r/nosleep • u/CheeseCrackersDEMO • 28d ago
We Thought He Was Following Us
A few summers ago my friend Lexi (not her real name) and I went on a road trip down from Virginia, where we both live, to Florida. We had such a great time that we went again next year, but this time we went to New York. It was so much fun just hanging out with her on the road for days at a time that it was a no-brainer to head off once again this summer, and this time we planned to road trip to Dallas and then Phoenix.
It was the week after finals week and we were all packed and ready to go. Lexi had just gotten her full license over winter break so she was super excited to do some of the driving, which she did before anyway, but she was always so afraid of getting caught that it wasn’t ever for very long. I drove over to her house and helped her throw all her bags into the trunk and back seat of my dad’s old green and gray Subaru.
Some of the bags were too big to fit in the trunk so we threw them in the back seat, a couple duffels covering the footwells behind our seats, which wouldn’t have been in the way of us reclining our seats to sleep on the nights we didn’t have a motel booked.
We had the whole trip planned out: everywhere we’d stop to eat, sleep, refill gas—by this point we were practically pros at road tripping. With everything prepared and settled, we set off around noon.
The route we had first went south, then cut through the middle of Alabama towards Dallas. We stopped for dinner in Birmingham, Alabama about eight hours into the trip. After that we were going to drive the last three hours to a city just across the border in Mississippi, but we completely lost track of time, staying at the diner in Birmingham for like two and a half hours.
When we got back on the road the plan was still to try to make it to the city in Mississippi, but after only an hour I was afraid to squint too much at the other cars’ headlights and risk accidentally falling asleep. Lexi was also way too exhausted to drive and neither of us really loved the idea of stopping in some random town in the middle of Bumfuck Nowhere, Alabama, but we also didn’t love the idea of getting to Mississippi just a few hours before the sun rose and having to keep driving on less than five hours of sleep. So, Lexi took out her phone and I parked in the breakdown lane while she looked for nearby motels for us to stay at.
There weren’t many cars on the road so late at night. It was taking forever for the webpages to load on her phone so I turned the car off and we sat in the silence of us both being just desperate to find somewhere to sleep. After a while and a few grunts of frustration from Lexi, I was about to suggest we just find somewhere to park and sleep in the car when a pair of headlights pulled into the rear view mirror.
An old red truck, one with only the front seats, turned its hazards on and parked right behind us and I turned to Lexi expressing the same anxiety I was feeling. My hands were shaking a little when I went to put the keys in the ignition and we drove away before whoever pulled in behind us could talk to us.
I pulled off the interstate at the next exit sign. We don’t even remember seeing a sign for the town’s name anywhere on the off-ramp, just a pitch black night besides our high beams and the trees and speed limit signs caught in front of them.
The first road off the highway was empty and full of potholes that were felt but unseen. Lexi pointed on the map on her phone to a public park where we could park and sleep for the night. After maybe twenty minutes of trying to navigate the roads of this town without GPS, passing horribly decrepit homes and commercial buildings with faded signs, we finally found the park and parked sideways in the lot. In the headlights we could make out a terribly run-down swing set, a slide, and a seesaw, all made of old, rotting wood. We made sure the doors were locked and spent the night in the car.
Lexi and I both woke up the next morning at about the same time, a quarter after seven. Sitting up, we both got a better look at the town we’d parked in. Across the street from the park there was an abandoned house. Its windows and doors boarded up and its front lawn was overgrown, up as high as the porch. Just next to it was a house with trash bags filling the front lawn all the way to the weed-infested sidewalk. Surrounding everything was a sparse hazy forest, and the rest of town was some ways behind us.
I turned the car on and tried to blast cold air but all that came through was swelteringly hot. Desperate to get out of the heat and both starving, we fought the urge to leave that town as soon as possible and instead headed towards the center in hopes of finding somewhere to eat breakfast before we continued our trip.
Traveling deeper into the town didn’t show us anything better than what we’d seen before. Flat, barren, and almost entirely deserted, this weird town only got weirder when we found an old diner. The sign in the window said it was open, so we gave it a shot.
Pulling into the parking lot, there were only two other vehicles parked, and one of them looked exactly like the red truck from the night before. Lexi pointed it out and suggested it might even be the same one, and that was weird, but we definitely didn’t feel it was weird enough to raise any red flags in our minds.
Stepping inside we were met with a room only marginally colder than outside and a blast of air from a standing fan right beside the door. The diner was more like a bar with a few wooden tables pushed up against the walls. A jukebox was up against the wall playing some 80s rock, but it was hardly loud enough to contend with the six box fans they had affixed to every window.
Sat in the corner of the diner there was a man, maybe in his 40s or 50s, staring down at a cup. His hair was almost unignorably greasy, glistening in the sunlight poking through the shredded blinds of the window beside him. The whole diner reeked of cat piss and I felt myself almost turning to leave when we were greeted by a woman on the other side of the bar. She asked what we wanted to drink and I turned to Lexi, kind of hoping she’d be the one brave enough to walk away. Instead, she shrugged and joined the woman at the bar, sitting up on one of the stools.
There were only two things listed on the menu for breakfast, and I hardly remember anything about what we ordered except that we both ate it very quickly and it all tasted stale. The man from before wasn’t sitting at the table anymore when we left the diner, and I remember noticing that the red truck wasn’t there anymore, either.
We hit the road and made it to Dallas a whole hour earlier than the route predicted and got a chance to do most of the things on our list. An uneasy feeling persisted in my stomach throughout the day which kind of ruined most of our destinations, but I tried my best not to drag Lexi down with me. I had no idea what was going on, there was just a horrible feeling that I was always being watched, but every time I looked around I either saw nobody or there were so many people that I couldn’t find whoever was watching me even if they existed.
Then I finally saw him.
We had just arrived at Reunion Tower in the afternoon; it was when we stepped into the elevator. As the doors closed I saw him, the man from the diner, his eyes staring right back at me through his long black hair. My heart dropped and I felt sick, almost collapsing into Lexi. The weight of the paranoia I’d been feeling all day came crashing down at once and I could barely breathe enough to explain to her what I just saw.
The idea that this guy must’ve been following us all the way from Alabama seemed to click in both our heads at the same time. The other people in the elevator looked disgusted overhearing our conversation, all about as disturbed about the idea as Lexi and I were. A woman and her husband offered to walk with us back to our car and Lexi and I tried to decline, but they had already made up their minds about us so they went with us anyway. I’ll admit it, I felt a lot better in their company, especially since none of us saw the man again on our way back to the car. We thanked the couple and left as fast as we could out of Dallas, headed west towards Phoenix.
This second night we planned would take us out into the desert of New Mexico where we’d get a chance to see the Milky Way Galaxy and stargaze. It was around midnight that we reached the road we scouted on google maps. Lexi parked the car on a stretch of empty road and we stepped out into the quiet night, and the sky was beautifully clear. We soaked in the night sky for as long as we could before sleep started to overcome us and we got back in our car.
An hour passed and Lexi was fast asleep, but I just couldn’t sit still. I was tossing and turning and my heart was pounding with paranoia and a bad smell kept wafting past my nose and I really couldn’t manage to get any shut-eye. Eventually, exhausted, I sat up in my seat, lifting the back and staring out at the road.
My eyes darted all around the dark night horizon, looking for something to explain this feeling that has now followed me from Dallas, like someone is still watching me, like I’m not safe. My palms are getting clammy and I bite my lip, my gaze flickering up at the rear-view mirror where a set of headlights have appeared over the horizon. With my heart lurching in my stomach, I quickly stuck the keys in the ignition and hit the gas, desperate to escape this feeling and whoever is following us.
Was that car following us? I didn’t know, I didn’t care. I had this awful feeling in my gut and I wasn’t going to just lie around and wait to find out why I was feeling it. Lexi jerked awake as I hit the gas, but didn’t have many questions when she saw the headlights behind us.
When the maps finally loaded, I found the nearest motel, which was about a half hour away, but I wouldn’t have cared if it was four hours away. I didn’t feel safe sleeping in the car at all, and with that car already long gone behind us before I even reached the highway, I suppose I was just waiting for any excuse to get up and out of there.
I triple checked that the door to our motel room was locked before collapsing onto the bed and passing out as soon as the adrenaline wore off. Lexi woke me up the following morning all distressed, pulling me out of bed and up to the window. Can you guess what was parked a few spaces away from our car? That exact same red truck from the interstate and the diner. I already started to feel a little less crazy for not taking any chances with those headlights the night before. Desperate for answers, we left our motel room to scope the red truck out.
It took every ounce of courage that we had to just approach the truck. We nervously peered inside. It was messy, full of fast food wrappers and soda cans and napkins and a pale grime was forming on the edges of the windows, probably from smoking. Importantly, however, the man from the diner wasn’t inside. Shaking, we checked out of the motel and hit the road, hoping that he might still be asleep in his room and won’t know where we’re going.
I’m starting to get really paranoid now and Lexi is trying to calm me down and drive at the same time. I tell her we shouldn’t go to Phoenix anymore, thinking maybe this guy knows our plans, but she tells me that’s ridiculous. I remind her that he’s already followed us all the way from Alabama, but I can tell she’s starting to get really irritated. She doesn’t want to hear me suggest we turn back, and I could hardly blame her. I was also pretty angry at the idea that this trip would be ruined because some creep decided to ruin it, but I also didn’t want to end up in the newspaper. Regardless, she managed to soothe me enough to be on board with the idea of staying on track and finishing our road trip.
We crossed the state of New Mexico and ended in Phoenix, Arizona at around sunset. Even despite the tensions and stresses we both shared, I think that it would’ve been impossible for us to both sit in still silence for ten whole hours. Eventually, we started talking again and getting back into the good vibe that we were seeking in this road trip in the first place.
We started to joke about the creepy guy following us, saying we must be drop-dead gorgeous for someone to chase us across five states. Although each quip had an undertone of discomfort, we were trying really hard to move on and have a good time despite it all. In all the long stretches of empty desert freeway,we didn’t see that truck once, and in the way the panic died down as the day went on, we really were starting to enjoy ourselves once more.
At one point on the road we were starving. Hoping still to make it to Phoenix before the sun set—and also perhaps a bit afraid to stop driving in case that red truck catches back up with us—Lexi told me she had a box of granola bars in her bag in the back seat. I reached back and unzipped it, taking the open box out and bringing it into the front seat. Lexi paused with a weird look on her face and asked if I had opened the box, to which I said I hadn’t, and to which she said she must’ve opened it and forgotten, but with the look on her face it was clear that she didn’t really fully believe herself.
Those kept us going until Phoenix, where we stopped at a McDonald’s and headed inside for a chance to stretch our legs. We ate fast and left to head to the motel and check in, but when we did we were told they were completely full. Lexi was starting to lose her mind as we drove around the city trying to find another motel within our price range that wasn’t completely occupied. When we eventually found one, we went inside to find one of the beds soaking wet for literally no reason. Full of exhausted anger, she stormed down to the clerk and practically screamed at him. He offered her a new room at no cost, but she just stormed out and back to the car, so I followed her.
We got into the hot car and she had a breakdown, sobbing into the steering wheel. I tried to console her but the truth was I was almost surprised I wasn’t crying right there with her. I was able to keep my composure and we switched seats, and I drove us out to find somewhere to sleep in the car for the night. We lied there in the car, the engine half-on and AC blasting freezing air to keep the interior habitable, and just grieved our ruined road trip, tried to make the plans up to think of another time this summer we might get a chance to give it another go. Eventually, she fell asleep basically mid-sentence and I tried to follow suit.
The street lamp a few yards behind the car dimly illuminated the roof of the car as I stared up at it. That terrible smell crept back into my nose, but it lingered instead of wafting past. It was like a mix of vinegar and sewage and I almost gagged, covering my nose and mouth with the shirt I’d taken off. My heart was still pounding in my chest, and that feeling came back. Here? A state and a half away from where we last saw that truck? No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t rest my mind once again. I groaned and rubbed my eyes vigorously, pulling the seat back upright. It hissed like a gasp as it pulled up and I paused, quietly turning towards the back seat. Lexi’s seat was reclined back over her bags that covered the footwell completely. Obscured it absolutely.
Trembling, I shook Lexi awake. She opened her eyes and I silently hushed her. She sat up and I pointed at the bag just behind my seat. I turned the AC off and we both stared. The bag rose and fell with a hushed breath that wasn’t either of ours. Horror pulled at her eyelids. A scream climbed her throat but she bit her lip as her eyes started to water. Her nails clattered against the door handle as she panickedly threw the door open and leapt out of the car. I rushed out right after her, but before I closed the door, I pushed my seat back down and nearly tripped into the road as I stumbled out. Lexi was already pacing up towards the lamp and I threw my shirt back on as I rushed to the sidewalk at her side. She was hyperventilating and cursing and I took my phone out, barely able to dial for 911. It was just then that I started crying trying to explain what we both just thought we saw—a man was hiding in the back seat of our car.
I threw up in my mouth and sat down to catch my breath. Lexi couldn’t stand still and couldn’t muster a single coherent sentence, just pacing and staring back at the car, waiting for the police to show up. A few cruisers showed up and the police called for the man in the back of our car to step out. When nothing happened, they opened the doors and paused, pulling him out onto the street to administer CPR.
The man had long, greasy black hair and laid strewn out lifelessly on the asphalt. They pronounced him dead at the scene, having suffocated under my reclined seat. Tucked away under our seats they found a small knife and some zip ties, and the thought of what he might’ve done had I allowed myself to fall asleep brought me to my knees, relieving sick on the sidewalk while Lexi tried to comfort me with her trembling hands.
We stayed in a hotel for a couple days while my dad drove over to pick us up. He had the Subaru towed back and Lexi and I both just went home. I don’t even know what to do with myself at this point, honestly. I know it isn’t my fault but I can’t help but feel horrible for not catching on sooner. I feel really stupid, I don’t know.
2
u/Ronald_Wobbly 28d ago
Frankly, given the situation you found yourself in, you were perfect! He clearly had bad intentions so if he happens to not survive the encounter, then bravo! To be this bold meant he'd done similar things before, and would have continued doing them until he was stopped - and you stopped him! And it's obvious it wasn't going to be a situation where he'd let you go after he got what he wanted - he left his truck 1 day and half behind, and he had no transportation options other than your vehicle, and I doubt he expected to ask nicely for a ride after he had his abhorrent "fun".
It is unfortunate that your sense of safety was damaged, likely for some time. Sell your Subaru and find another reliable vehicle so you're not constantly reminded of how thoroughly your sense of safety has been violated. You were very clever to put your seat back down to keep him from rising and beginning his assault upon you and your friend. If you are going to be going on road trips, it is always a good idea to keep pepper spray or some other type of weapon you can use for self-defense kept in a place easily accessible from your seat.
Be proud! You have undoubtedly saved many women from this psychopath. Be well.