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sakon76Ghost Stories series, entry #4....
Hitchhiking Ghosts
by K. Stonham
prereleased 8th October, 2007
The puddles shushed against his repaired wheels as Bumblebee drove through the rainstorm.
"It was a dark and stormy night," his partner quipped to him.
"Two shots rang out?" Bumblebee asked in reply.
Sam gave a small laugh. "You're getting better at this game."
"Someday we'll get a copy of Cybertron's library up and running on this planet, and then we'll see how good you can get at our literature," he told his partner.
"'You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon'?" Sam asked with a smile.
"Your people with your fictional aliens," Bumblebee remarked, amused. "When Prowl and Perceptor get that copy of the library up, I promise you it will blow your mind. The collected works of every culture we've ever run into."
Sam let out a low whistle. "That... will take a long time to read through." Bumblebee caught sight of a figure ahead and began to slow down. "What's up?" his partner asked as the human figure came into the headlights.
"I thought we could offer her a ride," Bumblebee explained, pulling alongside the teenager dressed in a demure blue skirt and white blouse. A red umbrella over her head kept the pounding rain off, but from the wet condition of her black hair it hadn't always been so successful. He opened his passenger side door.
"Would you like a ride?" Sam called out.
She blinked, then smiled. "Yes, thank you," the young woman answered, and folded up her umbrella, stashing it in the back seat as she got into the car. She closed the door and smoothed her skirt.
"Where are you going to?"
"Ten White Lane," she answered. "It's about five miles ahead, just over Rushing River Bridge and past the old Dale place."
"That's not too far out of our way," Sam said, hands on the steering wheel, as Bumblebee pulled away from the curb.
"'Our'?" she asked.
"Sam Witwicky," he introduced himself, extending a hand to the young lady, which she took. "And this is Bumblebee," he said, gesturing nebulously at the dashboard.
She blinked, then smiled. "A pleasure to meet you. Both of you. I'm Mary Liddell."
"What were you doing walking home so late on a night like this?"
She shrugged one shoulder. "There was a dance. The guy who I went with ended up taking someone else home." She looked out the window. "They always do," she said softly. But she looked back at Sam and smiled again. "Thank you for offering me a ride, though."
"No problem. You should be careful in the future, though." He smiled back at her. "Not everyone offering you a ride's going to be harmless like me."
"No," she agreed. "Not everyone is."
There was something odd in her tone, Bumblebee realized. Something... off. Disconcerted, he ran a scan on her, one which she shouldn't have been able to notice. She stiffened.
"You okay?" Sam asked.
"No," she breathed, staring at the dashboard.
"Sam," Bumblebee spoke up, surprised and wondering why he was surprised, "she's not human."
*
"What?" Sam demanded of his partner as the heat flicked on without either of the passengers in the Camaro's cabin touching it.
"She's like you," Bumblebee said quietly.
His eyes wide, Sam stared at the girl in the passenger seat, who was pressing back into her seat, knuckles white, as she herself stared at the dashboard. "You're a ghost?" he asked.
"Who's talking?" she asked.
"Bumblebee," he told her. "He's the car. Well, not just a car, but that's what he is right now."
Mary shook her head. "That's crazy. Let me out--"
The locks snapped shut as she struggled to open the door.
"Mary," Sam said softly, calmly. Her frightened eyes flickered to him. "Look." He took his hands off the steering wheel. The car continued to drive itself. With a terrified mewl she curled up small against the door. "It's okay," Sam continued to soothe. "He's friendly."
He guessed he looked trustworthy because after a minute she slowly uncurled a little from her defensive position. "How is he talking?"
"He's actually a giant alien robot from the planet Cybertron," Sam said deadpan.
"Is that like from a science fiction novel?" she asked, shaking her head.
She didn't know about the Autobots. That gave him one clue, and if what Bumblebee had said was correct--and Sam had utter faith in his partner's scanners--then....
"When did you die?" he asked softly.
"October," she replied, not looking at him. "1953."
His eyes widened and his gaze dropped instinctively to her feet, which were, he noticed now, encased in bobby socks and black-and-white saddle shoes.
"I just want to go home," Mary added plaintively. "I can never get past the river. That's where he dropped me."
"Dropped you?"
She looked away, out the window at the darkness beyond and the silver streaks of water that painted Bumblebee's glass. "He was supposed to take me home," she said softly. "He didn't."
"Sam," Bumblebee said, slowing down a little, "the river's a mile ahead."
He looked back and forth between the dashboard and the girl, and made a decision. "Hold my hands," he told her.
"What?"
"Just do it! Bumblebee, floor it," he said, grasping cold white hands with his holographic own.
"What are you doing?" she asked. "I can't go past the bridge!"
Sam smiled at her. "Maybe not alone," he said, "but I bet together we can."
She was staring at him.
"I'm a ghost too," he said quietly, and felt her hands clench on his, her lips parting and a spark of hope coming into her eyes for the first time.
As the not-really-a-Camaro roared toward the bridge and the houses beyond, the temperature in its cabin plummeted. Sam's artificial breath and Mary's plumed in the air. Hoary frost crept across the seats where they touched them, and white snowflakes and ferns drew themselves on snowy windows.
The radio buzzed with static and the vehicle began to shake as the bridge rattled beneath the tires, wind howling outside, energy fields flaring inside. "Sam," Bumblebee said, vocal processor strained.
"Keep going," Sam grated, concentrating on trying to keep Mary with him, trying to keep the maelstrom of energy from hurting his partner. Her fingernails bit into his skin, her hands holding onto him in a desperate, crushing grip. Her eyes pleaded with him. "We're almost there--!"
*
The other side of the covered wooden bridge was silence. Bumblebee skidded to a halt, frame shuddering. Inside him, two figures looked up.
"Did it work?" the girl asked.
Sam looked out his windscreen at the silver moonlight falling on Bumblebee's hood. "It's not raining." He turned and looked out the rear window, at the other side of the ravine. "It's not raining on the other side either."
"That's... not possible," Bumblebee said, logic processors choking on the idea. But as he trained his sensors back, he saw that Sam was right and the far side of the bridge was as clear as this one.
Sam patted his steering wheel. "Bumblebee, we're not possible," he pointed out.
"Is it over?" Mary asked, sounding stunned. "Can I go home now?"
Home. A word that was always so bittersweet. "Let's find out," Bumblebee proposed, and shifted into gear again, heading on down the road.
*
Number ten White Lane was a big, old house covered in wisteria branches, with lilac trees just blooming on either side. Sam inhaled their heady scent as he climbed out of Bumblebee's driver's side door. The lights were on inside.
"Do you suppose they'll know me?" Mary asked quietly from the other side of the car. "I've been gone so long... what if they've moved?" she asked, sudden fright on her face.
"Only one way to find out," Sam said, and rounded the car, catching her hand. "Come on." He led her up the three steps to the porch and rang the doorbell. Mary shifted from foot to foot beside him as they heard someone moving inside, and the porch light came on.
"Yes, who is it?" a woman's voice asked as the front door was opened.
"I-- I'm sorry, I must have the wrong house," Mary stuttered, looking at the elderly woman who stood on the other side of the screen. "I was looking for the Liddell residence--"
The woman's eyes were wide behind her reading glasses. "This is the Liddell residence," she said. "Do I... know you, young woman?" she asked cautiously.
"I... I'm Mary Liddell," the girl said nervously. "I just wanted to come home...."
The screen door was unlatched and slowly pushed open, the elderly woman stepping out onto the porch. Her eyes studied Mary. "Mary?" she asked.
Mary nodded.
"You don't recognize me... oh, of course you wouldn't," she said. "I'm Frances."
Mary's eyes went wide. "Frances?!" she gasped.
The woman nodded.
"But you're so old...."
"It's been over seventy years," Frances said softly, then suddenly hugged Mary. "You came home!" she said. "You finally came home. After all those people saying they'd seen you...."
Awkwardly, Mary hugged the other woman back. "I finally got a ride who brought me here," she replied.
Sniffling just a little, Frances straightened and smiled at Sam, her eyes glistening suspiciously. "Thank you, young man. Thank you for bringing my sister home."
"No problem," Sam replied with a smile of his own.
"Mary." Bumblebee spoke from behind them, transformed and kneeling on the drive, holding out a hand to her. "You forgot this." His hand uncurled, revealing the red umbrella she'd left in his back seat.
Her eyes were wide, as were her sister's, as they both stared at Bumblebee. But Mary smiled and took the umbrella from him. "Thank you, Bumblebee," she said. "Thank you both for bringing me home." And she turned back to her sister and handed her the umbrella. "I borrowed this for the dance and never got to return it to you."
"My umbrella," Frances said, staring at it. She looked back up at her sister. "Mary."
"I love you," Mary said, and kissed her on the cheek.
"Mary!" Frances said as her sister vanished. She looked around wildly for a moment, then sagged. When she looked up, her eyes were bright with tears again. "Thank you--both of you--for bringing her home to me," she said. "Please, won't you come in? I have some cookies...."
"Thanks, but no," Sam told her with a glance at his partner.
"We actually have an appointment we need to get on to," Bumblebee said apologetically.
She nodded in understanding. "Of course. That's how the world is these days, always so busy." Sam turned and stepped away as his partner folded himself back into Camaro form. "Young man!"
"Yes, ma'am?" he asked, turning back.
Frances clutched the umbrella like a lifeline. "How did you bring her back," she asked, "when no one else could?"
Sam hesitated, then smiled softly. "Let's just say we have certain things in common," he remarked, and let the hologram vanish from the porch step, reappearing by Bumblebee's door. It flicked open through him and he smiled at the elderly woman with a self-deprecating shrug, not wanting to frighten her.
Frances' mouth was open in an "o" as she stared at him, eyes wide. Then she relaxed, breathing the ghost of a laugh, and relaxed her grip on the umbrella. "Thank you," she said again, and Sam nodded and got in the car.
The porch lights went back off as they drove away, and nothing happened as they crossed over the wooden bridge. On the other side the moonlight still shone clear, like the rain had never happened.
And as they drove past where they had picked her up, on their way back to the interstate highway, there was no more teenage girl who had spent over seventy years just trying to get home.
*~*~*
Author's Notes: As y'all can probably tell from the title, I love the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland. It is one of the two "traditional park opening rides" in my family. And, among the folk ghost stories, the one a ghost and his car seemed most likely to encounter was the vanishing hitchhiker type....
Hitchhiking Ghosts
by K. Stonham
prereleased 8th October, 2007
The puddles shushed against his repaired wheels as Bumblebee drove through the rainstorm.
"It was a dark and stormy night," his partner quipped to him.
"Two shots rang out?" Bumblebee asked in reply.
Sam gave a small laugh. "You're getting better at this game."
"Someday we'll get a copy of Cybertron's library up and running on this planet, and then we'll see how good you can get at our literature," he told his partner.
"'You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon'?" Sam asked with a smile.
"Your people with your fictional aliens," Bumblebee remarked, amused. "When Prowl and Perceptor get that copy of the library up, I promise you it will blow your mind. The collected works of every culture we've ever run into."
Sam let out a low whistle. "That... will take a long time to read through." Bumblebee caught sight of a figure ahead and began to slow down. "What's up?" his partner asked as the human figure came into the headlights.
"I thought we could offer her a ride," Bumblebee explained, pulling alongside the teenager dressed in a demure blue skirt and white blouse. A red umbrella over her head kept the pounding rain off, but from the wet condition of her black hair it hadn't always been so successful. He opened his passenger side door.
"Would you like a ride?" Sam called out.
She blinked, then smiled. "Yes, thank you," the young woman answered, and folded up her umbrella, stashing it in the back seat as she got into the car. She closed the door and smoothed her skirt.
"Where are you going to?"
"Ten White Lane," she answered. "It's about five miles ahead, just over Rushing River Bridge and past the old Dale place."
"That's not too far out of our way," Sam said, hands on the steering wheel, as Bumblebee pulled away from the curb.
"'Our'?" she asked.
"Sam Witwicky," he introduced himself, extending a hand to the young lady, which she took. "And this is Bumblebee," he said, gesturing nebulously at the dashboard.
She blinked, then smiled. "A pleasure to meet you. Both of you. I'm Mary Liddell."
"What were you doing walking home so late on a night like this?"
She shrugged one shoulder. "There was a dance. The guy who I went with ended up taking someone else home." She looked out the window. "They always do," she said softly. But she looked back at Sam and smiled again. "Thank you for offering me a ride, though."
"No problem. You should be careful in the future, though." He smiled back at her. "Not everyone offering you a ride's going to be harmless like me."
"No," she agreed. "Not everyone is."
There was something odd in her tone, Bumblebee realized. Something... off. Disconcerted, he ran a scan on her, one which she shouldn't have been able to notice. She stiffened.
"You okay?" Sam asked.
"No," she breathed, staring at the dashboard.
"Sam," Bumblebee spoke up, surprised and wondering why he was surprised, "she's not human."
"What?" Sam demanded of his partner as the heat flicked on without either of the passengers in the Camaro's cabin touching it.
"She's like you," Bumblebee said quietly.
His eyes wide, Sam stared at the girl in the passenger seat, who was pressing back into her seat, knuckles white, as she herself stared at the dashboard. "You're a ghost?" he asked.
"Who's talking?" she asked.
"Bumblebee," he told her. "He's the car. Well, not just a car, but that's what he is right now."
Mary shook her head. "That's crazy. Let me out--"
The locks snapped shut as she struggled to open the door.
"Mary," Sam said softly, calmly. Her frightened eyes flickered to him. "Look." He took his hands off the steering wheel. The car continued to drive itself. With a terrified mewl she curled up small against the door. "It's okay," Sam continued to soothe. "He's friendly."
He guessed he looked trustworthy because after a minute she slowly uncurled a little from her defensive position. "How is he talking?"
"He's actually a giant alien robot from the planet Cybertron," Sam said deadpan.
"Is that like from a science fiction novel?" she asked, shaking her head.
She didn't know about the Autobots. That gave him one clue, and if what Bumblebee had said was correct--and Sam had utter faith in his partner's scanners--then....
"When did you die?" he asked softly.
"October," she replied, not looking at him. "1953."
His eyes widened and his gaze dropped instinctively to her feet, which were, he noticed now, encased in bobby socks and black-and-white saddle shoes.
"I just want to go home," Mary added plaintively. "I can never get past the river. That's where he dropped me."
"Dropped you?"
She looked away, out the window at the darkness beyond and the silver streaks of water that painted Bumblebee's glass. "He was supposed to take me home," she said softly. "He didn't."
"Sam," Bumblebee said, slowing down a little, "the river's a mile ahead."
He looked back and forth between the dashboard and the girl, and made a decision. "Hold my hands," he told her.
"What?"
"Just do it! Bumblebee, floor it," he said, grasping cold white hands with his holographic own.
"What are you doing?" she asked. "I can't go past the bridge!"
Sam smiled at her. "Maybe not alone," he said, "but I bet together we can."
She was staring at him.
"I'm a ghost too," he said quietly, and felt her hands clench on his, her lips parting and a spark of hope coming into her eyes for the first time.
As the not-really-a-Camaro roared toward the bridge and the houses beyond, the temperature in its cabin plummeted. Sam's artificial breath and Mary's plumed in the air. Hoary frost crept across the seats where they touched them, and white snowflakes and ferns drew themselves on snowy windows.
The radio buzzed with static and the vehicle began to shake as the bridge rattled beneath the tires, wind howling outside, energy fields flaring inside. "Sam," Bumblebee said, vocal processor strained.
"Keep going," Sam grated, concentrating on trying to keep Mary with him, trying to keep the maelstrom of energy from hurting his partner. Her fingernails bit into his skin, her hands holding onto him in a desperate, crushing grip. Her eyes pleaded with him. "We're almost there--!"
The other side of the covered wooden bridge was silence. Bumblebee skidded to a halt, frame shuddering. Inside him, two figures looked up.
"Did it work?" the girl asked.
Sam looked out his windscreen at the silver moonlight falling on Bumblebee's hood. "It's not raining." He turned and looked out the rear window, at the other side of the ravine. "It's not raining on the other side either."
"That's... not possible," Bumblebee said, logic processors choking on the idea. But as he trained his sensors back, he saw that Sam was right and the far side of the bridge was as clear as this one.
Sam patted his steering wheel. "Bumblebee, we're not possible," he pointed out.
"Is it over?" Mary asked, sounding stunned. "Can I go home now?"
Home. A word that was always so bittersweet. "Let's find out," Bumblebee proposed, and shifted into gear again, heading on down the road.
Number ten White Lane was a big, old house covered in wisteria branches, with lilac trees just blooming on either side. Sam inhaled their heady scent as he climbed out of Bumblebee's driver's side door. The lights were on inside.
"Do you suppose they'll know me?" Mary asked quietly from the other side of the car. "I've been gone so long... what if they've moved?" she asked, sudden fright on her face.
"Only one way to find out," Sam said, and rounded the car, catching her hand. "Come on." He led her up the three steps to the porch and rang the doorbell. Mary shifted from foot to foot beside him as they heard someone moving inside, and the porch light came on.
"Yes, who is it?" a woman's voice asked as the front door was opened.
"I-- I'm sorry, I must have the wrong house," Mary stuttered, looking at the elderly woman who stood on the other side of the screen. "I was looking for the Liddell residence--"
The woman's eyes were wide behind her reading glasses. "This is the Liddell residence," she said. "Do I... know you, young woman?" she asked cautiously.
"I... I'm Mary Liddell," the girl said nervously. "I just wanted to come home...."
The screen door was unlatched and slowly pushed open, the elderly woman stepping out onto the porch. Her eyes studied Mary. "Mary?" she asked.
Mary nodded.
"You don't recognize me... oh, of course you wouldn't," she said. "I'm Frances."
Mary's eyes went wide. "Frances?!" she gasped.
The woman nodded.
"But you're so old...."
"It's been over seventy years," Frances said softly, then suddenly hugged Mary. "You came home!" she said. "You finally came home. After all those people saying they'd seen you...."
Awkwardly, Mary hugged the other woman back. "I finally got a ride who brought me here," she replied.
Sniffling just a little, Frances straightened and smiled at Sam, her eyes glistening suspiciously. "Thank you, young man. Thank you for bringing my sister home."
"No problem," Sam replied with a smile of his own.
"Mary." Bumblebee spoke from behind them, transformed and kneeling on the drive, holding out a hand to her. "You forgot this." His hand uncurled, revealing the red umbrella she'd left in his back seat.
Her eyes were wide, as were her sister's, as they both stared at Bumblebee. But Mary smiled and took the umbrella from him. "Thank you, Bumblebee," she said. "Thank you both for bringing me home." And she turned back to her sister and handed her the umbrella. "I borrowed this for the dance and never got to return it to you."
"My umbrella," Frances said, staring at it. She looked back up at her sister. "Mary."
"I love you," Mary said, and kissed her on the cheek.
"Mary!" Frances said as her sister vanished. She looked around wildly for a moment, then sagged. When she looked up, her eyes were bright with tears again. "Thank you--both of you--for bringing her home to me," she said. "Please, won't you come in? I have some cookies...."
"Thanks, but no," Sam told her with a glance at his partner.
"We actually have an appointment we need to get on to," Bumblebee said apologetically.
She nodded in understanding. "Of course. That's how the world is these days, always so busy." Sam turned and stepped away as his partner folded himself back into Camaro form. "Young man!"
"Yes, ma'am?" he asked, turning back.
Frances clutched the umbrella like a lifeline. "How did you bring her back," she asked, "when no one else could?"
Sam hesitated, then smiled softly. "Let's just say we have certain things in common," he remarked, and let the hologram vanish from the porch step, reappearing by Bumblebee's door. It flicked open through him and he smiled at the elderly woman with a self-deprecating shrug, not wanting to frighten her.
Frances' mouth was open in an "o" as she stared at him, eyes wide. Then she relaxed, breathing the ghost of a laugh, and relaxed her grip on the umbrella. "Thank you," she said again, and Sam nodded and got in the car.
The porch lights went back off as they drove away, and nothing happened as they crossed over the wooden bridge. On the other side the moonlight still shone clear, like the rain had never happened.
And as they drove past where they had picked her up, on their way back to the interstate highway, there was no more teenage girl who had spent over seventy years just trying to get home.
Author's Notes: As y'all can probably tell from the title, I love the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland. It is one of the two "traditional park opening rides" in my family. And, among the folk ghost stories, the one a ghost and his car seemed most likely to encounter was the vanishing hitchhiker type....
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-10-09 05:00 am (UTC)I'm slightly surprised that this was a bit scary to you, as it wasn't to me and I'm a wuss... but then I'm the author, too, I suppose, so I knew where it was going to end up.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-09 07:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-09 04:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-09 05:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-09 05:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-09 05:58 am (UTC)The Ghost Stories series is actually a bit weird for me. They're all being written in a single stretch, which is why they're coming out so fast. (And short. For me, anyway.) I don't often write stories in just one sitting. Maybe it helps that this a series where any particular chapter could be the last, with no ill consequences to an overreaching plot....
And... is your icon from a Kamen Rider series? If so, which one?
no subject
Date: 2007-10-09 06:41 am (UTC)/sentai fangirl
no subject
Date: 2007-10-10 04:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-09 06:31 am (UTC)Now to go read some of the fics you've recommended through here. *g*
no subject
Date: 2007-10-09 11:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-10 12:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-10 02:44 am (UTC)I have to say, being a big Supernatural fan, I was half-expecting the ghostly hitchiker to be a Woman in White.
http://www.supernatural.oscillating.net/index.php?title=Constance_Welch
Good thing she wasn't!
no subject
Date: 2007-10-10 03:15 am (UTC)I haven't seen any Supernatural (no television for a few different reasons) and halfway want to, but I also suspect it would greatly surpass my "horror tolerance" level. It took me three days to get through "The Sixth Sense." During the daytime. Oddly, though, I really like the Supernatural fanfiction I've read... I guess written words can't scare me as much as video.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-10 08:44 pm (UTC)please more ?
*hugs*, bye, Blackie ^^...
no subject
Date: 2007-10-12 03:29 am (UTC)Nice work!