A red Subaru sped down I-40. Its rattling engine echoed over fields of harvested farmland, uninterrupted by other travelers. The road was a lonely place at three in the morning, but a few coyotes bore witness as the car would drift from lane to lane, speed up and slow down, and jerk back in place as its driver dozed. Stephen was not entirely immune to the monotony of the long drive, but in his view, the sooner he got home, the better. He turned up the radio, but the only thing he found to listen was static. He focused on trying to decipher the words through the noise, but even that could not keep him occupied for long.
Stephen’s head jerked up as his car vibrated loudly as his tires hit the ridges on the side of the highway. Shaking his head as if to clear the static in his brain, he looked up. There was a panicked, sustained honk coming from in front of him. Stephen squinted, trying to see past the headlights that were approaching quickly toward the head of his car before he realized he was in the wrong lane. He turned the steering wheel hard to the right, tires and brakes squealing as the headlights of a semi truck blinded his vision.
Then it was over. He was driving in his lane again, his mind racing at the danger of the incident. Maybe I should stop. I need to stop. He muttered unintelligibly under his breath, the image of the headlights speeding toward his car burning in his brain. After a few miles, he came across a rest stop, partially lit by street lamps. The only other visitor was a state patrolman, head nodding in his car. Stephen walked into the restroom. It smelled as if something had died in there, and there was a consistent yellow mold lining where the cinderblock walls and the cheap linoleum tile met. He turned on the faucet, splashing ice-cold water into his face, and looked up. There was no mirror in the bathroom, and Stephen, too exhausted at that point in time to care about how he looked, shuffled outside without bothering to dry off his face.
He started walking around the rest stop, weaving between picnic tables to try to get the blood flowing in his legs again. Using one to support a big stretch, he leaned forward, arching his back like a cat. Moaning tiredly, he twisted his torso, but as he turned, he found himself face to face with an otherworldly horror. The face was sunken with translucent skin that clung to its face like plastic wrap, with shadows for eyes and a cavern where the nose should have been. Stephen’s breath was caught in his throat as he stumbled over backwards, terrified to touch the waxy skin of the monster before him. The apparition was clothed in a cloak of smoke, and it’s fleshless arms reached slowly to the dark sky. It opened its narrow mouth wider and wider, head tilted up as if it were about to cry out to God, but Stephen didn’t wait to hear the prayer. He lunged to the side, running without abandon to his car. He turned his head over his shoulder, only to find that the apparition ran alongside him, its head grotesquely tilted to the side as if to question Stephen’s response. Within a moment, the apparition had overtaken him in speed and stepped in front of him. Stephen yelled, almost tripping into the monster that blocked his path to safety. He wildly threw a punch at the creatures face, but there was hardly any resistance. He felt something in the creature’s face crunch under his fist, and the figure fell over like a curtain dropping from its rod. Disgusted and terrified, Stephen sprinted to the cop car parked a by the rest stop.
“Officer! Officer!” Stephen bellowed, pounding on the driver’s window. “I need help, there’s a something out there, it’s following me…OFFICER!”
The officer snorted from within the car and straightened up in his seat a little bit. His radio was flashing, and Stephen could make out a female’s voice coming from it.
“We have a wreck on I-40, mile marker 666. It’s a head-on with a semi, and it looks pretty ugly.”
The officer fumbled with the radio for a moment, the started the car.
“Wait!” Stephen cried, pounding on the window. “I need your help!” The officer, blind to the desperate man’s request, pulled out of the rest stop and turned on his sirens, screaming down the interstate in the direction Stephen had come from. The red and blue lights were still dancing on the pavement when the apparition appeared again. This time, Stephen ran for his car without looking back. He opened the door to the driver’s side, jumped in, and gunned it. His wheels spun on the pavement as he raced toward the intestate, merged, and sped onward.
This is a nightmare, he thought, watching lights at the rest stop grow smaller in the distance. His hands shook as he held the steering wheel, and his eyes scanned the road anxiously for any signs of the creature. Nervously, he fidgeted the rearview mirror, until something deathly reflected back at him. It was the waxy face with no eyes, mouth opened in an eternal scream, staring straight at the mirror. Stephen’s body was doused in dread and panic. It’s in my car. He thrust his whole weight onto the brake petal, his eyes never leaving the mirror. His body jerked forward but as soon as the car slowed, he opened the door and jumped out into the middle of the highway. The shock of the pavement jarred him, and he tumbled as his car kept rolling slowly down the highway. When Stephen looked up, the specter was waiting for him on the side of the road.
“Get away from me,” Stephen panted, stumbling back on legs that had lost their will to work. The creature held out a hand toward him, not in a threatening manner, but almost as an invitation, if such a face could ever have a hospitable intent. “Leave me alone!” he cried again. The monster tilted its head to the side in that same questioning manner, then drifted toward him. Stephen collapsed in the middle of the road, his exhausted body unable to run any longer. He looked up at the creature as it reached down its skeletal hand and touched his forehead, as if checking for a fever. Stephen shivered uncontrollably as an icy rush pulsed through his body, his eyes rolling back in his head. He reached to grasp reality for one more moment, straining to open his eyes. It didn’t look like he was on the road anymore, but in some sort of enclosed space. It was a mess, with red stains that still looked wet splattered all around him. Red and blue lights reflected off of shards of broken glass and twinkled like Christmas lights in the dark. He could still feel the fingers on his forehead. Stephen closed his eyes again, praying that any moment he would wake up. When he opened his eyes again, his vision was consumed by the spectral face with the gaping mouth. It was studying his arms, which were cut and broken and bloodied like nothing he had ever seen before. His whole body lay limp on the pavement; he couldn’t feel or move, but it dawned on him that he was broken beyond repair. The creature gingerly picked him up in its fleshless arms, cradling Stephen as it drifted away and vanished into the distance, far from paramedics and detectives and a man in a body bag who had simply dozed off while driving.
