Lita’s Lane

Table of Contents

I knew I shouldn’t have been driving that night. The bar had been nothing special just cheap beer, stale smoke, a jukebox playing songs from twenty years ago. But I had stayed too long, stayed past the point where the world felt solid under my feet. The bartender had given me that look as I asked for my last round, the one that said you sure? I wasn’t sure, but I nodded anyway.

By the time I got in my car, the night air slapped me, but not hard enough. My head was light, my eyes burned, and the warmth that pooled behind them made the road swim like heat rising from asphalt. Still, I convinced myself it was fine. I wasn’t stumbling. I wasn’t slurring. I just had to make it across town, through the stretch of highway that cut beneath the overpass, and then home. Fifteen minutes. That was the lie I told myself.

The first few miles were quiet. Too quiet. No cars, no trucks, no late-night stragglers. Just me, my headlights, and the hum of tires against blacktop. I rolled the window down, let the cold air slap against my face, tried to stay sharp. Every time the road curved, the guardrails glimmered like dull silver teeth waiting to bite. And then, just before the Lita overpass, it happened. A woman appeared. Not walking. Not crossing. Running—straight at me.

She burst from the shadows at the side of the road, pale arms outstretched, hair flailing like dark water, her face warped into something between a scream and a smile. It happened too fast to think, too fast to process. My body moved before my brain caught up. And instinct told me something insane. Don’t swerve. Drive through.

Every bone in me screamed to yank the wheel, but I didn’t. My foot pressed down instead. The engine roared. Her figure exploded into my headlights, and for a heartbeat I was sure I would hear the crunch of bones, feel the shudder of impact. But she vanished. Not hit. Not thrown. Just… gone.

The bridge railing whipped past my window, closer than I realized. If I had turned, even an inch, I would have gone over. The realization punched the air out of me. My stomach churned. My chest locked up. I slammed the brakes, the tires skidding, rubber burning the night. Somehow, I managed to stop before the railing. The road behind me was empty. No woman. No sound. Just the black mouth of the overpass and the cold hum of my engine.

My hands shook so badly I couldn’t release the wheel. My breath came in ragged bursts. It felt like I had just been spit out of a nightmare. I told myself it was the alcohol. That it had tricked my eyes, made me see what wasn’t there. But the way my heart pounded said otherwise.

I sat there too long, until headlights finally appeared in the distance. That jolted me enough to move. I forced the car back into gear and drove the rest of the way, slow now, every shadow on the roadside twitching in my peripheral vision.

By the time I reached town, the fear had curdled into nausea. I didn’t even drive home. I pulled into the hospital parking lot. I told myself it was just to calm down, to make sure I wasn’t dying of some heart attack or panic episode. But deep down, I wanted to be somewhere that wasn’t alone.

Inside, the waiting room was a graveyard of fluorescent lights. Plastic chairs lined the walls. A TV muttered muted news to nobody. A woman slept in the corner with her arm over her eyes. The air smelled like disinfectant and something coppery underneath. I sat, hands still trembling, head lowered like a guilty child. That’s when a man slid into the chair beside me. Middle-aged. Average face. The kind you forget the second you look away. But his voice was sharp when he spoke.

“You saw her too, didn’t you?”

The words froze me solid. My head snapped toward him.

“What?”

“The woman,”

He said quietly. His eyes fixed on mine with a weight that told me he wasn’t guessing.

“On the overpass. Running at you. You saw her too.”

My throat went dry. I tried to answer, but all I managed was silence. He nodded anyway, as if my silence was enough.

“She almost made you swerve, didn’t she? Almost made you go right over. That’s what she does.”

My jaw clenched so hard it ached. I wanted to ask how he knew. I wanted to ask who the hell are you? But the words died in my chest. The man leaned back, his eyes distant.

“First time I saw her, I thought it was real. I swerved. Barely missed the railing. Second time, I thought I was losing my mind. Third time…”

He trailed off, swallowing hard.

“Third time, I realized she wasn’t after me. She wanted me to pass it on.”

The room felt colder. My skin prickled. Somewhere down the hall, a monitor beeped steadily, like a ticking clock. I forced myself to whisper,

“What happens if you see her a fourth time?”

His head turned slowly. For the first time, I noticed how pale his skin looked under the hospital lights, almost translucent. His lips curved into something that wasn’t quite a smile.

“You don’t make it here,” he said.

And then, he was gone. Not stood up. Not walked away. One blink he was there, the next he wasn’t. The chair beside me sat empty, like it had never been touched. My body moved on instinct. I left the hospital, practically running into the night, refusing to look back at the waiting room. My car felt like the only safe place, but even as I gripped the wheel, the thought gnawed at me:

What if I hadn’t been drunk? What if I had swerved? Would anyone even know what had happened? Or would they just find my car crumpled against the rocks below the bridge, write me off as another accident, another fool who shouldn’t have been driving?

I don’t drink anymore. I don’t drive alone at night. I don’t go near that overpass if I can help it. But sometimes, when I’m in bed, I hear it again. The slap of bare feet on asphalt. The sound of someone running. Always running—straight at me. And I wonder how many more times I have left.