It was a dark and stormy night on an unlit, deserted stretch of road. It was about 1am and John was on his way home from a friend's party. The rain was coming down hard and he could barely see the slippery road in front of him. It took all of his concentration to keep his car from sliding off into the bushes bordering the road.

Occasionally headlights flashed out of the darkness, momentarily blinding him, as cars passed in the opposite direction. But there were few cars on the road at this time of the night. John began to feel tired and his eyes ached. He slowed his car to a crawl.

Suddenly out of the night a figure appeared, running towards him. It was a young woman. She was waving her arms wildly. Long hair covered her face. She was soaked and her dress clung to her body. A flash of lightning illuminated the sky and John skidded to a stop, narrowly missing her.

The woman threw herself onto the bonnet of the car and pressed her face into the windscreen. John saw she had a deep cut on her forehead. Her dress was covered in blood. A wave of panic shot through him. What terrible scene was waiting for him up the road? The woman moaned, "Help me!" and lay draped across the car. Hesitantly, John opened his door, but the wind was so strong that it forced it to fly open. The rain lashed at him as he stepped out, and in seconds he, too, was soaked to the skin.

Gently he touched the woman on the shoulder and said, "It's all right, it's all right. Tell me what happened!" The woman lifted her head and turned towards him. She had a strange, vacant look on her face. When she spoke, it seemed as if her lips weren't moving. "Take me home!" she said.

John scanned the road ahead, but there was nothing to see - no car, no other people. He helped the woman to the passenger side of the car. He opened the door and the woman fell into the seat. She sat with her arms tight across her body, shivering. John closed the door and once again looked for any sign of an accident. Again he saw nothing.

When he got back in the car the woman was curled up with her head resting on the window. John looked at her and gasped. Although she had the deep cut and blood on her dress, she was not bleeding. The blood was dry. He reached into the back of the car and grabbed an old towel. The woman did not move when he handed it to her. He placed it gently around her shoulders and asked again, "What happened?" The woman did not answer. "OK," said John, "I'm taking you to hospital."

"No!" The woman sat up and stared at John with her strange eyes. "Take me home!" She reached into her dress and pulled something out. John could see it was a driver's licence, but when he reached out to take it she pulled it away. "OK, OK," John soothed her. "Just let me see the address." Slowly the woman held up the licence. It was badly faded and John had trouble reading it. He saw the name Jane Doe and an address in a nearby suburb. "OK, Jane," he said, "let's take you home, but after that I'm going to take you to the hospital." The woman remained silent, put the licence in her pocket and once again slumped against the window.

John decided that the woman was in shock. He would let her decide when to talk. He started the car and, as he slowly drove along the road, looked for any sign of an accident. Once again he saw nothing.

John drove on with the woman silent beside him. He tried to imagine how this woman had come to be on this deserted road on this cold, wet night.

After ten minutes he turned off the road into the street on the woman's licence. He stopped in front of a large, darkened house and turned to the woman, "Is this it?" he whispered. The woman didn't speak but lifted her head and nodded.

John turned to open the door but as he did the woman grabbed his arm. The coldness of her touch sent a shiver through John. As he looked at her he felt her eyes look right through him. "Tell my mother I love her," she whispered, before falling back into the seat.

John hurried up to the house and rang the bell. He was trying to decide what to say when a light came on and the door opened. An old woman stood at the door in a nightdress, blinking away sleep.

"Yes?" she said, noticeably annoyed.
"I'm sorry," said John, "but I have your daughter, Jane, in my car. She's been in an accident and -"
"What?" exclaimed the woman.
"I have your daughter, Jane, in my car," John repeated. "She's been in an accident."

The woman looked at John and said, "That's not possible. Jane died five years ago."
Now it was John's turn to be shocked. "But she's in my car! She asked me to bring her here." John turned and ran back to his car. The young woman was gone. He stood in the rain, staring at the empty passenger seat. He jumped when he felt a hand on his hand. It was the old woman. "Come inside," she said, "and I'll tell you everything."

For the next hour John sat in the kitchen with Jane's mother. "Exactly five years ago, Jane was coming to see me when she had the accident," she told him. "We'd had a big argument three years before that, and in those three years we didn't see or speak to each other. In fact, I was never to see her again."

The woman paused, then continued: "Two years ago, the same thing happened. Two women were driving along the same road. They were stopped by my daughter. They brought her home, only to find she had disappeared when they got there."

Her voice trailed off. Then John remembered what the young woman had asked him to do. "Your daughter asked me to tell you that she loves you." The old woman started to cry, and John stayed a while to comfort her.

Walking back to his car John heard a voice call out softly behind him: "Thank you." He turned back to look and saw a bright light hovering above the house. As he looked, the light suddenly shot up into the sky and faded into the distance.

Driving home, John felt calm and strangely happy. He knew that somehow he had helped Jane make peace with her mother. Now she could leave this world and continue on her journey into the next.