It was just another mundane evening. I’d finished my shift, the kind where you just go through the motions, and was looking forward to the quiet of my apartment. Tossing the day’s worries aside with an empty can into the recycling bin, I headed towards my car. My mind was already drifting to dinner plans when I slid into the driver’s seat of my trusty Hyundai. As I shifted into reverse, ready to pull out of my parking spot, the Backup Camera For Car flickered to life, displaying the scene behind my vehicle. And that’s when I saw her.
Unsplash, Charlie Deets
Alt text: Eerie image from a car backup camera display showing an empty street, hinting at a ghostly presence related to car technology.
A little girl was there, in the grainy display of my car backup camera, seemingly playing in the street. Purple chalk in hand, she was engrossed in coloring on the asphalt. Living near an elementary school, seeing kids around wasn’t out of the ordinary. But something felt off.
I tapped the horn, a short beep to alert her, assuming she was just oblivious. She didn’t even flinch. Her small hand continued moving, purple chalk dancing across the pavement in the rearview camera display. Up and down. Up and down.
Lowering my window, I leaned out, trying to get a visual beyond the frame of the car itself. “Hey, kiddo? Can you move for a sec? Need to back out,” I called out, my voice a bit louder than usual.
Glancing back at the backup camera screen, she was still there, unmoving. This was getting strange. Annoyance mixed with a prickle of unease. I sighed, deciding to handle this directly. I opened my door, intending to gently guide her out of the way.
But when I stepped onto the street, she was gone. Vanished. And even more unsettling, there were no chalk markings on the ground. No trace of purple dust, nothing.
I stood there for a moment, a shiver crawling up my spine despite the warm evening air. Had I imagined it? Stress? Fatigue? Dismissing it as a momentary lapse, I got back into my car, backed out, and drove home, the image from the backup camera already fading in my rearview mirror.
A week later, the unsettling image returned. I was leaving a restaurant parking lot after grabbing a late bite with my sister. We’d lingered longer than planned, catching up and unwinding. As I reversed out of my parking space, there she was again, in the car’s backup camera.
This time, she was kneeling, bouncing a handball on the pavement, the rhythmic thump echoing in my mind even though I couldn’t actually hear it through the backup camera system. Who was this kid? And why was she always appearing in my rearview camera when I was trying to back up?
Stepping out of the car again, a knot of apprehension tightening in my stomach, I walked towards where she’d been displayed on my backup camera monitor. But just like before, the spot was empty. No girl, no ball, nothing. The parking lot was deserted except for my car and a few others parked further away.
This wasn’t just a coincidence. It was beyond strange. A disquieting thought began to form in my mind. Could this be something more than just a weird kid with an odd sense of humor?
Memories, dark and unwelcome, began to surface. Memories of Nikki. Nikki was a young girl, the same age as the one in my backup camera, who had tragically died in an accident involving my father years ago. He’d accidentally backed over her while she was selling lemonade, a horrific event that had haunted our family.
Could this be her? Nikki’s ghost, somehow manifesting in my backup camera, seeking some sort of…revenge? The thought sent a fresh wave of chills through me. My father had passed away earlier in the year. Was she now targeting me?
Or maybe… maybe it wasn’t revenge. Maybe it was a warning. I realized something unsettling. Both times I’d seen her in the backup camera display were after I’d had a drink. The first time, a couple of beers. The second, a Long Island Iced Tea. Could she be a bizarre, spectral consequence of my drinking? A ghostly nudge to change my ways?
Driven by this unsettling theory, I dug out old newspaper clippings about the accident. But the photo of Nikki in the article wasn’t the blonde, pale girl from my backup camera. Nikki was described as having darker skin and hair. This wasn’t her ghost.
So, what was it? A prank? Some kind of bizarre hallucination? Or something even more inexplicable? The idea, however outlandish, that stuck in my mind was that this could be a projection, a glimpse of a future I was heading towards if I didn’t change course. A future where, perhaps, I could be the one causing an accident.
The thought was enough to scare me straight. I decided to stop drinking, completely. No beer, no wine, nothing. For three weeks, I stayed sober. Then came a party.
I hadn’t intended to drink. But then I saw my ex. And old habits, fueled by awkwardness and a desire to numb uncomfortable feelings, kicked in. Wine coolers and jell-o shots followed.
Later, as I prepared to leave the party, the image of the girl in the backup camera flashed in my mind. This time, I was determined to be thorough. I checked around my car, peering into the trunk, under the hood, even underneath the wheels.
And that’s when I saw it – a tuft of yellow hair, peeking out from under the car.
(Oh no, not again)
I dropped to my knees, crawling under the car as far as I could. My fingers grasped the yellow strands and pulled. It wasn’t hair attached to a child. It was a doll. An oversized, creepy doll.
Xs were drawn over its eyes in purple chalk. Half of its body was dressed in a tight black fabric, eerily similar to the dress I was wearing. And there, on the doll’s ankle, was a star drawn in black marker. It looked just like my tattoo.
This had to be her. The little girl from the backup camera. She was real, in some twisted way. I could almost hear her laughter, picturing her watching me from behind the wheel, her face reflected in the backup camera screen.
And then, a terrifying realization hit me. She wasn’t the girl my father had killed. She wasn’t a warning about who I might kill.
She was the one who was going to kill me. And my backup camera, this piece of modern car technology designed for safety, was somehow her chosen method of delivering this chilling message.
