The Hollow Curve

The first time I felt it, I was driving home from a late shift at the diner, cutting through the old county roads to save time. I’d taken that route a hundred times, past the skeletal oaks and the rusted mailboxes, past the field where Mr. Calloway kept his goats. Nothing had ever felt wrong about it. But that night, as I crested the rise before the sharp bend by the old mill pond, my stomach lurched like I’d stepped off a cliff. The air in the car turned thick, heavy, and cold, and a sound like a thousand bees filled my ears. I swerved, nearly clipping the guardrail, and had to pull over, shaking, my palms slick on the wheel.

At first, I blamed the leftover fried chicken from the diner, but the feeling didn’t pass. It was a pressure, a wrongness, as if the very earth under that curve was humming with a grievance. I tried to ignore it, but every time I found myself on that road, the same thing happened. The nausea would hit about fifty yards before the bend, and by the time I reached the apex, my vision would blur, and a wave of despair would crash over me so strong I’d have to fight to keep from weeping. I started taking the long way to town, adding twenty minutes to every trip, just to avoid it.

I told my sister, Mara, about it, half expecting her to laugh. But she just frowned and said, ‘That’s the spot where the Whitfield boy went off the bridge, isn’t it?’ I hadn’t known that. A kid from the next county, drunk, had wrapped his truck around the old iron railing twenty years ago. But that didn’t explain why my whole body screamed when I passed that spot. I wasn’t even born then.

Then, one afternoon, I got a call from my mother. My old elementary school was being torn down, and she’d found a box of my childhood drawings in the attic. I drove up there, forcing myself to take the old road, my jaw clenched, my hands white-knuckled on the wheel. As I approached the bend, the familiar dread rose, but this time, it was different. The nausea was there, but so was an image flashed behind my eyes: a girl, maybe ten, with dark braids, standing at the edge of the pond, her back to me. She was wearing a yellow raincoat, and she didn’t move as my car passed. I blinked, and she was gone, but the feeling of being watched lingered for miles.

After that, the visions came more frequent, always at the same spot, always the same girl. I started to research the area, desperate for answers. I dug up old newspaper archives at the library, looking through microfilm for anything about a girl matching that description. Nothing. I even asked my former teacher, Mrs. Albright, who still lived nearby, if she remembered any children who had died near the school. She went pale and said, ‘Why are you asking about the Holloway child?’ I hadn’t mentioned any name. She told me that a girl named Lucy Holloway had drowned in the pond in 1963, the summer before she was to start fourth grade. They’d never found her body.

I went to the pond one evening, not knowing why, just that I had to. The water was still, covered in algae and fallen leaves. As I stood at the edge, the air grew cold, and I heard a child’s voice, faint but clear as a bell, whispering from the reeds: ‘You see me.’ I spun around, but there was nothing. Then I saw the yellow raincoat, draped over a low branch at the water’s edge, like someone had just taken it off. I didn’t touch it. I just ran.

Now, I’m writing this from my desk at home, looking at a photograph I found in that box my mother sent. It was a class photo from first grade, and there, in the back row, was a girl with dark braids, wearing a yellow raincoat. I had scribbled an arrow pointing at her, and in my childish handwriting, the words: ‘My friend Lucy.’ But everyone told me I never had an imaginary friend. I think I know why that road affects me now. It’s not that the spot is haunted. It’s that Lucy is waiting, and she knows I can see her. And I’m terrified that one day, I’ll stop the car, get out, and walk into the pond, and then I’ll be the one wearing the yellow raincoat.