Free Story Friday: The Children Who Knock
But this? This was different.
It was pushing 2 AM on I-80, somewhere between nowhere and the middle of nowhere, Nebraska. My eyes felt like sandpaper, and the coffee I'd grabbed three hours back had turned into battery acid in my gut. The GPS said another forty miles to the next decent truck stop, but I spotted the glow of a Sinclair sign cutting through the darkness ahead. One of those old-school places—the kind with rust-stained concrete and fluorescent lights that buzz like angry wasps.
Perfect. Just what a guy needs at 2 AM.
I pulled my rig into the lot, air brakes hissing like they were tired too. The place was dead except for one other truck parked way over by the diesel pumps. The driver was nowhere to be seen—probably catching some Z's in his sleeper cab. Smart man.
The building looked like it hadn't seen a renovation since Carter was president. Half the lot lights were burned out, leaving these weird pools of shadow between the working ones. Wind was picking up too, making the overhead signs creak and sway. Weather app said storms coming through, but out here, storms always seemed to be coming through.
I killed the engine and sat there for a minute, just listening to the tick of cooling metal and that damn buzzing from the lights. Funny how quiet can feel so loud when you're used to the constant rumble of eighteen wheels on asphalt.
My phone showed three missed calls from Sarah—my ex-wife. Probably about Tommy's soccer tournament this weekend. Kid was ten now, getting good at the game, and here I was missing another one because someone in California needed their freight delivered yesterday. Story of my life these days.
The guilt was starting to eat at me when I heard it.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Soft knocking on my driver's side door.
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I looked down and felt my heart skip. Two kids stood outside my cab, both maybe ten or eleven years old. Boy and girl, pale as moonlight, dressed in clothes that looked too clean for kids wandering around a truck stop at 2 AM.
The boy raised his hand and knocked again, gentle but persistent. "Sir?" His voice was muffled through the glass, but I could hear him clear enough. "Could you help us, please?"
Now, I'm not heartless. Got a kid of my own, remember? But something about this whole situation felt wrong. What were two kids doing out here alone? Where were their parents? And why did they look so... I don't know. Put-together? Like they'd stepped out of a 1950s family portrait.
I cracked the window just enough to talk. "What's wrong, kids? You lost?"
The girl spoke up. Her voice had this weird formality to it, like she was reading from a script. "We need help, sir. Our parents left. Could you perhaps drive us to the next town?"
Perhaps? Who talks like that?
"Where are your parents now?" I asked, scanning the lot. Still just the one truck, still no movement anywhere.
"They said they'd return," the boy said. "But it's been several hours. We're quite cold."
The logical part of my brain was screaming that I should help them. Two kids, alone, scared. What kind of monster wouldn't give them a ride to safety? But every instinct I had was telling me to drive away. Fast.
Instead, I did something that felt like a compromise.
"Listen, I'm going to call the police, okay? They'll come get you, take you somewhere safe." I pulled out my cell phone. "What are your names?"
They exchanged a look that lasted just a beat too long.
"That won't be necessary," the girl said. "We just need a ride. Please let us in."
Something in her tone made my skin crawl. Not pleading—commanding. Like she expected me to obey.
I dialed 911, keeping my eyes on them through the glass. When the dispatcher answered, I said, "Yeah, I'm at the Sinclair truck stop on I-80, mile marker... uh, 247. Got two kids here, say their parents left them. They need help."
"We'll send someone out," the dispatcher said. "Can you stay with them until we arrive?"
"Sure thing."
I looked down again—and they were gone.
Not walking away. Not running. Just gone. No footsteps in the gravel, no retreating shadows. Like they’d blinked out of existence. My hand hovered over the door handle, part of me wanting to get out and check, but every instinct screamed not to. Stay inside. Stay put.
When the state trooper showed up twenty minutes later, he took my statement with the kind of patient expression cops get when dealing with truckers who've been on the road too long. Found no evidence of any children. Suggested maybe I'd been dreaming.
Maybe I had been.
But as I pulled back onto the highway, I couldn't shake the feeling that I'd dodged something. Something bad.
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Sixty miles down the road, I stopped at a rest area to grab some real sleep. One of those state-run jobs with concrete picnic tables and a bathroom that smells like industrial disinfectant. Not glamorous, but quiet.
I was just settling into my sleeper berth when I heard it again.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
My blood turned to ice water. Slowly, like I was in a nightmare, I looked toward the sound.
Same two kids. Standing right outside my passenger door this time, maybe three feet away. But now I could see their faces clearly in the overhead light.
Their eyes were completely black. Not brown, not dark blue—black. Like someone had filled their eye sockets with oil.
"Please let us in," the boy said, and his voice sounded different now. Older. More confident. "We know you want to help us."
I scrambled for my door locks, slamming them down with shaking fingers. The sound echoed in the cab like gunshots.
The girl stepped closer to the glass. When she spoke, her breath didn't fog the window. "You called the police before. That was... unnecessary. Just let us in now. You'll feel better if you let us in."
How did they know about the police?
More importantly—how the hell had they gotten here? I'd driven sixty miles in the past hour. There was no way two kids could have followed me. No way they could have beaten me here.
"We've been waiting for you," the boy said, like he was reading my thoughts. "We wait for people like you. Good people. People who care about children."
The way he said it made my skin crawl. Like caring was a weakness. Something to be exploited.
I fumbled for the ignition, hands shaking so bad I could barely get the key turned. The engine roared to life, and I threw the truck into gear without even checking my mirrors.
In the passenger-side mirror, I watched the kids standing perfectly still as I pulled away. They didn't wave. Didn't run after me. Just stood there, watching, until the darkness swallowed them up.
But here's the thing that really got to me—in that mirror, I swear their eyes reflected the light. Like an animal's eyes. Like they weren't quite human at all.
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I should have driven straight through after that. Should have found the nearest truck stop with a restaurant, bright lights, and other people around. Should have done a lot of things.
Instead, I kept thinking about what that cop had said. Maybe I'd been dreaming. Maybe the isolation and exhaustion were getting to me. Hell, maybe I needed to see a doctor when I got home.
But then my CB crackled to life.
"Breaker one-nine, this is Red Dog eastbound on I-80. Anyone else seen those kids tonight?"
My hands tightened on the wheel. "Come back, Red Dog. What kids?"
"Two of 'em. Boy and girl, maybe ten, eleven years old. Been showing up at my truck asking for rides. Something ain't right about them, good buddy. Something about their eyes..."
Static filled the channel before he could finish. I tried raising him again, but got nothing but white noise.
I was maybe twenty miles from the Colorado border when fatigue finally started winning the war against adrenaline. My eyelids felt like they had weights attached, and I was starting to see things that weren't there—shadows moving in my peripheral vision, faces in my mirrors.
Time to find somewhere safe and catch a few hours' sleep.
I spotted a weigh station ahead, closed this time of night but well-lit. Perfect. I pulled in, set my air brakes, and was just reaching for my logbook when I heard it.
Click.
The soft sound of a door handle turning.
My passenger door handle.
Every hair on my body stood up. I knew—knew—I'd locked that door. Checked it twice after the rest stop. But there it was, the handle turning slow and deliberate.
I spun around in my seat, heart hammering against my ribs.
One of them was sitting in my passenger seat.
The boy. Those black eyes staring right at me, reflecting the dashboard lights like marbles made of night. He was smiling now, and his teeth looked too white, too sharp.
"Hello," he said conversationally, like we'd planned this meeting. "Thank you for letting us in."
"I didn't—I never—"
"Oh, but you did." The girl's voice came from directly behind me. I whipped around, but she wasn't there. When I turned back, she was sitting next to the boy, both of them watching me with those horrible, empty eyes.
"You thought about it," she continued. "At the first truck stop. You wanted to help us. The wanting is enough."
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The world outside my windshield started to... shift. Colors bled from the edges of the night, draining into gray like ink running in water. The yellow glow of the weigh station stretched thin and tore, leaving only static black. The air thickened, grainy, like I was breathing through sand. Even the engine changed—its steady diesel rumble warping into a hollow metallic moan, as if something was breathing back at me.
"Where—what do you want?" My voice came out as a whisper.
"We want what we've always wanted," the boy said. "To go home."
"Where's home?"
They smiled in unison. It was the most terrifying thing I'd ever seen.
"Wherever you take us."
I reached for the door handle, but my hand passed right through it. Like it wasn't there. Like I wasn't there.
The girl leaned forward, and her breath smelled like old pennies and winter air. "You have a son, don't you? Tommy? He's playing soccer this weekend."
Ice shot through my veins. "How do you—"
"We know lots of things. We know you feel guilty about missing his games. We know you want to be a better father."
The boy nodded seriously. "We can help with that. Take us home, and you'll never miss another game. You'll never have to choose between work and family again."
The truck lurched forward, though I hadn't touched the gas. My hands were still on the wheel, but I wasn't steering. We rolled past the weigh station, past the highway signs, into that impossible darkness.
"I never invited you in," I said, more to myself than to them.
"Didn't you?" The girl's voice was getting fainter, like she was speaking from very far away. "Every time you wanted to help. Every time you felt guilty for not stopping. Every time you wondered what kind of person drives past children in need."
The boy's reflection grinned at me from the windshield. "The invitation was in the wanting. The guilt. The good intentions."
My vision was getting fuzzy around the edges. The dashboard lights dimmed to nothing, and the only sound was the whisper of tires on a road that might not have been there at all.
"Thank you," they said together, their voices echoing like we were in a cathedral instead of a truck cab. "Thank you for letting us in."
The last thing I remember thinking, before everything went black, was that I'd done the right thing. Called the police. Tried to help. I'd been a good person.
And I wonder, as I drive on a road with no lines and no end, if being good was the mistake all along. If being good was exactly what they’d been waiting for.
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© 2025 Karen Cody. All rights reserved.
This original story was written exclusively for the Urban Legends, Mystery, and Myth blog.
Do not copy, repost, or reproduce without permission.
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