Nancy kept her eyes shut until her face began to twitch. She slowly opened one eye, fearing to find the creature still right in front of her but it was gone. Nothing was in the headlights but a dirt road with woods on either side.

Cautiously Nancy unfurled her fingers from either side of the steering wheel and slackened her shaking arms. She dared to turn her head to look out the windows but it the sun had gone down long ago and the woods were too dark to see through. Nancy risked looking behind her to see if Robbie had just played a cruel prank on her and was silently laughing at her fear in the backseat. But it was still empty. Turning back to the driver side window, she rolled the glass down and let the cool night air wash over her trembling body.

“R-Robbie? If t-this is a joke, I’m leaving you right here,” Nancy’s quivering voice called into the darkness. She heard nothing. Absolutely nothing. No squirrel’s feet scampering over dead leaves, no bird’s wings beating against the chill, nothing. “Fine, I’m leaving!”

Gripping the keys, Nancy turned them. Nothing happened. She tried again with still the same result. She took them out, inspected them, and tried once more but again nothing happened. The engine didn’t even turn over. The battery didn’t click. Nothing in the car worked, except the headlights, which still illuminated the same spot of dirt road.

Nancy took a breath to calm her nerves and took stock of her situation: Robbie was missing. Her car was dead. And possibly something was out there. But it couldn’t be a monster. It was probably Robbie playing a prank on her. All that talk about the Twilight Zone was just to get her hyped up then scare the daylights out of her with whatever this was. He was probably hiding behind a tree, watching her freak out.

At this thought, Nancy’s fear turned to anger. How dare he? Why would Robbie think this is funny? It’s just stupid and immature and—and—not nice! And he thought she was just going to wait in the middle of the road with a dead car until he decided she’d had enough? Scowling, Nancy got out of the car, ready to go hunt that boy down. As she slammed the driver door with enough forced to rattle the window, something suddenly appeared next to her out of nowhere.

“Nancy!” Robbie abruptly materialized at her elbow. She let out a shriek before her friend covered her mouth. “SHH! We need to go!”

“What is going on?” Nancy tore his hands away, her anger bubbling over. “What the hell happened to you? What did you do to my car? And why are you so dirty?”

Robbie couldn’t keep still next to her. His eyes were darting around the dark trees and he kept pulling Nancy away from the car. His normally combed hair was sticking up at odd ends and his jeans were ripped and covered in dirt.

“We need to go,” Robbie repeated. “We need to get away.” He backed off the road, into the woods, still holding Nancy’s wrist. “We need to go.”

“Hey--stop that, Robbie--let go.” Nancy squirmed in his grip but he kept pulling her deeper into the woods. “What’s going on?”

“We need to get away!” Robbie shouted. He began to run and Nancy managed to escape from his loosened hold. She tried running after him but suddenly realized they were deeper into the woods than she thought. She looked behind her, expecting to see the car’s headlights on the road but only darkness was there. Did they go further into the woods than she thought? Turning again, Nancy couldn’t remember which was Robbie ran into the blackness. She spun around but every direction looked the same, the same darkness greeted her, the same outline of the same trees, the same woods.

“Robbie!” Nancy twisted once more, shouting in perhaps the same direction as before. “Robbie!” She turned. She was becoming more desperate. “Robbie!” Where was he? "Robbie!" Everything looked similar, too similar. Where had she come from? Where was the road? What was that creature? Where was her car? Where was—

“Robbie!”