KRIS ASHTON

Several years ago I went on a road trip and, like Colin in this story, began to reflect on the crosses that dotted the highway, marking the precise spot where someone died behind the wheel. Later that week, back in the office, I mentioned these memorials to my boss. Why would a parent want to commemorate the site of their child’s fatal idiocy, I wondered with contempt. What rational reason could they have for advertising it to the world?

 

“It’s not rational,” said my boss. (His response would go on to appear verbatim in the story.)

 

A while later, I decided there was probably a good horror story in all those crosses and wreaths on the highway, perhaps a ghost tale in the vein of ‘Blue Diamond Pool’, but I could not come up with a worthwhile plot.

 

Then, in late 2017, I was driving along a busy road when I saw a man as described in the story: muscular, no shirt, waiting to cross the road with a bunch of flowers in hand. It was such a bizarre image that my gaze lingered longer than it should have and my car’s forward-collision alert began to shriek. The braking technology hit the anchors half a second faster than I could have and probably saved me from ploughing into the back of a truck that had stopped unexpectedly.

 

I consider myself a safe and competent driver for the most part, but that day I was chastened to the point of mortification. The conversation with my boss echoed back down to me, and I realised a person did not necessarily have to be a fool to lose his or her life in a motor vehicle accident. When I viewed those crosses from a humbler perspective, the story began to materialise in my mind.

 

‘Highway Memorials’ is an unusually literary story for me*. That, and its implied supernatural element, made it a perfect candidate for The Fiction Desk’s 2018 Ghost Story Competition. It duly won third prize and eligibility to appear in And Nothing Remains.

 

* Even if it is my second story featuring urinary distress – the other being the much pulpier ‘The Midway Hotel’. When you go on as many road trips as I do, I guess such concerns worm their way into your subconscious.

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