Author: phantasma@evildeadclowns.com

This is based on a story my grandfather told me about his sister.

My little sister Sarah died at the young age of twenty-three. She had married her high-school sweetheart, an insanely jealous man. Accusations that she was seeing someone else were flung at her daily, completely unfounded. She never had a chance to meet anyone else, she wasn't even allowed to go to the grocery store alone. Besides, for some reason she loved this abusive man completely.

Time went on and things continued to get worse. We begged Sarah to leave "Jim", to no avail. One night, around 2:30am, we received a phone call from the local sheriff's department. Sarah was dead. Jim, in a drunken, jealous rage, had severed Sarah's head with an axe, then shot himself.

The new was almost too much to bear. We came from a small, loving family. My father had died when we were very young, and my mother, Sarah, and I had always taken care of eachother. My mother never quite recovered; she lived a few years longer, but the shock and horror of having her only daughter die before her, in that way, was a hard blow.

After she died, I was left alone for the first time in my life. Years passed, and I married and had children of my own. Eventually I was able to put it all behind me. I still loved Sarah, and my mother, but sometimes it's easier to forget something than get through it. Sometimes it's hard for me talk about them, even today.

About twenty years after Sarah's death, I was working as a plumber in a small town in Texas, and I got an emergency call from a lady who lived about forty miles out in the forest, right around midnight. I hated going all that way out there, especially at night. That particular patch of forest road gives you the feeling that someone's always got their eyes on you. The moonlight doesn't shine through the dense foliage, and God forbid you should ever break down out there; you never know how long it could be before someone would come along and find you.

After exiting town I turned off the highway onto the narrow, one way dirt trail. Going was bumpy, as it had just rained the night before and I kept hitting large mudholes that looked like solid road. Besides, it was really just a damn nasty road in the first place.

I finally reached the house and grumbled the whole time I was there. The old lady, Mrs. Whitfield, had sprung a small leak, not the Niagra Falls she had described; easily something that could have waited until morning. But, I was already there, so I finished the work and refused her offer of coffee. I was ready to get home.

On the way home, I started to feel a little sleepy. The rain had started up again, so I had to go much slower than I had been on the way up there. I leaned over to turn the radio up, and out of the corner of my eye I saw something. I turned all the way around, and there, sitting in the passenger seat, was my little sister Sarah, just the way I remembered her, staring straight ahead into that rainy night.

The Lord only knows why, but I didn't feel one bit of fear. On the other hand, though, I wasn't quite willing to start up a conversation. Like I said, I've had some experience with ghosts before, and one thing I learned is this: don't expect a ghost to be exactly like the person they were when they were alive. Sometimes they seem to go a bit strange.

I kept driving, alternately looking at the road and looking at her. I realized how much I had missed her over the years. She had a small, sweet smile on her pretty face, and it felt just like old times.

What happened next wasn't quite so peaceful. It occured in a matter of seconds, but I could describe it in such detail it would take you a half hour to read about it. I'll spare you a good portion of that, though; just to keep you sleeping well at night.

Slowly, her head started to turn towards me, and she frowned, looking awfully frightened. All of a sudden, I noticed stitch marks going in and out of her neck, all the way around. She reached behind her neck, looking straight into my eyes all the while (and me and my car slowing down to a crawl, not watching the road), and loosened something that I couldn't see right away. I heard a small popping sound, and all of the sudden she pulled those stitches out in hard tug. Unfortunately, along with the stitches, her head came clean off. I shouldn't really say clean, though. Inside that head crawled hundreds of maggots, spiders, and roaches, and the deepest, blackest darkness I had ever seen.

I screamed and before I knew it the car was off the road, heading straight for a tree (albeit at a fairly slow speed, on account of my slowing down). Suddenly, I heard a loud "crunch" and then nothing. I must have passed out, from fear or the collision, I'll never know.

I woke up to the sound of sirens, and a flashlight waving in my face. "You alright boy?" I heard someone ask, and looked up into the face of our sheriff, the very same one who had found Sarah's body so many years ago.

As soon as they got me out of the car and wrapped in a blanket, the sheriff told me what had happened, most of which I already knew. I had crashed into a tree, not harming another soul, not even myself on account of my slow speed. What I didn't know is the fact that at right after I pulled that stunt, a carful of drunken teenagers rounded a curve and crashed into a tree about a half a mile from where I was going at about ninety-miles-per-hour. The ambulance came for them, but they all died before that night was over. The sheriff, upon a "funny feeling", had decided to go off his normal route and check the backroads. That's when he came upon the other car. He noticed smoke rising from down the road, and that's where he found me. If I hadn't had the dickens scared out of me and flown off the road like that, I would have hit that other car that night and wouldn't be around to tell you about all this.

I turned around before getting into the sheriff's car to get one last good look at my poor wrecked vehicle, and in the distance I saw her walking, just as beautiful as ever. She turned around and smiled a big smile at me, waved, and disappeared. Sometimes I still feel her with me, but I haven't seen her since.

Lots of people ask me how I'm so sure it was Sarah and not some sort of demon trying to scare the hell out me. Well, they just didn't know Sarah. I recall all the times when I would get home late after school and she'd jump out of the hall closet and throw a handfull of daddy-long-legs on me as punishment. Not too horrifying, but it sure kept me from dallying with the guys and worrying Mama. I don't think I was ever supposed to be out on that road that night, maybe it just wasn't my time.

At any rate, be careful of the roads you travel. Unless you see Sarah, or someone like her, you never know which one will take you on your final track.