It happened one August. I was to drive from Louisiana up to New England for college, arriving early for orientation leader training and the like.
Because of the way the timing worked out, one of my best friends was able to tag along for the road trip, have a short New England vacation, then catch a cheap one-way flight back south. So Rosy and I packed up my little yellow beetle (RIP, I miss that car so much) and headed off for adventure.
Imagine a nerd girl road trip montage here—poorly singing along to dated music, and, when Rosy napped, I’d listen to horror short story audio books.
It was probably around 9 in the evening (though it felt an hour earlier to us, due to a time zone change) when we decided to stop for a late dinner. We were somewhere in southern Virginia, on an interstate. Given time and place, best we could do was look for the blue roadside signs to find fast food.
At a random, middle of nowhere exit, we see a sign for a McDonalds. We get off the interstate, hang a left. We pass an abandoned scrapyard looking place (without being lit, it was our best guess on what it was) and a treeline before finding the McDonalds. Success.
We enter, and everyone in the restaurant stops to look at us. Silence.
We order food. I get mine first, then go sit down at a table next to a window. While I wait for Rosy to get her food, I start observing. There’s a solid handful of other people in this McDonalds, but still *none* of them are talking. Even the employees aren’t talking to each other. People sitting at tables together utter not a peep. I glance out the window, and in the reflection I notice a man at a different table staring at me.
I take greater note of the silence—it’s not total silence. Softly, music is playing. It’s a strange, 80s synthy sounding song, just barely audible.
Rosy sits down, and starts talking, a conversation like a normal person. I check the window again, then softly point out to her that we are being watched. Rosy looks to the window, then looks to the man.
The man stands up, walks out the door, and off into the night. He doesn’t get in a car or head in the direction of the town, no. He stalks off into the night towards the treeline, cutting through a slight fog that’s started to roll in—or was it always there, and we simply didn’t notice it before?
We ate quickly, occasionally saying meaningless nonsense to each other, playing it cool. But still, our conversation lapses into silence frequently. There’s no background chatter to take up the blank spots, just that eerie pop song. It never sounded like it was ending and repeating, always sounding like it was in the middle of the song.
Only once we were out of there and back in my car were we able to talk freely about how creepy the place was! Why wasn’t anyone else talking? Where did that guy go?
We had to stop for gas, though, and there was an unmanned, self-serve station right close to the interstate. We stopped, and I hopped out to pump gas. From the pump’s radio, a song was playing. It was louder than the McDonalds radio, but very clear. It was the same song from the McDonalds. The exact same song.
By the time I finished filling my tank—in retrospect, why did I fill it up all the way instead of getting out of there and stopping again once we reached a less creepy spot???—the song had still not ended, was still playing.
We were so glad to see that exit, that McDonalds, in our rear mirror, and so creeped out that we drove deep, deep into the night so that we could stop in West Virginia instead of Virginia, not wanting to even sleep in the same state as that creepy place.
Now, every time I drive through southern Virginia on road trips, I always keep an eye out for oddities. To this day, I have no idea what was going on at that creepy McDonalds, why the people acted so strange. Sometimes I want to try to stop and find it again, sometimes I think the past is best left alone, and that I should just keep driving on—that’s generally the opinion of my most recent road trip companions!
Still, I always keep an ear out for that distinctive music. I haven’t heard it since that night. The closest thing to its vibe that I’ve found is “Suddenly Last Summer” by the Motels, which always sets me on edge now.
