I didn’t think this truck horror story would follow me home, but none of it made sense. I had been hauling a refrigerated trailer through northern Montana when he appeared in my headlights, maybe fifty yards ahead. He was wearing a gray work jacket and jeans. He didn’t wave for help. He just stood there with his head hanging down.
I hit the brakes.
The truck shook hard and the trailer pushed me forward. My coffee fell onto the floor. When I stopped, the man was gone.
I sat there gripping the steering wheel. The road was empty in both directions. There were no trees close enough for him to hide behind, no buildings, no ditch deep enough to disappear into.
Then someone knocked on my passenger window.
I turned and saw the same man standing beside the cab.
He was looking directly at me.
I screamed. I actually screamed like a kid and reached for the door lock even though it was already locked.
He leaned toward the glass.
His face was badly damaged. One side of his forehead was split open, and something dark had dried down his cheek. His mouth was hanging open.
He smiled.
I put the truck into gear and drove.
I didn’t care where he had come from. I didn’t care if he needed help. I just wanted distance between us.
I had been driving trucks for almost eleven years. That night, I was making a delivery to a warehouse near the Canadian border. A few hours earlier, I had stopped at a gas station because I was tired. I remember another driver telling me to avoid the old highway because there had been an accident there the previous winter.
I ignored him because the old route saved me almost forty minutes.
That’s the last part I remember clearly before seeing the man.
I drove for another ten minutes, checking the mirrors every few seconds.
The road behind me was empty.
Then I saw headlights.
A truck was following me.
It was an old white tractor with no company markings. It stayed about two hundred feet behind me, even when I sped up.
I went from fifty-five to seventy.
It stayed there.
I slowed down.
It slowed down.
My hands started sweating.
I picked up the radio.
“Anyone on this road?”
Static answered.
Then a man’s voice came through.
“Pull over.”
I stared at the radio.
The voice sounded exactly like the man outside my window.
I switched channels.
The voice came again.
“Pull over.”
I threw the radio onto the passenger seat.
The white truck behind me suddenly got closer.
Its headlights filled my mirrors.
I couldn’t see the cab anymore.
I pressed the accelerator.
The engine screamed, but the other truck stayed behind me.
Then something hit the back of my trailer.
Once.
Hard.
The whole truck moved sideways.
I nearly lost control.
Another hit came.
I looked in the mirror and saw a person standing on the roof of the trailer.
I could see him clearly in the headlights behind me.
It was the man from the road.
He was standing barefoot on top of the moving trailer.
I shouted, “What the hell?”
He bent down and placed both hands against the rear doors.
Then he pulled them open.
The trailer doors swung wide while I was still driving.
The interior lights came on.
There was something hanging inside.
At first I thought it was a piece of meat.
Then I saw the boots.
A human body was hanging from the ceiling of my trailer.
It was wearing my jacket.
My jacket.
The same brown jacket I had been wearing when I left home that morning.
I looked down at myself.
I was still wearing it.
The body lifted its head.
Its face was mine.
I slammed the brakes.
The truck jackknifed across the highway. The trailer slid sideways and smashed into the ditch.
My head hit the steering wheel.
For a few seconds I couldn’t move.
Then I heard footsteps outside.
Slow footsteps.
They stopped beside my door.
Someone knocked twice.
I didn’t answer.
The window cracked.
A hand pushed through the broken glass and grabbed my shoulder.
I fought it, kicking and screaming.
The fingers were cold and hard.
I managed to pull away and crawl toward the passenger side.
Then I heard my own voice outside.
“Open the door.”
I froze.
The voice said it again.
“Open the door. It’s me.”
I looked through the broken windshield.
The man was standing in front of the truck.
His face was mine.
He smiled and raised one hand.
Behind him, the white truck was gone.
There was no other vehicle on the road.
I stayed inside that wreck until morning.
When a highway patrol officer finally arrived, he opened the trailer.
It was empty.
There was no body.
No footprints.
Nothing.
He asked me what happened.
I told him.
He looked at me for a long time and said the highway had been closed for almost a year because of a bridge collapse farther ahead.
I told him that was impossible.
I had driven the road that night.
He shook his head.
Then he looked inside the cab.
My brown jacket was hanging over the passenger seat.
I was still wearing the same jacket.
There was blood on the sleeve.
I don’t drive trucks anymore.
But sometimes, when I am stopped at a red light at night, I see an old white truck in my mirror.
It never gets closer.
It just waits behind me.
