You’ll Have to Find Another Way

In the heart of America, there are many backroads often left unexplored, the roads which do not show up on GPS, and make self-driving cars ride off into the woods. Barry Anderssen was driving back home after visiting a girl in Arkansas whom he met online. “I had a good time, too, maybe I’ll visit you next if you’re ok with that?” the text read as he smiled and tossed his phone down on his lap. Yes, he did feel like seeing her again, but he’d let her know in an hour or two, best to not seem too eager.

            He was driving through the backroads of Pigeon Roost Creek between two towns which had no names. There were tall trees all around and thick forestation enclosing the road like a tunnel, and Barry was the only one who traversed it. The GPS on his phone had him take a detour onto a one-way road with only two lanes. He was on his phone when he lost service and his ping became frozen. The map would not update, and it lost track of his location and the road would not load. He continued down the street where his high beams offered the only light. If only he had the self-control to leave her earlier, then he would have gotten home before midnight. Although if every minute of sleep he lost tonight was spent with her, then it would be a fair trade.

            Still, his service was lost as he continued down the road for a while until he came upon the butt of a traffic jam. He saw the red glowing rear lights of a car up ahead and he slowed down to a stop. He looked down at his phone again, still nothing. At least he wasn’t alone, but why were they stopped?

            The cars up ahead were all at a dead stand still. Barry peered his head out of his window and saw the cars were lined up as far as he could see. He sighed and then decided to get comfortable and turn the radio dial until he heard an accompanying noise. He heard nothing but static until there came the booming voice of a preacher man broadcasting in the late-night hours to all of them in the woodwork. 

            “The Lord works in mysterious ways. We all know Jesus is the only way to the Father, the one who made the heavens and the Earth. All those who worship false prophets will have their time of judgement. Are you ready for the rapture, my child? Ask yourself if today was the day in the End of Days, would you be ready to be accepted? Would you be ready to be raptured? Those who worship false Gods shall find a cruel punishment. If you worship the sun or the moon or the stars, you shall not be saved my brothers and sisters. Amen. No one can be a slave to two masters. We must be beholden to the Lord our God. For thou shalt worship no other God. Exodus 34:14. We all know what tonight means. I hope you are all staying safe tonight” Then they cut to a promo about signing up for the local bake drive to help needy families, and he turned the dial down to a hum.

            Barry tapped his fingers against the wheel trying to remain calm, but he desperately wanted to get moving. He looked around at the forest shrouded in darkness illuminated faintly by the moon up above, and he had a strange sense. He wasn’t a stranger to the wilderness, but this was not his wilderness. He was stuck in a foreign land dependent on the phone to find his way home. He checked it again, still no signal. The cars ahead of him still weren’t moving in the least.

            Should he turn around and go back the way he came? Generally, he knew he needed to head east, and east was the direction he was headed. He figured to keep the course and be patient, the cars would get moving soon.

            Except they didn’t. He heard the preacher man come back on the horn saying, “You’re listening to Pastor Dan Gilbert on the Brighter Futures Network. I hope everyone is safe out there tonight. Do not be afraid because the Lord is on your side. Fear not, for if you take the Lord to be your one true savior, then you shall receive eternal salvation. You can and will reach the pearly gates. Repent all your sins before you die, and you shall have no fear of death…”

            He prattled on and on about death and fear. Barry turned him down for now. He had enough of Pastor Dan’s waxing biblical. He wanted to honk his horn, but he didn’t want to get into a skirmish with a redneck. The people around here were not kind to city boys.

            Screw it. Barry laid down the horn and he saw the guy in the car in front of him put his arms up. What am I going to do? His arms said. The man in the car ahead of him was of a burly country build, and he likely knew the area. It was getting late, and he needed to go home and rest. Barry didn’t have time to continue waiting for traffic to get moving. He needed to make things happen. He undid his seatbelt and put the car in park. He decided he’d walk outside and see what was going on.

            He got out of the car and used his phone as a flashlight as he approached the car up ahead of him. He knocked on the country fellas window and he rolled it down. “What’s the matter, mister? You got a problem?” The man was fat and in his thirties with a stubbly goatee not quite grown in.

            “Hello, no, no problem here. I’m just wondering what’s taking so long?”

            “Why? You got somewhere to be?”

            “Umm, just home. You know, I’ve probably been waiting for like fifteen minutes now, how about you?”

            “Yeah, I’ve been here a while. But what am I going to do? Just look. None of us are moving.”

            “Alright, well, I’m trying to go East, are you from around here?”

            “Yeah, I reckon.”

            “Good, is there any other roads back that way that go around? I got to get home.”

            He laughed at him in a high, country squeal, “You think I’d be sitting here in traffic if there was another way around? Look, you’re a city boy, you oughta be used to sitting in traffic. Now go back to your little automobile and wait like the rest of us.” He angrily rolled up his window.

            Barry walked back to his car and locked the doors. He turned the Pastor back up on the dial: “And you too can escape the grip of the polytheists if you just stay inside. Don’t go out and beware of their treachery. We all know what tonight means for some of us out there. Tonight, is the night of reckoning!” Pastor Dan said over the fuzzy radio.

            Barry put the car into drive and took it off road. He straddled the edge of the cracked, pot-hole riddled cement and grass which led down to the forest. The road was narrow and as he drove down, he heard the pelting of branches against the side of his car. He passed the cars slowly and crept through the traffic which went on for a minute before the road began to narrow even further and merged into one lane which bottlenecked. Two cars, which had parked, clogged the merge lane, and didn’t leave enough room for Barry to continue. He parked and looked at the other cars which were all on and running, but none of them moved. They weren’t even inching forward slowly to give any indication that they’d ever get through.

             Pastor Dan could be heard saying, “If you’re unlucky, and around here you have strayed tonight, I hope you find another way. I hope you find another way home. Tonight was the last night you’d want to find yourself here… I ask, when was the last time you looked at the moon with your own two eyes? Do not praise false idols…”

            Barry grabbed a flashlight from his glove compartment. It didn’t shine, it’s been out of batteries for a while now, but it was big enough and blunt enough to knock someone out. He got out of his car with his flashlight by his side and he walked over to the adjacent car. He didn’t see anyone inside, but the car was turned on. He went over to the driver’s side door and looked inside and found that no one was in it. He opened the door and heard the Pastor on the radio inside of this person’s car, “They praised the false Gods of their time, and now they have resurfaced! The knowledge once thought to be lost it has been found. A dark awakening indeed. Pray and repent my brothers and sisters for tonight—”

            Barry searched through the car and saw it was not parked, but that there was a brick placed atop of the brakes. Barry turned around to make sure no one was behind him. No one was there, but he didn’t feel alone. Then he took a glance at all the other cars and didn’t see anyone inside them either. All of the cars were empty and still running.

            He ran over to another car, and it was the same, there was a brick placed over the brakes and no one was inside while it ran. He abandoned his car and jogged down the road inspecting each vehicle as he passed by. He looked in the driver’s seat, no one, he moved on. Next car, nobody, but there’s a brick on the brakes again. He went further and further, and it seemed like the cars went on in perpetuity until he saw a large structure up ahead, but he didn’t know what to make of it. There was a long traffic jam in the middle of nowhere and nobody could be found.  

At the front of the line, where the traffic jam began, there was a structure in the road which prevented any cars from being able to move. When he got closer, Barry saw it was a small enclosure with an altar in the middle and seats surrounding the raised podium. On the altar was a dead owl which they placed at the forefront of their ritual to burn. What he was looking at was an unholy tabernacle, a place where people gathered to worship and give sacrifice back to the Gods. The sacrilege temple was empty but, in the woods, he heard the snap of a branch and saw eyes in the darkness. He saw shadows disperse and form with the whites of their eyes glinting in the moon. They moved in his peripherals. He was not alone. There were people in the dark forest all around him and when he listened very carefully he could hear them, too.

Barry turned back around and ran as fast as he could to his car. He ran past all the empty cars and found his own parked crooked against the grain of traffic off the side near the ditch. As he was running, he checked his phone, still no service. When he opened his driver side door, he didn’t hear Pastor Dan like he had hoped. Instead, he found that his car was turned off and the keys were missing. His heart sank into his stomach, and he grew cold with fear. He looked outside the car and saw the shadows in the woods gave chase on both sides of the road.

He got out and ran to end of the road back the direction from which he came leaving the traffic jam behind. He ran until he saw the high beams of the country man’s truck with him still waiting inside. Oh thank goodness, he’d could help. For some reason not being alone gave him a sense of relief.

He banged on the country man’s window, but he didn’t answer. Barry pulled open the door and out fell his body. His stomach was bloody from repeated stab wounds, and his face lay expressionless and pale. He looked inside and saw his brakes were pressed down by a brick and the car was still running. All this to give the impression of traffic. The radio was on, and the voice of Pastor Dan could be heard again saying, “I hope you’re all safe tonight. Do not be afraid in the face of death, for the Lord is on your side. Repent! Say your prayers and tidy all your affairs before the rapture cometh. For tonight those who have already received a judgment shall cast theirs upon you.”

When he looked up the road, he saw his exit was blocked by men in locked arms standing with the moon at their backs creeping towards Barry. They were dressed in dark robes with shiny, bedazzled masks which concealed their faces. They came out of the woods and began to hum ritualistically in the tune of a dead language. With wicked tongues they sang and enclosed Barry who fell to the ground stricken by fear. “No, please! Don’t sacrifice me! Please, let me live!” he shouted.

Then the crowd picked him up over their heads and threw him up to the sky and began to laugh. He heard their laughing, and he opened his eyes. He even saw the big country guy standing and cheering, too. The men in robes let him down and held their bellies as they laughed hysterically. They removed their masks and he saw the faces of people smiling and crying with tears. “Oh, man, we got you good, didn’t we?”

“What?” Barry was confused as he rose to his feet. “What’s going on here?”

“Oh, my goodness. It was a prank! We got you so good.” Someone said.

“This was the best one so far,” a voice said.

The leader, who was an elderly man with glasses and parted gray hair patted Barry on the back and said, “Thanks for being a good sport. You’re a part of our yearly prank we play on outsiders who come through. You see, we don’t get a lot of visitors around this neck of the woods and once a year all the townsfolk gather around to set this elaborate prank on people who happen by. You know, those few who get lost around these parts. It sure can be terrifying; these woods are quite menacing looking.”

“Oh my god. Thank god,” Barry said as he wiped the sweat from his forehead.

The burly country man with fake blood on his chest walked over and shook his hand, “You good, man? We really scared you, didn’t we?”

“Yeah, I’ve never been so scared in my life. You guys really went all out with this one. Seriously, this is crazy. It was very well staged. You definitely fooled me.”

They drove Barry’s car back up to him and when they gave it back to him, the car was pointed in the direction from which he came. They wanted him to leave the way he’d came.

The old man with glasses handed Barry his keys back, “You can get out through the way you came, cell service will probably kick back in once you get going. I’m afraid you won’t be able to go through this way. Clearly.”

“Oh, why not? Can’t I go through your town? Before I went offline, my GPS was telling me I have to keep on this road.”

“Oh, no, I’m afraid not. You’ll have to find another way.”

“Alright then, that’s more than fine with me.” He just wanted to get out of there. He saw them all staring at him, and he felt like he should leave. The laughter had died, and they all stood around him. He took the keys and went to his car as fast as he could.

“Have a good night.” They all said to Barry as he scampered into his car swiftly, twisted the ignition, and punched the gas as hard as he could. He set off down the road in the direction from which he came, thankful to be alive.

As he was driving away, he turned the dial on the radio and he heard Pastor Dan saying, “If you’re lost and they let you get away, do not hesitate, do not turn back, but be thankful that they have shown you mercy. Leave while they still let you.” Barry looked in his rearview mirror and saw them waving goodbye.

Pastor Dan continued, “We know what they’re hiding in that sick and perverted town. They have based their community around dark magic and the mythology of past deities. Tonight is their sacrifice. Beware of those who praise false idols my brothers and sisters. Stay safe out there tonight. If down this road you have strayed, and those who worship false gods have let you get away, then leave and leave now for you’ll have to find another way.”