The Tale of the Shiny Red Bicycle
And we end with a story that somehow managed to haunt me TWICE in different mediums. This entry for the Midnight Society follows Mike who is haunted by the ghost of his best friend. At the beginning, Mike and his friend Ricky are racing their bikes through town and down by a waterfall dam. The boys stop on the bridge to chat about the upcoming fishing season when Ricky leans on the railing too hard and it breaks sending him over the edge. Mike grabs him by his backpack but the strap begins to slip. Ricky slides out of Mike’s hand and into the rushing water below. Flash to a teen who sits up screaming in bed and we realize Mike is in high school now but plagued with dreams of his dead friend. The next day, Mike starts seeing Ricky’s ghost everywhere and he’s sent home for the rest of the week resigned to bed rest which means he’ll miss the first day of fishing season with his little brother.
Ricky’s ghostly face has haunted me for years and was made worse by a book I read in 5th grade called “On My Honor”. The book is about two boys who race their bikes down to a nearby river and when one of the boys drowns during a swimming race the other feels so guilty that he starts seeing his dead friend around town and in one particularly creepy scene, in the shower.
The moral of the story is don’t play by rivers. Even if you’re an adult.