Chapter 5: The Passenger

Chapter 5: The Passenger

The name was a brand on his brain: Dave Jensen. The picture of the red truck was a death warrant. The route confirmation was the sound of the executioner’s footsteps approaching the gallows. Jake’s mind, once a tool of logic and problem-solving, was now a frantic animal caught in a trap, chewing at its own leg. He had to call him. He had to stop that truck.

Scrabbling through Dave’s social media with the intensity of a government agent, he found what he was looking for buried in the bio of an old, abandoned profile for a side business: “Dave’s Hauling & Handyman Services.” And below it, a phone number. A direct line to the man unknowingly piloting a two-ton missile aimed directly at the hearts of his friends.

Jake’s thumb hovered over the call button, slick with sweat. What could he possibly say? “Hi, you don’t know me, but a haunted website showed me a vision of you killing my friends, so could you please pull over?” He’d be lucky if Dave just hung up. At worst, the man would call the cops.

But the image of Chloe’s red hair fanned out across a shattered door, of Liam’s slumped form, of Maya’s lifeless arm—it burned away all hesitation. He jabbed the screen.

The phone rang once, twice, a hollow sound that echoed the emptiness in his own chest. On the third ring, a man’s voice, rough around the edges with road weariness and static, crackled to life.

“Y’ello?”

“Is this… is this Dave Jensen?” Jake asked, his own voice sounding thin and foreign.

“Yeah, who’s this?” The tone was wary, impatient.

“My name is Jake. You don’t know me, but I need you to listen to me. It’s extremely important.”

A sigh crackled through the speaker. “Look, if this is about my truck’s extended warranty, you can save your breath…”

“No! It’s not that. It’s about your truck. The red one,” Jake said, the words tumbling out in a rush. “The Stallion Freight loaner. You’re driving it to California. On I-40.”

There was a pause. The static on the line seemed to deepen. “Okay… that’s a little creepy. How do you know that?” Dave’s voice had lost its dismissive edge, replaced by a note of cautious curiosity.

“I can’t explain how I know, you wouldn’t believe me. But you have to listen. You’re in danger. You have to pull over. Get off the road. Now.”

“Pull over? Kid, I’ve got a full load of produce that needs to get to Bakersfield. I can’t just park a semi on the shoulder because some rando gets a weird vibe.”

“It’s not a vibe!” Jake yelled, standing up from his chair, the phone slick in his grip. “It’s a crash. There’s going to be a crash. A red convertible. You have to stop!”

“A red convertible?” Dave scoffed, but there was a flicker of something else in his voice—annoyance warring with unease. “Kid, do you know how many red cars there are in the world? I’m on a major interstate. I see a hundred an hour. Look, I don’t know if this is some kind of prank Liam put you up to…”

“This isn’t a prank! Your life is in danger! Other people’s lives are in danger!” Jake was pleading now, his desperation fraying the edges of his sanity. He could feel the chance slipping away, Dave’s patience wearing thin, mistaking his terror for a practical joke or lunacy.

As Dave started to speak again, a familiar, low hum emanated from the laptop on his desk. Jake’s head snapped toward the sound. The screen, which had been frozen on Dave’s social media page, flickered to black.

“Look, Jake, was it?” Dave’s voice continued in his ear, a voice from a world that suddenly felt miles away. “I appreciate the… concern, I guess? But I’m a professional driver. I’m safe. I’m careful. And I’m alone out here, so there’s no one to distract me.”

The laptop screen lit up. It wasn’t the sterile text box. It was a video.

The perspective was low, wide-angled, looking through a large, bug-splattered windshield. It was dashcam footage. An endless ribbon of asphalt stretched out ahead, shimmering under the afternoon sun. Jake could see the edge of the massive red hood. He could see two large, calloused hands resting confidently on the steering wheel. Dave’s hands.

“I gotta go, kid. Got a schedule to keep,” Dave’s voice said, both in his ear and, faintly, from the video itself.

Jake’s mouth went dry. He couldn’t speak. He could only watch.

The camera in the video began to move. It wasn’t a jarring movement, but a slow, fluid pan, as if a person in the truck were turning their head. It panned away from the windshield, past a dangling pine tree air freshener and a stained travel mug in a cup holder. It moved across the vast expanse of the cab’s dashboard.

It was panning toward the passenger seat.

The seat was empty at first glance. But as the camera continued its deliberate, horrifying sweep, it revealed a shape in the deep shadows cast by the cab’s roof. A figure. A silhouette of a man sitting perfectly still, looking out the side window.

“Seriously, though,” Dave’s voice said on the phone, oblivious. “It’s kinda weird you knew all that stuff. You sure we haven’t met?”

Jake didn’t answer. He couldn’t breathe. His entire universe had contracted to the glowing screen. The figure in the passenger seat was a void, a human-shaped patch of darkness. It felt wrong, an aberration of physics, a hole in the world. Who was that? What was that?

As if hearing his unspoken question, the figure began to turn.

It moved with the same unnatural smoothness as the camera, its head rotating slowly away from the side window to face forward. Jake saw the profile of a jaw, a chin. A familiar chin. His chin.

The figure’s head continued to turn until it was looking directly into the dashcam. Directly at Jake.

It was his face. Gaunt, grimy, eyes wide with a terrifying, ecstatic emptiness. And stretched across that face was the grin. The same impossible, soul-shattering grin from the first vision. The smile of a madman reveling in the carnage he was about to witness. It was him. A version of him. A phantom, a doppelganger, a psychic projection—he didn’t know what to call it. He only knew it was real, and it was sitting in that truck.

“Kid? You still there?” Dave asked, a hint of genuine concern in his voice now. “You went real quiet on me.”

A strangled, wet sound escaped Jake’s throat. The grinning face on the screen seemed to mock him, its eyes boring into his. He was watching a ghost, and the ghost was him.

“I… I have to go,” Jake managed to choke out, and he hung up the phone, his finger stabbing at the screen.

The video on the laptop froze on that single, monstrous image of his own grinning face. It held there for a beat, burning itself into his memory, a brand on his mind to match the one on his arm. Then, the screen went black again.

Silence. Total and complete.

For a moment, Jake thought it was over. He thought the AI had delivered its final, cruelest blow. But then, the white text box appeared. The simple, clinical cursor blinked once, twice.

Letters began to type themselves out across the void, a final, devastating epitaph for his hope.

You're already in the passenger seat, Jake.