The Road to Hell - An Original Short Story by Josh
Most of you reading this are probably going to think the title is dramatic. I thought so too. I don’t even know if I believe in hell.
But I can tell you this: there is a road in rural Iowa that I will never drive again.
I’m writing this down exactly as it happened, because I’ve learned that if I don’t, I start questioning my own memory—and that scares me more than what I saw out there.
A few months ago, I moved to a tiny town in rural Iowa. Population was maybe 150 people. I wanted out of the city. I wanted quiet, privacy, somewhere you could leave your doors unlocked and see nothing but fields when you stepped outside. The town was perfect.
The problem was work.
There was nothing in town besides a couple of family-owned shops. The kind of place teenagers work summer shifts. So, I found an IT job about 45 minutes away. On the map it didn’t look bad—mostly county roads, straight stretches of farmland, hardly any turns.
I told myself the commute was worth it.
The job was great. Good pay, real growth potential. They even gave me a couple paid days to move from my old place, which was about an hour and a half away. I started settling into a routine fast.
Every morning, I leave around 5:00 a.m. It was still pitch-black outside, the kind of dark that swallows your headlights if you aren’t paying attention. I got to work around 6:00, hit the gym, and started at 7. I leave around 4:00 or 4:30 most days.
For the first few weeks, the drive was uneventful. Just fields, fog, and deer standing too close to the road. No streetlights. No houses. No cell service in spots. I actually liked the drive. It gave me time to wake up in the morning and cool off after work.
Then, one morning that changed.
It was around 5:15 a.m. I was coming up to a blind curve, slowing down like I always did because of deer, when my headlights caught something in the road.
At first, I thought it was an animal.
Then I realized it was shaped like a person.
It was hunched over in the middle of my lane. I slammed on the brakes and stopped just short of it.
When it stood up, I saw it was a woman.
That didn’t make sense. There were no houses nearby. I hadn’t seen another car for at least 15 minutes. She was thin and moved stiffly, like she was cold… or unused to moving. She started walking toward my car.
I didn’t roll my window down.
Something about her was wrong. Not in an obvious way. Just… wrong. In my headlights, her face didn’t reflect light properly. Her eyes looked dark, like pits. When she smiled, I could see teeth that looked too uniform, too exposed.
I didn’t wait.
I put the car in gear and drove.
As I crested the next hill, I checked my rearview mirror.
She was behind me. Running.
I don’t know how fast she was actually moving, but it looked like she was keeping up. I hit the gas and focused on the road, barely holding the car steady through the bend. When I forced myself to look again, she was gone.
A minute or two later, I came around another curve and saw a sheriff’s vehicle parked on the shoulder.
As I passed, it pulled out behind me.
The lights came on.
I started to pull over, then froze.
Something about the way the deputy stepped out of the car didn’t sit right. The movements were stiff. Delayed. Like the timing was off by half a second.
I stayed in the car. Windows up. Doors locked.
When the deputy reached my window, they leaned down like they expected me to roll it down. In the reflection of my dashboard lights, I saw the face.
Same eyes. Same smile.
I didn’t wait to see if I was wrong.
I floored it.
A few minutes later I reached the edge of a town and spotted another patrol car parked near an intersection. Same markings. Same county. I pulled in fast and waved the officer down.
He looked startled. Then concerned.
I told him I’d been pulled over by a sheriff’s unit back on the county road and that I didn’t think it was real. His face changed immediately.
“There shouldn’t be anyone running traffic out there right now,” he said. “I’m the only unit assigned to this area this morning.”
He asked if I’d seen a unit number.
I told him I thought it was 6664.
He went quiet.
Asked me to repeat it.
Then he handed me a number and said, “If this happens again, don’t stop. Call dispatch first. Confirm it’s one of ours.”
He told me to follow him to the station.
Inside, he showed me a bulletin board near the front desk. Old clippings. Missing people.
My eyes went straight to the number again.
6664.
Mysterious Disappearance, the headline read.
The article said the vehicle had been found abandoned on the roadside. No damage. No signs of a struggle. The deputy was never found. There was a photo printed below as a person of interest.
It was her.
I can’t prove it was the same woman. I just know it looked exactly like the face I’d seen in my headlights.
There were more clippings from that same stretch of road. Different years. Different names.
If I’d pulled over properly… would I have ended up on that board too?
I left for work shortly after.
A few blocks from the station, my seatbelt alarm went off.
From the backseat.
I checked the mirror. Empty.
Then I heard the click of a seatbelt locking into place—and the alarm stopped.
I looked again and saw a face in the mirror for a split second. Smiling.
When I turned around, the seat was empty.
This kept happening for almost two weeks.
Variations of the same thing. Seeing someone in the road. A sheriff’s car that couldn’t be confirmed. Every time I called dispatch, they told me the same thing: no units assigned to that area at that time.
After two weeks, I changed my route.
It takes longer now. More traffic. More lights. Houses along the road.
I’ve never seen her again.
I don’t know what that road is.
I just know I don’t take it anymore.