Dinosaurs In Hats

(Title)

Chapter One: Of Dinosaurs and Hats

Will spotted the dinosaur wearing a hat first. Initially thinking he was hallucinating, he rubbed his eyes in disbelief but the creature didn’t disappear. It remained, a slender-necked creature balancing on two legs with three claws on each foot, and a back and arms covered and feathers. It stood roughly about as tall as the car, studying it with alert eyes from the shadows of the trees. It sported an old-fashioned top hat - the kind that he’d seen pictures of Abraham Lincoln wearing in his history textbook. It was so surprising, in fact, that he nudged his brother, Tony, next to him.

“This had better be good,” he said, pulling out one of his earbuds.

“There’s a dinosaur in a hat out there,” Tony said.

“Yeah, whatever, dweeb.”

“I’m serious.”

But his brother ignored him, plugged his earbuds back in and closed his eyes Will pressed his face to the glass, craning his head until the dinosaur disappeared behind a bend. The car rolled on down the road. Looking ahead didn’t look all that promising - more forested hills and a seemingly never-ending ribbon of asphalt. That was when Will spotted the next unusual thing - even more so than the dinosaur wearing a hat, if that was even possible. The road was somehow shifting, subtly changing direction and taking someplace entirely unexpected. Up above, the slate-colored sky looked like rain.

“Dad,” Will said. “The road’s moving.”

His dad, who had been listening to classic eighties rock music that had been blaring out of the car stereos for the past four hours, glanced back at him.

“What?”

“The road. It’s…moving.”

“I think you need a nap,” he laughed. “Just relax. We’ll be in Grantsville before you know it.” Will shook his head and leaned back against the seat, mutinous. He knew what he had seen - could still see in fact. It was hard to notice but it was there. The road was gradually shifting a little further to the right, a a bend slowly bending further, even as they traversed it. How was nobody noticing this?
He looked out the window again whenever the car jolted, as if it had somehow hit something heavy, the engine spluttering in protest. The music blasting through the car speakers cut out, replaced by static and a grainy announcer’s voice speaking in a language he didn’t recognize and could barely hear. Tony sat up, pulling one earbud out.

“What happened?”

“I don’t actually know,” their dad said with a frown, pulling the car off to the side of the road. “It felt like we hit something but…I think I’m going to take a look. Make sure there’s no damage.” The radio continued to flicker with its static and alien language until their dad killed the power.

“That’s enough of…whatever that is. This shouldn’t take long.”

He climbed out of the car and popped open the hood to the engine. Now at a standstill, Will felt once again a prickle of unease. He peered through the woods whenever he saw the dinosaur again - though now there were two of them, both in the same ridiculous stovepipe hats and both studying the car with bright disaffected eyes.

“Look,” Will said in a hushed voice. “Tony, seriously.”

“This isn’t your stupid dinosaur wearing a hat again, is it?”

“They’re right there! There’s two of them now!”

“Look, I don’t want to be here in the first place on this dumbass camping trip. I don’t want you bothering me about…whatever. Dinosaurs in hats. That sounds stupid.” He mumbled to himself, thumbing through the music playlist on his phone, paying him no more attention. Will, however, was beginning to feel serious anxiety. The road shifting, taking them somewhere else entirely. The dinosaurs. The radio. Something was very wrong.

As if on cue, the two dinosaurs turned and disappeared back into the forest. His dad stepped back into the driver’s seat.

“I can’t find anything wrong,” he said. “No sign that we hit anything either. So I’m not sure what all that was about. Oh, well. That’s road trips for ya!” he started the car, blasting Billy Joel through the stereo speakers as they pulled back onto the road, which almost immediately began redirecting them yet again. Will didn’t say anything for a long time but he felt ill. He eventually stopped trying to follow the contours of the ever-shifting road. It gave him a headache to watch and it just brought to mind more anxieties about what, exactly, they were walking into.

“Dad,” he said. “Are you sure you know where we’re going?”

“Of course I do,” he said. “And if I don’t, the GPS knows where we’re going.” Will turned his attention to the dashboard.

“Uh - Dad?”

“Hmm?”

“The GPS says we’re driving through the middle of town.”

“What? No, that can’t be.”

His dad glanced at the GPS on the dashboard and frowned.

“That’s definitely not right. I wondered why I hadn’t heard it give out any directions for a while.” Will didn’t say anything. Outside the forest rolled by. More and more, he caught quick glimpses of more of the hatted dinosaurs running alongside the road, keeping pace with the car. The road had stopped twisting and shifting around.

Something’s wrong…

“We’ll figure it out. We’ll see if there’s a rest stop or something and we’ll get it figured out.” A silence fell over the car.

“No Internet,” Tony grumbled. “Great…”

Will didn’t say anything. That there was apparently no Internet - way out in the middle of nowhere - came as no surprise to him. He’d barely touched his own phone in his pocket for most of the trip. The radio flickered again, going back to the eerie static and the grainy announcer’s voice in the foreign language.

“What’s up with that?” he asked. “Dad…”

His dad reached out and turned the radio off. Silence fell.

“Trying to drive, kiddo We’ll have to do without music for now.”

Will slouched back in the seat again, arms folded across his chest. Nobody wanted to listen to him. And he hated being called ‘kiddo’. He’d just turned fourteen last week. They hadn’t driven much longer than that whenever the radio turned back on, the eerie static and the announcer’s voice permeating the car.

“I thought we were done with the radio,” Tony complained. “Bad enough I can’t get on the Internet, now I have to listen to this…!”

His dad didn’t answer, merely reaching over to flip it off. It didn’t work. It stayed on, the hissing static filling the interior of the car.

“This is like something out of a horror movie,” Will said, his anxiety continuing to build.

“I’m sure it’s fine,” his dad replied, though he sounded worried. “But we can’t really stop in the middle of nowhere.”

And then Will spotted the stranger. He was standing off to the side of the road, dressed in fraying brown robes, head bowed and hidden behind a hood. His dad had seen him too, doing a double take. The static in the car increased in volume, until Will could barely hear himself think. The announcer’s voice in the eldritch tongue began to come through clearer. His head hurt and he had a strange idea - an impossible idea. This man, whatever or whoever he was, was using the radio to communicate.

And then he noticed the dinosaurs again. More and more of them lining the woods, their eyes bright and intense - so bright that they were virtually glowing with blue and red light. All of them sported the same identical stovepipe hat and they were all following the car.

Will shrank back in his seat. He couldn’t remember the last time he felt so terrified, so incredibly alone. Neither his brother nor his dad appeared to have seen the creatures, his brother busy with his phone, his dad with his eyes on the road.

“Dad - that guy on the side of the road,” Will said.

“What guy?”

“You didn’t see him?”

“Will, what’s gotten into you? It’s not like you to be so twitchy.”

“There’s just…something wrong,” Will said. “I don’t know what.”

“Oh, I know,” Tony called from next to him. “Maybe it’s the stupid radio. God, it’s like something out of a horror movie.”

“We’re okay,” he said. “Maybe a little lost because the GPS is malfunctioning, but it’s alright. You’ll see.”

The car whined and began to stall again.

“Again?!” his dad said. “I hope we don’t have to wait for a tow truck.” He pulled over to the side of the road, just as the mysterious ragged cloaked figure appeared once more.