So, new find, reader of creepy stories, but this one hit harder, BECAUSE--
We used to attend a pagan festival called SummerStar in Skamania. Or maybe just outside, but it was in Skamania county, either way. Heavy woods, old growths,tons of moss, ferns, dense underbrush.
We were in Seattle with friends, so we packed up and drove down, passing through Vernonia on the way. We hit the edges of the town about ten? Maybe eleven? Either way, full dark, and while we weren't out of gas, we were low, so we started looking for a gas station. And...nothing. Nothing was open. Not just that--the buildings were boarded up.
Now, we'd consulted the map, and why yes we'd left the highway on what LOOKED like a simple diversion that would meet up back at the highway but skip a lot of the interchange action. I was driving, and I started to slow down, and my partner looked over her shoulder--to make sure no one was behind us.
No one was. But...worse...we could no longer see the forest behind us. Just dead black. Yes, I know it was night, yes I know we were already unsettled, thinking we were lost, but it wasn't just heavy-forest-night-sky dark. It was down-in-the-basement, basement-door-closed, inside-a-closet-with-THAT-door-closed dark.
We looked at each other, made the mutual decision not to stop again, and sped up to posted levels. And that black kept getting closer. Signs painted over. Buildings boarded up. Streetlights out, and even a couple of them wrapped up--to stop breakage? We didn't know. We still don't know.
We kept driving. Black got even closer. Now it seemed like a bubble of shadow that was trying to encircle the car, and it was nearly touching the back license plate. We sped up. It sped up. More abandoned buildings. Some burned buildings. Where the hell WERE we??
By the end of it, before we saw a visible sign, we were doing 75 mph and praying a cop wasn't lurking in the dark somewhere. Black pressing all around us and we swore we heard whispering and sure it could be due to us pretty much freaking out in the little explosion-hazard Pinto we were in but we just needed the road to drop us somewhere else ANYWHERE else and dear gods where the hell IS everyone--
And with a nearly audible pop, we drove into light and night-sky stars and the first rest stop we found, that would rejoin us to the highway when we drove out. We drove in, parked, breathed a bit, then got out to stretch trembling legs.
There was a posted map next to the small lot. We went over to find the road. it wasn't there. We found the road that we were on currently. We found where we last remembered lights and life. But the 'shortcut' we drove to get there...Nothing. Just forest.
Never been to Vernonia since.
kaledo-art
germansingergirl
jbbartram-illu
snowghoul
blakekathryn
titsay
annaxmalina
