The Legend

Ben Parker had a terrible, terrible fear of what everyone else knew to be Urban Legends. His name wasn’t Benjamin, by the way.  His full name, though he rarely used it, was Benadryl, as both of his parents suffered terribly with hay-fever during the pregnancy. He was also colour-blind, liked Double Deckers, and was paranoid that people would try and steal his car.  Also - and more relevantly, Benadryl was terrified of urban legends. 

He was terrified of the escaped lunatic banging on the car roof with the boyfriend’s head on his hook. He was terrified of the escaped lunatic hiding under the bed and licking the babysitter’s hand.  He was terrified of the escaped lunatic who creeps into the back seat of the car while the woman fills up with petrol. It also made him think that asylums needed to have a bit of a rethink about security.

He was also terrified of the possibility that Jamie Lee Curtis had once had a penis, or that there really was that picture of Debbie McGee.  He was terrified of taking a candle, and going alone to a mirror, eating an apple, and seeing the face of his husband to be peeping over his shoulder - largely because didn’t want a husband, and how binding was the arrangement, and wouldn’t that be a weird way to learn that you were gay.

His problem was that he believed them.  And he couldn’t stop believing them. He did try not to, but somewhere at the back of his mind he couldn’t help thinking that there was no smoke without fire. That somewhere, some time there had been an escaped lunatic with a hook for a hand, or a woman with a spider’s egg sac growing in her beehive hairdo.

It affected his daily life more and more.  He wouldn’t buy exotic fruit in case a deadly creature had stowed away in the crate, ready to give him a terrifying disease which would make his testicles pop. As a teenager he certainly hadn’t taken on any babysitting jobs, as they seemed to be main target for murderers.  And now as an adult it added nearly an hour’s drive to his day.

Because while most of the urban legends that scared him seemed to originate in America, there was one that originated only a few miles from his front door.  He lived on the outskirts of town, past Tudor Mansion and on the other side of Hardman’s Wood - not far from the Binkleman toy factory.  He worked at the library, which should have been a simple fifteen minute drive away.  If he used Sycamore Hill.  Sycamore Hill was the road that cut straight through Hardman’s Wood.  Sycamore Hill is unlit, single track in places and largely unused.  It had long ago become the subject of a classic urban legend.  The Ghostly Hitchhiker.  As the story went, drivers would see a man, dressed in green, hitchhiking at the side of the road. The driver picks up the hiker, who sits silently in the back seat, never saying a word, but staring, staring, staring into the rearview mirror. Then, one of two things would happen. If the hitchhiker disappeared, the driver would be fine, and leave with just an anecdote and a creepy feeling.  But if the Hitchhiker stayed in the rear seat, never moving, never speaking, never leaving, until the moment the driver stopped the car, then the driver would certainly die within the week. As the story went, it was the ghost of an escaped lunatic, what else, killed on the road one dark and stormy Friday the 13th, taking his revenge on other drivers.

This thought terrified Ben, and so he would always drive an incredibly long way round to get to work, to avoid driving down or up Sycamore Hill.  The additional drive meant that his driving time was more than an hour longer than it should have been.

After he had been doing this for five years, Ben started to feel a bit silly about the whole thing.

After all - he was a grown man. He shouldn’t be believing in these stupid stories.  They were all rubbish, right? Over five years, he had wasted an hour a day. He had now wasted 76 days of his life being miserably afraid of nothing. He was going to change.

Benadryl had had enough.  Enough of his own stupidity. He was going to face his fears, and beat them. 

And what better place to start than Sycamore Hill. He would wait until a dark and stormy night.  Preferably a Friday 13th if possible.  But he knew it was an unlikely set of circumstances.

It was with some horror that when the next Friday 13th rolled around, it was a horribly dark and stormy night.  But Ben had decided that this lunacy had gone on long enough.  He had made a pact with himself.  He could break this stupid cycle of fear.

He left the house at nine o’clock, and got into his car, checking underneath it first for people who might want to slash his ankles, and also the back seat for other the sort of murderers who prefer to stab you through the back of a car seat.

There was no one there.

He took a deep breath, and for the first time in five years, he drove towards Sycamore Hill. The windscreen wipers lick flacking at the driving rain.  After a few moments, he reached the point at which the hill entered the woods. The darkest and spookiest point.  He stopped the car for a moment.  At this point, he could turn around.  Go home.  Forget it all.  And wake up tomorrow and still be worried about Richard Gere and that Gerbil.  No.  He was going to do it.  He was definitely going to do it.  He put the car in gear, and entered the dark canopy of trees.  As he did so, the lightning flashed, and the thunder boomed.

The stretch of road was probably just under three miles, before the hill turned on the the larger A road that led into town.

Three miles of terror for Ben.  He crawled down the hill, looking left and right. Part of him wanted to see the spectral hitch hiker.  If he saw it, then he was entirely vindicated.  He hadn’t been stupid all these years, he had merely been sensible.

But of course, most of him was absolutely bloody desperate not to see it.  Because if he saw it, he couldn’t unsee it.  He couldn’t unknow it.  From that point on, the world would be an unendingly terrifying place.

The three miles through the woods seemed to take forever. The road seemed to drag on and on and on, the rain falling in fat drops from the branches above, and drumming on the roof of the car like a thousand bored fingertips.

Then Ben saw the lights of cars at the junction up ahead.  He was through. He had seen nothing. Just before the road emerged completely out of the woods, he pulled over to the side of the road, tyres crunching on the damp twigs. He breathed a sigh of relief.

There was no hitch hiker.  No premonitions of death. There had just been three miles of pleasant road.  Up ahead he could see the lit road stretching out, and he couldn’t help but think of it as a metaphor for his own life. Brighter, busier, more useful than where he was now.

That was when he heard the back door of the car open.  The roar of the rain grow louder.  A smell of wet clothes.  He instinctively looked up into the rear view mirror as he heard the door close again. In the mirror he saw a flash of dirty green clothing, a white face, and eyes that stared forward, straight into his eyes.

Ben’s body suddenly ran cold.

‘Hello.’.

Nothing. Silence.  Rain.  Eyes locked on his.

‘Do you need a lift?’

Nothing again.

‘I’d like you to leave.’

Ben talked only to the mirror.  Refusing to turn round.  The figure made no attempt to answer or communicate.  Maybe it couldn’t.

Not knowing what else to do, Ben once again put the car into gear, and started to turn around. Surely now the figure would disappear.  He would continue to drive until the figure disappeared.

And so he did. He drove back through the woods, now and again looking in the rear view mirror, and meeting those cold, cold eyes.  When he got back through the woods, the figure was still there.  So he turned around again, and drove back through the woods.  The figure didn’t move, thought he could hear him breathe.  But every time he looked in the mirror, it was still there.

The legend ran through his mind a thousand times.  If the hitch-hiker didn’t disappear, the driver would be dead within a week.

The hitch hiker was not disappearing. For nearly three hours, Ben drove to and fro through the woods, staring at his silent passenger whenever he dared.

And for all that time he grew more and more terrified.

He had less than seven days to live.

Except that...urban myths are told by people.  They are word of mouth tales.  They change  and shift. Details are lost.

Maybe the hitchhiker didn’t have to disappear on his own accord.  Maybe he could be made to disappear.  Ben’s eyes darted down the the footwell of the passenger seat, and the heavy crook-lock that sat there.

With one hand on the wheel, he slowly reached down and grabbed the heavy metal bar and pulled it into his lap.  He glanced up into the mirror.  No reaction from the silent hitch hiker in the back.

‘I’m going to stop’

He said.

‘I’m going to stop, and I want you to leave’.

No reaction.

‘Or I’ll make you leave, do you understand?’.

No reaction.  Ben applied his foot to the brake, and the car slowed down, but didn’t stop.  If you stopped, and the hitch hiker hadn’t disappeared, you were dead.  The car crept forward, out of gear.  Then, using a strength, and rage Ben didn’t know he had, he swung the crook lock, and smashed it into the head of the silent hitch hiker in the back seat.  And again.  And again.  The hitch hiker made no attempt to block the blows, but took them like a rag doll, blood spattering the window.

Finally, not wanting to touch him with his bare hands, Ben reached over, pulled open the car door, opened it and pushed the figure in green out into the rain.  

The last thing he saw were the eyes. The eyes locked on his and the body tumbled onto the road.

Ben clambered back into the drivers’s seat, and crunched the car back into gear.

He looked in the rear view mirror.  

Empty.  Success.

The car was still moving, and hitch hiker had disappeared.

He had beaten the myth.

As he pulled out of the woods he went to join the main road, and enjoyed the bright green rear lights of the car in front.

Which he knew were red.

And those green lights were exactly the colour of the outfit the hitch-hiker had been wearing.

Which made him think an awful thought.

The hitch-hiker had been dressed in red, not green.

He was not the hitch hiker from the legend.

He had just killed a man.

Screeching his way through a three point turn, he hared back up the hill, his heart thumping.  He looked this way and that trying to see the body of the man he may have killed.

And there, at the side of the road, was the figure of a man, dressed in bright green, with blood spattered down the front .  The man held his head, and lurched from side to side.

Ben screeched to a halt, reached behind and opened the door.

‘Get in!’

‘Thank God You’re Alive’

‘I’m so sorry - we’ll get to a hospital’.

And he sped off into the night.

When he pulled up to the hospital, Ben leapt out of the car, yanked open the rear door, to find nothing.  An empty back seat.  The hitch hiker had disappeared.

Ben really had killed a man that night.  An escaped lunatic, as it happens - the security at asylums really does leave a lot to be desired.  And thanks to his actions that night, on that stretch of road, a vengeful spirit now walks where there was none before.

Ben had made an urban myth an urban truth.