By Alexander Dunn
This happened over twenty-five years ago, when being stranded on the I-25 stretch between Sheridan and Jamison meant seeing another car wouldn’t take just minutes but hours. After dark it was even longer.
I had just quit school at Sheridan College midway through the term, deciding a certificate for an associate’s in business wouldn’t look nearly as good on the wood paneled wall of my dad’s office as a framed photo of me holding a Largemouth Bass. My dad owned and operated a car dealership in Jamison and I was heir to the throne. I had called my dad in the afternoon, had told him I was going to be home in the morning, and had finished packing all my belongings into the back of my 99’ Oldsmobile Cutlass by the time dusk rolled in. For the first part of the drive, the mountains to the west split the setting sun into rays that shimmered upon Sibley Lake, like the applause of angels. Fall had once again crept into the mountains where the trees were making their final bursts of color before they died. A mist rose up in the valley the color of lilacs.
By the time I exited onto I-25, it was dark. I had driven the highway many times in my year at Sheridan, but never at night. Night was the time for large game to kill themselves on the front fender of your car. When you’re cruising at seventy miles an hour it means a death trap for you and the animal. My uncle once hit a twelve point buck on this same stretch of highway and the antlers went through the windshield and pierced his shoulders. He had the scars to prove it. They looked like bullet holes. For the rest of the drive to Jamison, my eyes were wide and searching. I kept the brights on. There was no moon and all around the grassland was blackness. The yellow halogen light from the Cutlass spilled onto the deserted highway, and I kept my focus on the borders where the light met the dark, the darkness creating a boundary of mystery like a vast sea. When concentrated on one thing for so long, the eyes begin to play tricks on you, and the mind buzzes with strange ideas.
I had been on the road a couple hours when the man appeared in my headlights. He was like a flash of lightning, standing there on the side of the road, dressed in a black suit and tie and wearing a large trench coat. On top of his head, obscuring his face, was a black fedora. He was tall and thin. In his hand was a burlap sack that he was holding out into the lane, to get the attention of my oncoming car. When I saw him I slammed on my brakes and swerved, nearly skidding off the road. The car carpeted the asphalt with forty feet of rubber before I came to a stop. I looked behind me, panting hard and sweating, and saw the figure silhouetted red in my brake lights, standing there as if nothing had happened. There wasn’t a car anywhere in sight. It was like he appeared out of nowhere.
The smell of burnt rubber hit me and I gagged. I stayed where I was and debated what to do. To drive on would mean to strand the bugger till morning, but to give him a lift––it could very well be the last decision I ever made in my young life. I can’t say how long I sat there debating, because in what seemed the next second, he was right outside the passenger door, tapping on the window with white knuckles. I rolled it down but kept the car door locked. He bent over and peered in.
“What the hell, mister?” I said, “You ‘bout got us killed—”
I mentioned before that he was tall, but this guy was very tall, over seven feet. And so skinny he could’ve been hollow. His face was as white as ivory and the skin looked stretched out over the skull. He had deep set eyes and the irises were black as tar, I thought he might be inflicted with albinism. When he spoke, his voice was deeper than what is natural, and I couldn’t place the accent.
“I did not intend to frighten you,” he said, “My car broke down a few miles up the highway. I was wondering if you could give me a ride to the nearest town.”
“Do you know this area, mister?” I asked.
“No, I am passing through.”
“Without a map or nothin’? Edgerton is the closest town, ‘bout eighty miles, but it’s that way.” I pointed out the windshield into the blackness. “Where you was headin’ would take you back to Buffalo, and that’s more’n a hundred and fifty miles.”
“It seems I am lost.”
The highway was dead. I hadn’t seen another car the entire time I’d been on it. How long had this guy been walking? Hours maybe. I looked around as if searching for another option.
“Please,” he said.
There wasn’t another option––not when you’ve been raised Christian. Who was I to judge another one of God’s children inflicted with such malformations? The tall man grinned without teeth and the lines in his face folded in on themselves.
“You can tag along, I guess. But no funny business, ya hear?” I unlocked the door.
He climbed into the car, pushing the seat back until it hit against my stuff. He dropped the burlap sack on the floor and folded his fingers in his lap. The trench coat spread out over the center console and brushed up against my arm, it was tough, like made of canvas, and sent shivers down my spine.
For the first five minutes of the drive, the tall man didn’t say a word. Not even small talk. We sat in silence until the smell of rubber dissipated from the car, and I got a whiff of a different smell, something like formaldehyde.
“You smell that?” I asked.
I drove on. Faster than what was safe. I figured at eighty five miles an hour, I would have the tall man in Edgerton within the hour, before midnight. That wasn’t so bad. I could just bide my time in the strange silence that settled between us. But after another five minutes it came to me.
“Say,” I said, “didn’t ya say your car was up here somewhere? I know a thing or two ‘bout cars, I could look at it for ya.”
His white face turned slowly towards mine. It looked dead, completely expressionless.
“Where’d you say it was?” I continued, “We ain’t passed it yet, have we?”
He reached down and grabbed the burlap sack, lifting it onto his lap, the smell of formaldehyde got stronger. “I don’t have a car,” he said and began untying the cords that held the bag shut.
“Remember what I said about funny business?” I said, “You can get out right here.” And I began slowing the car.
“Keep driving, Matthew.” He said.
“How do you know my name?”
“It is in your interest to keep driving. Otherwise I will not let you choose and be forced to kill you now.”
“How do you know my name?”
“I know everything there is to know about you, Matthew. I know that you are not willingly dropping out of Sheridan because you will not make grades this term. I know you are Christian. I know you are inheriting your father’s dealership but you are not sure it is what you want to do. I know that you feel like you cannot make any choices in your life, that everyone is making them for you.”
The car’s speedometer dipped below thirty miles an hour. I dropped my hand into my lap. The man saw this move and his lips curled showing his teeth. Each tooth was about an inch long and carved off at the tip like a fang.
He continued, “And I know you have a pocketknife in your left trouser pocket and you are thinking of using it on me. And we both know that would be a bad idea, don’t we? But Matthew, more than anything I know this, I know that if you stop the car, you will die.”
The speedometer had just hit ten miles an hour. A tear rolled down my cheek. I had never known true fear before—the blood ran cold in every vein in my body like it was turning to sludge. I knew the tall man had all the power and there was nothing I could do. I knew this in my very soul. He had read my thoughts, had known my actions before I even knew I was going to do them.
“What are you?” I said and gently applied the gas. When I reached seventy miles an hour he spoke again.
“Good,” he said, “Now I am going to give you a choice, Matthew.” He reached into the burlap sack and removed what looked like a thick, textured cloth, unlike any cloth I’d ever seen before. The smell was overpowering. The tall man took off his black fedora revealing his bald white head and put the cloth over it like a veil.
“What is that?” I asked
It was a mask. He fitted it over his skinny head and fixed it into place. I realized a second later it was no cloth he was putting on, but skin. Human skin. He removed the rest of the skin from the burlap sack, an entire body suit, and spread it out over his lap. The tall man looked over at me. It was like staring into a mirror but the eyes were still his, like pools of black tar that reflected no light. He was wearing a mask of my face. Everything was there, my thick eyebrows, crooked nose, and the little scar just below my lower lip.
“My God…” I said.
“This is your choice Matthew,” he said, and his voice adopted mine, “Gimme your life. Lemme live it for ya. I’ll go back to Jamison and run the dealership. Dad’ll never know. I’ll do everything just like you would’ve done it. From going to church each sabbath day to fishing at our favorite spots. Give that to me, and in return, I’ll let ya live whatever life you choose for yourself, you can go off and do all the things you’ve always wanted, as an entirely different person.”
The air left my lungs and the tears flowed freely. I was not ashamed of them. Whatever this unnatural thing was, whether demon or alien or creature yet to be named, it had reached into me and had tampered with my very soul. Nothing would ever be the same. I knew that. It was like the special part of life that makes it worth living had been snuffed out from underneath you. I knew only one thing, that at the end of this conversation, whatever I would choose, this thing already knew. It chose me because it knew what I was going to say.
“You can have any life ya choose for yourself, but not this one,” it said.
“And what if I say no?” I said through the tears.
Its voice returned to the deep tone from before, “Then I will take your skin and add it to my collection.” He gestured to the burlap sack that had slumped to the floor.
And so I wept. And as I wept, the white highway markings disappeared under the Cutlass like on a large treadmill. Each marking passed by like a living soul, trailing off into the sea of darkness behind us at seventy miles an hour. Wherever this darkness would take them, I did not know, except that maybe, when they got there, someone, or something, would be waiting for them.
