The Number And The Legends Of The Devil’s Highway

Back in the 1950’s my father was a long-haul truck driver, I sometimes road with him on long weekends. One night he and I were driving alone a stretch of road when this happened!

The low rumble of the diesel engine is the only constant companion through the moonless New Mexico night. The glow of the dash lights casts My Fathers calloused hands in a pale yellow as he grip the wheel of his eighteen-wheeler. It’s the mid-50s, and Route 666 stretches out before us like a black ribbon unspooling into an abyss, the “Devil’s Highway” as some call it. You’ve heard the whispers, the tales of strange happenings, but for a long-haul trucker, a schedule waits for no ghost story.

The radio crackles with static, then fades into silence, leaving only the hypnotic hum of the tires against the asphalt. Peering into the inky blackness beyond the headlights. The landscape is sparse, unforgiving – a few gnarled junipers, the looming silhouettes of distant mesas. We passed a sign, barely legible in the fleeting beam: “Gallup – 40 miles.” Good. Almost there my Father said.

Then we see it. A flicker, barely perceptible, in my peripheral vision. I glance to the right. Nothing but desert. I shake my head, blame lack of sleep. But then it’s there again, closer this time, just beyond the shoulder. A figure.

My Father eased off the accelerator, my heart giving a sudden, unwelcome lurch. It’s a man, standing perfectly still, his back to us. He’s wearing an old, dark suit, out of place in this desolate landscape, and an impossibly tall, wide-brimmed hat that casts his face in shadow. He’s not hitchhiking; his arms are at his sides, stiff. And he’s facing the desert, not the road.

As we slowly rolled pass the figure, I could see a man. No, not a man. It’s too… angular. Too still. Like a scarecrow carved from obsidian. Our headlights illuminate him fully for a split second, and in that instant, we see it: a gaunt, impossibly elongated form. His head slowly, mechanically, begins to turn.

My Father pressed the accelerator, the truck roars, picking up speed, my eyes are glued to the right-side rear-view mirror. I could see his head as he continues turning. Slowly. Unnaturally. He’s turning in our direction. He’s not looking at the desert anymore.

And then, just as his face would have come into view, he lifts a hand. A long, skeletal hand, fingers like twisted branches. And he waves. A slow, deliberate, farewell wave.

My Father slammed his foot down, the truck howling as we leave the impossible figure behind. The sun will be up soon, and in the harsh light of day, you’ll tell yourself it was just a trick of the light, a desert mirage, imagination playing tricks on your mind. But as you watch the first weak streaks of dawn paint the eastern sky, you can still feel the chill of that wave, a cold touch that lingers long after the silence of the highway returns. My Father vows, loudly, I’ll never take Route 666 again.

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