I wrote this story in my sophomore year of college. It was originally published in Wide Angle Journal of Literature and Film. Enjoy!
This was country dark—the kind of dark where you were so far away from cities and street lights that you could put your hand just inches away from your face and still not see it. That’s what he kept saying, anyway, sitting in the driver’s seat next to her. He had repeated it at least three times in the two hours they’d been in the car so far, traveling south on I-85. And she supposed he was right. It was a thick, dense darkness outside, and the ribbons of raindrops sluicing the sky didn’t make things more visible. Only the headlights illuminated the framework of trees crowding the road, like fractures around the edge of her vision. Unannounced lightning sometimes cracked open the sky in a bright slash, causing her to jump and make a small, surprised sound. He had begun to chuckle whenever it happened.
“Storm a little scary, Mel?” he joked when it happened again. Melissa shot him a glare, though a small smile belied her irritation. The muscles in her stomach clenched when he used his nickname for her. Like they were newlyweds again.
“I’m just not expecting it, is all,” she insisted, tucking a piece of hair, brown just starting to grey, behind her ear.
“It makes sense to be scared. These woods are perfect for who-knows-what to be hiding in.” His voice had adopted the low, story-telling tone he used to speak in when he told their daughter, Cassidy, a ghostly story that would keep her up for nights on end.
“Nate, I have enough of an overactive imagination of my own, I don’t need your help!” She yanked the sleeves of her jacket down from her elbows to her wrists and folded her arms across her chest. A small smile crossed her face, though.
“You sure? You know how good I am at ghost stories. I bet I have a couple even you haven’t heard yet.” He lowered the volume on the radio, and Melissa worried he was preparing for telling a story.
She shook her head. “I doubt it.”
“Is that a challenge?” She could hear the grin in his voice and knew what was coming.
“No, that’s not what—”
“Perfect! Have you ever heard of Mothman?” He said, his voice shaking off the smile to take on a spooky quality, low and quivering as if it was struggling to bear the weight of the story. His eyes stayed focused on the road, as if he gathered inspiration from the murky darkness ahead.
“Mothman? You’re not serious,” she scoffed, but her hands fidgeted, and she uncrossed and recrossed her legs.
Nate caught the movement out of the corner of his eye, and his mouth formed his crooked smile. “Oh yeah. Big myth up north. Heard it all the time when I grew up in Virginia.”
“It sounds ridiculous. Like a reject super hero.”
“No, no. Mothman. Lives in woods like these. He looks like a normal man, but with big furry moth wings attached to his back. And his eyes—big red glowing bug eyes. That’s how you see him coming—red eyes.” He briefly shifted his focus from the road to Melissa, his eyebrows raised in an eager attempt to be sincere.
“Still not that scary. He just wanders around?” Melissa turned her face to look at him. His normally neatly-parted dark hair was ruffled in the back where it had leaned against the chair. The askew pieces melted into the dark around him.
“There are all these of reports of seeing him by the road late at night. He’ll fly as fast as your car, right next to your window and stare in at you. Sometimes he’ll land on the roof of a car.” Unconsciously, Melissa’s eyes flitted to the top of the car, the tan covering of the sunroof suddenly not sufficient.
She realized what she was doing and shook her head at herself. Ridiculous. Looking back at him, Melissa rolled her eyes. “And what does he do if he catches you?”
“Nothing—that I’ve heard of, anyway. People just have reports of seeing him, outside their car, or standing in their yards, outside their homes. But he never tries to get in—just stands there, watching. Sometimes there are reports—pictures, even—of seeing him a little bit before something bad happens, a catastrophe I mean. Like back in the sixties, this bridge collapsed in West Virginia, and dozens of people claimed to have seen him right around that time. Like an omen.” Nate guided the car gently around a bend in the road.
“But he doesn’t do anything? Then what’s the point?”
Nate was leaning forward slightly as he tried to see through the rain, windshield wipers doing their best to help. The rapid back-and-forth sound reminded her of a clock that had gone haywire—hurried tick-tocks occasionally punctuated by a squeak as the wiper dragged against the glass. “What point?”
“To the story! He doesn’t really exist, so people have made up creepy stories, but if he doesn’t do anything then what is the point? How is it supposed to scare people?” Melissa insisted, now twisted in her seat to face Nate, though he continued to look at the road.
“Maybe it’s not made up to scare people then. Maybe it’s real.” The trees outside his window whisked past his head, blurred by rain. Of course that would be his response.
“Nate. Please.” She turned back toward the front of the car.
“So you’re not scared in the slightest?” He glanced at her, eyebrows raised, daring her to deny it.
“I mean, I didn’t say that…”
Nate laughed and looked back to the road. “See, I knew it. You’re so predictable.”
Melissa smiled at him, but she swallowed tightly. Predictable. That again.
The radio music seemed to swell louder in the void, and Nate noticed her silence. “You missing Cassie already?”
Melissa hadn’t been thinking about her, but now that Nate brought it up, yes, of course she was. “The drive back home is the hardest part.”
Nate shook his head, the left half of his lips curving up into a smile. “She’s been going to camp for years now, Mel. She’ll be back in a month.”
Melissa smiled sadly. “I know. But still.” She paused a moment, looking down as she fidgeted with the zipper on her jacket. “And you’ll be home when she comes back, right? We always have our welcome home party.”
Nate coughed. “Yeah, I’ll try to make sure I don’t have a business trip scheduled. I may have to be gone some weekends or spend a couple nights in the city before then.”
Melissa nodded without speaking, not caring if he saw. Her eyes flitted to his left hand, resting on the steering wheel. He twisted his wedding ring absent-mindedly. He did that whenever he talked about staying in the city, nearer to his firm, for a night, or going on a business trip.
The rain had become more determined, a solid thunk-thunk-thunk on the roof of their car. Nate clicked the windshield wipers into a faster setting.
“Hey, what’s that up there?” he said, lifting his right hand from the center console to point. Melissa looked, and saw two glowing red dots in the distance on the road.
She looked at him, glaring. “No. Don’t.”
His smiled stretched wide. “Looks like eyes to me.”
“Nate, you know it’s not—”
“Big, glowing, red, bug eyes, actually…Kinda what Mothman would look like?” His voice was low again. Melissa was reminded of a camping trip they took one weekend in college. The group had clustered around the fire as Nate brought an ominous looming to the darkness surrounding them through his haunting stories. Melissa sometimes imagined that when people asked him about their marriage when she wasn’t around, he used that same voice to describe it.
Stop it. She wouldn’t let him get in her head. Melissa considered reaching for him, linking her fingers with his on the console where he had rested his hand back down. Instead, she said, “Mothman is some made-up creature, probably something you came up with yourself, by the sound it.”
Nate shook his head, looking serious but his voice was earnest. “I didn’t make it up. And it looks like it’s right there, not too far ahead of us.”
Melissa gripped his arm. He didn’t return with any gesture of comfort, but her breath still caught at the physical contact. She couldn’t remember the last time they had held hands. “It’s creepy.” She tightened her grip, relishing the warmth of her hand on his skin.
“Geez, Melissa, would you calm down, are you trying to cut off circulation to my hand?” He ripped his arm out from under her fingers, placing it on the steering wheel. “C’mon, you know it’s just the taillights of a car.” She swallowed tightly, like a young child who had just been scolded.
“Just trying to have a bit of fun. It feels like we never do that anymore,” she said, not even sure he could hear her over the pounding rain.
He had, and his body tensed, as she knew it would. “We have plenty of fun. But sometimes we’re both busy—life happens. You sound like Cassidy when she’s bored, Melissa.”
She leaned her head against the car door. Maybe if she just slept the rest of the way it would be easier. They wouldn’t have to interact that way. She chewed on her lip, remembering all the nights recently she had tried to sleep to forget about him, about the emptiness next to her in the bed. Just like those nights, tonight sleep evaded her. She stared into the oncoming rain, seeing every individual raindrop as the headlights spotlighted it in its onrush towards the ground.
He must have thought she was asleep, though. He turned the radio up, transforming the song from quiet background music to the dominating sound, notes mixing with plunks of rain on the roof. She hadn’t heard the song before, but he had. His voice felt out the words, shaping each one as if he were writing the song himself, in this moment. Melissa remembered that voice, the delicacy with which his lips formed each sound, the way it had when they first met at a karaoke bar in college. The memory seemed cloudy now, obscured not so much by distance as by the fog of other, harsher memories.
The windshield wipers swept frantically back and forth, vainly trying to coax the rain away. Nate was going at least fifteen under the speed limit—twenty five under his normal pace. The thought occurred to her that they might need to stop the car on the side of the road, wait out the storm. She wondered how long that would take, sitting in the car, listening to the rain. Maybe he would sing to pass the time, sing to her. She would like that. It would be like when they had first started dating. And then maybe she would do something else like those first few months. Free herself from the seatbelt, lean over the center console toward him, he would already be leaning towards her, expecting it and wanting it to come. Their lips would touch, softly, then he would push his strongly onto hers, his rough hands grasping for her. His smell, a mixture of sweet sweat and his cologne, would fill her nostrils. Maybe then he wouldn’t call her predictable and call her Mel instead, maybe they wouldn’t notice the rain had stopped until long after the sky was clear, maybe he would hold her hand the rest of the drive back, maybe there would be no more business trips or nights spent in the city.
“Nate, if the rain—”
He jumped. The car jerked to the left, suitcases in the trunk careening to one side in a thunder. “Damn it, Melissa, I thought you were asleep!” He pulled the car back under control.
Melissa relaxed a fist she hadn’t realized was clenched, now relieved they were the only car on the road. She tried to laugh lightly, but he didn’t join. “Sorry. I wasn’t asleep.”
“Well, yeah, I know that now. You were quiet for so long I just assumed.” His face was stony, jaw set and lips tight.
“Oh. I was just thinking.” She pushed the sleeves of her jacket up to her elbows and tucked the piece of hair back behind her ear, looking at the dashboard rather than at him.
“Hope my singing didn’t annoy you. I wouldn’t have done it if I knew you were still awake to listen.” He didn’t sound apologetic as much as bitter at her for hearing, for tricking him into thinking he was alone when she was still right there.
She swallowed. “Nate, if the rain is too heavy, maybe we should pull over.”
“Pull over? Where would we do that? There hasn’t been an exit in miles.” He lifted his hand off the steering wheel slightly, gesturing to the thickness of trees lining the road.
“I know, I meant, just, on the side of the road.”
“In the dark and by the woods by Mothman.”
The corners of her mouth twitched upward. “No, just in the dark by the woods. No Mothman.”
“I don’t think you can decide where Mothman chooses to go.”
She shook her head, laughter breaking the sound of the rain. This time his lips formed a small smile. “Mothman or not, I don’t want you driving in the rain if you can’t see through it. It’s getting pretty heavy and you’re already driving slowly. Maybe it would be best to wait it out.”
Now Nate was shaking his head, eyebrows furrowed in concentration. “No, it’ll be okay. There’s no telling how big this storm is. I’d rather just get back before it gets any worse.”
“Are you sure?” She put her hand on his arm, grasping for him again. “I wouldn’t mind getting home a little later, letting the storm pass.”
He readjusted his hand on the wheel, just barely, but enough that Melissa understood she was to remove her hand from his arm. Fine. It dropped back into her lap. “Alright, I just wanted to make sure you were good with driving. Not falling asleep or anything?” she said, her voice quieter, yielding to him.
“Nope.” The word, so casual, still carried the edge in his voice and settled like a rock in between them.
“Okay, just let me know.”
“I will.” He didn’t look at her, just kept his hands on the wheel, except to turn down the volume of the radio. The song faded into the background again.
She did not reach for him again or ask him to stop. She simply stared ahead at the rushing rain, the trees flashing past, the road reaching out, illuminated for a little bit ahead, then disappearing quietly into the country dark.
Cover photo by chmyphotography on Unsplash.
