The Dry Man on the Overpass

I’ve worked the evening shift at the paper mill in Tacoma for nearly two decades, but nothing in all those years prepared me for what I saw on the way home that December. It was the 14th, I remember, because I had just mailed my sister’s Christmas package and was feeling the weight of the holiday season. I left the mill at six, exhausted from a twelve-hour shift, the kind of tired that makes your bones hum. The rain was coming down in sheets, the kind of drizzle that soaks you through your coat and makes the windshield wipers work overtime. I merged onto I-5 heading south, traffic crawling at about forty, everyone in their own little bubble of red taillights and spray.

As I approached the exit for the Olympia City Center, I glanced to my right, up at the overpass that crossed above the freeway. There was a figure sitting on the guardrail, legs dangling over the edge. A young man, maybe in his twenties. He wore dark blue jeans, a blue vest over a darker long-sleeved shirt, and his hair was long, falling past his shoulders, the kind of style I had back in the seventies. But what caught my attention, what made me stare, was that he was completely dry. The rain was pelting down, turning the asphalt dark, but his clothes looked crisp, like he’d just walked out of a laundromat. He sat there with a dead stare, looking straight ahead at the traffic, not moving, not blinking.

I watched him as I crept along the freeway, my gaze fixed on him, trying to make sense of what I was seeing. The guardrail was part of the overpass, with a deep ravine dropping down on the other side. There was no way he could have climbed up there without getting wet unless he’d been there before the rain started. But I had passed this spot on my way to work, and there was no one there. The rain had been falling since noon. My mind raced with explanations: a mannequin, a prank, a figment of my tired imagination. But his eyes, they followed the cars, not in a way that suggested he saw them, but like he was counting them, or maybe not even seeing them at all.

I got to the point where I was almost directly below him, and I craned my neck to keep him in view. And then, just like that, he vanished. Not a blur, not a trick of the light, just gone. The guardrail was empty, the ravine on the other side was empty. I slammed on my brakes, causing the car behind me to honk, but I didn’t care. I pulled over to the shoulder, my heart pounding, and I got out of my car. The rain soaked me instantly, but I didn’t notice. I stared up at the overpass, searching for any sign of him, but there was nothing. The ravine below was dark, filled with brush and garbage, but no sign of a body or a person.

I stood there for what felt like minutes, the rain dripping down my face, the cold seeping into my bones. When I finally got back in my car, I was shaking. I drove home on autopilot, my mind replaying the image of that dry, staring man. When I got home, I told my wife, and she said I must have been seeing things, that I was exhausted. But I couldn’t shake it. The next day, on my way to work, I looked up at the overpass, and he was there again. Same spot, same clothes, same dead stare. And again, as I passed directly below, he vanished.

Over the next week, I saw him every day, rain or shine. I started to dread the drive, but I couldn’t look away. I tried to capture him on my phone, but every photo came out blurry, like he was vibrating at a frequency my camera couldn’t capture. I asked around at work, if anyone else had seen him, but they all thought I was crazy. I drove different routes, but I always found myself back on that stretch of freeway, drawn to him like a moth to a flame. I started to notice that he was always the same, the same blue vest, the same long hair, the same empty expression, but sometimes I thought I saw his lips move, as if he were speaking to me, though I could never hear him.

On the last day before my vacation, December 22nd, I decided to stop and confront him. I parked on the shoulder, climbed the embankment to the overpass, and approached him. He didn’t seem to notice me until I was right in front of him. Then he turned his head slowly, and his eyes met mine. They were not the eyes of a living person. They were filmed over, milky white, like a dead fish. And then he spoke, his voice a dry rasp that carried the smell of dust and decay. ‘You see me,’ he said. ‘You’ve seen me every day. Why? Why can you see me when no one else can?’ I stammered, I told him I didn’t know. He looked at me with that dead stare, and then he pointed down at the ravine. ‘Look,’ he said. I looked, and there, at the bottom, partially hidden by brush, I saw a glint of metal. I climbed down, my heart in my throat, and there, half-buried in mud, was an old bicycle, rusted and warped. And next to it, a pair of dark blue jeans, a blue vest, and a long-sleeved shirt, all torn and faded.

I looked back up at the overpass, but he was gone. I scrambled back up, and there was nothing. Just the empty guardrail. I went to the police, and they searched the ravine. They found human remains, mostly skeletal, buried under a layer of debris. They identified him as a young man who had gone missing in 1973, a hitchhiker on his way to Oregon. His name was Daniel, and he had long hair and wore blue clothes, just like I had in the seventies. They never found his killer, but they closed the case. I haven’t seen him again, but sometimes, when I pass that overpass, I feel a cold spot, and I look up, half expecting to see him there, watching me, waiting for someone else to see him. I’ve never told my wife the whole story. She thinks I’m just tired. But I know what I saw. And I know he’s still out there, dry as a bone, waiting for the next person who’s tired enough to see.