The Highway Silence
(A Forest Horror Story from Nevada)
It was close to midnight.
The long desert road stretched endlessly between Ely and Tonopah, Nevada — over 500 kilometers of nothing but pine-covered mountains and shadows.
Tom and Linda Carter, long-haul truckers from Cleveland, had been driving all day.
When Linda whispered,
> “Tom, I can’t hold it anymore, we need to stop,”
he sighed and pulled the truck over to the roadside.
The engine hummed softly as the headlights cut through the fog.
Linda stepped out, just a few meters behind the trailer.
Silence.
No wind, no animals. Nothing.
Then — a scream.
A man’s voice, far away in the woods, echoing:
> “Help! Please help!”
Her blood ran cold.
It sounded close and far at the same time, bouncing off the canyon walls.
She rushed back into the cab.
> “Tom, someone’s out there! He’s yelling!”
Tom turned off the radio.
They both listened, breath held.
And then came a sound that made Linda’s heart stop —
the growl of a chainsaw somewhere in the dark.
> “Probably a lumberjack,” Tom muttered.
“At midnight?” Linda hissed back.
But Tom had already grabbed his flashlight.
> “Stay here. Lock the doors.”
And he disappeared into the trees.
The forest swallowed him.
He walked for about ten minutes — only the crunch of pine needles under his boots.
No voices now, no chainsaw. Just silence thick enough to taste.
Then — a light.
A faint beam flickered between the trees.
Tom crept closer, careful, his breath visible in the cold air.
There stood a tall man, easily two meters, holding a running chainsaw.
His face was hidden under a welding mask, his clothes torn and stained.
The saw growled, but the man stood still… until Tom stepped on a branch.
The head turned.
The man screamed — and charged.
Tom ran.
Branches tore his arms, his flashlight flew into the dark, but he didn’t dare look back.
He saw the faint shape of his truck and yelled:
> “Linda! Start the engine!”
She did — and just as he leapt into the cab, something slammed against the side.
Glass shattered.
The mirror flew off.
Metal screamed as the chainsaw ripped across the door.
Tom hit the gas, the truck roared forward, and the sound of the chainsaw faded behind them…
but the echo seemed to chase them for miles.
By morning, they stopped at a gas station.
On the door — a deep, jagged scar from the blade.
And carved into the mirror, one single word:
> STAY.
Since that night, Tom and Linda Carter never again stopped near the forest —
no matter how badly they needed to.