Photo by Strange Happenings on Unsplash
I sank into the leather seat and looked up at the car roof after dropping off my last customer for the night.
A sigh escaped from my lips as I sank further into the
driver’s seat.
Too drained from working night shifts three times a week the
last couple of months, my eyelids gave in and were as heavy as lead.
But the silence did not last for long. A notification popped
up on my phone and stirred me up. A customer wanted to be picked up at a quarter
to three in the witching hour.
As I was about to call the customer and refer them to a
colleague of mine, another notification popped up.
I sat up straight upon seeing the numbers on the screen.
$1,000?
I punched in the address on the in-built GPS. $1,000 for a
ride twenty-five miles from the pickup location? What were the chances?
Levi, my friend and another Uber driver working night
shifts, said, quote, if something’s too good to be true, it is, end quote.
From what he told me, these kinds of customers were almost
all exclusively either influencers doing social experiments or teenagers with
nothing better to do but prank hard-working people like us for a hard laugh.
As if I hadn’t enough on my hands and mind already, a phone
call I did not expect hit me up just moments later and disturbed my train of
thought.
Swearing through gritted teeth and vexed more than words
could capture, I slowed down and unwillingly answered the phone. How long was
she going to keep this up?
“Hello? Joseph?”
“I’m working right now, can you—”
“Don’t do you hang up on me!”
I drew a deep breath, deliberately pausing to calm my nerves
and think straight.
“It’s my last shift. I told you that already.”
“You said that two months ago!”
“Just… just give me some more time, all right! I’m working
my fingers to the bone to provide for you and the kids, for crying out loud!”
“No…” Annie said, my partner of ten years, adding before I
could come to my defence. “If you were truly thinking of us, you’d start
getting a proper job!”
I shut my eyes briefly, trying to control the anger soaring
through every fibre of my being. ‘Get a proper job’? A smirk crossed my face. What
had I been doing all these years?
Had I the energy to snap back at her, I would. But I hadn’t
slept properly for too many nights to do that.
“Listen, I’m not in the mood for this, okay? I’ll hit you up
when I come home.”
“Joseph—”
I ended the call and tossed the phone on the passenger’s
seat. Rubbing my face to the point the dead cells came off, I slouched forwards
and rested my head on the steering wheel.
Annie and I were high school sweethearts. I was part of an alternative
rock band called ‘The Puppet Master’, a silly name, I know, but it sounded cool
back then.
We drew inspiration from Japanese Visual kei bands like the
GazettE and DIR EN GREY. We even had an entire friend group, which was all
about Visual kei bands and anime.
Annie was a transfer student and joined our close-knit group
during the second semester before graduation. The only daughter of an ambassador,
she’d been raised in Japan and was a mangaka in her own right.
Our love story, however, did not last as long as either of
us thought it would. When her dad got deployed to another country four years
later, we lost contact with each other and moved on.
When we met up years later in our mid-twenties, the sparkle
between us I thought had long since faded, rekindled.
We moved in together right away and got pregnant two years
later. Annie became with a child just six months after giving birth to our
firstborn.
It was a tough time for both of us. My dreams of getting
discovered, going on tours, and becoming successful never died.
Between working as an Uber driver at night and a cashier
during the day, I frequented clubs with my bandmates and tried to get some
exposure.
We weren’t big in the night scene, definitely not, but we
still had a small following that was loyal to us.
It wasn’t that Annie was wrong. She was right. I barely
slept at home and she was left to take care of both kids, two mischievous boys,
and the house chores all by herself.
Not to mention, we barely made the ends meet. Had it not
been for Annie’s parents, we’d probably be homeless right now.
I was sorry towards her. She was studying medicine when we
met and had her whole life before her. When this whole pregnancy thing
happened, she quit her studies to take care of our firstborn.
There wasn’t a day where I didn’t feel a pang of ache in my
heart for her, but putting all this pressure on me and deriding me for not
being enough wasn’t exactly what I needed to hear.
Beep, beep.
It was that customer again. $1,000, huh? How many diapers
did that translate to?
Levi’s voice replayed in my mind on repeat. But if this was
nothing but a silly prank, then why was this person so persistent? Surely, a
prankster wouldn’t go to such lengths to reach out?
I hit them up. Just to make sure someone wasn’t trying to
pull my legs.
A young woman spoke up on the other end of the line. Her
soft voice was pleasant to listen to. She sounded young, like someone in their
early twenties or an eloquent teenager.
“Hello?”
“Hi, uhm, this is Joseph,” I said, adding as the woman did
not reply. “The Uber driver?”
“Oh, hi. Are you here yet?”
“I’m sorry?”
“You… accepted my request ten minutes ago?”
I peeked at the app as the woman carried on in the
background. When did I press accept? When was I talking with Annie or
afterwards? I couldn’t even tell.
“Sorry ‘bout that. It seems like there’s some kind of
mistake on my part.”
“You’re not backing off, are you? I really need this ride. Please.”
I scratched the side of my brow and took another look at the
address on the GPS. It was literally in the middle of nowhere, the place this
person wanted to be dropped off.
Moreover, I was the only active Uber driver nearby, and this
person sounded too young for my liking. What was she even doing at this
peculiar hour at such a delicate age?
“How old are you?”
There was a slight pause after I asked this.
“Hello? Are you still there—”
“Please, I [unintelligible]…”
“I’m sorry, what was that?”
A low tone replaced the airy whisper I just heard. It was as
if I was speaking to two different people – that was how different the tone
came off to me.
Was Levi right, after all? Were these some bored-to-death teenagers
trying to waste their own as well as my time?
“I’m sorry, I already decided to call it quits for tonight. I’ll
refer you to my colleague—”
“NO!”
“What…?”
“NO! NO! NO!”
“Hey, is everything all right? Do you need help?”
“S- stay away! I said, stay away!”
I briefly put the phone away to take note of the customer’s
name.
“Emily? Emily, is everything okay with you? Hello—”
*inexplicable screams*
The line died.
Without thinking about what the hell I was doing, I started
the motor and hit the road. In hindsight, I should’ve called the police and
stayed put, but sometimes you do stupid things and you don’t know why.
I tried reaching out to the young woman throughout the fifteen-minute
ride. But her phone was off and kept sending me to voice mail.
When I finally arrived at the pickup location, the last
thing I expected to find was a graveyard on a wooded hill in the middle of
absolute nowhere.
There was no sign of life anywhere I rested my darting eyes.
Save from some derelict houses at the end of the narrow route, no one seemed to
be living in the otherwise dim neighbourhood shrouded in shades of amber and
purple from the rising sun.
“Hello? Emily? Are you here?”
There was no reply. I heard nothing but the frantic beat of
my heart and the wailing blasts of wind coming through from the northeast.
What was this feeling, though? As if I was being watched.
Stranger still, what was the customer doing in this harrowing graveyard at such
an odd hour? It made little sense.
“Emily? Do you need help?”
When I searched the entire graveyard for the third time and
still found nothing, I made up my mind to return to the city and from there
call the police.
As soon as the headlights switched on, however, something in
the direction of the blinding lights caught my attention. Was that… Emily?
I stepped out of the car and headed towards the silhouette
who stood with her back turned towards me. Her long, black hair reached to her
waist and she was dressed in a white nightgown.
Swaying gently to the breeze, she kept murmuring something
as I drew closer. I couldn’t hear what it was at first, it sounded like
something a drunkard would ramble up, but then I heard it as clear as day.
“He’s going to kill me…”
“He’s going to kill me…”
“He’s going to…” I stumbled backwards and fell as she turned
her pallid face towards me and screamed her head off. “… KILL YOU.”
Crawling backwards in the hopes of reaching my car and getting
the hell out of there, I nudged something sharp and stopped dead.
A bloody knife. At first, I thought I had cut my hand while
trying to get away, but I wasn’t bleeding anywhere.
I glanced up as the young woman appeared before me. Her neck
and body were twisted in opposite directions, and her hollow, wide-set eyes
fixed on me, as an invisible force dragged her through the wilted blades of grass
and left behind a trail of blood.
I stumbled back on my feet and followed the invisible figure
to a shallow pit. Both the woman and the thing that dragged her all the way
here faded away. The shallow pit turned into an unmarked grave.
I frowned as I touched the damp soil. It was newly dug. What
on earth was going on?
The hum of an engine coming through startled me out of my
dire thoughts. The headlights of what could only be another car soon followed
and illuminated the vicinity, only to switch off as soon as it pulled up next
to my car, which had still its headlights turned on.
“Damn it!”
I kept my head low, crawled as far away as I could without
making a single sound, and cowered behind a headstone veiled in a thick layer
of patina.
Reaching into my pocket to call for help, I realised too
belatedly that I left my phone in the car.
Shit! Swearing under my breath, I glanced towards the
blazing light as a figure showed up.
It was a man. I couldn’t see his face, though. I was too far
away from him. But it was a man; I was positive.
He looked around himself before turning off the headlights. Although
I couldn’t see it clearly from this angle, I knew he now had my phone in his
hand and was trying to unlock it.
I turned away and rested against the headstone. My chest
rose and fell to the cadence of my frantically beating heart.
There were so many questions whirling through my mind, but
none of them put me in greater distress as the one taking over every inch of my
brain right now.
What was Annie going to tell the kids? That their father,
who they hardly saw growing up just… just abandoned them and disappeared from
the face of the earth?
It wasn’t that I tried to neglect my duties as a father and
husband. I was just… trying to make a living for my family in the only way I
knew – by composing music.
A smile crossed my lips as the footsteps behind me grew
louder.
Annie said she fell for me after seeing me play the bass
during a school outing. I had a fling with another girl back then. What was her
name, again? Right, Laura.
She was a nutjob, man. She was… crazy. I thought I was in
love with her until Annie transferred to our high school and took my breath
away.
I still recall the first time I laid eyes on her. She was
the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. I didn’t believe in love at first
sight until she came along.
But now that I thought things over, had I the chance to go
back in time right now, I would’ve done everything I could to stay away from
her.
I didn’t deserve her.
I was a failure.
I messed everything up.
If only I could turn back time and…
Holding my breath, I stared up at the towering shadow that
fell upon me. The upside-down view of a familiar face greeted me with a wolfish
grin.
Before I could speak up and voice my doubts about the
mysterious man’s identity, he bludgeoned me to death.
As my head hung loosely from my bloodied neck, the man
dragged me through the grass and towards another shallow pit next to the
unmarked grave. I couldn’t even turn my head and take another look at him.
When he rolled me into the dark pit and covered me with soil,
he turned my head so I could finally look him in the eyes.
“I don’t know how you ended up here, Joseph, but I clearly
remember telling you to be careful.” He paused. “This? You brought it upon
yourself. When something’s too good to be true, it’s not.”
I moved my lips, at least I thought I did, but no words
escaped from me. He observed with a tilted head from where he squatted as I
struggled to speak and keep the crimson liquid from suffocating me to death.
Everything plunged into darkness.
The grains of damp sand smothered me out of air and got
stuck in my throat.
Under me and from either side, a heap of rotting corpses screamed
their heads off and fought to reach the surface and escape from their deadly
cage. I was the only person of the opposite sex.
The spell, which left me unable to speak, let up and I
regained back my senses.
Like the others below me, shoving and ripping one another apart to get out of this suffocating darkness, I screamed at the top of my lungs and dug my nails into the hard soil until blood covered my face.
