Last week I was driving back home from my grandmother's birthday party. My family all lives close to each other but five hours away from me, so my plan had been to spend the night and leave the next day around lunch. But then I got into a big fight with my brother—the worst we've ever had. My parents took his side, like they always do, and I decided I needed to go ahead and go.
It was about ten at night when I left their house, and by midnight I was starting to regret my decision. It was so far to drive that late and I was really tired. I'd have considered just stopping at a motel, but the route I always took consisted of tiny towns connected by long stretches of wooded roads, and I didn't think there was a single place to stay along that entire journey.
I was on the longest, darkest part of the drive—a stretch of nearly a hundred miles without any real signs of people other than the occasional farmhouse or closed country store. I began toying with the idea of just parking and taking a nap as my fatigue worsened, and when I woke up starting to veer, I knew it was a necessity. I decided I would stop to sleep, but only when I reached the next semi-populated spot in the road.
I know the tricks to stay awake. I rolled down the window. I tried to sing along with the radio. I rolled the window back up and cranked up the air. I even slapped myself hard enough to make my face tingle.
The thing is, these are all half-measures. They're sandbags against the rising tide of sleep, meant to delay the inevitable for a few minutes. Getting out of the car, caffeine, actual sleep, these were the only things I knew that could really roll things back once you were truly on the edge of falling asleep on the road.
I had no caffeinated drinks with me and I had no real idea how many more miles it would be before I saw street lights again. But rightly or wrongly, if I was going to sleep in my car, I wanted at least the suggestion of civilization and order surrounding me.
So that left getting out of the car and walking around. I didn't love the idea of stopping at night on some dark and lonely country road, but it seemed a better option than risking a wreck when I finally fell asleep for a second too long.
The part of the road I was on was winding, with thick stands of ancient-looking trees looming over the road on both sides. It was nearly a full moon, but the shadows of reaching branches covered the road in an endless silvery tiger stripe of alternating light and dark. I drove on, looking for a straighter, brighter patch of road, but none came, and with each mile I felt myself drifting deeper and deeper.
Muttering under my breath, I pulled the car over on a semi-straight section of road that was maybe 100 feet long before it snaked off in new directions. I hit my emergency lights, hoping to keep any late night drunk drivers from plowing into me or my car, and got out.
The air was colder than I expected, even for October. Colder than it had seemed when I'd rolled the window down earlier while driving. It was weird, but I was also half-asleep and didn't necessarily trust my logic at the moment.
I moved in front of my car and began walking in a circle within the glow from my headlights before transitioning to jumping jacks. I knew I looked stupid, but a glance at my surroundings made it clear there was no one around. Aside from my car's lights, the only source of illumination was the intermittent glow of moonlight from above the rustling trees. The only sounds aside from those shivering leaves was the low purr of my car's engine and my own puffing breaths as I went through my midnight calisthenics routine.
But then I heard something else. I stopped at the noise and listened, but there was nothing. After a few seconds, I decided it was my imagination and was about to head back to the car when I heard it again.
It was whistling. Not the cry of some bird, but the high, clear notes of some unfamiliar tune. My skin began to prickle as a low buzz of fear joined the music in my ears. It went on for at least ten seconds this time before stopping, and it was enough for me to tell it wasn't a recording or some scrap from a distant radio carried to me on a tide of nighttime air.
No, someone or something was whistling a song in the dark. And they were close.
Trying to keep myself from breaking into a panicked run, I went back to my car and pulled on the handle. The door was locked. I had locked it as a precaution when I got out because I had the image of someone sneaking into the back seat while I was outside with my back turned. The irony wasn’t lost on me now, but my main focus was on getting out my key and unlocking the door.
I fumbled desperately in my pocket as the whistling started up again for a few moments—much closer this time. It seemed like a different part of the same song, though I couldn't say for sure. I yanked the keys from my pocket and started jabbing it shakily at the lock when I heard my car’s engine shutter to a stop. A small whine of terror escaped me as I tried again to find the lock, this time successfully. Turning the key, I froze as the whistling began a third time, now directly behind me.
I could smell something now. A mixture of several strong smells, like someone was mixing cinnamon, garlic and rotten eggs in a hot skillet. I gagged slightly and was readying myself to try to yank the door open when the whistling stopped again.
The smell grew stronger. Then I felt a small, burning kiss on the back of my neck.
The next few seconds were a panicked blur. I yanked open the door and got in, slamming it shut without daring to look out to see what might be looking in at me. Locking the doors with one hand, I cranked the car with the other. I almost cried with relief when it came back to life immediately. I thought I heard light scratching at my window as I threw the car into drive and sped off into the night.
I had no trouble with drowsiness the rest of my drive home, and it wasn't until the next evening that I finally fell into an exhausted sleep. I don’t have any explanation for what happened out on that road, and as the days have passed, I've found myself rationalizing it more and more as some kind of waking dream or false memory brought on by my brief moments of sleep as I drove home that night.
But then last night I woke up to a terrible smell in my room. It smelled of garlic and cinnamon and sulfur. I sat up in bed, my eyes wide and my heart hammering as I stared into the dark.
Then I heard it. The whistling. And it was coming from underneath my bed.
I bolted from the room and my house, running next door in my underwear and hammering on my neighbor's door until they warily agreed to call the police. When the officers came, they found nothing. No signs of a break-in or anything stolen. No trace any intruder was ever there.
And for the most part they were right. When I returned home in the early hours of the morning, I did my own search for signs that some person or thing had been there. At first I saw nothing out of the ordinary. But then I looked more closely under the bed.
There was a minuscule amount of dirt there—strange greenish-gray dirt unlike any I had ever seen. And mixed in with the dirt was what looked like small patches of dried skin. As though something was…molting.
I don’t know what to do or if I'll ever have another chance to write this down, so I'm taking the time now, mainly so my account is known if something happens to me. I don't know what this thing is, but I feel sure it will find me again soon. The thought of that terrifies me, but it's not the worst part.
See, the more I think about it, the more certain I am that every time it whistles, it’s a different part of the same song. Almost as though it wants or needs me to hear the entire thing. Since I realized that, a single question has been haunting me. It casts its shadow over everything else, like the twisted, reaching branches of an ancient tree darkening some lonesome midnight road.
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