In the dead of night, under a thunderstorm sending battalions of rain drops onto my car, I was speeding down a secluded two-lane highway. My car was the only source of light amidst the encroaching forests on either side of the highway. The road was familiar territory, a road I have traveled down countless times, yet something about this particular night felt unsettling.
It was just past 1AM, and I had just wrapped up another grueling night shift at the hospital. As I began pushing 100 MPH, an unexpected sight caught my eye in the rearview mirror. Two bright lights were rapidly closing in on me. They belonged to another vehicle, an unusual occurrence on this isolated road. Especially at this time.
I remember muttering under my breath, a mix of annoyance and disbelief, as the car drew dangerously close, almost tailgating me.
“Come on asshole, I’m the only other car on this road. Just go around me” I said hoping that the other car would magically be able to hear me.
The driver began flashing their high beams at me, intermittently blinding me with bursts of light. I interpreted this as a signal to speed up, but with the rain lashing down, I was reluctant to push my car any faster. In an attempt to defuse the situation, I moved into the opposing lane to let him pass, only to find the other car mirroring my move.
The chase continued until I finally emerged from the forested area and reached the safety of my home. I darted inside and immediately called the police.
When the officers arrived, I recounted the unnerving encounter, but the mysterious car had already vanished. They inspected my car and the surrounding area but found nothing amiss. The officers, unable to take any substantial action given the nature of the incident, eventually left. I managed to fall asleep, but my rest was short-lived. At 4:00 AM, a flood of light through my windows jolted me awake.
How was it already day time?
After looking out the window, I soon realized that it was the same high beams, now casting an eerie, fiery orange glow into my room. I called the police again, but the car had disappeared by the time they arrived. The same officers, now visibly irritated, conducted a half-assed check and left, offering little assistance.
The following morning brought further confusion. I received a call from the hospital, abruptly informing me of termination, followed by hanging up on me when I tried to ask why. When I attempted to call back, the phone number was disconnected. Determined to seek answers, I drove to the hospital, only to be confronted by an impassable barrier of orange cones and a fallen tree blocking the only direct road to the hospital. Frustrated and lacking the energy to find an alternate route, I returned home, planning to address the issue of my final paycheck later.
That same night, and every night for the following week, the high beams returned, each visitation at 4:00 AM, intensifying my sense of dread. The car was silent and would always vanish before the police could arrive, who were now convinced that I was fabricating the story.
As the days passed, a surreal sense of isolation enveloped me. My social media seemed frozen in time and my ‘for you’ page would not update. I couldn’t get a hold of anybody over the phone and was instead met with the beeping of a disconnected number. I stopped seeing cars going through my neighborhood and would no longer see anybody walking the streets.
The outside world seemed eerily absent, save for the nightly visits from the mysterious car. The police stopped responding to my calls, and the town appeared to be closing in on itself, with construction work cutting off access to roads, including my own street.
As time passed on, my memory began to falter. It began with trivial things, such as where I vacationed 2 summers ago. But my memory continued eroding, to the point where I forgot the name of the hospital I worked at. By the seventh day, my own identity seemed like a distant, fading echo.
On the night marking one week since my first encounter with my nightly visitor, I was overcome with frustration and fear when I was awoken by a flood of light at 4:00 AM. Armed with a baseball bat, I ran outside to confront the car. I began screaming profanities at it, asking what it wants from me.
As I got closer to the car, I was met with an unfathomable reality. The car wasn’t a car; a void rather than a physical object. Suddenly, something I can only describe as a bubble seemed to form on the blank canvas of the void. The bubble popped open, revealing another flood of light. Similar to looking down into a well, I hunched forward over the hole and looked into it.
A blast of scorching, putrid air enveloped me; it was like standing at the mouth of an active volcano, the heat so intense that it drenched me in sweat within seconds. The image was so horrifying, so beyond the realm of human understanding, that it seared itself into my memory. I saw a vast, endless hellscape, a grotesque panorama of suffering and torment. The floor was a writhing mass of human figures, all on fire, blanketing the ground in a chaotic tapestry of pain. There were people everywhere, their bodies contorted in agony, their screams echoing through the chasm.
Above this sea of suffering towered monstrous entities, colossal in stature and terrifying in aspect. Their skin was a mix of dark red and bruised purple, resembling decaying flesh that clung to their enormous skeletal forms. Their eyes, glowing like embers from deep pits, radiated malevolence and hunger. Their hands, if they could be called hands, were massive, gnarled appendages, each finger ending in a claw that dripped with blood and human organs. Their faces were a blend of human and beastly features. Twisted mouths filled with rows of jagged, shark-like teeth. Their expressions were devoid of any humanity.
These demonic beings continuously scraped their claws against the ground with a sound like metal on stone. Every swipe of their massive claws was a death sentence, executed with a brutality that defied comprehension. Flesh burned and bubbled under their touch, blood sprayed in grotesque arcs, painting the hellish landscape in a macabre palette.
The air was thick with the stench of charred flesh and sulfur. The ground itself seemed alive, a fiery pit that consumed and tortured the souls trapped within its grasp. I saw faces, ones that contorted in unimaginable pain, their eyes pleading for a mercy that would never come.
I stood there, immobilized by terror, as the ghastly vision of hell presented itself before me. Days seemed to pass in that moment of profound dread, every second stretching into an eternity of fear. I began backing away slowly, a sense of reality clawing its way back into my consciousness.
But as I started to back away, I felt multiple hands gripping me with an iron force. For a fleeting second, hope sparked within me at the sight of police uniforms - perhaps they came back to save me. This hope was brutally extinguished as their faces twisted grotesquely, revealing pitch-black eyes and rows of razor-sharp teeth. They weren’t there to save me, they were there to cast me into the void. Their grip burned my skin to the touch, giving me blistering burns on my arms.
My screams echoed in the nothingness that surrounded us. My home, my neighborhood - everything familiar had vanished, leaving me in an isolated expanse of darkness. As they dragged me closer to the void, panic surged through me. I thrashed and kicked until, by some miracle, I broke free from their grip. I ran blindly into the void, fueled by pure instinct, my only thought to escape the horrors behind me.
As I ran, a glimmer in the distance caught my eye. Approaching it, I recognized the outline of the hospital where I had worked, standing alone in the engulfing darkness. The growls of the officers grew louder as they got closer. I pushed my body to its limits, every fiber straining, until finally, I lunged through the hospital’s front doors. The impact was rough, my head slamming against the floor with a force that sent waves of pain radiating through my skull.
As I lay there on the edge of consciousness, I realized the officers had vanished. My vision blurred and a severe headache set in, each pulse amplifying the pain. Then, suddenly, a flash of light blinded me, reigniting my terror - was the car back to claim me?
Time seemed to stretch endlessly before my vision began to clear, revealing more and more about my surroundings with each painful blink. Looking down, I saw my body, my right leg and arm encased in casts. I was in the hospital, my workplace, but now as a patient. I weakly pressed the assistance button, and soon, familiar faces appeared. Doctor Williams and several nurses entered, their expressions a mix of relief and concern.
“You’re finally awake. We’ve all been waiting for you to wake up. I’m sure you’re confused about what’s going on. We had a really bad thunderstorm tonight. After your shift, you must have gotten caught up in it because your car was found smashed into a tree on the side of the road. Two officers managed to find you shortly after and had you brought here.” Doctor Williams then hesitated before continuing on, “you were clinically dead for 14 seconds. We called our neurologist in and she hasn’t found any signs of brain damage. Your arm and leg are broken, you have a concussion and some internal bleeding, but you’re going to be alright.”
There words painted a starkly different reality from what I had experienced. Confusion ensued when I mentioned being fired - they assured me that no such termination had occurred.
As I lay in the hospital, trying to get a grip on reality, I glanced down at my arms. I noticed peculiar, blistering burns on my skin.
“Doctor Williams,” I began hesitantly, “why do I have these burn marks on my arms?”
Doctor Williams, who had been reviewing my chart, looked up in confusion. “Burn marks?” he echoed, clearly surprised. He moved closer to examine my arms more carefully. As his fingers gently traced the contours of the reddened skin, his eyes widened in shock. “These… these weren’t here before,” he murmured, almost to himself. “And your skin… it’s still radiating heat, as if these burns just occurred.”
A shiver was sent down my spine. The burns bore an uncanny resemblance to the shape of human hands - the very hands of the officers that had gripped me, trying to drag me into the abyss. The realization hung heavily in the air between us as Doctor Williams struggled to find a logical explanation for the burns. There was no medical explanation as to why I had burns on my arms.
Dr. Williams eventually departed, leaving me alone with a whirlwind of thoughts. Was the entire ordeal merely a hallucination, a byproduct of my oxygen-starved brain? The unexplained burn marks on my arms argued otherwise. They say that in death, you should head towards the light. Yet, in my experience, the light was a deceptive lure to something much worse. As I began getting lost in my thoughts, I was quickly snapped out of it upon noticing a bright light filtering through the curtains of my hospital window.
“It’s probably just a car. It was all just a hallucination, there isn’t anything to worry about.” I whispered to myself, ignoring my burns which suggested otherwise. I tried ignoring the light as long as possible, but curiosity is getting to the best of me right now. I think I’m going to go see what’s outside the window - just in case.