The Phantom Hitchhiker - Short story I wrote, looking for feedback

[Paradukes]

Okay, so I wrote this thing a while back as part of my English GCSE. Technically, we were supposed to do a drama based around the old urban legend of the phantom hitchhiker (You know the one, where a driver picks up a hitchhiker, but the hiker disappears and it turns out he's been dead for years). While I was hashing out a script for it, I decided to play with the old story and see what I could come up with, and this was the result. I was curious to see what people thought about it.

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The Phantom Hitchhiker

It was a dark and stormy night. To be fair, it wasn’t so much stormy as blustery, but some stories just require a dark and stormy night. And the weather was pretty bad.

It was one hell of a night for the Birkenhead constabulary. They were short-staffed as it was, and when the Mersey incident happened, Constable Amanda Marsden was left covering for about ten people at once. And now she had to deal with this...

“Constable Marsden”, she said, introducing herself to the young man following her.
“David Finchley”, he replied, proffering a hand. Not wanting to appear rude, she gave it a perfunctory shake.
She led him through to a spare desk and sat him down, taking the seat opposite him.
“Now, Mister Finchley-” she began, but he cut across her, saying, “Please, call me Dave”.
She frowned at him.
“Mister Finchley,” she repeated, “Please understand, this is not a good night for me. There’s been an incident, and we’ve called for all-hands-on-deck, except most of the hands are unavailable. I’m coordinating from the station, which means I’m running about five jobs at once. I don’t mean to appear rude, but you have until that phone-” she gestured at a phone sitting on the desk behind her, “-rings, to keep talking. I can’t give you any more time than that.” She took out a small notepad and poised a pen over it before continuing, “So I understand you want to report a missing person, is that correct?”
“Yes, that’s right. She said her name was Jessica Albright.”
Amanda raised an eyebrow, “‘She said’? Do you actually know this woman?”
“Well no,” David responded, “I only just met her tonight.”
Constable Marsden nodded, “I see. And she disappeared…?”
“About an hour ago,” David replied, unabashed.
The constable raised her other eyebrow.
“And it didn’t occur to you that she might not be interested in you and gave you the slip?” she asked.
David frowned, “It’s not that she disappeared, it’s the way she disappeared.” He said, somewhat defensively.

Amanda glanced over her shoulder. The phone still wasn’t ringing. On the one hand, this meant that things weren’t getting any worse, but on the other hand, it meant she had to sit here and listen to someone complaining about a date running out on them.
“And just how did this woman ‘Disappear’?” She asked, deciding to humour him.
David folded his arms across his chest, now clearly on the defensive. “She disappeared into thin-air from a speeding car without so much as opening the door.”
If Amanda’s eyebrows had gone any higher at this point, they would have been in danger of leaving her face altogether.
“Ok,” she said, “Perhaps you’d better take it from the top.”
David uncrossed his arms and frowned in concentration.
“Well I was heading home earlier, and I saw a girl trudging home in the rain. We were heading the same way, so I figured I’d stop and ask if she needed a lift.”
“You stopped to pick up a hitchhiker?” Marsden asked, cutting him off.
“Well come on. On a night like this,” David gestured to the rain lashing at the windows, “You have to have a heart. Besides,” David grinned, “She looked kind of cute.”
Marsden rolled her eyes, “Death by libido is a terrible way to go. But please continue.”
David nodded, “Well we were chatting a bit, and I think we hit it off. But when I was driving through a tunnel, she vanished.”
David stopped speaking, apparently thinking this covered everything.
“She… What? Just vanished?”
“Yup. Into thin air. One moment we were talking, the next moment she’s gone. I never stopped the car, and she definitely didn’t have time to get out.”
Marsden blinked a few times, as though hoping this would make things clearer. It didn’t. “So what happened next?” She asked.
“Well the traffic was backing up behind me, so I couldn’t turn around and search for her, so I figured I may as well come here. I thought you might have had a report of something like this happening before, or something.”
“Of people getting yanked out of cars while they’re travelling at high-speed?” Marsden responded, now laying the irony on thick, “You’d be amazed how many reports like that we don’t get.”
David was now looking distinctly crestfallen, and she relented.
“Alright,” she said, “At least tell me when and where this happened.”
“About…” David mused, scratching his head, “10:30-ish. It was that tunnel close to the train station, you know? With the busted lighting and the really narrow-”
“The Mersey Tunnel?” Amanda asked, interrupting him.
“Ah… Yea, I think that’s what it’s called.” David nodded.
“Mr Finchley, there was an accident at the Mersey Tunnel at around 10:30. That’s when you were driving through, right? You would have been there around the time it occurred. We still don’t know what caused it. Any details you can give me would help out tremendously.”
“Uh…” David said, clearly lost for words, “Well that’s pretty much it, I mean I wasn’t there very long…” his voice trailed off.
“The woman,” said Marsden impatiently, “What was her name?”
“Jessica Albright.”
Marsden started writing furiously, and motioned David to continue.
“Describe her to me.” She said.
David turned his eyes to the ceiling in thought. “Blonde, blue eyes, around my age, about five-foot-seven, fairly light-weight… Cute…”
Amanda finished writing all this down, before standing up.
“I’ll make a call, see if anyone matching that description was involved. Keep thinking. Anything you tell us could be important.”
She turned, and picked up the phone.

“Constable Benson?” she asked, when someone picked up on the other end, “There’s a man here who might have information about the accident. I need you to check through everyone involved. You’re looking for a woman named Jessica Albright. She’s blonde, about five-seven, mid to light-weight, around twenty years old,” Amanda paused, rolled her eyes and continued, “And ‘Kind of cute’. Get back to me as soon as you have anything.”

She hung up and turned back to David.
“Please, tell me exactly what happened. Don’t leave anything out.”
“Well like I said, we were going into that tunnel. All the lights are busted, so it was pitch black. The rain was making the road slippery as hell, and of course, it’s so damned narrow in there you can barely squeeze past the cars on the other side. We were just talking, and I think we were almost out the other side when she vanished.”
“She just vanished? Just like that? Nothing else happened? How did you even know she was gone?”
“Well she stopped talking, but it was still dark, so I couldn’t see she was gone until we… well… until I got out the other side.”
“And that was it? Did anything else happen?”
David frowned, as though remembering something that didn’t willingly spring to mind.
“I… I think there was a flash of light just before she vanished. Come to think of it, I could have sworn I heard something. I think someone slammed on their horn.”

The phone rang, ending David’s train of thought.
Amanda answered it and said nothing for a minute or so, other than the occasional “Uh huh,” or “Yea,”, and finally “Is that right? Call me the instant you have anything else.”
She turned back to the table and sat down again, fixing David with her most intensive interrogative look.
“That was Constable Benson. He had very interesting news. Miss Albright was indeed involved in the accident. She was in one of two cars that collided nearly head-on. She’s already in the hospital, and she should be fine. The driver wasn’t so lucky. Would you care to explain how she managed to get from your car to the one she was found in?”
“I have no idea!” David spluttered, “I’ve been telling you-”
Amanda slammed her knuckles down on the desk and rose from her seat, leaning over the desk and glaring into David’s terrified eyes.
“I think you’re lying through your teeth, Mister Finchley.” She said, her own teeth clenched, “I think you know far more than you’re letting on. I think you were involved in that accident - maybe even caused it. I think you came up with this cock and bull story as an excuse to find out what happened to Miss Albright. You were in that car, weren’t you? What did you do, distract the driver? Made him crash? And then what, you jumped out and legged it, not even bothering to check if anyone else was ok? What I can’t figure out is how you grew a conscience, or why you thought this would be the best way to find out what happened to them.”
By now David was stammering with fright, “I swear I was driving my own car! I wasn’t involved in the accident! I didn’t even know there was an accident until you told me!”
“I want answers, Mister Finchley. Start talking!” Amanda thundered.
“I swear, I was just driving.” David said, trying to stay calm, “I never stopped. I don’t remember anything else happening.
“You had better start remembering.” Amanda said, glaring at him.

The phone rang again. Amanda turned to pick it up, but shot a final glare over her shoulder. “Think fast, Mister Finchley.” She said, and then answered the phone.
“I… I don’t… I never stopped…” David stammered, and then frowned as recollection started to dawn.
“I remember…” he said to himself, “I remember the brakes… I stepped on the brakes but never stopped…”
Amanda stuck a finger in one ear, while holding the phone to the other. “Speak up, I can hardly hear you.” She said, addressing the phone in her hand.
Behind her, David continued to ramble to himself, “Why didn’t I stop…? I stepped on the brakes…” An expression of puzzlement was forming on his face now, “It was the rain… It made everything so slippery… The tyres didn’t grip anything. We skidded. I couldn’t stop…”
The puzzlement vanished, only to be replaced by sheer horror. “Neither could the other car. Oh god…”

“What was that?” Amanda was asking over the phone, “You identified the dead driver?” She picked up her notepad again and asked, “Ok, what was his name?”
A few seconds later she nearly dropped the phone.
“David Finchley? Are you sure?”
She spun around, but David was gone.
“What did he look like?!” she nearly shouted, “Curly brown hair, glasses?”
The other constable must have conveyed confused confirmation, because she said “Lucky guess,” and dropped the phone on its cradle.
“Mister Finchley?” she called. There was no answer.
“David?” she tried, heading to the door. Again, there was no answer.

The building was empty, save for her.

“Mister Finchley…? Hello…?”

[Dude Meister]

A week with no feedback? Poor you. I shall do something about that in the form of... Feedback! I do it by reading the piece and writing down whatever thoughts hit me as they come. So sentences at the top are my impressions from the beginning, sentences at the end from the end and so on.

Lol at the first line. Taking a cliche and changing it to something else is always good fun.

Some simple grammar errors around- did you proof-read this? Could do with some fixing. Especially the commas. Way too many of 'em. Some should be full stops, some should just be ommitted.

Hmm you got potential, buddy. Could do with a bit more life. Good personality in the narration, but the characters seem a bit lacking. Or generic, at any rate. Heh, strongly reminds me of the way I wrote when I was doing my GCSEs.

I love Amanda's eyebrows. Little things like that are what makes a story special and not generic. Keep it up.

Huh, when referring to Amanda, you sometimes write "Amanda" and sometimes "Marsden". Such inconsistencies can be annoying, so I'd stick to using either just the first name or just the last name if I were you. And I take back what I said earlier, this woman doesn't feel generic. As for David... meh.

"laying the irony on thick" - I think 'sarcasm' would be more appropriate than 'irony' in this context.

At this point (David mentions a 'flash') I have nothing to say other than I have been pulled in and am enjoying it. Less grammar mistakes here too.

Write "Yeah" not "Yea". It's just one step from that to "Ye" and then the next thing u kno nothings written rite

OH OH! Inb4 David actually died in the crash.

I don't get why people in stories get really mad over assumptions. Maybe it's just because I'm a very calm person.

Oh man she ignored him when he finally starts remembering.
...Wait, what? Wasn't she just screaming at him to remember a second ago? Now she's blocking him out? Isn't that a little inconsistent? It's a good plot device, I guess, but when you think about it her behaviour at this point doesn't really make sense.

In after David actually died in the crash. Totally saw it coming :smug:

An interesting twist on the original legend here. I like. Keep writing, you could become great. That's the key, just keep at it, keep improving your skills and keep learning new stuff. Nobody's ever going to be perfect, but you can at least become a good writer. I think you have that much in you.

[Big Dumb Patriot]

Really sharply written piece, my man. You do an excellent job of balancing out the details and the description, making an easily visualized scene which doesn't feel bogged down by unnecessary details. All in all, there are very few complaints I have with your style of narration for this piece, it actually felt very appropriate given the tone of the story, but I do have a suggestion for improving the story [i]itself[/i]: the constable's disinterest turned far too rapidly into an unshakable conviction that Finch was a guilty party. That was unnatural, it was choppy. Obviously the news that Albright is actually a real person, and that she was involved with the accident, would raise some questions in Amanda's mind, but the leap that she took when she heard the news was far too wide--totally unlike how I'd expect any right-minded person to receive the news.

[professor cool.]

jeez, so many short story threads lately

[Dude Meister]

creative work in a forum about creative work!? Blasphemy!

[professor cool.]

nah im just saying, usually there aren't a lot of short story threads, but there are like 4 on the front page now