In the Rear View Mirror

By: S. Dolan
2/9/2009

Lin Garris, a common middle American young man was getting off of his middle American income retail job in the middle of the night. He walked from the grocery outlet to his small little light blue Toyota sedan. It was a worn car, having scrapes along the side from a car accident that he wasn’t involved in and missing two hubcaps for the same reason. The car’s right side had, he’d been told, met with the side of a parked pickup and they had to bend the metal back into shape.

Having just bought the car used, for less then a thousand dollars, the young man couldn’t begrudge the story or the state of his trusty new vehicle. Having never driven it at night before, he idly checked the front lights a few times before turning the engine on and starting home. It was to be a long twenty-minute drive in the desolate part of his farm filled hometown.

He pulled off of the gravel parking lot and onto the small bumpy road. Turning on the radio, he started to search for his favorite late night station. As he was half leaned over to play with the radio buttons he saw a flash of light from the rear view mirror and his car filled with it. He looked behind him and what he suspected to be a semi-truck was blinding light right into his car. Worse there seemed to be a figure sitting directly in the middle of his back seat! He immediately pulled the car off onto the side of the road.

Given the jerky and abrupt action that was, the semi-truck gave an angry honk as it passed him, proving to in fact be a normal encounter with a rude driver. Lin flew out of his car and looked in the back seat. There was nothing back there. Nothing that wasn’t there before anyways! There was the hole torn in off to the left side of the long joined backseat, up towards the top of it made from some sort of puncture, the large stain that ran along it and then his baseball gear that he’d thrown in there the other day. No one was sitting back there.

Taking a few breaths he got back into his car and pulled back onto the road. His radio gave him comfort as he listened to the late night lover’s program full of sweetheart songs. It was one of his secret joys – light rock love songs. His eyes kept glancing to the back of the car through his mirror but he didn’t see anything.

Lin’s nerves had relaxed some, he figured maybe he’d seen some decoration on the grill of the semi-truck, or so he told himself out loud. His body had stop shaking and the radio was lulling him that is until the radio itself began to screech and scream with white noise!

He nearly had an accident as he jumped out of his seat, the seat belt being the only thing holding him in place. His car lunged forwards as his body jolted and he almost went off the side of the road into a wooden and barbwire fenced off pasture!

After righting the car his shaking fingers turned off the radio. It died with a click and he took in a deep calming breath, his eyes flashing to the mirror again and this time he saw someone there!

The car once more found the side of the road through barely controlled driving. Lin threw himself out and took several steps away from the running car. Never before had he wished he owned a cell phone! “Tomorrow I don’t care what it costs me, I’m gettin’ a phone… I’m gettin' a phone n’ I’m not driving the night shift fer a week!” He told himself with a southern draw.

Lin was, as stated, a normal boy. He did normal things such as play sports, become bashful when girls hit on him, and was built a little tall and scrawny. He had short bed-head blonde hair and bright rich brown eyes with tanned skin. He wore normal kid’s clothing, faded and abused jeans with holes in them and work tee shirts. He didn’t dabble in the occult, he didn’t really pay attention to alien or ghost stories and he sure as hell wasn’t accustomed to the strange!

He looked around him, just dark and suddenly very forbidding prairie land as far as he could see. Black fences seemed to jaggedly cut the landscape and what rocks and large trees could be seen were surreal in their new founded fear factor. The sky was clear, stars glittered like light through peepholes and the moon seemed unusually large in the sky, and bright. It was mid fall so the air was crisp and cold with a faint wind and the smell of rain from storms passed.

Inwardly, Lin despaired. He wanted to go home, he wanted to get a warm shower, have dinner and then go to bed and play baseball in the morning with his friends. That was what motivated him to open up the back seat, all be it with the stability of a freezing Chihuahua. He cleared his throat and said in a shaking but demanding tone, “Get out! I didn’t offer anyone a ride and unless I’m getting paid for the gas I’m not taking you anywhere!” He waited a moment for any change… maybe laughter; maybe weight to shift as some invisible person came out… nothing.

“I said out so I hope you’re out! I jus bought this here car n’ so it’s mine, ya see, and I decide who rides in it! So… be gone! Or, whatever.” He was fast losing his guts given he was beginning to feel rather foolish while another part of him that was deep and primal felt like he was being mocked.

He looked into the car. Nothing, no smell, no person, not even a strange reflection. He glanced at the hole and the stain that was all over the back. The car seller didn’t know what it was but at this point Lin couldn’t shake the feeling it was the cause of the issue! He grabbed up his baseball bat just in case and closed the back door. He got back into the driver’s seat and began his drive back home.

His eyes wanted to dart to the mirror more then they did want to watch the sinister road before him! It took everything he had to not look. He didn’t want to see it again. His heart was pounding so loud he figured any passenger could have heard it over the rumble of the rough road and engine. He was driving faster then the speed limit by about ten miles per hour.

As though his nerves weren’t bad enough, less then a minute in the electric windows suddenly started to roll themselves down and up! The radio that was shut off turned on and his station was playing behind the horrid white noise. Worse the lights on the car began to flicker and a bone chilling cold filled the up the cabin.

Poor Lin was sweating now, driving faster and faster. He made the mistake of looking at the rear view mirror and sitting there was the dark male figure, this time he couldn’t take his eyes off of it.

The face was pale, transparent and oddly smudging around as though the image was delayed in following the motion of the car. The eyes were hollowed and wide open staring right at him. The man had murky wavy hair falling around his face and blending into the dark nothingness of the night. He sat ramrod straight in the center of the back, wearing a dark suit that, like the hair, seemed to only be made of shadow, though his broad shoulders were obvious.

Suddenly there was a gunshot sound and Lin screamed, the pressure building up, his attention not on the road, Lin’s car went right off the pavement and crashed through one of the wooden fences lining the area. He hit into a tree not more then three yards after that! He felt the impact of the car and the fence but not the tree. No, when the passenger side hit the tree he hit the steering wheel headfirst.

Three days later Lin woke up in a hospital bedroom. His mother was there, eyes full of tears as she held onto her baby boy. “We found you, we found you and you’re alright now!” She assured him through sobs. “The police said you ran off the road! What were you thinkin’?”

“They said more then that…” His father’s gruff smoker’s voice came through as his old man, rugged looking and in worker’s clothing with oil stains all over, came into view. “They said that car you bought was a stolen vehicle. I cleared it up with them already and gave them the name of the guy who sold it to you. But son, what the hell were you doin’ that you ran off the g’damn road?!”

Now Lin was getting the idea that he was seriously damaged. His legs were both in casts and held up before him. His left arm was also in a brace. His he could feel his collarbone where the seat belt held on had been broken and he had a cast on his head. “There was a man… a dead man, in the back of the car… I swear it. The car freaked out n’ a dead man was sittin’ back there.”

His parents looked to one another. They had a deep look between them. Something he said they obviously understood, which Lin found odd, his parents were no non-sense people. His mother finally broke the silence that was beginning to press down in the room. “Honey, they said that whoever stole the car was transportin’ someone in it… someone that was shot through the heart n’ the back seat… a few weeks ago.”

Lin felt his heart stop and his eyes go wide. He wasn’t crazy! His parents believed him! There was nothing to be done for his diving record, no insurance agency in the world was going to buy ‘a ghost made me do it’ but at least his family understood. Sure it was back to getting rides to work but he’d have rather used a bicycle then ever ride in a cheap used car again!