Transcription
So, I've actually got two stories that I think are worth hearing, and they're both related to each other. My name is David. I used to work late nights at a gas station/convenience store out in the middle of nowhere. This was forever ago, which I'm only mentioning because it was back before every establishment had state-of-the-art security systems and cameras covering every square inch of their property. It's not like security systems didn't exist, more so that it wasn't much of a priority. Plus, the owner was cheap. But anyway, I didn't care because the job was laughably easy. The most difficult part of working there was honestly the owner. He legitimately had the mind of a goldfish. We'd have the same two arguments multiple times a week. And it was almost like this guy forgot what we argued about every time because he'd constantly repeat himself and bring up things we'd already addressed. But whatever. Here's everything you need to know. Most nights it was just me in there from 11:00 p.m. to 7:00 in the morning, and the place didn't see much traffic. That's about it.
Anyway, one night, I'm pretty sure it was during the week, I was doing what I always did, leaning against the counter with a magazine in hand, trying to prevent the boredom from putting me to sleep. It was really late. I don't remember exactly what time it was, since the store had the remarkable ability to blend all the ungodly hours of the night into one lump of misery. But the store was dead silent. You know, that faint buzzing noise those old fluorescent lights make? That was the only noise I'd hear in hours, and my brain had gotten numb to it, which I guess explains why I was so startled when the front door chimed. I looked up and there was a man walking in. He was this tall, 30-something looking black guy with an above average build. My first thought was ex-pro athlete. But then I looked at him a little more closely. Here's the thing, and I can't overstate how jarring this was. He was quite literally covered in blood. Or I guess it could have been red paint, but I knew it wasn't. It was everywhere. There was a huge splatter across his chest for one, not to mention the streaks on his face and arms. It was a cartoonish amount of blood, which is why my brain took so long to process it. It was one of those unique sights that paralyzes your brain for a few moments because it doesn't fit any familiar category of lived experience. But what really got me were his eyes. They were just empty. I don't know how else to describe them. There was nothing behind them. It legit looked like he was just walking into the gas station at 2:00 a.m. on any other night. He looked perfectly normal, like he was relaxed and almost bored. It was like he didn't even know he was drenched in what was very clearly blood. I'm describing all this in vivid detail so that my reaction makes sense. I don't want to come across as some pathetic loser. It was genuinely a terrifying situation. I was completely frozen and all I could do was stare at the guy, which was probably the last thing I wanted to be doing. I couldn't help myself. Every time I was able to look away, my gaze immediately snapped right back to his eyes. He noticed, obviously, which wasn't too surprising. I mean, I was quite literally staring at him. I'm not sure what I was expecting him to do, but I definitely was not expecting him to smile at me. And then he said, "Calm as anything, don't worry. It's not my blood." As if that was supposed to make me feel any better. It didn't. My brain immediately started the emergency alarms that this guy is a murderer. He might have just killed someone. He might kill me. Those were the only thoughts running through my brain, and I was freaking the [ __ ] out. But then my survival instincts kicked in, and I started acting like everything was normal. I nodded at him like he had said something normal about the weather and I buried my head back in the magazine. I watched him walk through the aisles like nothing was wrong. He grabbed some random stuff and came up to pay. I was actually kind of surprised that he wasn't going to just steal the items. I probably would have let him. I rang him up, careful not to look him in the eyes. The nightmare was almost over. He paid in cash, didn't say anything else, and left. The door chimed and he was gone. As simply as that. The second I heard a car engine start somewhere out in the parking lot, I grabbed the phone and called 911. I told them what I saw, and I tried to describe the guy as accurately as possible. I told them I didn't really know what had happened, but I was positive that something happened. The dispatcher was asking some clarifying questions when everything went sideways. I was mid-sentence when the door chimed again. Great. Another customer. That was the last thing I wanted to deal with. But I was wrong. It wasn't another customer. It was him again. The guy I was in the middle of reporting to the police. He looked absolutely furious. I hung up the phone as fast as I could, but it was too late. He knew what I was doing. He must have seen me through the window. He stormed up to the counter and started demanding to know if I'd called the cops. I denied it, but he wasn't buying it. Not even a little. Things escalated quickly. He started cursing at me, telling me to mind my business and that he knew I was lying. I just put my hands up and didn't say anything, trying to diffuse things as best I could, but there was nothing I could do. His voice was getting louder and those empty eyes were suddenly filled with rage. At first, I thought he was just going to yell at me, but I saw it a second too late. He jumped across the counter and attacked me before I could do anything. I don't mean he climbed over it. I mean he launched himself across the counter and tackled me to the ground before I could even react. In all of two seconds, he went from screaming at me to strangling me. And I was fighting for my life. I thought I was going to die. I had never been in a physical altercation before that night. And I was certain this guy was trying to end my life. I thrashed around wildly, kicking, scratching, biting even. I was just trying to survive. I could feel his blood, or whoever's blood it was, all over me, smearing my clothes and face. We were still rolling around on the floor when I resorted to my final option. I screamed that I had a gun, and I wasn't afraid to use it. A complete bluff, of course. Something about the way I said it must have been convincing, though, because he stopped punching me. He scrambled off and bolted for the door. I was still on the ground in a painful haze when I heard his car speed out of the parking lot. I didn't even get up at first. I just laid there for a while, covered in a mix of someone else's and my blood. The police showed up maybe 10 minutes later. When they saw the state I was in, they immediately left and tried to track the guy down. I never heard from them again. There was nothing about it on the news either. So, I was completely in the dark. The experience was by far the scariest physical thing that has ever happened to me.
Okay, if you thought that was crazy, I promise you this one's worse. A few months after the first incident, I was still working at the same gas station, which was probably my first mistake considering what happened. But I needed the money. Also, there was a part of me that had convinced myself it was just a freak occurrence, a one-time thing that had no chance of ever happening again. But that's not the case. It was another late night when the next thing happened. Looking back, the circumstances surrounding the night were pretty much identical to that of the first incident. It was a late night. I was alone in the store, dying of boredom, etc. So, anyway, this guy walks in the store and immediately catches my eye. The first strange thing I noticed was that he was wearing a suit. And not just any suit. This thing looked expensive. It was dark gray and perfectly tailored. He had no business being anywhere near a gas station past midnight dressed like that. My first thought was that he must be coming from a wedding or maybe some kind of corporate event. I mean, there had to be some kind of explanation for what he was doing. But even important people don't walk into gas stations in the middle of nowhere wearing nice suits. That just doesn't really happen. And I would know. The guy didn't browse or even so much as glance at the aisles. He clearly wasn't hiding his intentions or just didn't care enough to. Instead, he walked right up to me. He didn't speak or even look at me. He just reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a photograph. At first, I was beyond confused, but then I looked down at the picture and I couldn't believe my eyes. It was a picture of that guy. That guy who had come into the store with blood all over himself and tried to kill me. The photo wasn't 100% clear, but I was sure it was unmistakably the same person. I tried to mask my surprise, but I don't think I did a good job. I kept my face glued to the photo, but I could feel that man watching me. He didn't say anything at first, and when I looked up to meet his gaze, he just stared at me like he was studying my face or reading my mind. I wasn't sure if he was expecting me to say something, so I didn't. It was painfully awkward. And then after a really uncomfortably long pause, he finally spoke. His voice was surprisingly gruff, almost like he had just smoked a full pack of cigarettes. He asked me if I'd ever seen that man before, and I immediately said I hadn't. It felt like the right answer, even if I couldn't explain it at the time. I just didn't want to get involved in any kind of illicit activity that was going on. And my gut was screaming, "Deny, deny, deny." The guy didn't respond. He just kept staring at me with these cold, calculating eyes that I couldn't read. It was really unnerving, especially given what he was asking me about. The silence was excruciating, and with every passing second, I lost confidence in the believability of my lie. Still though, I wasn't budging, and I was still pretty sure I had given a convincing answer. I won our little implicit standoff and the guy finally reached down and picked up the photograph. As soon as he turned his back, I let out a huge sigh of relief, thinking everything was over. I watched him walk through the store toward the door, but right before he opened it, he stopped and he turned back around to face me one more time. And then he just said, "I know you're lying." And then before I could even respond, he was gone. I was pretty shocked by the whole encounter, more than I wanted to admit to myself. Being in that store all alone didn't feel safe anymore, and I didn't really know what to think. For the life of me, I couldn't figure out what the hell had just happened. Who was that guy? How did he know about the first incident? I wondered if he was a cop or detective or if he was something else entirely, someone connected to whatever that blood-covered man had been involved in. That's the thought that really freaked me out. I pretty quickly reasoned that if he had been someone official like a cop, he would have revealed his identity to me, which could only signify bad news. I didn't end up calling the police that time, partly because I wasn't sure what I'd even say, and partly because of the PTSD over what happened the last time I called the police. Nothing happened for a while after that night, though. I was a little shaken. Yeah. And part of me was expecting something else to happen that night, but nothing did. It wasn't until a few weeks later that I started thinking something might have actually been wrong. I started noticing the same silver SUV in various spots throughout my day. At first, it was parked across the street from the gas station during my daytime shifts, which was normal enough, but then I noticed it in the parking lot of the grocery store I went to, which was a touch stranger. Once I saw it on my street, the alarm bell started to go off again. I'm not a paranoid person by nature, but when you see the same vehicle in several different locations over the course of 2 weeks, you start to wonder. I had a feeling I knew who it was, and I told myself the next time I saw the car, I would call the police and report it as discreetly as possible. I knew it was that guy who had walked into the store that night in a suit. It had to be him. The worst part about it all was not knowing how he'd figured out where I lived. Somehow, he tracked me down. You have to remember I lived alone at the time. It's not like I had protection at home or a lot of people to consult on this. I don't know why, but I convinced myself things would blow over if I just ignored it. And of course, that was an awful way to proceed. About 3 weeks after he'd first shown up, I was jerked awake in the middle of the night by the sound of glass shattering. My first reaction wasn't to freeze or flee, but to fight. I grabbed the baseball bat I kept under my bed and ran into the living room. There was no one there, which I was able to determine in just a few minutes because the house was pretty small. There was something though. There, sitting in the middle of the living room floor, surrounded by broken glass, was a rock. Just a plain rock, maybe the size of a fist. There was no note attached to it, but I understood what it meant. In that moment, I realized I couldn't do this anymore. That guy had clearly been stalking me and he was clearly involved in something awful and was trying to tell me something. I didn't know what that thing was, but I knew I wanted no part of it. So, I caved. I quit my job the next day and started looking for other places to live. It took me a little over a month to find a nondescript apartment a few towns over and I figured that was good enough. In that moment, I didn't see the SUV one time, but my mind was made up. And nothing happened after that. I was finally at peace and I was actually able to find another job relatively easily. I ended up moving again not even a year later. This time way out of state and that was that. But I still think about both experiences from time to time. Even though the first encounter was probably more life-threatening, it's the second one that gets me. I was never able to figure out why someone would go through all that trouble, stalking, harassment, intimidation, just because I'd called the cops on someone covered in blood. The only explanation I could think of was that he somehow thought I had a connection to that first guy and I was harboring him or sheltering him or something. It's been years and I've accepted that I'll probably never figure out the truth behind any of what happened.
This happened about 8 months ago. The night in question, I was heading back from a job site about 3 hours from my house. I was beat. The job had taken longer than expected, and I didn't have the amount of caffeine in my system such exhausting work required. By the time I got back on the road, it was already past 10. I know a 3-hour drive doesn't sound too intense, but I had been working so hard that even the simple task of keeping my eyes open was a chore. Plus, my truck is several years old. I don't drive a fancy vehicle with assisted driving or anything like that. So, it's not like I had the comfort of knowing my car would help with the drive. About 45 minutes in, I knew I needed to stop. My eyelids were doing that thing where they just kind of drift down on their own, and I was having to physically shake my head to stay alert. So, I pulled into the next gas station off the highway. It was around 11:00 at that point. I filled up my tank, smoked a cigarette, and kind of stood there debating what to do. I still had over 2 hours of driving ahead of me, and I knew there was no way I'd make it. So, I made the decision to take a quick nap and finish the drive afterward. I drove to the corner of the parking lot and turned my engine off. I was just going to go to sleep for a few hours right there. I've slept in worse places. It didn't seem like a big deal. I was out almost instantly. When my alarm went off, it felt like I had blinked and an hour had passed. I still wasn't fully rested, but I was definitely more alert than before, which was good enough for me. The lot was completely empty now. There had been at least two other cars there when I pulled in, and they were both gone. Without as much as a second thought, I started my truck and pulled back onto the highway. Things were fine for maybe the first 20 minutes. The highway was dead and I was kind of zoning out. Not falling asleep per se, but just letting muscle memory take over. I was essentially on autopilot. At one point, I realized my truck was making some strange noises. It actually took my brain a few minutes to process what I was hearing as abnormal. That's how zoned out I was. I turned the AC down so I could hear things more clearly. There was this faint thumping sound coming from somewhere behind me. I turned around a few times, but didn't see any loose items bouncing around in the back seat or anything like that. I figured it was just something shifting around in the truck bed. One of my tools, maybe. Beyond speculating, there wasn't much else I could do. The situation didn't really warrant me pulling over, so I made a mental note to check it when I got back home, and I kept driving. The sounds continued, though. It actually started to bother me, and I ended up cranking the radio to drown it out. At one point, I slammed my hand against the hood of the truck and cursed out of frustration. Strangely, that seemed to work. For maybe 10 minutes after that, things were quiet. I was relieved, not because the noise was worrying me, but because it was genuinely ticking me off. The adrenaline from getting so worked up had woken me up a bit more, which was a good thing. But that increased alertness also cleared some of the brain fog, and I started thinking about how odd it was for a sound being made by an inanimate object to stop so abruptly as a result of my outburst. I had already eliminated the possibility that a faulty part in my truck had been making the sound. So, the fact that slapping the hood could have caused it to stop was such a weird coincidence. I was in my head about it, debating whether I should stop or not, when out of nowhere, I heard a deafening crack come from directly behind me. It was not a normal sound, and it definitely wasn't a normal crack either. It was more like a crash, like someone had thrown a rock against one of my windows. The next 30 seconds were pure chaos and terror. I turned around in shock, and what I saw nearly made me lose control of my vehicle. There was a person standing in my truck bed, banging on the glass divider between the truck bed and the back seat with one of my tools. It was dark, but I could clearly see him. He was banging on the glass repeatedly, like a wild animal trying to claw its way out of a cage. The way he was moving was truly barbaric. I can't overstate that enough. I swerved uncontrollably, partly out of fear and partly to try and shake him off. I lost control of the truck and started spinning out of control. I genuinely thought I was going to flip, but all I could think about was the maniac who was trying to smash his way through the glass. I somehow managed to wrestle the truck back under control and I skidded to a halt halfway between the right lane and the shoulder. I was too disoriented and terrified to think about how lucky I had been to avoid a wreck. And the moment my head stopped spinning, I ripped off my seat belt. I don't know what came over me. I'm not the bravest person and I wasn't armed, but I knew I wanted to do something. I couldn't just sit there. I had to confront the psycho in the truck bed, if he was even still there. I threw the door open and ran around the truck. As I was approaching the truck bed, I saw a man in a hoodie climbing out. He jumped onto the ground and started running for the treeline off the side of the highway. I chased him for a few seconds before realizing that was a terrible decision. It was pitch black out there. I had no idea if he was armed and we were completely alone. Wherever my bout of confidence had come from, it didn't last. In a matter of seconds, I was terrified all over again. I ran back to my truck and sped off without even looking back to see where that guy went. I drove for a little while and then pulled over again to inspect the damage to my truck. My brain was genuinely in shock. I couldn't think straight and I started to feel what I can only describe as a panic attack. I calmed myself down and got out of the truck. The glass divider was destroyed. It wasn't completely shattered, but there were so many cracks in it that one more forceful impact would have taken it out. I climbed into the bed of my truck to see what he had been hitting the glass with, but something caught my attention before I could even figure it out. There was a foreign object in there that I didn't recognize. It definitely wasn't a tool. It took me a few seconds to realize what I was looking at. It was a trash bag. It was wrapped over on itself multiple times like someone had been trying to keep it really secure. And it was small, too, like the size of two fists. It looked wet. And as I crouched down to get a better look, I realized it smelled disgusting. It smelled rancid, like rotting meat or food. I didn't want to touch it, but I needed it out of my truck. I needed to be as far away from that bag as possible. So, as gingerly as I could, I grabbed it and quickly chucked it toward the treeline. I didn't give things another thought, I immediately got back in the driver's seat and started driving away. As I was pulling out, I looked down at my hands and realized they were tinted slightly red. The bag had been coated in something. Something red. Something red that was now all over my hands. It was sickening, but there was nothing I could do besides drive. I rubbed my hands on my jeans and tried to just make it home without going insane. I ended up keeping the incident to myself. I didn't involve the police, and it wasn't until weeks later that I even told my friends about what happened. I couldn't stop thinking about the encounter for days afterwards. I got a friend of mine to fix my glass a few days later without asking questions, and that was pretty much that. But I'd be lying if I said I wasn't affected by what happened. Looking back, the only explanation that makes sense is that he climbed into the bed of my truck while I was asleep at the gas station, which makes sense because I don't have a bed cover, but he must have been lying completely flat there for most of the drive, too. Otherwise, I would have seen him. I've never been in a life-or-death situation like that before. It was by far the most terrifying thing I've ever gone through.