as with most legends the stories surrounding the site grew to the point where they became nothing more than tall tales.

  But nowadays most of those same townsfolk were either dead or were simply so old that no one would bother to pay attention to what might be perceived as their wild ramblings. So as a result, over fifty years later, the mysterious final resting place was now forgotten along with most of its tragic stories.

  But there are still a few your humble narrator has chosen to be recounted.

  Anson Middleton’s tale was one that was as riddled with clichés as it was tragic; the stuff of country-western tunes. Mr. Anson Middleton had once been a senior claims adjuster for the Competence Insurance Company of America. But on that fateful night when he had earned his place on the forest pile of the dead, Mr. Middleton was traveling in excess of 100 MPH while under the influence of a combination of alcohol and prescription drugs. His car left the roadway and slammed headlong into a bridge abutment, producing the predictable yet unpleasantly volatile and final results.

  Now if you were to take the initiative to unearth every one of the vehicles you would learn that the very first car positioned at the bottom of the pile was a 1938 Packard Super Eight owned by Jeremiah T. Blakely, a well-to-do local doctor and resident of the nearby city of Yuengsville. His sad story was one of mechanical malfunction, which eventually led to extreme suffering and ultimately, death.

  Jeremiah, his wife and two children had been enjoying a Sunday afternoon leisurely drive over the Wide-Top Mountain between the towns of Coalmansville and Horton when their brakes failed on the steep incline leading down into the little town. Their car quickly gained speed, and despite Jeremiah’s best efforts to maintain control, the velocity soon became too excessive to navigate the automobile.

  Since no guardrails were present during those early years, the car became airborne and flew over the hillside where it flipped end-for-end multiple times killing everyone inside, but sadly not instantly. One unknown fact about this tragedy was that Mr. Blakely was the last of his family to perish after being forced to spend the last few agonizing minutes of his life listening to the tortured suffering screams of his wife and family as one-by-one their cries faded as they succumbed to their excruciating injuries.

  But perhaps the strangest and most haunting stories of all the tragic and horrible tales was the one concerning a young, abrasive, and arrogant teen named James “Duke” Wellington and a forty-something-year-old family man named Francis O’Halloran.

  About halfway down the rusting pile of vehicles, circa 1952-1955, there lay the two corroded shells, which are the subject of this particular tale. The story of their arrival in the automotive graveyard is cloaked in conceit, wealth, influence, death, and eventual revenge.

  James “Duke” Wellington was a sixteen-year-old foolhardy youth whose father happened to be a wealthy and politically well-connected local attorney. Jim got the nickname “Duke” because of the way his surname, Wellington, rhymed with the famous jazz pianist, composer and big band leader Duke Ellington. However, young Jim Wellington was unable to write music, play piano, or conduct a band. The Wellington family lived in an upper-class subdivision outside of Franksville.

  In contrast, Francis O’Halloran was a forty-three-year-old father of four children, all of whom were under the age of sixteen. His eldest, Francis Junior, was in a class one year behind the infamous Duke Wellington. Young Francis had few if any encounters with Wellington but from observations he perceived the boy to be a bully. And like all bullies, Wellington traveled with a cadre of toadies, flunkies, and general hangers-on whose apparent sole purpose in life was to laugh at all of Wellington’s juvenile pranks as well as his immature sense of humor.

  Francis Sr. and his family lived in a small wood-framed lower-middle class row house in Ashton. They survived from paycheck to paycheck as did most of the people in his particular social strata. But he never complained and did all he could to support his family. He was a dedicated hard worker who was assigned to the job of second shift laborer at a local mirror manufacturing plant on the south side of Franksville.

  One late winter night when the roads were treacherous and Francis was driving down the steep winding hill, heading home from his job, Duke was simultaneously traveling like the proverbial bat-out-of-hell up the hill from the opposite direction. His car was fishtailing wildly and traveling outside of his lane. Duke was accompanied by one of his friends, Nick Giamondi, both of them laughing hysterically at yet another of Duke’s idiotic stunts. As fate would have it, the two cars met at the exact wrong time as the back end of Duke’s ’55 Corvette fishtailed into the oncoming lane and was struck by O’Halloran’s 1953 Ford Country Squire Station Wagon. Normally such a collision would not have done much damage to the tank-like Ford, but at the last moment, in an ill-fated attempt to avoid the collision, O’Halloran turned his wheel too hard and lost control of the monstrous vehicle sliding across the highway, through the guardrails, down over the embankment, and finally slamming into a cluster of large trees, killing him instantly.

  Duke’s corvette was damaged somewhat in the back end and he suffered a fractured leg, while his friend Nick managed to escape with just a few cuts and lacerations. Police filed charges of vehicular homicide against young Wellington but his influential father helped him to get away just a fine, which his father grudgingly paid. Likewise when the O’Halloran family tried to sue the Wellingtons in civil court, the results were just as uns
uccessful.

  Duke had escaped a jail sentence and a lawsuit. One might think such a close brush with the grim reaper might make him reflect; might even make him a bit humble, but it did not. In fact, in some people’s opinions his arrogance seemed to have increased, as did the number and severity of the various twisted pranks he pulled on his classmates. For young Francis O’Halloran, Jr. the idea of watching the person who killed his father get off scot-free was often more than he could tolerate. But Francis was a small boy with few friends and his family did not travel in the same socio-economic circles as the Wellingtons, so the best he could hope for was to avoid any contact with Duke whatsoever. He feared that if Duke recognized him as the son of the woman who tried to sue him, he would suffer intolerable harassment at the hands of Duke and his army of cronies. So he kept a low profile and remained quiet, doing his best to operate below Duke’s radar.

  During the next two years before Duke’s high school graduation many strange stories began to spread around the area about mysterious sightings at the very same curve where Francis O’Halloran lost his life that fateful night. Some people claimed to see a man standing near the side of the road as if looking and waiting for someone to drive by. One person said they stopped to offer the man a ride but when they opened the car door he was gone. Some people even went so far as to describe the man as looking like the late Francis O’Halloran, which of course started the rumor mill buzzing and before long all sorts of ghost stories began to permeate the region.

  The O’Halloran family heard about the stories but did their best to ignore them as such tales only served to increase unhappy memories. Duke Wellington heard the stories as well, but his response was to simply scoff at them as nothing but utter nonsense. Yet during those years Duke had made a point of going far out of his way to avoid that particular stretch of highway. His corvette had been repaired shortly after the accident and although he still drove much faster than he should, he made a point to never travel that road again.

  That was, until the night of his high school graduation when he was in a hurry to get home after a friend’s party. Duke wanted to see what his father had bought him as a graduation gift. He had asked for a new corvette, as his current one was never quite the same since the accident; at least it never felt right to Duke again. And since his father always bought him everything he wanted, he was certain the new car was waiting for him at home.

  Instead of taking his usual roundabout trip home he decided it made more sense to travel up the winding mountain and pass the site where the accident occurred. Although he had been nervous about doing so, Duke talked himself into it, thinking about how as a high school graduate it was time for him to put his unfortunate past behind him and be a man.

  As he approached the curve, which had caused him so much trouble two years earlier, Duke deliberately slowed his car so he would be certain to pass through safely. His first inclination was to drive past the site as quickly as possible, but slow and easy seemed the best choice on that dark and somewhat foggy night.

  As he approached the bend Duke saw someone; a man, standing by the side of the road watching as if waiting. The man wore a denim blue work shirt and cotton workpants. His hair hung down over his eyes and at first Duke was not sure who he might be. Then the strange man lifted his head and stared directly at Duke who immediately recognized him as Francis O’Halloran, the man he had killed almost two years earlier. But the man no longer looked as he had back then.

  Now the man’s cheeks were sunken and his flesh was no more than sallow hide stretched tightly over bones. His eyes appeared huge and seemed to bug out of sunken black holes. His lips were mere lines pulled back over a mass of large exposed black and rotten teeth. The horrible creature opened his mouth and let out a roar that vibrated deep into Duke’s skull, causing him to instinctively throw his hands up to protect his aching ears.

  As he covered his ears he was just entering the curve and the vehicle started to veer off the highway. He quickly grabbed the wheel, overcompensating in the process. The car went into an uncontrollable spin before skidding off the highway and slamming into the same cluster of trees at the exact same spot where Francis O’Halloran lost his life two years earlier.

  The police who arrived to clean up the mess could not help but notice the look of complete terror that remained on the face of the battered corpse of Duke Wellington. Since a few of them had been on the job a long time and had been the very same officers who had been called to the original O’Halloran/Wellington accident, they looked at each other with amazement; understanding the strange, unspoken coincidence. Once again the local rumor mill filled with stories of ghostly vengeance and how the spirit of Francis O’Halloran had come back from the grave to claim the life of the person who had taken his.

  Since that night, sightings of the mysterious stranger stopped. No one ever saw anything unusual at the site of the crashes again, no matter how many stories were told. And they never would. This was because the two cars were now a mile or more deeper in the woods decaying in the middle of a stack of cars; and each of those cars had their own terrible stories to tell.

  If you were to stop by the weed-infested pile of rusting metal late at night and if you were to sit quietly and listen with an ear for the uncommon, you might hear the painful cries of a young man and the maniacal laughter of revenge coming from his torturer as the two sounds blend to form a mournful howl in the darkness of night.

  Double Yellow

  It must be I thought, one of the race’s most persistent and comforting hallucinations to trust that “it can’t happen here”—that one’s own time and place is beyond cataclysm.

  —John Wyndahm, The Day of the Triffids

  Wyatt drove robotically along the winding country two-lane road. It was the same one he had traveled daily for almost thirty years during his long commute to and from work. Little had changed with that particular stretch of highway during those many years save for the occasional resurfacing project, followed by the repainting of the white lines along the shoulders of the road as well as the solid double yellow lines down the center.

  This was Wyatt’s first day returning to work as a purchasing agent for a major corporation after being absent the entire previous week, suffering with a particularly nasty strain of some sort of flu bug that had apparently been making its rounds. He had started feeling poorly the previous Saturday morning and by evening he was sicker than he had been in a very long time; exploding from both ends as it were. Wyatt could imagine little that might be worse as he had sat on the toilet with a bucket on the floor in front of him just waiting for the next wave of sickness to strike, which it often did simultaneously.

  By Sunday night the worst of his illness was over but he was feeling very weak, so Wyatt decided to take off Monday to rest and recover before making any attempt at returning to work. But when he discovered he felt no better Tuesday morning he once again stayed home and slept most of that day as well. Late Tuesday night he tried eating some clear soup broth, which his wife had made for him, hoping to feel well enough to return Wednesday. But as it turned out, he didn’t make it in Wednesday either. After trying to do a few things around the house in a feeble attempt to get himself back to normal, he began to feel worse once again. So he took off Thursday and Friday as well.

  He had decided it might be better to wait and start fresh on Monday. The weekend had gone fairly well and by Monday he was feeling about as good as he could be expected to feel after such an ordeal. Wyatt’s wife suggested that what he really needed now was to get back into his daily routine and put the illness behind him. He was still a bit foggy in the brain but he guessed that was to be expected after being down for so long.

  As he drove along the road in the early dawn darkness, Wyatt noticed the highway appeared somehow different than it had looked a week earlier. Something about it had changed. He could not quite determine what the difference was, however. At first he wondered if perhaps the state workers had resurfaced the two-lane while h
e was off, but he could see in the light from his high beams that the road had the same worn surface as previously. He always left for work before sunrise and arrived home after dark so he was accustomed to the way the road looked in his headlights. Yet still something definitely seemed different. He wondered what it might be. Then, he realized what it was: it was the lines.

  That was it. Apparently someone must have repainted the traffic lines during his time away. The single white lines along the shoulders seemed much whiter and the solid double yellow lines down the center glowed with a sort of phosphorescence the likes of which Wyatt had not noticed before.

  He wondered why anyone would have bothered to repaint the markings on a road that was in such dire need of resurfacing. It made no fiscal sense and the contrast between the lines and the worn highway surface was almost disturbing. Then Wyatt looked more closely at the lines and suspected he might have been incorrect and perhaps they had not been repainted after all. Yet the lines still did seem to stand out from the rest of the roadway for some unexplainable reason.

  Maybe it was the result of some strange convergence of atmospheric conditions; the darkness of the predawn; the position of the moon and stars combined with the absence of clouds. Perhaps he was viewing the lines through a magnifying morning mist. Who knew? For whatever reason, the lines seemed to glow with an incredible iridescence. Then Wyatt noticed something else about the lines that he could not begin to explain—they suddenly made him feel very uncomfortable.

  For the first time in all of his years of traveling along the same road, Wyatt felt as if he was a prisoner being held captive by the lines. Although he understood such a thought was illogical as well as completely irrational he couldn’t seem to shake the sensation, which was beginning to feel almost claustrophobic. Perhaps he was still feeling the effects of his illness of the previous week and it was playing tricks with his mind. But whatever the reason, the feeling was extremely intense.