Chapter 6 Gone Without a Trace
The Silent Hitch Hiker
I grew up on kindness, the kind that gets under your skin and stays there, helps the strays, buys a coffee for the stranger behind you, stops when someone looks lost. My mother’s voice was never far from my thoughts, even on a nite black enough that it felt as if the world had fallen off the edge. That's probably why I pulled over on Route 214, with the rain coming down in sheets and my headlights swallowed by the dark. Even when every hair on my neck was screaming not to.
It was the kind of drive you take to get away from your thoughts. The wipers smeared red tail lights into bleeding ghosts, the truck quivering in the wind. Then I saw him, just outside the reach of my brights, thumb pointing skyward, a scarecrow shape in a hooded jacket, face lost to shadow.
I rolled the window down and the rain hissed in.
“Need a ride? I said, and my voice sounded thin to me even.
He nodded, water dripping from his hood, and climbed in without saying a word. The door shut like a coffin lid. He smelled of wet leaves and old earth, the smell of forgotten basements and newly dug graves. He didn’t shiver, didn’t fidget, just sat, his hands folded as neat as prayer.
I tried to break the silence. Where were you headed? You from around here? Maybe you need to call somebody. He said nothing. Just breathe. Slow. Deep. Even. Sometimes I'd see his head turn, not enough to see his eyes but enough to feel him watching.
Mile after mile fell away, the world narrowing to a tunnel of wet light, the thwack of branches against glass. I tried every station, static, every one, as if the air itself refused a song. I started to wish I hadn't stopped, but pride is a stubborn thing. Perhaps he was just tired, I told myself. Maybe he just didn’t like talking.
After an hour he knocked on the window with his knuckle. His first word was:
Here.
Flat voice. No age, no accent, no nothing. The voice you forget the moment you hear it.
I stopped at an intersection, no houses, just black fields and a farmhouse far away, like a shipwrecked lantern. He went out into the rain and walked to the edge of the road. I looked in the rearview, waiting for him to wave or vanish into the dark. But he didn’t go anywhere. He just... vanished. One blink there, the next, gone. As if the nite had swallowed him whole.
The ride home seemed longer. The shadows in the car were closing in. The air was thick and stale. I parked in the driveway and glanced back at the seat, half expecting him to be sitting there, silent and waiting. The chair was vacant. But on the mat, a faint trace of mud, the ghost of a footprint.
I did not sleep. Rain scraped the windows, dreams washed out to sea. I woke with a headache behind my eyes, as if something was trying to claw its way out.
I tried to forget it. I truly did. The following day I saw him in the supermarket again. Or I thought I did. A hooded figure, just a glimpse by the freezers who turned the moment I looked. My heart was pounding in my chest. I chased shadows down the aisle, telling myself it was only the light, only coincidence.
But there he was again, by the pharmacy. By the way out. Always quiet, always out of reach. By the time I reached my car, my hands were shaking so badly I could barely insert the key in the ignition.
That night I saw him in the hallway mirror, a pale reflection behind my own, hood low, watching. I turned. The hall was deserted. My hand came to rest on the glass and the reflection blurred and then was gone, only my own trembling hand remained.
Days melted into days. I saw him everywhere. On the bus, in the busy shops, in the windows of cars driving by. Same face, same quiet. Nobody else ever seemed to notice. I would not sleep for fear he would be waiting for me in my dreams.
One night I called my mother. Tried to tell her about the hitchhiker, how he kept turning up. She listened, slowly, carefully.
“I’ve heard a story like that,” she said. Sometimes you get more than you bargained for. Sometimes you let things go.”
I laughed, but the laughter died fast. Her words lodged in me, sharp as a bone in my throat. I began locking all the doors, closing all the curtains. But that didn't matter. Locks can't keep out what's already inside. He was there, in every mirror, in every corner of my eyes.
One time I tried to speak to him, in desperation. I looked in the mirror and said, ‘What do you want?
He smiled a thin crooked smile that barely moved his lips. And then I looked into his eyes. Black and bottomless and full of hunger and rain. I took a breath. I staggered back, the heart of a trapped bird in my ribs.
The change was noticed. I got in, got jumpy. Nobody called any more. Neighbors crossed over the road. Sometimes I’d see his face looking back at me in their windows. Silent. Standby.
Now I can never be sure I’m alone. Sometimes when I look in the mirror I wonder if the face looking back at me is my own or his. Sometimes I hear footsteps at night. Soft. Purposeful. Never quite reaching my door.
If you ever find yourself driving down a lonely road and see somebody in need, think twice before you stop. Sometimes kindness is a door you cannot close. Sometimes, what you let in is harder to shake than you’d ever think.
He's still here with me. Waiting. As quiet as rain. Sometimes I look in the mirror and I wonder who's the ghost, and who's the living.
Chapter 6: Vanished Without a Trace Room 17
Some places don't really fit. Not during the day. Not during the nite. Where the skin of the world feels stretched thin and if you pressed just a little your finger might slip through—straight into whatever waits on the other side, I never did believe in these places. Not until I rolled into Dunridge, 2:13 a.m., headlights splintering rain, the world a slick, black smear outside the windshield. I was tired. Bone tired, the kind of tired that makes your thoughts rubbery and makes you see faces in the shadows.
That is how it started. One flashing neon sign. A sickly “VACANCY” flashing in the storm. I pulled in like a sleepwalker, the car crunching on broken asphalt, water pooling in the cracks like little black mirrors The motel had the look of something forgotten by everyone but the weather, its paint peeling, its gutters drooling, a line of doors staring back at me like crooked teeth.
Inside the office, a bulb hummed overhead and threw a light the color of old teeth. I picked up my bag and opened the door, splashing through puddles in my boots. The bell over the door rang like laughter, a brittle high sound like bones rattling in a box.
The desk clerk raised his head. Eddie, his label read. His hair was slicked back with something that might have been grease or desperation, and he was the kind of thing you wanted to give a sandwich to. He smiled too widely, all gums and practiced cheer, but his eyes, oh, his eyes, were bright and hungry. As if he hadn't slept for ages.
“Late night, huh?” he asked. His voice was rough with something more than cigarettes.
“That’s a long drive,” I said, my teeth chattering. "Do you have a room?
He slid a key over the counter; his bony fingers lingered a beat too long. Room seventeen. The last in line. The quietest one we got.
There was something in the way he said it that made my skin crawl. Maybe it was the way his eyes flicked up, met mine, then darted away as though he'd seen something he shouldn't have. But I was too tired to give a shit. I handed him my card, scrawled my name in the ledger and took the key.
“Anything you need, just ring,” he said and the smile never left his face. “Enjoy your stay.”
Room 17 lay hidden at the end, half swallowed by a willow tree that leaned in close, its leaves caressing the door like fingers. The number was almost worn away, blurred by rain. Like the door was trying to forget what it was. I turned the key. The lock squealed, like something protesting in its sleep, and I went in.
It was tiny. Smaller than I thought. A bed, a scratched dresser, a TV bolted to the wall (the kind that only gets static). The carpet was stained, the air thick with mildew and something sweeter, metallic, like pennies in a wet palm. But it was dry, and outside the rain tapped a lullaby on the window. I gave in to the dark, letting my bag drop and falling back on the bed.
Voices woke me in the middle of the nite. Soft and overlapping, as if coming from the walls themselves. My name whispered over and over, then laughter low and rich like earth giving way under your feet. My heart beat fast. I sat up, sweat slicking my skin, and checked the lock. Still bolted. I turned on the tv. Static. All channels. The rain fell harder. I tried telling myself it was just the storm, just my mind playing tricks.
But I felt them, eyes, watching me. From the corners, from the ceiling, from under the door, shadowy and still. The air was heavy, breathless, stifling. I dreamed I was drowning. Water pouring from the ceiling, rising around the bed. Cold hands grabbed my ankles. Pale faces peered out from below the surface, mouths open in silent screams.
Silence pressed in. Heavier than before. The rain had stopped but something was holding its breath. I went to the bathroom to wash my hands, and there it was. A dark smudge on the tile behind me, in the shape of a handprint. I turned -- nothing. The mirror. Just the mirror. My face. White. Eyes too wide. Hair plastered to my skin with sweat.
In bed again, I tried to laugh it off. Just nerves. “I’d laugh this morning. But then—three taps. Dull. Measured. The door.
I froze, holding my breath. “Who is this?” My voice sounded like that of someone much younger.
No answer. Only wind. And the willow scraping the siding.
I hid under the covers, waiting for daylight. My heart was thumping like footsteps down an empty hall.
The sun started bleeding through the curtains, so I dressed quickly. No shower, no breakfast, just off. Stuffing my stuff into my bag I ran for the office, the key to Room 17 digging into my palm.
There was Eddie, grinning as wide as always. “Did you sleep well?”
I tried a joke and it was a brittle thing, "Right...funny dreams."
He nodded, eyes glancing at the key. Lucky you. Not everyone checks out of Room 17.”
I glared at him. "What do you mean?
He shrugged and for a second the smile left his face. He looked old, skin pulled tight, eyes bottomless. Some people don't get out. Simply… disappear. Like they’d never been here before.”
I ran, and tossed the key on the counter.
I looked back, hands shaking on the wheel out in the car. For a moment I saw a face in the window of Room 17. A pale face, with black as ink eyes, watching me go. I blinked and it was gone.
I tried to forget but the dreams persisted. Faces at the glass, hands scratching at the walls, voices scraping at the foot of my bed. Sometimes I wake up gasping, thinking I’m still there, the door locked, Eddie’s voice curling around my ear.
Weeks later I searched for the place again. drove the same stretch of highway, checked every curve. Nothing No motels. No trace. Just weeds, and the rusted bones of a sign, half-consumed by wild green.
So, if you’re ever on a lonely road and you see a clerk with a smile just a little too wide—think twice before you take that key.
Rooms are waiting for you.
There are some rooms you can't leave.
Chapter 6: Gone Without a Trace Diner Guy
They tell you nothing ever happens in a small town. That is a lie. Small towns just hide the things that go bump in the nite better. The streets quiet early, save for the ghosts that haunt the sidewalks and the secrets that clatter about in the dark.
I’ve been working the overnight shift at the Maple Lane Diner for six years. Six years of burned coffee, truckers with stories as long as the road, and that low hum from the jukebox that gets stuck in your bones. You learn the shadows. The difference between the common one and the crawling one.
It started, as these things do, on a note so ordinary it made my skin crawl. The rain was coming down in sheets, tapping against the windows like a note from someone on the other side. I was pouring some more coffee for a couple of truckers when the bell over the door gave a weak jingle. I looked around.
He entered.
He was tall, coat dark as a bruise, hair slicked back like he'd just rolled out of a 1950's film. He didn’t look around. He didn’t hesitate. Slipped in and took the last stool. And when he looked at me, looked at me really, my blood froze. His eyes were too pale and his lips too tight, as if he held a secret that would rot the world if he spoke it.
“Late?” I asked. My voice sounded tiny, even to my own ears.
He didn’t flinch. Didn't look at the menu, didn't pay attention to the specials or the lemon meringue pie everyone else said was to die for. Just stared. That gaze pressed against my skin, cold and hungry.
The truckers were gone. Behind him, the dishwasher, Andy, rattled plates. I tried to stay busy, but the silence grew thick and sticky. The third time I cleaned the counter, trying not to notice the guy watching me like I was at the show.
He went out as he had come in, without a word. Just a nod, coat flapping, and away into the rain. I exhale a breath I didn’t know I was holding. Andy was gone the next morning when I came in though. Not just late -- gone. His car was still behind him, keys on the seat. Didn't make it home.
Andy just finally hit the road, I told myself; like he always said he would. But deep down I knew better. There was something in the man's stare that stuck with her, like the taste of old coffee you can't spit out.
The man came back the next night. Same chair. Same deadpan stare. "Coffee?" I asked and he just nodded, barely. I told a joke, one of those that usually gets a laugh even from the graveyard crowd, but it just fell to the floor and died.
He looked at the jukebox, his head tilted as if he could hear music that no one else could hear. And when we closed up, he left. Quiet as a ghost.
The next morning Sue, the morning waitress, didn’t show up. Her phone rang and rang and then went dead. Her apartment was all locked up, purse on the table, breakfast half-eaten, police said. No trace of her. Nothing but the silence.
Then the stories started. The cook swore he’d seen the man outside at dawn, just standing there in the lot watching. The regulars began whispering he was a ghost, or worse. Each nite he returned. Ate never. I didn't drink. Just sat down. Watching.
I had started to fear the dark. Started messing up orders. I couldn't sleep. I would wake, gasping, thinking of those eyes, too bright, too wide, burning through the glass.
One night, nerves shot, I finally spoke. The rain was loud, and the clock was approaching midnight. He and I were the only people in the diner.
"Why do you come here?" I asked. My voice sounded like somebody else's voice. “Wat wilt u ?”
He cocked his head and looked me over. For a moment there was a glimmer in his eyes. Hunger, maybe. Or desperation.
"I like to watch," he said, voice like the bottom of a well. “People come and go. Some leave. Some... continue."
He grinned. Too many teeth. Way too much.
“Where are they?” I said softly. Andy, Sue, all the others whose faces stared out from missing posters by the register.
He stood up, his coat flying open to show a shirt blacker than midnight. “Dead,” he told them. “They’re dead.”
He went away. The bell over the door clanged three times. My heart pounded as I stood frozen.
I thought about calling the cops but what do I say? Guy turns up, guy doesn't eat, people gone? They'd laugh at me off the phone.
That night I closed up early. Turned the lights off. Hide behind the counter. Knees knocking. The bell sounded. I heard heavy footfalls outside, but the door never opened. A shiver on my neck, a breath in my ear:
“Soon. “Your time will come.”
Dawn found me on the ground, shaking. My keys were missing. My phone was flat. I stumbled out into the bruised light of morning and saw something dark and sticky smeared on the wall: "WATCHING."
That day I gave up. I packed a bag, and hit the road. But sometimes, late at nite, I see him sitting in a diner window or walking down some deserted street. Sometimes I hear the bell ring three times. And I know somebody else will disappear.
If you ever work the nite shift, and a man with a silent face takes the last seat at the counter, don't look at him. No questions. No lingering after closing. Some of the customers are just passing by. Some want somebody to take along with them when they go.
Chapter 6: Missing Without a Trace
The Other
You don't think about crowds until you're in the middle of them, just another face in the churn, pressed between strangers, everyone shoulder-to-shoulder with their own secrets, their own private aches. That was how it was for me, that summer festival day, the air thick with the sweet stink of fried dough, the far off thump of bass like a heartbeat you couldn’t quite capture.
I have always liked crowds. I was safe, in the crowd, invisible. Anonymous, age 13. That’s why it hurt so much when I was pulled out of it—singled out, exposed, as if all eyes had turned and found me wanting.
It was fast. I was just looking at the fountain. Vendors sold glow sticks that pulsed anemone-bright in the dusk, and parents followed small children shrieking for candy. As the sun sank and the crowd seemed to thicken, I felt a hand on my shoulder. Soft yet strong. The kind of touch that says, pay attention, but don’t freak out. It's that kind of touch, before they say something you don't want to hear.
I turned, expecting to see a friend. Or someone who had been lost and needed directions.
But the face - God, the face - was a mess. Static, but a living sort. Not old, not young, really. Not really nice, but not mean. Unplaceable, like a face you almost know in a dream, but wake up forgetting.
The stranger leaned in, his breath hot and insistent against my ear.
They whispered. So quiet it was more a feeling than a sound. "They're watching you. “Don’t let them see you go. “Don’t have them remember your face.
The stranger was gone before I could answer, before I could even ask what the hell they meant. Flowed back into the flow. I turned around and looked, but all I found were strangers, faces that swirled if I stared too hard, eyes that skittered away from mine.
My heart pounded in my chest. I tried to laugh. I tried to put it down to festival weirdness, but panic crept cold up my spine. I got out of there early, suddenly realizing how exposed I was. I kept looking back, waiting to see that face, but there was only shadow and the sound of the words.
When I got home I locked the door and drew the curtains tight. “They're watching you.” That warning kept echoing in my head. Who were they? Why me?” I sat on the couch trying to remember the stranger's face, but it was slippery, like my mind was oiling it up, pushing it away.
That’s when the weirdness began. I flicked through the festival photos on my phone - half my selfies were blurry, the backgrounds distorted, my smile contorted into something I didn’t recognize. In group shots people's faces were smudged, as if someone had rubbed them out with a thumb. I watched a video I had no memory of filming. A whirling, sickening sweep of the crowd, then a flash, a white face grinning, gone before I could stop.
I staggered into the bathroom, stared at the mirror. For a moment my own face seemed wrong, eyes too wide, mouth twitching as it had never twitched before. I splashed water on myself. Told myself it was just nerves, a joke, mistaken identity.
But as the night wore on things got stranger. The lights flickered. Voices hummed in the fridge. The street outside was empty, but in the reflection of the window I saw shapes—watchers—always just out of sight.
I tried ringing a friend. The line snapped. Her voice was far away, garbled, as if she were talking from under water. “I saw you at the festival,” she said, “but I don’t remember what you were wearing. Or who you were with. You looked... changed." The call was dropped.
Sleep was fitful, haunted by dreams of the crowd pressing in, hands reaching, faces featureless and whispering secrets I forgot on waking. Every time I woke up I felt more and more like not-me. It was like being pulled through my memories one by one.
The next morning I went to work, hoping to get back to normalcy. But there was a space. My boss called me by the wrong name. My colleagues would not meet my eyes. I flashed my ID badge at lunch. My face was there, but the name was wrong, the letters crawling under the light.
That afternoon I saw the stranger again, or someone like him, a figure in the crowd outside my office, looking down, waiting for me to notice. The more I tried to focus the more their faces blurred. I followed, ravenous for answers, but they turned a corner and disappeared. My heart beat loudly in the void they had left behind.
Things fell apart at home. Faces in the TV static, mouths in soundless warnings. My bathroom mirror lagged behind my movements, smiled when I didn’t. My phone buzzed with texts from numbers I had no idea:
Are you still you?
“Don't look outside.”
That night I heard slow, deliberate footsteps in the hall, and they stopped at my door. I held my breath, trying to make myself invisible. The knob was turned. The door didn’t open. A whisper through the crack, same voice as before:
They are nearly here.
I wanted to scream, to run. But I was frozen, nailed to the mattress. It got cold in the room, shadows stretched, brushed my skin. I remembered the warning: never let them remember your face. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to fuzz myself out, trying to let my memories wash over me like the faces on my phone.
I woke to sunshine, the world painfully normal. But nobody at work knew my name. My friends said nothing. I saw a stranger smiling back at me in the mirror.
Now I walk the city at night, afraid of crowds, afraid to be alone. Sometimes I catch the warning stranger out of the corner of my eye—always watching, always about to speak. And sometimes I wonder if I'm still me, or just another face in the blur, waiting to pass on the warning.
If you're in a crowd and you feel a hand on your shoulder, if a stranger whispers a warning you can't quite remember - listen. And whatever you do, don't let them see your face.
Chapter 6: Vanished Without A Trace
The House that Vanished
In the suburbs everything is built to be alike. That’s the lie they tell you when they sell you the mortgage, the same kind of lie you tell yourself on sleepless nights. I thought I had that sameness down pat, every mailbox, every peeling shingle, every stubborn weed pushing up through the cracks on Maple Row. So when the new house came the next morning it felt like somebody had pushed a splinter into my brain. A pale blue Victorian with a wrap-around porch and flower boxes in riotous bloom sitting at the end of the cul-de-sac like it had always been there. Only it hadn't.
No building crews. No trucks. No dust or hammering at nite. I would’ve heard, I would’ve known. I walk my dog, Max, every damn evening. I asked Mrs. Baxter about it. She just looked at me like I'd farted at a funeral. It’s always been there,” she said, voice too bright, eyes jittery like a squirrel in a traffic jam. “Funny the things you forget. She laughed, but it was the wrong laugh. like a tape running backward.
By noon the rumor had gone metastatic. People huddled on the sidewalk, pointing and whispering. The house was too perfect. Fresh paint, glass that gleamed, a red door that looked as if it had never been touched by greasy hands or bad news. The SOLD sign winked in the sun. The real estate agent's name was gibberish, like a typo or a curse.
No one dared to come near. The kids cheered each other on but even they didn't have the guts. Max wouldn’t go near it, whimpering, tail between his legs, leash tight as a fiddle string.
Then, mid-afternoon, the curtains stirred. The door flew open. A couple floated out, teeth and politeness, waving like politicians at a parade. “Hey, neighbors!” The man’s voice was syrupy, warm. “We are the Thompsons! “Come in and say hello!” They looked normal, but normal like mannequins are normal. Too slick. Well done.
Mrs. Baxter came out with cookies, fresh from the oven. That was the last time I’d seen her. Then came others: Mr White, the twins Harris, old Tom the postman with his bag slung over one shoulder. The door shut behind them. A little too loud, laughter bubbled out.
I waited for them to come back out, to tell stories, and spread rumors about the new arrivals. But nobody came back. The sun was bleeding out behind the trees, and through the house's golden windows I saw shadows moving, faces pressed to the glass, smiles too wide, eyes shining like wet marbles. I waved my hand. No one waved back at him.
The next morning the house was gone.
Enough.
No porch, no flower boxes, not a shingle left. The grass was flat, untroubled as if nothing had ever been there. Max whimpered at the door. The "SOLD" sign was also missing. Mrs. Baxter’s house was quiet and dark. The Harris twins' bikes, untouched. Tom’s mailbag, still on the step, unopened.
I phoned the police. They took notes, shrugged, looked at me as if I had lost my mind. “People move,” said the officer, his voice brittle. He wouldn't look me in the eye.
I tried to get over it. I couldn't. I trawled the internet, chasing legends and urban myths – houses that appear and disappear, doors that lead nowhere, neighbors who vanish like spilled water. All I found was ravings, warnings, crazy late nite posts.
I began to watch the empty lot. It came back two nights later.
This time the house was yellow, with green shutters. New faces, new couple, same bright voices. “Hello, friends!” they yelled, and the words went straight under my skin. More neighbors came in. The Patels, the Nguyen girl, the pastor from down the road. The door shut. The house was lit up like something from a fever dream. Gone by morning. And so they were.
I didn't go to work anymore. I watched. I waited. I was obsessed. The next one was white with red trim. This time I was ready. I saw new faces coming into the windows, faces I should have recognized but didn't.
Max and I crept out at midnight. Light poured from every seam of the house, making it shimmer. The porch was stickied with my feet, the air thick and sweet, like rotting peaches. Voices called my name, softly, gently, from inside.
I twisted the knob. I entered.
The foyer was endless, doors pulsed, breathed in the dark. At the far end stood the couple, hands clasped, eyes black as oil, a grin stretching.
“Welcome,” they said in perfect unison. “We’re waiting for you.
I tried to escape. The door was missing. The foyer stretched out and took me over. Faces pushed out of the walls, neighbors, mouths open in silent screams, eyes pleading. I clawed at the wallpaper, but it slid beneath my fingers, sticky and alive.
“You’re one of us now,” the woman whispered, her lips barely moving. “Everybody belongs somewhere.”
I shouted. I struggled. The house pulsed, hungry, and I was pulled inside. Somehow, someway, I got out. Max barked as I stepped outside, the house behind me flickering like a dying TV signal. Then it was over.
Now I look down Maple Row, waiting for the next house to appear. The street is empty and quiet and hollow. In the middle of the night I hear the laughter of empty lots, see faces in the windows that shouldn't be there.
If you ever notice a new house in your neighborhood, with neighbors you've never met before, and a door that seems just a bit too welcoming—don't go inside. There are places that do not wish to be visited. Some places want you to stay forever.
About the Author
I’ve always loved horror, the supernatural and the paranormal since I was a kid. I really love writing scary stories about monsters, creatures and haunted places.
I was raised in a haunted house, along with my family. My older sister and I would often hear a little girl's voice singing softly in the basement, "Jesus loves me." I know, it sounds unbelievable, but we witnessed it together.
I hope you have enjoyed reading these short stories and that they give you the creeps until the next scare comes along.