Highway E105

 I went out, looked at the door, and there was not a dent, but a gap, as if the rebar had been inserted and passed. The men who were in the parking lot crowded around when they saw the case, and they told him everything.

It is rumored that sometimes human bones are found in the swamps, piled up and gnawed white. And when a whole group of foreign tourists disappeared here, the cops raided the forests. We walked for a long time, until finally we found the bones sucked. And among them is a nail sharpener, which is made behind bars. By the way, there were no incidents for a long time after those events. I guess I've had enough.

That's the way it is, San. I'm not going to lie – I haven't seen anything like this myself for as long as I've been traveling. Sometimes something glittered in the headlights, but it could be foxes or wolves, they still roam here. And one day I caught a glimpse of something running across the road. It was as big as a man, but it moved like an animal. Maybe a wolf, or maybe one of these…

Anyway, no one has been missing here for a long time and no empty cars have been found, for three or four years. Either it has subsided, or everyone is lying. One thing scares me, if these creatures are real, they're probably hungry..."

I listened to this guy, to the steady rocking of the cabin, while simultaneously struggling with sleep. It's creepy, of course, to imagine such a thing at night, but so tired after those few hours on foot, my body fell into a doze with pleasure. The driver continued to tell stories and sluggishly answering him, I was already leaning against the window and starting to take a nap. Road signs, trees, poles, and the occasional oncoming car whizzed by, doing nothing to dilute the emptiness of the night highway.

Half asleep, I had been watching the glare for several minutes floating among the trees. It was like the light of the moon falling on the bike's retroreflectors.…

You know, I'm not the timid type. I've heard worse stories and even practically participated. But then I had a cramp. The longing trucker continued his stream of speech, and I was horrified to see two huge glowing eyes in the thicket, moving parallel to our car and staring at me with their attentive and very... hungry gaze.

Chilled to the bone, I turned to the driver, noticing that he had abruptly stopped talking and was staring at the road.…

The silhouette on the side of the road was rapidly approaching, and I was torn between two feelings: to shrink into the seat and become invisible, and at the same time to cling to the glass and see, as far as possible in the dark, this voting person when we pass by.

"Oh, Sanya, how lucky you are that I picked you up," the driver muttered then, without taking his eyes off the creepy figure. Most of all, she looked like a cat staring at you from the dark, with the light from a flashlight reflected in her eyes. Our truck was moving at a decent speed, which was a little reassuring, but at the same time we drove so fast that everything turned into a blur. And somewhere on the edge of hearing, I heard a disappointed howl.

"Our..."

Something was puffing right next to my door. I looked out the window and…

"Drop us off... we won't touch you... he's ours... our prey... why did you pick him up..."

This story was told to me by a trucker when I was hitchhiking in the north of our homeland. He picked me up on the E105 highway in the Murmansk region, between Monchegorsk and Pyrenga. By that time, I had already been stomping for four hours, it was dark, there was a forest around, there was some kind of reserve, I don't remember the name anymore. It's late afternoon, and the cars aren't in a hurry to slow down, even more so, they gasped at the sight of me, as if they wanted to get out as soon as possible. And only this trucker probably regretted it, and even then it was kind of strange: he stopped a hundred meters ahead, leaned out of the passenger window and pointed a flashlight at me. The sun had already sunk below the horizon, of course, but it wasn't exactly dark. And he didn't take his eyes off me the whole way that I was stomping to the car.

I came up, he wouldn't open the door, we exchanged a few words, he looked at me suspiciously, and then, for no reason at all, he told a joke. And I was tired, but this guy was so endearing to himself, and even more so, the warm cabin of his Mercedes, that at first I laughed out of politeness, and then I actually doubled over with laughter. As soon as he saw it, he opened the door, "get in," he says.

We started moving, and he looked at me askance, and we chatted about various things, and I even got a little nervous. And then he asks me straight out what I've been doing here. I tell him that I want to hitchhike to the Barents Sea, but I was delayed on the highway because no one picked me up. Then this guy grinned and said that I was lucky that he found me. Well, and then from his words:

"The roadside empties out after sunset, San. Local villagers, urban residents, only fly through this area by car and do not stop. And while it's still light, the voters are being selected, but that's if they're familiar. I'm from Murmansk, I know the place well, I've traveled all over the region. And if someone sees a pedestrian on the side of the road, he pushes his shoe into the floor and skips by. We have a story that this is not an ordinary passenger. Well, as a story, the village grandmothers will tell you what you want, it depends on the skill, the legend is rather local and I've heard it since childhood.

In general, they wander here in the evenings, until midnight, along the road. You can't make out what they look like in the dark, but no one has the courage to stop and look closely. Those who have enough will not tell. They're called fellow travelers, and they've been wandering for half a hundred years, probably.

There were sawmills here, under the Communists, the place was cleaned for interchanges and branches were made from the highway. Special components were brought from all over the Chernozem region. The places are remote, you can't get to settlements without a map more often, so they didn't keep much watch over the camps. Where are you going from here? So one day we missed an entire shift at the sawmill.

Twelve people disappeared as they had not been. They rushed to look for them, the sailors from the base were pulled up, the forest was combed, and after about a week they began to catch them one by one. The prisoners, they are only united in front of the camp administration, as soon as they are outside, everyone begins to pull the blanket over themselves. So they quarreled in the woods, scattered one by one. Four of them really stuck to each other, three old and one young. And this young man was not easy, the son of some party member, he made a frivolous noise, but did not smear the folder. He was about five years old, I think, and the Urks managed to talk him out of it.

At that time, a warning went out in the newspapers of the nearest cities, saying that there were no mushrooms or berries in the forests, otherwise you never know. The orientation points for the departments were posted. And when they began to find them, they calmed down. Well, how did the newspapermen calm down, and those who were not directly involved in the search? San, there was such a thing that captured loners told creepy things about morals.

these three, the oldest urkagans. And every next one gets scarier. When, apart from those four, the others were caught, the cops ran around like they'd been shot.

Do you know who is called "canned food" in the camps? That's it. Are you getting it now? The last one they caught told them that the grub was over, the three instigators began to look at their NZ, that's why the others ran away, they felt sick themselves. The folder of that kid howled, personally wandered through the woods with the search engines. And not a word in the newspapers, so as not to cause panic.

They found him, anyway. I managed to overcome my hunger earlier. And the scariest thing is that they literally didn't get a kilometer to the highway. They would have gotten themselves something to eat there. After that, the authorities secretly ordered them to be nailed on the spot. And they did shoot after a couple of days. They hid in the swamps, they thought that they would not be searched much there. They were having a meal when the sailors jumped out at them, they didn't even have time to gnaw the bones properly. The bodies were loaded onto an all-terrain vehicle and taken to the city, and it just fell into the quagmire. The driver barely managed to jump out. So they left them in the swamp.

And after a couple of seasons, people began to disappear in the area. Those who walked along the road in the evening are on the missing persons lists. People started to be cautious, stopped walking here, everything seemed to calm down for a year, and then they began to find empty cars on the side of the road. Everything is as one – with its nose in the ground, as if it jumped off the road at speed, the doors are wide open, things are overturned and there is no trace around.

They attacked the raiders, patrolled, ambushed, but to no avail. And the people around are not the police, it's not shameful to believe in devilry. Therefore, when rumors about strange people standing on the night road started, they immediately realized everything. Then they almost stopped finding empty cars, no one stops. It rarely happens, but all the rooms there are not local.

Those who have skipped past this devilry say that when the light hits their eyes, you can immediately see that there is not a person there, because they glow like two saucers. And the longer they go without food, the wider their eyes get. That's why I was looking into your eyes, checking.

And another driver, from Murmansk, said that he unknowingly braked the truck once at night. He was saved by the fact that the cabin was high, and he couldn't reach the window right away. Just as he was about to roll down the window to talk, that's how I am with you, and this creature is already standing at the door. It's dark, you can't see anything, and she says to him, "Open up, man, I beg you from the bottom of my heart." The driver crossed himself, fired up his cart at once and drove off into the distance. He says that people don't wheeze like that and they don't look at you out of the dark like wolves. When he started to turn off the gas, it hit his door like a bang, it was good – metal, this creature did not reach the window. The glass would have crumbled at once. He raced for a long time, and did not sleep a wink until the morning. At first light, I found a parking lot where people were, and I got up there.

A wheezing, growling, breathless voice came from the other side of the cabin. Exactly the same shadow as mine under the door was hopping after the truck and demanding to speak to the trucker. The man frowned, pursed his lips and just turned on the gas, forcing the creatures to stay.

They drove on in oppressive silence until the trucker gasped and pressed the horn button. I jumped at the deafening horn and peered into the distance. A car rushing to the left suddenly swerved to the side and I managed to see a shadow flash right in front of it, jumping out to intercept. Jumping into oncoming traffic, she barely managed to avoid a head-on collision, in a lighted

In the cabin, a man and a woman, judging by the horror on their faces, were already saying goodbye to their lives. Children's hands clung to the back of the driver's seat…

He braked right in the middle of the road.…

The trucker and I exchanged glances, and the first impulse to stop and intervene immediately passed when the side mirrors finally reflected what was happening around the unfortunate's car.