The Pale Dust Impressions

I was thirteen when my best friend, Marta, invited me to stay the night at her family’s farmhouse. It was a sprawling, ivy-choked place on the edge of a town called Greybrook, which was really just a crossroads with a diner and a gas station that smelled of stale coffee and oil. Her father, Mr. Evers, was a gaunt man with a perpetual squint, as if he were always looking into a sun that wasn’t there. After dinner, he leaned across the table and said, ‘You girls ever heard of the Cindergrade Road?’

We hadn’t. He told us that up on the ridge, past the old canning factory, there was a stretch of asphalt that defied gravity. The locals called it the ‘Hill of Hollows.’ According to him, if you stopped your car at the bottom and put it in neutral, the car would roll uphill, as if something was pulling it. He also mentioned that just off the road, hidden behind a screen of dying pines, stood the ruins of the Holbrook Slaughterhouse, a place that had been abandoned since the thirties after a fire that took the lives of twenty workers. He said their ghosts were known to hitch a ride.

I thought it was a story to scare us, but Marta was game. Mr. Evers drove a rusted-out Chevy pickup, and we piled into the cab, me in the middle, sandwiched between him and the door. The road wound up through fields that looked like black velvet, the only light coming from the truck’s dim headlights. As we climbed, the air grew colder, and I could smell something metallic, like blood and iron, mixed with the sweet rot of fallen apples. The slaughterhouse appeared as a darker shape against the trees, its roof half-collapsed, and I saw a flicker of light in a window, but when I pointed it out, Mr. Evers said it was just the reflection of a car passing on the highway below.

We reached the top and he turned the truck around, facing downhill. He killed the engine, put the truck in neutral, and pulled the parking brake. ‘Now, you feel it, girls,’ he said, and released the brake. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, slowly, the truck began to roll forward, but instead of going down the slope we were on, we were moving uphill, against the incline. The sensation was like being a leaf caught in a slow, relentless current. I looked at Mr. Evers. He had both hands on the wheel, but his knuckles were white. ‘You’re doing this,’ I said. He pressed the gas pedal, and the engine roared, but the truck continued its forward creep, as if some external force was more powerful than the combustion. The engine whined, but the speed didn’t increase. We rolled for what felt like five minutes, then gradually came to a stop at the crest of the hill.

Mr. Evers turned the truck around again, and we drove back down to the start. Before we reenacted the trick, he produced a can of baby powder from his jacket. ‘We’re going to dust the back bumper and the tailgate,’ he said. ‘Then we’ll do it again, and we’ll see what happens.’ We got out, and Marta and I sprinkled the powder thickly over the entire rear of the truck, leaving a layer as white as snow. The air was still and heavy, and I could hear the distant hum of insects. As we climbed back in, I noticed that the powder on the ground was being disturbed, as if something had walked through it, but there were no footprints. I chalked it up to the wind.

We did the trick again, this time with the headlights off to better see the darkness. The truck rolled uphill, and in the pitch black, I felt a pressure against my back, like a hand pushing. I turned around, but there was nothing. Then, Marta gasped. ‘Look at the rear window,’ she said. In the faint glow of the dashboard, I saw handprints emerging on the glass, pressing from the outside, as if someone was trying to get in. The prints were small, like a child’s, but they were smearing the dust, coming from nowhere. Mr. Evers kept muttering, ‘It’s okay, it’s okay,’ but his voice was shaking.

When the truck finally stopped, we were trembling. Mr. Evers slammed the gear into park and shut off the engine. ‘Let’s check the back,’ he said, his voice suddenly gruff. We got out, flashlights in hand, and walked around to the rear. The powder was covered in impressions—not just handprints, but full palm prints, some with fingers splayed, others with two or three fingers missing. There were also what looked like drag marks, as if something had been pulled across the tailgate. One set of prints was unusually large, with elongated fingers, and it was positioned right where I had been sitting, on the passenger side. Marta slowly raised her flashlight beam to the top of the truck, and there, on the roof, was a single, perfect handprint, encircled by a ring of powdery residue. It looked like a brand.

We got back in the truck without speaking. Mr. Evers started the engine, but it sputtered and died. He tried again, and the dashboard lights flickered. Then, out of the silence, we heard a low, rhythmic scraping sound coming from the truck bed, as if something was being dragged across the metal. I looked through the rear window, and in the darkness, I saw the silhouette of a humanoid figure, hulking and misshapen, slowly rising over the tailgate. It had no face. Mr. Evers screamed, ‘Don’t look!’ but it was too late. The creature pressed its palm against the window, leaving a dusty print. Then it dissolved into the night, and the engine roared to life.

We sped back to the farmhouse, not saying a word. We never spoke of that night again. But sometimes, when I look at my own hands, I see a faint, pale residue in the creases, and I wonder if some of that powder is still on me, marking me as its own. And I know it’s waiting for me to return.