My girlfriend and I liked to drive on the weekends. Something we both had in common was that when we were younger, our families would take us on road trips on the weekends to break away from the weekly monotony. This is something that we kept going well into adulthood, and after a long week of soul crushing 9 to 5, we would pack up and go on adventures together. After our most recent adventure, we were heading back home when a traffic accident stopped all highway traffic dead for hours. “At this rate, we aren’t gonna get back home in time.” My girlfriend said while browsing reddit on her phone. “Well, it’s not like I can fly the car over the traffic. We knew this adventure was risky.” We didn’t have room for error when driving out of state. A delay like this would run us the risk of missing work and eating into our paychecks, and when you’re a young American couple with debt and living paycheck to paycheck, that’s not really an option.
“I’m gonna try to see what the hold up is, try to find us another route.” I got out of my car and walked down the road to see how bad the situation was and maybe get an update on how long we would be stuck here for. I didn’t get the chance to talk to anyone, maybe three minutes into my walk I could see dozens of police, fire and rescue vehicles trying to stop a fire caused by a collision. Needless to say, we wouldn’t be going anywhere for hours. Defeated, I walked back to my car. “Well, it looks like were fucked.” I said to my girlfriend while I closed the car door. “Not necessarily, I found a road that will take us around the highway crash.” That was odd…then again, google maps never gives you the fastest route to a place. “Why didn’t we see that before?” I asked as my girlfriend showed me her phone screen.
There was a backroad that google had not even recommended. It would have us getting back on track in about an hour, much faster than waiting around for emergency services to clear the road for traffic to flow. Without much hesitation I said fuck it and passed a few cars to do an illegal u turn. Thankfully cops were too busy to notice me driving away in the opposite direction. Night had caught up to us while on the road and the closer we got to the backroads we would see less signs of civilization. When we finally got to the road it was in pretty bad conditions: potholes and unkept woods would make our drive that much slower.
We had not seen post lights, other cars or houses for miles. Driving on that road had me extremely nervous although I tried not to show it for my girlfriends’ sake. This would not be the road anyone would like to be stuck in the middle of the night. Just like I had somehow brought that thought into the universe, we saw a stalled car in the road. The road wasn’t wide for two vehicles to ride alongside each other without one driving into the woods and I was not looking to mess up our only way out of this creepy place.
I parked the car ten feet behind the vehicle in front of us. “You know this is how every horror movie starts right?” My girlfriend said while very clearly terrified. “I know but there’s not many options here.” I reached into the glove box and grabbed my glock. I’ve never actually shot the thing aside from the range but maybe it would help me feel better about walking out of my perfectly fine car. It didn’t.
I slowly walked towards the car with my phone’s flashlight leading the way and my gun in the other hand. The car lights were on and I was close enough to hear it was on. “Hey, do you need some help?” I asked firmly, trying to not let my voice tremble. No reply came from the car. As I got next to it, I could see no one was in it. it didn’t make sense for someone to just leave their car running in the middle of the road, so I immediately raised my gun and looked around. I’ve heard of assholes doing this sort of thing to rob anyone that stopped to help. My heart skipped a beat as I looked in the back of the car and realized there was an empty baby seat. It took me a few moments to snap out of the shock and confusion, but I sat on the driver’s seat and moved the car out of the road.
As soon as I stepped out, I realized that aside from my breathing, the night was as quiet as the dead. An overwhelming sense of dread showered over me, and I nearly had a heart attack when I heard a voice scream out. “help me!” someone cried out from somewhere in the woods. Something was not right with that voice. It didn’t sound like a voice that could ever come from a human. “Please help me. It took my baby.” I stayed just as quiet as the first time it spoke. Whatever was calling for help was a few feet in front of me in the woods. I tried to ignore it, every fiber in my being wanted to sprint back to my car and drive away to safety…but a morbidly curious part of me forced Me to point my phones flashlight in the direction the voice was coming from.
In the tree line, I could make out the humanoid shape of…something. No human had such features, but I could tell it was holding on to something human… the small fat leg of a baby he was still munching on like a chicken leg. I stopped breathing for a few moments when it shot me a sickening smile. His grotesque crooked fangs were stained with crimson. I completely freaked out. I dropped my phone and immediately unloaded my gun straight at the fucker, only stopping when pulling the trigger did nothing.
I picked up my phone from the ground and started to carefully walk back to my car. “You missed me.” Something said in a mocking tone too fucking close to me in the darkness. I sprinted as fast as I possibly could back to my car and floored it as soon as I locked my door. I sped so fast out of that road I almost crashed multiple times even when I was miles away from that place. I didn’t even register my girlfriend wasn’t in the passenger seat anymore.