The Passenger

Ashlund Drive became an urban legend of sorts among the cab drivers of St. John’s Bay, England. The circumstances surrounding the experience and testimonial of William Bray is as frightening and mysterious as the story that follows. But it was his story alone that became the legend known only as The Passenger.

It was half past midnight and Bray was ending his shift. It was the peak of winter and a blanket of night concealed patches of ice, which were scattered like mines along the roads bordering the English countryside. Bray drove carefully. Slowly, he advanced along the winding road that led back to town. The night was still and preserved and the moon lit up the rolling hills and silhouettes of distant farmhouses, barns and sheds. Tall, twisting trees stood frozen in time, their naked branches straining toward him and his vehicle like bony fingers in the moonlight. And though their appearance made him uneasy, he concentrated on the road. There were plenty of real dangers out there. Black ice and sub-zero temperatures were of real concern and Bray wasn’t about to succumb to carelessness and bring himself to be stuck out in the middle of the desolate countryside miles away from city and home. He was but an hour away. A final fare had brought him out this far. Though it was an unusual and expensive request, the customer reassured him by paying full in advance with a generous gratuity given to him upon his arrival. Cabbies don’t usually do this, save for the rare exception. They are discouraged to take fares far out of the city, as it would be easy to rob the cabby and take both their cab and commissions. Bray had heeded such warnings and this was his first exception. Though he was not a coward without it, Bray reinforced his courage in the form of a revolver underneath the driver’s seat. A fringe benefit the company need not know about.

He wore on, about forty-five minutes from his destination. A fog bank was now rolling in from the countryside. It blanketed the fields and captured the light of the moon, illuminating and glowing as if coming to life and reflecting a beautiful, eerie essence. Eventually, inevitably it broke through the boundaries of wood and barbed wire fences bordering the fields and rolled out onto the road. Bray turned on his brights. It helped but a little as the fog reflected and refracted the beams. He turned them off and squinted instead. And though his vision was narrowed, he could see with surprising clarity.

The road winded but once more and then straightened out, permitting a rest from unknown hazards lurking in twisted, icy roadways. However, this stretch of road was not devoid of its own surprises. And what Bray saw in the distance ahead caused him to blink and rub his eyes. But despite his efforts, Bray could not dismiss this sight from them. Ahead and to his right stood the figure of a man silhouetted by the illuminated fog that surrounded him. Bray tapped lightly on the brakes. Within seconds the cab came upon him. The man stood about six feet, two inches in height. He was of medium build, wearing slacks and a tweed blazer and clearly was underdressed for the conditions of the weather around him. His hair was a dark brown and matted on one side. And creeping down the side of his forehead from his hairline was a darker, dried substance. Blood. The man looked injured. Bray rolled the passenger side window down.

“Sir. Are you alright””

There was no answer. The man just looked at him. He looked weary and his eyes seemed vacant and glassy.

“Sir, if you need a ride into town, I’m headed that way. You ought not be out in the cold like this dressed as you are. If you come in, I can drop you off somewhere along the way. Free of charge.”

The strange man just stood there for a second.

“Sir, do you need help?” Bray became concerned.

“No one comes down this way for hours. There’s no one around these parts for miles and I don’t want you to freeze out here.”

The man just stood there. After what seemed to be an eternity, he looked down the road that led into town. He then looked at Bray, then at the passenger door. Assuming his assistance was required, Bray exited the cab and went around to the where the man stood. He opened the door and motioned for him to enter. Bray backed up as the man slowly walked toward the open door. He entered the cab and Bray closed the door after him. With the unsettling passenger inside, Bray drove the cab onward into the night.

The cab drove on, cutting through the shroud of mist and surrounding silence. His passenger hosted an unnerving presence. He never spoke or made any sounds. He did not shiver, though his skin resembled a slight discoloration brought on by prolonged exposure to the cold. The blood that stained his forehead and brow appeared frozen with a texture like that of an icicle. He looked as though he were in shock.

“Sir, I don’t mean to pry, but, were you in an accident? You look hurt real bad. May I ask what happened?”

The man didn’t respond.

“Sir, I don’t mean to badger you but I think I need to take you to a hospital.”

The man spoke for the first time since Bray had come upon him on the roadside.

“No, no hospital.”

There was an unpleasant tone about his voice that made Bray’s hair tingle. It sounded forlorned, disconnected, and seemingly alien. It didn’t make sense. Why wouldn’t he allow Bray to take him to the hospital? He had entered the cab and thus complied with his request to take him into town. What was wrong with going to the hospital? His wound appeared serious and it almost gave Bray a headache just looking at it. It was clear that the man didn’t want help. Bray knew pushing people into things just isn’t the way the world works in your favor. But, sometimes it’s for the better. Head injuries can cloud a man’s judgment to the point where he could not decide what was best for him. Perhaps this man’s judgment had come to that point.

And Bray didn’t want a lack of compassion to bring death upon this stranger.

The cab struggled up even the most gradual of inclines and elevations. Its tires skidded and clawed at the road’s terrain but maintained its grip. Eventually it made it up to where the hill began to crest. As the cab reached the top, Bray caught sight of a strange blur of fluctuating light in the fog in the distance. It looked like a porch light, but the color was of a darker hue. Bray checked on his passenger in his rear view mirror. He didn’t move an inch. It appeared as though he were frozen in time. He didn’t even blink. He barely even braced himself as the cab fought and struggled to maintain friction with the road in its descent down the hill. But soon they reached the bottom of the slope and the cab ambled along another straight stretch of road. About another half an hour to go. Bray kept a cautious pace, though he grew nervous with the fleeting appearance of his passenger. He could race time if he needed. But what help would both of their deaths bring them?

The light Bray had first caught a glimpse of from the crest of the hill now took on a different form as the cab crept closer to its source. The fog surrounding the light was darker in color. It was black, ascending violently toward the sky above. The light’s color was of red and orange hues, and moved just as recklessly. And as they got even closer, Bray realized what it was. Fire. And it was shooting in all directions from torn and twisted metal. The object was black, much like the pluming smoke the fire released. What the fire devoured protruded from a creek bed hidden just beyond the edge of the roadway.

“Oh my god,” Bray uttered as he brought the cab to a halt, realizing what he was looking at. Stuck in the creek bed by its front end was the wreckage of a car, its rear jetting out and upward from where it was wedged. It was nearly burnt beyond recognition

“J-Just stay here, sir. I’ll be right back.”

Bray got out of the cab and hustled the best he could over slippery road towards the wreckage. Something cracked and broke under his feet: Glass. He didn’t need to look down to confirm this. He didn’t even need a flashlight. The flames lit up the surrounding area like daylight. And light traveled far in the country. Sometimes, even in the fog. Bray got as close as flame and heat allowed. He could see inside the vehicle. It was vacant. Where was the driver? Passengers? Could they have gotten out and made it to town? Bray hoped so. He hadn’t room in his cab to bring many more injured passengers out to town and the conditions of the road would lengthen an ambulance’s ability to arrive on the scene in a timely manner. Not drawing to conclusions too soon, Bray still had another side to search. He carefully made his way down to the creek bed and stepped across it. And there, poking out from behind the flames and twisted wreckage was a body. It lay face down, outstretched along the cold earth. Bray hurried over to take a closer look.

“Hello? Are you alright? Hello?”

There was no answer.

Bray came closer to it and saw that it was the body of a young man.

“Hello, Sir?”

He looked unconscious, if not dead.

Bray came closer. He could smell something wet and thick like blood. He saw that he was bleeding. A small pool had formed by his right hand. His head was facing away from him. Bray walked along to the other side so he could see the man’s face.

“Hello Sir, Hel…”

Bray just stood there, mouth hanging in terror and disbelief.

He shook his head, rubbed his eyes, and pinched his arm. He was dreaming. It couldn’t be real. He shuffled carefully toward the man he now knew to certainly be dead.

There, staring back at him was a man underdressed for the weather surrounding him. A man in slacks and a tweed blazer lay before him with dark brown hair, matted with blood that had dried and stained his forehead. His eyes were glassy and vacant, except for the fire that danced and reflected within them. Bray fell back upon the cold earth. He now shivered, but not from the cold. His heart pounded and burned within him. To his left he saw his cab, parked on the road just beyond the wreckage. But he couldn’t see the passenger compartment where that strange man sat. Bray felt paralyzed. For the moment, he couldn’t move or muster the courage to lift even a foot from the ground. But eventually, he did. He even stood up. Though his legs shook, he walked around the burning wreckage and even across the creek bed. The cab was but a blur in the fog that surrounded it. Bray crept up to the passenger compartment and looked in. But no one was there. The cab was empty.

Bray just stood there in the fog. After a while, he got into his vehicle and drove on down the road towards town.

When he arrived, Bray called the police and reported the accident. He kept his encounter with the strange passenger to himself. He knew what he had seen, although he didn’t want to acknowledge it as such. Weeks went by before a cabbie friend of his confided in him a story that brought him back into that cab on that cold, foggy night along Ashlund Drive. Listening intently, his friend’s voice stammered in broken fragments as he told of a frightening vision he had witnessed that nearly got him killed.

He was driving home alone one night along Ashlund Drive around midnight. He had momentarily lost his way and had used Ashlund as a means of returning to town. As he claims, he felt an uneasy presence that came from the back of the cab. Out of habit, he checked his rear view mirror and saw the face of a young man with dark brown hair, matted on one side with dried blood trailing down from it. He was so startled by this that he lost control of his vehicle and nearly drove it off the road. When he collected himself, he looked back to the passenger’s compartment, but there was no one there. By some logic and motive known only to him, he felt it necessary to state the number of the cab he was driving that night. 237. When Bray heard this he learned of a trend. He too had been driving cab 237 the night he encountered this ghostly passenger.

And so it came to be that whoever drove cab 237 around midnight and, by strange circumstances, found themselves on Ashlund Drive, would report seeing this phantom passenger in the rear view mirror. But when they turned around to see who it was, there would be no one there.