The Girl In Red

I am halfway through the junkyard when I hear the voice. At first I think I imagined it.The wind has a way of playing tricks out here. It whistles through broken windows and rattles loose metal panels. More than once tonight I have mistaken ordinary sounds for footsteps. So I keep walking.

Then I hear it again, "Go away." The voice is female, young. The words are soft, almost swallowed by the darkness, but unmistakably real. I stop immediately. Every muscle in my body tightens. "Hello?" My voice echoes faintly between the rows of rusting vehicles.

There is no answer. I slowly turn in a circle, scanning the maze around me. Moonlight glints from shattered glass. Twisted metal casts crooked shadows across the dirt. The junkyard remains silent. Then movement catches my eye, a flash of red. I whip my head toward it.

A young woman stands perhaps thirty yards away between two wrecked vehicles. She looks roughly my age. Long dark hair escapes from beneath the hood of a red sweatshirt. For the briefest moment I can see her pale face staring directly at me. Then she steps backward behind an old pickup truck, and vanishes.

I blink. "What the hell?" I immediately start moving. The narrow corridor between the vehicles twists ahead of me. I round the pickup truck expecting to find her standing on the other side. Nobody is there. The space beyond opens into three different paths winding between rows of wreckage.

I round the pickup truck expecting to find the girl on the other side, but the space beyond it is completely empty. I stop and stare in confusion. The corridor between the vehicles stretches away beneath the moonlight, branching into several narrow pathways formed by rows of rusting cars and trucks.

There is nowhere she could have gone that quickly. She was standing there only seconds ago. I move forward cautiously, scanning every shadow and every gap between the vehicles while the uneasy feeling in my stomach continues to grow.

"Hey!" I call out. My voice echoes softly through the junkyard before being swallowed by silence. No answer comes back. The wind rattles a loose piece of metal somewhere in the darkness, but otherwise the graveyard of abandoned vehicles remains perfectly still. I continue deeper into the maze, weaving between rusted sedans and stripped pickup trucks while keeping my eyes fixed ahead.

Then I see her again. The red hoodie stands out immediately against the dull gray and brown landscape. The young woman is perhaps fifty feet away beside a rusted school bus, and for a brief moment she appears to be watching me. The instant I start toward her, she disappears again.

I break into a jog, my feet kicking up dust as I race toward the bus, convinced I can finally catch her before she slips away. By the time I reach it, however, she is gone. There is no sign of movement, no footsteps, no sound of someone running. The space beyond the bus sits completely deserted beneath the moonlight.

A chill slowly works its way up my spine as I look around. The junkyard suddenly feels larger than it did before, its endless rows of wrecked vehicles stretching away into darkness. The silence feels heavier now as well, and despite every instinct warning me to stop, I find myself continuing forward after the mysterious girl.

The girl appears again several minutes later. This time she stands atop a crushed sedan partially buried in sand. Moonlight illuminates her clearly enough that I can see the shape of her face. She looks frightened, not threatening ir dangerous.

"Wait!" I start toward her. The girl turns and slips behind a wrecked RV before I can call out to her again. I immediately break into a jog, weaving around scattered debris and rusted bumpers, fully expecting to catch her on the other side. Instead, I find nothing.

The narrow corridor beyond the RV stretches away in two different directions between rows of abandoned vehicles, both of them empty. I stop and look around in frustration. She could not have gotten far. There are too many obstacles, too many dead ends, and too little open ground for someone to vanish that completely in only a few seconds.

The pattern repeats itself over and over as I move deeper into the junkyard. Every time I catch sight of her, I see the same thing: a flash of red fabric, a frightened face, and a young woman who appears **** for me to leave. Then she ducks behind a vehicle or disappears around a corner, and by the time I reach the spot she occupied, she is gone again.

The junkyard is large enough to conceal someone who knows its layout, and that explanation makes far more sense than anything else. Whoever she is, she knows these pathways better than I do. She is moving through them with confidence while I stumble after her through unfamiliar terrain, arriving a few seconds too late every single time.

The pursuit continues deeper into the junkyard. I lose track of time. Sometimes I go ten minutes without seeing her. Then suddenly she appears again between two vehicles. Or standing beside a rusted camper. Or watching me from the far end of a corridor formed by stacked cars.

Every sighting lasts only seconds. Every chase ends the same way. The junkyard seems determined to swallow her whole. Eventually I find myself standing in a section of the yard I do not recognize. Rows of vehicles surround me in every direction. The distant fires of the shanty town are no longer visible. Even the road has disappeared.

Was she trying to lead me away from the shanties? For the first time since entering the junkyard, I realize I have absolutely no idea where I am. A knot forms in my stomach. I turn slowly, searching for any familiar landmark.

I take three steps. Then hear the voice one final time. "Please go away." The words come from somewhere nearby. I spin toward the sound so fast that my neck nearly snaps. My eyes search every gap between the vehicles, every shadow beneath the rusted frames, every narrow corridor winding deeper into the junkyard.

There is nobody there. No red hoodie. No frightened young woman. No movement at all. The place where I heard the voice is completely empty. I wait for several seconds, listening for footsteps or the scrape of metal, but nothing follows. Whoever she is, she is gone.

After nearly an hour of chasing glimpses through the maze of wrecked vehicles, I have finally lost her completely.

I slowly take stock of my surroundings. The junkyard stretches endlessly beneath the moonlight, a labyrinth of rusted metal and forgotten lives. Somewhere beyond it lies the open desert. Somewhere in the opposite direction are the distant fires of the shanty town. Neither option feels safe. The girl had repeatedly warned me to leave, but she never once told me where to go.

Now I stand alone among the wreckage, surrounded by the ghosts of other people's mistakes, trying to decide whether to risk the open desert and whatever might still be hunting me out there, or make my way toward the fires and the unsettling promise of other human beings. The wind whistles softly through the junkyard, and for the first time all night, I realize the choice is mine alone.