On Highway 87 in Montana there's a lot of road, sky and not much else. Unless you saw that someone (or something) walking along the side of the road…
The eastern part of Montana is flat, empty and full of a subtle kind of beauty. It's a place where the sky is big and the silence is bigger. A place where your mind can play tricks on you if your car happens to break down on the side of the road in the growing darkness. And that's just what happened to Loretta on an evening not too long ago.
Thanks to this season’s sponsor, YETI for supporting the podcast.
Artwork by Tyler Grobowsky (@g_r_o_b_o)
No matter how dark the night…
No matter how fast you run…
No matter what is chasing you…
You’ll be safe if only you can make it to the campfire.
There it is, up ahead, through the trees.
We’re waiting for you, but…
Will you make it?
This is the Camp Monsters Podcast.
Feels good to be back around a campfire, after last week at sea. Nice to have solid ground beneath us again: the flickering heat of the flames on our hands, and this wide-open Montana night around us. We’re here, just a-ways north of the city of Great Falls. Now when people think of Montana, they think of the western half, the mountains: Glacier National Park and all that. But if you keep driving east, those mountains end so suddenly. It’s like stepping out of a movie set. You can watch that whole part of the state disappear like a wall, fading in your rearview mirror. And then you’re out here, in the plains, in the wide open: you’re out in this Montana, the other Montana.
It starts, oh, around here near Great Falls, and it stretches out as far as you care to go, all the way to the North Dakota line. It’s not as spectacular as the mountain side of Montana, not by a long shot. At a glance, driving through, it looks like just nothing at all. But if you get out of your car and spend some time here, you may earn the sort of beauty so harsh and vast it’ll change your eyes forever. You’ll see a thing you’ve seen a hundred times before, like a thunderhead or a sunrise-- but something about the sight sweeping at you over these empty fields just knocks your breath away.
… Or maybe you’ll just see four hundred miles of freeway with no hills and too few rest areas. Like I said, the beauty of this Montana has to be earned-- not everyone sees it.
Speaking of seeing things, did anyone see someone walking along the side of Highway 87 as we drove up here? Someone all in denim, walking with their back turned to you? Good. If you had… well I guess you wouldn’t want to stick around for this story. You’d have already lived it.
That figure… people call it the “Black Horse Hitcher” or the “Black Horse Dog.” It’s got two names because it has at least two forms. Some people see a person-- some see a dog. Some see both. The “Black Horse” part of the name comes from the area that the figure is always seen near: Black Horse Lake. Of course you’ve already been past the lake. We drove right through the middle of it on the way up here from Great Falls… but I’ll bet you didn’t notice. You wouldn’t-- you couldn’t: the lake doesn’t exist right now. It only appears after there’s been rains-- the heavy Montana kind of cloudbursts, the ones that come and saturate the whole county in the space of a few hours. Then, all of a sudden, where there’s just grass and scrub today, a two-mile lake appears. Black Horse Lake. Maybe it lasts a few days, maybe a week or two… then it disappears again.
But the lake isn’t the only thing that appears and disappears, out there.
A couple of years ago, Loretta was heading home on Highway 87, south toward Great Falls, driving her old truck with the camper on the back and hauling her horse trailer behind her. Loretta is a horse trainer and handler-- one of the best, in a state that has a lot of great ones. She was coming back from a job that had lasted a few weeks, and was bringing her horse Annie and one of the client’s more troublesome animals-- a gelding named Dan-- back to Loretta’s place outside Great Falls.
It was a gray day falling into a gray, gray evening. She’d been driving for hours and hours across these great, empty plains. Fall was here, the fields she passed were stubble. It was no longer warm, but wasn’t very cold yet. Jacket weather. A little rain began to fall, and thin crystal streamers of it painted rivers in the wind outside her driver’s side window. A wire fence sagging on ancient wooden posts zipped past on her left… might be considered a landmark out here, in the middle of all this nothing.
Loretta saw something beside the road, way ahead of her. She watched it, for lack of anything else to watch, and tried to figure out what it might be. Too big to be a fence post… too small to be a sign. As she got a little closer she realized it was a person, all in rain-soaked, dark blue denim, walking along the side of the highway. Not a broke-down car in sight… must have been a long walk, wherever they were coming from. Probably had a long walk left, wherever they were going to. How far were they from Great Falls? She glanced at the map on her phone-- it was another ten or fifteen miles to the outskirts of town. And between here and there was a whole lot of nothing.
Ten or fifteen miles is a long way to walk in the rain, Loretta thought, with night coming on. If the world was a different place, she’d have offered the stranger a ride. As it was, she decided she’d slow down and offer to call someone for them. She turned her eyes back down the road, looking for the figure walking along it.
But after staring for a few seconds she shook her head, blinked a few times, bit her cheek as hard as she could stand. There was no one up ahead-- nothing but road and blank plain as far as she could see.
She’d been driving too long, she decided-- working too hard, not sleeping enough. Starting to dream things. That sort of thing happened, especially out here on the plains after a long day driving, when the light began to fail. Usually she would see barrels rolling in the corner of her vision, or high-tension wires zipping by overhead that weren’t there when she looked right at them. This was the first time she’d ever imagined someone walking up ahead. “You’re almost there,” Loretta told herself, “almost home. Just ten, fifteen more miles.”
She was reaching to turn the radio on when it happened. Something leapt out in front of her truck, slamming into the grille with a force that jolted her, then rolling right past her face over the windshield and away across the roof.
Loretta fought the instinct to slam on the brakes so hard that they’d lock up-- she couldn’t afford to jackknife, that might spill the trailer. But she stopped the rig as fast as she could, right on the edge of skidding. It wasn’t more than three or four seconds, but it felt like forever before she ground to a stop in the gravel on the right-hand side of the road.
Loretta sat there breathing heavy as the engine coughed and sputtered and then settled down to its old familiar ticking, idling rattle. The windshield wipers were going too fast, now that the wind wasn’t pushing rain onto them. One smear that they were dragging noisily back and forth across the glass was thick and red. Loretta couldn’t believe the windshield had held without shattering, the thing had hit it so hard. She turned the wipers down, instinctively. And she sat there for a second, trying to come to grips with what had just happened.
There had been nothing-- and no one-- near this stretch of highway as she approached. She was sure of that. The figure that she’d seen before, walking down the road, had never really been there-- it hadn’t been real: she’d dreamed it. Once she’d lost sight of that… person, she’d strained her eyes looking for them and hadn’t seen a thing. Unless…
She glanced out her window at the short, grassy stubble and shrubs that covered the ground here. No. Not nearly tall enough to hide anything-- an animal or a… or a person. Loretta leaned her head on the steering wheel and tried to remember… tried to recall exactly what she’d seen in that split-second when the thing had darted in front of her. In her headlights for just an instant, it had looked like an animal… she couldn’t say what kind of animal, only that it was big and brown and moved on four legs. But when it had rolled up and over the windshield, just inches from her face, she could have sworn… she didn’t see much, but… but all she saw for sure-- for sure-- was a flash of blue denim.
As soon as that memory came clear in her mind Loretta heaved her door open and jumped out of the truck, standing on the shoulder of the empty highway on legs that still trembled with the adrenaline of the impact. She peered back, past the horse trailer, looking for something-- or someone-- lying in the road. She walked slowly down the truck, past the camper and down the length of the trailer. Her boots in the gravel seemed incredibly loud, and she could feel her stomach knot and her throat tighten more and more with every step-- with every step she expected some crumpled figure to come into view, laying in the road back there…
But there was nothing. Until… Until she had almost reached the rear corner of the trailer. Then she was overwhelmed by a… strange and sudden fear that there was something… just around the corner, right behind the trailer. It was a senseless fear-- whatever she’d hit would be in no condition to threaten her or anyone. But the feeling came on so strong that she bent down to peer under the back of the trailer, to see if anything was standing back there. Nothing that she could see. But still, she stepped out into the empty highway and rounded the corner wide and slow.
There was nothing there. Loretta walked back down the road a bit, looking for something crumpled on the shoulder, looking for the blood trail dragging off the road that would at least indicate what direction the thing she’d hit had gone… but there was nothing. No blood, no trail in the grass off to either side-- nothing. She turned back to face the truck, stood still and listened: nothing but the soft sound of the rain, and the horses in the trailer.
The horses were nervous. As she walked back toward them, Loretta could see Annie looking through the thin trailer windows at her: quiet and poised, but all alertness. Dan, the client’s horse, was tossing and snorting. He’d start trying to kick soon. Loretta climbed up on the trailer’s fender, where its steel jutted out to cover the wheels. She spoke softly and quietly, stroked Annie’s nose and gave Dan the nub of a carrot she had in her pocket. But she knew the horses wouldn’t calm until she was calm… and she wasn’t. There was an alarm going off in her heart, in that region of instinct that had always brought her closer to the horses. She felt just like Annie-- quiet, poised… but waiting for something to happen.
And then she heard the footsteps.
Footsteps in the gravel, on the far side of the trailer. Someone shuffling or… something dragging itself haltingly along the shoulder of the road. The sounds got more distinct, and Loretta bent her head down and looked through the narrow slat windows of the trailer, looking through it and out the thin windows on the other side. And past the shadows of the shifting horses, in the last of the evening’s fading light, Loretta thought she saw… something moving… along the far side of the trailer, up toward the truck… in the same direction she thought she’d first seen the figure walking along the side of the road. It must be an animal… but…
“Hello?” Loretta called as loudly and steadily as she could. “Hello?” Trying to keep control in her voice, trying to mask the feeling that was threatening to choke her. She jumped down from the fender and ran to the open driver’s-side door, and as she passed the gap between the trailer and the back of the truck, she thought she saw something flash past the other side of the camper, the side away from the road, furthest from her. Something like a paw, or an old brown boot, stepping away toward the front of the truck.
When she got to the door she reached beneath the seat and felt for her flashlight. When she couldn’t find it, panic took hold of her for the first time, and she didn’t know what she was going to do. I’m afraid I would have jumped in and driven away, and she was tempted to do the same… but the impossibility of the situation held her where she was, made her take a gulp of air and slow herself down, feeling methodically under the seat until-- there-- there was the flashlight.
And here was the situation: she had hit something. With her truck, at very high speed. Until she found what it was and helped it, or satisfied herself that it was out of pain, she couldn’t leave. She wasn’t going to be scared away from that duty by… by imaginary fears. Loretta kept telling herself that the only thing that it could be was a maimed animal-- if it had been a person, if she hadn’t just dreamed up the flash of blue denim she thought she’d seen rolling across her windshield… a person would have stayed laying in the road, calling for help if they were able. They wouldn’t hide. Only an animal would hide.
She took the big, long-handled flashlight firmly in hand, and switched it on. The last of the evening had ebbed away into night, though the sky was still a deep blue and only the strongest stars were peeking out. The old truck’s engine rumbled along quietly, its headlights stabbing the road and prairie ahead with sudden, harsh light. Loretta stepped back away from the truck, into the still-empty road, and walked a wide circle slowly around the front, until her body was lit with the headlights but her head remained above them, staring off along the darkness on the far side of the truck. She raised the strong flashlight and shined it that way.
“Hello?” she called again, and didn’t get an answer. No sound, no shuffle in the gravel. After a few seconds came a hollow BANG, and she was so nervous that she jumped, even though she instantly recognized the sound of Dan trying to kick the wall of the trailer. Loretta took hold of all her courage and walked across the front of the truck. She forced herself to take the last few steps quickly, both to surprise anything that was trying to hide from her… and to overcome her own dread of what she might find.
Again she had that impression of something ducking around the corner furthest from her-- up between the camper and the trailer this time. But she dismissed it as a trick her eyes were playing on her. A shadow as her light moved. She knelt on the wet pavement and shone the light along the ground, as far down the truck as it would reach before it petered out beneath the trailer. There was nothing there. No hiding animal, no crouching boots. She was alone out here. Whatever it was that she’d hit must have dragged itself away, somehow.
She used the front of the truck to help herself onto her feet, and as she did she noticed something else. The bumper and grille had a little blood on them, just as the windshield had right after the accident-- other than that they looked fine. But she’d felt the impact of the crash when it happened… the whole truck had jolted. A collision like that… it should have cracked the grille at least, dented the bumper, gouged the hood, maybe ruptured the radiator. But there wasn’t so much as a scratch…
As soon as she’d thought that, though, the idling engine started making a strange sound. A rasping, bubbling sound, like… like the fan belt rubbing on something, maybe? “Oh no you don’t,” Loretta thought, “No you don’t! No, don’t you die on me out here, in the middle of all this!” She grasped the latch on the hood and flung it open, shining her light around the engine compartment to try to spot a problem.
Everything looked fine-- fan spinning, belt whirring, nothing obviously damaged or jammed out of place... but the sound continued, growing louder. Then, unexpectedly, the engine revved itself to a higher RPM… then began to fade. Loretta gripped the edge of the engine compartment, hoping against hope that that rev wasn’t the engine’s last… that it wouldn’t stall and cough and die… that it would settle back to an idle…
And Loretta’s hope came true. The engine rattled back into its old familiar idle, though the rasping, growling sound was even more pronounced than before. But when the engine suddenly revved again, Loretta was transfixed by two realizations that hit her at once. The first was that the growling sound didn’t change at all when the engine revved… and she realized the sound wasn’t coming from the engine itself but from beneath the engine, right by her feet… right where a beam of her flashlight that poured past the engine and should have shone on gravel... landed instead on a mangy patch of brownish fur… that moved as if it were breathing.
But even that terror was crowded from Loretta’s mind as her eyes stared, disbelieving, at the throttle lever on the carburetor… watching it move as the engine roared. So the engine wasn’t revving itself… wasn’t malfunctioning. Someone was in the cab… pressing the accelerator.
Loretta flung herself sideways through the air, toward the road, out from in front of the truck. As she fell her light flashed on the cab and revealed a figure sitting behind the wheel. Loretta didn’t see its face, its features-- all she caught in that flying instant before she hit the ground was wet blue denim.
And then she was scrambling to her feet, grinding her hands and knees through the gravel she sent flying in her rush for the driver’s side door. Annie was in that trailer, her whole life was in that truck-- Loretta wasn’t going to just stand by and watch it disappear down the road. She got hold of the handle, pulled herself around the open door, swinging the butt of her long flashlight so quickly that it made a sound like an aluminum baseball bat does, cutting through the air. Loretta swung it so hard that her hand ached when the flashlight collided with…
… with the empty front seat of the quietly idling truck. Loretta shined the light around the small interior… but there was nothing and no one there.
Loretta was done with this. Whatever was going on, she no longer wanted any part of it. She jumped into the truck and slammed the door to shut out the sound of the growling, that was growing louder and louder outside. She threw the truck in gear and was about to stomp on the accelerator when…
When, from out of the darkness ahead, an animal trotted into her headlights. It was a dog. A big, brown, mangy dog-- skinny but enormous. In spite of the rain, its fur looked dusty and dried out. It stopped, not ten feet in front of her truck, perfectly illuminated in the bright glare of her headlights. Then it turned its head and looked at her… and Loretta saw its eyes. Or… the holes. The empty, perfectly dark holes where its eyes should have been. Dry sockets that, in spite of their emptiness, seemed to stare directly into Loretta.
If the Black Horse Dog managed to get out from in front of Loretta’s truck as she tore off into the night, flinging gravel behind her, it must be able to move pretty quick. Loretta didn’t stop until she was on the best-lit street in the center of Great Falls. Then she pulled over and called a friend, and they checked on the horses and went over the truck and camper carefully together. Not a thing wrong with any of it-- the rain had even washed every trace of blood off the front. Loretta’s friend ended up staying out on the ranch with her for awhile… at least until she could look at wet blue denim without jumping.
But people are tough in Montana. They have to be-- life can be hard out here. And Loretta has clients out old Highway 87-- she has to drive it from time to time. She just tries to avoid that particular stretch… the one along Black Horse Lake… when the light is bad. And once, when she started down the gentle slope that leads that way, and saw something walking along the road way up ahead… she pulled over, before she was even close enough to tell if it was a deer or a dog or a man. She pulled over and sat for a long time, considering. Then she turned around and drove all the way to Fort Benton to spend the night. She didn’t want to take the risk of… running into anything… out there.
Looks like we’d better be running into our tents. It’s getting late, the fire is losing its glow. Except… I forgot, you’ve got a hotel room in Great Falls, don’t you? It’s just a quick trip down Highway 87, you’ll be there in no time. But if you happen to glimpse something up ahead, at the far edge of your headlights, walking along the side of the road… well, we’ve got an extra tent here, and some blankets you can borrow… if you decide to turn around.
Camp Monsters is part of the REI Podcast Network. That tall, eerie figure that looms on the side of the road in your headlights may just be our engineer, Nick Patri, out gathering sound effects for this episode. The two thoroughbreds kicking the walls of the horse trailer back there are our Executive Producers, Paolo Mottola and Joe Crosby, just raring for a chance to run. Luckily our Senior Producer Chelsea Davis knows how to get the best out of all of us with a subtle combination of calming words, firm discipline, and the occasional carrot that she keeps in her pocket. Tonight’s episode was written and performed by yours truly, Weston Davis, the only one on this show who proudly owns a complete suit of blue denim.
And a reminder that the stories we tell here are just that: stories. They’re based on things people claim to have seen and experienced, but it’s up to you to decide what you believe… and how to explain away what you don’t.
Thanks to all of you for listening, subscribing, rating, and spreading the word about this podcast.
And special thanks to this season’s sponsor, YETI. The YETI Tundra Haul hard cooler comes with rugged wheels and a handle built right in, so if you’re considering haunting a lonely highway on foot, but you still want easy access to perfectly-cooled drinks and snacks-- the Tundra Haul may be just the cooler for you. YETI’s got a cooler for everyone, plus a whole lot of other great gear. Check it out at REI or on YETI.com.
Next week we’re heading for the heart of the midwest, listening for-- shhh! Did you hear that distant howl? No? Well you’ll hear it-- much closer-- next week… See you then.