Chills, page 19
Ashley looked drained of all strength and emotion as she nodded and then walked down the short hallway to her bedroom. The door shut quietly behind her.
“She gonna be all right?” Meg asked once she was gone.
Bessie sniffed and said, “Are any of us gonna be all right?”
That was all she said before the three of them dove deeply into their private thoughts. It wasn’t until the coffee was brewed and poured, and they were gathered around the kitchen table, each of them cupping their warm cup in their hands, that Bessie cleared her throat and spoke.
“So,” she said, “I guess we’ll start by calling the police, huh?”
Jared and Meg nodded their agreement.
“I’m sure someone’s realized there were problems there last night,” Jared said.
Bessie nodded and winced as she sipped her hot coffee.
“I’m surprised no one from the mall has called already.”
To drive the point home, she turned and glanced at her telephone answering machine. There was no blinking light indicating that she’d gotten a message.
“Now that the storm’s over, we’re gonna have to go back there.”
“Weird,” Jared said.
Meg grunted and then said, “We’ll have to walk or else call a cab. Your car’s still out at the parking lot.”
“Probably got buried by the snowplows by now, too.”
Meg got up and walked over to the kitchen sink, squinting as she looked out at the fresh-fallen snow. The sun had cleared the horizon, and a slanting beam of orange light cast the contours of the newly fallen snow in high relief. The shadows were a rich blue. She gazed out at the street, at the empty snowplow.
“I’ll be damned,” she whispered as a thought hit her.
Neither Jared nor Bessie reacted. Meg frowned as she considered this thought, and then, her voice low, she said, “I know who he was.”
Neither Bessie nor Jared heard her, though, and she continued to stare out the window, aware of her thin, ghostly reflection in the glass.
“We’ve got a lot of explaining to do, that’s for sure,” Bessie was saying. “I just… So much of it is so…so damned confusing.”
“I know,” Jared said.
Neither one of them had to say they were thinking about Kimberly, Tyson, and Phil being dead.
Meg suddenly stiffened. Her hands resting on the edge of the counter tightened when she said again, “I know who he was.”
Still, Bessie and Jared either didn’t hear her or else were ignoring her. She turned and looked at her aunt and friend. They were chatting away, their voices seeming to come from far, far away.
“I know who he was,” she said so loudly her voice broke. Both Jared and Bessie turned and looked at her.
“What’s that, dear?” Bessie said at the same time Jared said, “Huh?” Seeing the panic on her niece’s face, Bessie pushed back her chair and stood up, unsure whether or not to approach her.
Meg’s eyes widened, and she began to tremble as she looked outside.
Bessie walked over beside her and, leaning over the sink, looked outside, scanning the road up and down. The snowplow was still out there, but it was obviously deserted. Unbroken snowdrifts swept across the apartment parking lot. The tracks they had made in the snow that morning stood out sharply in the otherwise unbroken snow.
“We all fell asleep on the drive home,” Meg said in a distant, dreamy voice.
“Yeah?” Bessie said.
“The driver said he didn’t know where you lived,” Meg went on. “Did you ever tell him?”
Bessie considered for a moment and then shook her head.
“So how’d he know to bring us here?”
Bessie shrugged while Jared just sat there staring blankly at her.
“I think he was the same driver…the one who was driving the snowplow that night,” Meg said.
Neither Bessie nor Jared had to ask What night? They knew exactly what she was talking about.
“The night Alan’s car went off the road, and your three friends died,” Bessie said simply. “It was all over the news…a terrible tragedy.”
The tension inside Meg began to build until it was almost unbearable. Jared regarded her with a steady gaze, his eyes wide.
“They skidded out,” Meg said, “but do you remember what else happened?”
Bessie squinted her eyes and shook her head.
“It was a year ago.” She sniffed with laughter as she shook her head. “At my age, I’m lucky if I remember what I had for breakfast yesterday.” She paused, and to break the silence that followed added, “What did I have for breakfast yesterday?”
“A snowplow rammed into the car,” Meg said hollowly.
Jared snapped his fingers and nodded, not looking away from her.
“That’s right,” he said. “They skidded out when they took a turn on Railroad Avenue. The newspaper said they were going too fast for the turn, and they careened into a town plow that was coming the other way.”
“And it pushed them off the road, rolling them over into a ditch,” Meg said. “But do you remember what else?” When she got nothing but blank stares from them, she continued. “The driver of the snowplow lost control of his truck and ended up crashing, too.”
“That’s right,” Jared said.
“And he died!”
Meg didn’t have to say any more.
As impossible as it was, she wanted to let this sink in because if what she was thinking was true, then she wasn’t losing her mind and she wasn’t dead. All four of them, Ashley included, had experienced it. Only the steady ticking of the wall clock in the kitchen broke the silence.
“Are you saying…?” Bessie said, but then her voice faded away.
Meg narrowed her eyes against the brightening sunlight and shook her head from side to side.
“I don’t know what I’m saying.” Her voice broke on nearly every word. “But if they…if Alan, Sally, and Richard came back to…to get me to join them because they thought I should have died with them, then why not? Why couldn’t the guy who killed them come back, too?”
“You mean the snowplow driver—the dead snowplow driver,” Jared said.
“You think he came back to save you…to make up for what happened?” Bessie added.
Meg thought for a moment and then nodded eagerly, wanting to believe that’s exactly what had happened, but she recognized how not just insane it was, but how impossible it was.
Jared let out a sniffing laugh but quickly quieted down when he saw the serious expression on Meg’s face.
“Are you nuts?” he said, incredulous. When Meg didn’t respond, he added, “You don’t actually think a ghost drove us home last night—this morning—whenever?” He slouched back in his chair and waved his hand dismissively.
“Then how’d we get here?” Meg said. “Do you…do any of us actually remember the drive home?”
Bessie and Jared exchange concerned glances and then shook their heads. They had nothing to say.
“We were all asleep when we got back here, and by the time we woke up, the driver was gone. No tracks. No trace of him. Nothing. It was like he’d never been here.”
“I just… So how’d we get here?” Bessie asked.
“I haven’t got a clue,” Meg said, looking at her steadily. Her heart seemed to stop beating for a moment or two, and then it started running so fast she felt lightheaded. A salty pressure began to build up inside her head as she considered what she had said and what she knew, in her heart, to be the truth.
“You were right, Jared,” she said simply. “It wasn’t my time.”
She jumped when a blast of black exhaust suddenly shot from the snowplow’s exhaust pipe, and a loud rumbling sound filled the air and shook the building. Surprise and panic gripped her when she realized what was happening.
The snowplow had started up.
She wanted to say something, but her voice caught in her throat as she watched it pull away, its lights flashing and its plow grinding the asphalt as it pushed aside the snow from last night’s storm. She tried to see who was behind the wheel, but she didn’t see anyone. She watched as the plow turned the corner, and then it was gone as if it had never been there.
“It wasn’t my time to die then,” Meg said, “and it wasn’t my time last night.”
She was smiling as she turned to Jared and Bessie, relief coursing through her like a fresh spring breeze.
~ 40 ~
It took nearly a week to clear things up to everyone’s satisfaction. The survivors—Meg, Bessie, Ashley, and Jared—all gave as complete a report to the police as they could. The one time Meg mentioned that she had seen “figures” outside in the snow, she got such a curious look from the investigating detective that she decided not to mention it again. She and, to be honest, Aunt Bessie, believed there really had been ghosts there. Jared remained skeptical, but when Meg pressed him in private, he had to admit that he didn’t have any other logical explanation.
The cleanup of the store was going to take time, but the new owners backed out of the deal, and Bessie had to file with her insurance company to claim the business a total loss. Either way, she said, she was done with the store and had more than enough money in the bank to retire. Once the cleanup was well underway, the four of them went to the funerals for the three who had died. After that, Bessie was bound and determined not to miss out on her Caribbean vacation with Ashley and Meg.
The kicker was, they had an extra vacationer.
Now that he was “gainfully unemployed,” as he put it, Jared didn’t have a good excuse not to come with them to St. Kitts. He had plenty of reasons to go, and not many to stay behind. Over the two weeks following that night, his relationship with Meg had developed into something a lot more. He was only too happy to take off from snowy Maine and go to the Caribbean.
He and Meg snuggled and held hands and kissed for most of the flight while Bessie and Ashley, sitting in the seats in front of them, left them alone. When they arrived in St. Kitts, they had plenty to talk about and explain to Jeff and Ellen Clark, Meg’s mother and father. She hadn’t told them about Jared, but they accepted him with open arms…after making it clear that they were not going to be allowed to share a room. That didn’t matter. They found ways to be together.
“Anyone hungry?” Meg’s father asked after they picked up their luggage and were heading for the airport exit.
“We found this fantastic place on the beach close to where we’re staying,” Meg’s mother said. “It’s a—what do you call them, dear?”
“A beach hut, I guess,” Meg’s father replied.
“That’s it,” she continued. “A beach hut. It’s certainly not much to look at, but the chef—a skinny little Rasta—makes the most amazing sandwiches.”
“And they’ve got Carib beer, of course,” added her father.
Meg glanced at Jared and smiled.
They made their way through the crowd and out the front exit where a slew of taxis waited, their drivers anxious to snap up the first fares. Meg’s father picked one he said he knew, a guy with the improbable name of James Bond.
“Oh, my God!” Bessie said. “I can’t believe it.” She stopped in her tracks and, looking up at the cloudless blue sky and dropping her suitcases, tossed her head back and took as deep a breath as she could while spreading her arms out wide as if to embrace the entire island.
“It’s amazing to be so warm in January,” Jared said, turning to Meg.
But Meg wasn’t looking at him. Like Bessie, she was looking up, but she was focused on something much closer. A group of palm trees towered above them, their fronds swaying gently in what the locals called the “Christmas Winds.” As warm as it was, a shiver as cold as any breeze in Maine in January wrapped around her and began squeezing when she saw three faces appear in the foliage overhead.
They were only there for a fleeting instant, and then they disappeared, dissolving in an instant. But in that instant, Meg recognized all three of the faces.
They were Alan, Sally, and Richard.
“You coming?” Jared called out when he realized Meg had stopped and was still staring up at the palm trees as the rest walked down to the waiting cab.
Meg kept staring at the waving palm fronds, daring the faces to return, now that she was looking directly at them. She was telling herself that she hadn’t seen what she thought she had seen. She wanted desperately to believe she had only imagined them.
It was impossible.
There was no way her dead friends could have followed her here.
No way!
“Yo, Meg?” Jared called, strolling back to her and sliding his arm around her waist, drawing her close until she lowered her gaze and was looking at him. “You okay?”
A fitful breeze blew against the back of her neck, but instead of warmth, it touched her like icy fingers, running slowly up her spine.
There’s no way… They’re not there, she told herself, and as she and Jared walked away side by side, she desperately wanted to believe it.
Rick Hautala, Chills
