The Crossroads

Gerda Spratling had learned to drive when she was sixteen.

However, with Mr. Willoughby constantly at her beck and call, she had not driven much in the intervening fifty-six years. Now she was hunched behind the wheel of Sharon’s silver Hyundai, moving slowly. She was headed home to the manor because she sensed Clint would be there waiting for her.

Clint will know what to do!

Clint Eberhart’s Thunderbird was gaining on Judy, so she gunned the Cadillac, jammed the accelerator all the way to the floor.

“Come on, ghost boy! Show me what you’ve got!”

She bounded up a knoll, left the pavement, and landed with a rocking thud that sent Zipper’s head bobbling like a dashboard dachshund.

There was a slow-moving vehicle blocking the road in front of them.

A silver Hyundai doing thirty-five miles per hour.

The Cadillac pulled up alongside the Hyundai.

Gerda Spratling saw Mrs. Jennings behind the wheel. “How dare she! That woman stole my automobile!”

The old lady stomped on the gas pedal with all the strength her surging hate could provide.

Judy saw the blinking red light where 13 crossed 31 and decided to barrel through the intersection to make Miss Spratling and Clint Eberhart chase after her. She’d lead them both away from the factory and Zack and out into the Connecticut countryside.

Maybe all the way to New Hampshire.

She looked both ways when she hit the crossroads but didn’t even think about stopping.

Gerda Spratling squeezed the steering wheel, leaned forward, and willed the whining Hyundai to move faster.

Faster!

Then she saw a familiar figure standing at the edge of the crossroads and forgot all about catching up with George Jennings’s wife.

It was Mary O’Claire.

The girl who told Sheriff Jennings all those lies!

Claimed Clint was her husband. Hah!

The young woman stretched out her arms and beckoned Miss Spratling into the crossroads.

“Dirty, stinking, stupid liar!” Spratling aimed the car straight at the ghostly apparition.

Mary drifted to the right.

Spratling matched her move, cut her wheels sharply.

The little car was doing sixty miles per hour when it entered the crossroads. That sudden twist of the steering wheel caused it to flip over and tumble down the asphalt. When it finally stopped rolling, when the roof caved in and the gas tank ruptured, when it looked like a rusty beer can flattened under a truck tire—the car exploded.