“We’re glad to see you again. What have you learned?”
“Well, it isn’t just folklore: your Dead Man’s Curve has indeed been the site of a strange series of fatalities.”
“That’s what we assumed.”
“In 1915, a Mercer Raceabout was the first car to crash, killing its driver. But the car was salvaged and, two years later, sailed off the same spot, again killing the driver. It was restored but not used again until after the war, when, in 1919, a driver was killed flying off at the same spot. The car was destroyed in that crash.”
“That’s true. We knew all that.”
“But in 1921, a pre-war Imp was driven off the cliff at the same spot. The driver was killed but the car was salvaged.”
“We know that. too. We want you….”
“The buyer of the wreckage left a diary with a complete account of the renovation of the car. It was completely rebuilt using parts of other old Imp automobiles from before the war. There were, at least at this point, NO parts from that 1913 Mercer Raceabout.”
“Ah. See, Jenkins? I told you.”
“The Imp was completely destroyed in 1923, when it sailed off the cliff at the same point. There were no more fatalities until 1925, when a Model T tumbled from the cliff. The driver was killed.”
“And no parts from that Imp…the name, see, kind of suggests….”
“I have no data on that, but it would have been unusual for a Ford to have been repaired with anything but Ford parts. The Model-T was easy to repair, it seems, and it survived crashes from that same point in 1927, 29, 1933, and so on, plunging over the same cliff at the same spot every two years, killing its unfortunate driver and sometimes passengers, until the war. At that point, it waited in a garage until it was donated to a World War II scrap drive.”
“I don’t suppose there’s any way to find out what it was made into.”
“That would be problematic. But the fatal accidents began again in 1949 When a Ford Sportsman went over the cliff, killing the driver. The same Sportsman was involved in several crashes until it was in turn destroyed and a Corvette began to take the plunge. In due course, it became inoperable and then a Triumph crashed in the same spot. And so on until the present.”
“So all you’ve done is establish that these different cars had no ‘cursed’ parts in common, and that the money the Council spent over the years on exorcists and Native shamans to remove the curses was a waste. Do you expect payment for that?”
“I did go further, sir. I was able to engage the services of a reliable medium who, after some work through intermediary spirits, was able to contact the spirit of Billy Ilmandotte.”
“Who?”
“The driver killed in the original crash in 1915.”
“Ah! Now you’ve got something.”
“Yes, sir. It was not what I expected, however. I frankly thought that Mr. Ilmandotte wished to avenge his own death by killing other drivers.”
“No?”
“No, sir. What his restless spirit is actually doing is possessing cars that he likes and forcing the drivers eventually to go somewhere by way of Dead Man’s Curve just to show he CAN make it around that corner at that speed. He’s sure he just needs the right car and the right timing.”
“I see. So can you think of any way to convince his spirit to go somewhere else? Can this medium you employed do something along those lines for us?”
“Well, actually, sir, since I also found out how much the City Council has spent over the last century on candlemongers and shamans and priests, I did wonder why you don’t just put up a guard rail.”
“That seems…what? Yes, Jenkins here is right. Why spend tax money on a thing like that when we only have one person killed up there every two years? We wouldn’t need it all once this fellow…wait. Do you suppose if we awarded him a posthumous trophy for making it around the corner that he’d take that as a sign he was finished? Silver, yes, Jenkins, with a mahogany base and….”
Blogsy Babbles 