THE HITCHHIKER

Phil Roberts About 6,500 words
22 Stafford Street, First Publishing Rights
Footscray (V) 3011 © Copyright 2024
AUSTRALIA. Phil Roberts



THE HITCHHIKER
by
PHIL ROBERTS



Sarah Daylesworth was driving her clapped-out VW Beetle at a leisurely thirty kilometres an hour along a dirt road a few kilometres outside Lenoak in the Victorian Countryside. On the BeauLarkin to Willamby line.

"Come on, you old boneshaker!" said Sarah as the ancient Beetle's motor started to sputter.

As though obeying her command, the lime green VW started to run smoothly for the first time in years.

"That's a good girl," said Sarah; having decided years ago that all cars, like ships, were female.

She continued along at a leisurely thirty kilometres an hour when she saw the old man standing beside the road trying to thumb a ride. The man was tall and thin with long snowy white hair, wearing a smart, but ancient pinstriped suit. He also carried a knobbly brown cane in his left hand.

Sarah started to brake to pick the old man up, then thought: No, the BeauLarkin Masher a few years ago was in his eighties. In fact, the BeauLarkin Masher had been nearly thirty years ago, but it seemed like just a few years to Sarah.

Outside, the Hitchhiker started forward to where the boneshaker had stopped a dozen metres or so in front of him.

No, better safe than sorry! thought Sarah, suddenly starting the car up again and accelerating away.

The Hitchhiker was almost up to the Beetle when it took off again. For a few seconds, he ran after it, hoping that the VW would stop again.

Then as the old car easily outpaced him, the old man raised his left hand, waved the knobbly walking stick after the departing vehicle, and whispered:

"Zoom zoom."

Inside the Beetle, Sarah Daylesworth felt a little guilt leaving the old man beside the roadside, however: Better safe than sorry!

Having accelerated up to sixty kilometres an hour -- what Sarah regarded as an insanely dangerous speed -- once out of reach of the Hitchhiker she removed her right foot from the accelerator... to no effect, the car continued to accelerate.

"Oh, what now, you old boneshaker," asked Sarah.

She shifted her left foot across to the brake pedal and pressed gently ... with no effect. So she pressed harder, and harder until she was almost pushing the brake pedal through the rusty floor of the ancient VW Beetle.

Yet, still, the Beetle continued to accelerate. First to eighty kilometres an hour, then to ninety, then a hundred.

"How can it still be increasing in speed?" wondered Sarah.

In desperation, she pulled at the emergency brake, which screeched like a Banshee but did nothing to slow the runaway car.

Finally, she unwittingly pumped the brake pedal right through the floor, as the VW continued up to a hundred and twenty, then a hundred and thirty, then a hundred and forty kilometres an hour.

"Stop, please Lord let it stop!" shrieked Sarah.

Yet still, the car raced up to a hundred and fifty kilometres an hour. A speed that it had not reached in over thirty years, and which it should not have been able to reach in its current rusted-out condition.

"Stop, please Lord let it stop!" shrieked Sarah again.

Too late, Sarah saw the rapidly approaching guardrail and tried to turn the wheel to the left to avoid hitting the railing. However, the steering had locked up and the VW kept racing forward, until crashing into the aluminium crash rail, and straight through it, till the car was more than halfway over the edge.

"Oh, God! Oh, God! I've got to get out!" cried Sarah.

She struggled with the driver's side door, which had buckled under the crash and refused to budge.

Finally, in desperation, she unbuckled her seatbelt and climbed over to the left-hand seat....

Too late, as the VW Beetle toppled forward over the cliff, taking a screaming Sarah Daylesworth with it.

Behind, on the dirt road, the Hitchhiker slowly walked along until he had reached the broken guard rail. Standing by the very edge of the cliff, he looked down at the shattered wreckage of the old boneshaker, and Sarah.

Grinning broadly, he said: "Zoom zoom!"

Then he turned and walked away, whistling as he walked.


"This is Norbert Beezley, your commentator on 'The World's Stupidest Stuntman Down Under'," said the tall morbidly obese man looking into the camera: "We're on the fiftieth storey of the Marsden-Hinkley Building in Sydney South. Behind me you will see we have removed the window, looking out across to the Mosley-Turner Building a mere two hundred metres away. Where we have also removed a window. Beside me is Basil 'Turnip-Head' Mokbell on a modified Harley-Davidson. He's going to try to jump across to the next building.

"Are you ready to go, Turnip-Head?"

"No, I think I'm gonna chicken out."

"It's too late for that," said Beezley. He signalled for two burly goons to come across to start pushing the motorbike toward the missing window.

"Nooooooooo!" cried Mokbell.

Finally realising he had no choice, he reluctantly started the bike and roared out through the window.

"He's going to make it!" shouted the excited commentator: "He's going to make it! He's going to make it! He's going to...!" Then as the Harley Davidson started plummeting toward the street below: "Not make it."

By now the stuntman's shrieks had reached near ear-shattering decibels.

"Don't worry folks," said Beezley: "We've lined the street below with something soft for him to land on ... About a thousand Mexican Giant Cardón cactuses ... or should that be cacti?

"Anyway, those are really huge phallic-shaped cacti. So hopefully he won't fall off the bike before landing on them."

"Oh God, no! I've fallen off the bike!" screamed 'Turnip head'.


Sheila Bennett and Tommy Turner were laughing so hard that they both almost fell off the sofa, in the lounge room of Mrs. Morton's boarding house in Rochester Road, Merridale.

"Are you all right, babe?" asked Derek, a tall black American by birth, not sure what she was laughing at.

"Sure, honey," Sheila managed with difficulty to say. A tall, athletic Goth chick, with orange-and-black-striped hair, Sheila was the second-top cop in the BeauLarkin to Willamby area. She was also dating Derek.

"How could anyone not find that funny?" demanded Tommy, a short dumpy retiree with shoulder-length yellow hair: "The others don't know what they're missing."

"I don't know," said Derek unconvincingly.

After 'The World's Stupidest Stuntman Down Under' ended, Tommy went up to bed, leaving Derek and Sheila to kiss and cuddle on the sofa for a while, before they sneaked up to Sheila's bedroom.


The next morning, they were seated around the dining table at 7:30 sharp at what had come to be known as the Yellow House, due to Deidre Morton's obsession with the colour yellow; with which the boarding house was painted inside and out.

"So, what's for brekkie, Mrs. M.?" asked Terri Scott.

A tall thirty-something ash blonde, Terri was the top cop of the area and Sheila and Colin's boss. As well as Colin's fiancée.

"This morning I have a real treat," said Deidre Morton, a short dumpy, sixty-something brunette.

Before she could finish, however, Terri's mobile phone rang.

"Oh no," said Sheila as Terri took out her phone: "Why must they always ring at meal times?"

"Don't worry, dear, I'll pack yours to go," said Deidre.

"Ours too, I hope?" asked Colin Klein.

A tall redheaded retired crime reporter, Colin now worked for the Glen Hartwell Police Force.

"Don't worry, dear," said Deidre.

She hurriedly prepared three bag breakfasts as Terri talked on the phone.

"Sarah Daylesworth has driven off that dangerous stretch outside Lenoak," said Terri, after disconnecting.

"Oh, dear," said Natasha Lipzing, a tall grey-haired lady of seventy.


Forty-seven minutes later, Terri's police-blue Lexus arrived at 'Madman's Bend' as the locals called it. There was already an ambulance waiting for Sarah Daylesworth's remains, plus Jesus Costello (head surgeon at the Glen Hartwell Hospital), Elvis Green (the local coroner and a massive Elvis Presley fan), and a male nurse Leo Laxman (a black Jamaican by birth).

There was also a worried-looking farmer, Yancy Cartwright, standing near his ancient, rusty Land Rover. Yancy had discovered the broken guard rail a little after 6:00 and had gone to investigate. After seeing the wrecked VW Beetle down the side of the mountain, he had rung the Glen Hartwell and Daley Community Hospital.

Near the edge of the broken section Ed Bussy, the local mechanic and car wrecker, was slowly trawling the Beetle up the mountainside with his tow truck's winch.

While Ed trawled, Terri took Yancy's statement, which didn't tell them much. Then she went across to talk to Ed while Sheila and Derek talked to Cheryl Pritchard, a tall muscular woman who looked a decade less than her sixty-something age. She was the head paramedic of the area, Derek's boss and Sheila's friend.

Finally, Sheila followed Terri and Colin over to Ed Bussy.

Colin held onto Terri as she leant over the edge to have a look at the mangled wreckage slowly ascending.

"Wow what a mess," said Terri.

"Best guess, we reckon she was going close to a hundred and fifty Kays an hour when she ploughed through the guard rail," said Ed.

"I wouldn't have thought the old boneshaker would go that fast," said Sheila.

"Sheils," said Terri, sounding shocked: "Poor Sarah is dead!"

"I didn't mean Sarah, I meant her car," explained the Goth chick: "That's what Sarah called it ... The Old Boneshaker!"

"Oh ... sorry."


Over at Blackland Street, Glen Hartwell, Lorna Maxwell had just come out of the Garden of Eden -- a florist shop owned by Eva and Percy Eden. She had just ordered a young lemon tree, which the Edens had promised to deliver and plant on her front lawn that evening.

The elderly lady had a bit of a skip in her step as she started across Blackland Street, despite needing a small walking frame to move since having had a bad fall just before Easter. As a child, her family had had a lemon orchard, and despite now living in Glen Hartwell township, she had always wanted a lemon tree of her own.

Of course, it will need a lot of nurturing during the first few years, thought the seventy-one-year-old: Lemon trees can fail and turn into lime trees in the first three years if you don't look after them properly.

Thinking this as she ambled across the street, Lorna forgot to look both ways before crossing the street; as she was usually very careful to do.

A little further down Blackland Street, Luigi Pistroni was also crossing the street. Although only fifty-two Luigi's chronic arthritis, which he'd suffered from since his early teens, meant that he ambled even slower than Lorna. Despite the agony of each movement in winter, Luigi refused to be beaten by his illness, and always walked at least an hour every day; except during the recent flooding and pounding rains which had kept him trapped indoors for nearly two weeks in late June and early July.

Not anymore! thought Luigi: For the rest of 2024, come rain or shine, I'm walking an hour a day minimum! Damned if I'll let this bloody arthritis beat me! As it had done for those two weeks.

Thinking this, proud of his resolution, Luigi stepped off the Kerb to cross Blackland Street, for the first time in his life forgetting to look left, then right, then left again before starting across the road.

Hillary van Horton was off sick from her job as a secretary for a local real estate agent. In reality, she was sick of her job as a secretary and dreamt of the highlife as a world-famous actress or singer. Unfortunately, she couldn't sing, and suffered from extreme stage fright. She still remembered her embarrassment as a nine-year-old in primary school, when appearing in a school play, she had walked out onto stage to deliver her one line. Instead, she had stared glassy-eyed at the audience of students and parents for thirty seconds, then throwing her arms up into the air she had shrieked like a banshee before turning and running off stage again.

The worst moment of my life! thought Hillary. Her parents tried telling her that it was the highlight of the play, and they weren't the only ones who had thought so, nonetheless Hillary realised: Acting is out for me. I suppose I could always try being a heavy metal singer. The fact I can't sing a note wouldn't matter then! No heavy metal vocalist can sing!

On her way to meet her unemployed boyfriend, she thought: I'll ask Mannie what he thinks. She had once dreamt of marrying rich, but you don't meet many millionaires in Glen Hartwell, other than robber-baron estate agents like the one she worked for -- when she bothered to go in to work.

Yes, that's what I'll do! she thought as she started across Blackland Street.

Down the end of Blackland Street Toralei Katz a tall leggy redhead was pushing a double-decker pram with her twins, Tamsin, and Youtha as she headed across the street towards Jaynie's Prams & Baby Clothes & Stuff.

The twins were turning one soon and she wanted to get them some new clothes as a birthday present.

"Can't let my two beautiful little girls wear the same drab clo-clothes forever, can I?" said Toralei, stopping in the middle of the road to baby talk to the twins: Tamsin, who was the spitting image of her mum, right down to the flame red hair, and Youtha, another Toralei lookalike other than having her father's yellow-blonde hair.

Tamsin happily chewed on a round chew toy while staring at her mother, while Youtha preferred to suck on a pacifier.

"Got to make my beautiful girls even more beautiful!"

Not sure what to make to this, Tamsin started to cry, while Youtha started to giggle after taking out her dummy.


At the other end of Blackland Street Frankie FitzWilliams was driving his removalist van along the street, just entering Glen Hartwell, when he saw the old man standing beside the road trying to thumb a ride.

"Sorry, mate, not allowed to pick up hitchhikers," said Frankie disingenuously, since he ran his own removelist company.

The white-haired old man raised his left hand, holding his knobbly brown cane in the air, and said:

"Grand Racer."

Suddenly the view through Frankie's windscreen changed. Instead of looking out over Blackland Street, he was looking at the yellow race track of the arcade game Grand Racer.

As he approached Lorna Maxwell, 500 POINTS flashed in red on his windscreen, directly over the old lady.

Swerving the van to the right, Frankie easily hit the old lady, sending her flying a hundred metres diagonally back across the street, straight through the window of Morrie's Cakes & Pastries.

"Direct hit!" cried Frankie excitedly, even though he had never played arcade games in his life. Then he saw Lorna Maxell moving slightly and realised that it wasn't a kill!

500 POINTS! had started flashing on the left-hand side of his windscreen. Then as Lorna started moving, it downgraded to 200 POINTS!

"Damn!" cried Frankie.

He started to turn the van toward the cake shop. Then seeing Luigi Pistroni staggering arthritically across the road just up ahead, he turned back to the left and accelerated.

As he approached, 500 POINTS started flashing over Luigi, and this time Frankie made sure of the kill, sending the old man flying two hundred metres straight up Blackland Street, narrowly missing Hillary van Horton, who was too wrapped up in her thoughts of fame and fortune to even notice the old man flying past her to crumple in the middle of the street. A clean kill this time!

500 POINTS flashed in the middle of his windscreen, then sunk to the left to merge with the 200 POINTS that he had already scored, changing it to 700 POINTS!

"Yes!" cried Frankie: "One more kill to get to a thousand points!"

Just up ahead, 500 POINTS started flashing over Hillary van Horton, who was still daydreaming of a better life. A better life that she would never get to experience.

"A thousand points coming up!" cried Frankie, as he gunned the engine and roared straight toward Hillary.

At the last second the teenager looked around and saw the red-and-white van racing toward her. But like a rabbit caught in a floodlight, Hillary stood her ground, staring as the van approached.

Too late, she tried to run, as the van struck her, sending the seventeen-year-old flying through the air, right down Blackland Street, passing straight over Toralei, Tamsin, and Youtha Katz, to crash down in a broken heap just beyond the three females.

"What the Hell?" said Toralei turning to look where Hillary had crashed, unfortunately making her look away from the danger rapidly approaching her and the twins.

500 POINTS flashed in the middle of his windscreen, then sunk to the left to merge with the 700 POINTS that he had already scored, changing it to 1200 POINTS!

"Yes, made it to four figures!" cried Frankie.

500 POINTS started flashing in red over Toralei Katz, followed by 300 POINTS flashing over each of the twins.

"Here comes another eleven hundred points!" cried Frankie, almost pushing the accelerator pedal through the floorboards of his van.

Toralei started toward Hillary to see if she could help the shattered teenager. Then, just in time, she heard the roaring of the removalist's van.

Spinning round she saw the van, too late to save herself, but just in time to push the double-decker pram with all of her might, sending it racing across to the opposite footpath.

Seconds later the van hit Toralei sending her flying down Blackland Street, before running over the broken remains of Hillary van Horton, making doubly certain that the teenager was dead.

500 POINTS flashed in the middle of Frankie's windscreen, then sunk to the left to merge with the 1200 POINTS that he had already scored, changing it to 1700 POINTS!

"Here comes the bonus points!" cried Frankie.

He started to turn the van to the left to go after Tamsin and Youtha Katz. But just in time a man watching the carnage in shock grabbed the pram and carried it to relative safety inside Guido's Fruit & Veg shop.

"Damn!" cried a frustrated Frankie FitzWilliams.

Turning back to the centre of the road, he continued roaring straight through Glen Hartwell as people raced out into the street to try to help Frankie's victims.

At the end of the town, Frankie kept racing out into the surrounding forestland, until his van collided at full speed with a huge ghost gum tree, finally stopping the van, and killing Frankie instantly.


Over at Madman's Bend outside Lenoak, they had finally managed to cut Sarah Daylesworth's grisly remains out of the wreckage of her VW Beetle. Without bothering to speed or use the siren, the ambulance headed toward the Glen Hartwell and Daley Community Hospital.

"So what's the verdict?" asked Terri Scott.

"No reason to think of it as anything but an unfortunate accident," suggested Elvis Green.

"Agreed," said Jesus Costello.

"Despite the Old Boneshaker being incapable of travelling at fifty Kays an hour, let alone a hundred and fifty?" said Sheila Bennett.

Jesus shrugged, then said: "Maybe she had a new engine installed. You'll have to ask Ed Bussy about that."

"Ed?" asked Colin Klein.

Looking at the redheaded former reporter, Ed said: "It'll take me a while to sort out what she had installed, the state it's in."

"So, for now, we regard it as just an accident?" said Terri.

Receiving nods from Jesus and Elvis, Terri and co. started back to her blue Lexus.

"Home, Jane," said Terri as they piled into the car.

"Shouldn't that be, 'Home, James'?" asked Colin.

"Yeah, but I didn't want to insult Sheils, by questioning her femininity," teased Terri.

"Hey, I'm as girly-girly as the next musclewoman," teased back Sheila as she started the Lexus.

They had barely started back to Glen Hartwell when Alice Walker from the Mitchell Street Police Station rang to tell them of the carnage that had just happened along Blackland Street.


Fifty minutes or so later Terri, Sheila, and Colin stood in the centre of Blackland Street watching in horror as Jesus Costello, Tilly Lombstrom (a tall attractive fifty-something brunette, and Jesus' second in command), Elvis Green, Leo Laxman, Annie Colfax (a forty-year-old ash blond and the Nurse-in-Charge at the Glen Hartwell Hospital), and Topaz Moseley (a gorgeous thirty-two-year-old platinum blonde nurse) were all treating the dead and damaged.

"What's the total, Jesus?" asked Terri.

"Lorna Maxwell will be in a wheelchair for the rest of her life. Luigi Pistroni, Hillary van Horton, and Toralei Katz were all killed. However, Toralei managed to save Tamsin and Youtha by pushing the twins out of the way just in time."

"Poor Jordan, having to raise Tamsin and Youtha without Toralei," said Sheila: "And them both looking so much like their mother will only make the hurting worse."

"Poor Hillary, just starting out in life," added Terri.

"Any idea why he did it?" asked Colin.

"No, he killed himself straight afterward," said Tilly: "We'll have to test his blood for alcohol and drugs. Otherwise, your guess is as good as ours."

"No one saw anything before the mayhem started?" asked Terri.

"There was the old bloke trying to thumb a lift at the other end of town," said a teenage boy: "He tried to thumb down the van, which zoomed straight past him ... Then the madness started."

"Can you describe the old bloke?" asked Colin

"Not really, he was too far away. But I saw him shake his walking stick in anger at the departing van."

"Did he say anything?' asked Sheila.

"He may have done, but he was outside my hearing range, so I'm not sure."

The four cops (including Alice Walker, a forty-six-year-old brunette, pro rata policewoman) asked around and discovered that four other people had seen the Hitchhiker

"So, was he involved in some way?" asked Sheila of no one in particular.

"How could he have been, if he never touched Frankie or the van?" asked Colin.

"Anywhere else that would be a valid argument," said Terri: "But in Glen Hartwell and the surrounds wacky stuff happens."


Luella "Lulu" Wellins, a petite pixie-cut brunette teen, was sitting at the checkout counter at the Glen Hartwell Mall in Boothy Street when she saw through the glass doors an old man trying to thumb a ride from the departing cars.

"Mr. Brody won't like this!" said Lulu, referring to the mall's manager, Hiram P. Brody. Clicking on her microphone, Lulu said:"Could Mr. Brody please come to the checkout desk."

"What is it, Lulu?" asked Brody a few minutes later.

"A hitchhiker in the parking lot," said Lulu, pointing to where the hitchhiker stood.

"The damned nerve," said Brody.

He used Lulu's mike to call for two burly security men, and then the three of them went outside to confront the Hitchhiker.

"Oy!" called Brody: "What the Hell do you think you're doing?"

"Trying to get a lift," said the old man casually.

"This car park is for the convenience of the mall's customers, not so you can thumb a ride."

"But there are plenty of cars here, so it's a good place to get a lift."

Sighing in frustration, Brody signalled to the security guards: "Johnson, Barrymead, show him out.'

Smiling in pleasure, the two men walked across to grab the Hitchhiker by the arms and half led, half carried him to the footpath outside the car park.

"And don't come back," said Johnson, before the two men started back through the car park.

Glaring at the two security guards, the Hitchhiker waved his knobbly walking stick after them and said: "Dodgems!"

Myra Cristillo was a lilac-haired old lady of eighty-something who never exceeded thirty-five kilometres an hour in her lilac 1982 Ford Fairlane -- painted to match her hair. As she approached the mall's car park, she saw the Hitchhiker waving his cane and accelerated just a little, so he wouldn't think that she was going to give him a lift.

Suddenly, as she entered the car park, Myra's perception changed: instead of being at the mall, she was at the Glen Hartwell fairground -- which had closed down in the early 1990s. More specifically, instead of driving her ancient Fairlane, she was in a gold and red coloured Dodgem car.

Oh my, I haven't been in a Dodgem car in over forty years; what fun! thought Myra as she planted her foot on the accelerator and headed straight at another Dodgem car.

Leroy van Pelt had just made deliveries at the G.H. Mall and was weary. He climbed into the cabin of his van, only to have his perception alter too: suddenly instead of driving a blue and white striped delivery truck, he was also in a gold and red coloured Dodgem car.

"Oh boy!" said Leroy.

Then seeing Myra Cristillo heading toward him, Leroy gunned his truck-cum-Dodgem and headed straight at the old lady.

"Try to sneak up on me will ya, Granny?" said Leroy with a cheeky grin.

The Dodge truck ploughed straight through the ancient Ford Fairlane, reducing car to tin foil and poor Myra to mince meat.

"Whoa!" cried Leroy in excitement. Blissfully unaware that he had just killed an old lady.

Turning his truck-cum-Dodgem, Leroy decided to sneak up on another Dodgem, just a little ahead of him. The fact that there were four people getting into the Dodgem, a mother, a father, and two kids when Dodgems only have two seats, did not strike him as strange or make him hesitate.

"Oh boy, what a day," said Ricardo Monte as he piled groceries into the boot of their Honda Civic Hatchback.

"Sorry, honey," said his wife, Manuela, but I'll make it up to you tonight.

"How ya gonna make it up to him tonight?" asked their nine-year-old daughter, Lysette.

Thinking fast, Manuela said: "By reading him a bedtime story before we go to sleep."

"Can you read me one too?" asked Lysette, pushing her pink-framed glasses a little up the bridge of her nose.

"Don't be an idjit," said Antonio, 'Tony', their thirteen-year-old son: "She's gonna give him some jiggery-pokery."

"Hey!" called Ricardo, taking a swipe at his son, who just managed to duck in time: "Show some respect for your mother; she's a lady."

"What, so lady's don't give their husbands jiggery-pokery?" asked Tony, this time not managing to avoid being slapped by his father.

"Calm down everybody, and get into the car," said Manuela: "We'll all be home and comfortable soon enough."

"First bags on the shower!" called Lysette.

Seconds later, Leroy van Pelt's Dodge truck ploughed into the Honda, killing Manuela and the children instantly, and ripping off the left leg of Ricardo who was just getting into the driver's seat.

"Manuela! Tony! Lizzie!" called Ricardo, before passing out from shock and blood loss.

"Success!" cried Leroy, throwing his arms into the air: "I'm the Dodgem champion of Glen Harwell!"

The fact that Glen Hartwell didn't have a Dodgem arena didn't occur to Leroy as he looked around at the other Dodgems, some moving, some parked, some without passengers.

"No fun ramming the empty ones," he said, before spotting a beautiful ravenette climbing into a Dodgem car at the other end of the mall-cum-arena.

In fact, Lynda O'Keefe was climbing into a lime-coloured Morris Minor, having finished her week's shopping. The beautiful ravenette had just turned thirty-five, but felt closer to sixty, after a hard day's shopping. The Glen Hartwell Mall had been crowded and the shopping had been slow and wearisome.

Can't wait to get home and soak my feet, thought Lynda, grateful for the foot massage bath that her younger sister had given her recently for her birthday: That'll soak my aches away!

Having snuck up upon the beautiful ravenette, at the last second, Leroy van Pelt shouted: "Gotcha beautiful!"

Startled, Lynda spun around, dropping some of her groceries. In the process she stepped aside, which saved her life as the Dodge van steamed through her Morris Minor, ripping it to shreds, while narrowly missing the ravenette.

"My car!" cried Lynda, wondering how she was going to get home. Not realising at first how close she had come to being killed.

Then as realisation set in, the ravenette fainted to the bitumen, as Leroy roared past her.

"Score one more for the Royster!" shouted Leroy as he roared across in front of the mall as a horrified Lulu Wellins and Hiram Brody came out to see what all the noise was about.

"What the Hell is going on?" asked Brody to no one in particular.

"Darned if I know, sir," said Lulu staring wide-eyed as the chaos continued.

Melanie Morrissey was sitting in the front seat of her sky-blue Kia Cerato steeling herself to get out to go shopping. It would be her first shopping trip alone in three years, since her husband, Roscoe, had died unexpectedly of a heart attack last week, at the age of thirty-two. Just twenty-eight herself, the strawberry blonde could not imagine ever remarrying, she had found and lost her soul mate, and did not know how she was going to live the next sixty-plus years without him. Unaware that that was not going to be a problem.

"Oh, Roscoe!" she said, covering her eyes with her hands as she started to cry. She had been crying a lot over the last week. Everything she saw, everywhere she went reminded her of Roscoe. Not that she had gone out much, mainly staying indoors with the drapes closed, crying alone in the dark.

Leaving Lulu to watch the ensuing chaos, Hiram Brody went inside to ring triple-O for the police and as many ambulances (six) as Glen Hartwell possessed.

Leroy van Pelt, on the left-hand side of the car park had spotted Melanie in her Dodgem-cum-Kia and started accelerating toward her:

"Score one more for the Royster!" he shouted in anticipation of another bumper car victory.

At the right-hand entranceway to the mall, Marshall Pederson was slowly driving his eighteen-wheeler into the car park to drop off the mall's weekly frozen food deliveries.

I'll be glad when this delivery is over! thought Marshall after a long hard day of delivering.

That was his last rational thought as he entered the car park and his perception changed. Instead of an eighteen-wheeler, suddenly Marshall was driving a Dodgem car in the long closed-down Glen Hartwell Dodgem arena.

He looked around the arena for a likely-looking victim to bumper into. After a moment, he spotted Melanie Morrissey sitting alone in her Dodgem-cum-Kia Cerato.

"Gotcha, Gorgeous!" cried Marshall as he accelerated his rig toward the strawberry blonde.

From the left-hand side of the mall, Leroy van Pelt was also accelerating toward the small car. It was a race to bumper first. A race that Leroy won, bursting straight through the small car, sending Melanie up to Heaven to be with her soul mate, Roscoe.

Then Leroy's win turned into a loss, as Marshall's eighteen-wheeler ploughed through the shattered remains of the Kia, then continued straight through Leroy's Dodge truck, reducing the Dodge and Leroy both to minute shards.

"Chalk one up for Marshall Matt!" cried Marshall Pederson as he continued around the car park, looking for further 'Dodgems' to collide with.


"What the Hell is going on?" demanded Terri Scott as they pulled up outside the mall car park.

Outside the car park, half a dozen ambulances waited, their drivers afraid to enter the parking lot. Inside the parking area the melee continued as cars and trucks careened into and in some cases straight through each other.

"You got me," said Cheryl Pritchard driving the lead ambulance: Brody rang through to say the drivers had gone mad in the car park, and he was right."

As they talked, the passenger side door of the ambulance opened and Derek Armstrong stepped out.

"Where ya going, Strong Arm?" asked Cheryl.

Thinking he was coming over to her, Sheila Bennett stepped out of the blue Lexus.

Instead, the black man raced into the madness of the car park and ran over to where Ricardo Monte lay on the bitumen, blood spewing from the severed stump of his left leg.

Taking off his jacket, Derek pressed it hard against the stump to attempt to staunch the bleeding. Then picking up Ricardo he ran back to the street, narrowly avoiding being Dodgemed, to get Ricardo in through the side door of the ambulance.

"Do what you can for him," said Derek, to Tilly Lombstrom who was seated in the rear of the ambulance. Tapping on the communicating wall, he said to Cheryl: "Get us to the hospital."

"Not yet!" corrected Tilly: "Let me stop the bleeding first."

For the next twenty minutes the madness continued, and then slowly the Dodgem drivers returned to reality and stared in horror at what had happened around them. At what they had done! At the cars they had smashed and the people whom they had killed!

By the time the chaos ended, Cheryl had set out for the Glen Hartwell and Daley Community Hospital taking Ricardo to be attended to properly.

The other five ambulances headed into the car park slowly, the paramedics looking around at the mayhem, trying to decide who needed treatment the most urgently.

It would take hours to sort out the mess and get the injured, then dead to the hospital. All up sixteen people were dead, and twenty-nine more were injured, some mortally.

Finally, already fatigued from helping the ambulance crews, Terri and co. were able to start interviewing people:

"So how did it start?" Terri asked Lulu and Hiram Brody.

"Your guess is as good as mine," said Brody.

"It started straight after you had that hitchhiker thrown out, Mr. Brody," said Lulu Wellins.

"Hitchhiker!" said Terri, Colin, and Sheila as one.

"That's right. Some old bloke with a cane was hitching right in the car park. I notified Mr. Brody and he had him thrown out into the street. The chaos started within a minute or two of that."

"A Hitchhiker again," said Terri to no one in particular.

"Is that important?" asked Brody, puzzled.

"I'm starting to think so," said Terri. Then to Lulu:"The hitchhiker was definitely out on the street before the madness started?"

"Absolutely."

"And he never physically touched or communicated in any way with any of the drivers before it started?" asked Colin Klein.

"No way, "said the pixie-cut brunette.

"So what'd he use if he caused it?" asked Sheila: "Magic?"

"Around her, I wouldn't rule it out," said Lulu. She remembered back to the zombie invasion at the local cemetery a while back when she had been visiting her deceased nana. [See my story: 'Music of the Damned'.]

"Then we need to go visit our witchy friend," said Sheila.

"Magnolia McCready!" said Terri and Colin as one.


1/21 Calhoun Street, was the right-hand half of a sub-divided yellow weatherboard house. It contained a lounge room, a small bedroom, a kitchen, and a small shower room-cum-toilet cubicle. Inside, Magnolia McCready, a tall attractive redhead with electric-blue eyes, handed around cups of lemon tea.

"So what can I do for you this time?"

They told her of the crashes and the reports of the Hitchhiker nearby on the last two occasions.

"But he wasn't at the first site?" asked Magnolia.

"He may have been, "said Terri: "But there were no witnesses."

Magnolia thought for a while, then said: "Sounds to me like you're dealing with an ancient European legend, called the Hitchhiker. The Hitchhiker legend goes back to the days of Jesus."

"Before cars?" asked Sheila.

"Sure, you could hitch a ride in a stagecoach or a horse-drawn cart," said Magnolia: "The Hitchhiker will keep killing until someone stops to give him a lift."

"Then he'll piss off?" asked Sheila.

"That's what the legend says. Oh, and one last thing," said Magnolia, holding out her right hand: "You owe me fifty bucks for the consultation."

"Yeah, we know, Wiccans gotta live too," said Terri standing up. She took fifty dollars from her shirt pocket and handed it to the Wiccan.

"That's right," said Magnolia with a cheeky grin.

"Thank God for the petty cash box," said Colin.

"I just wish you two would tell me where it is," complained Sheila.

"We're not as silly as we look, Sheils," said Terri as they headed outside.

"I never thought you could be," teased Sheila: "So how do we get this Hitchhiker to come to us, and no one else?"

"By getting everyone else off the roads," said Terri.

"Uh-oh," said Colin: "Not another bogus plague alert?"

"Not quite. This time we say the madness was caused by nerve gas accidently released by a military jet. And it will be a few more days before it wears off."

"The R.A.A.F. will love us for that," said Sheila.

"And what if the survivors and next-to-kin start a class action against the R.A.A.F.?" asked Colin.

"I didn't say it was a perfect plan," said Terri, as they climbed back into the Lexus.


For the next four days Terri, Sheila, and Colin drove around the streets of Glen Hartwell and the surrounding towns, dressed in civilian clothing, hoping to be pulled over by the Hitchhiker. They were starting to lose hope and wondered how much longer they could keep motorists off the road with the fake gas-spill alert.

It was after 4:00 PM on the fourth day, as they were driving along Williamstown Road just outside Glen Hartwell when they finally saw the old man standing beside the Macadam thumbing just ahead of them.

"Pull up just past him," instructed Terri, and Sheila did so.

Pushing open the front passenger door, Sheila asked: "Looking for a ride?"

"I sure am, pretty lady," said the Hitchhiker getting into the Lexus.

"How far are you going?" asked Sheila.

"To the ends of the Earth," said the Hitchhiker.

"Well, we can only take you as far as Westmoreland," says Terri.

"That'll do for now," said the grey-haired old man.

As they drove along, Terri and co. did their best to make convincing small talk, so that the Hitchhiker wouldn't smell a rat. Finally, they stopped at the start of Westmoreland Township.

"This is as far as we go, mate," said Sheila, pulling up.

"This'll do nicely, pretty lady," said the Hitchhiker.

Getting out of the Lexus, he walked a dozen paces or so down the street, then vanished.

"Hopefully that's the last we'll see of him," said Terri.

"Fingers crossed," said Colin, as Sheila started the car again, to return to Glen Hartwell.

THE END
© Copyright 2024 Philip Roberts
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia