Baled Scribe Flashback : For A Drive
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Ravi pressed his foot to the accelerator and watched out of the corner of his eye as the darkened roadside blurred past. There was little or no other traffic out that night, but he would have welcomed it, especially the sight of a trooper as the car behind him continued to follow and draw slowly closer. At first, he had taken the trailing headlights as a coincidence, an amusement on a late night drive, but when the car behind him continued to match him, turn after turn, it started to edge out beyond the realm of strange and into that of unsettling. He rarely saw anyone take this back road before, especially at this time of night. There were two other houses besides his in the five mile stretch before it dead-ended at the river and in both cases, the elderly couples living there rarely left their home.
Still, the car behind him remained in position, never getting too close or letting him get too far ahead. He could make out the billowing smoke behind the car in the bright moonlight and seemed to notice every time the car back there fishtailed on some loose gravel. Each time, he prayed for the thing to run off the road but it never happened. He wished he could call ahead to the house for someone to help but even if his phone hadn’t died, coverage out here was rarely reliable enough to count on.
Last fall, Ravi and his father had plowed a rough path from the road which led to the back-side of the property. It was the kind of thing that you would miss unless you knew to look for it. He looked at the car in the mirror and braced himself, waiting as long as he could before slamming on the brakes and swinging the car onto the path, fishtailing severely. One side lifted up off the ground for just a moment before it leveled out and found purchase. Ravi looked up into the mirror and saw nothing but darkness behind him. Maybe he had managed to shake the guy loose. Or maybe, the person hadn’t been following him in the first place and he had just made himself look like an idiot.
He slowed down and tried to focus on their make-shift road, which had been intended more for tractors. Every few seconds, the car would slip from side to side as the tires lost their grip on the soft ground. As he reached the center of the tree-line and turned left, towards the house the lights behind him flipped on again and he heard the other engine revving over the sound of his own. Whoever it was back there and whatever he had done to piss them off, they weren’t giving up so easily.
Ravi accelerated towards the house, hoping that maybe the noise would cause someone to look out the window and call the police at the sight of the two cars racing around on the property. His moment of possibility dashed against his triggered memory that his parents and brother were out of town for the weekend, up at auction to scout out some new equipment. Whatever was going on here, he was going to have to deal with it himself and the looming, darkened house ahead of him seemed to look down in amusement at the situation he had somehow managed to find himself in.
Before he could articulate any other thought, he was rocked forward against the steering wheel as the car behind him sped up and collided with his bumper. He lost his grip on the steering wheel and the car swerved off into the grass, throwing dirt and debris behind it in a wide fan. Ravi pumped the brakes and grabbed hold of the wheel, steering into the spin, and after a few over-corrections managed to get back onto the path. He raced past the house, onto the proper driveway and back out onto the road. Maybe he could outrun this guy back to the highway and get help elsewhere.
The car behind sped up, and again collided with him, this time rocking the car forward. He slipped forward on the seat but managed to keep his grip, swerving a little as he did so. Still, he didn’t know how much more his car was going to take. The problem was that until they got to the highway, there wasn’t anywhere else to go, no avenue of escape other than simply driving faster. Ravi accelerated, burying the needle on the speedometer as the other car began to fall further behind. He maintained the high speed, risking the gravel surface and saw that he had gotten significantly farther ahead. He didn’t let up, needed to get as far away from the thing as possible. Who the hell was it? He knew that he tended to be somewhat loose with the booze on the weekends but it was hard to imagine what he could have possibly said to warrant something like this.
His heart sank as he topped the next hill and realized that he still had several miles before getting to the paved highway. He was starting to wonder if he could even make it before he saw the headlights behind him start to shift from side to side, first lazily and then violently as it whipped around, spun and then blinked out completely.
Ravi stopped and turned to look out the rear window.
The headlights did not reappear.
Every sense in his being screamed at him to go on, to get out of here and to try and call the police. Still, he couldn’t shake the need to know. Who the hell had been chasing him? He had to find out. He backed up until he reached the point where he thought he had seen the crash happen. It didn’t take long as he spotted one of the taillights, now blinking as they cast a dim red light up into the air. He stepped out of the car and eased his way down. As he reached the car, he put his hands out to brace himself against the frame as he made his way to the passenger window to peek inside.
There was no one there.
Nobody.
There was no way that anyone could have walked away from this. There had been so little time that he would have spotted anyone shambling away from the accident.
Ravi frowned and looked around again. There had to be someone who had been driving the car, he must have just missed them. It’s not like the car could have driven itself.
In a moment of clarity, he saw the person hiding out, just out of sight and then sneaking past him to try and steal his car. He rushed back up to the road but it was still there, engine running smoothly. He could have sworn he had turned it off as he stepped out to investigate the scene.
As he eased behind the wheel, something was jabbing into his leg and he reached down into his pocket to find out what it was. Frowning he reached into his pocket and at the familiar weight and jingling sound, his heart went cold. His hand came out clutching his car keys. The car shouldn’t be still running.
Ravi looked up at the dashboard in a panic as all four door locked around him and the engine revved up, taking him up to an even higher speed than he had been driving before. The back wheels started to lose their grip on the road and he felt the back end starting to come around. The pedals moved out from underneath his feet, operated by a forces unseen and the steering wheel moved from side to side, under its own power. He thought about the car that had been following, seemingly driving itself, a notion he had thought was so absurd. Now his car, as if something had passed between the two.
As his stomach lurched from a partial lift off the ground, the stereo came on in a burst of static. In the background he could just hear some kind of music playing but mostly what he heard was the static as it bellowed out through the car’s speakers.
It sounded like the car was laughing at him.
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