The Country Lane Ghost
You are driving through orchards, there are no streetlights, the night clear, the moon nearly full. It’s October cold. You’re a little high, but not as high as you pretended to be when you were in the tent in your friend’s yard. Alone in your mother’s car, the window cracked, her ashtray overflowing with butts and Wrigley’s gum wrappers. You wanted the night to be more fun, which is familiar. You think about the stories the guy whose kids you babysit told you, about the ghost standing in the Pippin trees behind their house. The ghost of the man who used to own the land standing outside, looking into the new man’s home. He told you another story about how he saw a woman’s face in his rear view mirror while driving on these dark roads and how he looked up the history of the road and found there had been a fatal wagon accident there, where a woman had died. It was her face he saw in the mirror, he told you. He saw a photo. And you believed him. You had no doubts. You don’t look out the kitchen windows of his house towards the apple trees when you watch his children. Now, driving this giant old car of your mother’s you won’t look in the rearview mirror. And for some reason you don’t ever wonder why he wanted to scare you so badly or why he needed to tell you these stories. Always when the wife was at work, or when he drove up the black road back to your mother’s house. It takes you 25 years to start to wonder. When your friend called tonight you thought about having to drive home. You thought about the mirror. You think about what is in the orchard. Who. You almost didn’t go tonight, but you don’t want to miss out on something. Anything. So here you are, speeding down Brown’s Valley Road toward home, not looking back.