WILMINGTON – It was late.
Raindrops where beginning to kamikaze themselves onto the windshield of David’s car as he drove down this unremarkable stretch of Highway 70 in central North Carolina.
He was currently making this trek four nights a week; his company had decided to transfer him an hour and a half away from home to help start up their new Greensboro location.
His house in Raleigh was still on the market and he wasn’t about to pay two mortgages.
So he drove.
The route was familiar to him by now and his tired brain, just off another 12-hour shift, was greatly enjoying the rhythmic “whip-whop” of his windshield wipers as they fought off the never-ending onslaught of suicidal raindrops that continued to emerge out of the darkness.
With his brain more than content in its soupy dullness, David almost didn’t register the figure standing on the side of the road, cleanly cut from the darkness by the car’s headlights.
The figure was a young girl, with long black hair matted to her forehead.
She was shaking in her soaking wet white dress and desperately waved her arms towards David as he slowed to a stop in front of her and flicked his high beams.
There were no houses on this particular stretch of road and David did not see a broken down car or any other indication as to how this girl had come to be standing on the side of the road in the middle of the night during a torrential rainstorm.
It was as if she had simply … appeared.
It was raining harder now and David was determined to help this poor young woman.
Fat drops of rain relentlessly smashed into the pavement between the girl and David’s car.
The exploding rain drops where illuminated by David’s high beams; the shadows that were thrown and scattered caused the girl to appear to approach in a jittering, articulating way that bothered David somewhere down deep.
He ignored the feeling as the girl reached the car and opened the back door.
The deafening roar of rain that rushed into the warm, quiet interior of David’s vehicle was snuffed out as quickly as it had arrived as the girl crawled into the back seat and shut the door behind her.
She told David that her name was Lydia and had just come from a school dance and was just trying to get home.
She gave him an address not too far from where they were, and David set off in that direction.
He looked at the girl from the rear-view mirror and asked if she was okay.
What happened? Where you by yourself? How long had you been out there?
Dozens of other questions that continued to pop into his mind.
She answered his inquiries with vague, soft noises and kept repeating that she just wanted to go home.
He thought she may be in shock and decided to leave her alone and let her rest.
Lydia laid down in the backseat, away from the streaming street lights overhead, quietly shivering as they drove.
Eventually, the two pulled into the driveway of the address that Lydia had given and David parked.
He leaned into the backseat to tell Lydia that they had arrived.
But Lydia was gone.
David jumped out of the car and flung open the back door to find no trace of the girl whom he had just driven home.
He was still standing there, stunned, when a light on the front porch of the home blinked on.
An old woman came out onto the porch and motioned for David to come up, out of the rain.
He did so, and before he could speak, the woman produced a framed picture of a young, dark haired woman and handed it to David.
It was Lydia.
He looked up from the photograph to the old woman and managed a “wha-“ before she interrupted him.
“Thank you, young man, for getting my Lydia out of the cold rain and bringing her home to me. You are not the first to do so, and I imagine, will not be the last. You see, Lydia died many years ago in a car accident on her way home from a school dance and I’m afraid she has been trying to get home to me ever since.”
US HWY 70-A has many twists and turns as it winds it’s way between Raleigh and Greensboro. One such bend in the road will bring you to an overgrown underpass known as Lydia’s Bridge. It is there that many folks have claimed to see – and even pick up – a weary hitchhiker in a white dress that never quite makes it back home.
