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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/WriterMac on 2026-08-07 08:38:07+00:00.

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I've been sitting on this for eight months now and I still don't really know how to start it, so I'm just going to write it the way I remember it.

I (mac.) was driving home from my buddy Ray's place a little after midnight. We'd had a couple beers, not enough to be stupid about it, and I left around 12:30 because I had work in the morning. Ray lives out past Millbrook, if that means anything to anybody, and to get back to my apartment I had to take County Road 9 for about eleven miles before it connects back up with the state highway. It's one of those roads with no streetlights, no shoulder to speak of, just corn on one side and tree line on the other, and a yellow sign every couple miles warning you about deer.

I want to say it was maybe fifteen, twenty minutes after I turned onto 9 when my temperature gauge started climbing. I didn't think much of it at first. My car's a '09 Impala with almost 190,000 miles on it, so something's always a little off with it. But then I started smelling something sweet, almost like syrup, coming through the vents, and I knew that smell. Coolant. I'd smelled it once before when a hose blew on my old truck.

By the time I found a spot wide enough to pull over, steam was coming up from under the hood, and the gauge was pegged all the way to H. I put it in park, killed the engine, and just sat there for a second like an idiot, like maybe if I waited it would fix itself. It was pitch dark out there, no house lights, no reflectors, nothing to go off of, so I honestly couldn't tell you exactly where on that road I'd stopped. I'd never driven it at night before that. To this day I don't know exactly where that spot was, and if I'm being honest, I don't want to know. I've never gone back to check.

I got out and popped the hood, and even in the dark with my phone flashlight I could see the lower radiator hose had split. There was coolant all over the ground, still steaming a little. I'm not a mechanic, but I know enough to know I wasn't driving that car another inch without getting it fixed or at least topped off, and I didn't have anything with me to fix a hose on the side of the road at one in the morning.

I checked my phone, a Samsung, no signal at all. Not even one bar.
So I just stood there next to my car for a while. No traffic. Not one set of headlights the whole time. Just corn moving a little in the wind and the sound of my engine ticking as it cooled down.

I want to say I waited close to twenty minutes before I heard footsteps coming up the road behind me.

I turned around and there was a man walking toward me, maybe in his fifties, wearing a flannel jacket and jeans, nothing unusual about him at all. He had his hands in his pockets and he wasn't walking fast or slow, just normal, like a guy out for a walk. I remember feeling relieved more than anything else, because at that point another human being felt like the safest thing in the world.

"Car trouble?" he asked, before he even got all the way up to me.

I told him about the hose, and he nodded like he already knew, like it was something he'd heard a hundred times.

"Yeah, that's not something you're fixing out here tonight," he said. "You're not gonna get a signal for miles either. There's no sense standing out here till sunup. I'm just up that way, you're welcome to wait it out at my place and figure your car out in the morning."

I told him I appreciated it but I didn't want to put anybody out, and he just kind of shrugged and said it was no trouble, that he'd probably feel bad leaving me out there anyway. I stood there weighing it for a second. I know how that sounds now, going off into the woods with a stranger at one in the morning, but at the time it felt like the safer option. I was thinking about mountain lions, not people. I was thinking about getting hit by some drunk driver coming around the bend at fifty miles an hour and not seeing my car until it was too late. A house with a stranger who seemed decent enough felt like better odds than standing in the dark by myself till six a.m.

So I said alright, and I locked up my car, and we started walking.

I figured we'd just be walking up the road, but after maybe a quarter mile he stepped off onto what I guess you'd call a trail, right at a gap in the tree line I never would've noticed if he hadn't just walked straight into it. It was barely wide enough for one person. I asked him if he wanted me to light the way with my phone, and he just said, "I know every step of this," without really turning around. I remember thinking that was a strange thing to say, but I didn't dwell on it. I figured he'd just walked it a thousand times, lived out here his whole life, whatever. People say things like that.

I turned my flashlight on anyway because I sure didn't know the trail, and we started walking.

It got quiet fast. Like, really quiet. No bugs, no wind moving through the leaves, nothing. The only sound I could hear consistently was my own shoes hitting loose gravel and rock on the trail, this crunching, shifting sound every single step.

We walked for a long time. I checked my phone once, more out of habit than anything since I had no signal anyway, and saw we'd been walking about thirty-five minutes. I remember thinking his house better be close because my legs were getting tired and my ankle had already rolled slightly twice on loose rock.

Somewhere around then I started feeling like something was wrong, and I couldn't have told you what. Nothing had happened. The guy hadn't said or done anything. I just felt it building in my chest, that feeling you get when you walk into a room and something's off before you even know why.

At one point my flashlight passed over something just off the trail, in the brush, and it took me a second to register it was a backpack. Just laying there, half covered in leaves, looked like it had been there a while. I almost said something, almost asked if that was his or if he knew whose it was, but I didn't. I don't know why. I just kept walking and didn't say anything and he didn't say anything either, like maybe he hadn't even noticed it, or like he had and didn't care.

Then he started talking again, out of nowhere. Asked me if I believed in any of the local stories, said there'd always been talk about people going missing out around these hills, disappearing off trails like this one, said his grandfather used to tell him stories that would curl your hair. Asked me straight out what I thought was really out here.

I don't know exactly why, but that question scared me more than anything that had happened so far. I'd already started praying in my head after seeing that backpack, just kind of automatically, and I guess it just came out of me, because I said, "I believe Jesus Christ watches over me and protects me. Whatever's out here, I'm not worried about it."

I didn't plan on saying that. It just came out.

He didn't answer right away. Then he just said, "Hmm."

That's it. Just, "Hmm."

And after that the quiet felt different. Heavier, somehow. I can't explain it better than that.

We kept walking, and that's when I noticed my feet were killing me. The rocks on that trail were sharp in places, I could feel every one of them right through my shoes, my ankles were sore, I was breathing hard just from the walk. But somewhere in there I noticed I hadn't really been hearing his footsteps the same way I was hearing mine. Mine were this constant crunch, shift, crunch, the whole time. His didn't sound like that, or maybe they did and I just wasn't paying attention, I honestly don't know anymore. It almost seemed like his feet weren't landing the same way mine were, like there wasn't any weight behind his steps, but I could be remembering that wrong. I've gone back and forth on it a hundred times since.

I told myself I was tired, that my mind was playing tricks after a long night and a couple beers. But once that thought was in my head I couldn't shake it, and my heart started pounding, and I just kept saying Jesus's name over and over without really deciding to.

He was walking slower now. I remember that much, he'd kept a pretty steady pace this whole time and now he wasn't, like he was hanging back, letting me get a step or two ahead of him without meaning to.

I was scared to even lift the flashlight up at that point. Some part of me didn't want to see anything more than I already had. But I made myself do it anyway, I don't really know why, I just raised my arm and pointed the light up toward his face.

I don't think I even stood there a full second after that. As soon as the light hit his face, I was already turning to run.

Both my hands hit the ground hard along the way, I want to say I went down almost right as I turned, and they felt small somehow, numb, but I didn't feel any actual pain from it, not right then. I got back up and I ran with everything I had. I don't think I've ever run that fast in my life and I don't think I ever will again. I had my hands out in front of my face the whole time so the branches wouldn't tear me up too bad, but I didn't put them there on purpose, they just came up on their own, I had no control over any of it.

I didn't look back. Not once the whole way. I heard something behind me, I want to say twice, maybe three times, some kind of low sound, and I genuinely can't tell you if it was an animal or a person or neither, it just didn't sound right, and I wasn't about to turn around and f...

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