The Passenger Voice

I still think about the voice I heard that rainy afternoon.

I was driving my van with my five children inside when I took a corner too quickly. The road was slick from the rain, and before I could correct myself, the van slid off the road.

There was nothing I could do.

The front of the van dipped down, and we started sliding into one of the deepest ditches I had ever seen. My first instinct was to slam on the brakes, but as we continued downward, I heard something that made my entire body freeze.

A man's voice.

Right next to my ear.

"STEP ON THE GAS."

It wasn't faint.

It wasn't far away.

It sounded like someone was sitting directly beside me in the passenger seat, speaking calmly but urgently over the sound of the engine and rain.

I looked toward the passenger seat.

It was empty.

I don't know why, but I listened.

I pressed the gas.

The van hit the bottom of the ditch hard, but instead of stopping, we kept moving. The tires caught the ground, and somehow we climbed up the other side and made it safely back onto the road.

I didn't stop.

I didn't even look back.

I just kept driving.

A few minutes later, the van started shaking. One of the tires had come loose and was barely holding on. I carefully drove to the nearest store, where my husband was working on an exterior painting job.

Luckily, the rain had stopped him from working earlier, and he was still there. He fixed the tire, and we eventually made it home.

That night, after my children were asleep, I kept replaying the moment in my head.

The voice.

The exact words.

The fact that it came from the passenger side.

The next morning, my youngest child asked me something strange.

"Mom, who was the man sitting next to you yesterday?"

I froze.

I asked him what he meant.

He looked confused and said:

"The man who told you to press the gas."

I felt a chill run through me.

I asked him what the man looked like.

My child paused for a moment and said:

"I couldn't see his face. He was just sitting there."

I had been alone in the front of the van.

There was no one else with me.

To this day, I don't know who saved us that day.

But I know one thing.

Someone was in that passenger seat.