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The lights were on. The door was unlocked. No one was there.
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I wasn't supposed to still be driving that late. I'd taken a wrong turn somewhere miles back, lost my signal not long after, and figured I'd just follow the road until I hit something familiar. At first, it didn't seem like a big deal. Then I saw the sign. It was half-hidden off the side of the road, bent at an angle like it had been hit years ago and never fixed. The metal was rusted, the paint worn down to almost nothing—but I could still make out the number. Route 66. I remember thinking that didn't make sense. I hadn't been anywhere near it… not that I knew of. But I was tired, and the road stretched out ahead of me like it had no end, so I kept driving. That's when things started to feel… wrong. No cars. No lights. No signs of anything at all. Just a long stretch of empty asphalt cutting through the dark—and the uneasy feeling that I wasn't the only one out there.
I'd been on the road for what felt like another hour, though the clock on my dash said it had only been twenty minutes. That's the thing I kept coming back to later—how the time never added up. The land on either side of me was flat and featureless, just scrub brush and the occasional fence post disappearing into the dark. No exits. No side roads. No mile markers. It was the kind of nothing that starts to feel intentional after a while.
I had the radio on low, some late-night talk show out of Tulsa that I could only half receive, the signal dipping in and out. I turned it off when it started to sound more like static than words. The silence that replaced it wasn't better.
That's when I saw the figure.
He was walking along the right shoulder, about a hundred yards ahead, moving at a steady pace. Dark hooded jacket, hands in the pockets, head down. Nothing about him looked panicked or lost. Just walking. I slowed a little as I passed him—old habit—but he didn't look up. Didn't flinch, didn't raise a hand. Just kept moving like I wasn't there at all.
I checked the mirror as I pulled ahead. He was already shrinking into the dark behind me.
I told myself he was probably just some local taking a late walk. Maybe a truck driver stretching his legs. People did that. It was strange, sure, but not impossible. I picked the speed back up and kept going.
Another twenty minutes passed. Maybe more. The road didn't change. No curves, no hills, just the same flat stretch in every direction. I was starting to wonder if I'd somehow gotten turned around without realizing it when my headlights caught something up ahead on the shoulder.
A figure in a dark hooded jacket, hands in his pockets, walking at a steady pace.
I slowed again without thinking. Same posture. Same gait. Head down, not looking up as I passed. I watched him in the mirror until the darkness swallowed him again, and then I sat there with my hands tight on the wheel, trying to work through a rational explanation.
I hadn't turned around. I was certain of that. And the road had been straight the whole time, no way to loop back without me knowing. A second person in a dark jacket? Two people walking the same road at the same hour? It was possible. I told myself it was possible.
But I drove a little faster after that.
About fifteen minutes later, I saw the gas station.
It appeared out of nowhere on the right side of the road—a small place, one pump island, fluorescent lights burning under a flat canopy. The sign just said GAS in big block letters, no brand name, no logo. The kind of place that's been there since before the interstates made it obsolete. The lights in the small attached building were on. A hand-painted OPEN sign hung in the window.
I pulled in and sat there for a moment with the engine idling. The place looked normal. That almost made it worse.
Too normal.
I went inside.
The door wasn't locked. A little bell above it rang when I pushed through. The lights inside were the old buzzing fluorescent kind, slightly too bright, the kind that make everything look a little flat. There were two short aisles of snacks and sundries, a cooler along the back wall, and a counter up front with a register and a small TV mounted in the corner, turned off. No one behind the counter. No sounds from a back room.
I stood there for a second, listening. Nothing.
"Hello?" I said. My voice came out smaller than I intended.
No answer.
I grabbed a bottle of water from the cooler and a Snickers bar from the rack near the register, mostly just to have something to do with my hands. I set them on the counter and pulled out my wallet. There was no price sticker on anything, no scanner, no obvious way to pay. I left a five on the counter and figured that was close enough.
That's when I noticed the other bills.
They were folded the same way I fold mine—in thirds, longways—and stacked near the register in a small, neat pile. Different denominations. Three or four of them, at least. Like someone else had done exactly what I'd just done. More than once.
I stood there looking at that pile of folded bills for longer than I should have, and then I picked up my water and my candy bar and walked back out to my truck without looking at anything else in the store.
The fluorescent lights buzzed behind me as the door swung shut.
I sat in the parking lot for a few minutes before pulling back onto the road. The relief I'd felt when I saw the lights had already curdled into something else. But the road was still there, and I didn't have anywhere else to go.
I drove.
For a while, nothing happened. The road was still empty, still straight, still flanked by nothing on either side. I drank some of the water and felt a little better. Told myself I was tired, that tired people imagine things, that the bills on the counter had a dozen explanations that didn't involve anything I didn't want to think about.
Then the headlights picked him up again.
He was closer this time. That was the first thing I noticed—he was closer than he should have been, only about thirty yards ahead instead of a hundred. Same jacket. Same posture. Same steady walk like he hadn't moved at all.
I didn't slow down. I kept my speed and moved a little to the left to give him room. As I passed, I looked over out of instinct, the way you do.
He was turning his head.
Not all the way. Just enough. The hood shifted, the angle changed, and for a fraction of a second I was looking directly at the space where his face should have been.
There was nothing there.
Not a shadow. Not a blur. Just a flat, unbroken dark inside the hood, like the inside of a closet with the door cracked—the kind of dark that your eyes keep trying to resolve into something and can't.
I don't remember pressing the gas, but I must have. The speedometer hit eighty before I even thought about it. I watched the mirror. The shoulder behind me was empty.
A few minutes later, I saw the first road sign I'd spotted in hours—a state highway junction ahead, a town name I recognized, a distance in miles that made sense. My phone found a signal. I glanced at the clock on my dashboard.
3:33 a.m.
I stared at it for a second, then looked back at the road.
I pulled off at the junction and stopped the truck under a working streetlight and just sat there until my breathing evened out.
I've thought about that drive a lot since then. About the time that didn't add up. About the bills on the counter. About the way he turned his head in the exact moment I was passing, like he'd been waiting for that.
What I haven't let myself think about, until right now, is something I noticed when I finally got home and went to put my jacket away.
There was something on it.
Not dirt. Not dust.
A mark. Faint, uneven—like fingers pressed into the fabric and then dragged away.
And I don’t remember him ever getting close enough to touch me.
© 2026 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. This tale may appear in a future special collection.
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