Exit 60 Was Never On the Map

We were headed to Los Angeles.

A road trip—just the two of us. Me and my younger sister, Clara. No deadlines, no responsibilities, just two playlists, a cooler packed with sodas and sandwiches, and the kind of warm, aimless freedom that only comes with summer highways.

We’d been laughing at some dumb joke when the GPS screen flickered. Just a blip. Then it recalculated, redirecting us off I-10. A new route blinked on the screen in green.

Exit 60.

Clara leaned forward. “That wasn’t there before.”

I frowned, but shrugged. “Maybe a shortcut? Looks like it rejoins the highway ahead.”

She hesitated, then nodded. “Alright. Just feels… weird.”

I took the exit.

It dipped low, under a snarl of concrete overpasses that seemed too old for this stretch of freeway. As the road curved, the asphalt cracked beneath us, overtaken by thick, wet grass. Trees leaned in close—unnaturally tall, as though we’d fallen behind on time.

Our tires hissed through the overgrowth.

“This doesn’t feel right,” Clara said, her voice smaller now.

Around us, rusting hulks of vehicles appeared like monuments. Old school buses, half-collapsed vans, a 90s Cadillac with a caved-in roof. They weren’t parked. They were abandoned—mid-turn, doors open, windows smashed, hoods lifted like yawns from the grave.

A thin layer of moss clung to everything, climbing across metal and glass like veins. It wasn’t a junkyard. Junkyards have fences, signs, structure. This was… decay. A place left to rot under something's watch.

And then we noticed the silence.

No birds. No wind. No distant hum of traffic. Just the shallow sound of our own breathing.

Clara rolled her window up slowly.

“Let’s turn around,” she whispered.

I nodded, heart thudding. But when I reversed toward the ramp, my stomach dropped.

There was no ramp anymore.

Just forest. Towering pines, dense and shadowy, blocking the way like a wall.

“That’s impossible…” I muttered, grabbing my phone. No bars. I opened Maps. The GPS spun in place, spiraling like a compass without north.

Then Clara froze. “Someone’s there.”

A girl.

She stood maybe thirty feet ahead, waist-deep in the grass. Twelve years old, maybe younger. Her skin was pale—too pale—and she wore a torn school uniform, the kind no district uses anymore. In her hands: a limp, one-eyed doll.

She didn’t move. Just stared.

“Should we help her?” Clara asked, already unbuckling.

“Don’t,” I said sharply. “Clara, wait—”

Too late. She stepped out.

The sound of the door slamming felt too loud in that silence. She called softly, “Hey… are you okay? Are you lost?”

The girl didn’t respond. She just raised one arm… and pointed.

I followed her gaze, looked into the rearview mirror—

—and my breath caught.

People.

Dozens of them. Maybe more. Emerging from the abandoned vehicles.

Men in wrinkled business suits. Elderly couples holding hands. Children in Halloween costumes. A teenager in a prom dress, makeup smeared. A firefighter with an empty hose dragging behind him.

All of them frozen mid-step. All of them staring at us.

Clara turned to run, and that’s when I hit the gas.

The tires spun against the slick grass, screeching. We weren’t moving. Something beneath us was dragging—scraping like claws.

Then Clara screamed.

I turned and saw the girl—no longer in the grass.

She was pressed against Clara’s window. Smiling.

But it wasn’t a child’s smile. Her mouth stretched too wide, like her skin wasn’t made for it. Teeth—needle-sharp, too many of them—pressed against the glass.

I don’t remember the rest clearly.

A scream.

A jolt.

And then—

I woke up slumped over the steering wheel. My head ached. The hum of engines surrounded us.

Morning sunlight poured through the windshield. We were back on the main highway. I-10, stretching endlessly in both directions. Cars sped past like nothing had happened.

Clara sat beside me, shaking. Pale. Silent.

Her hands trembled in her lap.

And in them… a torn piece of cloth.

It was part of the doll’s dress.

We didn’t talk. Not on the drive. Not that night. Not ever. We got to LA, stayed in a hotel, pretended nothing had happened. We said we’d just taken a weird detour and gotten tired. But I knew. And she knew too.

She started sleeping with the light on.

Six years passed.

We moved on. New jobs, new cities. I told myself it was a hallucination. A dream. A shared panic attack. Some rare psychological phenomenon.

Until yesterday.

I was driving alone through San Bernardino, rerouting around construction.

And for just a second… I saw it.

Exit 60.

The sign flickered into view like static on an old TV.

Then it was gone.

Not on the GPS. Not on any map. I pulled over and searched every app I could find—nothing.

But standing at the tree line, just for a breath of a second… I saw her.

The girl.

Same uniform. Same one-eyed doll.

And she was pointing.

Right at me.