a walking tour of dead sunnydale, con'td
Jan. 29th, 2004 02:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
holliWe now take a brief detour to the edge of town. For more on hitchiking ghosts, read about Resurrection Mary, one of the most famous.
our next stop: the old logging road
You take a sharp detour off the highway because there's taillights stretched out before you as far as you can see, and the logging road takes a good fifteen minutes off your commute even without traffic. It's the first time you've been down it in months, the first time since that town-- Sunnydale, wasn't it? You'd only driven through-- got hit by an earthquake. You'd decided to steer clear of the logging road because you didn't know how damaged it was by the quake; besides, it veered dangerously close to the crater.
But this is the worst traffic you've seen in months. You've got a bottle of wine and a week's worth of TiVo waiting at home. And the logging road is probably pretty safe. They would have closed it, otherwise, and it's a clear night--
There's a crack of thunder, and the skies open up. You switch on the wipers and hope the road doesn't wash out; you're too far from the highway for it to be worth turning back.
You nearly drive past the hitchhiker. He's dressed in black, nearly invisible in the rain, and your headlights catch his shape for such a brief instant you're not entirely sure you saw him at all. But you stop, just in case-- you know it's not safe, these days, but it's raining something fierce and there aren't going to be any other cars coming down the road tonight.
He opens the door and climbs in, apologizing for the rainwater he's dripping on your upholstery. He's young, really just a kid, pale and dirt-smudged. "I was camping," he says, "and the rain--" He trails off. You realizes he's not quite as young as he looks, just little, and there's something about the way he sits that makes you a little afraid-- for, not of-- him.
"Where you headed?" you ask, after a few minutes pass without conversation.
"I need to get back to Sunnydale," he says, and you risk looking away from the road for a moment.
"What are you-- Sunnydale? You have an urgent appointment at the giant crater?"
He looks up at you, wide-eyed and startled. "The-- oh. Right. I didn't-- I'm from there, and I've been. Um. Away, and I didn't know. I haven't seen."
"Well, you should, in a minute. I think this road passes right along the edge of it." The rain is starting to let up, and you can see that there's nothing on the other side of the trees. As you approach, the car gives a mighty lurch-- quake must've shook it up worse than you thought. You hit the brakes, and the instant you stop bouncing your passenger opens his door and bolts for the trees. "Hey! Kid--!"
You get out and folllow the path he took, but can't find a trace of him, not even footprints in the muddy dirt. Your search takes you right up to the edge of the crater, and there you think you catch a glimpse of him, but it's gone as fast as his reflection in the headlights. You don't see him again.
You go back to your car, and the seat isn't even wet anymore. It's like he'd never hitched a ride in the first place, and for the rest of the drive you entertain the thought that he hadn't, that he was a figment of the rain and your worry about the crater. But the car smells damp, and the memory of his pale face and the catch in his voice are real, so when you get home you call a friend on the force who trains search-and-rescue dogs. You don't want to leave that boy up there, even if he is crazy or drug-addled or whatever else you'd need to be to run off to a vanished town in the middle of nowhere.
The two of you drive up the old logging road the next morning, your friend sitting in the back with the dog. When you get to what looks like the spot you picked the kid up at, you pull over and let the dog get a good whiff of the passenger seat, figuring that there's a good chance of finding his campsite. The dog has clearly picked up something-- he tears off down the road, barking gleefully, and you follow with your friend. But the dog stops at a nondescript patch of muddy earth, with no sign of the kid visible, and starts digging, looking for all the world like he's planning to bury something. You're about ready to call the whole thing off when the dog turns up a human femur.
The next few days are strange and frightening for you. The body is that of a young man with an outstanding arrest warrant in the State of California; his face in the mug shot is instantly recognizable as the boy who hitched a ride with you. The bones, according to your friend, have been buried for over a year. You have no way of reconciling all these facts.
You wonder, sometimes, why a ghost would consider it more important to get to a crater where a town used to be than to get his own body found. You don't really want to know the answer.
You don't take the logging road anymore. Even when the alternative is to sit in traffic, and wonder about what could be buried in Sunnydale that's worse than what was buried by the road.
our next stop: the old logging road
You take a sharp detour off the highway because there's taillights stretched out before you as far as you can see, and the logging road takes a good fifteen minutes off your commute even without traffic. It's the first time you've been down it in months, the first time since that town-- Sunnydale, wasn't it? You'd only driven through-- got hit by an earthquake. You'd decided to steer clear of the logging road because you didn't know how damaged it was by the quake; besides, it veered dangerously close to the crater.
But this is the worst traffic you've seen in months. You've got a bottle of wine and a week's worth of TiVo waiting at home. And the logging road is probably pretty safe. They would have closed it, otherwise, and it's a clear night--
There's a crack of thunder, and the skies open up. You switch on the wipers and hope the road doesn't wash out; you're too far from the highway for it to be worth turning back.
You nearly drive past the hitchhiker. He's dressed in black, nearly invisible in the rain, and your headlights catch his shape for such a brief instant you're not entirely sure you saw him at all. But you stop, just in case-- you know it's not safe, these days, but it's raining something fierce and there aren't going to be any other cars coming down the road tonight.
He opens the door and climbs in, apologizing for the rainwater he's dripping on your upholstery. He's young, really just a kid, pale and dirt-smudged. "I was camping," he says, "and the rain--" He trails off. You realizes he's not quite as young as he looks, just little, and there's something about the way he sits that makes you a little afraid-- for, not of-- him.
"Where you headed?" you ask, after a few minutes pass without conversation.
"I need to get back to Sunnydale," he says, and you risk looking away from the road for a moment.
"What are you-- Sunnydale? You have an urgent appointment at the giant crater?"
He looks up at you, wide-eyed and startled. "The-- oh. Right. I didn't-- I'm from there, and I've been. Um. Away, and I didn't know. I haven't seen."
"Well, you should, in a minute. I think this road passes right along the edge of it." The rain is starting to let up, and you can see that there's nothing on the other side of the trees. As you approach, the car gives a mighty lurch-- quake must've shook it up worse than you thought. You hit the brakes, and the instant you stop bouncing your passenger opens his door and bolts for the trees. "Hey! Kid--!"
You get out and folllow the path he took, but can't find a trace of him, not even footprints in the muddy dirt. Your search takes you right up to the edge of the crater, and there you think you catch a glimpse of him, but it's gone as fast as his reflection in the headlights. You don't see him again.
You go back to your car, and the seat isn't even wet anymore. It's like he'd never hitched a ride in the first place, and for the rest of the drive you entertain the thought that he hadn't, that he was a figment of the rain and your worry about the crater. But the car smells damp, and the memory of his pale face and the catch in his voice are real, so when you get home you call a friend on the force who trains search-and-rescue dogs. You don't want to leave that boy up there, even if he is crazy or drug-addled or whatever else you'd need to be to run off to a vanished town in the middle of nowhere.
The two of you drive up the old logging road the next morning, your friend sitting in the back with the dog. When you get to what looks like the spot you picked the kid up at, you pull over and let the dog get a good whiff of the passenger seat, figuring that there's a good chance of finding his campsite. The dog has clearly picked up something-- he tears off down the road, barking gleefully, and you follow with your friend. But the dog stops at a nondescript patch of muddy earth, with no sign of the kid visible, and starts digging, looking for all the world like he's planning to bury something. You're about ready to call the whole thing off when the dog turns up a human femur.
The next few days are strange and frightening for you. The body is that of a young man with an outstanding arrest warrant in the State of California; his face in the mug shot is instantly recognizable as the boy who hitched a ride with you. The bones, according to your friend, have been buried for over a year. You have no way of reconciling all these facts.
You wonder, sometimes, why a ghost would consider it more important to get to a crater where a town used to be than to get his own body found. You don't really want to know the answer.
You don't take the logging road anymore. Even when the alternative is to sit in traffic, and wonder about what could be buried in Sunnydale that's worse than what was buried by the road.
