The Detour

Neither of them could remember when the fog had set in. Was it before or after the car had veered off the shoulder? Had they seen it as they careened down the crumbling slope to where they were now? As they drove through a labyrinth of residential streets, it appeared to Douglas that they might never find their way back to the main road, the one which led out to the coastal town where they would kick off the first week of their retirement.

“Take that turn, we haven’t been that way before.” Maribel issued the edict with a confidence Douglas couldn’t fathom. He was unable to distinguish between the blocks of empty, identical houses boring evenly down both sides of the road. The suburb, evidently a new and as-yet uninhabited development, seemed as unvaried as it was endless.

The slowly thickening fog was no help either. Fed up, Douglas pulled over to the side of the road. “Are we out of gas?” asked Maribel.

“No, I’m just tired of driving through this maze, and I don’t want to get us in even more trouble. We should wait for the fog to clear.” Douglas massaged his chest with one hand, a habit he’d developed after his first heart attack. It seemed improbable to him that their bumpy trip off the shoulder had left them so utterly uninjured. Perhaps they had both been hit in the head. That would certainly explain why it appeared to be taking them all afternoon to escape a subdivision.

They sat there in silence, peering into the blanket of white which hung heavy and motionless around the car. After a few moments, Maribel’s expression brightened and she pointed to a figure—a blurry smear of motion—ahead of them on the road.

“There we go, Douglas, roll over to the big guy over there and ask how we get out of here.”

Douglas put the car in gear and rolled down his window as they approached the figure. As they approached, they could see that it was not so much a big guy as a young-ish person with a big backpack. Maribel couldn’t help calling out, as the hitchhiker resembled so many of her students. “Are you hitchhiking all by yourself out here, honey?”

“If you could spare a ride, I know the fastest way out of this fog.”

“Deal” said Douglas, reaching back and popping open the rear passenger door of the old sedan. “We’ll take you as far as the main road, if you can get us there, kiddo.”

The hitchhiker hopped into the back and thanked the couple. “I’m older than I look, actually.” Douglas chuckled. “Well, you sure look younger than us, Maribel excepted of course.” Maribel had raised a warning finger at her spouse. “Good save Douglas.” Turning in her seat, she looked over her spectacles at their guest and added “We’re all the same age in this car.” The hitchhiker nodded attentively.

“You’re still in college then?” Maribel asked.

“No, I work full time. Except for today. It’s been about a thousand years since I took a day off.”

“Oh, you poor thing. What do you do?”

“Human services, basically a lot of getting people to places. Well, really, it’s all the same place.” Here the hitchhiker seemed to want to trail off, but Douglas cut in. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well, people don’t always want to get where they’re going, you know.”

Douglas peered into the rearview mirror with his eyebrows raised until Maribel intervened. “I see what you mean dear. Like an institutional driver, to hospitals or prisons, Douglas.” She whispered the latter institution as though it were a curse.

The hitchhiker smiled apologetically. “My work can be very rewarding. I see a lot of people in the worst moments of their lives, and I like to think I’m taking them someplace where they can put that all behind. The pay is steady, too. I get paid per mouth.”

“Per month, you mean?”

“Sorry, per capita. Per person, I guess. The pay’s alright. But the expectations sometimes get to me. Constant availability. Always a standard of perfection.”

“Sounds like you have a tough boss.” Douglas said this with a hint of approval, as though having a tough boss were a mark in favour of their guide’s character.

“I guess in a way it’s my own fault. Sometimes, I feel like human society would completely fall apart if I skipped out for a day. That’s why I like to take some time away now and then, just to remind myself that a little variety won’t throw the universe off balance.”

“That’s right.” Maribel smiled, “You know, that’s something I had to learn from my students. Young people have such a healthy outlook on work. Much more than we did.”

“We grew up tougher, no offense to you, kid.” Douglas said, “Working hard will do more for you than sitting around sharing your feelings all day like they do in the colleges nowadays.” Maribel tutted. “They’re wiser than you think, Douglas. You bottle it up all those years and that’s why you have high blood pressure. There’s no shame in sharing your feelings.”

“Bottled up feelings can have all kinds of consequences around here. Draws the wrong kind of attention.” The hitchhiker seemed to be about to elaborate but stopped after catching Douglas’ expression in the rearview mirror.

“You trying to teach me something, kid?” Douglas growled, holding his scowl until Mirabel hissed at him to knock it off. The hitchhiker didn’t respond.

They rode on for some time, the hitchhiker gesturing for Douglas to turn this way or that, seemingly impervious to the heavy fog. The fog, for its part, had grown so dense that Douglas worried that he might roll the car right over the curb. Maribel, looking out the passenger window, could make out other figures, shadowy and distorted in the haze.

“Who would be outside in this weather?” She chuckled, shaking her head. “At least they’re not driving.”

“They can’t.” The hitchhiker said this with a sad smile. “They’d be just as lost as you were, without a guide.”

“You seem to know the way” remarked Douglas.

“Oh yes, this subdivision is part of my usual route. But it’s always low visibility for anyone who isn’t—” here, the hitchhiker stammered, “in my position.”

Suddenly, one of the dark shapes in the distance appeared to grow bigger, moving with a fluidity that, to Douglas, suggested a vehicle. The shape moved in and out of his sight, as though it were driving behind a row of oddly shaped columns. But Douglas saw no columns in the fog.

“Well, someone seems to be driving. He looks like he’s got his lights off, too. Idiot.”

For the first time, the hitchhiker’s facial expression turned to one of concern. “Just keep going straight ahead. Faster, please, if you can.”

Douglas began to sweat. The shadowy vehicle—or whatever it was—stuttering in and out of view reminded him, inexplicably, of the way the light from the street used to flicker from behind the blinds in his childhood bedroom at night.

The memory was dizzying and seemed to flash into the forefront of Douglas’ mind every time he looked at the formless shadow now keeping pace with the sedan. Arms shaking, Douglas began to weave dangerously, causing Maribel to place a hand on the steering wheel. As it got closer, it appeared to Douglas that whatever it was must have been smaller than a car. Smaller, even, than a motorcycle. He wouldn’t have taken it for a vehicle at all were it not for its speed. It appeared to be accelerating.

The hitchhiker peered out at the other driver with narrowed eyes, then began to speak absently, as though struggling to remember something. “People get seriously lost around here, and lost people get desperate, follow anyone who seems a little more... alive to where they're going. Anyone who might seem familiar. If you’re not careful, you could wander out of the fog and end up anywhere. Times Square. The bottom of the sea. A lightbulb in an old streetlamp that won’t stop flickering.” The last item drew a confused laugh out of Mirabel before she turned back towards her husband.

“Douglas, get a hold of yourself.”

Douglas tightened his grip on the steering wheel, his jaw set. He had never told anyone, aside from his mother, about the lamp post on Charleston Street, visible from the window of his childhood bedroom. The lamp had started flickering just a few days after his brother James had died, and for years, Douglas had imagined that it was his brother’s way of letting him know that he was there. When he had told her about it, Douglas’ mother had said nothing. She only sighed, and looked at him with an expression of what he took to be pity, perhaps mixed with disgust. He had never dared tell anyone else.

In fact, Douglas might have given this childish imagining no further thought had it not been for the flickering shadow, still tailing them through the fog. That, and the hitchhiker’s manner of speech. Douglas could not see how the hitchhiker could know about James, let alone about how Douglas’ youthful imagination had interpreted the flickering light outside his window. Yet something about the whole situation filled Douglas with unease even as he reproached himself for the feeling. To Douglas, the speaker’s voice rang with a truth that he could not accept without losing his mind. He floored the gas pedal.

"Did I disturb you, Douglas?" The young face seemed genuinely contrite, as though the hitchhiker understood Douglas' increasing discomfort.

“I’m just keen to get out of this fog.” That much was true.

The shadow followed, always an unintelligible shape, buried just far enough in the fog that Douglas couldn’t tell what he was looking at, always flickering in and out of view in the pattern that he remembered so well.

“Why won't he stop following us?” Douglas hissed.

“He might be hoping that we lead him to the main road” said the hitchhiker with concern. “Or perhaps he just wants some attention.” With that, the hitchhiker rolled down the window and, tilting his head away from the rearview mirrors, made some inaudible signal to the other car.

“Can he see you?” asked Douglas incredulously.

“I'm not hard for him to see. There, he’s giving us more space now. Just keep at this pace, Douglas. We’ll be out soon.”

And so it was. After what felt like ten or fifteen minutes at the quickest pace the old sedan could safely muster, the flickering shadow rolled out of sight for the last time, and Douglas slowed the car down. They drove on like that, the hitchhiker only breaking the silence to point out the next turn, until they emerged from the fog.

For the first few minutes, they cruised through the afternoon sunlight in silence. Neither Douglas nor Maribel remarked on the familiarity of the road now clearly visible before them. But when the sedan breezed past the curled edges of a broken highway barrier, neither could remain silent.

“But that’s where we went through!” said Douglas, running a hand through his thinning hair.

“Just look at that drop” Maribel rolled down the window to get a better look at the steep cliff-face. “I’m surprised the car made it down in one piece, let alone us. I can’t even see the subdivision from up here!”

“Most people wouldn’t make it back after a drop down that cliffside” confessed the hitchhiker. “Now that we’re on the main road, would you mind dropping me off here?”

Maribel glanced back in surprise. “We’re far from the nearest town.”

The hitchhiker smiled. “That’s fine with me. I suspect our friend from the fog might be coming up the road soon and might need some directions home.” The hitchhiker’s smile was the last thing Douglas and Maribel saw in their rearview mirror as they turned the corner and began the rest of their journey.

“You know, you could have been nicer to the person who was helping us get back on our way.” Maribel’s reproachful tone was as familiar to Douglas as her face.

“I wasn’t rude.”

“You were so terse. What on earth set you off like that? Your teeth are probably ground to sawdust.” 

“He was talking about people getting lost and ending up in a lamppost.”

Maribel looked like she might be about to crack a joke at Douglas’ expense, but when he glanced at her from the driver’s seat, she could see that his cheeks were wet. There was a lengthy silence.

“There was a lamppost outside of my window, which started buzzing and flickering after James died. I thought…” Douglas trailed off. “I thought the lamp was a sign from him. I didn’t tell anyone because I knew it was stupid. I only realized it had stuck with me when the hitchhiker said someone might get lost and end up in the lamppost. I thought of James. That car in the shadows, I know what it sounds like, but it flickered the same. In that fog, I just had that feeling again that it might be him. It came up, that feeling that I thought I buried.”

Maribel sighed and rubbed Douglas’ arm. “Besides, Maribel, the kid was smirking the whole time like there was some grand joke we weren’t part of.”

“Not the whole time,” began Maribel, “but I see what you mean. Well, next time, try not to drive us off the road and get us lost.”

“That’s a promise.”

“And stop bottling up your feelings. Or it’ll be the death of us.”

“I’ll try.”

As they made another turn, Douglas noticed something glinting in the rearview mirror. A foreign coin of unknown denomination had slid across the backseat. A souvenir.