Glowing Shadows in the Wyoming Whiteout
My name is Jack Mercer.
I’ve spent thirty-four years behind the wheel of eighteen-wheelers, chasing loads across the lower forty-eight, through nights so long and cold that the road seems to stretch into eternity.
I thought I’d seen it all: whiteouts in the Rockies, ice on the highways like glass shards, and stretches of highway where silence sits heavier than snow.
But the night I’m about to tell you about… that one has never left me.
It was late January, and I was cutting through northern Wyoming.
The moon hung low behind thin clouds, reflecting off a crust of ice that made every mile feel like a gamble.
My GPS had been recalculating for miles, and the radio had long since turned to static.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew something about this stretch of road wasn’t right—but a trucker learns that curiosity often comes packaged with danger.
Then I saw it.
A light.
It wasn’t moving, not really.
Just a pale glow hovering near the shoulder, low and steady, almost like a lantern someone had dropped into the snow.
My first thought was a stranded vehicle.
But as I slowed, my heart sank.
The GPS blinked, recalculated, then went black.
Completely dead.
I eased the truck to the side.
Frost crept across my windshield.
Wind gusted in sudden knife-edged bursts.
The glow seemed to pulse as I climbed down, every crunch of snow under my boots echoing too loud.
That’s when I saw it: a pickup truck, half-buried in snow, driver’s side door open, the tires pressed into nothing.
No footprints, no tire tracks—just a vehicle abandoned in a place that shouldn’t even exist.
“Hello?” My voice cracked in the wind.
“Anybody there?”
A faint, trembling voice answered.
“Please… help.”
I approached the cab.
Inside, a man—thin, shaking, mid-thirties—was slumped against the steering wheel.
His lips were blue, his hands stiff from cold.
“Name’s Evan,” he whispered.
“My wife… she went to get help hours ago. The road… it… wasn’t there before.”
I froze.
The words didn’t make sense.
Roads don’t vanish.
Trucks don’t just disappear off the map.
And yet, as I looked around, the highway behind me stretched into a white, empty nothingness.
No landmarks, no signs, nothing familiar—just the pulse of that pale light.
I helped him into my cab, cranked the heater, and reached for the radio.
Static.
Channel 19—dead.
Even my GPS was lifeless.
Then I noticed something: the glow wasn’t coming from the pickup or the snowbank.
It hovered above the road, moving closer, slowly, deliberately, like it was aware of me.
Evan’s grip tightened around my arm.
“Don’t stop here,” he whispered.
“It doesn’t like it when you stop.”
Before I could ask him what he meant, my engine sputtered—and died.
The dashboard lights flickered once, then went black.
The cab grew colder than outside.
The glow flared, white and sharp, illuminating the snow in unnatural angles.
I swear, the shadows themselves seemed to stretch and twitch.
And then, from somewhere behind the trailer, I heard crunching footsteps.
Slow, deliberate, echoing in the frozen silence.
“Jack…” Evan’s voice was barely a breath. “We shouldn’t have come here.”
I slammed my hands on the wheel.
Nothing.
The heater had died.
The glow moved closer.
And then I saw it—first as a shadow, then as a shape.
A figure, tall, human enough at first glance, but wrong.
Limbs too long, joints bending in ways they shouldn’t.
No face, just an absence where one should be, glowing faintly with the same pale light.
I wanted to flee, but my body didn’t obey.
The figure stopped a few feet from my cab, tilting its head as if studying us.
Evan started to mumble, repeating something under his breath: “The mile… the mile…”
“What mile?” I asked, my voice trembling.
“The mile… that’s not on the map.
Once you enter… it chooses,” he said, shivering.
Then he collapsed against the seat, muttering incoherently.
I was alone with that thing—or so I thought.
The glow pulsed, and my peripheral vision caught more shadows emerging from the whiteness.
Figures, silent, slow, surrounding the truck.
They didn’t speak, but the cold deepened as if they were breathing it in.
I tried the engine again.
Dead.
Tried to call on my satellite phone.
Nothing.
And then—just as suddenly as it had flared— the glow dimmed.
For a heartbeat, I thought we were safe.
That’s when my cab door creaked open on its own.
I swear Evan didn’t move.
I turned my head slowly.
The snow outside the cab wasn’t the same snow I’d walked on.
It was smooth, unbroken, and reflected the glow like glass.
And then—there, pressed against the window from the outside, was a face.
Human, or almost human, with eyes too black, staring.
Too still.
Watching me.
I screamed.
The figure receded, but the sense of being hunted didn’t.
My instincts took over.
I hit the gear, praying the truck would move.
Tires spun.
Ice cracked.
Something slammed into the trailer side—a heavy, wet thump—and I felt the cab shake.
I swerved, narrowly avoiding a snowbank that hadn’t been there before.
The GPS blinked.
A road reappeared on the screen.
A real road.
I followed it blindly, glancing back to see nothing but the pale light fading into the snowstorm.
Evan’s seat was empty.
I slammed on the brakes, heart hammering.
I turned the cab around.
Nothing.
No truck.
No footprints.
Not even a single mark in the snow.
By dawn, I reached a small outpost—a gas station, a diner—somewhere near Buffalo, Wyoming.
I stumbled in, shaking, insisting on calling the police.
I told them about the pickup, the man, the road that wasn’t there.
They listened politely.
Then one officer leaned forward.
“There’s been… a few reports of disappearing stretches up north,” he said slowly.
“But no one survives long enough to describe them. Drivers go in… and they just… vanish. Your truck came through alone.”
Alone.
My rig.
Alone.
My brain refused to process it.
And when I looked at the rearview mirror that morning, I saw faint streaks in the snow behind the cab—faint, irregular, glowing streaks—like someone, or something, had followed me.
I’ve tried to explain it since, but even now, months later, the memory gnaws at me.
Some roads… don’t lead anywhere.
Unless they choose to take you.
And sometimes, when you think you’ve escaped, they’re still waiting, just beyond the edge of the map.
I thought I had escaped.
I was wrong.
Two nights later, I found myself back behind the wheel, trying to shake the memory of that night.
The road had called me—though I didn’t know it yet.
My regular route, the highway I’d driven thousands of miles, suddenly felt wrong, like a mirror that didn’t reflect reality.
Mile markers shifted in ways that didn’t make sense.
I could swear that the same stretch of road I passed yesterday morning now curved impossibly to the left.
I tried to convince myself it was fatigue.
Thirty-four years of truck driving, plus winter storms and late-night hours—it could be stress, hallucinations.
But then my GPS blinked.
Not the usual recalculating.
Just one word, glowing red: “RETURN.”
I slammed on the brakes.
The truck skidded on ice, wheels spinning in snow that seemed deeper than it had any right to be.
The static-filled radio crackled: “Jack… come back.” The voice was faint, distorted.
Then gone.
I tried calling the police, but the signal was dead.
Every communication device I had suddenly refused to work.
I realized, with a sinking feeling, that this was the same force I’d encountered in Wyoming.
The road—the place—it had a memory.
And it remembered me.
Hours passed as I drove, unsure whether I was moving forward or looping back into the same stretch.
The sun never rose.
Snow fell thick, muffling everything, making time meaningless.
And then, from the distance, I saw lights.
Not headlights—more like faint lanterns, like before.
And walking toward me was a figure I recognized.
Evan.
I swerved.
“How the hell—?” I shouted, but he didn’t answer.
His eyes… they were empty.
Hollow.
His lips moved, whispering something in a language I didn’t know, yet somehow I understood: “They want you.”
Before I could stop, more shadows emerged from the snow—tall, thin, faceless, moving like marionettes.
They circled my truck, closing in, silent except for the crunching of their feet.
I tried to drive through them, but every time the tires touched the snow, I was pulled backward, the truck resisting as if the road itself had grown teeth.
Then came the worst part: the snow began forming shapes.
Faces—my own, twisted in fear.
Faces of people I knew who had vanished over the years: a trucker from Nebraska, a hiker missing since last winter, a family who had disappeared on Highway 85.
All of them stared at me from the snowbank, mouths frozen in silent screams.
I realized something horrifying: the mile hadn’t just taken Evan and the others—it consumed them.
It remembered their fear and used it against me.
I was panicking, fumbling with the ignition.
My hands shook so badly I could barely grip the wheel.
And then—another voice on the radio, this one familiar, chillingly calm: “Jack… drive into the heart. Or be claimed.”
The words made no sense.
The heart of what? My cab? The snow? The road itself? But before I could decide, the dashboard flickered and revealed a path—a glowing highway cutting straight into a black void where the stars should have been.
I had no choice.
It moved, but not of its own volition.
The truck followed, as if the road had swallowed the controls.
Hours—or maybe minutes—later, I reached a clearing.
A bridge, impossible in its geometry, arched into the sky like a frozen rainbow.
Beneath it, the shadows and faces gathered, looking up at me with pleading eyes.
Evan stepped forward, suddenly alive again, holding something in his hands: a small, rusted key.
“Jack,” he whispered, “it’s not just a road.It’s a test… a trap. Only one leaves.”
Before I could ask what he meant, the bridge trembled.
The truck’s engine roared, tires squealing.
The shadows surged forward.
And then the impossible happened: the bridge split in half, revealing a glowing chasm that stretched infinitely downward.
The key in Evan’s hand shot into the void, and with it, he disappeared—leaving only a whisper: “Trust no path.”
I slammed on the brakes.
My cab hovered at the edge.
The void beckoned, yet the glowing highway behind me pulsed like a heartbeat, offering an escape—or a trap.
I realized the first night hadn’t been a random encounter.
The road didn’t just choose people.
It learned from them.
Every move I made, every choice, shaped what it would do next.
And then, I noticed movement inside the cab.
Something I hadn’t felt before.
A shadow, crawling across the dashboard, forming shapes too human to be snow.
I reached for the door handle.
Locked.
The truck—my own cab—was alive.
Watching.
Waiting.
Deciding.
I didn’t know whether to drive forward into the unknown or reverse into the darkness that had already swallowed Evan.
And in that moment, I understood the truth: the road wasn’t just a mile off the map.
It was a predator.
And now, it had me.
Somewhere, far in the distance, a faint light flickered—like a lantern in the snow.
And I could swear I heard my own name being whispered.
