I think it started three years ago, when we were just teenagers. Just kids. It started that night, the one of the accident.
It was raining and Vicky couldn't see out the windshield very well. I tried to warn her that she should pay attention to where
she was driving. She told me she was, and we laughed about this or that; neither of us really expected some guy to be standing
out in the middle of the road. He was just standing there, staring as we rapidly approached.
"Oh, shit, Vick," I cried, reaching out to grab the wheel.
She knocked my hand away and turned it hard. Good news is we missed the guy. Bad news is we went off the edge of the incline
in the process. The car spun, us trapped inside; unwilling passengers. It toppled over and over, and I stopped determining
what was up and what was down. I could only hang on. I heard the loud splash of something heavy hitting water, and barely
had time to instinctively hold my breath before the water rushed in through the various cracks in the windshield and Vicky's
open window.
I looked over to Vicky, but just as quickly looked away. There was no way she was getting out of this alive; by the looks
of it, she was already dead. The water was turning red around us. I tried to escape, but my door had been jammed through the
car's rolling, and the handle wasn't working. I could feel myself running out of air; I wouldn't be able to hold it in much
longer. I got out of my seatbelt and tried Vicky's door. It was unlocked, but only opened an inch or two before it stopped,
stuck against the bottom of the lake.
I started to panic.
I tried breaking the windows then, starting with the already breaking windshield. All that did was hurt my hand. My chest
was getting tight. Someone save me, I remembered thinking, but knew it wouldn't happen. I wouldn't be saved. Finally, the
pressure on my lungs was too much and I vainly tried to suck in a breath, only to suck in water. My head and body grew heavy,
and my vision blurred more than it already had been. I was dying, but I wasn't scared of it.
I wasn't scared.
Vicky and I would go together.
-
"...ear! Gotta pulse... No, flat-"
"-ne, clear! Do we got 'im? No-"
"-ear! He's fighting. C'mon, bud, stay with-"
"-can do it, guy. You can do it, c'mon, buddy. Stay with us-"
"Eric Jones, you can..."
-
I was clinically dead for fifteen minutes, and remember bits and pieces of it. I told the doctor I remembered, but he didn't
believe me. Either that, or he thought I was crazy. I passed out after a while, then woke up three days later. I remembered
every single detail of the accident as if it had happened moments before.
I could remember the gash on Vicky's face, and the taste of bloody water in my mouth. I remembered the face of the man
standing in the middle of the road. According to the authorities, he was a dead man. Had been dear for almost fifty years,
they said, after I'd described his face.
I wanted to laugh at that thought.
Now I was seeing ghosts.
