The Hitchhiker I Did Not Stop For

I was driving a long empty stretch of two-lane road late at night, the kind with nothing but fields and the occasional dark farmhouse, when my headlights picked out a man standing at the shoulder waving me down.

He looked completely ordinary. A jacket, jeans, a friendly wave, the universal gesture of a person whose car has broken down. Every part of my upbringing said slow down and help. And every part of my gut, loud and immediate, said do not stop, do not even slow, keep driving.

I have picked up stranded people before. I am not a paranoid person. But the feeling was so strong and so physical that I obeyed it. I did not slow down. I kept my speed and passed him, feeling guilty and foolish, telling myself I had probably just left a poor man stranded in the cold.

Then I looked in the rearview mirror.

The instant the car was past him, the friendly wave stopped. The smile, which I could still just see in the red glow of my taillights, dropped off his face completely, all at once, like a mask coming off. And then he started running. Not stumbling, not calling for help. Running, hard and fast, straight down the middle of the road after my car, in dead silence.

I put my foot down and did not lift it for ten miles. When I finally checked again the road behind me was black and empty. There was no broken-down car anywhere near where he had stood. There was nothing out there for miles but the fields.

I do not know what he was, or what would have happened if I had been the helpful person I usually try to be. I only know that the smile came off the second I was past, and that whatever was under it wanted very badly to catch me.