I had an experience with a ghost. I think it was a ghost. It wasn’t bound to anything like a house or a grave. It drove a car just like you or me. It did so in the dead of night and it sought something from me when I worked at a Pizza place out of Dedham, Massachusetts. The incident itself lead to a car accident, I lost my job, and I haven’t been able to drive at night without sweating. This incident I am about to tell you… ruined my life, but maybe posting my story here will alleviate the pain somehow.
At the time I had to make ends meet for my “weedy” needs and school textbooks. So I picked up this part-time job as a delivery guy at a local pizza place. It sold the best New York-style pizza in Mass. So you can believe I was on the road a lot, and being so young; I was on the night shift.
The night this happened, it was shortly after a horrible nor’easter that covered the entire state in toddler-height snow and caused a lot of accidents, shortly before the Christmas holidays. So I was the only delivery driver, and it turns out a lot of people are pretty fine with risking my life for pizza. So was my boss, for that matter.
He didn’t even bother to show up to work either. It was me and two other in-house workers that night. Joe and Ryan. This didn’t slow anything down though, I was in and out of the store starting at 5 PM and by 6 PM delivering orders. The air was calm and the streets were cleared and salted. It was all easy money.
It was about this time that I saw a black SUV pull up behind me while I was only a couple of blocks away from my store. It didn’t seem suspicious at first. It was jet black, and there was no brand logo on the front of the SUV. I guessed a custom Ford Explorer or Chevy Traverse, at the time. As I got closer to my store, my eyes kept wandering in my rearview mirror. As if pulled by curiosity at first, and held there by a magnetic pull. Every time I looked away I wanted to gaze back up at the mirror to see who was behind the wheel. All I could see was darkness though. I finally closed in on the right turn towards the store I worked at and flipped my blinker on.
This driver behind me did the same, signaling his turn into the same parking lot. He was following me in and when we stopped at the red light before turning, I attempted to get another glimpse under the street light. It was just a black silhouette in front of white lamplight pouring down through their moon roof. I looked away quickly and turned.
Turning in, I zoom in to park in front of the store, watching the SUV move three car lengths behind me in the mirror. I parked in front of the store with a screech and nearly stumbled out of my car, but the SUV was nowhere to be seen once I got my footing. I stared out onto the parking lot at the empty spots and plowed snow. A flurry of snowflakes began to come down and I strained through it hoping to catch a glimpse of the pursuer. Nothing. No tire tracks, no lights. Nothing.
I walked steadily inside and was happy to find out that orders were null. Both Joe and Ryan were rolling a joint right in front of the cash register. A good ol’ victory joint for this weird ass night. We shared jokes and hurried outside the back of the store to smoke behind the trash can. It had an extra four feet of cover from the snow. It made sure no one could see us. We puffed and passed around and I felt that buzz tingle in the back of my brain. It melted over my mind like a warm blanket and it made the snow falling that more beautiful.
But I felt my euphoria drain from my brain like the blood did from my face, as I saw the same black SUV parked a short distance away. It was only fifty feet away from us, parked under a street lamp. The driver inside the car was illuminated by the light through the ceiling window of the SUV. The driver sat like a jet-black figurehead among white-colored seats, indiscernible and my eyes seemed to strain at it. Almost like I was forced to try and see it. I was clutching the joint between my lips as I stared through the smoke. They began to water as I strained to just get a single detail. It should have been close enough for me to make out some sort of detail, right? Ryan and Joe kept shit-talking until they saw me zoned out and not passing the joint. They kept asking something but I couldn’t understand them. My attention was transfixed, trying to identify the driver. and I watched as the driver’s silhouette head tilted suddenly.
It jerked a hard ninety-five degrees, horizontally, and he didn’t even lift its hands up to move it. Its neck cracked with the movement and somehow my head heard every ‘pop’ as it moved. As if it was my own neck being twisted sideways. I jumped back, scaring my coworkers and dropping our joint on the ground. It sizzled in the snow and they both looked at me like I drowned their goldfish.
When I looked back at the SUV it was gone and I began to sweat. I asked them if they saw the SUV but they just walked inside, and Joe just called me an asshole. I sulked inside thinking I was losing my mind. Finally all the marijuana I smoked throughout my life was finally causing my mental faculties to waver. I froze and turned to look at the joint on the ground. Why waste it? I thought while rushing back to get it. I picked it up and as I rose I saw the black SUV again, but its headlights were at me and it revved as if it was about to charge toward me and the trashcan.
I quickly ducked behind it, throwing the mushy joint into my coat pocket and bracing my back against the trashcan. There was more malicious revving before I heard the tires screech and the engine roaring closer. It was approaching at ramming speeds! As the roaring engine was at its apex, closing in on my weak trash-can barrier, it suddenly stopped.
I blinked a few times as I realized there was no car sound at all, but instead of looking to check I ran inside and rushed to the bathroom. All I could think of as I vomited was how close I was to being pasted between a brick wall, and a dumpster can. The image of my insides being squished out painted my mind and I reeled at the thought of dying to some unknown thing.
I tried to change my thoughts. I decided to focus on the wet joint and pulled it out of my pocket. I gutted it and laid the contents into a paper towel I pulled from the bathroom dispenser. I then clutched it in my hand like a brown balloon and held the balloon under the hand dryer we provided in the bathroom. I waited for the papertowel to dry the contents as I thought about my drive for the night.
I then had a strange thought. It was like lightning but I understood it.
“Get ready to roll…” I heard in not my own voice. It pinged off the back of my thoughts and took center stage.
“Time to hit the road!” again a voice not my own but I trusted it inherently. I grabbed the paper towel and tucked it into my jacket pocket before running out and getting the orders. When I looked at Ryan and Joe, they were red-eyed and forgiving of my fuck up. I got a second chance to ask about the black SUV which of course both denied ever being there. They asked me what took me so long and I handed back the weed that I recovered explaining my attempt at recovery.
I was given pats on the back and fist bumps as I left, and I felt atoned for my crime against stoner-kind. I carried the pizza boxes to my car and loaded them inside, not without wildly searching around for my pursuer. Once I saw the coast was clear, I did a quick circle of the lot to make sure it was actually clear of all people. I saw no one, not even behind the large snow piles.
It was 7PM now. The night was dark, and the roads seemed only to be lit by the piles of snow on either side. The flurry had added another foot or so of snow, making small ice walls on either side of me. As I drove through neighborhoods and listened to my podcast, I still jumped at any SUV I saw. At this point, it didn’t seem to even matter what color it was. As long as it tailed me for longer than five seconds, I panicked. I still delivered my orders, but one house I stopped at had a jet-black Ford Explorer parked up front with the lights on. I nearly had a heart attack before I realized it wasn’t the same vehicle.
When I got to my last order for this trip, it was nearly 8 PM now. I had two more hours left on my shift and honestly, I really just wanted to go home. The last order was to a place deep within a wooded neighborhood. Every house seemed to have a massive forest behind it instead of a backyard, and each front yard had one or more trees. It was like driving through a winter forest instead of an HOA neighborhood. When I arrived at the address and got out with the pizzas, I took a glance around again to make sure no one was following me. Coast was clear, I thought, and I rushed up the driveway clutching three boxes in both arms.
I rang the doorbell and turned to look again at my car and the surrounding road, and again, no one was there. When I heard the door open I turned back to see a small balding man glaring up at me, arms crossed, and face crunched down in a frown. He took the pizzas silently and then stared at me expectantly, tapping his brown loafer.
He said I had forgotten his soda, and I realized that I had left it in the front seat of the car. With a smile, I apologized and told him so, then turned to go. I froze. Parked only a couple of houses away was the indescribable black SUV. I could feel the driver’s gaze on my forehead. It burned. I turned to the man and screamed at him, asking him if he saw the SUV. I pointed at it manically and he just…stared scared at me. The rage about his soda was gone from his face and replaced with fear. He responded quickly in a tone of concern, “I don’t see anything there…”
I ran and jumped into my car, pushing the pedal to the metal and driving with screeching wheels. I think I hit forty-five in a ten-mile-per-hour neighborhood zone. The houses l drove by heard the noise as I raced as fast as I could away from my pursuer. The SUV was only three car lengths behind me the whole time. I felt that magnetic pull of the driver’s stare and I pushed my foot harder against the gas.
The houses in the neighborhood…I don’t know when but suddenly we were just on a road in a forest. A road that curved and turned left and right and it seemed to never end. There were streetlights, I remember clearly because every time we went under one of the lamps I was forced to gaze at it in my rearview mirror. My eyes honed in on the creature and I saw its spotlight eyes gaze back at me now. Its yellow stare was veined with black and the pupil expanded in and out as it stared back. Its charred skin flipped open and close against the perfectly white leather seats. My eyes couldn’t look away from all of that flapping skin. At the detail of the interior. At the smile that was wide enough to eat my head whole.
Then I heard my car crash against metal because I wasn’t looking at the road anymore. I didn’t black out right away but instead watched my world become inverted and felt my car crash against the trunk of a tree. I heard a voice again that was not my own which seemed to pull me from blacking out.
“It’s time to roll…” it said, “We got work to do…”
I started hanging upside down in my car from my seatbelt and watched the SUV pull up next to my wreck. The driver stepped out in its charred glory. The light of the fire glinted off his glistening flesh wounds. I could smell the smoke coming from my car. I guess the flip had caused a gas leak, and I was passing out. The Pursuer approached with an intelligent step, and it spoke now with its real voice. My god, I can remember it so clearly. I hear it in my nightmares. Its voice was like liquified shrapnel being hocked like a loogey.
It snapped its head left and right wildly, a series of cracks as if a room full of people were cracking their knuckles. I felt my own neck tense in pain and I heard my bones crack as it approached. The smell of seared rot was the last thing I smelled before I passed out. When I woke up I was in the Hospital. I was told I was found on the side of the highway in the snow, car smoldering and destroyed, and safely away from the fire.
I didn’t tell anyone. I lied and said my brakes stopped working so I rolled out of the car and saved myself before it crashed. When I was questioned by the police, they informed me that the doctors found THC in my system and suspected that is why I crashed. I was given a DUI right then and there and the cost was exorbitant.
My boss fired me with a text, but the man was an asshole so I didn’t really care about that. What is worse than being fired and a DUI? I thought a DUI was the worst thing that could happen but…The sleepless nights. I hear the cracking of bones every night I close my eyes. When I have the courage to drive, I shrink at the sight of every black SUV. I think I even see the black SUV outside of my window at night, parked down the street, headlights on, staring at me. I feel its gaze, and I try to tear myself away from the window but I sometimes can’t. I stare for hours and hear the words, “It’s time to roll…” and “We got work to do…”