Pale Light

            The night was dark and only got darker as Mark looked at the stretch of road ahead. With the street lights out, Mark could only think of one cause. “Copper thieves,” he said to himself as he switched from his car’s regular headlights to high beams. He wasn’t expecting to see any oncoming traffic coming through the valley at almost three in the morning. In fact, he wasn’t expecting to see anything at all as he drove home.

Then he noticed the light in the middle of the road. It wasn’t a shiny gleam, but a faint, steady glow, like a dying ember. Uncertain, Mark turned the high beams off and drove slowly toward the light as fear crept in the back of his thoughts. As he got closer, the light got bigger, but oddly, not any brighter.

            It wasn't long before Mark saw the source of the radiance - a young woman. She stood facing away from him in the center of the glow, clearly emitting the light like an aura. It wasn’t a particularly bright shine either, but rather a dull, pale glow much like the color Mark expected to see on the skin of a corpse, or Death’s steed.

            The woman was barefoot in a white dress that fell to her ankles. Long, silvery hair fell down to her waist. Mark’s foot pressed lightly on the brake pedal as his mind put the pieces together. It was the Lady in White.

            Mark took a deep breath. Then another. He'd heard stories, friend of a friend heard it from their friend from an uncle who had seen the Lady in White. She only appeared late at night to lone travelers. A beautiful woman, lost, just looking for a ride home. In the stories, when the traveler stops, the woman gets a ride home, a home which mysteriously disappears in the driver's rear-view mirror as they drive away. When the traveler doesn't stop, however, the woman still appears in the car and leaves the driver with a much less desirable fate. Mark knew what he needed to do. Don’t drive past her. Just give her a ride wherever she wants to go.

            Unless it wasn’t the Lady in White, raced a rogue thought. Unless it’s the Menstrazzo. Mark’s heart raced even faster as his foot moved from the brake pedal to the gas pedal. His mother used to tell him the stories of the Menstrazzo, an eyeless man with long hair and a long, white robe who shines in the night. He only appears at night and in the dark, never facing his victims. “Don’t ever stop for the Menstrazzo,” she would say, “or he’ll snatch you up and take you away.” His grandmother brought over the stories of the Menstrazzo from the old country when she and his grandfather immigrated to the United States and eventually settled in Hawaii. But the Menstrazzo shouldn’t have followed them as well.

            Stop or go. Go or stop. Mark’s foot jumped from one pedal to the other and back again, forgetting that the car was still rolling forward. Thirty feet now. Twenty feet. Fifteen feet. Ten feet. Mark let out a shout and stomped on the brake pedal as he yanked the steering wheel to the side. The car went into a spin, but he managed to keep it under control until it was facing the opposite direction. Before the car even had a chance to come to a stop, Mark’s foot jumped to the gas pedal and he sped back up the street. He pulled off the road, kicking up dirt and gravel. Shaking, he put the car in park and shut off the engine. Slowly, slowly, Mark turned just enough to still see the faint glowing light exactly where he left it. Whoever it is, it only appears at night. He pulled his phone from his pocket. 2:48 am. Mark risked another glance back and saw the light, still in the same spot. Just four hours until sunrise. He leaned his chair back and tried his best to calm his racing heartbeat. It was going to be a long night.

I'm not sure how long ago I actually wrote this, but I know that I wrote it for a Halloween, scary-story contest. I made a couple changes to it recently, but I know it still wouldn't have beaten that year's winner. First off, just to get the apologies out of the way, I probably got the myth wrong about the Lady in White, though I'm pretty sure that is a real thing here (hooray for taking liberties with other stories!). As for the story of "the Menstrazzo," I made that up. Basically, I just needed a story that was similar to the one that I made up. Most of the inspiration for this story actually came from Neil Gaiman's "American Gods." It was kind of a long read, but one of the ideas that I stole from the novel is that the stories people tell, the things they believe, it follows them wherever they go. In the story, Gods (actual, physical manifestations), are brought to America by people from their home country through stories they tell. And with Hawaii as such a melting-pot of cultures, I thought it would be interesting if a story from another place was very similar to a story we already have here (which, if you've read as much mythology as I have, you know that this is actually a thing). Anyways, hope you enjoyed Day 1 of my Halloween stories. They don't get any better.