Chapter 8: The Next Hitchhiker

Chapter 8: The Next Hitchhiker

The garage was a tomb, and Noah’s journal was the epitaph. Jake slammed the footlocker shut, the sound a hollow boom in the suffocating silence. The final, damning message burned behind his eyes: Your turn. It wasn’t a threat; it was a statement of fact, a transfer of title.

He stumbled out of the garage, gasping for the cool night air. The rusty key was still clutched in his hand, a brand of ownership. He had to get rid of it. The thought was a singular, frantic obsession. This was the anchor, the physical chain that bound him to the curse. If he could break the chain, maybe he could escape.

He scrambled into his car, the driver’s seat now feeling alien and hostile. He drove recklessly through the sleeping town, his headlights cutting a desperate swathe through the darkness. He didn't slow until he reached the old, skeletal trestle bridge on the outskirts of town, the one that spanned the Havenwood River. The water below was a black, churning void, the same river system, he imagined with a fresh wave of nausea, that had fed the creek where his brother had met his end.

He got out of the car, his shoes crunching on the gravel shoulder. The wind whipped around him, cold and sharp. He walked to the middle of the bridge, the rusted iron railing cold beneath his hand. He held the key up, its jagged silhouette stark against the moonless sky. For a decade, he had been haunted by a ghost. Now, he was being haunted by a promotion.

“No,” he whispered, the word torn from him by the wind. “It’s not my turn.”

With a scream of pure, desperate defiance, he hurled the key into the darkness. He waited, listening, and after a long moment, he heard it—a faint, almost imperceptible plink as the curse hit the water. It was gone. He stood there for a long time, his chest heaving, the cold air scouring his lungs. For the first time in hours, a fragile, trembling sliver of hope dared to bloom in the wasteland of his soul. Maybe it was that simple. Maybe all it took was refusal.

He practically ran back to his car, slamming the door and locking it, a child hiding from monsters under the blankets. He needed to check on Maya. He needed to disappear himself, leave Havenwood and its suffocating legends behind forever. He reached into his pocket for his phone to call Sarah.

His fingers brushed against cold, flaking metal.

Time stopped. His blood turned to slush in his veins. Slowly, with a dread so profound it was a physical sickness, he drew his hand from his pocket. Lying in his palm, glinting dully in the dim light from the dashboard, was the key. It was dry. Not a single drop of river water clung to it.

A strangled, hysterical laugh escaped his lips. It wasn't a game you could refuse to play. The prize had been delivered, and returns were not accepted.

The next twenty-four hours were a blur of escalating panic. He drove to the industrial park and hammered the key on a concrete block, the blows ringing out in the empty lot. The hammer's head chipped, but the key remained unscratched. When he opened his hand, the key was there, pristine. He drove deep into the national forest and buried it under a foot of soil and rock, marking the spot with a morbid, makeshift cross of twigs. He drove five miles away, pulled over, reached into his pocket for his wallet, and felt the key’s sharp teeth bite into his thumb.

It was a part of him now. An iron tumor.

By the second night, the panic had curdled into a new, more horrifying sensation. It started as a low hum in his bones, a quiet vibration that seemed to emanate from the key in his pocket. It was a feeling of being pulled, a magnetic draw toward the garage, toward the driver's seat of his car. It was an itch behind his eyes, a restless energy that made the walls of his apartment feel like they were shrinking, suffocating him.

Drive.

The thought wasn't his own. It was an intrusive whisper, a suggestion planted deep in his subconscious. He tried to fight it. He put on a movie, but the dialogue was just noise. He tried to read, but the words on the page swam, rearranging themselves into road signs. He thought of Maya, of her vacant, staring eyes, and the guilt was a fresh, hot agony. But even that was beginning to feel distant, a memory from someone else’s life. The humming grew louder, the pull becoming a physical need, a desperate thirst that only the road could quench.

His body moved without his permission. His legs carried him out of his apartment, down the stairs, and to his car. His hand, guided by an unseen puppeteer, put his own car key into the ignition. The engine turned over with a familiar rumble that now sounded like a purr of satisfaction. He wasn't driving. He was being driven. The curse was behind the wheel now.

His hands guided the car through the familiar streets of Havenwood, but his mind was a distant observer, trapped behind a wall of glass. He watched as his own hands turned the wheel, leading the car onto the old, dark highway heading out of town. The car accelerated, the rhythmic thump of the tires on the asphalt a hypnotic drumbeat. He was heading back. Back to where it all began.

The car seemed to know the way, its headlights cutting a familiar path into the oppressive, ink-black void of Highway X-17. The air grew cold, the silence immense. The humming in his bones intensified, a resonant frequency that made his teeth ache. It was a feeling of anticipation. A feeling of… coming home.

Up ahead, a familiar, faded sign materialized in the high beams.

SLOW DOWN

And just past the sign, parked on the gravel shoulder, was a car. Its brake lights glowed like twin red wounds in the darkness. Inside, he could see the silhouettes of four figures, their heads turned toward their own rearview mirror, their youthful laughter and bravado a faint, doomed echo on the wind. They were playing the game. They were waiting.

Jake’s car slowed to a stop a hundred yards behind them. The engine cut out on its own. The humming inside him ceased, replaced by a profound and terrible calm. The gnawing anxiety that had been his constant companion for a decade was gone, washed away by a cold, clear sense of purpose. He knew what he had to do. It was the only thing he could do.

He opened the car door. The hinges didn’t creak. The night air, which should have been cold, felt neutral, pleasant against his skin. He stepped out onto the asphalt, his movements no longer his own jerky, fidgeting motions, but something else entirely. They were economical. Precise. Patient.

He started walking toward the waiting car, his footsteps steady and measured on the broken road. The headlights of the teenagers' car cast his long shadow behind him. He passed a puddle of stagnant rainwater, a dark mirror reflecting the starless sky. For a fraction of a second, his gaze dropped, and he saw his reflection.

It was not his face that looked back.

The reflection was of a man with unnaturally pale skin, his features long and gaunt. His unkempt, dark hair was slicked back under the brim of a wide, dated hat that cast his eyes in perpetual shadow. His own worn jeans and t-shirt appeared in the murky water as a dark, threadbare suit. And on the face of this stranger, this specter wearing his form, was a smile. It was a thin, terribly polite smile that did not reach the darkness of his eyes.

He looked away from the puddle, his own lips settling into that same, unfamiliar smile. He could feel it on his face, a mask of calm civility. The legend was true. The prize wasn't what you won. It was what you became.

His turn had come.

He continued his steady walk toward the waiting teenagers, a new hitchhiker on an endless road, ready to ask for a ride.