Not to be confused with “The Hitchhiker” from way back on October 25, 2017 (man, I’ve been doing this for a bit, haven’t I?). I mean, the “The” in that story makes it so different!! Well… I mean, it definitely turns out differently for the hitchhiker.

The full moon shone on the deserted stretch of road, turning the still waters of the lake just off the side of the road into shimmering silver in the night. The stillness belies the secrets hidden beneath the surface – especially the purported car that drove off the road into the water on a night just like this one, the woman at the wheel a jilted lover, distraught and didn’t see the edge of the road until she careened off into the cold waters, unable to free herself from the car and drowning beneath the waters of the lake… even though they never found the car… Or was she trying to get to her husband, but lost control of the car… Maybe she was trying to get to her children who she had left for just a moment, but a blown-out tire caused her to go off the road…

As the fog drifts up the short bank to the road, they say sometimes that woman can be found hitchhiking, hoping to get a ride to her lover/husband/children. When the hapless driver picks her up, she stares wordlessly out the window until one moment she just disappears…

Amanda had not heard this legend. Amanda didn’t care about legends because Amanda had just gotten off working a double at Valley General. Despite pounding her fourth (fifth?) Red Bull of her shift just before she left, Amanda was tired – wired, but exhausted. So Amanda didn’t notice her headlights shone through the bedraggled woman shivering on the side of the deserted road.

She pulled her Subaru Forester to the side of the road, lowering the passenger window.

“Why are you out this late?”

No response.

“You know what, just get in, honey.”

The woman wordlessly opened the back door and started to get in.

“Oh, shit, sorry – that’s my gym bag back there,” Amanda said, reaching back over the seat to awkwardly wrangle her lavender gym bag over the backseat into the trunk area, grunting with the effort. “Yeah, okay, that should be clear. Hop in!”

The hitchhiker climbed into the back seat and closed the door.

Amanda signaled and pulled back onto the road. “What are you doing hitchhiking at this time of night? Are you crazy? In that outfit? You’re going to die of hypothermia if you don’t get picked up by a serial killer first…”

The hitchhiker stared at Amanda with luminous eyes, filled with deep sadness.

“Hey, Sweetie,” Amanda snapped her fingers. “You with me, girl?”

The hitchhiker didn’t respond beyond her still, baleful stare, tears on the edge of falling down her pale cheeks.

“Where are you going, hon?”

No response.

“Yeah, okay…you just tell me when you need me to stop, okay? But really, what’s a girl like you doing out here? I was joking about the serial killer, but not really. I’m an ER nurse at Valley General and, let me tell you, I’ve seen so many young women just like you come in clinging to life. It’s so sad…” Amanda trailed off.

As a heavy stillness fell over the car, the hitchhiker turned her head to stare out the window into the darkness.

“I mean, they really should put up guard rails here, right? I’m not the first to suggest such a thing. But, noooo, they’re more concerned with wildlife crossings than keeping those of us who drive this road safe. Can I get an amen?” She waited a heartbeat, but when no “amen” was forthcoming, Amanda continued on, “I heard someone died out here when their car crashed into the lake.”

The hitchhiker’s face snapped back around to stare at Amanda in the rearview mirror.

“I don’t think that happened, though – we’d have heard about it in the papers, right? Okay, yeah, that’s dumb – who reads papers anymore. Maybe on Neighborhood or Reddit… though, come to think about it, what would be the Reddit that would cover this? R-slash-deserted-road-safety?”

The hitchhiker let out a sigh and stared out the passenger window again.

“But seriously, girl, what are you doing out here? Hitchhiking isn’t safe in the daylight. You’re out there in the middle of the night? There was barely a shoulder for me to pull off onto – did you think that through before you started hitchhiking?”

The hitchhiker in the back seat started to rapidly fade from existence.

“Hey, no, no, no, no,” Amanda said, noticing the girl’s increasing translucence, reaching her arm back to steady the girl even as she kept her face forward watching the dark road. Her hand passed right through the hitchhiker’s torso. But the look on the nearly-invisible hitchhiker’s face changed from resigned sadness to shock as a spark of life energy arced from Amanda’s hand, bringing the hitchhiker back into nearly solid coherence. Her mouth formed into a wordless “Huh?” as Amanda snatched her hand back.

“Ow, shit,” she said pressing her fingers to her mouth. “I think I got shocked…”

The hitchhiker stared back and forth in the car, shocked she hadn’t vanished.

“I bet if that woman who ran off the road were in like a Tesla she wouldn’t have drowned – probably electrocuted, right?” Amanda laughed. “I mean, I don’t know if that’s how that works. It’s just like a lot of electricity, you know?”

The hitchhiker reached for the door handle in desperation, but the door didn’t open.

“Oh, yeah, sorry, the child locks are still on from when I had my niece this last weekend. She’s such a doll. I took her to the other lake – the one that’s not creepy and has ducks?” She smiled at the memory. “Did you know you’re not supposed to feed ducks bread anymore? I mean I guess we were never supposed to feed them bread – it’s not good for their little duck stomachs. But who knew? And, if I’m honest, I let Danni – my niece, Danni – feed bread to the ducks. Because, what? Am I a monster?”

The hitchhiker clawed desperately at the door handle, then tried the window with the intention of throwing herself out the window.

“Yeah, same thing – Danni was playing with the window and I told her, ‘Danni, if you put your hand out the window it’s going to go home in another car.’ That’s terrible, isn’t it? I mean that’s what our parents told us, right? But speaking as someone who has had to handle a hand in a baggy of ice that really did go home in another car just the other week in the ER… man, that got dark…” Amanda laughed.

The hitchhiker sat back, resigned to spending the rest of her afterlife in the back seat of this Subaru Forester.

“…They did get the hand attached again. But, you know, I don’t know if they got full functionality… I’m guessing they’re not going to grow up to be a concert pianist or anything.” She laughed as the car drove on through the night, beneath the full moon as the road curved away from the lake and the hitchhiker stared through the back window at the lake, wishing she were under its cold, silvery surface gasping for air.

My evening walk takes me past an old cemetery. I know, I know – that’s like the perfect setup for a ghost story. But it’s not like that. I mean, yes, my walk takes me past an old cemetery, but it’s literally just along one edge of the cemetery. It’s not like I go through into the cemetery and walk among the gravestones.

Well, usually that’s the case.

For one, Noodles (my husky) will not go in the cemetery. Like, period. He flattens out like a Berkeley protestor and will not budge. But Noodles wasn’t with me tonight. If he had been, the creepy guy in the Chevy Malibu almost certainly wouldn’t have immediately turned around after passing me and drove past really slowly while looking at me.. and then turning around again…

Before you ask, yes, I have several ways to defend myself. When he first turned around my hand fell instinctively to the small pocket in my exercise shorts that held my mace. My other hand tightened around the Nightcore T4K flashlight that could deliver a 4,000-lumen burst of light that is quite disabling. I swallowed hard as he drove by and felt the chain around the kydex sheath concealing my Bastinelli PiKa Karambit knife that my dad taught me to very effectively use against a tree in our yard whose bark is extremely carved up as a result. So, yeah, when I use terms like “layered defense,” trust me that I have an idea what I’m talking about.

That said, best way to survive an encounter is to avoid it in the first place. So, when the Malibu made the second lazy U-turn, I hesitated for only a moment before turning and vaulting over the low stone wall surrounding the cemetery.

The tall trees that ran along the stone wall swallowed the light from the streetlights almost immediately, and I turned my flashlight on a much more sedate and useful light level, hurrying deeper into the cemetery to put as much distance between me and the creepy guy as possible. My vague plan was to cut through and come out the west side of the cemetery and pick up Oak Avenue which I could use to get home. That was the plan, at least.

But it was very dark, and the flashlight created eerie shadows among the pale gravestones. I was only about a hundred meters in before I started to lose my nerve and wonder if maybe testing my pepper spray might not have been the worst idea as the familiar warm concrete smell of the sidewalk gave way to the earthy smell of watered lawns – I could hear the distant chick-chick-chick of automated sprinklers in a far-off section of the cemetery. A nearby owl hoot-hooted, startling me. I hurried deeper into the cemetery.

I caught movement in my periphery and trained the beam of my flashlight in that direction – nothing. I kept moving only to hear the distinct sound of leaves underfoot from that same direction. I shone the light again. Again, nothing. I moved faster. The footsteps on dead leaves seemed to keep pace. I had almost sped up to a run now. I spotted another flashlight beam ahead in the distance, and as the steps behind me picked up their speed, I broke into a sprint towards the flashlight in the distance hoping it was some night watchman. I thought I heard the footsteps sprint after me, but I wasn’t certain – I wasn’t going to check. I ran at a breakneck speed towards the person with the flashlight.

The flashlight holder clearly heard my desperate footfalls and my own erratically moving flashlight beam. “Whoa, whoa there,” a female voice came from the flashlight holder.

“Oh my god,” I panted. “Thank god. There’s something following me..”

She trained her light behind me and increased the brightness. There among the gray and bone-white tombstones stood… a deer. Well, a buck. With a pretty nice set of antlers. It paused for a second as the light reflected in its eyes like, well, a deer in headlights, before turning his head and darting into the darkness.

“Well,” she laughed, “I think you’re safe from marauding deer now.”

Her laughter made my fear evaporate, replaced by embarrassment. “God, now I feel dumb…”

“You shouldn’t. It’s spooky as hell in here. Getting scared of an animal skulking in the dark just seems reasonable.” The silence around us pressed in before she added, “Hi, I’m Mara.”

I smiled in the darkness. “I’m Leah. Thanks for, well, for being here.”

She chuckled. “Just taking my nightly walk through here. What are you doing in here, Leah?”

“Ugh,” I sighed. “There was a creepy guy… I decided to cut through the cemetery to try to get away from him.”

“Holy shit, did he hurt you?”

“No,” I said quickly. “Nothing like that. He just drove by slowly, then again, then turned to come around again.”

“Jesus, that’s scary…”

“I mean… yeah…” we were quiet. As my heartrate slowed, I broke the silence, “You cut through here regularly?”

“Oh yeah, it’s my usual route.”

“You don’t find it scary? I mean there are terrifying deer in here and everything,” I said dramatically.

Mara laughed. “No, it’s peaceful. Well.. at least it’s usually peaceful.”

“Usually?”

“You were just terrified by a ruminant; I don’t want to add to your fears.”

“Oh, now you’ve got me intrigued.”

From the light of our flashlights I could see Mara sizing me up. “Yeah, well, this one time I ran into something a lot scarier than a buck.”

Maybe it was the company, but I felt less afraid. “Yeah? Go on…”

“I don’t know what it was. I was walking through in the middle of summer, so the sun had set and there was still just enough light for me to see an unusual statue on one of the mausoleums by the west entrance. I didn’t remember it being there before. A few steps in, I turned to look at it again and it was gone.”

“That’s… disconcerting.”

“Right? I told myself I just needed to get through, so I sped up. I passed the groundskeepers shed and heard a loud hissing. I had my flashlight,” she gestured to the light in her hand, “and shone it towards the sound…”

“And?”

“I saw… I don’t know. It was like a shadow that the light couldn’t penetrate. Pure darkness, just hovering there by the corner of the structure. Then burning red dots appeared, like it opened its eyes and looked at me.”

“Holy shit,” I said.

“Yeah. I booked it.”

“Hell yeah, you did.”

“I got maybe thirty yards before it appeared directly in front of me, the darkness coalescing into the form of an enormous crow – like ten feet tall. It spread its gaping wings to engulf me. I skidded to a stop and bolted across the grass. I could hear it take flight, I thought I could feel the wind from its massive wings, but when I stole a glance over my shoulder I could just see the dark shape and fiery red eyes soaring after me.”

“Jesus…”

“Yeah, well, I probably shouldn’t have looked behind me as I ran across the grass because I tripped over one of those low grave stones and went down hard.”

I winced just thinking about it.

“My foot went numb – I don’t know if I sprained or broke my ankle, but it didn’t matter as that.. thing settled right in front of me. I scrambled backwards and I could see other shades moving in towards me from other directions. The main being floated closer, its eyes boring into me…” she trailed off into silence.

I waited a long moment for her to continue, but the silence hung heavy in the darkness. Finally, I couldn’t stand it and asked louder than I intended, “Well? How’d you escape that thing?”

My question startled Mara. “Oh? Oh, yeah. I didn’t. That was, what? Ten years ago? I’ve been here ever since.”

My blood froze in my veins as I staggered backwards, my flashlight pointing at Mara… through Mara, before I turned and ran for the exit.

I sighed when I saw the caller ID. There was no good reason why my ex-wife, Christina, was calling me so soon after I dropped our son off at her house after my visitation weekend. “Hey Chris, what’s up?”

“Ethan, what the hell is up with that shithole you call a house?”

“’Hi Ethan, how are you?’” I mimicked her voice. “‘Good, Chris, thanks. How are you?’ ‘I’m good, thanks for asking…’”

“Cut the shit, Ethan. What happened to Noah this weekend?”

“Wait, what? We went to the zoo. I told you that. What’s going–”

“He doesn’t want to sleep in his room. Said you let him sleep with you?”

“Well, yeah. He didn’t want to sleep in his room here. I mean, he didn’t want to be in there at all. So, yeah, I let him sleep with me. I figured it’s a new place, he’s just not used to it.”

“Christ,” Christina exhaled. “Nothing else happened?”

“No, nothing else happened.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, Chris –”

“Please call me Christina.”

“For Christ’s sake, I’ve called you Chris since we met, I can’t turn on a dime and call you Christina every time.”

“Well, please at least try.”

“Goodbye, Christina,” I added extra emphasis. “See you in two weeks.”

***

 “I just don’t like it, Dad,” Noah said.

“But it’s your room, buddy. Look, I put your favorite dinosaur sheets on the bed. You like those sheets, right?”

Noah nodded. “Daddy, I want to sleep with you,” he whined.

Part of me wanted to take a stand – isn’t that what you’re supposed to do as a father? Put your foot down? This was the third weekend Noah had been over since I moved into the house on Sutter, and he hadn’t slept a single night in the room I made up for him. But I was tired. He was tired. Neither of us had the energy to talk this one through. Maybe in the morning… “Okay, buddy, come on.” He climbed onto the bed. I settled him in, turned off the light and then started to get into what apparently now was my side when Noah was over.

“Dad?”

I stopped. “Yes?”

“Can we leave the bathroom light on?”

I looked through the darkness to the outline of the dark bathroom. I sighed, “Sure, buddy.” I turned the light in the bathroom on before climbing into bed. “Good night, Noah.”

“Night, Daddy.”

He fell asleep almost instantly. Me, not so much. It’s weird, but it felt like the house changed when Noah was in it. I’ve been trying to figure out if it’s just been my perspective on the house – with the little one around, it’s no longer my bachelor pad and now I have to change my mindset to be “Dad” – or whether it was something… else. That night I thought I heard whispers right at the edge of hearing. I couldn’t make out any words, and I thought it might be the kids next door having a party and the sound drifting over. But there was no bass music or laughing or anything you’d associate with a party. Just what sounded like people whispering. My mind tried to rationalize it, but nothing made sense and the more I concentrated on trying to figure out what they were saying, the more unsettled I got. But I must have been tired because next thing I know the sun is streaming in the window, and Noah’s head is on my chest leaving a drool puddle on my shirt.

Most visitation weekends I pick up Noah from his Mom’s Saturday morning and bring him back Sunday evening. This weekend, though, Chris had gone out of town for the weekend and asked if I could take him to school on Monday and she’d pick him up after school. To me it meant I had extra time with my son, so that’s fine. We watched the latest Minions movie and then I took him out to dinner at his request. Again, he wanted nothing to do with his room, and I was happy to have another night with him so I didn’t argue when he asked to sleep with me.

But the whispering was back again. I mentally tuned it out and was nearly asleep when movement caught my eye. Something had moved between the lit bathroom and the bed. Eyes wide open now, I stared hard t the rectangle of light that was the bathroom door, waiting for a repeat. No movement, no dimming. But the whispers grew louder so that I could almost make out words… but not quite.

***

“Who did you have over at the house this weekend?”

“Hello to you, Chris – Christina,” I caught myself. “What are you talking about?”

“Noah told his friends that you always have people over when he’s there. Is that true? Do you have what’s her name there? Ellie?”

“Eleanor? No, we broke up like six months ago. Christina, no one was over at the house. It was just the two of us. What exactly did he say? I had people over?”

“Apparently, he said he doesn’t like the people at your house. Ethan, if any of your stupid friends is messing with my baby, so help me God…”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, calm down there. No one is at the house when he’s here. It’s literally just us.”

“So, he’s lying then?” she said in clipped tones. “You’re saying our son is a liar?”

I pinched the bridge of my nose to stave off the headache I felt coming on every time Chris and I would fight. “Christina, no, no one’s calling him a liar. I don’t know why he’s telling people there’s people over here.”

She was silent for a long moment. “You swear to God?”

“Jesus, Christina…”

“Swear to God?”

I sighed heavily. “Yes, my hand to God, I’m not having anyone at the house when Noah’s here. That’s our time.”

She was quiet again. Then said, “…Because I won’t hesitate to go to court…”

“Goodbye, Chris,” I said deliberately, ending the call.

***

Two weeks later, Noah was asleep next to me in bed and I couldn’t tune out the whispering. I rolled over and caught something slip between the bed and the bathroom. I stared at the lit bathroom doorway – nothing. Something blurred in my periphery by the door to the hallway. The whispering grew louder, so loud that I looked down at Noah to see if it had woken him – still sound asleep. My eyes dart from the door to the hallway to the bathroom doorway and back, my arms instinctively holding Noah.

The whispering stops suddenly. The house is silent.

“You can’t protect him,” a female girl’s voice whispered right behind my right ear.

I leapt out of bed, spinning to see who was there. No one. I saw a shadow cross in front of the bathroom.

“Did they talk to you?” Noah’s voice came from the bed.

I looked down at him staring up at me, fear plain on his face. “Who? Did who talk to me?”

He shrunk into himself, tears welling up in his eyes. “They told me I can’t tell you or they would hurt me.”

The door to Noah’s room slammed shut with a bang. I jumped. The door to the bathroom slammed shut, plunging the room into darkness.

I lunged for the light switch, but no lights came on. I leaned over and scooped Noah up and moved into the hallway, heading for the front door. The table by the door tipped over, sending everything crashing to the floor, including the little bowl I kept my keys in. I bent, grabbed the keys, unlocked the front door and pulled. The front door didn’t budge. With a Herculean effort I can only attribute to Dad adrenaline strength, I wrenched the door open and strode out into the night, the door slamming behind me.

“I’m scared, Daddy,” Noah said as I buckled him into his car seat with shaking fingers.

“I know, buddy,” I said as reassuringly as I could. “We’ll be fine…”

“Where are we going, Daddy?”

I didn’t rightly know – I hadn’t thought that far ahead. “We’re going to find a hotel for the night. Everything will be better tomorrow. You have school in the morning.”

I started the car and hurried out of the driveway as I could see lights inside the house wink on and off furiously. As we sped through the neighborhood, I breathed a sigh of relief. I didn’t know what the hell was going on with my house, but I’d sort it out. Or burn the place to the ground – I didn’t rightfully know. I turned the radio on to soothe my nerves.

The loud whispering emanated from the car’s speakers.