The Happening on Little Valley Road

A Marredbury Short Story

Alex can’t explain what happened on her drive home. Either guilt drove her insane or she saw something she was never meant to see.

This short story is part of the Marredbury serial anthology. Check out the ColbyStream where Carla discovers this story:

Episode 1: The Happening on Little Valley Road

Photo by Thanos Pal on Unsplash

Alex couldn’t believe she had slept with Simon. A guy she just met, a guy with a girlfriend. She pressed harder on the gas, the highway empty so late at night. A twangy country song played on the only clear station she could find. She’d been driving for over four hours and the guilt still simmered in her gut.

Coffee. It could settle her nausea. She finished the last dregs in her thermos, replaced it in the cup holder, and searched the dark horizon for the twinkling lights of Art’s Diner. The hitchhiker stood on the side of the highway.

The sight flitted Art’s from Alex’s mind. She lifted her foot off the gas, slowing her rundown sedan, to study the strange sight. Just a glimpse. The same sandy-colored hair as Alex, long pants and a t-shirt like she wore. Her eyes had to be playing tricks on her. Sure, the woman may have looked similar to her, but it was just a hitchhiker. Alex glanced in the rearview mirror. The woman had disappeared.

For a moment, the cycle of thoughts stopped running through Alex’s head. She’d been given a reprieve from her guilt, but with the woman gone, her mind slipped back to the night before. Simon’s lips pressed against hers. The tang of his sweat on her tongue and the feel of his sandpaper scruff rubbing against her skin.

Simon had a girlfriend. Alex knew that, but she’d decided to whore around anyway. When she should have slapped Simon’s roaming hand away and berated him for the cheating scum he was, Alex slipped her own hand on his thigh and watched the flames of the campfire reflect in his eyes.

Shameful tears pricked at the back of her eyes, but she blinked them away. She didn’t deserve to wallow. She’d slept with another woman’s boyfriend and had no one to blame but herself.

And Simon.

They’d been hiking for five days, the most difficult hike Alex had taken. She found the hiking group online. They developed a warm camaraderie through the rocky trails. As the two slowest hikers, Alex and Simon filled the hours talking. They shared about their careers and aspirations, their family and friends. Simon was easy to talk to. He made her laugh.

She confided in him. Alex had started the trip worrying about where she would live. Her neck was sore from the tension of living at home with a new roommate that stared too much. A bulk of a man with constant five o’clock shadow, his heavy footsteps sent a chill through Alex. The creak of the stairs made her press the weak lock on her bedroom doorknob. She fought the urge to grab her phone and call for help when he knocked on her door. He just wanted to invite her to join him for take-out and a movie. Harmless, really, but he eyed the way the blanket slipped from her bare legs while she lounged in bed. Words failed her, but her gut was clear.

Around Simon, Alex didn’t worry.

“Has he done anything?” Simon had asked her.

Alex thought a moment before answering. “Nothing really. He’s just creepy.”

“Maybe he’s just shy and awkward. I’d be nervous too with a hot roommate living with me.” He winked at her.

Alex’s stomach fluttered with nerves. Why were all the good guys taken?

Now she replayed their final night in her head. The group of six hikers were all high on adrenaline, giddy with exhaustion. One woman had brought a flask to celebrate the fifty miles they’d just trekked. Alex only had a sip, but it went straight to her head. Simon’s leg pressed against hers. That warmed her more than the crackling fire they sat around. He knew what he was doing and Alex leaned close to him.

The hitchhiker jostled Alex from her memories. She stood on the side of the road again. The same person, almost twenty miles down the highway. Same clothes, same features. She’d traveled faster than the sedan.

Alex slammed her palm against the radio, shutting it off. She fixed her gaze on the hitchhiker. A coincidence, nothing more. But how was it possible? How had she moved so quickly? Alex searched the dark roadside for a vehicle or any other explanation. She only looked away for a moment, enough time to blink. But, again, the woman disappeared.

Just gone, slipped away in the shadows. Alex scoured the dusty side of the highway. Her palms grew sweaty on the steering wheel. She didn’t slow this time. The urge to be home washed over her. She never thought she’d be ready to be home.

Just over two hours left in her drive.

She’d been on the road alone for hours. The guilt and shame twisted her mind. She hadn’t slept much the night before. Her body buzzed with caffeine. Did coffee fuel hallucinations? That had to be it. Alex knew she wasn’t seeing a copy of herself on the side of the road. It wasn’t possible.

A sign informed her of a truck stop coming up in ten miles. With a little over two hours of the drive to go, Alex decided she needed a rest, just a quick nap to clear her mind.

Before the truck stop exit was a small turn off. The exit sign read Little Valley Road. The hitchhiker stood under the sign. Alex could see her more clearly in the glow of the sedan’s headlights. Not a woman, but a teenager. A youthful face, round cheeks, and knobby limbs. The teen raised her arm as the car approached. Alex’s breath caught in her chest.

A narrow two-lane road waited beyond the hitchhiker, the kind of road only taken by service workers and serial killers. Alex’s breath grew shallow. There was no way she was going down that road.

She imagined a night where she ignored the mysterious teen. She’d finish the final leg of her trip, drag her large hiking backpack up to her room, and lie in bed. The quiet would give her plenty of space to think about Simon and the betrayal she had participated in. Worse than the open road. She’d close her eyes and feel his calloused fingers on her cheeks, smell his breath on her skin. His lips had been so soft and warm. His body fit against hers, two pieces of a puzzle coming together. She yearned to run her fingers through his hair again. The thought of him warmed her cheeks.

His number was on her phone. In the quiet of her home, with only the occasional thuds of her roommate on a floor below, would she be tempted to call him? Had she lost all sense of her moral compass?

Before Alex could think through the unknown of the small, dark road, she turned the wheel toward Little Valley Road and followed the hallucination down the narrow path.

The illusion disappeared before she could catch up. It reappeared a few hundred yards down the road as it curved into the hills. The road was dark and quiet. Alex flicked the high beams on, illuminating the scattered trees and bushes on either side of her. The teen disappeared again as Alex approached. She drove the road, staring into the darkness in search of any movement, any sight of the vision. But the road only continued winding through the hills, following the flow of nature. Tree branches scraped against the roof of the car until the canopy ended in a large clearing, a parking lot for a local park. A sign at the entrance stated the park closed after sunset. At the far end of the parking lot stood a two-story building.

Alex’s foot hovered over the gas. The automatic transmission kept the vehicle crawling forward. She inched closer to the shadowed building. The sight made her jaw slacken.

The teen stepped out of the building’s shadow. Alex eased her foot on the brake. The squeak bounced off the surrounding hills, shaking the leaves of the trees and bushes. Stopped, the headlights illuminated the vision. With her breath caught in her throat, Alex turned off the engine, but not the lights. The night stilled. She stared at the vision through her windshield, and the teen stared back. Alex understood how she mistook her as an image of herself. The tilt of the teen’s nose, the intensity of her gaze. Almost a mirror image. Did Alex look at Simon with the same look in her eye before he kissed her? Did he read the fear, like what Alex saw on the phantom girl’s face?

The illusion turned its head and gazed at the building. She moved slowly. The breeze outside rustled her hair.

It was too dark to make out the baby blue color of the paneling, but Alex didn’t need to see the color to name it. The purple door appeared darker, almost black. The planter beside the porch steps held a fern. Alex had received the plant as a housewarming gift. Her new house mate had kicked it over several times. He always claimed an accident, but Alex didn’t trust his raised upper lip, a sneer that encouraged her to keep her distance.

The fern had grown three times the size since she’d received it, a point of pride for Alex, though her more frequent hiking trips had left the plant limp.

Her house stood in the middle of nowhere. Alex studied the hilly park around her/ The familiar hills surrounding Marredbury towered over the parking lot. She hadn’t crossed the town border, so she had to be on county land. It didn’t really matter, though. She returned her gaze to the teen and the house. She half expected it all to disappear, just like the teenager had been disappearing on the side of the highway, but the building and the young hitchhiker remained before her.

The teen stepped out of the car’s spot lights. She seemed to glide across the dirt parking lot and up the cement steps. The front door opened as she approached and floated inside.

Alex pressed her fingers around the keys, still sitting in the ignition, and opened the car door. She could follow the delusion into the house. That’s what it wanted her to do. The teen, her house. It all had to be Alex’s imagination run amok. The park rangers would probably find her confused and hungry in a couple of days. Unless the mountain lions found her first. Were there mountain lions in these hills?

A breeze pressed back against Alex, urging her to stay in the car. She should replace the key in the ignition and speed back to the main road. Alex should drive away, get back on the highway, and not stop until she made it back into Marredbury.

The house appeared so real, though. Her imagination wasn’t that impressive. The front door hung open, revealing the dark doorway. The shadows begged her to go in.

She twisted her hips through the open car door and stepped past the urging breeze.

Her shoulders pressed up to her ears as she walked up the familiar porch steps. Through the door, the house was cold. Alex saw no evidence of the teen. She released a breath, part of her relieved to not be standing face to face with the phantom girl, but the silent rooms sent a chill through her. Alex hugged herself, wishing for the metal walls of her car to protect her.

All the windows in the house had been opened. Shivering from cold and nerves, Alex moved through the house slowly. She stepped lightly in her boots. She tried to imagine what she would find, but her nerves just wound tighter in apprehension. Only the rustle of curtains flapping in the wind greeted Alex. She flinched with each whip of the fabric.

Finding the first-floor rooms empty, Alex stood at the bottom of the stairs. She stared into the dimness. One bedroom waited for her up there, hers. She could still return to the car. She didn’t even know why she was searching the house, why she felt so scared.

Movement shifted in the shadows. Alex’s eyes adjusted enough to the darkness to watch a dark form slip past her bedroom door, the one she’d locked before leaving on her trip.

She started up the stairs. Halfway up, she froze. A thump sounded from her bedroom. Something fell, not too heavy. The carpet softened the landing.

Alex clutched the banister until her knuckles were white. She didn’t fear the apparition moving around in her bedroom, but the heavy footsteps pricked at her nerves. The teen wore heavy boots, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that someone else waited in her bedroom.

She should call the police. She shouldn’t face an intruder alone. But this was all a delusion. Where would the police even go? The version of her house in Marredbury or the house standing at the end of a county parking lot?

The thought brought Alex’s pounding heart up her throat. This couldn’t be real. Alex had lost it. She’d lost all sense of herself sleeping with Simon and the shame had driven her insane.

Delusions couldn’t hurt her. She finished the journey up the stairs. With her bedroom door halfway open, a grunt bounced off the walls.

Alex pressed her palm to the door. The painted wood was cool against her skin, sending shivers down her arm.

She noticed her bed first. Well, not the bed as much as the young girl sprawled naked in the middle of it, no older than fourteen. Her wrists and ankles were bound to each corner. Her head flopped in Alex’s direction. The girl’s face was swollen. Her eyes red from crying, but the dark bruise over her cheek and split lip weren’t caused by tears. Her honey-colored eyes were dull and glazed over, and her pale face contrasted with the freckles sprinkled across her up-turned nose. Her hair hung stringy and limp over her shoulder, like it hadn’t been washed in days, but Alex recognized the color, sandy just like hers and her apparition. It was her vision, hurt and trapped. The teen stared at Alex, her lips slightly parted, but no sound slipped out.

Movement to her left pulled Alex’s attention off the girl. A large man stepped in front of the window, out of a shadow. It was John. His hair was buzzed, but his receding hairline was still visible. Sweat dampened his enlarged forehead, and he wheezed as he stepped his round body in Alex’s direction.

“Wha—” John’s mouth hung open, and he froze when he recognized Alex. “You weren’t supposed to be home.”

Alex narrowed her eyes at her pudgy house mate. While she had thought his hovering had been a creepy crush, she was now sickened by his depravity.

She glanced at the girl strapped to her bed. John started toward Alex.

She pulled her leg back, launching it into John’s soft body with every ounce of power she could muster. He stumbled backwards, the blow pushing the air noisily from his lungs. Doubled over, he tried to regain his composure, but Alex swung her leg again, catching him across the lower side of his face. The heel of her boot split his cheek and sent a spray of blood onto the carpet and dresser. Alex continued to stomp on her house mate, a rapist, a pedophile. She glared at the bloody pulp before her. Ire raged inside of her. It possessed her, moved her limbs while silencing all reason.

A single cry from the girl pulled her out of the red haze. Her foot hovered over John’s body and she looked over her shoulder at the girl.

Her eyes were like round saucers, staring at the predator on the carpet. Alex followed her gaze to see the bloody mess left of John, the carpet soaked with his blood. She didn’t know when she had started kicking a corpse. Slowly, she lowered her leg. Alex was splattered from the waist down. Her gaze slowed, studying the patterns of red across her jeans and drenching her boots.

What now?

With shaking hands, Alex pried her phone from her jean pocket. She dialed 911, requesting help at her address and abruptly hanging up. All the while, the honey-eyed girl watched her, speechless.

Alex replaced the phone in her pocket and began working the knots that secured the girl to her bed. He used nylon stockings. Her nylon stockings. He’d rummaged through her drawers. The thought made her want to vomit.

The girl pulled each limb close to her until she was a ball in the middle of the bed. Alex tugged the blanket folded across the foot of the bed and draped it over the teen.

“The police will be here soon.” Her voice was just above a whisper. It sounded foreign to Alex.

She smoothed the girl’s hair, cupping her head for a few comforting moments.

“Go.” The girl’s voice was rough and raw.

Alex didn’t need to be told twice. She hoped for the end of a nightmare. She’d wake up back on the hike, a kind of fevered dream brought on by the guilt she felt over Simon. But her car remained idle before her, the delusional house behind her, unshaken.

The violation of her home made the driver seat of the car safe. She locked the doors and put the keys back in the ignition. Alex maneuvered her car around the empty parking lot before leaving back down the road she arrived on. The double disappeared around the bend. Alex drove under the canopy of trees once again. She allowed herself to peek in the rear-view mirror.

Dark rolling hills, fences, and bushes. Nothing moving. The expansive park was still and quiet. The house was gone.

By the time Alex crossed into Marredbury, she’d convinced herself it had all been an awful waking dream. The vision of the teen. Her magically moving house. Her house mate. The horror in her bedroom. The blood. All of it a terrifying memory of a nightmare. Alex was lucky to have made it back to her hometown alive. How had she driven during her waking dream?

She turned onto her street. A large moving van blocked half of her driveway. Two men stepped out of the back of the truck as Alex slowed in front of her house.

“Sorry!” the shorter and rounder of the two gave Alex a wave. “We’ll get it out of your way right now.”

Alex waved at the new neighbors.

“Dad!” a teenager shouted as she stomped down the front steps of the house next door. She wore black heavy boots.

Alex was back on the road again. Round rosy cheeks. Sandy-blonde hair. The same teen from her vision crossed her arms and shouted for her dads again.

“One second!” the taller man replied. “You dad needs to move the truck.”

“You said you’d order pizza an hour ago,” the teenager whined.

“I’ll call!” He waved his daughter off before taking the box from the shorter man.

The shorter man retrieved keys from his jacket pocket.

Alex gave her new neighbor a final wave after he backed the truck out of her driveway. She pulled in and turned off the car. Outside, the new family continued unpacking boxes. The teenager helped now, though she continued to ask about the pizza.

Alex couldn’t make sense of the reality before. Part of her expected yellow crime scene tape and police cars blocking her home. Her legs ached from the effort of stomping her roommate to death, or did they ache from the rocky hiking trails?

She forced herself out of the car. Wind rustled the leaves overhead as she walked across her yard with a smile.

“I’m Alex.” She held her hand out to the taller man. He returned her smile and took her hand.

“Hashim.” He gestured behind him to where the other man and the teen stood on the porch. “That’s my husband, Jared, and our daughter, Sam.”

“Welcome,” Alex said. “I’m right next door if you need anything.”

The new neighbors thanked her and Alex started back to her house. She popped her trunk on the way back to her driveway and retrieved her over sized backpack. She studied her house’s facade before entering. The same baby blue paneling. The morning sun shined on the purple front door. Her fern had been knocked over again, dirt sprinkling the front steps. The same house, but foreign to her now. Her night at the park shaded it in gloom. She glanced next door one more time. The family of three were all inside. A couch sat on their front lawn, waiting to be brought in. Alex knew why the ghost of that teen came to her on the side of the highway. She knew what she had to do.

Alex started up her front steps, righted the plant, and went inside.

I hope you enjoyed this Marredbury short story! Word of mouth is so powerful to indie authors. If you like this story and the Marredbury series, tell a friend or let me know in the comments below!

You can also check out the world of Marredbury for more spooky tales!

Go back to Prologue or Continue to Episode 2

Episode 2: Hydrocortisone