This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/bushleaguetree on 2024-11-01 01:10:02+00:00.

I found them this morning, stuffed between the torn seats of my old leather duffel bag: a brittle stack of my own journal entries from thirty years ago. Strange, considering I barely remember writing them, let alone journaling at all… I hardly remember anything from my early years, busy from driving coast-to-coast non-stop to build a decent bank account. Look how that turned out… It’s my handwriting, no doubt—there it is, clear as day, looping and fierce across every line. The entries start like any trucker’s log, full of routes and road conditions, little observations as we’re teached to do at truck driving school. But as I read, the tone shifts, and my handwriting gets shaky and approximate. Then I remember.

The night of Halloween 1994.

October 24, 1994 There’s something strange about Nevada this time of year. It’s the way the desert wind has a bite to it, how it carries the smell of sagebrush and dust, how the sky turns from deep orange to bruised purple and makes the whole landscape look haunted. I’m due to drive across the state in the next few weeks.

Got to Tonopah early, barely had time to grab a coffee. We’re all meeting up at this truck stop off the 6, and it’s a grimy place, but it has this campfire pit where we gather when the sun sets. Jerry said it was great at this this of the year, “like a rite of passage,” he said. They’re all in their forties, fifties, old-timers with the road written into their faces. I’m the youngest by a few decades. Probably why most of the ones I don’t know look at me like I shouldn’t be there, everytime I go to one of these gatherings… Usually the others ignore me, which is fine by me.

October 27, 1994 One guy I didn’t recognize. Never seen him around before. Not new in and of itself, however that one guy… Just standing there at the edge of the firelight, silent as stone. Didn’t say much, barely even looked up. None of the other guys seemed to be put off, but all ignored him unless spoken to. As always, I was more of a distraction… I probably shouldn’t go to these anymore, Jerry hasn’t even shown up. Just awkward.

October 30, 1994 They’ve gone from accidents to hauntings to outright superstitions. All of them drunk. Incredibly, that makes them like me more.

We’re huddled around the fire, about twenty of us. Multiple conversations, swapping stories. One of the guys — Tom I believe — even asked me where I’m headed next.

That’s when I heard it. Low and quiet, almost like a whisper: “There’s always the shortcut.” The stranger stands a bit apart from us, arms crossed, eyes like coal. “What?,” I said, turning around. “You said you had to be in Denver by tomorrow. That’s quite the ride. So I said: there’s always the shortcut.” Puzzled, I looked around at Tom, the guys… not one met my eyes. I turned back towards the stranger, but he was gone. All that was — and is — left is his voice, deep and succinct. “There’s always the shortcut.”

No one has looked at me since then, like the stranger’s words had made me invisible. Better get to bed.

Couldn’t sleep. That man—he was waiting for me by my rig. I almost turned back, but he looked so desperate, his eyes wild and dark, and I felt something twist in my gut.

“Listen to me,” he said, voice low, barely more than a breath. “Whatever you do, don’t take the shortcut. If you see it—just… don’t take it.” He swallowed, glanced over his shoulder, and I swear, he looked as if he was running from something. “Please. Just don’t.”

I tried to ask him what he meant, but he was already moving away, slipping into the shadows. I stood there, cold and confused, a bad taste in my mouth. Then I got back in the truck, shut the door, and locked it tight. I lay there, mind spinning, but sleep pulled me under… for a few hours at least. Better get back to it, the road is long to Denver…

October 31, 1994 I woke up late. Later than I’d planned, anyway. There was no time for coffee, no time to think. I just threw my gear together and hit the road, the world around me hazy, like a half-remembered dream.

The sky was still heavy with the last of the dawn haze as I pulled onto the empty road. It stretched out ahead of me, cutting through the flat Nevada desert like a scar. I couldn’t shake the stranger’s words from my mind, circling over and over: If you see it…

Something about that warning itched under my skin. The others. They just went silent, like kids who’d been told a ghost story they half-believed. This is a well-known route, pretty common, and not once had anyone mentioned a shortcut. So why that weird moment?

Miles stretched on. The landscape was desolate, just sagebrush and scrub rolling on either side of the road, with the occasional rocky outcrop breaking up the monotony. By then, I’d made up for my late start. By noon, I’d hit that perfect rhythm where the hum of the engine melted into the background, and time began to slip. This was what I loved about the road, the way it let you disconnect. Even the strangest warnings and wildest stories could fade out here, where it was just you, the truck, and the endless blacktop.

Then, sometime around late afternoon, something caught my eye. Up ahead, a thin track branched off from the main road, barely visible, like it was half-buried under sand and years of disuse. My heart skipped. I knew the roads out here like the back of my hand, and I’d never noticed this turnoff before.

The shortcut.

My hands tightened on the wheel, and I slowed down, the gravel crunching under the tires as I approched the odd branch in the road. I could feel a strange pull, like something deep in my chest was telling me to turn, to see where that road went. But then, the stranger’s words echoed again.

And past I went.

The shortcut quickly vanished in the rear-view mirror, and sent my mind racing. Was that it?

Skipped the shortcut. If it even exists.

I don’t know how long I sat there, engine idling, in a trance. Didn’t even remember stopping the truck. Hours have gone by… I’d better shift back into drive and merge onto the main road, can’t believe I lost all this time…

The rest of the drive was quiet, almost too quiet. As the sun dipped low, painting the sky with fire and shadows, I felt that unease creep back in. The road seemed to stretch on forever, no other cars, no signs of life. Just me, my rig, and the empty desert.

I finally stopped for the night about an hour ago, at a rest area miles near the Colorado border. As I killed the engine, I noticed something strange in the back of my mind—a foggy sort of sensation, like I’d left something behind on that road in Nevada, something I couldn’t quite… remember?

November 1, 1994 The first thing I remember is waking up with a start, like I’d been shaken out of a nightmare. But when I tried to recall any details, they slipped away, just shadows in the dark. I checked my log, saw the miles I’d covered, and my own scrawled handwriting in the entry from the night before:

Skipped the shortcut. If it even exists.

I don’t remember writing that.

October 30, 2024 Thirty years. And tomorrow, I’ll be back on that same stretch of road, going east from Tonopah to Denver. I wonder if they still hold those gatherings, with the campfire. The roads are different too—more highways, more mapped out. So probably not.

And yet, I’m holding these old, brittle pages, reading my own handwriting like it belongs to a stranger. It’s strange, how certain memories stay sharp while others slip through your fingers. I still don’t remember everything from that night, that trip. I don’t remember much at all, but that thin strip of road branching off, over and over, like it’s always there—like a déjà-vu.

These pages—they’re proof. Proof that something happened, something I can’t, for the life of me, remember. Why did I stop? None of the later journals refer or even allude to that night, in 1994…

I must admit, the thought stroke me a few times since I got assigned that same route, on that night, thirty years later. Sharp as a knife: what if the shortcut is still there?

The world’s changed in thirty years. We’re connected now, everything documented, recorded, tracked. Tomorrow, I’ll have cameras, a dash cam, and GPS. If the shortcut shows up again—if it even exists—I’ll see it, and I’ll have proof.

I’m not sure what I expect to find. Maybe just an overgrown trail leading to nowhere, or a memory that I can finally lay to rest. But there’s a part of me that feels it—that deep, quiet pull, the same feeling I had all those years ago, sitting behind the wheel, staring down that thin, sandy track.

I’ll take the route east tomorrow, and if the shortcut’s there, I’ll record every mile, every minute. The sun’s setting outside now, casting long shadows across my wall, and I feel that strange, familiar itch under my skin. The same one that whispered to me thirty years ago.

This time, I’ll take the shortcut.