I moved to a small town in rural Colorado not that long ago. It’s been a few years of basically nothing interesting. I have a good job and a decent girlfriend, but nothing really exciting ever happens to me. I have trouble talking to new people because I almost never have anything to talk about. But recently something decided it needed to change that.
I don’t remember what day or what month this thing showed up in my boring life, but I know it’s been here for at least a year. I’ve been dating my girlfriend for over a year now, she’s not the best girlfriend or the hottest, but she’s nice I guess. That’s when he showed up. This faceless man in a three piece suit stands outside my house on the other side of the street next to a bus stop. His skin is very pale and veiny, almost seems to have a thin layer of skin pulled over his entire face, and his hands are the same. The suit is like soot, black and matte with no color to it, besides the blood red handkerchief in his right breast pocket and the gold on the handle of his cane.
He stands upright with the best posture I have ever seen with both his hands on his cane. Night and day he stands there looking at me unmoving. He has no eyes so I can’t really tell what he’s looking at, just seems to be in my general direction.
No one else can see him. My girlfriend can’t see him. My neighbors think I should talk to someone because I’m seeing strange men on the sidewalks. People on the streets walking right past him don’t see him either. My neighbor walks their dog every morning and one day he stopped to stretch his hamstrings right in front of the posh faceless man, he didn’t see the thing and the thing still didn’t move. I started to go insane for while but then I finally realized and said to myself “he hasn’t moved from that spot and no one else can see him, maybe I’m just overreacting. If he does something then I can start going crazy, but it’s been a year and I haven’t seen him do much of anything.”
I’ve tried to talk to him, making sure not to go to close to the figure, in case something happened to me or him. He never responded or even moved, he doesn’t even seem to be breathing. He’s like a statue. An ominous statue of a demon with a sheet of skin tightly wrapped around its face and fingers. I almost wanted to touch it to see if it truly is real, but I’m not sure what that would do to me. I’m not sure if it would come alive and attack me. I have no idea what to think of this thing anymore so I decided to leave it alone for now, it doesn’t bother me or anyone else, there’s no point in trying to reason with it.
My parents decided to come over for the weekend. It’s christmas and because I have this apartment to myself and this girlfriend, they want to have the family over to meet her. They helped me clean the house for the party and they put up stupid christmas decorations everywhere. I helped my mom with the food in the kitchen, even though I can’t cook a decent meal for the life of me. My kitchen window has the perfect view of the bus stop and the thing haunting it. I have gotten so used to it’s creepy stare that I gave it a small salute, trying not to let my mom see me. I haven’t told my parents about the entity watching my every movement. I figured that they don’t need anymore stress in their life on top of the fact that their son has no life whatsoever.
As more and more people started to arrive at my house, I kept checking to see if the man had moved at all, he was always looking at me alone or with my girlfriend and had never seen so many people at my house before. He didn’t looked phased at all by the commotion or loud christmas music coming from my living room. But then again he doesn’t have a face so there aren’t any emotions to read. It almost looks like he moved maybe a foot forward though, but I think it might be the eggnog getting to my head. He hasn’t moved for a year, why would he start now?
I think I drank a little bit too much at that party because I woke up to a splitting headache and the man had moved off of the sidewalk. I started to worry a lot. I started shaking my girlfriend to wake her up. I felt bad right after because she was very peaceful and beautiful in her sleep. She looks at me still half asleep.
“ What?” she says groggily.
“He moved!” I just about yelled at her. Through my headache, it felt like a sledgehammer was hitting the side of my head.
“Wait what? Who are you talking about?” she held my face between both her hands tenderly.
“The faceless man in the suit! He moved!”
“Stop yelling, you haven’t talked about this thing for a long time, why is it coming out again now?”
“It wasn’t moving so I just left it be and didn’t react to it anymore, but last night it must’ve moved. It’s not in the same spot.” my heart started racing.
“Babe, you’ll be fine just take an advil and go back to bed.” she turned back over and went back to sleep.
I take her words and try to forget about it. I take an advil pm to help me go back to sleep, it is difficult and I can’t really get comfortable but the drugs kick in pretty quick.
I wake up to my bed empty and cold, Sheila must’ve left for work. I look to the window on the other side of my bedroom. The window is open and the curtains are fluttering in the wind. It’s freezing outside, why would Sheila open the window?
It takes me a few seconds to notice that the street outside my window is completely deserted. There aren’t any cars on the street. No noises coming from downstairs where I knew my parents were staying. No dogs barking from down the street. It is utterly silent. I get up to close the window and suddenly feel a chill run up my spine. This is a feeling I had expelled from my mind and body a year ago. I tell myself it’s just the cold and try to get dressed.
It’s strange just how quiet it is, I can hear everything so much more than I ever could. My refrigerator is making the loudest rumbling noise, I had no idea just how loud it really is until now. I start to think that my heat is off too because I can usually hear that pretty well no matter what and it got super cold with the window being open. I head to my basement to turn it back on, again not sure why Sheila would turn it off and open the window. Seems like she’s trying to freeze me to death, but she wouldn’t try to do something so dumb.
When I get to the boiler, it’s unchanged. Nothing is wrong with it. What is going on? I turn it off then back on again, which works nicely. I guess it just stalled out. I shrug it off and turn to walk back upstairs to eat something when I see the cause of this twinge going up my spine since I woke up.
He is standing maybe five feet from me. If I took a step forward and put my arm out, I would touch his chest. I can see just how horrid his skin is. It’s so pale, it looks translucent against the veins barely under it. There is not one piece of lint or hair anywhere on his suit. My skin crawls with goosebumps and my heart starts to pound hard against my ribs. Why would he come to me now, after so long? What does he want from me? My pulse is going faster than I can count.
“Give it back John Avery”
The voice didn’t come from the posh man, it came from inside me head. It was deep and scratchy like it was coming from an old speaker.
“What do you want from me?” I could barely get the words past my lips I was shaking so much. I have never seen anything so scary in my life. I could feel the pee running down my legs and the warm tears rolling down my cheeks.
“Give it back to me John Avery!”
It was screaming at me from the inside of my head. I thought I was going to go deaf because of it. I felt blood running out of my ears. Then I hear a pop, like walking on a carpet of bubble wrap. His whole body contorted in front of my eyes. What used to be his arms are now long angular noodles with joints that should not serve any purposes. Where his legs were, there are now many different legs of different sizes that look to be barely glued together. The skin left on these limbs is barely there, hanging off by threads of thin skin. He looks like he cannot feel the awful things happening to his body, at this moment his expression is no different, his face is unchanged.
I do not know what I could possibly do now to stop death from grabbing me by the coat tails. I start bawling my eyes out. I can feel in my bones that I am going to die right here in my basement. My life starts to flash before my eyes. All the sweet childhood dreams and adventures wizz past me making me cry even more. I never thanked my mom for throwing this party for me, it was so good to see everyone. I wish I could tell her how much I appreciate everything she’s done for me.
“I DON’T KNOW WHAT U WANT!” I scream over him with what I can only call the last breath of a man who knows he is about to lose everything.
I see his long arms stretch out to his sides becoming even longer. He must be at least ten feet tall right now. The bones on one of his arms grows and sharpens into the large needle like knifes of bones and flies above his head getting ready to strike me.
I have fallen onto the floor and am now on my knees pleading, begging to this demon and to God to not kill me. But my screams are to no avail.
His arm comes down at me in one swoop. I don’t feel anything at first. The fear and adrenaline that is coursing through my veins prevented me from feeling even the slightest itch of pain. I see the blood poor out of a gash across my chest and I scream. He picks up his other arm and hits me again, across my stomach. I could feel everything now as I watched the contents of my abdomen spill out of me and onto the cold stone floor in front of me. I look up at the thing staring at me without eyes,without emotions. I can’t get any words out, I can’t make a sound to the pain I’m feeling. I fall to the floor. I can’t breathe very much anymore and I can feel the life draining from me. I take a final look at the demon who brought me my death, hoping for some sort of answers to why I’m dying here. I see nothing, no reaction, no change. His voice coming from inside my head is the last thing I hear.
“You took this life that did not belong to you,and now I shall take it back.”