Black Hollow Road

Black Hollow Road

The radio came on by itself just after Marlene turned onto Black Hollow Road.

At first, she thought she had bumped the knob with her knee. The old Buick had a habit of taking offense at ordinary use. The Buick made plenty of noise on its own. The heater clicked. The glove box rattled. Wind slipped in around the passenger-side window whenever it blew from the north. Marlene knew all of those sounds, but the radio was not one of them.

Almost.

Static filled the car, low and dry, like dead leaves being dragged across concrete. Marlene reached for the power button without looking away from the road. Her finger found the knob, pressed it, and held it for a second. The static faded, then came back.

Marlene frowned and pressed the button again, harder this time. The dashboard clock glowed 10:43 in pale green numbers. Outside, Halloween night had settled cold and clear over the fields north of the city. The moon hung above the cottonwoods, not quite full, not quite helpful.

Black Hollow Road stretched ahead in two narrow lanes, bending through dark farmland, old houses, irrigation ditches, and stories people liked to tell after midnight. She had not driven it at night in years.

“That is enough,” she said, and jabbed the radio button one more time.

The static snapped into music. An old song came through first, warped by distance and age. She knew it but could not place it. Something with soft guitar, a slow drumbeat, and a woman’s voice singing about going home. The sound thinned and thickened as the car moved, fading near the ditches, clearing near the open fields.

Marlene slowed without meaning to.

She had taken Black Hollow because the highway was jammed with Halloween traffic. Teenagers were going to haunted houses. Parents were hauling tired children home from trunk-or-treats. Couples were headed to parties in costumes too thin for the weather. She had sat through three light changes on 104th before giving up and turning north.

It was only a road, she told herself. A road with pavement, fence posts, fields, and mailboxes. A road where foolish people invented foolish stories because darkness made them feel creative.

The song ended in a ribbon of static. For a moment there was nothing but tires humming over pavement and the loose rattle from the glove box. Then a man’s voice came through the speakers.

“Good evening, Adams County. You are listening to KBRD, your late-night companion on a cold Halloween. It is thirteen minutes before eleven, October thirty-first, nineteen seventy-eight.”

Marlene’s hand tightened on the steering wheel. The announcer had the bright, practiced cheer of a man sitting alone in a booth and pretending he had company. His voice was warm, almost neighborly, with a faint crackle around the edges.

“We have got a clear sky over Thornton tonight, though the county sheriff’s office reminds drivers to watch for ice in the low spots. Especially along Black Hollow Road, where fog off the irrigation ditches can make those curves a little tricky.”

Marlene stared at the radio. The display showed no station. No numbers. No call letters. Just a blank blue screen. She pressed the power button again, but the announcer kept talking.

“Coming up after the break, we will have the school lunch menu, a word from Harper’s Feed and Grain, and an update on a single-vehicle accident reported north of the old bridge.”

Marlene’s foot eased off the gas. The Buick drifted down to thirty-five. A pickup came around the bend ahead, headlights glaring. She blinked against them and forced herself to stay in her lane. The pickup passed with a rush of cold air and vanished behind her.

The radio hissed. “Reports are still coming in,” the announcer said, “but deputies believe the vehicle left the roadway sometime before eleven. One occupant has been located. A second may still be missing.”

Marlene turned the radio volume down. The voice lowered. She turned it all the way down, and the voice became a whisper, but it remained. She pulled her hand back as if the knob had burned her. Her wedding ring clicked against the steering wheel.

Harold had hated Black Hollow Road at night. He had called it a road for people who wanted to prove they weren’t afraid of something. Harold had been gone six years.

Marlene had come from her daughter’s house in Brighton, where she had handed out candy until her knees ached and pretended to enjoy chili made with cinnamon. Her grandson had worn a skeleton costume and asked why Grandma didn’t dress up.

“I have been old all day,” she had told him. “That is costume enough.”

Everyone had laughed. Now the laugh seemed to belong to another woman.

The road curved between two rows of cottonwoods. Their bare branches met overhead, black against the moonlit sky. Dry leaves moved in little circles along the shoulder, though she could not see any wind pushing them. The Buick’s headlights caught a white fence, a mailbox shaped like a barn, and a handmade sign advertising pumpkins. The sign should not have bothered her, but it did.

The voice on the radio cleared its throat. “For those of you just joining us, this is KBRD with a late update from Black Hollow Road. Deputies are responding to a crash near the old cottonwoods. The vehicle is believed to be a blue Chevrolet Nova, possibly occupied by two teenage girls.”

Marlene hit the brakes. The Buick shuddered beneath her. Gravel snapped under the tires as she drifted toward the shoulder, then corrected too sharply. The car swayed, and for one sick second the ditch opened black beside her.

She stopped in the middle of the lane. Her breath came hard. Both hands gripped the wheel. The radio hummed softly, waiting.

“No,” she said. The word fogged the windshield.

There had been a blue Nova. Not hers. Debbie’s. Everything about the car had been Debbie’s, from the fuzzy dice on the mirror to the cracked vinyl seat held together with silver tape. Marlene had not thought of the tape in years because she hadn’t allowed herself to.

A horn blared behind her. Marlene cried out and looked in the mirror. No car was there. The road behind her lay empty, silvered by moonlight.

The horn sounded again, closer this time, long and panicked. Then came the squeal of tires. Marlene twisted in her seat.

Nothing.

Only Black Hollow Road, empty in both directions.

The radio crackled. “Sheriff’s deputies are advising motorists to avoid the area if possible,” the announcer said. “Road conditions remain poor near the bend north of the Wilcox place. One witness reports hearing a horn shortly before impact.”

Marlene put the car in park. Her right hand trembled. She looked at the passenger seat, though she knew better. Her purse sat there. Nothing else.

No girl with feathered brown hair. No denim jacket covered in embroidered flowers. No cheap plastic witch hat tossed on the floor. No Debbie Palmer rolling her eyes and saying, “You worry like somebody’s mother, Mar.”

Marlene closed her eyes, and the memory did not come gently. It arrived with the smell of drugstore perfume, cold air through a half-open window, and Debbie laughing too loudly because she had taken two drinks from somebody’s bottle and wanted Marlene to think it was three. They had left the party early after Debbie argued with a boy whose name Marlene could no longer remember. The road had been slick. The music had been loud. Debbie had driven too fast because she always drove too fast.

Then the bend. The horn. The fence. The world turning sideways.

Marlene opened her eyes and shoved the gearshift into drive. “I was thrown clear,” she said. Her voice sounded small inside the car. “I went for help.”

The radio hissed, but the announcer said nothing. Marlene drove on.

She had told the story so many times she had worn it smooth. The car crashed. She woke in the ditch. She could not see Debbie. She walked to the Wilcox farmhouse and called the sheriff. By the time deputies arrived, the car had burned.

Those were the facts. The newspaper had printed them. Adults repeated them in kitchens and church basements. Classmates whispered them, looking at Marlene as if survival were a kind of theft.

The road dipped. The Buick’s headlights slid down the pavement and rose again. Ahead, a low mist had gathered where the irrigation ditch crossed beneath the road.

The radio clicked. “KBRD has received confirmation of one survivor,” the announcer said. “A seventeen-year-old female found walking southbound along Black Hollow Road. She appears disoriented and is asking not to be taken back to the vehicle.”

Marlene’s throat tightened. “That is not what happened.” Her voice cracked on the last word.

The announcer continued in his calm late-night tone. “Deputies have not yet located the second occupant, identified by friends as Deborah Palmer, seventeen, of Thornton.”

Marlene shook her head. “She was in the car.”

Static swelled beneath his voice. “Witness states her friend was in the vehicle at the time of impact.”

“She was.”

“Witness also states she attempted to open the passenger door.”

“I did.”

The Buick’s dashboard lights flickered. “Witness states the door would not open.”

“It would not.”

The passenger-side window gave its faint whistle. Marlene smelled smoke then, impossible and sharp. Not woodsmoke. Not leaves. Something oily and black.

The announcer’s voice softened. “Witness states she heard no response from inside the vehicle.”

Marlene’s hands clenched until her knuckles ached. The road ahead blurred. She blinked hard, once, twice, but tears kept rising. The old story trembled inside her, not breaking yet, but loosening.

There had been a response. Not at first. At first there had been only the tick of the engine, the hiss of something leaking, and Marlene’s own sobbing breath as she crawled through wet grass. The Nova had come to rest nose-down against the fence. One headlight still burned. The passenger side was crushed against a cottonwood trunk.

Marlene had staggered to the driver’s side and pulled at the handle until her fingers slipped. Then Debbie had made a sound.

Not a scream.

A knock.

Three small knocks from inside the car.

Marlene pulled over so suddenly the Buick bounced onto the shoulder. The engine idled. The heater blew warm air over her feet. Outside, dead grass bent in the ditch.

The radio was silent. For a moment, she heard only the ticking of the Buick’s engine. Then, from the passenger door, came three soft knocks.

Marlene stopped breathing.

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

Her purse slid to the floor by itself. The seat belt warning began to chime. Marlene stared at the empty passenger seat. The gray fabric was worn smooth where Harold used to sit, where grandchildren had kicked muddy shoes, where grocery bags had tipped and spilled apples into the footwell.

The seat belt lay flat against the pillar. The warning chimed again.

On the radio, the announcer returned. “Northbound vehicle now stopped near the old bend. Driver appears to be alone.”

Marlene could not move.

“Passenger seat occupied.”

A faint depression formed in the fabric beside her, as if someone had just settled into the seat. The belt lifted, stretched across empty air, and clicked into place. The chime stopped.

Marlene made a sound she did not recognize. The temperature inside the car dropped. Frost feathered along the bottom of the windshield. In the side window, her own reflection looked pale and hollow. Beside it, for less than a second, another face appeared: seventeen years old, brown hair, blood at the hairline, eyes full of hurt.

Marlene turned, but the seat was empty again.

“I was scared,” she whispered.

The radio hummed.

“I heard you.” Marlene pressed both hands to her mouth, then lowered them because hiding was childish after forty-eight years. “I heard you knocking. I thought the car would burn. I thought if I stayed, I would die too.”

The heater clicked off. Outside, somewhere beyond the ditch, a girl began to cry.

Marlene closed her eyes. “I told myself you were already gone.”

The crying stopped. The announcer spoke very softly now, almost kindly.

“Survivor states she went for help.”

“I did,” Marlene said.

“Survivor reached the Wilcox farmhouse eleven minutes after the crash.”

“Yes.”

“Fire reported four minutes after that.”

Marlene opened her eyes. The road ahead curved left around the old cottonwoods. She remembered the Wilcox house being just beyond the bend, lights on, porch sagging, a dog barking itself hoarse inside the mudroom.

Four minutes.

She had never known the number. Or she had known and buried it so deep it became part of the dark.

The passenger seat creaked. Marlene looked over slowly.

Debbie sat there.

Not burned. Not ruined. Not as Marlene had imagined her during sleepless nights. She looked the way she had before the party went sour, before the curve and the fence and the knocking. Her denim jacket was zipped to her throat. The embroidered flowers on one sleeve were frayed. The cheap witch hat rested in her lap.

“You left,” Debbie said.

Her voice was not angry. That made it worse.

Marlene’s lips trembled. “I know.”

“You heard me.”

“Yes.”

The answer seemed to take everything from her. All the years, all the careful wording, all the polite sympathy she had accepted from people who did not know what question to ask.

Debbie looked out the windshield toward the bend. “I knocked until I couldn’t.”

Marlene began to cry then, not the quiet tears of an old woman embarrassed by feeling, but hard, ugly sobs pulled from the same frightened girl who had run down Black Hollow Road and kept running for almost fifty years.

“I am sorry,” she said. “Debbie, I am so sorry.”

Debbie turned back to her. The blood at her hairline had dried dark. Her eyes were still seventeen, still hurt, but no longer confused.

“Why tonight?” Marlene asked.

Debbie looked down at the witch hat in her lap and smoothed its bent paper brim. “You came back.”

Marlene wiped her face with both hands. “I did not mean to.”

“You never did.”

The radio crackled again. The announcer sounded farther away now, as if he had stepped back from the microphone.

“Final update from Black Hollow Road,” he said. “One vehicle stopped near the old bend. No injuries reported at this time.”

Marlene looked at the dashboard clock. 10:56. Four minutes before eleven.

Ahead of her, headlights appeared around the curve.

Too fast.

A small car came toward them, weaving slightly over the center line. Marlene saw costumes inside, pale faces, open mouths, a driver looking down at something in his hand instead of the road.

The radio snapped into the old song again: soft guitar, slow drumbeat, a woman singing about going home.

Debbie looked at the oncoming car, then at Marlene. Marlene understood.

She put both hands on the wheel and pulled onto the road. The Buick’s tires bit pavement. The oncoming headlights filled the windshield, then the car 9swerved hard back into its own lane. A horn screamed. The small car shot past so close the Buick rocked in its wake.

Marlene braked in the middle of the road. Behind her, tires squealed, corrected, and kept going.

No impact. No fence. No fire. Only silence.

Marlene sat very still, breathing hard. Her heart battered her ribs. The radio went dead. Not quiet. Dead, as if there had never been a broadcast at all.

The passenger seat was empty. The witch hat lay on it. Cheap black paper. Bent brim. A tear near the point where Debbie had laughed and taped it together before the party.

Marlene touched it with two fingers. It was cold.

She drove the rest of Black Hollow Road at twenty miles an hour. At the next gas station, she pulled beneath the harsh white lights and parked beside the air pump. Teenagers laughed near the door, carrying candy and soda, alive in that careless way young people were alive when they believed every road would let them reach morning.

Marlene turned off the engine. For a long time she sat with her hands in her lap. Then she picked up her phone and called her daughter.

“Mom?” Karen answered on the third ring. “Are you all right?”

Marlene looked at the witch hat on the passenger seat. “No,” she said. “But I think I might be.”

Behind her, from somewhere far down Black Hollow Road, a radio played one last burst of static.

Then three soft knocks came through the speakers.

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

And after that, nothing.