The "Real World"

Tom groaned at the radio, the drive across the mountains was turning out to be a pain. The only radio station in this section was a weather channel being broadcast from the line of fire towers running along the ridge over the highway. He had graduated last year and done an internship in Portland, now he was going to start his new job outside of Phoenix. He just had to make the drive. That turned out to be the hardest part so far…

“Why the fuck can’t I even get a god forsaken country station?” Tom growled.

Time to think had become Tom’s enemy, ever since his girlfriend and her roommate had disappeared two years ago… She had been driving with her roommate to try and find the roommate’s boyfriend when he disappeared one winter night in the woods between University of Maine and University of Boston… They had found the two cars along the side of the road in the middle of nowhere with no one around.

“Shit,” Tom moaned, “That fucking night…”

Of course the police had contacted him, but since he was taking a test at the time it happened, he was not a suspect, and Kelly’s family had shared what the police had found with him.

“Let’s see here, how much further to the motel?” Tom said aloud as he tried to get his mind off his missing girlfriend.

Tom reached down and grabbed his phone out of the cup holder and looked at the screen. The directions on the map app said that his next turn was in two hours, and that was the turn into the town that motel was in. Tom looked over the hills and saw the sun resting low.

“Shit…”

*

The sun was now completely over the ridge to the west. Tom was still an hour away from the town. Tom blinked twice, a curve in the road appeared on the horizon in front of him with a massive fog bank surrounding it. Tom slowed down and pulled over to the side of the road. He looked around and there was no lights from the road, but Tom arched an eyebrow. Ahead of him was a lake with a stone foot bridge. The road banked around to the left, but there was a fog enshrouded lake in front of him. He could barely see a large something in the fog in the center of the fog bank.