The Last Route Map

The digital clock on my dashboard read 00:07 when I pulled out of the parking lot, the orange sodium lights of the depot fading in my rearview mirror. My name is Julian, and I’m a 29-year-old logistics coordinator for a pharmaceutical distribution company. I’d just finished a fourteen-hour shift, my eyes tired from staring at shipping manifests, my ears numb from the constant drone of the air conditioning. My rented flat was a good forty minutes away – a two-bedroom place in a converted Victorian house on the edge of the city, where the street lamps grew sparse and the houses sprawled into overgrown lots.

I took my usual route: down the industrial strip, past the closed grocery stores and the shuttered workshops, then onto the winding back roads that cut through a patch of old woodland the city planners had never quite conquered. The roads were empty, as they always were at that hour. I had the windows down, the cool night air biting at my skin, trying to keep me alert. My playlist had shuffled into a series of old jazz standards, but I was too tired to focus on the saxophone wafting through the speakers.

It was on one of those back roads, where the trees overarched the asphalt like a cathedral of branches, that I saw the map. It was lying there in the middle of my lane, half in a puddle of something slick that gleamed under my headlights. It was a road map of the area – the kind you can get at any gas station – but it was old, yellowed, and the creases were so deep they looked like canyons. I swerved to avoid it, but the front wheel clipped the edge, and the map caught on my undercarriage with a soft thump. I should have pulled over, but I was tired, and the map was just trash. I drove on.

Ten minutes later, I realized I was lost. That wasn’t unusual for me – I had a habit of daydreaming, and these back roads all looked the same in the dark. But this time, the GPS on my phone was spinning at a dead end, showing ‘GPS signal lost’ over and over. I slowed down, trying to get my bearings. The streetlights had completely vanished, and the road had narrowed to a single lane, the asphalt cracked and weeded over. I saw a sign – a rusty green metal sign with white lettering that read: ‘Lakewood Road – 3 KM’. I’ve lived in this city for six years, and I’ve never heard of Lakewood Road.

My headlights illuminated a shape ahead – a figure, or so I thought. My heart jumped, but as I approached, it was just a scarecrow. But scarecrows don’t usually stand in the middle of a road. It was a mannequin, actually, but a child’s mannequin, the kind used in shops to display children’s clothing. It was dressed in a tattered raincoat, its plastic face smiling a blank, unsettling smile. The raincoat was soaked, even though it hadn’t rained in days. My hands were sweating on the handlebars. I drove past it, and the eyes – painted, glossy black – seemed to follow me in my mirror.

I sped up, wanting to get off this road. My tank was low, and I had no idea when I’d reach a gas station. The map was still caught under the bike – I could hear it flapping against the metal. I thought about pulling over to remove it, but something stopped me. A superstitious dread that touching it again would seal my fate. Instead, I pushed on, the hedgerows closing in. After a few more minutes, I saw something in the distance that made me brake hard: a house. A two-story Victorian, identical to the one I lived in. But I knew with a primal certainty that it was not my house. It was the house from the map – I recognized the shape from the little diagram in the corner, the one that marks a point of interest.

The house was dark, except for a single light in the upstairs window. The front gate was ajar, and the garden was overgrown. My engine idled, filling the air with the smell of exhaust and damp earth. I don’t know why, but I felt an inexorable pull toward that house. My legs moved on their own, carrying me off the bike, up the path. I left the headlights on – they cast a long shadow of me on the peeling front door. I knocked. No answer. The door was unlocked.

Inside, the house smelled of dust and old books. There was a hallway with a crooked mirror, and a staircase leading up. The light was from the room at the top of the stairs. I climbed, each step groaning. In the room, there was a desk with a lamp on, and on the desk, an open atlas. The pages were blank except for a hand-drawn line that curled through the streets – a route that didn’t match any map I knew. At the end of the line, a red X. I was standing on the spot where the X was – the house itself. Below the X, in faint pencil, was written: ‘You are here.’

I backed out of the room, feeling a cold sweat break on my forehead. I ran down the stairs, but the hallway was longer than before, the mirror reflected a man I didn’t recognize – pale, gaunt, with hollow eyes. But he was wearing my jacket. I turned away and got back to my bike, praying the engine would start. It did. I reversed, nearly hitting the mannequin, which had moved closer. Its head was tilted, as if curious.

I drove for what felt like hours. The road took me through a forest that glowed with a phosphorescent green, where the leaves were damp and swirled with movement. I passed the same scarecrow-mannequin, now pointing down a different fork. The map grumbled under my bike, and I felt it pulling me, steering me without my hands on the handlebars. I was a passenger in my own vehicle. Finally, exhausted, I stopped under a streetlight I recognized – the one right outside my flat. I was home. I killed the engine and sat there, trembling.

I went inside, took a hot shower, and fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that the map had left a mark on me – a papercut on my finger I hadn’t noticed before. The next morning, I checked my bike. The map was gone. No trace. I tried to convince myself it was a dream, but the route on the map is etched into my memory, and every time I close my eyes, I see that red X, and I wonder: what if the map wasn’t a map? What if it was a recipe? And I was the next ingredient?

I’m writing this because I need to know if anyone else has seen Lakewood Road on a map. Because I looked it up – there is no Lakewood Road in this city. But the other day, I was driving to work, and I passed a sign that read ‘Lakewood Road – 2 KM’. And the GPS on my phone just went dead.