June 8, 1931

Only twenty thousand more years of working the graveyard shift before I can afford to get out of this backward town.

Thomas felt like his life had already been lived. Each day was just a dull repeat of the one before. All of his boyhood dreams seemed as far off as ever, and now at twenty-two, he felt like an old man resigned and settled in his day-to-day ways. His future was like a straight road before him leading to nowhere interesting.

Cinder Creek was a town of about nine hundred people. The filling station was an outpost and the last desperate stop before the prairies that stretched beyond for miles (not that the miles leading to the town were that populated either). It was just a small town on a plain road that was more of a means to an end than an actual thriving place. Tired and cranky drivers would have to get gas at the station before continuing on the flat road leading to anywhere but here.

“How far to the next town?” they might ask.

“Why is it so deserted out here?” they might also ask.

“What is a young person like you doing working at such a dump?” they would for sure ask (sometimes with a sneer).

Yes, Thomas endured the monotony of the questions, and all that they implied about him. Most people didn’t even bother to speak to him. He was the unimportant attendant, barely worth a glance. No one cared if he had hopes and dreams like they did. They just plunked their money down on the counter and that was that. He felt every bit as backward as the town, but at least it was a job. He was saving for his big dream. The world would one day know who Thomas was. He would be the one in his family to finally break out of this monotonous life. And yet, a familiar heaviness settled over him whenever he watched people drive onward into the future, while he remained stranded in Cinder Creek.

On this particular night, June 8, 1931, Thomas yet again was working the graveyard shift. He sat eyeing the clock that never seemed to move in his favor, while he waited for the one or two cranky potential customers who might or might not stop for a fill-up.

Seated behind the counter, Thomas stacked chewing gum packages this way and that. Then, he would knock the stack down and start over again.

Headlights caught his attention. A Ford coupe slowly turned into the filling station drive and parked at the pumps. Thomas couldn’t see very well as a light rain had started to fall. It made a sort of mist in the moonlight.

After a few minutes, he decided to run out there to see if they wanted service. Thomas hesitantly approached the passenger-side window. It was so dark inside the car, strangely so, that he couldn’t see in very well. No one seemed to answer him when he asked if they needed any help, so he jogged back inside. He grabbed a cloth from behind the counter and wiped his wet hair.

Hmm. Weird.

Thomas resumed his seat and grabbed his book. A few minutes later he looked up to see if anything was happening with the car. He jumped with such a start that he almost fell off his chair. Just outside the window stood a tall, thin man, wet from the rain and plainly dressed with a cap on his narrow, severe head. His arms hung at his sides like two limp fish. He stared through the window at Thomas with a gaze that was somehow vacant and piercing at once. His nose was almost touching the glass.

Thomas liked to think he was as manly and brave as the next guy, but this man creeped him out. Thomas hesitantly approached the window, “Do you need help filling your car?”

The man continued to stare. “Do you need any help, sir?” Thomas was putting off going outside to help. There was something about this man that seemed unstable. After a minute of the two men staring at each other through the station window, Thomas ventured to say, “I…I can come out and help you if you need me to.”

The man finally spoke, “Come.”

Thomas didn’t like this at all. More than ever he now wanted a few normal, cranky drivers to show up so that he wasn’t alone.

The man spoke again, “Come.”

His hand involuntarily went to his pocket and felt that his pocketknife was indeed there, which was reassuring. He walked toward the door as slowly and as politely as possible. He finally popped his head out the door, but the man was still staring through the window at the place where Thomas had been standing.

“Sir?”

The man slowly turned his head while his body still faced the window. Then, he turned his body. It was done in such a stiff manner, as though an unseen hand was doing it for him.

“Come.”

The man shuffled slowly and methodically toward the car. Thomas followed at a safe distance. The man silently opened the passenger-side door and stood to the side in the same limp fashion as he stood in the window. He seemed to be silently directing Thomas to look inside the car, so he reluctantly leaned closer. An old newspaper lay unfolded upon the seat. Across the top, an enormous headline read THIRTY YEARS SINCE THE CINDER CREEK MURDER: KILLER NEVER FOUND and an even larger picture of the very man who was standing next to him!

Thomas felt frozen to the ground in the damp drizzle. His eyes finally broke from staring at the newspaper and moved toward the backseat where he now noticed a lifeless body of a woman in a blood-stained dress. Her light blonde hair was strewn about on the seat. There were marks on her neck as if she had been strangled, then cut with a knife across her throat. In spite of all the apparent violence done to her, she looked more like a waxwork than a human.

Thomas could feel the blood rising in his veins and his ears throbbed. He felt like he had seen this young lady before, but how could he have? He instinctively picked up the paper and started reading in disbelief.

Thomas Morris, formerly of Cinder Creek, is believed to be the killer of victim Carrie Myers of Arkansas. Miss Myers was traveling to see family, but never arrived. Authorities are still searching for Morris in connection with this murder and several others…

Thomas slowly looked up to meet the gaze of the stranger and saw nothing. He was gone! The car was missing. The girl was missing. Even the newspaper that he was holding in his hand was missing!

The sun was just coming up over the horizon signaling the end of his shift. The drizzle came to a stop. Thomas walked back into the station, stunned by the night’s events. He stood behind the counter bewildered. For so long he had been frustrated with his dead-end job and his own obscurity in a nothing-town. Could it be that he went on to gain infamy as a serial killer? The thought was monstrous. Yet beneath his horror, something else stirred: a sickening flicker of the pride of being recognized.

His hand went to his knife in his pocket. He slowly drew it out and set it on the counter, staring at it as though it were no longer an ordinary object. He snatched it, pocketing it again, and went home to sleep.

His next shift started as all the others had. The events of the previous night now seemed like they had happened to another person, and yet, he had lived through the strange encounter. Thomas hardly noticed that a car had pulled in. The station door opened, and the sound of the bell above it broke Thomas from his dark musings. A young lady walked up to the counter.

Thomas immediately recognized that light blonde hair. It was was lady from the backseat!

“Thank goodness you’re open!” She said, “I have been driving for miles, and I wasn’t sure that I would make it to a filling station before running out of gas. Getting stranded out here must be like a death wish.”

Her words hung in the air.

A death wish.

“Could you help me fill up my car? I also thought that I heard a strange knocking sound near the engine. I hope nothing is going to break before I make it home to Arkansas.”

For an instant, the tall stranger appeared in the window. He stood where Thomas had seen him the night before, wearing the same cap and the same vacant, piercing expression.

“Sir?” Carrie asked.

Thomas blinked, and the figure disappeared.

Thomas studied her face. He had but a moment to decide. His fingers tightened around the knife in his pocket. He could warn her to run. He could simply help her and let her go.

Thomas stepped out from behind the counter and opened the door for her and simply said, “Come.”