The Salt Flats Incident

My name is Cora, and I live in a small, weathered house at the edge of the Bonneville Salt Flats. My only companion is my dog, a wiry terrier named Pip. Every evening, I take Pip for a walk along the old access road that borders the flats, a stretch of cracked asphalt that sees more tumbleweeds than traffic. The silence out there is immense, broken only by the wind and the occasional distant rumble of a truck on the interstate miles away.

A few weeks ago, as the sun was bleeding orange into the horizon, Pip stopped dead in his tracks. His ears pricked forward, and a low growl rumbled in his chest. I tugged his leash, but he wouldn’t budge. Then I heard it: a screech of tires, loud and violent, followed by a scream that hung in the air like a phantom. The sound was so close, it felt like it scraped across my skin. I yanked Pip off the road and onto the gravel, my heart hammering. I spun around, expecting to see a wrecked car, a twisted metal mess, something. But the road was empty. Not a single car in sight. The only trace was a faint smell of burning rubber, which lingered for a moment before the wind snatched it away.

My curiosity got the better of me. I walked Pip up and down the road for half a mile in each direction, my eyes scanning the barren salt flats for any sign of disturbance. Nothing. No skid marks, no debris, no blood. The silence was absolute, save for the distant whine of an occasional vehicle miles away. I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the cooling desert air. When I got home, I told my father about it, thinking he might have some rational explanation. He just waved a dismissive hand. ‘Probably a truck downshifted, and a coyote got hit,’ he said. ‘Don’t get worked up over nothing.’

But I couldn’t shake it. That scream echoed in my head, and Pip refused to walk that road alone since. He’d tug at the leash, trying to steer me away. So I started going out at different times, early mornings, late nights, hoping to catch whatever it was. Nothing happened for a week. Then, one evening, just as dusk settled, I saw it: a single, shimmering figure standing on the salt flats, about fifty yards off the road. It was a woman, or the shape of one, wearing a long, tattered dress, her hair whipping wildly in the wind. She was facing away from me, toward the vast emptiness of the flats. I called out, but my voice felt swallowed by the silence. Pip whined and pressed against my leg.

The woman turned, slowly, and I saw that her face was blurred, like a photograph out of focus. She raised one arm and pointed east, toward the railroad tracks that cut across the flats. Then she opened her mouth, and the same scream I heard that first time burst forth, raw and piercing, but it wasn’t a scream of terror. It was a scream of warning. Then she vanished, leaving only the whisper of wind.

I stood there, shaking, with Pip trembling at my side. I looked east, toward the tracks, and saw nothing but the fading light and the endless white. But I knew something was out there. Something that had been waiting. I slept with the lights on that night, and for every night after, I never walked that road again. But I still hear the scream sometimes, in the quiet moments, and I wonder what she was warning me about. And I pray I never find out.