Kendare Blake - Anna Dressed in Blood

The grease-slicked hair is a dead giveaway no pun intended.

So is the loose and faded leather coat, though not as much that as the sideburns. And the way he keeps nodding and flicking his Zippo open and closed in rhythm with his head. He belongs in a chorus line of dancing Jets and Sharks.

Then again, I have an eye for these things. I know what to look for, because Ive seen just about every variety of spook and specter you can imagine.

The hitchhiker haunts a stretch of winding North Carolina road, bordered by unpainted split-rail fences and a whole lot of nothing. Unsuspecting drivers probably pick him up out of boredom, thinking hes just some college kid who reads too much Kerouac.

My gal, shes waiting for me, he says now in an excited voice, like hes going to see her the minute we crest the next hill. He taps the lighter hard on the dash, twice, and I glance over to make sure he hasnt left a ding in the panel. This isnt my car. And Ive suffered through eight weeks of lawn work for Mr. Dean, the retired army colonel who lives down the block, just so I could borrow it. For a seventy-year-old man hes got the straightest back Ive ever seen. If I had more time, I couldve spent a summer listening to interesting stories about Vietnam. Instead I cleared shrubs and tilled an eight-by-ten plot for new rosebushes while he watched me with a surly eye, making sure his baby would be safe with this seventeen-year-old kid in an old Rolling Stones t-shirt and his mothers gardening gloves.

To tell the truth, knowing what I was going to use the car for, I felt a little guilty. Its a dusk blue 1969 Camaro Rally Sport, mint condition. Drives smooth as silk and growls around curves. I cant believe he let me take it, yard work or no. But thank god he did, because without it I would have been sunk. It was something the hitchhiker would go for something worth the trouble of crawling out of the ground.

She must be pretty nice, I say without much interest.

Yeah, man, yeah, he says and, for the hundredth time since I picked him up five miles ago, I wonder how anyone could possibly not know that hes dead. He sounds like a James Dean movie. And then theres the smell. Not quite rotten but definitely mossy, hanging around him like a fog. How has anyone mistaken him for the living? How has anyone kept him in the car for the ten miles it takes to get to the Lowrens Bridge, where he inevitably grabs the wheel and takes both car and driver into the river? Most likely they were creeped out by his clothes and his voice, and by the smell of bones that smell they seem to know even though theyve probably never smelled it. But by then its always too late. Theyd made the decision to pick up a hitchhiker, and they werent about to let themselves be scared into going back on it. They rationalized their fears away. People shouldnt do that.

In the passenger seat, the hitchhiker is still talking in this faraway voice about his girl back home, somebody named Lisa, and how shes got the shiniest blond hair and the prettiest red smile, and how theyre going to run off and get married as soon as he gets back hitching from Florida. He was working part of a summer down there for his uncle at a car dealership: the best opportunity to save up for their wedding, even if it did mean they wouldnt see each other for months.

It mustve been hard, being away from home so long, I say, and theres actually a little bit of pity in my voice. But Im sure shell be glad to see you.

Yeah, man. Thats what Im talking about. Ive got everything we need, right in my jacket pocket. Well get married and move out to the coast. Ive got a pal out there, Robby. We can stay with him until I get a job working on cars.

Sure, I say. The hitchhiker has this sadly optimistic look on his face, lit up by the moon and the glowing dashlights. He never saw Robby, of course. He never saw his girl Lisa, either. Because two miles up the road in the summer of 1970, he got into a car, probably a lot like this one. And he told whoever was driving that he had a way to start an entire life in his coat pocket.

The locals say that they beat him up pretty good by the bridge and then dragged him back into the trees, where they stabbed him a couple of times and then cut his throat. They pushed his body down an embankment and into one of the tributary streams. Thats where a farmer found it, nearly six months later, wound around with vines, the jaw hanging open in surprise, like he still couldnt believe that he was stuck there.

And now he doesnt know that hes stuck here. None of them ever seem to know. Right now the hitchhiker is whistling and bobbing along to nonexistent music. He probably still hears whatever they were playing the night they killed him.

Hes perfectly pleasant. A nice guy to ride with. But when we get to that bridge, hell be as angry and ugly as anyone youve ever seen. Its reported that his ghost, dubbed unoriginally as the County 12 Hiker, has killed at least a dozen people and injured another eight. But I cant really blame him. He never made it home to see his girl, and now he doesnt want anyone else to get home either.

We pass mile marker twenty-three the bridge is less than two minutes away. Ive driven this road almost every night since we moved here in the hopes that I would catch his thumb in my headlights, but I had no luck. Not until I got behind the wheel of this Rally Sport. Before this it was just half a summer of the same damn road, the same damn blade tucked under my leg. I hate it when its like that, like some kind of horribly extended fishing trip. But I dont give up on them. They always come around in the end.

I let my foot ease up on the gas.

Something wrong, friend? he asks me.

I shake my head. Only that this isnt my car, and I dont have the cash to fix it if you decide to try to take me off the bridge.

The hitchhiker laughs, just a little too loudly to be normal. I think youve been drinking or something tonight, pal. Maybe you ought to just let me off here.

I realize too late that I shouldnt have said that. I cant let him out. Itd be my luck that hed step out and disappear. Im going to have to kill him while the car is moving or Ill have to do this all over again, and I doubt that Mr. Dean is willing to let the car go for too many more nights. Besides, Im moving to Thunder Bay in three days.

Theres also the thought that Im doing this to this poor bastard all over again. But that thought is fleeting. Hes already dead.

I try to keep the speedometer over fifty too fast for him to really consider jumping out, but with ghosts you can never be sure. Ill have to work fast.

Its when I reach down to take my blade out from under the leg of my jeans that I see the silhouette of the bridge in the moonlight. Right on cue, the hitchhiker grabs the wheel and yanks it to the left. I try to jerk it back right and slam my foot on the brake. I hear the sound of angry rubber on asphalt and out of the corner of my eye I can see that the hitchhikers face is gone. No more easy Joe, no slicked hair and eager smile. Hes just a mask of rotten skin and bare, black holes, with teeth like dull stones. It looks like hes grinning, but it might just be the effect of his lips peeling off.

Even as the car is fishtailing and trying to stop, I dont have any flashes of my life before my eyes. What would that even be like? A highlight reel of murdered ghosts. Instead I see a series of quick, ordered images of my dead body: one with the steering wheel through my chest, another with my head gone as the rest of me hangs out the missing window.

A tree comes up out of nowhere, aimed right for my drivers side door. I dont have time to swear, just to jerk the wheel and hit the gas, and the tree is behind me. What I dont want to do is make it to the bridge. The car is all over the shoulder and the bridge doesnt have one. Its narrow, and wooden, and outdated.