The highway was desolate, stretching through miles of empty terrain under a thick, cloudy sky. Nathan was driving alone, the hum of his car’s engine the only sound breaking the stillness. He was on his way back from a business trip, hours past midnight, his mind wandering as the endless road unraveled before him.

Without warning, his car sputtered and lurched. The engine coughed, and then everything went silent. He tried the ignition, but it was dead. Cursing under his breath, he looked around, realizing his car had come to a stop right in front of an old, red telephone booth standing eerily on the side of the road.

Nathan had driven this route dozens of times, but he’d never noticed the booth before. It seemed out of place, a relic from another time, casting a long shadow under the dim glow of his car’s headlights.

Then, piercing through the silence, came the shrill ring of the telephone.

Nathan jumped, his heart pounding. Who would be calling a phone in the middle of nowhere? The logical thing would be to ignore it, but something—a strange pull, an inexplicable curiosity—urged him to step out of the car and answer it.

He opened the door and made his way to the booth. With a shaky hand, he lifted the receiver.

“Hello?”

For a moment, there was only silence on the other end. Then, a faint, distorted voice crackled through.

“Nathan… we’ve been waiting.”

He froze, his breath catching in his throat. “Who… who is this?”

The voice continued, calm and unsettling. “You don’t remember, do you? You came to us once, on this very road. Years ago. And now it’s time to come back.”

Nathan’s mind raced. Memories he had buried long ago, half-forgotten flashes of a night he could barely recall, started to surface. He remembered driving this same road late one night, a crash, the darkness that had followed… and then waking up in the hospital, told he had narrowly survived.

“That accident…” he whispered, his voice barely audible. “But… I survived. I left.”

The voice on the line seemed to smile. “No one ever leaves, Nathan. You left a part of yourself here, a part we need. It’s time to finish what you started.”

He dropped the receiver, stumbling back, but the phone began to ring again, louder this time, echoing in the stillness. He tried to turn back to his car, but his feet felt glued to the ground. Shadows flickered in the corners of his vision, shapes that seemed to press closer, whispering his name, reaching out with cold, invisible hands.

Frantic, he grabbed the receiver again, desperate to end this.

“What do you want from me?” he shouted into the phone.

The voice replied, its tone dripping with finality. “To bring you back to where you belong. You escaped us once, but no one escapes forever. The road only leads one way, Nathan.”

Suddenly, the line went dead, and the booth fell silent. Trembling, he dropped the receiver, turning to flee. But when he looked back at his car, he saw it wasn’t empty. In the driver’s seat, a figure was waiting—a figure that looked exactly like him, eyes cold and empty, a twisted smile on its face.

Nathan backed away, but there was nowhere to run. The shadows closed in, and as the phone began to ring again, louder and louder, he realized the truth:

He was never meant to leave the highway that night. He had been driving in circles, returning to the same point, a ghost retracing his own footsteps.

And now, he was finally home.