The Six O'clock Automobile

The Six O'clock Automobile

         Cecilia Road was a very old road, and fairly worn down by the automobiles and buses that frequented it on their routes; it was mainly a commuting road. There were more trees than houses along it, for it wound itself through a small woodland forest between a village and a small town, where the majority of the houses lay.
         At 1630 Cecilia Road lived a man by the name of Luis Groue. His house stood before a backdrop of woods facing the road, in a spot just before the road curved north-west towards the village of Pendulebois.
         Luis had few neighbors in that stretch of the woods, and was a rather reclusive man. He would be at his town office from early in the morning until mid-afternoon, and would then return home. Often he would spend his free time sitting in an old chair on his front porch, or in front of his dining room window, watching the traffic roll by. There would be red cars and blue cars and white cars and little yellow cars and the public buses on their routes to and fro through the woods, and they would turn the corner and hurry by, or they would hurry by and turn the corner, depending on where they were headed.
         And, somehow, watching the commute never grew old to Luis. He always wondered where these people might be going. Perhaps to their jobs, as he did everyday. Perhaps into town to see a loved one dying in a hospital bed. Perhaps to an airport to leave forever, or to a pub to stay until midnight, or to a dentist's appointment, or a wedding, or a funeral for that loved one who had been dying in the hospital bed. Perhaps one was on an aimless drive? Luis would inadvertently consider everything.
         One evening, he was sitting in his dining room, reading the newspaper, when he glanced out to the road and saw an odd black car travelling west in the wrong lane. He stood up from the table and watched.
         At first, Luis thought it could just be another inebriated driver returning from the pub, but it seemed that the car was being driven in a careful and decided fashion, as if the driver knew what he or she was doing. He contemplated waving the driver off the road, though he could see the car was already passing by his house from the dining room window, and he would miss it by minutes.
         The grandfather clock in his living room tolled its six o'clock chime. Impulsively, he left his house and walked quickly out to the shoulder of the road.
         As Luis neared the edge of the road, he acknowledged the bad feeling that had been growing in his insides. He hoped dearly there would be no accident at the road's curve; a car coming from the town would be quite blind to the oncoming black car in its lane, which could prove to be very misfortunate. He dreaded car accidents.
         Instead, and to his relief, he saw the evening school bus round the corner and speed by towards the village, unscathed. No black car. He figured it must have righted itself into the right lane before meeting the bus. Though he was eased of worry, the foreboding did not subside. He swallowed uneasily.
         After watching several other cars pass by, intact, Luis walked back towards his house. The bad feeling walked with him.

         The next evening was much of the same, though this time he was outside on his porch when the black automobile appeared again. Luis stood up from his chair in disbelief. It drove by steadily, in the wrong lane.
         "Hey!" he yelled, stepping from his porch. "Hey, stop! Halt!" The car did not slow, or make any attempt to find the correct lane. Luis could not see the driver, for the windows were tinted a deep black. It's going to cause an accident, he thought.
         He called out again as the black car was nearly past, and as he was doing so he heard the grandfather clock toll six o'clock. He stopped, and felt a dreadful chill descend his body, like he had just uncovered something he was not supposed to see.
         A lot of cars, Luis had observed, would be predictable in what times they would pass by his house, often coming or going from work, or church, or the schoolhouse. But it was the same exact instant as the evening before that the black automobile passed by his house a second time, in the wrong lane; as the clock tolled six o'clock.
         He stood on his lawn, his head swimming. He considered the possibility of coincidence, but the swell in his stomach suggested otherwise; something was definitely off about this car, aside from its contrary driving habits. Perhaps the driver was doing this for a reason.
         After much thinking, he decided he would stand by the side of the road the next evening and wave the driver off the road. He, or she, would surely see him then.
         He watched the evening school bus pass by, and walked back to his porch to pass the time until the next evening.
         And when the next evening did come, there stood Luis at the edge of the road, three minutes before six o'clock, awaiting the odd black car.
         He waited for what seemed like hours, until, sure enough, he saw the unsettling sight of a black car in the wrong lane making its way down the road towards him. Looking back, he saw to his relief there were no cars rounding the corner from the opposite direction.
         As the car approached, Luis felt the knot in his stomach twist into dreadful origami shapes. His breathing quickened.
         'Tis only a bad driver, he thought. Nothing to worry about. Though as the dusky car drew closer, again making no effort to change lanes, Luis was overwhelmed with a great desire to be somewhere else; to leave the side of the road, to travel to a faraway place where roadways and horrific traffic accidents were unheard of, where there was no right lane and no wrong lane. But he remained at the side of the road, listening vaguely to the six o'clock chimes of the clock in his house, frozen in place with trembling legs, awaiting the black automobile that loomed in the wrong lane.
         And in seconds it was upon him, and Luis stood, waving his arms, signalling, shouting, beckoning, trying terribly to prevent a likely accident. But the black car kept driving. It did not even slow.
         Luis stopped yelling abruptly and watched carefully as the car disappeared around the corner. Seconds after, the familiar yellow of the school bus emerged from the curve and tore past Luis, heading towards Pendulebois.
Luis did not notice. His head raged with questions of what he had just witnessed.
         Was this black car an apparition? Was he seeing things? Where was it going when it rounded the corner? Why six o'clock? Why was it always six o'clock?
         He sat down, there on the road shoulder. The thoughts and questions weighed down on his mind like the great thunderhead of a storm. Immediately, he wished it was the next evening, for he knew precisely what he would have to do.
         Several cars passed by, staring at the odd man sitting on the side of the road, his head in his hands. Luis began to realize how silly he must look, and finally rose with a deep breath. He walked slowly back to his house with determination and a vague understanding of something that was not able to be understood, as if he had just struck a deal with a ghost.
         He knew what to do. He would wait out the next evening in anticipation of the six o'clock automobile.
         And so he did. That night he found no sleep, and sleep did not seem to find him. He remembered the hours specifically as they passed: eleven, twelve, and back down to one, two, three, four. Noon. Three o'clock, post meridiem. Five o'clock.
         Throughout the hours of the night and the day, he did not move from his chair at the dining room table. He watched the great grandfather clock solemnly, as the hands shifted and the rhythm became every aspect of Luis; his own out-of-body heartbeat. It was the sound of waiting.
         The last hour was the longest. At times, Luis had actually begun to believe that the hands had stopped moving. He imagined great cobwebs forming over the clock in its state of inertia, a final sign that time had ended altogether. But then he would at once find the long and short hands suddenly pointing out five-thirty together, and he would begin to think of his task at hand. It was very simple, yet to Luis it seemed to be an immense undertaking that he regarded with uneasiness.
         And then twenty minutes passed, and then five more, and before Luis could catch up, the time he had so long awaited in the dark was upon him. He found himself standing, taking a deep breath, and leaving his house. It felt surreal, like he had fallen asleep and was dreaming himself outside of his dream. But he was fully conscious, fully awake, fully resolute. He did not notice the lack of commute on Cecilia Road, for that hour; he did not notice the ghastly weather billowing overhead; he did not feel the electricity in the air, or the cold road like rigor mortis, as he stepped onto the empty pavement. He only felt the indescribable weight of a great burden, like the weight of a world. But he refused to buckle.
         His eyes focused, and he was staring down a long band of grey with a streak of faded yellow; the roadway. He would be facing the black car as it approached in the wrong lane, if it came. Luis was quite sure it would.
         The terrible silence was broken by a loud stamp of thunder overhead. He stared ahead. The knots in his stomach were as tight as could be, and a calm sense of dread pulsed through his veins. There was no black car in sight. The road lay barren.
         Luis began to think perhaps this evening, there would be no black car in the wrong lane. The bizarre nightmare had ended. It was all a coincidence.
         But then he scolded his foolish optimism, for he heard a low hum in the distance, some ways down the road in the direction of the village. At once, he knew what it was, and his heartbeat quickened. His breaths grew more shallow, and his vision dimmed. Sweat formed feverishly on his face, and he was frozen, still with fear. The ominous drone grew louder. Luis did not move from where he stood in the middle of the road.
         After what seemed like a very long time, Luis finally saw the black of the automobile rise over the small hill down the road; his fears had materialized.
         It drove steadily in the wrong lane towards Luis, and never in his life had he conceived something so ugly and revolting as that black automobile as it drew nearer. Feelings of hate and contempt swelled in his head, and a great anger pulsed through his veins in place of dread. He wanted sincerely to roll that horrible car into a lake, driver and all.
         And then the fear re-emerged, and he began shaking uncontrollably. His eyes glazed over.
         The car, and the terrible aura that followed it, was suddenly very close. Luis feared it would not stop, but could not move from his petrified state upon the roadside.
         But, as he had hoped, the black automobile slowed and rolled to a stop ten feet in front of Luis on the road, to both his fear and relief. The droning stopped.
         Luis dared not breathe. There was an awful silence, and then the driver's side door was opened, and from the black automobile stepped a thin man. He was dressed in a strange, tattered grey suit that was withered with age, and his shrivelled black tie lay awkwardly on an angle across his chest. His face was lined with small wrinkles, and his eyes were as dark and piercing as the car he drove. An old-fashioned English hat sat atop his head.
         For a long time, neither men spoke. They stood, staring at one another, in the wrong lane of Cecilia Road. Luis stood, frozen, and the man in the odd suit seemed to be waiting for Luis to speak. Finally, he did: "Who are you?" asked Luis shakily.
         The man revealed a very handsome smile, and said quietly, "Luis."
         "I am Luis," replied Luis. "Who are you?"
         The man smiled again, but his expression quickly turned solemn. Both men heard the faint sound of the grandfather clock chiming six o'clock from Luis' living room. Luis felt a cold chill pass through his body.
         "The clock tolls for thee," said the man. "I shall see you soon."
         And with that, the man in the odd suit and the black automobile both vanished into thin air.
         Luis blinked in bewilderment.
         Seconds after, he heard a low sound behind him, and before he was able to realize what was happening, Luis was struck dead by a school bus.


by Brock A. Edwards.
Written through one week of September, 2004.