Optiv’s Chilling Ghost Story

Our tour in Slovakia had been wicked, even though it was a whirlwind tour through the biting Baltic winter. My last gig was in a western city called Senica, an hour from Bratislava—nothing special, apart from its cheese dumplings and castle that cast a mid-morning shadow over the deserted town most of the day. At night, however, the place came alive. The bars hummed, and when the chess-playing grandparents had left the parks, the night began. The gig Lost Souls was rammed. The place was a sweatbox, and the vibe was sick. When my set was finished, I walked outside to wait for my driver, Sergei, to take me back to the capital. The cold hit me like a tub of Ben and Jerry’s. Sergei’s iron-curtain Lada Niva chugged round the corner, and I jumped into the passenger seat. It was colder inside than out.

“We were about 30 minutes from Bratislava, where the farm road turns to highway, and that’s where we saw it…”

“Heating broken,” Sergei said, handing me a pair of gloves. This was going to be a long hour’s drive.

We headed out of town. The birch trees that lined the only road into Senica looked like skeletons dripping icicles. I shivered and rubbed my hands together, more for something to do than to generate heat. Despite the cold, I drifted off to sleep.

I woke to the sound of the motor turning over with that slow drawl of a dying battery. “Battery broken,” Sergei said, handing me a torch.

Sergei popped the hood, and we both stared at the motor, then at each other. I was hoping that this Slovakian would have a miracle cure, but he rattled a few wires, sprayed some WD40 on the battery terminals, and hit the tires for good measure. I scanned the road with the torch, catching the snowflakes falling in the beam of the light, and then I caught something else—a movement, a glint, a dark shadow—moving toward us. A bear? Do they have bears here, I thought.

“Car broken,” said Sergei, getting out his phone.

I kept the torch on the shadow moving toward us.

“Signal broken,” said Sergei, staring at the body appearing out of the mist.

“Problem?” said the man, sucking his teeth back into his chin. He stared down at the motor, scratching at the bailing twine that held his trousers around the circumference of his waist.

“Battery,” said Sergei.

The man took a file—the sort used to sharpen chainsaws. Sergei and I looked at each other. The man got on the ground and disappeared under the chassis. We heard a grinding noise, like that which you would hear in the dentist’s chair. Then the man got up, shook our hands and said, “Turn her, she’ll go.”

We did, and she fired into life. We turned back to thank the man, but he was gone. So we jumped back in the car and set off, laughing at the strangeness of the encounter and our good luck.

We were about 30 minutes from Bratislava, where the farm road turns to highway, and that’s where we saw it: the green and yellow of an upturned John Deere tractor and the impaled body of a farmer, the cord of his trousers wound around the shank of the chisel plough.

Follow Optiv on Facebook | Twitter