In the forgotten hours of the night, while everyone else passes through the darkness in a haze of dreams, trucks continue, lumbering like serpents under the sea of the black sky. In those hours, the dreadful, fantastical, and horrible are permitted to emerge, making themselves known to an audience of only a few lonely, isolated truckers, creating trucker scary stories.
This is the story of one such encounter.
Happy Halloween!
—
“You sure about $10,000?”
Walter tilted his head, narrowing his eyes deliberately to communicate his suspicion. The contract rested between the men like a fire: Enticing, but dangerous to touch.
Mr. Thomas sat across from Walter. His unkempt beard poured over his tie in a million tiny worms. His jacket, an unfashionable shade of purple, was tattered at the sleeves, reminding Walter of a clown he had seen in a Halloween poster once. Regardless, Mr. Thomas’s face was as unmoving as stone, giving no hint that a smile had ever been there.
“When did the world become suspicious of kindness”, Mr. Thomas exhaled a long and drawn-out breath. He gestured out the window to the old semi-truck with a grandiose sweep, taking a moment to behold the object of their negotiation. “Like I’ve told you, I am simply ready for a new chapter and need the money urgently. But if you’ve changed your mind…“, The old man started to stand, an act of obvious theatrics.
“No, Mr. Thomas,” Walter held up a hand. “If you insist that there is nothing mechanically wrong, then you have a deal.” His arm extended to an offered handshake.
With sudden agility, Mr. Thomas grabbed Walter’s hand like a cat to an unassuming mouse. “It’s a deal then,” said Mr. Thomas, shaking his hand and smiling broadly, his lips drawn like puppet strings.
As Walter drove off in the old Peterbilt, he watched in his rearview as Mr. Thomas gazed in his direction. At first, Walter assumed that he was likely admiring the departure of a long and difficult career, perhaps even drinking in the site fondly. But as the old man’s shadow grew smaller, Walter thought that he could see the man’s shoulders bobbing up down, but whether in laughter or weeping, Walter could not tell.
—
Walter squinted through the dense fog of darkness. The Peterbilt’s headlights were faint, narrowing the road further into a thin slice of asphalt.
Walter had tuned out the radio long ago. As the truck careened down the road at highway speeds, guarding his small cone of vision had become a demanding task, and every shadow was a potential threat to his safety.
Suddenly, the radio stopped.
There, in the fortress of trees and foliage, it seemed as though the enclosure’s lid had snapped shut, a trap activated by something unseen. The silence of the night had lived just outside his cabin, but without warning, it entered and wrapped Walter in its suffocating embrace.
There was no crackling of pavement under tires. There was no hum of an engine. In that strange twilight, Walter could not even make out his own heartbeat. Instead, a dreadful crackling came over the CB radio.
“Walter, help me.” The sickly voice oozed over the speaker, cutting through the static like a knife through sand.
Walter slammed on the brakes, bringing the truck to a noiseless halt. The static continued to gush from the radio in undulating bursts, increasing in volume until an ocean of sound filled the cabin.
Then, it stopped.
The noises of the forest returned as regularly as a door opening to the outside world.
Walter removed his hands from his ears. He turned his head to look out the driver-side window, spotting only a few daisies bowing gently in the breeze. The scene was tranquil, placid, and unbothered.
Walter turned to inspect the CB radio. It was an older model. The dials were worn and one of the antennae was slightly bent, but ultimately, Walter found it to be ordinary. He raised the microphone to his mouth.
“Hello? Did someone need help?” Walter tried his best to sound unshaken, but failed. The radio emitted a low buzz, only coughing a few bursts of static occasionally.
“Hello,” Walter spoke more emphatically. “Someone called my name, and I am here. I don’t know what’s going on, but I can help—” Before he could finish, another voice echoed through the cabin.
“Turn right.”
Walter rapidly turned his head to discover that the sound came from his phone. His navigation app was still on, and a large, flashing arrow was pointing to the right. The typical image of a road had vanished, replaced by this one, large arrow. The artificial voice again urged him, “Turn right, then your destination is on the right.”
Walter stared at the phone; his face illuminated by the bright arrow. He raised his head to look out the window.
Outside, the forest had vanished. In its place, an endless field surrounded him. The moon illuminated clusters of wildflowers, and in the distance, he could make out a small stream. The beauty of the composition before him felt painted, like he had just been inserted in the scene of someone’s imagined world.
Walter grabbed the steering wheel to make sure it was real. His hands could easily discern the grooves tracing the wheel. It was cold.
Before Walter could even begin to imagine what had just taken place, the CB radio came alive again.
“Someone, please help me.” The CB radio static nearly choked the words. The voice was so soft and pleading that it pricked Walter’s heart, penetrating him like it was the cry of a helpless child. In an unexplainable way, Walter felt an overwhelming sympathy for the person communicating through the radio.
But he noticed something else. The sound seems to arrive from two places: the radio, and just outside the cabin.
“Turn right.” The phone reinserted its refrain. The arrow flashed wildly.
Walter turned to look out the passenger-side window. There, cradled in a grave of flowers, was an overturned semi-truck. It was heavily rusted, but Walter could make out that it was the same model of the truck he had just purchased. Its frame slouched, giving it the appearance of an exhausted animal.
As Walter studied the sleeping giant, he noticed a faint flash of movement from inside the cabin. It was a discreet, subtle shift, one that could have been easily mistaken by a reflection on the windshield. Then, it happened again.
There, inside the truck, was a man. “Please, help me,” the man spoke, the radio echoing his plea.
Walter tore off his seat belt, threw the door open, and lurched toward the other truck, his boots clawing the soil with the sudden traction. Using the wheel spoke as a handhold, he hoisted himself onto the truck’s upturned side, grabbed the doorhandle, and, after several attempts, pried the door open.
Inside, the man’s face was turned away, his neck limp and drooping. Walter carefully lowered himself into the cabin, placing one leg on the dash, and the other on a chair.
“Are you okay? What happened?” Walter reached down and shook the man’s shoulder. The man didn’t respond. “I’m here to—“, Walter started, then stopped. The man’s face turned.
Looking back at him was a face Walter had seen a million times. It was the face in the rearview mirror. It was the face in his family photographs. It was his face.
Walter reeled back in horror, unable to take in the nightmare before him. Then, the face, his face, smiled.
The semi-truck frame lurched as the surrounding wildflowers wove themselves around the truck, entangling it like a gargantuan spider claiming its prey. As each layer of vines covered the vehicle, the cabin grew dark. Walter tried to keep his footing, but failed, tumbling around the cabin, disoriented by the inertia, the darkness, and the ever-growing screams coming out of his own through throat, across the cabin.
Through the enclosing blanket of black, a ray of light flashed across the CB radio. Seeing the only hope for rescue dangling from a spiral cord, Walter kicked a chair, sending his body in the direction of the microphone, grabbing it with one hand. With the other, he attempted to secure himself to the steering wheel, but the force was too great. His head collided with the maelstrom of equipment swirling around him. With every impact, his vision tunneled deeper and deeper into unconsciousness.
As the walls of the semi-truck closed in on him, and his tomb of metal descended into the earth, Walter raised the microphone to his mouth, and in the desperation of man’s final moment, he screamed into the microphone those words that had brought him here, “Please, someone help me.”
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