We were all looking forward to this vacation. Me, my girlfriend, my best friend and his girl. I know I was long overdue for some time out of the daily loop at my job, it was wearing me out. All four of us were excited to have finally left for the alps, where we would enjoy the December snow, skiing and celebrating Christmas. We had departed in the early hours of the morning, to avoid most of the regular traffic jams and, as we were scheduled to arrive at our winter cottage around noon, we’d have plenty of time to get settled in.
The highway is nearly empty as I’m driving a fair amount above the speed limit. Streetlights pass in quick succession, like a big strobelight, causing shadows to spin around inside the car. I put my music playlist on a quiet volume, because beside me Phoebe was asleep in the passenger seat. She has a big cushion pushed up against the car window, where she awkwardly leaned against. Behind me, Olivier is awake, keeping me company. Beth, who’s sitting beside him, is also trying to get some sleep, using Olivier as a pillow.
I glance at my dashboard, where my GPS app is telling me what road I need to follow. We’ve been driving for nearly an hour and a half now, but still had a long way to go, as the GPS reported another ten hours until we’d reach our destination.
All of a sudden, the streetlights that flooded the highway in yellow light went dark. The shadows stopped rolling in the car when we passed them by.
‘Uh…,’ I start, looking at Olivier through the rearview mirror. ‘Is this normal?’
‘Maybe to save on electricity?,’ Olivier says.
We drove for another half an hour in what would be total darkness, if not for the headlights of my car that still illuminate the road ahead. I didn’t see another car in that entire time, it was like I was driving through the vastness of space. It was calming, serene, almost.
The car’s navigation notes that I need to take the next exit in about a kilometer. As I approach the exit, the morning mist starts to settle down between the trees, hugging the highway like a blanket.
The highway exit will have us drive an almost complete circle that merges into a highway going south. The streetlights are still dark and the long and slow turn tugs on the car.
When my car’s navigation shows I’m merging onto the other highway, my bad feeling becomes worse. Before me, down the road, there’s no highway. The same turn simply continues to the right. With little other choice, I continue following the road, hoping it’s just a bug in the GPS app’s system.
The turn is taking too long for sure now, and at some point, navigation sprang back to the start of the highway’s exit that I had taken, as if I’d somehow been able to drive a full circle.
‘Hey, bud, what’s going on?,’ asks Olivier, who clearly also noticed something was off.
‘I…,’ I start, trying to formulate a way of telling my best friend what was happening without sounding insane. ‘This exit… It keeps going in a circle, like there is no end to it.’
‘What do you mean? That’s not possible, right?’
I don’t know what to say. He’s right, by all accounts that should have been impossible, but here we are, driving an endlessly turning road.
Olivier laughs. ‘I see, I see,’ he says playfully. Then he starts spouting out questions to which I have no real answer. ‘Are you sure you didn’t take the wrong turn? Are there other roads that exit out of it?’
‘I just followed the Waze app, man. So far, I’ve not seen any other roads splitting off of this one either.’ My headlights only illuminate a dozen or so meters ahead, so it was difficult to tell exactly what I had or hadn’t seen in the dark night and mist.
I must have raised my voice a little too loud, because both girls woke up from their half-asleep state. ‘What’s happening, babe?,’ asks Phoebe next to me, holding her cushion close to her chest.
‘Apparently we’re stuck on a looping road and can’t get out,’ Olivier explains for me, blunt and ungracefully. ‘Guess the skiing trip is cancelled.’
‘What?!,’ Beth gasps, no longer awkwardly laying on Olivier’s lap. I see her bewildered face looking at me through the rearview mirror for confirmation. I really don’t know what to tell them at this point. I focus on the road, looking for exits.
‘Good prank Darron, we got them really scared there for a second.’ Olivier laughs and turns to his girlfriend. ‘You should’ve seen your face!’ To which Beth promptly gives Olivier a playful slap to the face.
‘That’s mean, Oli!,’ Beth yells at him. But both can’t contain their laughter.
I look to my right briefly and see Phoebe staring at me with a worried look. Unlike the other two, she must have noticed my unease. Phoebe and I have been together for nearly four years now, so I know she’s a very empathic person. She always seems to know what’s on my mind.
I let out a sigh and put on my most serious voice. ‘Guys, it’s not a prank, we’ve been on this turn for five whole minutes already.’
I hear Olivier and Beth’s laughter stop as the reality sinks in.
‘No, this is a prank, right?,’ Olivier asks for extra confirmation, but I say nothing. Beth whimpers and holds on to Olivier’s arm for comfort. ‘Some trick of the light then? Maybe this is a really big roundabout?”
Now Olivier is actually looking for rational explanations, unlike before when he thought he was playing along to a prank. He’s a good thinker, if not, he wouldn’t be studying for a master in physics. It was a struggle to convince him to drop working for university for a week to come along on this trip.
I again look towards Phoebe, but see she remains oddly calm. I know of her interest in scary and paranormal stuff. She always asks me to watch random horror movies with her. Maybe she’s grown so numb to these kinds of situations from movies that actually being in one hardly even phases her.
No, that can’t be right, anyone would freak out no matter what. ‘Phoebe, are you alright?’ I ask her, more so to reassure myself.
She gives me a small nod, then points to the road ahead. ‘Darron, look,’ she says calmly.
Straight ahead, I see a small light burning in the distance on the left side of the road. It seems to be getting closer as I continue driving.
‘What’s that?,’ asks Olivier to no one in particular.
‘Are we saved?,’ adds Beth with a barely audible sniffle.
I let the car slow down as we approach the light. When close enough to the source, we see a phosphorus tube light up a small glass bus stop. Of course there’s no one there waiting for a bus at this hour.
‘Hey,’ says Olivier to get my attention when I’m about to drive past the bus stop, ‘there’s probably a map or something in there, we should go check it out.’
‘You’re right,’ I agree with him. I stop the car by the side of the road, putting on my blinkers, even though by now I’m fairly certain there’s no one else on this road.
Both me and Oliver step out of the car and cross the misty street. Once at the bus stop, we indeed find a map hung up against one of the glass walls.
‘There, that’s it, we’ll just…’ Olivier’s voice dies away as he realizes what’s pictured on the map.
Disbelief fills me and is quickly replaced by a sense of dread. ‘It can’t be…’
The map shows a singular perfect circle, noting one bus stop, the one we are at right now. Little drawings of trees and rocks fill up the blank space inside and outside of the circle. To the right of the map, a timetable shows when buses are supposed to arrive, yet none of the noted hours make any sense, they’re almost a random assortment of numbers rather than actual arrival times.
‘There has to be some sort of clue here!’ Olivier panickingly starts to inspect every corner of the bus stop, but quickly gives up.
As soon as we headed back to the car, the light blew, making me jump. The noise was sharp like blades and there was glass all over the asphalt now. In renewed darkness we quickly find our way back into my car, luckily I had left its lights on.
‘What was that?!,’ asks Beth with panic building up in her voice.
‘What did the map say?,’ adds Phoebe.
‘It’s a loop, it’s all a loop!,’ I hear the panic in my own voice now too.
I start the car back up and drive away from the bus stop, not knowing what else we might encounter along this cursed loop. I wasn’t even driving for ten seconds again when the streetlights decided to turn on again.
‘What the hell is that…’ I gaze up at the lights. ‘They all have more… heads than they should.’ I use the word “heads”, because at this moment, that’s all I could think of to describe them. Not only that, those heads are following the car along like spotlights following the lead actor in a play.
Suddenly, Phoebe screams my name. I revert my attention back to the road and see the deer standing in the middle of the road just in time to dodge it. The car jerks to the left, Beth is screaming in the back of the car, but I manage to keep it under control and continue driving.
‘What the fuck that was close!,’ I let out to lower my adrenaline levels.
‘Everything just keeps getting weirder and weirder, this is madness…,’ Olivier mumbles behind me.
We end up driving like this a while longer, the multi-headed streetlights still following us as we go. I feel my mind is starting to play tricks on me as well. Sometimes I swear I see movement in the shadows between the trees. ‘Must be more deer,’ I think to myself.
Then I see the same bright white light as before, the one at the bus stop.
‘Wait, that light…,’ I start. I don’t need to finish that sentence, everyone saw it explode behind me and Olivier.
‘Guys, We need to get out of this,’ Beth yammers. ‘Like, ASAP!’
As the repaired bus stop gets closer, something else becomes visible. Phoebe is the first to spot it. ‘Is that…’
All four of us now see it too. A tall shadowy figure stands in the bus shelter, waiting patiently for a bus that will never come, and it’s looking directly at us.
Instinctively, I floor it. My car starts speeding up and the G-forces pull even harder on it as I race over the turning street. I quickly leave the bus stop behind me, but in front of me a new threat appears. From behind the trees, a set of headlights quickly approached us on a collision course.
‘Watch out!,’ screams Phoebe. But there is little I can do, but direct the car into the crash barriers.
The sound of scraping metal against metal rips through my ears. As the headlights grow close enough to blind me, I grit my teeth and the other passengers scream at the top of their longs.
No collisions happen and my car grinds to a halt. When I look for the passing car in my rearview mirror, I find no tail-lights whatsoever. I lean my head against the steering wheel and swear a couple of times. When I straighten myself up again, I turn to my friends and ask them if they are all ok.
‘Still alive, so that’s good,’ jokes Olivier, trying to hide his fear behind sarcasm. His rapid breathing tells a different story. Beth breaks down into crying, and clings to Olivier’s arm still.
After checking on them, I reach for Phoebe’s shaking hand and hold it tightly. ‘We’re going to be fine, we’re getting out of this, I promise,’ I tell her. She softly nods.
After checking if there’s no immediate danger, we decide to step out of the car for a moment to take in some fresh air. I’m discussing with Olivier what we should do now, while Phoebe turns to comfort Beth who’s shaking in her boots.
‘Should we just… keep driving?,’ I ask my friend.
‘How should I know? If anything, more and more weird shit has been happening the longer we are in this loop,’ he argues.
‘Could we escape through the forest? I won’t be able to maneuver my car through the trees, though…’
‘We really don’t know what’s out there. If this place is as cursed as it seems, those forests are probably just as endless.’
‘Then what do you suggest we do, fucking smartass?’
Olivier looks at me with frowned eyebrows. Only after a few seconds did I realize what I said. Tension was high and I blurted it out without a second thought.
‘First of all, yes I am smarter than you, and secondly, how the fuck should I know. None of this makes sense, it shouldn’t even be real!’ Then Olivier turns away from me, leaning his back against the car.
‘Hey, hey we’re all stressed out here, let’s cool our heads and look for a way out, ok?’ Phoebe, with a worried and scared Beth behind her, tries to diffuse the situation. I hope she’s successful.
‘Yeah…,’ I say. ‘Yeah, fighting is the last thing we should be doing. I’m sorry, Oli, I shouldn’t have said that.’
‘There’s light.’ Olivier says, still looking away from me, into the forest at the heart of the loop.
Phoebe tries to follow Olivier’s gaze to find what light he’s talking about. I too move closer to the barrier on the side of the road, and spot an unusually bright light through the trees too.
‘Is it the other side of the loop?,’ asks Beth.
‘No… too close… and too low to the ground to be streetlight,’ answers Olivier, lost in thought.
‘You’re right… Should we go check what it is? Maybe it can be our way out of here?,’ I suggest.
A silence follows. Everyone’s probably thinking the same thing, they don’t want to go, we’re all scared of what might be out there.
‘Guys I’m scared, I’d rather not go anywhere unless it’s out of this nightmare,’ says Beth.
I want to propose going alone to check things out, but Olivier cuts me off.
‘I’ll go, Darron, you got car duty. If anything happens, just drive away.’
I didn’t want to think about it, but I had to ask. ‘How do you intend to find us if we drive off?,’ I ask him while he opens the passenger seat’s door to grab the key to the roof box holding our skiing gear.
‘No matter where I go from here, I’ll find this road again, considering it’s a huge circle around this bit of forest.’ He grabs one of our skiing poles and brandishes it like a spear. ‘And if anything jumps me, I’ll have this here for self defense.’
‘Are you sure you wanna do this?’ I ask him again.
‘We gotta do something about this, anything.’ Olivier walks up to Beth and holds her tightly, whispering something in her ear, some words of reassurance, I figure.
Beth returns to her seat inside the car. I understand this must be the hardest on her, even though they haven’t been together that long, about two years if I recall correctly, Beth always struck me as a clingy person.
Olivier gives me a small nod, then steps over the railings and disappears in the darkness between the trees. I watch him for as long as I can keep track of him, praying he’ll return safely.
‘Will he be okay?,’ asks Phoebe, who’s now the only one standing next to me outside of the car.
‘He’s one of the smartest people I know, he’ll find a way, I’m sure,’ I reply, still lightfocussing on the dark forest before me. We then wait in silence for Olivier.
I’ve been staring between the trees for so long now that I’m starting to see things move in the shadows. I close my eyes firmly, thinking it must be due to exhaustion or stress. When I open them again, I find my surroundings darker than before.
‘The streetlights, they turned off again,’ warns Phoebe.
Instinctively, I look for the light at the center of the forest, and to my relief, that one is still shining, hopefully guiding Olivier to a way out of here.
‘We should get in the car, it’s safer inside,’ I tell Phoebe.
Once inside, a single streetlight behind us turns on. Then, a couple of seconds later, it turns off again. I decide to not think much of it, but another streetlight turns on, this time one that’s closer to us. I squint my eyes and notice the light isn’t illuminating the entirety of the road. When it turns off, and another streetlight right behind us turns on, I notice there’s a shadow on the asphalt in the rough shape of a human. And it’s getting closer to us.
‘Fuck, fuck, fuck! We need to go!,’ I yell out as I start my car.
Beth screams Olivier’s name from the backseat as the motor roars to life to get us moving. The streetlights behind us turn on and off in quick succession as if someone, or something invisible is chasing us.
After a bit of driving, we pass the bus stop again, which now lay in complete ruin. Its glass walls shattered on the floor, maps and timetables ripped to pieces and the phosphorus light hangs on blinking on a piece of cord. The frantic turning on and off of the streetlights behind us comes to a stop. I let the car slow down. Going fast in this never-ending turn felt like something was trying to pull me out of the car. It was tiring to keep ourselves upright.
‘It stopped,’ I breathe out.
‘There’s a light on in front of us now,’ Phoebe says. ‘Isn’t that where Olivier left to go into the woods?’
Ahead, I indeed see the one streetlight illuminating the road in a deep red light. I see a person standing underneath the hellish light on the right side of the road. It’s hard to tell colors in it, but when my headlights mix with the light, I can distinguish Olivier’s blue sweater.
‘Olivier!,’ shouts Beth who had also instantly recognized him.
‘Thank god,’ I say as I slow the car to a halt where Olivier is standing.
Beth immediately opened the car door and ran out towards her boyfriend. My own relief is immeasurable and I want to ask him many questions of what he’d found, where the light came from, if there’s a way out. But when I look at his face, my heart starts beating several times faster.
‘Fuck, that is not Olivier!,’ I shout out. Phoebe saw it too and screamed Beth’s name.
The thing looked exactly like out Oli, except from the blood smeared copy of a face that barely even resembled the person it was trying to pose as. All its facial features were torn and twisted, especially the unnatural grin.
There was only one thing I could do, drive. I floored the accelerator and with skidding tires left Beth behind.
‘We need to go back for her, we need to go save her!,’ Phoebe pleaded.
Guilt gnawed at my heart and mind, but right now all I could think of was getting Phoebe and myself out of there. Everything that was happening was slowly corroding my sanity away. Only panic and resolve to bring Phoebe home safe were still pushing me forward.
I keep driving as fast as the bending road allows me to. All the streetlights are now on, flooding everything in blood-red light. We pass the broken-down bus stop again, and ahead of it we run into a blockade of deer.
Standing from end to end is a wall of deer, their glowing red eyes staring at us as we approach at high speed, their antlers twisting in weird shapes. They show no intention of moving, so I stomp the breaks and make a sharp U-turn. Not knowing what else to do, I start driving in the opposite direction that we had been going before.
‘It’s my fault…,’ murmurs Phoebe next to me. ‘It’s all my fault!’
‘What? What do you mean? How is it your fault?’ I want to look her in the eyes, but I have to keep my eyes on the cursed road.
‘I brought something I shouldn’t have.’
‘Something you shouldn’t have?’
I take a quick second to glance to my right. Phoebe is sitting in her seat, knees pulled up to her chest and frantically biting her polished black nails. The look in her eyes is panicked, reflecting the red glow of the streetlights.
She hesitates a second before explaining. ‘I brought my grandma’s cursed doll… and a Ouija board.’
‘You… what?! Why would you…?!’ I didn’t know how to express what I felt. I’ve seen enough tonight to never question ghost stories again, so maybe it was indeed her fault for bringing those items. She got her horror obsession from her delusional grandmother after all. When that old woman passed away a few months ago, she must have sneaked those freakish artifacts into our home.
We passed the smashed bus stop again.
‘I thought it would be a fun night! I didn’t know how real this was!’ She started crying.
‘A fun night talking to demons? Are you crazy?!’ I really didn’t want to get mad at her, but I couldn’t keep my cool anymore. I broke down too.
While trying to get my adrenaline levels down, I spot a set of headlights on the road once more. I evade them again, this time not swaying off the road.
Not much further, I see two shadows, two people, standing in the middle of the road, holding hands. When my headlights illuminate them, both me and Phoebe recognize them as Olivier and Beth, or more precisely, the entities posing as them. They are standing just a bit further than the bus stop, which is now somehow completely restored again. I know it’s not them, so I keep driving at full speed, fully intending to hit the monsters that took my friends.
‘NO!,’ Phoebe cries out as she yanks the steering wheel to turn right.
I scream at the top of my lungs as my car rips through the glass bus stop, probably leaving it shattered as they encountered it before. I have no control over the car anymore, all I can do is punch the brakes in hopes of slowing down. That, however, doesn’t seem to have much effect. The car keeps going for a few meters, taking down a few bushes and young trees, until it finally comes to a brutal stop against a massive tree trunk.
Everything goes silent and black.
“This is how it ends, huh?,” I think before my consciousness fades.
In the void that follows, I feel no pain, but I notice I’m still breathing. I become aware of a soft buzzing sound. I try to open my eyes, but the world is too bright. Distant voices become audible too.
‘He is regaining consciousness,’ a voice says.
‘Sir, you are in the hospital now,’ another says. ‘You’re going to be alright.’
Then everything fades again.
Author notes;
Hey! Rei here, thanks for reading, hope you didn’t get too spooked! This short story was written as a challenge for Halloween 2025, to write it in one month. I also used a writing style that is new to me, namely first-person present tense. It was a very useful experience!
On a more personal note, this story hits close to home for me, not because I get stuck on looping roads at night getting chased by demons often, but because of the metaphor it hides. I came up with the concept for this story when I was working at one of my previous day jobs. Every day felt like I was in an actual loop, and I did feel it eat away at my mental well-being, a little more with every passing day. Luckily, I was able to escape it, but not without crashing and losing a few people along the way.
In the end, wherever you end up going, make sure you don’t get stuck in one of those loops. Do what you want to do, what you were meant to do. Stay safe and ’till next time!
