The Return of the Phantom

Panic! On the Highway

Whew! Taking driver's ed was hard. But I did learn a lot of stuff about cars that I never cared to know before. Enjoy some car problems!

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Jackson zoomed past, yanking up a knee-high sock on his right foot, while the one on the left still sagged sadly. His blond hair was still neatly combed over, but his wild dashing for various necessities risked it getting disheveled. Looping the strap from his soccer bag onto a freckled shoulder, he staggered toward the door. Still struggling with his belongings, he waited impatiently at the door.

"Come on Dad!" He yelled up the stairs. "I can't be late!"

"Just a wait a second, Jackson!" Danny called back. He was standing at the foot of the bed, where Sam sat, her arms crossed. Lily played with a puzzle on the bedroom floor, but was getting a little frustrated when the carpet caused the pieces to keep falling apart. But impressively for a three year old had kept up her patience for this long.

"You didn't tell he had a game an hour away today." She complained. "I thought it could be a family night.

"You know, board games, an outing to a museum or something..."

Danny shrugged helplessly, rubbing the back of his dark hair self-consciously. "I honestly forgot about it. But we'll be back soon, I'm sure. Maybe when we get back we could watch a movie together or something." He was trying to be optimistic.

He really did want to get in some family time with the kids, before ghosts started becoming more and more prominent in their lives. Right now, wretched specter activity was low, and Danny wanted to and he knew Sam wanted to take advantage of that time as much as they could. But maybe the quality time with Jackson would just as fun.

"It'll give me some quality time with Jackson, and you with Lily," he suggested, voicing his thoughts. Sam opened her mouth to say more but was interrupted by another insistent shout downstairs.

"We really need to leave, now." He told her hurriedly, and gave Lily and Sam each a farewell kiss before dashing down the stairs.

Without ceremony Jackson dumped the soccer bags into Danny's arms and opened the door.

"Let's go let's go let's go!" He sprinted down the sidewalk to the car, yanking the door handle repeatedly, but it refused to open. Danny hit the unlock button on the keys, and the door, surprising Jackson, popped open. His momentum caused him to fall backward and he landed awkwardly on his butt. Unhurt, he quickly hopped up and climbed into the car.

"You shouldn't pull on the car handles like that, it could damage the door," Danny warned sternly. Their family van was about ten years old, a dusty red, and had been nothing but reliable. Except for the time when its one front left tire kept going flat unexplainably. The mechanic later figured out they simply had a bad tire, and it was fixed within the day.

Jackson stared out the window guiltily. "Sorry." He mumbled. Danny started the car, pulled out of the driveway, and soon they were off the back roads leading into Laurel Copse and on the highway. Soon they'd be in Newport News, Virginia, the site of the game.

It was actually a skirmish for Jackson's travel soccer team, the Eagles, but it was important for the team to play against tougher competitors to prepare them for the regular season. Being an assistant coach, Danny understood the tumultuous emotions that accompanied difficult matches like this one. The bigger city teams were better, were provided with more funding. But he still held tightly to the hope that the Eagles had what took to defeat their opponents. The head coach, Coach Drey, repeatedly assured parent coaches that this was the best team he'd seen in his nine years of coaching soccer. And of course Danny was guilty of thinking Jackson was a fantastic player.

It wasn't untrue... He protested, a little weakly. Sure, he wasn't as experienced as some of the older players, but he was keeping up quite nicely with their skill level and certainly was an asset to the team.

"Jackson, you know, you're going to do great tonight, win or lose." Danny remarked sincerely. Jackson didn't quite respond. Maybe a mumble of thanks, but his attention was on the scenery passing by in a blur past the window. Ivy-strewn sound barriers were more interesting than this conversation.

Danny reevaluated his son's response. Was he being distant intentionally? And why?

Then, this brief change in his normally cheerful personality flipped like a switch, when Jackson seemed to snap out of whatever trance he had been under.

"Wha? Oh, yeah, I think we probably have a small chance." Jackson remarked, now looking in Danny's direction.

Danny changed lanes. Their exit was approaching. "A small chance?" He asked teasingly.

Jackson rolled his eyes. "We're a small team from a rural community." His pronunciation of rural was a struggle. "Rurrrall. Rurrrl. I can't even say it right."

"Rural?"

"Rurrrrl!" Jackson shook his head in exasperation. "This is exactly what city kids make fun of you for anyway. How we have a 'country accent' and stuff."

Danny nodded to Jackson's rambling. He couldn't exactly relate, having grown up in Amity Park, which could be described as a city; at least in comparison to Laurel Copse.

Huh. Looks like the oil needs changing.

The gleaming yellow icon of "check oil" had appeared on the dashboard. It wasn't a cause for worry, it wasn't red yet, but it was a little confusing; they had just taken the car in less than a month ago to get all of its components checked. Hopefully the oil sign was nothing serious. Teacher's and an artist's combined salaries didn't amount to much more than bare necessities.

The radio turned on. Danny and Jackson both looked at one another, bewildered. Neither of them had touched a button. It was some odd Spanish station, and Jackson reached over to change it, but before his hand even touched the knob, the radio switched off again.

Something... was definitely not wrong. This could not happen right now. But since when did ghosts care about what Danny wanted?

In a gasp of chilled air, his ghost sense activated. So where was the ghost?

Jackson seemed a little disturbed, which was understandable because of the radio's odd behavior. So he probably wasn't overshadowed.

Then the car shuddered, and bang! On the right side, the car sagged, and Danny had to grip the wheel tightly to keep the car from spinning out of control. Jackson let out a yell.

"What the heck was that!?"

"Blown tire," Danny replied with gritted teeth. "Just need to pull over to the side-" He figured that the car's malfunctioning wasn't just a coincidence. Whatever ghost was facing them, it had deadly influence over vehicles.

Probably a deceased car salesman, he thought dryly. Through his rear view mirror, a large tractor trailer was close behind him. His heart froze in his chest when he happened to see the driver's face. Pure terror. Either he was a nervous driver, or he had absolutely no control over his machine. And he was about to ram mercilessly in the back of their afflicted car.

There was only one thing he could do.