The Last Roadside Altar

The pine trees along Route 9 had begun to blur into a single dark wall when Marcus first saw the figure. It was just past the mile marker with the faded blue sign, the one that promised a diner and gas station that had been boarded up for years. He blinked, rubbed his eyes, and when he looked again, the road was empty. He said nothing to Elena, who was dozing in the passenger seat, her head against the window, or to his brother, Theo, who was in the back with their old dog, Buster, snoring softly.

They were driving back from a week in the volcanic hills of the Azores, a trip their parents had insisted on for the family reunion. Now they were nearly home, but the last leg was a long stretch through the high desert, and fatigue had settled into Marcus’s bones like lead. The radio had been reduced to static for the past hour, and the only sounds were the hum of the tires and Buster’s occasional whimper.

It was nearly 2 a.m. when they entered the canyon. The road twisted between steep rock faces, and the headlights carved a narrow tunnel through the dark. Marcus’s eyes felt gritty, and he rolled down the window, letting the cold air bite his face. That’s when he saw it again: a figure standing on the shoulder, this time on the right. It was tall, impossibly thin, with arms that hung too low, and it was holding something—a small, glowing object, like a lantern. It didn’t move. It just watched as they passed.

‘Did you see that?’ Marcus asked, but Elena was asleep, and Theo was muttering in his sleep. Marcus’s heart hammered. He told himself it was a rock formation, a trick of the headlights. But the image stayed, burned into his mind: the figure’s head tilted, as if it were following them.

Twenty minutes later, the car sputtered. The fuel gauge had been hovering near empty, but Marcus had been sure they could make it to the next town. He was wrong. The engine coughed, then died, and the car rolled to a stop at the side of the road. The silence that followed was oppressive, broken only by the ticking of the cooling engine. Elena woke up, alarmed. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked. Theo sat up, rubbing his eyes. ‘Out of gas,’ Marcus said, his voice flat.

They were stranded in a stretch of road with no lights, no signs, only the vast dark and the stars overhead. They had no cell signal. Theo volunteered to walk ahead to see if there was a house or a phone booth, but Marcus remembered the figure and grabbed his arm. ‘No. We stay together. We wait for daylight.’

They huddled in the car, the doors locked. The dog whined. Elena suggested they use the emergency kit to light a flare, but they had left it at home. They had nothing but a flashlight and a half-empty bottle of water. They turned off the engine to save the battery, and the darkness pressed in. The wind picked up, howling through the canyon, and they heard a sound that made Marcus’s blood freeze: a low, rhythmic scraping, like something dragging itself along the asphalt.

They peered through the windows, but saw nothing. The scraping grew louder, then stopped. Then it started again, this time on the other side of the car, as if whatever it was had circled them. Elena screamed. Theo covered his mouth. Marcus fumbled with the flashlight, shining it out the window—and there was nothing. Only the empty road.

They sat in silence for what felt like hours. The scraping faded. At some point, they must have drifted off, because Marcus woke to a gray dawn. The car was still there. The road was still empty. But when he stepped out to stretch, he noticed something on the ground near the back tire: a small, rusted lantern, its glass cracked, the flame extinguished. It was the same object the figure had held.

They scavenged some gas from a passing trucker later that morning, and they laughed about it, blaming their exhaustion and the isolation. But when they got home, Marcus found a photograph in his phone that he didn’t remember taking. It was of the figure, standing at the side of the road, its face obscured by shadow, but its hand raised as if in farewell. Behind it, barely visible in the blur, was a roadside altar, a small wooden shrine with a statue of a saint, its paint peeling. Marcus zoomed in. The saint’s eyes were scratched out.

He never told Elena or Theo about the photo. He deleted it. But sometimes, late at night, he thinks he hears that scraping sound outside his bedroom window, and he wonders if the figure followed him home, waiting for him to drive down that road again. He hasn’t been back since. And he never will.