The Dark Spot in the Road

The Dark Spot in the Road

By Plot Roach

"Right there is where it happened," said a voice from behind Gracie. She paused reading her book, raising her eyes to look out the window of the us..

"No way, man. They wouldn't just leave stuff hanging round like that." said the other voice. "All body parts and evidence just hanging out in the breeze."

"They don't leave parts around, dude." said the first voice. "But you can totally see the scorch marks the crash left behind."

"What did you say?" asked a man to the side of Gracie. She had given up completely on her romance novel and put her finger in between the pages to keep her place. She was in the mood now for a little suspense, so she looked out the window as the man behind her pointed to the dark spot in the road.

"Right there is where is happened. Right there is where she died."

"What? Who? How?" The man beside Gracie asked.

Indeed, Gracie thought. Do tell.

"My cousin said two weeks ago another bus driver on this route was rushing through the curve real fast because he was running late on his route and was trying to make up the time. But this lady pulled out of her driveway and on to the main road without looking. They smashed up and the bus driver was sent flying while she was stuck in her car."

"What then?"

"Well..." he took  breath and waited, knowing that they were waiting on his every word. "The bus driver shot through the front window."

"-And was killed?" his friend asked from beside him.

"No, man -he lived."

"How? He must have been thrown at high speed onto the hard street. No one could have survived that."

"But he did. All he had were some cuts from the glass and a mild concussion."

"Wait," said the man from beside Gracie. "Why wasn't he wearing his seatbelt?"

"My cousin says that it was the last tip of the night and that he had forgotten to buckle himself in after taking a smoke break -thus the reason why he was running late."

"And the lady driver?"

"Well she got stuck in her car. It got banged up real good from the bus, the doors wouldn't open, though she fought like hell to get out."

"And your cousin say all this?"

"Yeah, he and the other passengers got a little shaken up from the accident, a few even were thrown from their seats. He was walking to the front of the bus to get a better look at things and to see what was what. That's when they saw the car catch fire."

"And your cousin did nothing -just watched her die. Man, that is low."

"No way, he and some others got out through the emergency exits on the bus windows and tried to pull the car doors open. One guy even broke his arm trying to get the driver's side window to break by punching it -but it did no good, she was stuck for good and the flames started getting really wild. In the end all they could do was stand back from the flames and watch her die."

"Man, that must have been a rough way to go."

"Yeah, she was conscious all the way until the end."

The dark spot in the road was long past them now, but the story stayed with Gracie for the rest of the day and many days afterward. It chewed at her relentlessly like a rat, gnawing her from the inside out.
She tried Google-ing the accident, but got only perverted porn sites and ads for accident insurance. As the bus passed the site twice a day (to and from her job) she couldn't help but feel a chill as they passed over the spot. She tried looking away, holding her breath and focusing on something -anything- but the horrible way that the woman had died. She wondered if her spirit still haunted the spot where the scorched road met the small white cross nailed into the earth. There were other crosses in the dirt beside it. The spot had seen a lot of deaths, but Gracie had never paid attention to it -until now.

On a hunch, she visited the local library and told the woman at the reference desk that she was writing an online article about the spot where all the crosses were. The woman helped her pull up some of the articles from their online database and a few that were on microfiche.

Gracie waded through the piles given to her, creating a list of the people who had died at the exact same spot. A child that had run out into traffic and had died. There were several traffic accidents, one involving a man who hadn't died at the site -but had died at the hospital he had been taken to. One newspaper article spoke of an elderly woman who, having battled the onset of dementia, strode into the oncoming traffic as though he were walking into the gates of heaven. Nearby onlookers questioned her actions, saying that maybe it wasn't a hallucination, maybe she chose this way to commit suicide.

Twenty seven people died at that spot -or because of it. And finally she came across the story of the most recent victim.

Amanda Higgins, known as Mandy to her friends, was in a hurry that night to get her cat to the pet hospital. A neighbor had said that it looked as if a stray dog had attacked the feline and was scared off. The cat was wounded and Amanda did what any cat lover would do -she headed for the hospital as fast as she could -forgetting to check the rear view mirror as she pulled out onto the street and into the path of the oncoming bus. Witnesses at the accident said that they tried to free her from the car wreck, but were unable to do so as the fire consumed the car. An autopsy reveled that she had been conscious as the flames closed in around her. Along with the article was a picture of Amanda holding her calico cat.

Oh, what an awful way to die, Gracie thought, bundling up the paper copies of the articles. Though why she wanted to keep such gruesome stories she could not say why.
She took the usual bus home, hoping now that the chills would plague her no longer. If only I could have talked with Amanda, she thought. I could have told her what a loving and wonderful heart she had for trying to save her wounded cat and told her that I was sorry that she had died in such a horrible way. Still, Gracie had questions she knew would go unanswered, because she could not speak with Amanda herself. Simple things that ranged from what had the cat's name been? to what was death like?

She gathered up her things and headed home, one less question on her mind.

The bus lurched in traffic, and Gracie's water bottle fell from her bag and rolled to the front of the bus. Embarrassed, she walked up to retrieve it.

"Hey, lady, the driver scolded. You're supposed to be behind the yellow safety line. Don't you know that-" but that was all he said before an oncoming car swerved from its lane into theirs and ploughed into the bus.

The driver, seatbelt latched, ended up smacking his head on the steering wheel. Most of the passengers had been seated and would suffer from mild bumps and bruises.

Most, but not all.

Having been at the front of the bus, Gracie was thrown through the window like the driver of the fateful bus had been through this same spot just a few weeks earlier. Unlike the driver, Gracie suffered from more than just a couple of cuts and a concussion. But unlike Amanda, her death was not drawn out and painful. Gracie could see a crowd gathering at the side of the road and joined them, looking at the poor soul who had crashed through the front window of the bus. She had come to a stop at the area where the street had met the curb. And from the look of the odd angle her head was at, it looked like she had snapped her neck upon impact.

I hope the poor thing went as quick as I think she did. Gracie said, peeking through the crowd at the dead woman's body.

It was then that she noticed the people around her and shivered when she realized why they had looked so familiar. A cat was chasing a sheet of paper blowing in the breeze, Gracie tried to pick it up, but it passed through her fingers like mist. She tried again, and saw that it was her fingers, not the paper that were as insubstantial as a hologram.

But then the cat rubbed up against her leg before bounding off to the places where the crosses had been nailed into the earth.

A woman then bent over to pick up the cat, cradling it in her arms as she smiled and beckoned for Amanda to follow.   

All of the questions and the words of awe that had been trapped like a gnawing rat could now be finally released. The sheaf of papers that Gracie had kept, detailing the deaths of those around her, flew like birds on the wind.

A few weeks later when Gracie visited the spot, she smiled as her own marker was displayed next to Amanda's. it was nice of her neighbor, Mr. Zimman to make it for her. She tried to touch it, but her hand passed though the wood. This ghost thing is hard to get used to, she thought. But at least  she had good company. The calico batted at her shoelaces as she turned away from her cross, pained blue -her favorite color. At least Zimman remember that I liked blue, she thought. Now if only he had remembered that I was Jewish.

And as she began to turn away and follow the cat, a bus passed by. A woman looked out the window and shivered at the dark spot in the road.