Chapter 3: The Roadside Encounter

Chapter 3: The Roadside Encounter

A fragile, unfamiliar feeling was blooming in Silas’s chest: hope. It was a weak and tentative thing, like a winter flower pushing through frozen ground, but it was there.

“I think that went… okay?” Silas said, the words feeling foreign in his mouth. He stared out the passenger window of Rob’s rattling Honda Civic, watching the strip malls and gas stations of the suburbs blur into a smear of late-afternoon color.

“Okay? Dude, she basically offered you the job!” Rob beamed, cranking up the volume on a generic rock station. “Junior graphic designer at a mid-level marketing firm isn’t exactly the Louvre, but it’s a paycheck. It’s a start. See? I told you. You just needed to get out of your own head.”

For the past three days, Rob had been a relentless force of manufactured positivity. He’d woken Silas up at a reasonable hour, forced him to eat something other than dry cereal, and scoured online job boards until he found this opening. Silas had gone along with it, mostly out of a sense of weary obligation. He didn't deserve a friend like Rob.

The interview had been a blur of corporate jargon and strained smiles, but the manager, a woman named Cynthia, had seemed genuinely impressed with the old portfolio pieces he’d salvaged. She’d said they’d be in touch by the end of the week, but her handshake had been firm, her smile genuine. For the first time since the heavy oak door of his family home had clicked shut behind him, Silas felt a flicker of a possible future. A normal one.

He allowed himself to relax into the worn fabric of the passenger seat, the rhythmic thrum of the tires on the asphalt a soothing, monotonous sound. The fear that had been his constant companion for the last seventy-two hours had receded to a dull ache in the back of his mind. He hadn’t seen the figure since that day on the lawn. He’d started to convince himself that Rob was right. It was stress. Trauma. His broken mind projecting his inner despair onto the outside world. He was getting better.

“Yeah, maybe you’re right,” Silas admitted, a small, genuine smile touching his lips.

Rob shot him a triumphant look. “Damn right I’m right. No more boogeymen in black coats, huh? Just spreadsheets and deadlines. Welcome back to the real world, my friend.”

As Rob spoke, they turned off the main thoroughfare onto the long, two-lane road that led back to their neighborhood. The sun was beginning its slow descent, painting the sky in fiery strokes of orange and purple. The road stretched out before them, straight and empty, lined on both sides by dense woods.

A familiar prickle of unease ran down Silas’s spine. He sat up straighter, his eyes scanning the tree line, then the road ahead. The hope in his chest began to wither.

“What is it?” Rob asked, noticing the sudden tension in his friend.

“Nothing. Just…” Silas trailed off, his gaze fixed on a point far down the road. A dark speck.

It grew larger as they approached, resolving itself from a blur into a distinct shape. A human shape. Someone was standing in the middle of their lane.

“What’s this idiot doing?” Rob muttered, his foot hovering over the brake. “Probably some kid’s dare.”

But it wasn’t a kid. As the Civic devoured the distance, the details sharpened with sickening clarity. A long, tattered black coat. A wide-brimmed, tall hat. A silhouette that defied the warm, fading light, seeming to radiate its own pocket of cold, deep shadow.

It was him.

“Rob,” Silas breathed, his voice barely a whisper. All the air had been punched from his lungs. The fragile hope, the successful interview, the illusion of normalcy—it all shattered into a million pieces.

“I see him, I see him,” Rob said, annoyed. “I’m not gonna hit the guy. He’ll move.”

But Silas knew he wouldn’t. The figure stood with that same impossible stillness, a statue of dread planted in the center of the road. It wasn’t waiting for them to swerve. It was waiting for them to arrive.

“Rob, stop the car,” Silas said, his voice tight with rising panic.

“What? No way, he’ll move. I’ll just tap the horn.” Rob reached for the steering wheel’s center.

“NO! STOP!” Silas screamed, the sound tearing from his throat, raw and animalistic. He instinctively slammed his right foot down on the floorboards, a phantom brake pedal, and grabbed the dashboard with white-knuckled hands.

The car was still closing, doing sixty miles an hour. They were less than a hundred feet away. Fifty. The figure was now terrifyingly large in the windshield.

And then it moved.

It wasn't a step, or a flinch. It simply tilted its head. An almost curious gesture. Just enough for the brim of the hat to angle upwards slightly.

In the profound, absolute blackness beneath, two points of light ignited.

They weren't eyes. Eyes reflected light. These were the opposite. They were small, swirling voids of pure, milky white, like anti-stars consuming the dusk. They held no emotion, no intelligence he could recognize. They were just… a presence. A horrifying, ancient, patient presence.

And they were looking directly at him.

The moment his gaze met those swirling orbs, the world dissolved.

The roar of the engine stretched and distorted, thinning into a low, metallic drone that seemed to vibrate inside his skull. Rob’s concerned shouting—“Silas! What the hell is wrong with you?!”—became a distant, underwater warble, the words losing all meaning. Time itself seemed to thicken, turning to molasses. The car, which had been hurtling forward, felt like it was crawling through thick, invisible tar.

His vision tunneled until the entire world was nothing but those two white voids. They seemed to expand, pulling him in, a silent vortex promising an oblivion colder and deeper than anything his suicidal thoughts had ever conceived. A scent filled his nostrils, something ancient and dry, like dust from a forgotten tomb and the sharp, metallic tang of ozone after a lightning strike.

He was no longer in the car. He was in the road. He was everywhere and nowhere. The pressure of that gaze was a physical weight, crushing his mind, rewriting his senses. He felt a profound, soul-deep cold spread through him, an invasive chill that had nothing to do with temperature. It was the cold of utter emptiness.

A violent lurch snapped him back, just for a second. He was aware of the car passing through the space where the man had been. There was no impact. No sound of a collision. Just a fleeting, ghostly sensation of passing through a pocket of freezing air.

Then, there was nothing. The white voids consumed his consciousness entirely.

“Silas! SILAS!”

The voice was muffled, frantic. A hand was shaking his shoulder, hard. The car was no longer moving. He could feel the rough texture of the seat against his cheek and the rhythmic, jolting motion of someone trying to wake him.

He couldn't respond. His eyes were open, staring blankly ahead at the now empty road, but they saw nothing. His limbs were heavy, disconnected things that refused to obey his will. His mind was a silent, white wasteland, scoured clean by that impossible gaze. A thin line of drool trickled from the corner of his mouth.

Rob had slammed on the brakes, skidding the car to a halt on the shoulder of the road. He was leaning over the center console, his face pale with terror. Not of the man in the road—for him, there had been no man—but of his friend. Of the sudden, violent scream, the seizure-like tension, and now, this. This horrifying, catatonic emptiness.

“Oh god, oh god, Silas, talk to me!” Rob pleaded, his voice cracking. “What happened? What did you see?”

But Silas couldn't answer. He had seen. And in seeing, he had been broken. The last vestiges of hope for a rational explanation, for a simple psychological breakdown, had been annihilated on that empty stretch of road. The thing hunting him was real, it was powerful, and it had just shown him that it could touch his mind as easily as he could breathe.