Chasing Down the Devil on the Taconic State Parkway

Once upon a time, when my father was a young man, he was chased by the Devil while driving southbound on the Taconic State parkway. Prior to this paranormal encounter, the Taconic had always been a long, lackadaisical scenic splay of pavement for our family, the link between New York, where we lived, and New England, where our Grandparents quaint little home lay. On the day that The Devil tried to get my Dad, he had dropped off my mother and brothers and me in Massachusetts for a visit, and then had turned around to drive back home. I don’t know why. The particulars are unknown to me and forgotten by him, lost to time. What he can recount, in great chilly, detail, is that while driving back on the darkened parkway, he had caught a glimpse of something in his side mirror, and had suddenly realized that a man was running up along the side of his car, grinning and panting and reaching for him. My father had blinked hard and stared in the mirror in horror at this creature, recognizing him at once as The Devil. He had stomped his foot hard on the gas and sped up, trying to outrun the ghoul, but when he checked his side mirror, there it was again, keeping pace, gunning for him. He had hit the gas hard again and sped ahead, and then, in the split second it took for him to glance again in his side mirror again, he found himself jerking awake, wide eyed and in a cold sweat as he sped southbound like a demon in the night.

He thought, “What the hell just happened?”

He gripped the steering wheel in a panic.

“Did I fall asleep at the wheel?”

Both prospects frightened him immensely.

All the way home he trembled with panic and perspiration, trying to separate fantasy from reality. He rushed inside our house and called my mother at my grandparents’ house in Pittsfield.

“I just outran the Devil on the Taconic parkway.”

This story became legend in our family. My brothers and I would beg our father to tell us again and again about the time he was chased by The Devil. Sometimes I imagined it was the cartoon Tasmanian devil chasing my Dad in the dark, and in my child’s mind he was round and brown and hairy and laughing in the night. As I grew older, I imagined a tall, thin, figure of a man in a sharp suit, reaching towards my father with long, tapered, taloned fingertips, like Richard Ramirez, the real life Night Stalker. I imagined The Devil man wore a mustache and goatee and had glowing dark eyes. He was clever looking, but if he were to catch up with my father, he would surely kill him.

But was he real?

What Demons really chased my father that night?

It is a certain fact that we all have Demons that follow us as we ramble though our lives, and in the light of day, they stay hidden in the shadows. But then, sometimes, they can catch us all alone on a dark night and make their move.

My father certainly had demons that lurked in his soul, and crept around his heart. You might say he was an easy mark for a demon to try to run him down, but my father was crafty. He sped up and kept running and managed to stay one step ahead.

Does the devil live inside your head, or in your heart?

If you know what to look for, you can watch the people you love always struggling to shoot that extra step. My brother Sam is sixteen months older than me, so I had a front row seat to watch him dodge his demons his entire life. Sam’s battles grew along with him as he grew up. Nothing rolled off his back. It collected and congealed and haunted him. Watching him from my vantage point of younger sister was like watching someone stumble through thorns, getting stabbed again and again, and never being able to heal from the punctures. His wounds were deep. He lost his first child, his son, when the baby was born too premature to survive more than a handful of days. He was one of the first paramedics to respond to the Twin Towers on 9/11. Months later when he would finally speak of it, he would talk about it in a flat, detached way with his eyes empty, the steady inflection of his voice a vain attempt to veil the horror, as if he were speaking of stumbling down a street littered with broken toys. He could push the demons down, but their hunger was unrelenting. They trailed after him for the better part of twelve years. You can try to muscle your pain, but it will take you over in the end. A man who always loved the youthful play of being the most dashing part of the party will begin to hide behind these tools in his grief, as if they have become the very paraphernalia of his survival. A man, who was always smart and daring and glorious can become a slow boiling pot, always a second away from steaming over. Staying one step ahead of your demons takes an enormous amount of energy.

In the end, it was the Taconic that was his undoing, and that sneaky southbound side at that. Sam had learned to sooth himself with long drives made musically melancholy with his old friends Bono and Sting, singing to him all the songs that could sate his sorrow. In the cocoon of his car, he could smoke, and dream, and drive just fast enough to stay that one step ahead.

He should have remembered the story of the night The Devil tried to get our Dad.

I can see him in my mind, my Irish Twin big brother, driving along in a warm fog of contemplation, the wipers brushing rhythmically along with the music, and the headlights sweeping a swatch of bright clarity into a very dark night. I imagine him soft; his thoughts slow, the heater brushing warm air across his feet and against his face. I imagine he lazily looks into his side mirror and sees a figure running up along side his car. He feels a panic rising in his throat as the figure reaches towards his mirrors, fingertips like claws, the face coming into clearer view, a menacing mask, wanting nothing more than to take him down.

My father knew to gun the gas, and speed ahead as fast as he could, but Sam, poor Sam, finally forgot how to run, and wrenched the steering wheel to the side, careering off the road, smashing into a tree, and flying like an angel out of the car and into the cold night, smashing his skull as he came down, breaking his body and his brain, lying there bleeding in the night until he was found hours later.

Did the Devil stand over his broken body and laugh?

And what of this, if the Devil knew my Dad, and if the Devil knew my brother, then does that mean the Devil knows me? Does he know where I’ve been, and what haunts me? Does he know the battles that brew inside me? Does he know of the pain that lingers in the most tender part of my heart?

And is he somewhere, out there on the highway, waiting for me?

I will refuse to run from him, and he will have no cause to chase me.

But is he still out there, lurking and looking, waiting to run you down? How many times has he slid alongside some unsuspecting driver in the midnight hour, or in the morning mist, or even in the bright light of the midday sun, grinning as he grasps towards your window, crooking his claws at the glass with his talon like fingertips to give it a tiny little tap.