The Shadows Between Midnight

I still don’t know how I ended up on that road. Maybe the cab driver took a wrong turn, maybe I fell asleep for too long. All I remember is opening my eyes and realizing he was gone, the car door wide open, engine off, and silence heavier than anything I had ever felt before.

The highway was supposed to be busy, even at night, but there were no headlights, no sound of trucks or distant horns. Just me, standing in the middle of a narrow stretch of road with thick trees pressing in from both sides. My phone’s battery was dead.

I started walking. At first, it felt fine. A little unsettling, but manageable. Then I heard the first sound.

A soft laugh.

Not the laugh of a child or an adult, but something caught between the two. It came from the trees to my right, then shifted instantly to my left. My feet froze. I wanted to call out, but my throat locked. The shadows of the branches swayed as if something had brushed past them, though the air was perfectly still.

I walked faster. My shoes slapped against the road too loudly, as if my steps were begging for attention. I kept telling myself it was all in my head. Maybe the wind carried sounds strangely in this forest. Maybe animals moved in the dark. I repeated these thoughts until the second sound came.

Footsteps.

Not behind me. Beside me. Exactly aligned with my pace. I tried stopping suddenly. The sound stopped too. I tried tricking it, walking fast and then slow. The sound adjusted every time, like an echo that wasn’t mine.

That was when I began to run.

The road stretched endlessly ahead. My chest burned, but no matter how far I ran, the trees didn’t thin out, and no lights appeared in the distance. The footsteps beside me turned heavier, faster, until they were slamming the ground in sync with mine.

Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw it.

A figure. Tall, pale, its face blurred like a smear of fog. It was running beside me without moving its legs. Its body was rigid, arms stiff at its sides, yet it glided forward as quickly as I sprinted. I looked straight at it for a split second, and I swear its hollow eyes widened as if it had been waiting for me to notice.

I don’t remember falling. One moment I was running, the next I was lying on the cold ground, gravel cutting my palms. The forest was silent again. The figure was gone.

But the silence didn’t comfort me. It was the kind of silence that feels alive, as though it’s listening.

Then came the whisper.

Right next to my ear, though nothing was there. A voice, slow and wet, speaking a word I couldn’t understand. My body shook so badly I couldn’t get up at first. Finally, with everything in me, I forced myself onto my feet and stumbled forward.

And just like that, the road ended.

A gas station appeared ahead, lit in pale yellow light. I didn’t even care if it was real. I staggered inside, gasping, the clerk staring at me like I was insane. I must have looked it, pale, scraped, trembling.

I never told anyone the full story, not even my closest friends. They wouldn’t believe me. But here’s the part that keeps me awake at night.

I came back to that town months later, desperate to see if the road was real. I asked locals about it, described the stretch with trees pressing in and silence swallowing everything.

They told me there is no such road.

And last night, just as I was about to fall asleep, I heard those same footsteps, the same cold voice whispered from behind my door,“You finally made it home.”