Thinking about things you shouldn’t is an established common trait among humans whether we developed that horrid trait through human evolution or just a part of us we have always had I don’t know. It sucks and it sucks more when you need to just let go of those certain events however on the road trapped in the Evernight it’s an impossibility. One does not simply erase horrors from the mind no matter how hard they try but luckily you can distract yourself, you can let your mind wander while driving for hours in the dark. My routine would consist of podcasts blasting music like a sane person, the one thing I’d recommend to not do is fuel that burning desire to dwell on those bad thoughts or memories. Don’t be stupid and listen to horror videos or true crime. Don’t listen to that conspiracy theorist who has his own radio station and has the southern voice that draws you in. Don’t listen and think about the creepy shit on the radio, podcast or whatever just leave it as background noise believe me when I say the allure of horror should be kept to fiction as inviting into your life is never a good idea. And for the love of God and all that is holy don’t fucking text and drive.
Now you might be wondering ‘why can’t I think about the creepy stuff or bad memories in my life?’ and my answer should be obvious, it’s creepy shit at night I don’t care about how brave or edgy you think you are. Out in the dark that type of vibe can invite things to you, things that look human but well aren’t. This was made clear to me that my thoughts out at night can both influence and attract certain entities to someone’s location, some of these beings may be good and some can be extremely dangerous. You might ask how can some be good? Well from what I’ve heard there are helpful entities that gift people who might come across them with money, treasures, or a sense of peace. Others don’t do anything remotely close to beneficial but aren’t exactly out to cause chaos to unfold they just more or less linger in the limbo of the Evernight. Events that occur being it creepy or riding on the side of weird stupid shit, for instance, there are odd occurrences, like a clown car honking its horn three times, where one of the passengers grants you a sight of a full moon on a clouded night - a peculiar incident, to say the least.
You also may think to yourself that ‘Oh I’m fine with that it’s just creepy clowns at night.’ Yeah, many people thought the same thing back in the late 2010s and that ended up with people dead so good luck with that mentality. See in the Evernight you should have at least two rules with you encounter horrifying shit. First option is to run like hell, or rather drive like a bat out of hell. The second and the riskier is to grab your gat and hold it sideways and explain why this bitch done fucked up. That’s assuming you have a Glock lying about inside of your car and you can hit while holding sideways. If not plan three seems to work best for my coworkers. Shoot and drive.
I listed the options because when it comes down to it you must either fight or run. And in running there is no shame in that. You’re a regular person after all not the protagonist in a novel. When it comes down to the decisions to consider you must value your life and not play stupid games, this is what my coworker told me however when he explained it to me the man was mostly drunk and high while I drove down the empty highway. And before you question why he was, I don’t know why he decided to info dump his hellish stories unto me but there was plenty of bat shit tales that cause him to become a drunk to just cope with what was in his head. I’m more than positive he was a sober great individual, but that person was long gone and the man I had met was nothing more than a shell who only functioned from strong booze and somehow managed to drive sober enough to get to his destination. Apparently, it was enough to keep his employment but of course it wasn’t for long.
I tell you this because it’s simple, I made the mistake of dwelling on the terrible memories I made over the course of my trips, and I allowed myself to let the supernatural influence my mind while driving and it caused stress like no other. By this point in my life, I learned that the supernatural is very much real and you should at bare minimum give it the respect it deserves. Don’t misinterpret what I say next. When you do night drives for as long as I have, no matter the main road, or the backroads you will have an experience that will be seared into your mind or several, and you should treat it with some kind of respect. I’m not saying you should give a supernatural entity polite speech or anything like that. What I mean is if you encounter a monster, you treat the situation with some actual brain power and deal with it accordingly. For example, if you see a creature that resembles a human stand up screeching in the road within your headlights. You shouldn’t pull your phone out and film it and hope the cameraman rule applies to you, life is not a movie, and it may not send a saving grace to protect you in the moment that does happen.
This story is not necessarily supernatural but is more of a lesson you should take in not putting bad thoughts out into the world, because the world may response and give you a terrible outcome and bad experience.
It was a Friday night. I had got my coffee and grabbed my keys to pack up the vehicle they provided me at this old military building that was repurposed for whatever the company uses it for now. I was told to get to the hospital and grab some medical goods and whatever else they needed and take it up to 4 hours from the city and come back if anything else was needed they would inform me through text and send me to meet with another one of their contractors. Normal stuff everything that this company takes always goes back to this lab up in a big city and we are sent to collect the items and essentially by the courier that delivers them. The job was simple as they come and so I made my way to grab what I needed to form the hospital as directed.
I had soon begun my long drive into the endless blackness of the Evernight with nothing but the destination in mind. I drove on with music playing and thoughts of ‘what horrors may come to play tonight’. That was the wrong thought because that was the day, I witnessed the first untimely deaths on the road. My mind was racing at the story my coworker told me about his third encounter with the dead woman in the road. He explained during his travels he spotted a woman running from the wilderness into the main road and he stopped for her. Her face was that of a gorgeous model and she wore a beautiful white dress. He thought “Score.” At first and rolled his window down asking where she needed to go. He was told she needed just to get to the next town as fast as possible so that her husband doesn’t find her and to at least take her to the hospital.
He was asking what happened to her as she got into his vehicle, and she explained to him that she was beaten by him countless times and she finally mustered up the courage to leave him. She fled with a friend who she trusted and when her husband found her, he beat her and the friend up and shot his friend. She ran away and got a ride from a uber but the uber wouldn’t take her that far after they were shot at and so she fled down the road and into the wilderness. Feeling horrible for her he sped of telling her she’ll be fine and that she would be taken to the hospital and the police notified.
During this trip she was asking questions and began to get sexual with him, she was being overly flirtatious and despite his better judgment he let his little brain get the better of his. While they started getting a little busy, he had undone her dress only to discover that she had bullet wounds and stab wounds in his stomach. Screaming he tried getting her off and out of the vehicle only to wake up in the truck alone in the side of the road. The only thing he had was the scent of her lingering and the blood still all over his clothes, driving away he shuddered in fear.
I tell this story as an example of what creepy things could pop up as you drive and not to stop for everything, supernatural creatures could be lurking and who knows the intentions. As I drove through the back roads into the main toll I was worried about seeing a ghost or some kind of monster in the road.
I vividly remember that night—it was 2337 when I was on the toll road, traversing the seemingly endless path. As I rounded a bend, sudden blinking lights caught my attention. At first, I thought my mind was playing tricks due to the dimly lit surroundings until I completed the turn.
I was going about 87 miles an hour, when I realized to those hazard lights on the road were not as far as I thought, slamming on the brakes I came to a halt a little way from the vehicle, my adrenaline spiked at the sudden action I had to take as I contemplated what could have happened had my reaction been a second slower. I would have collided into the vehicle and at best very injured or worse – a direct collision with the car. Illuminating the area with my high beams, I discerned a lone white Toyota Camry obstructing the road. Inside, there were figures slumped in their seats, with red stains on the window.
My instincts took over as I unbuckled my seat belt and opened the passenger storage compartment for the first aid. Picking up my head and turning for my door I looked out into the night through the window and there briefly illuminated by the hazard lights was a dark figure hidden slightly in the brush. I paused my movement and stared waiting for the lights to flicker on again. As they did, I saw the figure looking at me tilt its head slightly, curious if it was spotted. It was pure luck I noticed; the figure crouched in the grass divider tucked by some of that thick brush. But it was close enough to notice.
My mind raced with thoughts. “What should I do? Should I drive off? Open the door and scream at him to leave? No, I don’t know what he has. If I don’t do something now, he’s going to make the first move.”
A few moments went by, and I decided to open the door, I steadied my breathing while cursing myself for doing something that could get me killed. The moment I opened the door I pulled out my gun from its holster and turned my weapon light on pushing the door out all the way. I hit my weapon mounted light and gave the figure the 600 lumens of light and locked in with the red dot. While I had opened my door the figure had stood up but froze the moment, I turned that beam on and placed a hand up blocking the light in his other hand I took full noticed of his still dripping red liquid-stained large knife. I held my position and demanded what did he want?
No verbal response was given however his actions did give a response; he made a slicing motion on his neck as he took a step forward toward me. He must have thought I had a regular flashlight because he continued to step towards me as I yelled for him to stop. I shouted as loud and made it clear for him to stop where he was at. Even though he was a decent distance away from where I was a rush from him would be horrible because bullets don’t stop someone immediately. When he continued to move to me slowly, methodically this was something he probably has done before many, many times. I shouted for him to drop the knife and by his fourth step I shot at his feet.
The moment that bullet left my gun he ceased all movement and that granted me a few more seconds of planning. From the looks of it, I could shoot this hooded figure dead and be cleared of any wrongdoing, or I can get back into the vehicle and run away and never think about this again. Another part of me just screamed for me to shoot him and end his life. Whatever bravery the hooded figure showed earlier, he certainly lost it all as the gunshot was reason enough to not pick this would be prey tonight and that was good enough for me. He took a few steps back and gave me a small wave as he casually walked away. After he got further into the grass, he slowly removed the hood and showed off a blank emotionless mask, one of those party masks that had no theme to hit. It was a simple mask that would get from a party store. The white mask had noticeable red stains scattered all over the left cheek and to contrast the messy left side is what appeared to be a bloody tear coming down from the right eye.
After fading into the darkness, I called the police and waited for them to get there, during that time I had inspected the body that was in the car, there staring up into the car was a handsome young man who was holding his neck, blood splayed across his shirt and fear painted on his face. The multiple stab wounds in his chest indicated the cause of death. In the passenger’s seat was a beautiful woman who was coughing up blood reaching for the door handle gurgling still and crying in pain, whimpering at the sight of me. I heard her cries as I ran to my car and grabbed a first aid bag. I ran to the side of the car and put on the emergency gloves and pulled out gauze and other first aid equipment. I opened the door and assisted her out of the car hearing her cry holding onto me as her blood pooled onto me.
I pulled her to the light of the vehicle and began first aid. She was trying to tell me something however I didn’t understand her at all. She pointed to her stomach and told me, “It hurts. Scared.” She said in gurgled breathes. I tried to do everything I could to prevent the bleeding from continuing however I didn’t know how long she may have. I cut her shirt with the emergency scissors and looked at her body, the source of her bleeding was the three stab wounds to her stomach, I grabbed some of the clotting gauze and began putting it onto the knife wounds and wrapping them around her stomach as her cries of pain echoed into the night. Minutes felt like hours, and I held her there in the night as she kept crying out for help. She was holding onto my blood stand jacket as I kept her other hand on her wound putting pressure on it.
Occasionally the sound of a crunch echoed in the grassy patches to which my response was a sweep with my pistol with the light on and ready to shoot. My fear growing not only for me but the woman I now held in my arms, I was scared, not just for her as horrible as it sounds. I didn’t want to get stabbed potentially the masked man because that would mean certain death for the both of us. All the while I kept on the look out for the police. Finally, after what felt like a lifetime the police came and with an ambulance, the relief of seeing those red and blue lights was unlike any other. The woman who I held was still talking as I kept asking her questions, anything to make her retain consciousness as we waited for the ambulance to finally arrive. When they came out and got her, I was pulled aside and felt my heart drop again as the first cop who arrived on scene grabbed me and slammed me into the car.
Confusion hit me like the handcuffs placed on my hands as I realized this cop reading me my rights before he even understood what the hell happened. As he was shouting at me, I could only stare into the shocked expression of the young man who lifelessly sat in the car in front of me. I could only recall being pushed into the car twice over and the cop screaming at me. Finally, after what felt like what would have been a third bashing, the man was taken off me while another officer grabbed me and asked me who I was. When I explained I was the one who called them she let me go apologizing for her partner.
Turning my head to her I looked at the man who cuffed and slammed the head into the car, the startling realization that he looked very similar to the young boy in the car. With tears rolling down his cheek I understood his frustration. The female officer took me and guided me to her car where we spoke of my encounter. I told her what had happened mentioning how I just saw a hooded figure walk away from me waving goodbye. I thought it best to just give them a simple explanation with no detail and leaving my gun out of it as it could result in them taking my only means of defense for their investigation.
She said to me, “You know she might make it and its thanks to you. You’re a hero. Be safe out there and get back safely.” I looked at her almost disgusted by the word, I wasn’t a hero that is for sure. A hero would have done more, I didn’t even shoot the man responsible for it. I nodded to her and made my way to my vehicle. As I approached the car, I picked the spent casing of the round and got into the car. Driving off I looked back at the eerie sight of red and blue flashing lights consuming the orange hazard lights.
As the ambulance departed, I felt regret hit me and a heaviness in my chest, the thing I noticed when I was there was how in the car I noticed their phones, purse and even a backpack wasn’t touched, just those two individuals were harmed. They were just prey to some sick hunter in the night it wasn’t a robbery gone wrong, it was just some sick murder for the sake of murder. That murderer gave me a rush I didn’t want to feel, the cold feeling of adrenaline flowing through my body as I was put into fight or flight coupled with the painful guilt. The guilt of not pulling the trigger a second time.
I learned that night just because you have the means to fight back in a situation doesn’t mean the tension or horror goes away. It just means there’s a chance to get out of the situation with some scars. Be it physical or mental, and for me well I got a bit of that mental scarring from that, and a regret that will forever haunt my mind for my first encounter with a murderer. Although my misfortune wouldn’t end there as the more, I drove through the backroads in the Evernight, the more I would come realize the horrors come from both man and monster.
As for the girl, she lived but she wasn’t the same after that. I got a message from a number I didn’t know, turns out it was a long message from that lady. She thanked me for saving her. She wanted to wish me well and to stay safe. She also told me what I told myself many times over, I don’t blame her for feeling this way, a part of me feels like I should have listened to myself and gone through with it. Her last words in that message read, “I wish you at least shot the bastard instead of letting him go.”
I had to respond. And I simply said, “You’re right, I should have shot him. If I see him out there, I will.” I hoped I never have to see him or someone like that again, but I knew I would. After all it’s the Evernight, the time and home of the darkest parts of life. Human or otherwise until then, drive safely.