The Tale of the Hitchhiker and the Mysterious Bag

I hesitate to tell this story because it still fills me with fear and trepidation. This is the story of the day we decided to stop and pick up a hitchhiker, and the mysterious bag that he carried.

It was a cold day in January when my friend Ben and I decided that we would go visit some friends in Austin. One of my friends, Sean, had recently moved there and he was always telling me how great it was. I figured it was only a 3 hour drive from Dallas so why not take the weekend off and go party with Sean and his friends. Ben borrowed his sister's car and I agreed to drive it. It got much better gas mileage than my old truck. We threw a case of Budweiser in the trunk, grabbed some extra clothes, and hit the road.

It wasn't long into the drive when we noticed a guy on the side of the road dressed all in black with a green military backpack. He had his long grizzled thumb thrust high up in the air and he was half-stepping out into the road as if he didn't really mind if a car were to hit him.

Ben said "Hey why don't we stop and see where that guy's going?" and gave me the strangest smirk. "What? I'm not about to pick up some dirty hitchhiker. We don't know where he's been." was my reply. Nevertheless we did stop. I'm not sure the reason. Ben told the guy we were headed to Austin if he was going that way. To my dismay he opened the left back door, tossed his giant bag in the backseat, and climbed right in. He had a strange, musty, stagnant smell but I figured hey.... it's not my car.... so I put it in gear and we were off again.

About 20 minutes into our journey Ben started acting fidgety. He leaned over and whispered in my ear "I wonder what's in that guy's bag". I looked back at the hitchhiker, who appeared to be nodding off in the backseat, and said that it was probably just some clothes and a few other "on the road" type things. After all, the guy's a hitchhiker, what else is he going to have in his bag? Ben said then "What if it's an axe? What if the guy's a murderer?"

"You were the one who wanted to pick him up!" I exclaimed. "Now you're going to freak out about it?". Ben wouldn't let it go. I'm not sure what had gotten into him. He turned to the backseat and asked loudly "Hey man, just curious, what you got in the bag there? Just some clothes and whatnot?". The hitchhiker gave a raspy reply "None of your damn business". Ben looked at me, eyes wide, and then looked straight ahead - clearly frazzled. All I could do was drive on.

I could tell though, in spite of all the fear, that Ben was getting pissed off. After about 15 more minutes he turned around again and said in a commanding voice "Look bro we've taken you this far, we just need to know what's in the bag. Just tell me it's clothes or something. I need to know you're not some crazy murderer."

The hitchhiker leaned forward, his pale sunken eyes seeming to glow. "None of your damn business". I told Ben to chill out or else maybe we really will get murdered and we pulled off the highway to look for a place to urinate. I circled around behind what looked like an abandoned shopping mall. "You can't see anyone peeing here from the highway" I thought to myself. "Alright guys, let's take care of business and get back on the road". I stepped out of the driver's seat and whipped it out. Ben did something similar on the passenger side, both of us leaning back against the car, yellow water running into a nearby drain by a giant metal dumpster. The hitchhiker got out of the car also and walked about 10 feet so that he was positioned just behind the dumpster. Maybe he was shy about this sort of thing. At that point Ben yelled for me to get in the car. "Get in!! He left the bag!!" I hopped in the driver's side just as Ben slammed the passenger door and we took off at high speed. In the rearview mirror I could see the hitchhiker running toward us but soon enough he was gone. Somehow shining dully in the back seat of the car was the giant musky green military backpack.

When we finally opened it up we were absolutely terrified by what we found.