Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-23872426-20170819024924

The Hitchhiker

It was just about a year ago, that I learned the hard way why you never pick up strangers. My friend and I were driving back from college on the backroads of Minnesota. An annoying amount of road construction had extended our normally four-hour trip to six, so we agreed to take some backroad shortcuts that avoided construction that would hopefully speed up our trip. It seemed to be working for the most part, everything was smooth sailing right. That was until around one in the morning, when a thunderstorm formed in the distance and the weather took a turn for the worse. Before my friend Stan and I knew it were surrounded by a thick blanket of fog. All that our headlights illuminated was just a few feet ahead of us, with the occasional flash of light breaking through the shroud from the lightning ahead. We slowed the car down, after all there were deer out on this road and I didn’t feel like getting in any accidents in the middle of nowhere. It was like this for about a good… 15 minutes or so until my bud, who I thought was sleeping, jerked straight up and began yelling for me to stop the car. I only had just a moment to look ahead and see what he was screaming about. From out of nowhere this girl appeared of the fog to our right, stumbling like a zombie and waving us down. I slammed on the brakes, and the car skidded to a halt just inches away from her. Normally I don’t stop for hitchhikers, but normally Stan doesn’t yell and the way that this girl just threw herself in front of my vehicle I really didn’t have much of a choice. Reluctantly I rolled down the window, and asked her what was wrong. She explained she was in a car wreck just a mile away and it was urgent she got back to town as soon as possible. I was still hesitant but since I nearly took this girl’s head off, a strange sense of responsibility overcame me... Had known what was going to happen next I probably would have just drove off. When she got in I finally got a good look at her, and that only added to the strangeness. All of her clothes were torn up, and the way she dressed was…outdated. Turtlenecks and skirts aren’t really all the rage these days, especially ones covered in holes. We never did get her name, but she was probably a few years younger than us. After about a ten minutes of just awkward, uneased silent driving she finally began to calm her breathing. She thanked us for picking her up, and apologized for startling us. We asked her what happened, and she went quiet again. Something just didn’t feel right, I had this uneasy feeling in my gut stabbing at me like a knife. Looking over, Stan’s wide eyes and quiet demeanor hinted he probably felt similar. She apologized to us and told us she lied to us. Turns out her car did crash, but when she got free from the wreckage a strange man appeared and startled her. According to our hitchhiker, he started screaming obscene things at her and following her. Threatened, she said she rain, and lost him in the fog, but wasn’t completely sure. Being the gentlemen that he was, Stan did his best to reassure her that she was safe and we’d drop her off at the police station. At this point the fog had finally let up and we were in the clear, surrounded by empty fields and roads. This is when things began to get even more strange. At the first mention of the police station she immediately gunned it down. When I asked why, she simply replied, “I just want to go home,”. Fair enough I thought, so we asked her where she lived. Once again she told us the town name, but nothing else. It almost seemed like she was hiding something. I looked back at her to try and get more information, but tears began running out of her eyes. With the moonlight free from the fog, and illuminating the vehicle I noticed something on her that I missed before: Blood stains were on her clothes. Stan noticed too. “Are you okay?” He asked immediately. “No.” “Would you like us to take you to the hospital?” “No.” She then proceeded to begin sobbing loudly, and told us just to take her home. Stan and I gave each other a good look of guilt before we asked her address, but she didn’t reply. The sobbing abruptly ended, and was replaced with silence. We asked again, but heard only silence. At the same time, we both turned, only to see…nothing. There was no one in the back seat. It was like she just vanished into thin air in the snap of a finger, like a magician of some sort. I stopped the car, and Stand and I searched my entire vehicle for her. There was nothing. All that we found was a rusty locket where she was sitting, with her picture in it and what we could only guess was her mother. These photos were very old and aged, and looked like they had been taken decades ago… Speechless, we didn’t speak the rest of the trip. I could tell from Stan’s face he was probably just as confused and probably just as frightened. Our first instince was to call the police, to no avail our phones were dead in spite of having a full charge just minutes ago. This was starting too look like some shit straight out of the X-Files So instead we just drove to the nearest police station, and reluctantly told them everything that happened. Surprisingly enough, they didn’t mock our story or anything like that. They actually took time to ask us questions and recorded it into logs. In fact one of the older officers seemed very eager to hear more about our story and asked to see the locket. When we gave it to him, he gave us a very confused look, and immediately demanded to know where we found it. Stan and I told him the same story. He commented strange that was, and proceeded to explain that about 40 years ago a 16-year-old girl went missing in the area. The only trace that was ever found of her was the wreckage of her car, found hidden in a ditch by the very road I was driving on. Her physical description fit the chick who was in the backseat of my car to a tee, along with the picture in the locket These past few years I’ve learned a few things about this event. We weren’t the only ones who this has happened to. Every few years or so in spring, someone reports picking this girl up and about how she tells her story and then just vanishes. Why she vanishes I couldn’t say. Maybe she’s just scared, or perhaps lonely. Personally I think she’s just waiting for someone to find her body so she can finally rest in peace. Whatever the reason, I’ll never drive down that road again, nor will I ever pick up another hitchhiker. 