An Evening With A Shadow

Alba is driving down the Apache Trail in his Mitsubishi Mirage. The sun already set in draping the whole area with pitch-black darkness.

In the morning he parked his car at 3 Mile Wash and hiked along upstream Apache Trail. A few moments later he got a lift in a truck of local farmer to Salt River Canyon, his starting point. He started his traverse from the junction of Salt River and Highway 288 along the northern bank and finished mapping up to Theodore Roosevelt Dam Whole day was pretty boring. During the majority of the traverse, he found the area was filled with loose alluvial fan deposits except for a short patch of Basaltic rock of Hickey Formation. He had mapped the Basalt outcrop and took a few samples of basalt with him in his rucksack. He would have finished much early but the lunch with the old couple, whom he met at Salome Cove, had eaten nearly two hours of his day time. The old lady was riding a black stallion whom she named "Nero", and her husband was on the foot. They saw Alba was biting his sandwiches sitting on a boulder with a huge rucksack on his back. Something in Alba, maybe his childish face or the manner he was sitting and taking his lunch, made the old lady invite him for lunch with them. Generally this time of year it's pretty hot in this part of Arizona. Alba was also exhausted from the traverse and the samples in his back made multiplied the problem. So when he got invited, he didn't refuse. Indeed, the lunch proved to be delicious, especially the Albondigas soup.

The continual rolling sound of the car made him a little drowsy. He turned on the radio to recover from drowsiness. Wow! It's John Denver, singing "Country Roads, Take Me Home. He started singing in loud with Denver just to keep his eye open.

Suddenly at the curve, "What the hell!!!"What's that???"

A shadow of a hand, as if it's telling him to stop. But instead of getting scared, he got confused at first. He thinks he might be hallucinating due to his sleepy head.

But again at the second curve the same thing. This time he sees the shadow of someone's palm telling him to stop. He increased pressure on the accelerator, the engine roared and speed increased 80 miles per hour. Generally, at this ungodly hour, Apache Trail becomes deserted, but Alba never faces this scary kind of situation ever. He nearly completed three and a half months in this area. Sometimes he had driven in Apache Trail late nights, at very early morning and two weeks back when his right side back tire got flat in the middle of the night, he slogged entire 3 miles through this road before getting a lift. But nothing happed He dangerously maneuvered through curves and at each curve he saw the same sight. After 20 minutes of intense driving, a burning smell due to the excessive clutch-plate heating filled the car. He stopped the car. His heart is throbbing as if it will pop out of his mouth, his breath becomes shallow and rapid, an eerie sensation of numbness bit his legs. He is unable to move a single inch from his seat. 5 seconds, 10 seconds, 20 seconds passed by. As time passes by, numbness gets more intense. Somehow he gathers strength from the last drop of his blood and comes out of the car taking only the map, that he prepared through these 3 months of hard-working, with him. With a trembled leg he walks to the front.

He is blank and has no idea what is waiting for him there. Except for the beam of the headlight and that unearthly shadow, the whole universe has plunged into pitch-black darkness. He tried to shout, but not a single word comes out of his mouth. 

He somehow reached the front of the car. He felt he walked thousands of miles from the driver seat to the front of the car. He tries to find the origin of the shadow and look at the headlights.

"Wait, What is it?"

To his astonishment, he sees an insect-like creature inside the headlight chamber. With a closer look, he finds out that a moth somehow finds its path into the chamber of the headlight and got fried by the heat of the bulb. It got attached at the surface of the bulb, and its shadow at every corner seems like a shadow of a hand. He wants to laugh out loud but controlled his emotion.

He felt like his fever got away with a lot of sweat. Suddenly he felt that he is full of energy. He jumped into the driver seat and without wasting any moment he starts the car drove out of there.