It was presumably a hot summer that year. We’d packed into the family van with Dad driving and we were off to the lake.
Since it was shorter and more scenic, Dad decided to take a back road rather than go on the asphalt.
Sitting in the back seat with a book as usual, I looked up to watch the scenery as trees zipped by and the remnant vegetation turned into paddocks. Dust rose up behind the van, and we turned onto another dusty road. We were almost at the lake now.
You could never drive on these roads in the winter unless you had a four wheel drive or similar vehicle because the rain would make them boggy and you’d slip and slide and all of that stuff you just didn’t want, but when it was dry, the roads were fine. It still wasn’t a good idea to go too far off the road onto the side of the road and you could fall in a ditch or get stuck, but generally you were safe from getting bogged.
Sometimes, you might even see a sheep that had somehow escaped its paddock roaming here.
Inside the van, as I watched, getting ready to turn away and go back to my book, I saw something following after the van in the dust, almost bounding after us.
It wasn’t a sheep, but it was something.
It was the shape of an animal and it was keeping time with the van, not getting further away or closer, though we were going fast, and at first I thought it might be something caught under the vehicle that was trailing behind, but I couldn’t see anything connecting whatever it was to the van.
Besides, it was quite large and I think I would have heard if we’d driven over anything, but I hadn’t heard anything.
Dad hadn’t slowed down or swerved or remarked upon running over anything, either.
I stared at it intently, but I couldn’t make it out through the dust. It just seemed to be following us.
At this point, I got scared and turned around to ask somebody else if they could see the thing too, and when I turned back to look again, I could no longer see it.
To this day, I have no idea what it was, and it still gives me the creeps just thinking about it. In the back of my mind, I kind of wonder if it was some kind of interdimensional creature, or maybe I just watched too much Stargate as a teenager.
Whatever the case, I’ve been down that road again and I have never seen anything strange or out of the ordinary, and I have never seen any odd creatures any other times, either.
The odd spirit or two, perhaps, but nothing that creeped me out nearly as much as this did. There was just something about how it was following us, and how it disappeared and I could no longer see it on the road, that just gets to me.