The Headless Rider of the Backroads
On a night when the rain wrote streaks across the windshield like cracked glass, I drove the backroads that locals called the stitching between towns. The map was old, the headlights dim, and the radio hissed with static that sounded almost like a breath. The road curved past fields where the corn stood in graveyard silence, and orchards leaned in as if listening for something just out of frame. I had learned not to press the accelerator, not to ask questions of a road that seemed to remember more than it told.
Then the silhouette appeared at the far edge of the trees—a rider mid-gallop, a specter on a horse, but with no head. The cloak flogged behind him, a ragged banner in the wind, and the lantern he carried swung with a measured, almost polite pace. The rider's body remained perfectly still, as if the air itself kept him from falling apart. The horse's hooves made no sound on the wet shoulder of the road, yet the ground trembled beneath them as if a drumbeat followed in their wake.
- The air cooled to the temperature of a winter throat clearing, catching at the edge of your senses.
- The lantern’s glow washed the road in pale gold, but never touched the rider’s face.
- The ground trembles slightly beneath the tires, as if the road itself is listening.
I slowed, because the air turned cold as a throat clearing, and the world seemed to tilt toward the rider with all the gravity of a whisper. He raised a gloved hand, not to beg for help, but to beckon me forward, inviting me to chase the tail of the night. The lantern's light never touched his face; instead it bled into the fog and drew a pale, pale map along the road, guiding me toward a bend where the earth pressed close and the trees crouched low, listening.
Some roads remember those who cannot remember themselves.
Along that bend, I found a wooden sign half-swallowed by ivy: End of Road. Beyond the sign, a graveyard lay spread like a secret, its headstones leaning toward the sky as if listening for old prayers. The rider paused there and for a moment the world exhaled—then, in a breath that smelled of rain and rust, he vanished. The only trace was his lantern, now lying on the damp pavement as if dropped from a careless hand.
From the lantern's glow I pulled a scrap of cloth, torn and damp, stitched with a single initial: A. The night did not forgive the curious, but it kept its promises. I drove away with the engine still humming, but the memory of the headless rider never left the backroads. Some nights, if you listen closely to the rain, you can hear the horse's sighs echoing along the hedges, and feel the road remember you long after you have passed by.