Growing up, we all had those spooky local legends that, when armed with our new driver’s license, our parents’ car, and a few curious friends, we couldn’t resist but explore. The following is a mostly true story about our spooky local legend… Gravity Hill.
I sat on my hands to prevent the others in the car from seeing them shaking. I looked out the window, the dark blur of dried out bushes and trees flashing past. The moon was bright that night, a merciful glow illuminating the increasingly dark streets as we got further outside the city.
Clarisse’s sister had told her about Gravity Hill and, at the time, without knowing much, our morbid curiosities convinced us we needed to visit it. But now, on our way there, Clarisse’s grip on the steering wheel was noticeably tighter than usual and Jordyn had no problem expressing how scared she was getting. Kyle seemed fine, excited even, but I could sense his edginess as he asked Clarisse to relay the tale her sister told her.
The multitude of city streetlights had long since disappeared and the last traffic signal I saw was several miles behind us. Aside from the occasional ranch house porch light, the darkness was vast and endless. Clarisse pulled onto the small dirt road and drove another mile or so. I listened to the gravel crunching under her tires, hypnotized by the cracks and pops. We got to the crest of a small hill and she put the car in park. She turned around to face the rest of us and told us the tale of Gravity Hill.
I stared past Clarisse, through the windshield, watching the particles of dust float through the beams of her headlights. Her voice sounded disembodied, distant. “Years ago, a bus full of sixth graders was returning from a field trip to a farm another few miles up the road. At the bottom of this hill, the bus stalled.” She turned around, pointing towards the misty expanse ahead of us. “Back in the day, a train went through this area, helping the farmers get their produce to the city. Well, the bus was stalled on the tracks.”
“Of course it was,” Kyle snorted.
Clarisse glared at him. “Anyway, they say that the bus driver was unable to get the door open before a train ploughed into them, immediately killing everyone onboard.”
“Good God…” Jordyn said softly.
“The legend says, if you drive down to where the tracks used to be and put your car in neutral, the spirit of the kids will push you uphill off the old tracks.”
I took a deep, shaky breath, then said, “Well, what are we waiting for?”
A few minutes later, Clarisse situated her car at the bottom of the hill, right where the incline began. She put her car in neutral and said, “Ok, here we go.”
We sat there in complete silence for what felt like hours. We peered out the windows, looking out at the old farms, watching the moonlit brush swaying in the breeze. I looked out through the windshield again, watching the patch of road lit up ahead of us from the headlights. Finally, Jordyn yelled, “Oh my God!”
“What?” Clarisse yelled.
“We’re moving!” Jordyn’s face was plastered to the passenger window.
Faintly at first, then with a terrifying realization, I noticed the beams of the headlights slowly climb the hill. My heart was racing and I couldn’t move. The frantic excitement in the car was deafening, a palpable chaos that gnawed at my nerves.
“What was that?” Clarisse yelled, pointing out the passenger window.
We all looked, wide-eyed, towards the empty field to our right, straining to see whatever terrifying entity Clarisse had seen.
“Cut it out, Clarisse!” Jordyn yelled through fearful tears.
The car stopped moving some ten feet up the hill from where we started our ascent. For the first time all night, Kyle didn’t have a joke to tell or a quip to declare. His face was one of shock and disbelief. I kept staring out the window towards the field Clarisse pointed at, squinting, struggling to identify a series of misconstrued shadows. Her knuckles white on the steering wheel now, Clarisse gunned it up the hill without a word.
Our terror was subsiding as we passed familiar landmarks back in the city. I had never been so happy to see streetlights and traffic signals. We grabbed some McDonalds, finally able to talk calmly about our experience at Gravity Hill.
“Alright, fess up, Clarisse. Did you really put the car in neutral or did you keep it in drive?” Kyle’s accusations didn’t sit well with Clarisse.
“I swear, I was in neutral!”
We got back to Clarisse’s house where we had a scary movie marathon planned to coincide with our adventure earlier in the night. We filed out of the car and I walked around the back, my path around the front of the car blocked by a giant planter. As I passed the trunk, I froze, petrified. Littering the back of the car were dozens of tiny, dusty handprints.
