The Hollow Glow of Junction 9

On the last night of summer, 2014, I dozed off on the hood of my brother’s rusted Chevy in the dirt lot behind the old grain elevator. The town of Drywell had been dead for years, but that night, the air felt thick, like the sky was pressing down. I was seventeen, bored, and too tired to walk the two blocks home.

As I drifted into that drowsy half-sleep, I felt a cold pressure slide down my left arm, as if a finger of ice traced a slow line from my shoulder to my wrist. I thought it was a draft from the prairie, and I let myself sink deeper. Ten minutes later, something woke me—a change in the light, or the silence. I opened my eyes to find a figure standing on my left, its form flickering like heat distortion above asphalt. To my right, a column of pale, sterile light rose from the ground, humming faintly, like a fluorescent bulb about to die.

The figure on my left was not human. Its skin was a charred mosaic, cracked and weeping, as if it had been burned from the inside out. Its fingers were long, like needles of blackened bone, and it had no eyes—just smooth, melted sockets that seemed to stare anyway. Its mouth was a gash of sharp, dark teeth, and it was smiling, not at me, but at the light.

I should have screamed, or run, but I felt pinned by a strange calm. The light on my right pulsed, and from its edges, I could almost discern a shape—a silhouette of wings, or a robe, or just the trick of dying sunlight. The charred thing and the light did not fight. They seemed to be acknowledging each other, like old acquaintances meeting after a long absence.

I remember thinking: *This is me. Both of them are me.* The burned husk was the thing I kept hidden—the anger, the bitterness, the part that wanted to watch the world burn from a distance. And the light was the part that still tried to hope, the part that grieved for my father’s empty chair at dinner, the part that ached for something good.

They stayed for a long minute, or maybe it was seconds. The charred figure turned its empty face toward me, and I felt no malice, only a hollow recognition. The light dimmed, and the figure began to dissolve like smoke. When I blinked, they were gone, leaving me alone on the cold hood of the car, with goosebumps crawling up my arm.

I didn’t feel afraid. I felt empty—like someone had scooped out the center of me and left only the shell. For weeks, I caught myself staring at my reflection, wondering which part would win. At night, I’d wake with the memory of that smile, and the glow, and the strange peace that came from knowing that even the ugliest parts of me had their place.

Years later, when I drive past Junction 9, the spot where the old mill road meets the highway, I still half-expect to see that flickering figure in my peripheral vision. But I’ve stopped fearing it. I’ve even started to understand that the hollow feeling isn’t a curse—it’s just the space where both my demons and my angels live, side by side, waiting for the next time the sky presses down and the light appears.