Three Years by Jan Darrow

Under grey skies it was misting lightly when Cara got to Sheridan. The leaves on the autumn trees looked almost iridescent. Yellows, oranges, and reds tucked into the rising landscape. The town was little more than a gas station/convenience store, church, five houses and a barn. She filled her car with gas but had brought most everything else they would need for the weekend. She had finished paying when her phone rang; it was Garrett. Would he tell her he couldn’t come? That his wife needed him? One day, she thought, it would be something like that. 

But no, he was calling to say he was running late.   

Fog rolled down into the valley below her as she drove on and made her way around the curves. Up ahead a logging truck had rolled over. A police car and EMS were nearby.

The only sound as she drifted by were the wipers across her windshield. 

The light had once again shifted when she got to the cabin. Inside she poured herself a glass of wine and looked out past the trees and into the vast expanse of the higher elevations. For three years they had rented this lonely little cabin. Three long patient years.

She unpacked her weekend gear and would have dinner ready in no time. She was sure Garrett would arrive soon.

With dinner in the oven, she looked across the road.  There was only one other cabin nearby that was usually occupied. There were no lights on this time. 

Cara tried calling Garrett, but there was no answer, and it didn’t go to voicemail. She wasn’t perplexed as there were a few non-service areas on the way up.

As she waited, something she hadn’t seen before in the cabin caught her eye. It was a DVD player and a small television on a shelf behind the chair. There had never been a television in the room before that she could remember. It must have belonged to some other renter who left it behind. 

The machine was plugged in and with nothing else to do, Cara powered it on. The plastic DVD case held no clue as to what it was. She ejected the disc, and it was blank as well. Curious, she put it back into the machine and pressed play.

Whatever it was, it was homemade. Someone filmed a road - actually, the very road she had just travelled on – autumn trees, dark gloomy skies, everything. They too had stopped at the gas station. How odd she thought. The frames were dreamlike slow-motion, and mesmerizing.

Then she saw it. 

The logging truck, her windshield smashing, her car flipping over and over until it finally came to a stop.

Steam from the engine pooled the autumn colors from the trees into one. She saw the police and EMS. She saw the horrified look on Garrett’s face as he arrived on scene.  

Jan Darrow grew up in the rural Midwest where she connected to the natural world at an early age. Ghost stories are her favorite. Her collections of poetry and flash fiction are available on Amazon. You can also find her at Jan Darrow / Poetry and Fiction