One Haunted Night

Author's note: This was originally intended for Halloween... 2012. It's a little late but I hope you'll still enjoy it. Comments and feedback would be greatly appreciated, and will probably make me finish off some more of this stack of unfinished stories I'm sitting on.

- - -

It was when the road was empty like this that most accidents occurred.

The thought, that suddenly rang in her head like an irritating, public service jingle, made her lift her foot off the accelerator sharply. Her high-beams picked out the tangled, clutching branches of the trees crowding the country road a little clearer, and she realised that she probably had been driving a little too fast.

It was the car's fault of course. This big, macho penis extension that was her brother's pride and joy seemed to beg to be raced as soon as the key was turned in the ignition. And that wasn't her at all! What the hell did she care about being the first away from the light? Christ she couldn't wait for her cute little Honda to get back from the shop, and for this goddamn Christine car to go back under the sheet in the garage.

Ted was hardly overjoyed about the whole thing either, but dearest mother, exerting her maternal authority even now that they had both moved out and ostensibly started their own lives for real, had frowned (over the phone) and that was that. "Your sister can't survive down here without a car, while you're hopping on your New York City Public Transport System to get from the bar to class and back again..."

He'd made hollow threats; she'd promised - not a speck of paint displaced from its gleaming red body.

That had seemed a lot easier when she wasn't driving through a forest in the middle of the night in the pitch-black in a ridiculous pirate costume to get to some terrible Halloween party that her lunatic friend had made her promise to attend. Something small pinged off a wing-mirror, making her physically flinch. She swore under her breath. If Carrie wasn't already there, and if Carrie wasn't right about Lou being there tonight... Oh God, if she had to chat and hang out with those idiots from her company and all their... idiot friends...

She had to remind herself to slow down again.

And it was as she slowed a little, her eyes scanning the canopy (because the trees really were forming a roof over the road now, making her feel strangely like a bullet making its way down the barrel of a long, twisting gun), that she saw the girl by the side of the road.

Dressed all in white, her black hair long and messy, partially covering her face, she picked up the headlights like a safety jacket, like a road-sign. She glowed, and Polly winced, fumbling to bring down the beams and not blind the poor girl.

She needed a lift, and Polly needed some distraction to keep her from going crazy.

It was only as she pulled to a stop in the middle of the narrow road that she realised the girl hadn't flagged her down at all. She had just been standing there, in her retro white dress and gleaming white pumps, and Polly had just felt... that she ought to stop for her.

The road had narrowed to the width of a single car now - still surfaced, but that was the only thing lifting it above 'dirt track' at this point. The trees walled them in, sealed them in from above too. The phrase 'lost in the forest' shimmered in her consciousness and she felt cold needles prickling the back of her neck as she leaned over to wind down the passenger window. She couldn't be lost, she reassured herself, there had been no other turnings to take since she left civilization.

The girl hadn't moved, and only when Polly opened her mouth to speak did she turn to face the car. She turned but... Polly didn't really see her turn. Now she was facing her, now she was at the window, leaning down, her face blank, unreadable, beautiful, exactly as Polly said: "Hey can I give you a..."

"Wait a second," the girl interrupted, her voice melodic and hollow, "You're a girl."

And suddenly Polly felt as though someone had just snapped their fingers and she was waking up. She hadn't even noticed she had been asleep! She couldn't have been asl-

"I said - you're a girl." The girl had a quick, arch intonation that made Polly think of old black and white movies. She urged her tongue to life, for some reason eager not to aggravate this strange pale girl.

"Y-yes? Yes I am..." The girl was leaning on the car door now, that strange, expressionless face registering what seemed to be... scepticism? Disappointment?

"What's with the moustache honey? Who you try'na fool, hey?"

"I'm not...?" Polly stammered, touched the fake, pasted on moustache that had come with the baggy white shirt, the headscarf, the big pants and the faux-leather jerkin of the costume. The girl raised an eyebrow.

"You a dyke hey, honey?"

"No! What the hell is..." Polly shook her head, violently, trying to reclaim her senses "I just thought you might need a lift to the party! Maybe you don't!"

"Party, huh?" Wait, hadn't the girl's hair been long, messy and covering her face? Now it was perfectly neat, coiled and teased in the fashion of a 1930s film star. She was smoking too, but Polly hadn't seen her produce a cigarette, let alone light it. "I coulda sworn you were a fella," she mused, looking ruefully back in the direction Polly had come from. "I saw this beast of an automobile, I squinted and saw a moustache and I thought, 'Oh, Mol, this is the one.'"

"Wait," Polly was getting more and more irritated with this dizzying forest waif, "were you just trying to pick up a guy?"

"Heh," the girl, Mol, looked down at her with a strange not-quite-smile, "something like that."

"Look, if you don't want a ride then..." Polly looked away, and without that luminous porcelain skin, without that shining spotless dress the forest track in front of her looked a whole lot darker and scarier.

"No, no wait!" The girl chuckled, and it sounded old, not like a girl at all, but like a woman. "A party, you said? At the old Mason place?"

"Well, it's Halloween, isn't it?"

"Every year." The smile in Mol's voice was so clear and so devilish that Polly had to glance across. The other girl was already in the passenger seat, long, perfectly white legs crossed, her stiff looking dress riding up her thighs, her cigarette hand hanging coolly out of the window. Polly almost flung her door open and jumped out. She stifled her shock with both hands, biting down on the scream before it escaped.

"Let's go to a party." Mol grinned, her teeth white as the moon.

- - -

A little way further along the track, just as she remembered from the few times she'd driven up to the Mason place with her friends in high school, the forest suddenly cleared and she was driving along a mountain trail, a cliff wall on her left and flimsy looking barrier on her right separating her from a long, long drop down a terrifying cliff face. People died here, driving too fast, too drunk, every year. She slowed down a little more. At least there were passing points cut into the cliff here.

"So, what..." she started, interrupting her hitch-hiker gazing dreamily out of the window at the precipitous drop, "I didn't see a car. Do you live out here or something?"

"Not 'live' exactly," again, that older than her years laugh. A laugh that spoke of experience and worldliness, the kind of thing that Polly would never achieve if she didn't get out of her hometown soon. "Let's say: I have a strong attachment to the place."

"But what were you doing out here if you weren't going to the party?" Molly kept the questions up, not just because the girl made her nervous, and her too-cool way of smoking with the window open was chilling the air in the car, but because this dangerous route put her on edge too.

"Jeez, honey. You're from around here," there was no hint of a question in her intonation. "Can'tcha guess? Can'tcha root around in that pretty head of yours and work things out a little?"

"I have no idea..." Polly started, tapping the steering wheel with the third finger of each hand as she drove and biting her lip. This girl was maddening. Something popped into her mind. "Is this about drugs?" Suddenly it made sense - almost. She had heard that some people used the sturdy old abandoned mountain mansion to do drug deals and... all sorts of things. This 'Mol' girl had been waiting for a drug dealer!

"Ha! You-" Mol pointed with her cigarette, it was in her left hand then suddenly back in her right, "are a riot, baby. No it's not about drugs."

"Well then what..."

"Jeez Louise!" Mol finally straightened up a little in the deep, leather passenger seat. "A strange, beautiful, slip of a girl all alone in the dark forest. A young, muscular - possibly moustachioed - stud in the car his daddy bought him for graduation. He can't believe his luck, he wants to show off his ride, she says she needs a ride back to her friends up the hill, he's driving too fast..." Polly's throat was dry. The list of events, the 'story' was... what was this? "...there's no way the barrier can possible prevent that much horsepower from going over the edge of the cliff, from ending in a beautiful fiery rose a coupla hundred feet later."

"You... you..." The window was closed but the car was still freezing cold. She had been smoking this whole time, but no smoke was coming from the cigarette, even as it burned down to nothing. Polly's knuckles were white. She wanted to swallow but couldn't.

"These urban legend deals are meant to last a few years more than this! What do you kids spook each other out with these days, honey?"

She was dizzy, her heart was pounding, she had to stop...

With a screech the car jolted to a stop in the middle of the treacherous mountain road. There was something next to her in the car, and it wasn't a girl, and it was making everything cold, and she needed to get out and get away from it.

"Who are you?"

"I'm Molly Mason, honey. Seventy something years ago my darling beau bashed my brains in with a metal bar and tossed my body off of this cliff. I've been taking boys down to lie with me ever since."

"You're a ghost." The tremors started in her hands, glued to the wheel and moved up her arms until she was shaking in her seat. There was a breath on her neck, so cold she had to grit her teeth to keep from yelping.

"I don't know, honey," Mol crooned in her perfect, empty murmur, "why don't you take a look, see what you think?"

Polly didn't want to look, didn't really want to turn her head at all, but found she couldn't resist the invitation. And the thing in the seat next to her crept into her field of vision. And when her brain finally processed what it was she was seeing - something that was dead and smashed and broken and bloody, that was perfect and twisted inside in a way that made her ears ring - she screamed. And then, mercifully, she passed out.

- - -

"Oh my God Pol, don't you think you've had enough?"

Polly looked down at the glass on the counter. A squat, square tumbler that was rapidly filling up with what looked like... bourbon perhaps? She looked across calmly at the bottle in her hand - the bottle that was filling the glass. Yes, good old Jackie D. Her eyes moved back down to the glass and she dreamily watched the liquor start to spill over its thick lip.

"What has gotten into you?" Carrie snatched the bottle away from her, shunting her not all too gently aside as she grabbed a cloth and started sopping up the spilt alcohol. Polly almost lost her balance, her head spinning as she took two big steps sideways. Lucky the dirty old kitchen was so big. Even though there were other people scattered around the place she didn't come close to bumping into them.

She put her hands on her knees and was about to start giggling when she remembered the car. The thing that wasn't a girl in the car. She was at the party? She was at the party with Carrie and she had no idea how she had gotten there. The laugh shrivelled and froze in her throat and the thoughts started coming thick and fast. She was drunk - really, really drunk and... how? She would never have drunk this much around so many strangers! Oh God, had Lou seen her like this? Did she just black-out and come here on - on autopilot? Was that even possible? Was she schizophrenic? Was there an evil Polly inside her too? Or...

As soon as the thought crossed her mind she felt things shifting inside her like two sheets of silk rubbing against each other. The girl she had picked up - the ghost. Surely that would be the craziest thing of all, but somehow she felt...

"Oh relax, honey," the sweet, empty voice from before whispered, as if breathing into both ears at once, "just relax, we've been having a great time."

"M-Mol?"

"In fact why don't you just relax, dream on, and let me keep driving this cute little body of yours around? I can drive a lot better than you can, drunk I mean. It's been so long since I tasted a good, strong liquor, I'm afraid I may have... over-indulged whilst you were checked-out. Doesn't really affect me, sadly. You must be feeling pretty woozy though."

"I just don't recognise you tonight, Pol!" Carrie's hand was on her back, the drink nowhere to be seen, helping her to stand up straight. "I thought," her blonde friend hissed, "that you were going to be Miss Ice Queen tonight? That Lou wouldn't be able to resist?"

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" Polly felt drunk and detached, like she was herself, and not herself - an observer judging her in some ghostly competition. "I was... I don't know what happened, I... What did I do?"

"What do you mean, what did you do? You just poured Jack D all over the kitchen! Or do you mean showing up with this phoney tough-girl voice, hitting on guys and knocking back shots like they were going outta fashion?"

"Honey, I'll show you phon-" The words just burst from Polly's lips, unbidden, unthought. Her eyes went wide and she clamped both hands over her lips, stifling, but not silencing the invectives she was, somehow, spitting at her friend.

"Oh my God, are you going to throw up now?" Carrie rolled her eyes and span Polly around, guiding her to one of the many doors leading off the cavernous, run-down kitchen. It was a small bathroom she saw, and suddenly she felt like being away from people was the best thing she could do right now.

The curses and insults on her tongue suddenly stopped, and while she could feel this... urge buzzing around in her head, threatening to explode out of her at any moment, she thought, maybe, she could speak for herself again now.

"Ok, ok," she gasped, recovering her tongue for her own use. "I'll be ok on my own." She gingerly pushed Carrie's hand off her shoulder, wincing as she realised they were sticky from spilt spirits. She watched as her fingers wiggled and rubbed against each other, feeling the tacky, clinging residue.

Then she froze, realising that she hadn't told them to do that.

"You sure?" Carrie's voice softened a little, and Polly had to focus, to take control and answer in as normal a voice as possible.

"I'm sorry Carrie, for whatever I did..." supporting herself on the doorframe she looked back, "But can you... hang around out here for, just a minute?"

"Ok," her friend chewed her lip sceptically, "Just... shout if you need me or whatever. And I'll start banging if you're not out in five. So lucky we didn't run into Lou and his buddies yet."

Polly nodded, relieved that she hadn't made a fool of herself over the cool, wolfish guy she'd been mooning over for months, and slumped backwards into the bathroom. Pulling the door shut after her, she locked it, then unlocked it. Frowning, she locked it again.

"See, sweetie? Just giving you an idea of the... ballpark we're pitching in here." The sibilant whisper again, as if Mol was leaning down on either side of her, lips brushing her small earlobes. It wasn't a voice in her head, it was as if she were actually hearing the girl. No, not a girl, a thing.

"What... what are you doing? Are you in me?"

"Oh, honey! I knew you were smarter than you made out earlier!" The invisible lips were smiling, the whisper cutting through the raucous noises of the party that she was only now beginning to tune into. "Can't just park your car in the middle of a mountain road now, can you? When you passed out behind the wheel I... ah, took the liberty of slipping behind your wheel, as it were, and driving you and your big ol' beast of an automobile the rest of the way to the party. You should be thanking me."

"You- you can do that?" Polly's heart was pounding, every inch of her skin prickling with the dizzying vertigo of the unknown. What... what had happened? What had Mol made her do? What could she make her do? She was talking, out loud to the... the ghost and didn't know if she should be whispering or screaming.

"Oh, of course honey. How d'you think I get all those pretty boys to drive their cars off-of that cliff? Now, when I got all the way up here and you still weren't showing any signs of perking up, I... well I have to admit I may have indulged a little. But then," Mol's voice feigned good intentions in the most flesh-crawling way imaginable, "it wouldn't have exactly been safe to leave you sleeping in an auto with all these... virile stallions pulling up in their vans and cars all around you. Now, would it? Huh, honey?"

Polly was leaning, back to the wall, still right next to the door. Head spinning, she urged her self to straighten up, to take the three, impossibly tricky steps over to the washbasin. She reached it and clung on for dear life, bringing her eyes to bear on the thick, cracked mirror above it.

Of course the girl looking back at her wasn't her. It was the high-contrast perfection of Mol.

"Just think of me as your designated driver for the nighy, Polly honey." The reflection was smoking, a long, old-fashioned cigarette that got smaller but never gave off any smoke. "In your current state, if I were to, ah, vacate the premises, you'd be an even worse mess than you are now, darling. But Molly Mason is never impaired," the ghost in the mirror did a the faintest curtsey, lifting the one side of her dress an inch but still smoking with the other hand. "If you just give me the keys for the night we can be the queen of this party. Just leave everything to me and you won't so much as put a foot wrong. And this dreamboat Lou you're all starry-eyed about? With me running things? Honey, he's as good as yours. And then tomorrow... well, it's a little embarrassing to admit it but, I'm actually kinda stuck here on this mountain, honey. It's part of the deal I got going on."

The room was rotating in one direction while the sink, the mirror and Polly seemed to be going the other way. She felt something fade, some part of her come back and with it she suddenly realised she was going to throw up.

Then Molly was back in her and the urge to vomit faded, the fairground room slowed, at least a little.

"Y'see? C'mon, for all I know I'm going to spend eternity up on this stinkin' mountain, honey. There's no guidebook for ghosts! I don't know if Gabriel is gonna swoop down here after I've done a couple hundred years and say - 'You did your time sister, heaven awaits!'" In the mirror, Mol grinned, and to Polly the grin seemed both perfect and stretched far, far too wide. "Then again, I killed a lot of people since I passed. Probably be someone from the other place. Anyway, my point is, let's you and me have fun. I get one more night in the flesh and you get to let go and just enjoy yourself like you never have before. And I promise your man will be putty in your hands." The cigarette between Mol's fingers was suddenly freshly lit again. The room lurched.

Polly gripped the basin, white-knuckled, and hissed through gritted teeth. "You got me drunk, so that when I woke up I wouldn't be able to stop you. You were... hitting on guys?"