Thumbs Out

I was driving home with my girlfriend. It was late, and we had just come from the movies. I don’t have a radio in my car, it was stolen. However, my girlfriend can play music just fine on her phone. As we drove home in the dark, I started to notice that it was getting foggy. Suddenly, her phone started to ring. She looked down angrily at it, since her favorite song was interrupted. When she answered it though, all she got was static. Meanwhile, I cursed and drove around a piece of road kill. It looked fresh. Actually, as I thought about it, that was maybe the 4th one that I had passed in the last minute or so.

As I drove a little farther, I started to see more and more dead animals. First small things, like possums and skunks. Soon though, I thought I saw a dog. Then another large animal. I even had to slow the car to get around three deer that lay strewn about the road. They looked more like they had been ripped open than hit by a car. Being a Michigan resident, I know what road deer look like. By now I was really starting to get creeped out. My girlfriend was glancing around a lot too, like she was very nervous.

Suddenly, I though that I could see a shape start to resolve itself at the very edge of my high beams. At first, it looked like a woman in a dress. As I drove closer though, my heart started to beat very quickly. Her skin was pale and dirty. She might have had black hair, but I could not tell. her face is what really drew my attention. I can see it in my mind almost every waking hour since that night. Her mouth looked like a long smear of ink, spilled from ear to ear. It glistened in the headlights. Her eyes were also black and dark, but they were too long on her face. They almost touched in the middle, and extended almost to where her ears should have been. She had no nose. She started to raise her arm. Then it clicked.

I realized that she was holding out her thumb, following that classic hitchhiker pose. That’s when I floored it. As I drove past, her face seemed to follow me as I went by. I don’t mean that she turned her head to follow my progress, but that her face seemed to simply slide around on her head to track my car… Somewhere in my head, I noted my trip odometer. When I finally pulled into my driveway, my girlfriend ran into the house. We even left our leftover movie snacks in the car. Even though we had passed the…girl…about 30 miles back, we were still pretty scared. The only reason either of us slept that night, I think, is because we had each other for comfort.

That was two days ago. My girlfriend left yesterday to visit her grandmother in the town north of here. She was supposed to be back this evening. It occurs to me though, that with all the hours of night that we have in the winter, that thing might only take a night or two for someone to walk 30 miles. I was pondering this when my phone started to ring. I nearly jumped out of my skin. When I looked at it though, it said it was from my girlfriend. When I picked it up though, there was nothing but static. I didn’t start to worry, truly worry though, until just a few minutes ago when I looked out the window…

It just got very foggy outside...