The road became hilly outside the city limits, with the horizon intermittently dipping out of view to reappear like black tar lapping up onto the car hood. With no halogen glow of Eastfawn behind him, and no road signs in front of him, he had no notion how far he was from Stonesthrow. However, once he was far enough away, he could see the blue arc of the spacecraft again stretching low across the sky in an ominous rainbow. Eventually even this beckon disappeared, which left him feeling he had fallen off the edge of the Earth. His eyes trawled the darkness with growing desperation, and soon snared something just off the road ahead.

The unmistakable high top of a Cadillac ambulance poked up in the weeds with all the presage of an ill-placed crypt. He deduced from the corroded roof and busted siren light the vehicle was long abandoned. Its easy proximity had him getting out on foot to consider the rising terrain and thicket. The pale blades of grass from a distance appeared scorched, but on closer examination in his headlights, they were crawling with black field crickets. Thousands of the small insects were animated and chirping in the glow, and Michael, cringing, was inescapably in the middle of them. It was not what he saw but what he thought he heard that had him pressing his ear to a mud-caked ambulance window: radio static. The rusty rear door gave with a ghastly screech, but no noise was bouncing around inside the dark hull of the vehicle; there was, however, a stack of uprooted road signs with Stonesthrow headings. Puzzled, the traveler was already backing away when the field beyond the skulking wreck blinked. The inkiness between him and the light source could have been measured in one mile or a hundred, but it was impossible to gauge the distance given the briefness of the flash. Another burst of light arose farther along the horizon. A third occurrence confirmed something was getting closer, though the sparks were dropping out of the night sky with devilish steps. Michael knew he must have been looking at road lamps going off and on. The few poles that populated the countryside marked crossroads and billboards, but he could not guess how many lay between him and the advancing light. He returned to the shoulder of the road once the specter disappeared inconveniently behind a copse of trees. In his preoccupation, he was slow to glance down at his pants.

They were covered from cuff to belt with crickets.

Mortified, he dashed back to the front of his car and began flinging them off. The beam of a headlight aided in the mad removal of the crawling pests, though in bending forward to check his socks, his line of sight was directed down the side of the Saturn to the red taillights. Something far back on the road was moving steady toward him, although the shape suggested neither light poles nor a vehicle. He stood up in a slow burn and waited for a hint to identify it. The cry of the crickets crowded out any sound that may have accompanied the mysterious object, so he circled back around to the driver’s side and probed guardedly to the rear fender. His first impression was one of a bird. A heron flying low over the pavement, perhaps. Yet as it drew nearer, it more resembled a blowing paper sack. He waited for it to pull even with a mailbox reflector a quarter of a mile back, in order to gauge its size and speed.

The sack-like apparition easily dwarfed the reflector.

Grasping the enormity of the thing, Michael scrambled to get in his car. The form was now nearly intelligible in the rearview mirror, yet just when he engaged the engine it dissipated over a cornfield as a will-o’-the-wisp. The driver pulled back onto the lonely stretch of highway with the distinct sense he was being followed.

The road forward remained stingy with clues, and frequent glimpses in the rearview mirror soon yielded something alarming. His phantom had returned and was faintly visible in his taillights. Yet it was not so much glowing as shifting on the terrain like a mirage of water wafting off sweltering blacktop. Michael hoped against hope it was only another car—albeit one with its headlights inhospitably turned off. Equally unnerving, its distance was fixed to his speed, as if a dogged shadow of unvarying length. The driver pulled off a side road after a couple of miles of the unwelcome pursuit. He did not travel far but switched off his lights to wait for whatever it was to pass him. Seconds went by in anticipation, and then a whole minute; he was now regretting having left the highway. Whatever was behind him must have also stopped and was lurking somewhere close by in the darkness. With no choice, Michael turned on his headlights to see his way clear back onto the main road. When his taillights lit up the path at his rear, the shadow of something large was pinned to the scraggly brush on the far shoulder. His pursuer was just forward of the intersection and hidden from direct view by high grass. Terrified, the motorist hesitated in turning around, but in his moment of indecision the ominous companion crept quietly away. The man rejoined the road, although what had been behind him was now more disconcertingly in front of him.

Another couple of miles had him prematurely easing when something else turned up. What seemed an unusual massing of leaves scurried across the highway ahead, although they were too far away to be clearly identified in his headlights. In and of themselves, there was nothing to merit alarm, yet on glancing around at the gnarled trees speeding by his car windows, Michael saw no evidence of wind in the branches. He proceeded cautiously and noted (also with dismay) not a single stray leaf was anywhere in sight. Another wall of leaves was spotted about a half a mile down the straightaway—only this time they were moving in the opposite direction and imitating the shape of a large lumbering animal! The driver slowed to watch the leaves clear the white line. They swiftly broke up to catch in the low-hanging bramble, yet without a decibel or mummer to their scattering. He knew the next time they would likely pass even closer to the vehicle, so kept his foot ready to brake. With his eyes now intensely fixed on the way forward, he was not paying attention to the way back. He finally looked up in the rearview mirror to see the dark animalistic form once again crossing the road, only now it was burning in the embers of his taillights. His attention was immediately flipped around. Both shoulders of the highway funneled down through his rear window to concentrate his fear, and he was so focused on them he was late glancing up—

A tree was lying in the middle of the road.

He slammed on the brakes and swerved into spitting gravel. Screeching tires brought him to within feet of the sprawled trunk. Quaking, his hand grazed the cell phone on the console when he shifted into park, and with the engine idled down swarm-like static could be heard crackling in its earpiece.

It had been on the whole time.

The frantic man looked through the rear glass to see a storm of dead leaves barreling up the road in his direction—coughed out of hell! He clicked off the phone in a gasp, but not before red and yellow leaves plowed into the back of the Saturn with the force of a fist! The maniacal design quickly disintegrated along the dark road, and in turning back to the windshield to catch his breath, he spied a badly bent road sign hailing him over the roadblock:

Stonesthrow One Mile.

The arrow on the sign was clearly pointing to the left.