Halloween - One For The Road by Nicholas Boldock

Jason Travis tip-tapped the steering wheel in time to the music blaring from the car's speakers. He glanced at the digital clock on the dashboard - 16:53. The sky was darkening, even at this early summer hour, not as a result of the setting sun but brought about by the lumbering grey rain clouds overhead. Jason flicked the windscreen wipers on, and then off again, as the first drops of rain began to spatter the glass.

The wipers swiped the wet splashes away, only for more to appear in their place. In a matter of seconds he switched the wipers on again, leaving them on this time, as the rain fell in heavier and heavier rhythms.

As the deluge increased, Jason slowed the car to fifty miles an hour and moved over into the left-hand lane of the motorway. He could no longer clearly see the car in front - just two lights staring out of the rain like deep red eyes. The rain drummed out a tattoo on the roof of the car, drowning out the sound of the stereo. Jason reached over to turn it up, keeping one eye on the road, and as he upped the volume the stereo began to make pained whirring noises.

Before he had a chance to stab at the eject button, the car stereo saved him the bother and calmly spat the tape out. An inch or so of the cassette - What's Goin' On? by Marvin Gaye - protruded from the machine, and as Jason pulled it all the way out, the brown plastic tape from inside the cassette unravelled, its end still stuck in the stereo. He swore under his breath and tossed the tape onto the passenger seat. Its brown umbilical cord kept it attached to the stereo. He flicked the stereo onto FM instead, and the chattering voice of a radio DJ filled the car. Jason had no idea who the DJ was but it didn't matter - one was much the same as another these days. He couldn't drive with no background music at all, and he couldn't fix the cassette player while he was driving, so the nameless DJ's show would have to do for the time being.

The rain showed no signs of letting up. The sky was black now, and Jason thought he heard a rumble of thunder off in the distance. He supposed he should ring Claire and let her know he was going to be late. He'd been running behind schedule even before the rain started, and if it carried on like this he wouldn't be home for another couple of hours.

He glanced at the dashboard and Claire glanced back. There was a picture stuck under the air vents with Blu Tack, a photo of Jason with his arm around Claire, Claire cradling their daughter Natalie in her arms. All three of them smiling, happy, even Natalie in her babyish way. It was a couple of years old now but he'd gotten attached to that photo, so it stayed where it was, watching over him on his daily journeys to and from work, guiding him safely home. He picked his mobile phone up from the dash and dialled home. He didn't usually like to use the phone while he was driving but this would only be a quick call so he ignored caution. He waited for the call to connect but nothing came. He looked at the display on the phone. No signal. Typical, he thought, and placed the phone back on the dashboard. He'd try again later. Maybe the rain would ease up, then he could put his foot down a bit and make some time up. Who are you kidding? It's like monsoon season out there. And it was. The surface of the road was slick with a film of water which bubbled and spat as the rain pelted down onto it. The conditions were so bad that even at fifty miles an hour he was probably driving a bit too quick. He eased off the pedal, just a touch, and watched the needle dip to just over forty.

The song on the radio - some generic rock band or other - finished, and the DJ announced that it was time for the news. Jason only half-listened as the newsreader ran through the headlines. Nothing too interesting. A body found floating in the Thames. Housing market in crisis. Manchester United to pay an astronomical sum of money for a little-known Dutch defender. The usual stuff and nonsense. After the news came the weather report, which announced with cheer that the South East was enjoying brilliant sunshine and blue skies.

Jason laughed. He was currently driving through the centre of Kent - firmly in the South East by anyone's standards - and blue skies and sunshine were most definitely not in attendance. The Great British Weather Forecast, as accurate as ever. He picked up the mobile phone and tried phoning home again. The phone stayed resolutely silent. He returned it to the dashboard a second time. continued below.

Halloween - One For The Road continued by Nicholas Boldock

Suddenly the radio let rip with a screech of white noise, as if Jason had just driven into a deep tunnel. He reached over and switched to a different station - he had the main ones programmed into the stereo's memory - and was met by more feedback. He flicked through the stations - there were six of them stored in there - but all of them provided him with only snowy noise. He flicked the stereo off, annoyed that it was being such a pain. First the tape deck, then the radio. He wondered if the aerial was okay. He didn't think it could have got damaged - the rain shouldn't harm it in any major way - but he supposed it was a possibility.

He wasn't certain, but the rain seemed to be easing off, if only slightly. It did seem brighter outside, the sky a lighter shade of grey than it had been before. And then, as abruptly as it had come, the rain stopped. It was as if he had been driving through a dense rain cloud, and now he had burst through the other side.

The sky was blue now, an almost supernatural transformation from the deathly grey of before. Jason looked in the rear view mirror and expected to see the impenetrable gloom receding behind him, but behind him the sky was clear blue too. He looked left and right, thinking the road must have bent round to a different direction, but still there was no evidence of the torrential rain he had just been driving through for the past half an hour or so. The grey clouds that had been so definite before now seemed to have disappeared without a trace. The road ahead was as dry as a desert. Jason shook his head and nudged the car back up to seventy. The motorway was fairly quiet, unusually so for this time of day. Normally this stretch of road was filled with commuters making the journey back to their homes, vying for each inch of tarmac as if that was all there was. Now there were only another seven or eight cars that he could see, some behind, some in front. Having this few cars about gave him an opportunity to make up lost time, so he pressed down on the gas and coaxed the car up to eighty. He might not be too late home after all.

He flicked the stereo on and cycled through the radio stations again, but still he was met with a blanket of white noise. Again he switched it off. He checked the mobile signal and that was still out as well. He tried ringing the number anyway, just in case, but got nowhere. Jason figured that the torrential rain he had driven through must still be interfering with the phone, and the radio too probably. No matter. He pressed on, concentrating on his driving, wishing the damned stereo hadn't eaten his Marvin Gaye tape.

Some half-hour later, Jason left the motorway at junction 24, a route he took five, sometimes six, days a week. The slip road ran down to a roundabout, and from there Jason would take the third exit onto the smaller, quieter road home. Leaving the motorway was his favourite part of the journey, because it meant he was on the last leg of the drive home, within an hour or so of his wife and daughter. He drove round the big roundabout and pulled off at his usual exit. He started to bring the car back up to speed then realised he had gone wrong. He'd come off at the wrong exit. Idiot, he thought, you do this every single day, how can you go the wrong way?

Continued on www.thisisull.com...... Next Page.

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