My wife told me, “Honey you can’t do this. You’re going to get hurt.”
I replied, “There is no other choice, we have no other option. Tonight, this nightmare ends.”
“Mark, be safe.”
I got into the car and started driving. It is still making the noises. Hopefully it’ll make it far enough so this thing would be over. I bought this car for my wife. It was the first luxury car anyone in my family has every owned. My hope was that it would be a quality car and something that my wife would be proud of. Its been our secret shame. I sped up the dirt road toward the mountain.
I bought it for under market value. I thought it was a steal. It’s an old secret that you buy a car at the end of the month. Sometimes the dealership would do anything to make their quota. This dealership was AAA motors. Probably had the name from the time of the yellow pages where businesses were listed by alphabetical order. They had a nice silver coupe. It was different from all the other cars on the lot. Most were old domestic cars this was only a few years old and German. On the last day of October, I walked out with the keys in my hand and not paying a penny on down payment. Idiots, I practically stole the car. That’s what I thought then.
My wife was so happy when I brought it home. She jumped into my arms with excitement. We took it for a cruise downtown and hoped that our friends would catch us in the car. After a dinner date, that’s when the trouble started. As I turned in the intersection, the engine cut out. I had to push the car to safety. But it got worse. Other times the rear-view mirrors would go out of position right before turning, and my wife had to swerve to avoid an accident. Other times the car acted as if it would deliberately crash into oncoming traffic. I swore I saw an old man in a top hat, smoking a cigar in the backseat. After a second glance at the image was gone. I took it back to the dealer, but there were no codes, nothing they could do? How do you ask to check for ghosts in a car?
As I drive up the mountain, I aim for the innocuous spot where there is no traffic. But there is no preparing for what happened. As the headlights illuminated the mountain wall, eyes were darting back at me. As the crash was about to happened, I realized someone was there. I try to steer away but the ghost was taking the wheel and aiming at the person. I could smell the rich tobacco in the car as a cloud of smoke rose from the rearview mirror.
I wake up in the pitch-black night. I stumble out of the car in a daze. My feet still do not have the strength to carry me forward and I stagger as if I was on a deck of a rocking ship. The voice grabs my attention in state of shock and I go to see what happened. The old woman stares at me with malevolence. It is as if every wrinkle and expression in her face was designed to personally cause me unease. Her breathes slowed down but her angry souls is forcing her to live on. She says her dying words.
“I am not finished with you yet.”
Her face changes from anger to a gleeful evil and an exaggerated smile fills her face. As her life ended my living nightmare starts. I have to take her body and hide it, because otherwise I will be implicated in her murder. The car is no linger drivable I have a metal mess that can only be sold for scrap. But that is nothing. Now the haunting problems with the car now invaded our home.
Sometimes I will be taking a shower and that witch’s face is visible through the steam, smiling at me with her evil thoughts penetrating my mind. Other times the stove will turn on, just barely missing giving me a serious burn. The television will turn on, by itself to show macabre scenes freighting us. But the serious incident was silent and lethal. I woke up early. one night and I went to the kitchen and realized that the stove was on but unlit. Who knows how much gas has been poisoning us? I tried to wake my wife but she won’t respond. My cell was plugged in and didn’t charge. I had to call 911 from my neighbor’s house.
According to the doctors at the hospital, my wife is in a coma because of the carbon dioxide poisoning. But the hospital can not protect her health. Unless I stay put the ghosts will cause problems. Sometimes I catch the nurses when they pick up needles filled with air rather than medicine and try to inject my wife. Other times my wife’s information will get switched and confused with other patients’ treatments. Sometimes I catch them grinning at their plans to torture us.
So I have no one to turn to for help. I have already prayed my eyes out: There is no hope. Whoever is reading my journal I do not know what is next. As I hold my wife’s hand, I have to sleep sometime. And then there is nothing to stop the inevitable.