The Hitchhiker

Vancouver, BC, version

By Jason Edward Collinge

I was driving from UBC to my home in Richmond, BC and decided to take Northwest Marine Drive behind the Anthropology Museum and the Nitobe Garden and past Wreck Beach.  It was early dawn in late September.  The rainy season had started and puddles on the road were shimmering in the light from my headlights.

I was very drowsy as I past University Boulevard and started along the curves to Agronomy Road, but I woke up when I saw a beautiful young woman standing on the treed side of the road.  She was dressed in the typical blue-jeans and T-shirt of a university student, but she had neither shoes nor coat and carried no umbrella despite the chill rain that was falling.

I pulled over and asked if I could help her.  She said that her date had gotten furious when she had stopped his advances and had made her get out and walk. I offered to take her home and she accepted. 

She didn’t talk much as I turned the car around and headed back to the student residences at Gage Towers near Brock Hall on the north end of the campus.

When we got there, I got out and came around the car like a gentleman to open the door for her, but when I lifted the door handle, she was gone.  I couldn’t understand it, and shaking my head, got back in my car and drove home to Richmond.

The next day, when I arrived for classes, the campus was abuzz with the news of a missing student.  

I stopped at the SUB for a coffee, and though I feared the answer, casually asked the barista at Blue Chip Cookies who was missing.  

“Why, Mary, of course!” she said with surprise.  “Where have you been?”  Then she explained that Mary had been on a date near Wreck Beach and her body was discovered there around noon by two late-season swimmers.  She had been dead for over fourteen hours.  I was about the fifth person that day to have given her a ride home!  It sure shook me up knowing that I had given a lift to a ghost.

I just hope she eventually gets home, but I don’t envy the student who takes up residence in her old room when she does finally get there.

~ The End ~