Published: 4 May 2020

Hitchhiking is an activity which can lead to unexpected risk. When you step onto a highway and stick out your thumb you enter the world of the unknown. When a potential ride stops at the side of the road, there are two options. You can either accept the beckoning door, or you can turn it down. Once in the car, your destiny has changed. Some times the change isn’t perceptible. You get a ride, you get out and go on with your life. Then there are the other times. Your life becomes altered because you accepted this particular ride and became part of someone else’s reality.

There may be no hint or clue past your hair rising a little on the back of your neck as you first lay eyes on him. It is so subtle, you might not even notice it, or you might simply brush it off because you really are tired of waiting for a ride. You don’t want to listen to the subtle warning that might keep you safe. Once the car drives away, your future is in the hands of a complete stranger.

I wasn’t much of a hitchhiker. An occasional experience when I had a flat or a break down. Then there was the time Mike Williams and I ended up hitching from Seattle to Los Angeles and back. Being with someone else made me feel safer, though I always wondered where the cars picking us up came from and where they disappeared to. Like the hair on the back of my neck, I didn’t notice much past that in the two dozen rides we’d accepted in the month we were on the road. Mike and I were having a great time. We seemed to be lucky with rides all but a couple of times when we had a little delay in picking up the next ride. That was on the way down to Los Angeles.

Mike was running away from his piano, and I was simply going to the golden state for my first visit. He was experienced at getting rides and the kind of help you need when you are on the road. At seventeen he was a bright and happy guy tired of too many hours of practice and too much time spent at a keyboard. I was glad to have his company. He made my first hitchhiking adventure fun.

When we were heading back after almost a month, we decided we’d stay close to the coast. We wanted to go the scenic route not realizing how this would thin out the available rides. Since it was my first trip to California, I wanted to get the full experience. The rides on Route 5 came easy with little time between. On highway 101 we went up the coast in short rides. We didn’t realize how tired we were until we started to walk hoping to find some place to lay over for the night. My legs felt like lead and my feet hurt.

We were both dragging as the dark sedan stopped for us. Mike laughed and said, “See. I knew we’d get another ride. Knew it all the time.”

As we ran up to the car, a man got out of the front seat, and another one got out of the back seat. I shook off the uneasy feeling I got when I was being separated from Mike. I thought it peculiar they wanted him to sit in the middle in the front seat as I sat in the middle in the back. Having a big man on either side of me, and two big men flanking Mike, didn’t seem all that odd, not if you didn’t want to think about it. I was too tired, and I was just glad to get off my feet and onto my seat. We rode in silence the first few miles. I’d gone against my instincts and was about to regret it.

The driver said something in Spanish, and the guy on my right side answered him in Spanish. This started a conversation between the four of them. The driver talked to each guy, and each guy answered him. My Spanish skills hadn’t been honed, so I brushed this off as simply being four guys that spoke no better English than I spoke Spanish.

When the car turned off to the left, I became alarmed.

“You can let us out right over here,” I said, leaning up to the back of the seat knowing we were still just off the highway and there was time to stop without the driver seeming rude.

“No, amigo, I can’t do that. You see, this highway is far too dangerous to be out this late. I would feel terrible if I let you out and something then happened to you. Haven’t you heard about all the murders along this exact stretch of road?”

“No,” I said, “But we’re going north. We need to stay on 101.”

“You see, amigo,” the man beside me said, “There is a car load of Mexican’s going around picking up white boys. They leave them on back roads with their throats cut. That’s why we can’t just drop you on the side of the road. We feel responsible for gringos that come onto our turf. We are four humble Mexican’s driving in our car. You see our responsibility here. You see why we can’t just put you out.”

“Yeah!” the guy beside Mike said, “How’d we feel tomorrow they find you with your throats cut. We’d feel awfully bad. You wouldn’t want us feeling bad now would you. How would you feel in that case?”

“Look,” Mike said, “You’ve scared us. Were really amused by your sense of humor. Now, let us out of the fucking car. Now!” He demanded.

“Oh, amigo, you do not appreciate our concerns for you. This is not good for you, amigo. I don’t think you want us to be letting you off out here. We are only trying to help. Trust me, amigo. I only mean to save your lives.”

“Let me out,” Mike said, “Now!”

The car pulled to the shoulder of the road. It was too narrow to get the wheels off the pavement. The four men talked Spanish as we sat in the car going nowhere. No one moved or offered to let us out. Mike was trying to get to the door handle, but the man in the passenger seat kept knocking his hand away as he reached for the handle. The guy beside me stared at the driver and spoke to him covering a lot of ground in only a minute.

The two right side doors opened at about the same time. As the guy in the front seat got out, Mike shot out past him running around the rear door and across to the other side of the road. The driver jumped out and chased Mike. The guy beside me stood up to look and see where he was running. I bolted past him pushing him down a small embankment before rounding the rear of the car going in the same direction as Mike. I stayed on the opposite side of the road from the driver and Mike, but ran in the direction they went.. The driver turned trying to grab me as he heard me coming up from behind him. I saw the knife in his hand as I dodged around his outstretched arms. One of the other guys was yelling as he ran after us. The other two had stayed near the car.

My heart felt as though it would burst in my chest. I’d never known real fear until that instant. I’d been afraid I might screw something up on the job. I’d feared being rejected by this person or that, but this put all those incidental fears into perspective. There had been times when my life bumped up against unpleasantness I found uncomfortable and perhaps I feared them, but I’d never come face to face with an evil that left me with no other option than to run if I wanted to survive.

“Rick. Up here,” I heard, as my lungs burned from my sprint. I’d gone about as far as I could run, and I heard the car turning around to come after us. It was Mike’s voice. I looked over my shoulder as someone grabbed my arm pulling me into some shrubs. I didn’t have time to see how close my pursuer was. I started to say something, but Mike covered my mouth with his hand. We lie there in a ditch hidden by some short bushes. I could hear my heart in my ear. There were footsteps that didn’t quite come to where we were lying. There was the sound of the car idling close behind.

“Where’d they go,” a voice said in perfect English.

“Down the hill toward the highway. They don’t know how quiet the road is this time of night. We’ll find them.”

“They can identify us, Jose. We can’t let that happen. They’ll grab us for the other killings. They’ll fry us.”

“It won’t. Where can they go? The Ocean’s there. Too steep to get to it. The road is the only way they can get to 101. We’ll drive the car down there and work our way back. We’ll find them. We always do. This is the fun part. The hunt is always better than the kill.”

The footsteps disappeared back up the street. I lay there shaking and trying to figure out who these guys were. Why would they want to hurt us? It made no sense. We’d never even seen them before. We’d never been in the area before.

“Come on. Before they come back,” Mike said. “There are mailboxes here. There has to be houses up this dirt road.”

“Looks more like a driveway,” I said.

“We’ll find a house. Call the cops. Come on before they come back.”

I followed Mike up the hill regretting the crunch of the gravel under our feet. There was a cold chill in the air. I shivered as the darkness hid all but a shadow presence of my companion. I could hear him breathing as we got to the top of the sharp rise.

“Here’s a driveway. Let’s go this way. There’s got to be a house up here.”

As we walked up the narrow dirt and gravel drive, a mist filters through the trees into our path. It felt damp and was moving down the small hill fast enough to see it moving. It almost lit the air with its whiteness. I could still barely see Mike, but I sure could see that mist.

“We must be getting close to the ocean,” Mike said, “Let’s go toward the fog. It’s getting thicker. They’ll never find us. There should be a house up here some place.”

“What do you think they wanted?” I asked.

“Let’s just find a place to hide. I don’t want to think about them. We can stay up here until daylight. They’ll never find us in this soup.”

The road turned as the trees thinned out. We broke through into a clearing, there was a house directly in front of us. It was a two story white house and seemed to almost glow against the misty night.

“Shit. No one is home,” Mike said.

“Maybe they’re in bed. Knock on the door. We’ve got to wake them up.”

“No car,” he said. “No ones here. Shit.”

“Knock on the door. They may be asleep. Someone has to be in there.”

Mike pounded on the door with loud thumps. I thought if anyone is in there, they’ll be going for their gun.

“It’s unlocked,” he said, with the doorknob in his hand he turned to look at me for my approval.

“Let’s go in. We can hide. Those jerks won’t risk going into someone’s house.”

“Neither will I. I don’t want to go to jail,” Mike said.

“Jail! Jail! They’re going to kill us. You better hope all that happens to us is jail.”

I pushed past him and stepped into the entryway hoping the house had an alarm system that was now alerting the local police.

“Damn it’s dark. Find a light.”

“Right! Let’s shoot up a flare so those assholes will find us without wasting their entire night looking for us. Hey, anybody home? Your door is unlocked. We need help. Anybody.”

“There’s no one here,” Mike said.

He was right. I don’t know how I knew it, but there was no one in that house. It gave me an eerie feeling, but it wasn’t the kind of feeling you get when other people are close at hand, there was an emptiness to it, and yet it looked like any other house. I guess a light would have come on, or a sound would have come from someone moving around if there was someone there, but there was no sound, and I knew there wouldn’t be one.

“Lock the door,” I said.

“What if the people lost their key and can’t get in. That’s why they left the door unlocked.”

“Get real, Mike. Lost their key? Those guys come up here, they aren’t going to be looking for a key. We’ll find a place to hide just in case. I bet this is someone’s weekend house. I bet they come up here from the city. I bet no one is living here.”

“I hope,” Mike said.

It was very hard to see anything. There was no moon and no starlight. The fog seemed to cover everything when we looked out of the window.

“We’ll go upstairs so we can see out of the front window. We’ll see them if they come up here.”

“Can’t see anything,” he said. “How we going to see them?”

“It’s better than sitting here by the door for them to bust in. If we see them, we can go out back and hide. They’ll think there is no one around. Just make sure the door is locked..”

I took first watch while Mike slept on what must have been the daughter’s bed judging by the frilly doodads that covered it. It was the first time I noticed he snored. He also tossed and turned. I had to take my coat off because it got so hot in the house. I watched for any sign of light coming up the drive. I didn’t know if I wanted the people that owned the house to come home or not. I found a phone, but it was dead. I knew that meant we didn’t have to worry about anyone coming home. I sat back at the window staring into the night.

I must have fallen asleep. It just became impossible to keep my eyes open. Then, the car lights were lighting up the treetops. The fog became super lighted and glowed as the tires crunched on the gravel as they slowly made their way up the driveway.

“Mike. Mike.”

“What?” he said, not being totally awake and for just an instant not remembering where he was.

“What is it,” he said alarmed, sitting straight up in the bed.

“Out front. There’s a car.”

“I told you the people would come home.”

“I don’t think so. I found a phone. It is dead.”

“Shit! Let’s go out the back way.”

“It’s too late. There are two of them standing out in front. I don’t see the others. They’re just looking at the house.”

“Shit!”

Two of the men stood in-between the headlights talking. One went around back. The other one went up to the front door. He tried the handle and backed up to look up at the widows.

“No one back there, Jose.”

“Front doors locked. Let’s go further up. We can’t let them get away. They’ve seen us. They can identify us. We’ve got to do something about that.”

His eyes seemed to penetrate the house. I leaned back shying away from the window as he looked at it. I could hear him trying the door again before backing up and looking at the window where I hid.

“Hey! Jorge, we done this house?”

“What?”

“We been here before, man. I’ve been here before. I know this house. If we haven’t done it, we’ll come back to do it after we catch our gringo friends.”

“You were here without me, dude. I’ve never been here before. We’ve never done this place,” Jorge answered.

“Maybe not. Maybe not. I think so. I could swear. I think so.”

He walked toward the front of the car looking once over his shoulder at the house. He pointed up and down toward the lane as he talked to the other guys. Two stood at opposite sides of the car as Jorge and Jose stood in front talking. Mike sat motionless in the bed. The car lights finally flashed across the front of the house as they backed up and left.

“They gone?”

“I think so. It’s too dark to see if anyone stayed behind. The one guy was awful curious about the front of this house. Thought he’d been here before.”

“Let’s get out of here before they come back when they don’t find us.”

I turned around sitting on the floor looking at Mike.

“Where do we go?” I asked. “They’re looking for us. We go down on the road and they’ll find us. We don’t know the area or how far it is to some civilization. I think that’s why they picked this area to kill us.”

“You think they were really going to kill us? Maybe it’s just a hoax. You know, trying to scare the hitchhikers game?”

“Why look for us? Why come up here? We were scared enough to run and leave our stuff. Why keep on with it if it is just a hoax, unless they want to scare us to death. We go out there and we risk walking right into them. They’ve been here already. They might not come back. They checked all the doors and seemed satisfied. This is probably the safest place for us.”

“And they might come back,” Mike said.

I must have dozed off again as we sat silently while the darkness closed in on us. When I woke up, the entire house seemed to be shaking. There was a thundering that seemed to surround us. Mike woke at the same time. The sound seemed to echo through the house.

“What is it? What’s going on?” Mike asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe an earthquake. Let’s get the hell out of here. The whole house is shaking.”

The stairs seemed to be moving out from under me as I took them three and four at a time. I had trouble getting the front door open. As soon as I got out into the yard, I could feel the ground moving under my feel. Mike came charging out of the house running past me down the driveway. I followed him to the access lane, and back to the road that led to Route 101. I continued to run until I couldn’t run any more. Mike was waiting for me in sight of the main highway. He leaned with his hands on his knees looking every bit as trashed as I felt. It had been a difficult night.

“What the fuck was it?” Mike asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “The ground was shaking, and it sounded like thunder. Listen. Hear it?”

“What? I don’t hear anything but my heart beating.”

“Exactly. No noise. No shaking. Whatever it was, we outran it. Whatever it was is back at that house.”

“I hope you’re right.”

We walked down to Route 101 crossing it and then walked north. The first morning light had started to appear between the trees. After about a half an hour, a car stopped to take us to the first town. We went to the sheriffs department. We described what had happened to us and told them about the guys that accosted us taking our belongings. They wrote it up as a simple robbery, but I protested, and Mike added his disagreement to the mix. We were escorted into a conference room when we told them about the threats and the knife.

We were very reluctant to tell them about being in the house, but finally Mike said we ought to tell them everything just in case. We didn’t want to go to jail for burglary, and since we didn’t do anything but sit in a bedroom, well, how much trouble could we be in. The deputy sat and listened to us. He took notes, and seemed indifferent. I don’t think he took us too seriously.

“Look you two, we are a small department. We cover a lot of territory. Give us some evidence showing that something took place last night, and we’ll be glad to act on it. A tag number. Anything. These guys will say they gave you a ride and you left your bags. Their word against yours. I doubt you are going to ever see your things again. Why not just call it a day, and head on up the road. Those guys are long gone, and you don’t have anything to give us. Hitchhiking is dangerous. You’re lucky you only lost your clothes.”

“These guys are looking to kill someone. You better take notice. When you find a couple of bodies around here with their throats cut, that’s when your going to sit up and take notice,” I said.

“Who are they,” a voice said from a speaker hanging over a mirror on the wall.

“Robbery chief. They say some guys gave them a ride. Threatened them. They think they saw a knife. They don’t have much to give us.”

“Let’s back up to these couple of bodies with their throats cut,” the speaker said.

“That’s what they said they were going to do. I saw a knife,” I said to the mirror.

“What’d they steal?”

“Everything they owned, chief.”

“They threatened to kill us. Cut our throats.”

“Did they?” The speaker asked.

“I’m telling you these guys were going to kill us if we hadn’t gotten away from them.”

“They just said, we’re going to cut your throat. That it?” the Chief asked, “Then they just let you go?”

“Not exactly. They told us a story about four guys cutting the throats of hitchhikers and leaving them on the sides of deserted roads up along here.”

“They said that was happening, but did they say they were the cutters and they were going to cut you.”

“No, sir. I got the point of the story,” I said. “They were telling us what they were going to do to us. They got their rocks off by scaring shit out of us.”

“You sure they weren’t stopping to let you out. Rattled your chain a little. Let you out, scared but none the worse for wear.”

“They chased us. That’s when we found the house.”

“After you got out of the car, then they chased you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Awful careless of them letting both of you get away. I think someone is pulling your legs.”

“They came looking for us. We hid in a house up off 101. They came looking for us. We just lucked out. We locked the door, and they didn’t think we could have gotten in.”

“Let me get this straight, you broke into someone’s house?”

“Not exactly,” Mike said, “I turned the knob. The door was unlocked. They were coming after us. It wasn’t like there were a lot of options at the time.”

“Could you show me the house? We have to investigate that. If it checks out, well, under the circumstances we can probably forget about it. That’s if nothing is damaged or missing.”

“Yes, sir. I think I can find it,” Mike answered.

“You boys have anything to eat?”

“No, sir,” we both answered at the same time.

The Chief of Police loaded us into his car and took us to a restaurant at the end of town. He ordered us hot cakes and milk. After eating we ended up driving south on Route 101. We weren’t sure how far we’d come after being picked up, but described the way the road went off on an angle to the left a few minutes before we ran from the car.

The Chief questioned us as we rode. He was particularly interested in the knife I saw, and what was said that made us think these men were going to kill us. He seemed most interested in why we thought they meant to cut our throats. He kept coming back to questions about the knife.

“Here,” Mike said. “That’s it. Isn’t it, Rick?”

“It could be. Go down and come back up from the other way. That’s the way we were traveling. It will be easier to see if it’s the same.”

The Chief followed our instructions as we found our way back up the road where we had been terrorized the night before.

“Stop here. That’s the driveway leading to the house,” Mike said.

“You sure?”

The Chief seemed surprised as he put the car into reverse and backed up past the mailboxes before turning toward the left.

“I think it was the first driveway on this lane. Damn fog still hiding everything. It was the same last night. The closer we got to the house the foggier it got,” Mike said.

“It’s the ocean. Always like this in the mornings this time of year. You sure where you are taking me?”

“Yes, sir. This is the place,” I said.

The fog was so thick you could only see for about ten feet. The car rolled slowly along until we told him to turn once again. He pulled into the narrow drive and stopped putting his car into reverse immediately before driving us immediately back to the police station. We were once again taken into the little room. This time the chief came in with two cans of coke.

“What’s your game? You didn’t break into any house along that road. What’s the story here? I don’t like little boys playing with my head.”

“We told you the truth. We told you just what happened. Don’t you want to let those people know we were in their house. They’ll see we didn’t bother anything. Just sat up in the corner bedroom until they left. We woke up with the ground shaking and split. That’s it. We’ve told you everything we know.”

“You’re going to stick to that story?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now, I’m going to tell you what I think. You boys read about the killings that took place here a few years ago. You decided you were going to come down here to have a little fun with the locals. You invented this story, but you should have checked a little closer. There is no house up the drive you had me on. You screwed up. You should have done a little more research. You know you’ve filled an illegal report here. Making false statements on an official investigation is against the law. Now, I haven’t got time to play with you boys. I want you to get your ass up and march out of this station and out of my town. This nonsense stops here.”

“What’s your problem. We picked the wrong driveway. That’s all. It’s the next one, or the one after that. You saw the fog. It was the same way last night. It just rolled in over everything. There could have been a driveway we missed.”

“All those houses up that road went into the Pacific during a storm over eleven years ago. There are no houses left up there.”

Mike and I looked at each other. We knew what we saw, and we knew where we had been. We thought that was the spot but knew we could be wrong.

“It was the wrong road then,” Mike said. “There’s another road that looks like that one.”

“No. Not like that. Not with houses that close to the ocean,” the Chief said. “You got it all right down to that. That’s where you screwed up.”“How far did we go off 101 before Jose pulled over, Mike.”

“I don’t know. I was too busy yelling I wanted out of the car. I don’t know how long. Seemed like forever. Couldn’t have been more than a minute or two or three before he pulled over.”

“Jose?” the Chief said.

“That’s what they called him. They were talking in Spanish, but the guy in the backseat called him Jose. I’m sure of that.”

“He did. I heard the name,” I said. “Later on. At the house, I heard Jose call one of the other guys Jorge. They were right under the window where I was watching.”

“You guys sit tight. I’ll be right back.”

The chief disappeared and returned about ten minutes later. He put a book in the middle of the table and opened it to the middle.

“I want you guys to turn the pages and check out all the pictures on each page. I want you to tell me if any of the guys in that car from last night are in this book. Start at the page I’ve turned it to.”

“Jesus,” Mike said, “There must be a thousand pictures here.”

We looked at the page the Chief opened to us and agreed there was no one on the page we recognized. We turned the page.

“Him,” Mike said, “That’s Jose. That’s the son-of-a-bitch.”

“It’s him. That’s the driver of the car.”

“A 1985 four door Caprice. Shitty looking green color?” The Chief said.

“Yeah! Could have been. It was green with four doors,” Mike said.

The chief flipped through several more pages. Each time we picked out a man within a minute. The chief closed the book and took it out of the room. A few minutes later he returned.

“What’s the story, boys. I want the truth. You’ve been here before. Read about our town. Heard stories. Someone you know lived here?”

“I don’t know what you are talking about. I’ve never been here before, and I can guarantee you I’ll never be here again. We’ve told you what happened to us. We’ve told you the truth. I don’t know what your fucking problem is.”

“I find that hard to believe,” the Chief said.

“You’ve got the book. Pick these guys up. They’re going to kill someone. We can identify them for you. They might still have our stuff,” I said. “At least you could try to do something.”

“You went down that road and you went into a house?”

“That road. One like it. That’s what happened.”

“Come on boys. We’re going to end this little game right now.”

The Chief didn’t say anything else about knives or the four guys we picked out or even where the house might be. He drove back south on 101 until we turned up the road that slanted off the highway where we were taken the night before. This time he went to the driveway where we thought we’d been the night before. This time he drove up over the hump, and there in the fog was the thick house just like we’d told him.

“See. Told you. There. There it is. It was there all the time,” Mike said. “Who’s wrong now?”

“That thundering. What the fuck is that,” I said, as I could feel the car shaking.

“That’s the Pacific Ocean. It undermined this section of the coast a few years back. We’re right on the edge of where it undermines this cliff.”

“You going to leave a note for these people,” Mike said. “We didn’t take anything.”

“You went into this house. You went upstairs, and you stayed in the front bedroom? Point to it so I know what you’re telling me.”

“Yes, sir. That window right there. That’s where we watched them stop right where you are parked now.”

I could feel the ground shaking when I got out of the car. The thundering roar was even louder than when it woke me that morning. The chief leaned on the front of the car as we stood by the porch.

“See anything funny about this house?” he asked.

“No,” Mike said, looking at the chief and me.

“Go open the front door for me. Just like you did last night. I want you to go upstairs and wave at me from that bedroom window. I want you to show me where you watched those boys from.”

Mike walked into the fog. We followed him as he stepped up on the porch.

“Looks a little different in the daylight,” he said. “Looks older. More worn out,” he said, as he turned the handle and threw the door open. Mike started to step through the door and moved back quick. “Fuck. What in hell happened to the house?”

I moved up behind him and looked ten feet inside the door where I could see the Pacific Ocean fifty feet below crashing up under us. We stood there looking at each other.

“Still think you were in here last night,” the Chief said. “Still think you were upstairs. I think you’d have to go down there to find any stairs.”

“We were. I thought we were. This is the house. When did this happen?”

“January 23^rd, eleven years ago last night. Four houses went in that same night. Hellacious storm.”

“How is that possible?” Mike said, looking at me.

“Not! Not at all. Neither could those four boys have picked you up last night.”

“What?” Mike said.

“Those four pictures you picked out were pictures of four petty thieves that plagued this county for ten years. Little punky stuff. The night of January 23^rd, eleven years ago, they broke into this house to rob it. You see, the houses had been evacuated that morning when they were declared unsafe after days of rain. These boys figured they’d come up here and make a nice score. Hit the houses back off the road. Who would ever know.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“They were in the house when it went into the ocean. They figured everything but the fact they evacuated them for a good reason. End of story. Only when this happened, we had a series of homicides along this stretch of highway. All hitchhikers. All found dead on deserted sections of road. All of them had their throats cut. Strangely enough, that string of murders stopped about the time those boys went into the ocean with this house. I never gave it a thought. I sure never tied those petty thieves to all those murders. They were punks. No violence on any of them.”

“You’re jacking us around, right!” Mike said. “You decided you don’t believe a thing we’re saying, and now it’s payback time. I’m not buying it. You’re making this crap up.”

“Jose Morales, Jorge Cassio, Thomasino Cruz, and John Ramos died in this house eleven years ago. None of my department was here during the murders or when the houses went in. The case was widely publicized at the time. The murders went on for several years. There were nine bodies found within 10 or 12 miles of the town. When they stopped, everyone agreed the murderer either moved on, died, or went to prison for some other unrelated crime.

“We’ve tried to forget it. No one that remembers it talks about it. Then you boys show up with this story of yours. The only thing that makes any sense is that those four boys did the killings. That’s why the killings stopped the night they died. We’d never have known the truth if you hadn’t come along. That’s the reason I’m going to drop you off on the far side of my town, and you’re going to keep moving on up the road.”

“This makes no sense,” I said, “What you’re saying isn’t possible.”

“I’m not saying anything. You’ve done all the saying. I’ve just told you about the history of our town, this house, and four of our less than leading citizens. You’re telling me that you were picked up by four dead guys, and you hid from them in a house that isn’t there.

“Damn if I know what it means, but I advise you boys to take your looses, and get the hell out of here, before you stir up anymore of our restless dead. If I were you, I wouldn’t be here after dark. That’s all I’m saying.”

He didn’t need to say anymore.

The End

This is the last chapter of a short story by Rick Beck. Please let Rick know if you have read the story (and your guess as to which is real): RickBeck at CastleRoland dot net.

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