When I was in high school, I spent many restless moments, filled with this weird kind of energy and I never knew what to do with it. My way of dealing with it was to go driving. I would just randomly drive around, turning whenever I felt like turning, picking this street or that. I never got lost. I have an excellent sense of direction. I always either found my way back the same way that I had come, or I found a new route home. I would often stumble upon streets that I knew and then take them back home. Once, when I was driving around, it was in a fairly residential neighborhood, but up in the hills of Southern California. I was a little unsure where I was, so I pulled over to check the Thomas Guide. As I was looking at the map, I looked up and there was a cop standing by my window. Apparently, I was speeding. He didn�t even have to pull me over, I pulled myself over. How sad is that?????
I had a friend named Laura. Often times, on a Saturday night, when we had nothing better to do, we would go driving together. We�d load up on coke and snacks and cigarettes and drive around. If it was cold, we�d have the heater on but the windows open. (Just for an FYI, I didn�t do any smoking, the cigarettes were all hers, though I�ve been known to have a puff when I�m drinking. Since I don�t drink much anymore, cigarettes are a thing of the past and also since I gave my boyfriend a hard time about smoking, I�d be a hypocrite to smoke now) We would blast our music (usually Genesis, Boston, Howard Jones), we would talk or not talk as the mood struck us and just randomly drive around.
This one particular Saturday night, we started out in Upland, where Laura lived. We drove to Newport Beach and stood on the dark beach and watched the waves crashing on the shore. After that, we drove up Highway 1, past Long Beach. Then we drove back out towards Upland and drove out towards San Bernardino. We got on this one particular street and just took it until it ended, then turned back around. We then began driving up the 15 towards Vegas. We were just wandering souls. No destination, it was all about the journey. We had driven over 300 miles that night. Just aimless wandering.
As we were driving up the 15, we passed this street, Cleghorn Drive. And for some reason, it called to us so we got off the freeway and began driving down the street. It was a very eerie sensation. The street was deserted, it was very dark, no street lights, nothing. On the right hand side of the road, there was this large blue granite mountain that seemed to glow in the dark night. On the left hand side, we were parallel to the freeway for some time, and then the road veered to the right and we were suddenly perpendicular to the freeway. We drove for over 20 minutes and the road seemed to stretch on for miles.
I can�t say exactly why, but for some reason, after about 20 minutes of driving, we both began to get this eerie feeling. I turned to Laura and started to speak. I said �I feel like�� and she said back, cutting me off �Don�t say it, I feel it too�. I said, �Laura, I think we�re going to turn around and the freeway�s not going to be there anymore.� She admitted that she had felt the same way. At this point, we were both freaked out and we turned around. As I was driving, I began to see visions � bodies in the road. Just flashes. And then they would be gone. She saw them too. We were both very anxious and I drove quickly on this empty road. We were both relieved to find the freeway was still there when we returned. That was the end of our journey for the evening. It was enough.
A few weeks passed. We were talking with another of our friends, Lisa, and telling her about the road. From that time on we began to call it �The Road�. Both Laura and myself were curious and wanted to go back. We felt drawn to The Road. Lisa also wanted to see it. We decided to go back and drive it to the end. So off we went.
When we got there, we got off and followed the road. The glowing blue granite mountain was gone. I mean, it was there, and now it was gone. No blue granite mountain. Just a regular brown dirt mountain. The road paralleled the freeway for the whole drive. The sharp left hand turn was gone. GONE. We drove for about 10 minutes and then found ourselves at the end of the road. The road ended at a street called Kenwood and that street had a freeway entrance. Laura and I were both in shock. We knew we had not imagined the sharp turn, the granite mountain and the 20 minute drive with the road stretching into the horizon. Yet that road was gone. 100% completely gone.
We got back on the freeway and drove home in shock. But we were hooked. This became our regular Saturday night outing. Every Saturday night, we would return to the road. Every Saturday night, the road was different. Sometimes it would be a curvy road, sometimes it was straight. Sometimes there were old abandoned houses on the side of the road, sometimes just hills. Once there was a divider in the middle of the road. The legend of the road grew and so did our group of road pilgrims. Soon there were 5 of us making this journey. We were all amazed and obsessed with our road.
One night, we decided to do an experiment. When we got off of the freeway, we set the trip odometer to zero. We drove to the end of the road and marked the mileage. It was 8.9 miles. We turned around, reset the trip odometer and proceeded to drive the other direction. At the end (beginning) of the road we again marked the mileage. It was 12.3 miles.
I want you to know, this is not a story. This really happened. I was not the only one to view this. There were 5 of us in the car that night. What happened next was ever weirder and it is hard for me to explain, I hope I do it justice. As we were driving back the other direction (we had decided to measure the road again), for the first time there was now another road that came off the road in a Y. We turned down this Y and drove about 50 yards where the road dead ended. Here is where it gets weird. Now, this was night, but we had some visibility. We could see the things around us. We had only driven 50 yards down this road. We turned around to go back. In front of us, there were the tail lights of a car. Okay, we had only driven 50 yards and now we were staring at the back of a car that we would have had to have passed. But we didn�t. There wasn�t a car on the road as we drove down it. The car turned right and we decided to follow it. We followed it down the road a few seconds and then�.. it vanished. It disappeared. It was gone. And there was no where for it to go. We drove up and down the road several times and the car was completely gone.
The whole time we were having this love affair with the road, it was both an excitement and a fear. We were drawn to the road, but scared by it too. After the disappearing car, our fears grew and we could not get to the freeway fast enough. I remember a panicky feeling in my gut, my heart racing. I found it hard to draw breath. We just wanted to go home. I remember even saying that as I was driving, I want to go home. It was like being in a scary movie. That�s how I felt anyway. As we got on the freeway, we found ourselves in stop and go traffic. There had been an accident. A van had flipped over and was on fire. As we drove past it, I looked into the burning van and I saw a face. I saw the person trapped in the car burning. It was all too much. We, as a group, did not return to the road.
The road lost it�s magic that night. Laura and I returned to it a year or so later, in the daylight. It was just a simple little road. Nothing special. We returned to the road several times, both during the day and at night. From that point on, the road was always the same. It�s time of magic had passed.
