A light gust of wind rustled the leaf pile. Our suburban Atlanta yard was bounded by trees on three sides. Every October it got coated in yellow and orange leaves, and today was raking day.
Our neighborhood was quiet, our street never busy. So when a car came by the noise always caught our attention momentarily.
I heard the sound of a humming engine and wheels turning on pavement. Up the hill came a black Cadillac, a car I had not seen before. It looked to be from the 80s and had New York plates. The driver was bald. The Cadillac continued past our house up the hill. Odd, but it was likely just a visitor. Family of someone up the street. Neither Caroline nor I thought much of it.
That evening after dinner we took a walk as we often did. Up to the end of the road, down to the intersection with the highway, and back to the house. The Cadillac was in the driveway of the biggest house in the neighborhood, the one at the end of the road. Again, not out of the ordinary, as they had visitors all the time.
I never saw the car go anywhere for the next four days, but it was entirely possible that I just hadn’t been home or looking at the right times.
Then, at dusk on Thursday, I saw the car again, driving up the street the same way it did Saturday. Same driver. New York plate. Again, not much reason to be suspicious - until Friday, when, on our walk, we saw another Cadillac, identical to the first one, parked at the house next door to the original one. The first car was still in the driveway it had always been in.
“Why are there two identical cars, with out of state plates, parked at houses right next to each other?” I asked Caroline. She shrugged. “Weird.”
Things would go from weird to almost paranormal in the next couple days. By Sunday, the last four houses at the top of the road all had black Cadillac Coupe DeVille’s in their driveways. Monday morning it was five, Monday afternoon it was six. We never saw any of these cars leave. Come to think of it, I hadn’t seen any activity at any of the houses following their Cadillac visits.
“Have you seen anything happen at the places up the street?” I asked Caroline. “No,” she said softly, with a concerned look on her face.
“You think there’s something serious going on there?”
“I don’t know,” she responded. “Should we call the police?”
I thought about it. “It’s just so bizarre. What are the odds that five identical cars from the 80s show up in our neighborhood? And don’t leave? And we haven’t heard anything from the places they’re at?”
So on Monday night, we called the police. They came over, asked some questions, then went to investigate. They knocked on doors, peered inside the vehicles, ran their plates. Nothing. No one to be found.
“We got nothing,” said an officer. “It’s probably an elaborate inside joke. People out here, you know, they have the money to pull this stuff. And there are plenty of those cars still around.”
Tuesday morning, the 7th Cadillac came up the street and pulled into the driveway across the street from ours. Terrified but also very curious, I called Caroline and we peeked through the blinds.
A bald man in a suit with a briefcase got out, walked up to the front door, knocked. A few seconds later he went in. The door shut behind him.
That was when it hit us: we were next. The neighbors across the street were slightly further along the road than we were.
In a frenzy, Caroline and I grabbed our valuables, got in our car, and left. We had no idea what was going to happen when our Cadillac arrived, and we weren’t sticking around to find out.
As we made a right out of our neighborhood onto the highway, we saw the 8th car flip on its blinker and turn onto our street. I floored it.
We drove north toward Tennessee, peering in the mirrors frequently. Every glimpse of a black car startled us, but there were none that matched the ones in our neighborhood. We had no real plan in mind - the only thing I could think of was putting as much distance between us and those cars as possible.
We drove all day, stopped only twice. “We need to figure out what we’re doing tonight,” I told Caroline. “Can’t just keep driving forever.” She made a reservation at a hotel somewhere outside Chicago. We’d driven for over 10 hours.
In the room, I sprawled out across the bed, never having felt so tired yet on edge. “Do you think we’re overreacting?”, I asked Caroline. She sighed. “I don’t know. Hopefully we don’t find out in the morning.”
I pondered that comment. The wording was bizarre, but in a way she was right.
When I woke up, Caroline was gone. I figured she was getting coffee or something. Until I looked out the window, and saw a black Cadillac in the parking lot below.
My phone rang. Caroline.
“Hello?” I answered, audibly panicking.
A man’s voice was on the other end. “Guess we found out.”
I heard the door click open behind me. I turned around slowly. There was nobody there.