Missing a Smile / Empty Seats

Welcome to Scary Story Podcast. Going through our old memories can sometimes lead to sinister discoveries. In our second story, we hear about an accident and the thing that may have caused it. Are you ready? My name is Edwin, and here's a scary story. Every time I went inside, I would walk over to the bed, sit down and stare at the mountain of random things on the floor, and lay on the bed, wondering where I should start. I must have walked in there four or five times that night. Had always found something better to do instead, anything but clean that room. It was difficult enough already. Underneath the layers of the proper eggshell white paint was orange and green, the same color as of my braces when I was thirteen. I don't know what was there before, but from what I've heard, they were the scribbles on the wall with whatever colored crayons I could get a hold of. I'm sure college was exciting enough already. After living in the dorms for the first year, I had made friends that had found a house to live in. Mom was right, I was not going to be moving back home anytime soon. She grabbed an old certificate with a coupon to in and out. Along with the big green book, we both recognized certificate of excellence and a note of congratulations from a local burger place, along with a free hamburger or cheeseburger. I could not remember when I had gotten that, and Mom, careful as always, picked up the old picture album and pointed out the picture of me back when bangs actually looked good on my face. I was standing next to a teacher in a flowery dress and a huge red backpack on the floor next to my shoe, the certificate blocking out a huge smile that wrinkled my eyes. I still smile like that. We talked about it for a bit, and neither of us brought up why the coupon for the burger was still there and unused. The burger sounded good. Right about that time, Mom caught on and petted her knees with both hands, stood up, and told me that it was time to get back into it. If I kept going through everything one by one, I would never finish. What kind of person could go through everything in their childhood bedroom and decide on the three super basic piles that Mom swore by, one for keeping, one for trash, and one to give away. Photographs were the most difficult ones, so without looking I simply put them in the keeps file clothes. Almost all of them went to the giveaway pile, but the trash, well, there was no trash pile. I stick care of my things. Besides, nobody was in a rush to finish. My parents were scheduled to sell the house next year, and the feeling of overwhelming anxiety started taking over as I found myself once again staring at the ceiling, this time on the floor. I don't know where the strength came from. I managed to get back up and started searching around for the next thing to start to organize. Maybe if I focused only on the things from my closet, working with only a tiny area, maybe I feel more accomplished with something. I walked over to it, opened the closet door, and sat right by the front. The boxes and random things were on the top shelf, but I set a goal to clear the bottom. There it was again looking at the old baseball gloves, old trophies, and things like the shirts who made when we were about to leave middle school, even the dried up cresage for my very first school dance. Things that I could not remember. It took a lot out of me though going through everything, but adding things to the keep file wasn't that difficult. That's what I found myself doing. It was late now, a little after midnight, when I finally got to the last box old stuffed animals and dried up Halloween candy inside tiny orange plastic pumpkins. There were also some batteries, and then a black wrapped up bag at the bottom of a box. Mary. I couldn't help but smile, that's saying, the old thing looking right at me with her big green eyes. Somehow it looks so different this time. I just couldn't put my finger on why, and it would take a lot of digging, almost literally, to find out the reasons. There were lots of other things to go through, so at the time I simply smiled waited for it to drift away. Then I set it on top of my dresser as it watched me organize the rest of my room, and it did so for the next several days. I think that was it turning point. How they say that there was indeed a last time when your mother picked you up, the first time that you paid the bill for her, the last time someone tied your shoes and the first time that you tied them for yourself. It always seems easier to remember first than last. For me, something was different. It clicked in my mind when I set her down on that old piece of furniture. Maybe when I saw her again, noticing those strange lines around the composite plastic, lightly painted and sun burnt skin of her face. It could have been from the many times they dropped her in the yard and left her out in the sun. There could have been something else. The first night, after moving everything off my bed and shaking the sheets to get rid of the twenty year old dust that had likely fallen on it, I felt a bit heavier. If you have ever tried to put words to a sensation that comes to you in a memory, that uneasiness you get when you know that something is there, like the name of your best friend in elementary school and you just can't think of it. But when you try a new food and it has an ingredient that you're familiar with but cannot identify. That's what this was. I wanted to remember when I stopped playing with Mary and why she was wrapped up with a black bag and tape that today would leave me with such a sinister image of the way you wrap up a corpse. You're about to get rid of it forever. But of course, in the innocence of my childhood, I had no idea what I was doing. I tried to talk myself off the topic. Once I was staring at the moving headlights from somewhere outside, sweeping through my curtains and crawling from the side walls and to the ceiling and fading into the opposite wall of my room. I wish I wouldn't have prodded so much. I fought back to my fourth birthday with memories far too distant to not be made up of only photographs that I was shown after I was much older. I think my earliest memory started when I joined t ball, or I remember fighting for the playto table at daycare. But I thought of just how many friends my parents used to have when I was little. I mean, from looking at the pictures they brought, cool gifts and everything. I think one of them gave me the doll with the black hair and green eyes. Vaguely, I remember the comment about how great it was to have a doll that looked just like me. There it was, I opened my eyes wide and stared up at the popcorn ceiling. Once again, I saw myself playing with it, sharing a spot with me in the car. I remembered her sitting on a tiny plastic chair across from me. That's the time I was serving us both a plate of fake plastic fruits and vegetables. The way he looked at me without blinking, and fear I felt spreading through my body. How my eyes were fixed on it when I saw its head turned to its side. The way I screamed and yelled, kicking at the table in the chair, sending the doll flying right into the wall for I ran, screaming for Mom, who ran toward me as I tripped and hit my nose against the railing of the staircase. The way she laughed, I mean the way Mom laughed, not the doll slight nervousness in her tone. If, just what if her daughter was right? Maybe it was for my noseweed. I looked at her green eyes turned slightly away from me. Just to make those memories a little more real, I smiled, knowing that so many things could have happened for me to imagine that thing turning away from me, that I might have gotten scared for no reason at all. The next day, Mom walked up to me with another box. I was annoyed, obviously, and I was maybe four or five boxes away from finishing, and I didn't have any other things to soar through. She was holding something in her hand, the picture of my birthday party when I was little, A cardboard box opened carefully and sat on the gift table. I was standing next to my dad and their friends, holding Mary in front of me, a huge smile on my face. She did kind of look like me, same puffy cheeks and same smile. Hey watch it, mom said, as the photo slipped away from my hand. The hard, plastic, immovable, composite face of the thing was smiling at me in that picture. I turned my hand to the dresser. It's cold, dead eyes looking right at me. This time, something was indeed different. There was no smile. The following story is called empty Seats, and it is coming up right after this. The orange light was finally moving away from my eyes as I saw the dark claws against the trees begin to stretch high up above me. It was one of those times when stillness wakes you up, like when you were a kid. And you got home, and you only knew it because of the rumble of the car. Was no longer there trees. I was in the trees, or one of them now. No. My neck was hurting from trying to look all around me. Though I was most comfortable staring right up at the sky. I didn't know how long I had been there. Frankly, I didn't really care. All I wanted to do was stare up at the sky from the hole in the glass of the windshield. It didn't hurt to look up like it did to look around me. A bunch of birds were commanded to get up and fly, just like they did at the park, all at once, way up to the top of the trees, their wings stopping once they were all settled into their branches. For I knew it, it was dark outside. The happy birds turned into the hoots of owls and those who were hunting with her teeth. It was only at that thought that I started feeling ants crawling up and down my arms and in my legs. I reached up to my face, too curious to stop. When my elbow started hurting. I could feel the sticky blood on the side of my face, gluing my hair to my forehead in a crusty paste, burning to the touch. To my left, I heard something stepping around the car. All the windows were closed except for the cracks in the front that were only covered by a broken windshield wiper twisted away from the car. I tried so hard to remember what had happened. I was looking for clues all around me as I reached to unbuckle my seatbelt, only to find out it had already been clicked open. The movements once again, something growling around the car. I stayed as silent as I could, holding my breath and trying to close my eyes as I heard it give up and walk away. Whatever it was it had stopped to investigate and given up, and now was my turn. I waited a few more minutes, just to make sure that nothing was around me before I reached for the white styrofoam cup from the donut shop, the one we had stopped at before turning onto the highway. We Paulette and Mike both in the car with me. Sandy was driving. I heard it all over again, the radio and the laughter. We were making fun of Sandy for the pink donut she got that turned out to be filled with jelly, something she had told us she hated more than anything in the world. I reached for the side of my face just to make sure it was really blood. Yeah, it was empty. Seats. Mike's backpack on the footrist behind me. I had never seen him without it. It must have been the same one he had in high school, stitched up with patches of metal bands so obscure, I'm sure they were all made up. I remembered to look in Paulette's eyes as she pointed to the side of the road before everything started going blurry. The sounds around me once more. Somebody lurking around the tree trunk that had stopped the car from going further down the hill and faced it up toward the branches. I could hear her breathing. Paulette Mike. I whispered, trying to yell as I looked at the stillness of the woods, now surrounded by shadows. Someone laughed. I looked out over the trees to my left and maybe I was asleep. Maybe I was dreaming, and I would wake up from this at any moment. I thought of the song. That was the way the girl from the side of the road looked at us. Sandy screamed first, and it was all scrapes from branches against the glass in the frame of the rental car. As it plummeted down the side of the road. Mike screened for Sandy to hit the brakes. I wasn't sure exactly when everything became silent, but I do remember the laughter, same one approaching from above the trees. In my days or whatever it was, I remembered a woman in a green dress approaching the car. Her face twisted and mismatched, her elbows turned to the other side as she warped and twisted toward my passenger side window. I shut my eyes, trying to make all of these visions go away, leading with myself to please snap out of it. There was nothing there. I could see some lights in the distance, and it reflects of the side mirrors, no matter how hard I tried to squeeze my eyes shut, then carefully I opened them. She was right there, her face firmly against the glass. She opened her mouth as if to tell me something, but only flashed her yellow teeth as she laughed and floated behind the car. She looked oddly familiar. I felt the pressure of the dashboard against my legs. This time it squeezed me enough to let me know that my legs were still there, that if I tried hard enough, I could move the seat just a little bit and get out of there. The moon was showing through the branches now, and the same lights with the laughter were getting closer. I needed to get out. I moved my elbow to the side of the seat and pulled on the lever. The car seat bent backwards abruptly, and I plopped against Mike's backpack. I grabbed it, fling through everything to try to find his phone. But what was I thinking? Of course he would take it with him, where was mine. I tried to turn my hand below the glove compartment and then reach under the seat to slide the seat back, but it was no use. The laughing lights were now behind me, coming closer and wiggling through the trees, yellow teeth growing bigger as it got closer to me. Once again, fingers finally felt the lever under the seat. I squeezed with all my might to try to move the seat, and I could feel it nudging away from the dashboard and my legs. I looked at the mirror. It was too late she was there, and I shut my eyes. There was a flash of light bouncing from the mirror and against my face now, and that's when I heard it. Can you hear me? Are you okay? It was Paulette, a red roper on the top of the car, followed by the straps is secured in place. Several people with bright lights were all around me. I'm all right, I remember yelling out. Paulette explained to me that Mike and Sandy were out by the road getting medical help, that we had been in an accident, that I had been stuck and they decided to get me help, and that it had only been about an hour. It was a long night, and we were all sitting by the lobby of a random motel where we were going to be staying. Phone calls had been made and the car was being pulled out. We had all gotten our stuff safely out of the woods. We were left with the same good bye words, get some rest, okay. Sandy must have been feeling guilty because she had not said a word. She even passed over the phone to Mike when her mom called, not a single comment. I understood she had been driving, and I know that we could have all gotten seriously hurt, but it was an accident, yet she avoided eye contact with me. Paulette, who was sharing a room with Mike, went to the room first. Mike tried to make conversation with Sandy, who just sat there, entering into different modes of intensely staring at me from across the center table between us. I try not to notice. When I would look over to her, it would take her a little longer than usual to look away and pretend she wasn't staring at me. There was two or so in the morning now, and Mike was falling asleep in his chair. He twitched a little, got up and said good night, rubbing his face with both hands. Sandy, are you all right, I asked her. She only stared at me. Sandy, I know you saw her too, and I want to talk to you about it. Please. She looked at me, waiting for me to finish. I explained to her that I had seen her and that I was scared too. That girl on the side of the road. She could have startled anybody. She glared at me, expecting me to continue if she knew that I had seen the girl. While I was waiting there by myself, so I told her what I could remember. I nearly started crying, remembering the creepy look on her face and that strange familiarity that I simply could not identify. She stared right at me, Amy, you really didn't see her? I just told her that I had. What was she thinking? Sandy walked over to me and sat on the table right in front. Amy, you really didn't see her, Amy, she asked. I didn't know what to say. Amy, that was you. You were the ones standing on the side of the road. Scary Story podcast is written and produced by me Edwin Kovarobas. You can reach me by email or through scarystorypodcast dot com with the link and the other information in the description of this episode. Check out the other podcast from scary FM by looking for true Scary Story or a Dark Memory through the search bar. Thank you very much for listening. Let see you soon.