Childhood Horrors Revisited

When I was a kid my parents rarely told me any stories. Maybe it’s because they were Christians and pragmatic, but the most common tale I heard before bedtime was “Have you finished your homework and studied yet?”

So naturally I took to my friends and cousins for the juiciest tales.

An early tale I remember, perhaps the oldest, is one a friend told me around Halloween. Of course, I was young and impressionable back then, and the story naturally stuck, but when I look back it really does feel a bit absurd. Then again, stories back then mostly were.

It starts off with a taxi driver making his rounds at the witching hour, driving down a lonely cemetery road. By some stroke of fate he encounters a passenger, a mysterious young woman dressed in black whom he can’t see properly in the rearview mirror. She directs him to a cemetery nearby, and when he turns around, lo and behold – she’s a skeleton. And naturally, the story ends with the clichéd, “And he was never seen again.”

Yeah, it’s pretty absurd. But I guess most stories had to be to impress a kid.

Looking back on it, however, the story isn’t particularly wrong. People are afraid of death, so what better way to play on those fears than to have a skeleton pop out from behind you? Of course, I reckon that as people grow older their exact fear regarding death begins to change. It goes from fearing their own deaths to fearing the deaths of others. I mean, we’re not here forever, are we?

So think about that story again. Imagine being a taxi driver driving down a lonely cemetery road at 3am. You’re middle-aged, in a midlife crisis. You live alone. Your friends and family have alienated you. By some stroke of fate a young lady flags your taxi down.

“Where to, madam?” you ask as she comes in.

“Do you know where cemetery three is at?” she asks, her voice wavering.

You know, but the alarm bells in your head are beginning to ring. Still, you drive her there – you need the money anyway. Throughout the five-minute drive you try to catch a glimpse of her face in the rearview mirror, but she purposely keeps it hidden from you, leaning against the door. Her dress is a deep black. When you reach the cemetery you feel a chill run down your spine.

“Can you wait here for a short while?” she asks. “Just five to ten minutes.”

You nod silently, and she gets out of the taxi. As you see her walking away, deep into the cemetery, you feel an urge to just drive away, but you’re paralysed with fear. You’ve heard this story before, way back when you were a kid.

After eight minutes she returns.

“To the nearby train station, please,” she says. Her voice wavers even more. On impulse you turn on the lights in the taxi and look at her. Nothing out of the ordinary, but her eyes are red from crying.

“I’m fine,” she reassures you, and you begin driving. It’s silent for the first few minutes, but then she begins to speak.

“Frightening, isn’t it?” she mutters.

“Sorry?” you ask, puzzled.

“To think that the people you love may just die someday,” she continues.

“Ah, yes,” you don’t quite follow her.

“It’s scary that people can just disappear like that,” she seems sad. “But you know what’s scarier?”

“What?”

“That some people don’t seem to care, or even worse – they forget.”

Your thoughts return to your estranged family.

“My grandmother died a couple years ago,” she explained. “Every year I would visit her grave and put flowers, but then this year, yesterday – I forgot. I've been so caught up in everything that it didn't even occur to me. It was only at midnight that I remembered. And I even forgot which cemetery she was buried in.”

She heaves a sigh. You are nearing the station.

“But at least you went to her grave eventually,” you reassure her.

“Thank you," she accepts the consolation, "but I still feel horrible for forgetting. No one should forget, right?"

You don’t reply. You stop at the taxi stand.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to send you straight home?” you ask. “No extra cost.”

“It’s fine,” she says, offering you a fifty-dollar note. “I need time to think. Keep the change.”

And with that she gets out and walks away. You don’t drive away, however – you stay there at the taxi stand, alone, thinking in silence, until the dawn begins to break and your shift ends and you go home.

Frightening, isn’t it?