"Series 42"

Miller Clark pressed on the brake and pulled to the side of the highway. It was flat grasslands for miles all around, so the figure on the shoulder's black outline stood out as the only object of interest on the horizon. Miller was from an era before hitchhikers were regarded as dangerous, so when he saw the fellow on the side of the road, he had no reason not to stop. He reached over and rolled down the passenger window as he neared the figure. The young man was neat; a clean-shaven fellow, not of the type you'd expect to find hitchhiking. Younger than you'd think to see hitchhiking, too. Young enough for Miller to think of him as a boy. He wore glasses and had on a large coat that flowed behind him in the wind. He shielded his eyes from the sun as he looked in at Miller in the driver's seat, casting a dark shadow over his skinny, almost gaunt, face. "Hello there."
"You're a long way from, well, anywhere, at the moment. Do you need a lift?" Miller asked of the willowy young man. He seemed, wispy, almost insubstantial, underneath his shroud-like coat.
"Why, yeah, a lift would be super, 'specially in a ride like this." He spoke of Miller's car. It was a classic, a Cadillac Series 42 Deluxe, made just after the war, and it ran, and looked, like a dream.
"Come on in, then. Just put my briefcase in the back, there." He opened the door, moved the briefcase, and then sat down in the passenger's seat. He looked around the interior of the car, then removed his glasses and looked again. "Is this a . Series 42?" he asked, incredulous.
"Matter of fact, it is." The boy held his hand out the window, feeling the wind flow around his arm. He brought his wiry limb back in, running it along the smooth metal of the door.
"Gee. Well, I have to thank you for stopping to pick me up. Sunny as it may be, the wind makes it mighty cold out there." Miller was surprised anyone could be cold in a jacket like that, no matter the wind-chill. "And I wouldn't want to be on these roads when the sun isn't out." The boy smiled, obviously in possession of some knowledge that Miller wasn't privy to. "It's rather ironic that the reason I'm so glad you picked me up also happens to be a Series 42, huh?"
"Pardon?" Miller took his eyes of the road, momentarily. The boy had taken off his glasses and was polishing them with a small square of cloth that squeaked as it rubbed against the smooth lenses.
"You know, certainly?"
"Know what?"
"About the ghost? The ghost of that Series 42 that drives around here." Miller stared at the boy. He had thought the boy looked rather educated, he even would have said that he looked intelligent beyond his age, but he then realized that the he was a fool. It takes a superstitious man to believe in a ghost, but only a fool would believe in a haunted car. Miller smiled at the boy.
"You're joking, surely?"
"Of course not, sir." His glasses were on again, and he was looking straight at Miller, in all seriousness. "It's a big legend around these parts. Why, you must not be from around these parts, then. What brings you out here?"
"I'm. delivering a product to a customer." Miller said in a slightly bewildered fashion. He felt disoriented, he couldn't remember what he was delivering, or to whom. But he kept it to himself, hoping he'd sort it out.
"Ah, wow. Oh! I never introduced myself! If my mother was here, she'd have smacked me for being so rude. I'm Lucifer Sinclair. My mom always said I was named after my father- he left us when I was born. It's an odd name, but it's mine." He flashed Miller a toothy smile. "What about you?"
"I'm Miller Clark. I'm named after my pa, too, as a matter of fact." Miller wasn't named after his pa, and he had no idea why he said he was.
"Well, whaddya know, huh?" He paused for a moment, watching the stripes on the highway flicker by. "Oh, yeah, let me get back to story. So they say a big, black Series 42, a Deluxe, as a matter of fact-"
"This is a deluxe." Miller said, proudly.
"Well, by golly. This is just getting weirder and weirder, huh? It's black too, isn't it?" Miller nodded. "Let me get on with the story, if I may. It goes like this: There's this big, black Series 42 Deluxe that drives these roads at night, causing all sorts of mayhem: driving people off the road, smashing into bikers, and just mowing down people on the side of the road- very brutal. You can understand why I wouldn't want to be out with something like that about."
The boy seemed to be getting nervous, and his hands trembled slightly. "Do you mind if I smoke?" Miller nodded his head tersely, and the boy withdrew a cigarette from his coat and brought it to his mouth. As he watched the boy light it, Miller realized that he did mind, and that he hated tobacco. His sense of confusion swelled, but he kept to himself, not wanting to agitate the boy.
"They say that the car haunts these roads because the driver," the boy continued, "I think he was a car salesmen or something, had just left his wife and baby daughter at home, to deliver the car to some rich fellow, when, slam-" He made a gesture, hitting his palm with his fist, knocking a smattering of ash from his cigarette and drawing a look a of distaste from Miller before continuing, "He gets smashed into by a truck illegally passing in the opposite direction. Killed instantly. I guess the car wasn't ready to go yet, especially having just been all fixed up. Maybe it didn't like the mechanics touching him so much, eh?" The boy smiled wryly at Mille, obviously self-satisfied with his innuendo. "Then again, maybe it just doesn't like people. They say he was listening to Mozart when it happened, so you always know that it's nearby if you hear Mozart playing on these roads. Spooky, huh?"
Miller felt the car speed up, but his foot wasn't on the gas. "Hey, what do you do?" Lucifer inquired. Miller's chest tightened. A realization was slowly creeping up on him, something that was rattling around his head that he knew, but was constantly forgetting.
"I'm a used car salesmen." He replied. As the sun set, Miller suddenly felt bad for the boy next to him. He had been partially right in what he had said, the Series 42 was brutal, fatally so, but he was mistaken in thinking that it only drove at night. Miller sighed- he was only the driver, the Series 42 was the one with the insatiable hunger for death. He looked at the boy and he hated being a ghost, and he hated his rotten memory.
The radio went on by itself, Mozart crackling from the speakers, and it was far too late for the boy to escape his fatal mistake.