Koji Suzuki - Edge

“Book motels well in advance for road trips,” the book had also advised, but Hans and Claudia hadn’t listened.

As the minutes ticked by, dusk settled slowly over the land. As the darkness deepened, Hans’ sense of urgency intensified as well.

It was past 6:30 in the evening now, and the sun had almost disappeared behind the western horizon. Once they made it to Route 58, they were sure to find a motel there. But they had to pass Soda Lake first, and the elusive landmark had yet to appear. Hans had been looking forward to seeing Soda Lake, but it was now becoming apparent that he would only get to view it in darkness.

When he finally spotted a recession between the mountains gleaming red in the light of the setting sun, he knew it had to be Soda Lake. At that exact moment, he also spotted a lone car stopped in the opposite lane up ahead. It was the first car they’d encountered since turning onto Soda Lake Road. The interior light of the red four-door Pontiac sedan glowed dimly, but its headlights were off.

Given that they were already at Soda Lake, there wasn’t much point plugging the other driver for information. In the time it took them to pull over and ask questions, they could just press onwards to look for a motel themselves.

But before Hans realized what he was doing, he found himself pulling over. It was a relief to finally see another vehicle, but there was also something about the situation that gave him pause.

There’s something strange about this .

Apparently, the impulse to investigate the unusual was stronger in men than in women. As the car pulled to a stop, Claudia let out a soft cry. “What are you doing, Hans?”

“They’re stopped in the road,” Hans explained as he pulled the parking break.

“I can see that,” Claudia retorted.

“I just want to have a quick word,” Hans told her. From the looks of it, the red Pontiac had pulled over to attend to some matter or another.

“About what?”

“Whether there’s a motel up ahead. And if they have any vacancies.”

“In the time it takes you to ask them that we could be there already!” Claudia protested, but Hans couldn’t contain his curiosity.

“I’m just going to take a quick peek. You can wait here.”

Hans got out of the car, leaving Claudia behind in the shotgun seat. He looked right and left, but sure enough, there was no sign of any approaching traffic as he crossed the road and walked north towards the motionless Pontiac, about ten meters away.

With its interior light on, Hans could see into the car even at a distance. There didn’t seem to be anyone in the front or rear seats of the vehicle. Now Hans realized what it was about the car that had seemed odd. There was nobody inside.

The driver probably got out to relieve himself. He’s probably just behind the car , Hans speculated. But even when he circled the vehicle, there was no sign of the driver.

The car was parked on the shoulder of the sloped road, just beyond where the pavement ended. All four of its tires were on the sand. One of the doors on the driver side was ajar — that explained the interior light. Nothing interrupted the red skyline that defined the earth’s edge. No cacti, even — the only plant life in this arid landscape was grass.

Hans walked a few more steps and then called out loudly towards the horizon. “Excuse me!” But there was no response, other than what sounded like the faraway baying of a coyote.

When the baying stopped and silence returned to the desert, Hans suddenly became aware of the sound of guitar music behind him. Guitar music and a woman singing … The strains of an old Country Western song were leaking out of the car’s open door. The car radio was on. In a husky voice, the vocalist sang plaintively about betraying her boyfriend, who was away at war, and marrying another man. I hate to say it, but I have to tell you this tonight. It’s too late now. I’ll be wed to another .

Hans turned towards the woman’s voice. He had the impression that the radio had just been switched on and the music had just begun. But that was impossible.

There’s nobody in the car. I must have been so preoccupied looking for the driver that I didn’t notice the music .

The car radio must have been on the entire time, Hans told himself. When he peered through the open door into the driver’s seat, he noticed that the keys were in the ignition and the car was vibrating slightly. There was nobody inside and yet the radio and the engine had been left running, it seemed.

Hans continued to take stock of the situation. A woman’s cardigan and handbag sat on the passenger seat, and two open cans of Cola stood in the cup-holders in the console box between the front seats. There was no smell of cigarette smoke; in fact, the car smelled more like milk. The smell seemed to emanate from the child’s car seat installed in the back. A fluffy towel and a cup had been abandoned there, and the entire back seat smelled of milk as if a small child had been there just moments earlier. The cup itself was still half full of milk.

From the looks of it, Hans was quite sure there had been either three or four passengers in the car. Accounting for the driver, the woman in the front passenger seat, and the small child in the rear, there was only room for one more.

But where had they gone? All three or four of them seemed to have vanished into thin air, though the evidence suggested that they had been there just moments earlier.

Hans stepped back from the car and once again scanned the horizon, where the last sliver of sun was just disappearing, but there was no sign of the missing people. It seemed as if the red glow of the horizon was stronger than it had been a moment earlier, as if time were moving backwards.

Before setting out on this road trip, Hans had read about a number of urban legends that were currently generating buzz in the U.S. One of them popped into his mind now.

They were short vignettes, passed along by word of mouth among the younger generation who held them to be true. There were lots of variations, but they all conformed to more or less the same basic structure. Hans found himself recalling one such tale now:

This is a true story I heard from a friend at my school. My friend’s dad was driving on Highway 168, between Big Pine and Oasis. It was dusk. There were no houses in between the towns out there, no cars even. My friend’s dad was driving along, bored, when all of a sudden he saw three people walking along on the opposite side of the road. This is in the desert, way out in the middle of nowhere. A guy and a woman carrying a small child were just walking along the highway. The man and woman had this stupefied, blank look on their faces, and for some reason the man was carrying a crushed Coke can .

My friend’s dad slowed down. He figured these people were trying to hitch a ride, right? I mean, what else would they be doing out there? And how did they get out there to begin with?

But none of them even glanced at my friend’s dad’s car. They just kept on walking, staring straight ahead, with no sign of trying to hitch a ride. My friend’s dad found that pretty strange, but he kept going. But after a couple of miles he just couldn’t forget about those people, so he pulled a U-turn and went back. He figured he should at least try to talk to them. He figured he had a duty to at least ask them what they were doing out there and if they needed help. He wasn’t in a hurry or anything, so it wasn’t a big deal if he had to go out of his way a little bit .

But when he got back, the three people were gone. It didn’t make any sense. Just a few minutes ago, they’d been wandering down the side of the highway. The land was totally flat and empty, with just the highway cutting through it, so where could they have gone? My friend’s dad drove another two miles before he gave up and turned around again, this time searching extra, extra carefully. But the three people were nowhere to be seen. They had vanished into thin air. So then, when my friend’s dad had driven onwards about five miles from where he’d seen those people, he came across a car totally flipped over onto its roof. There were black skid marks on the road, and the car was totally smashed up. Steam was rising up from the radiator and black oil was pooling on the road like blood. The smashed-up, upside-down window on the driver’s side was half open, and a man’s arm dangled limply out of the window. The hand was clenching a crushed Coke can, and it swayed gently back and forth, as if beckoning to my friend’s dad .