Previously: “The Man With The Cane.”
Given that I don’t really drive much, it’s perhaps a bit curious that I’ve featured so many creepypastas that involve driving on weird, unusual, or otherwise eldritch-y kinds of roads here at TGIMM — but, well… here we are. Today, we’re looking at a creepypasta called “Exit” — a story which, in addition to being an on-the-road tale, also sounds a teeny bit like it could be a Slenderman story. It’s not, for what it’s worth; it can’t be: “Exit” pre-dates Slenderman’s 2009 creation by nearly a full year.
But honestly, that just kind of makes the whole thing even more uncanny.
“Exit” is credited to “Josef K,” making it — like “The Hole In The Wall,” which we took a look at back in 2022 — the work of writer and narrative designer Cameron Suey. (And while we’re on the subject, do check out Suey’s most recent project, the found footage podcast Observable Radio. It’s a delight.) “Exit” is an early Josef K tale, with a first publication date of October 20, 2008; despite its earliness in the timeline, though, it still has a nice overall shape and some gloriously unsettling images.
[Like what you read? Check out Dangerous Games To Play In The Dark, available from Chronicle Books now!]
The big thing here, I think, is that the person who’s driving this road, over and over and over again, isn’t trapped there by some external force actually keeping them there.
The road is, as the saying goes, a prison of their own making.
Find an excerpt below, and check out the full story here or here. And the next time you hit the road… look out for an exit for Silver Creek Road.
If you find it, do NOT, under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, take it.
You’ll almost certainly come to regret it.
***
I know this road better than I know myself. I know each of Interstate 85’s 250 odd miles; I know that it takes me an average of 3 hours and 26 minutes to drive west, from Charlotte to Atlanta, and an average of 3 hours and 29 minutes to make the same trip going eastward. I know the price of gas at a dozen stands, and the closing hours of each fast-food shack and greasy diner. I know the curves of each low hill and I know each stand of pine and oak trees. I know the stretching dark of the long winter nights and the wet heat of the summer breeze. I know these things well because they are the totality of my existence now.
I know the names of each exit, westward and east. Batesville, Poplar Springs, Spartanburg. They tick through my head as I pass, but the Silver Creek Road exit is never among them. In three years of this endless loop, it has never appeared again. If I ever begin to doubt that it will, then I have nothing left.
The Silver Creek Road exit doesn’t exist on any map, or at least, it no longer does. It may have once, but like the road itself, it has been razed from the earth and from all memory and record. At the beginning, I spent long anxious days poring over old surveying maps and neighborhood planning documents, searching in vain for any sign of the road, or the exit I know I had taken. When there was nothing left in the libraries and city halls to comb through, no meek county official left to interrogate, wide-eyed and frothing, then I began the drive.
***
Follow The Ghost In My Machine on Bluesky @GhostMachine13.bsky.social, Twitter @GhostMachine13, and Facebook @TheGhostInMyMachine. And for more games, don’t forget to check out Dangerous Games To Play In The Dark, available now from Chronicle Books!
[Photo via Egor Kamelev/Pexels]
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