"Well good morning sunshine," I said breaking the silence of the long and lonely road, "you get some good shut eye?"
"Hmm?" mumbled the sleepy beauty sitting in the passenger seat. She took her time slowly returning to consciousness before answering. After five hours of sleeping like a baby in a crib, I would take a while getting up too. "Good morning my baby. Sorry I slept for so long, this blanket is just so darn comfortable," she spoke as she removed the sheet lying on top of her.
"Nah don't worry about it sweetheart. All this time to myself gave me some time to think about stuff anyway," I said with all honesty.
"Stuff? What kind of stuff?" inquired the now fully awake woman.
"You know, stuff. Like how much your going to love meeting the Minnesota cousins for the first time, the fact that this is our first trip out of Texas together, how awesome the food's going to be, and how happy I am to have a wife like you," I explained as I looked into her eyes with the last point.
"Aww, Whitman! How did I manage to get such a charmer of a man?" She asked playfully while grabbing my arm and resting her head upon my shoulder.
"I don't know baby, probably the same way I was able to nab such a beautiful woman," I cleverly replied, "I love you Samantha."
"How much?" Sam asked oddly quickly lifting her head from my shoulder to look at my face.
"How much you ask? Well let's see…" I pondered out loud, I was a bit thrown off guard by the suddenness of the question. "Samantha, I can say with full confidence that you are the single greatest thing that has ever happened to me. All of the years we've spent have been full of joy. I wouldn't want to live in a world without you. You're my everything," I harped trying to sum up my feelings for the love of my life in mere words.
"And you'll love me forever right?" She asked, again in a hasty almost serious tone.
"Of course sweetheart. I will always love you forever and more," I added. Sam sighed a breath of relief and her head fell back onto my shoulder.
"You're so romantic Whit, I just wanted to make sure." She explained. I took my eyes briefly from the road ahead and gave her a look of confusion.
"Make sure? Baby you know I'll always love you," I reminded her.
"I know, I just had this really bad dream and it was bothering me. Sorry about that," she professed with her voice returning to a more lighthearted tone.
"You wanna talk about it?" I asked with some concern.
"No, it's cool. I just wanted to hear you say it again. By the way where are we?" She asked now turning her head towards the windows. My eyes too glanced out at our passing surroundings. Pine trees zoomed by us on all sides as we drove noisily along the quiet forest road. An overcast sky above us prevented any sort of shadow from appearing and darkened the already dense woods. If it hadn't been for the hums of the motor and the rushing air condition it likely would have been a very eerie drive.
"We're in Kansas, I know that. Exactly where in Kansas though…" my voice trailed off with uncertainty.
"Are we lost?" asked Sam with slight alarm.
"No, No. Don't worry, we're not lost," I reassured her trying to ease her doubts preemptively. I then opened up the console and pulled out a worn piece of folded paper. "Here I'll show you, go ahead and open the map" I said handing the map to her. Sam unfolded the pages of the map until it until all of Kansas was displayed. "Okay, so you see this stretch of road right here and how it goes about for about 200 miles?" I asked while pointing at said road with my finger, "we got on this road about 5 hours ago. Meaning we should've already gotten off it by now and onto the next road, but it just keeps going. I've looked at the map a thousand times, and I swear to God that I definitely took this road. I just don't get it." I looked towards Sam to gauge her reaction to this conundrum, but she was too busy analyzing the map. After a little bit, she looked up at me with a face I had come to recognize and said,
"Whit we're lost." Yep. I knew she would say that. Still I defended my claim,
"We're not lost, I promise. Look I know I'm not always great with directions, but I'm telling you we're not lost this time." Sam sighed and then playfully jested,
"Oh I should have known better than to leave a man to the directions."
"Oh hush your face, I'll get us there," I retorted in an equally mocking tone. As we turned around yet another bend, fog, thickest I had ever seen, enveloped us. Instinctively, my foot pressed down on the breaks to accompany the treachery of this sudden twist in climate. "Holy crap Sam, where the hell did this come from? I can barely see 20ft in front of us," I spouted in awe of the fog's intensity.
"Seriously, this is like something out of the Twilight Zone or something. I think it looks really pretty though. You don't get to see this everyday," she concurred while looking on the bright side. She was right about that, it was a strangely alluring sight. My attention waned as my eyes longed to feast upon the new world around me, if only for a moment. It added a feeling of mystery and wonder to our otherwise plain surroundings. After driving this long through dull forest, I thought to myself that this was a nice change of pace.
"Whit watch out!" yelled Sam as she cringed into her seat and pointed towards the veil of fog ahead. Her unanticipated cry jolted my mind and eyes back to the road and I witnessed a man shaped shade within the fog fast approaching the front of my car. My heart and stomach plunged into my toes as my foot slammed down on the breaks. My eyes shut tightly and I gripped the wheel with all of my might so that I may brace for impact. I heard the screeching of rubber sliding across asphalt and Sam's screams of terror fill my ears, and then nothing. What felt like a lifetime of dread was over in less than a second. Although all was now quiet, I dared not look up to see the blood of some poor soul smeared across my windshield. Only until Sam called out to me did the tension in my body finally begin to loosen.
"Whit? Whit? Whit are you okay? Oh my God!," she panicked. In a meek, cracked voice, I somehow managed to answer her call,
"Ya! I'm alright! Are you okay?"
"I think so! Oh my God, did we hit him?" I felt terribly sick at the thought and closed my eyes tighter. "Wait…" Sam said, as she looked into the fog, "No We didn't! I can see him standing in front of the car! Whit! Come on! We have to help him!" Hearing those words made me feel like an unimaginable weight had just been taken off my conscious. I immediately looked up to confirm for myself whether the man was alive, as Sam had said, and sure enough there was indeed a figure standing in front of the car.
"Ya! Okay we gotta help!" I agreed as both Sam and I scrambled out of the car and approached the figure. "Oh my God, I'm am so sorry! I didn't see you in the fog! Are you okay? Are yo-" my words were cut short as I got a better look at our almost victim.
From just my initial impressions, I thought the figure to be a very tall man, but on closer inspection, it was anything but. Its body definitely resembled that of a rather fit adult male, however the proportions were all wrong. It had to have been at least 8ft tall. Attached to its long arms were abnormally large claws and each finger was tipped with a jagged pitch-black blade. The creature's skin was as white as the moon and as pale as marble all over its body. It was clearly not a man, yet around its waist there was what seemed to be the robes of a monk completely covering the figure's lower half. Atop this monstrosity was a head that has only been seen in nightmares. Its head was slightly elongated with its jaw running nearly to where its ears would be, that I if it had any. The mouth was twisted into an extremely disturbing grin making visible the black, rotting, daggers that lined its gums. However, the worst part of this abhorring abomination was its eyes, sunken so deep into the socket that I could not even tell if it had any or not. Still, as I gazed up at the figure, I felt the overwhelming sensation that it was looking back at me.
Sam and I stared at the horror in the middle of the road, both entranced by its sheer strangeness. It remained completely rigid and unmoving despite our proximity to it, yet that did not quell the immense dread we felt emanating from the creature.
"Whit, what the hell is this thing?" asked Sam, breaking the unnatural silence that surrounded us.
"I have no idea, some kind of wax model of a monster or something," I answered still fixated on the figure.
"Well, I don't like it. It freaks me out. Can we just go?" pleaded Sam already moving back towards the car door. I didn't hear her; the amount of detail in this thing was fascinating. I wanted to examine it more.
"Whit! Let's go okay?" Sam's voice called me back to my senses.
"Ya… Ya lets go, it's probably just a prank anyway," I finally replied as I walked towards the car. I didn't really believe that something like this could be part of a prank, but before I could think about it more, the horrifying scream of my wife demanded my attention,
"Ahhhhh!" Sam had her mouth agape in mid scream as she pointed towards the front of the car. My head darted in the direction of her finger and what I saw nearly paralyzed me with fear. The creature had vanished.
"Whit! NO!" Sam cried, and I heard scrapes across the asphalt behind me. My head twisted around instinctively just in time to see the pale figure towering over me with its hand raised across its chest. Before I could do anything else, I felt the incredible force of the monsters bony hand coming down upon my frail body.
Darkness descended upon my sight and the taste of blood and dirt was abundant. Sam's screams suddenly pierced my ears,
"Whit! Help me Whit! Save me! Whit!"
NO, NO! Don't you touch her! Don't you fucking touch her! I try to cry out in a fit desperation,
"…Sama….ntha…." but it was of no use. Sam's pleas for help began to grow farther away,
"Whit! Whit! Help!"
No, not my Samantha. No, no, no, no ,NO! With every last bit of strength left in me, I forced my eyes open just enough to witness the foul creature running off down the road with my Samantha over its shoulder.
"…no….urgg…" with this last utterance, my body gave out and I was thrown into the abyss of unconsciousness.