Jeff Jones, Week 3

“Who are these? Why sit they here in twilight?

Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows…”

There was another message this morning, just the same as before. This one appears to be from a poem called “Mental Cases” by Wilfred Owen. You know, with these sorts of bizarre happenings, there tends to be a progression from initial interest to disbelieving horror with repetition, and then further to frightened acclimation. I think I’ve skipped straight past that second step – these messages don’t horrify me. They unnerve me, but their like clockwork repetition has become just another part of my overall terrifying life. It doesn’t help that stranger things than literary quotes appearing on my monitor are happening as well.

The man is moving closer. I call him a man – that thing in the suit. The faceless man. He reappeared outside my home every single night this week – he’s there as I type this, actually – but inching slowly forward. He was across the street near the tree line last week. But as I type this, he is about three quarters of the way across the road, just past the shadow. The shadow is one of the most unnerving things about this whole ordeal, actually – while the man would always disappear by the morning, the shadow has persisted. I should explain.

One night, I parked my chair in front of my window. Yet another storm – it’s been incessant for the past week or so – had knocked out my power, so I was out of things to do, particularly since my work has been slow going and fruitless. So I sat in front of the window with a cup of coffee and watched the man. The lightning flashes would illuminate him for brief instants every few minutes, sending waves of horror radiating throughout my body with each flash. But at one point, I saw a car approaching from further down the road. It wasn’t unheard of, but it was rare that cars passed my way so late at night. The man was right in the car’s path. I sat up and gripped the sides of my chair. The car got closer and the man remained still. Thunder rumbled. The car was really close now. They were going to collide. The man would surely die. Lightning flash – and the car passed straight through the man, as if he weren’t there at all.

I sat there, petrified, my head in my hands for what felt like hours. I cannot trust the evidence of my own eyes, I reasoned – the man must be a hallucination. But of course, the words of the driver from last week came back to me.

“You could see him, too?”

I could see him, too. I sat there, wondering – was this some shared psychosis, or was there some worse horror at play? Am I insane, or am I hunted? I didn’t really care to learn the answer – neither one was particularly comforting. They say there is comfort in resolution, that the best horror movies are the ones that don’t resolve everything in a nice little bow. I disagree – resolution isn’t comforting at all. It’s a specific identification of what has befallen you. With your questions answered, there is nothing left but to accept your inevitable fate. No, not knowing is much better. It gives you something to hope for.

I went to bed not long after that, but of course I didn’t sleep. I got up and dressed the next morning, and started the drive into town when I passed the spot where the car had driven through the man the night before. I looked at the spot on the road and slammed on the brake. I got out of my car and stared at the spot on the road.

A shadow of the man was imprinted directly into the asphalt. It wasn’t some sort of substance or an actual shadow – it was as if his visage had been burned into the asphalt. I pulled out my pocket knife and started to scratch at the asphalt, but the shadow did not move. It reminded me of those images of shadows from Hiroshima, reverse burned into the ground as the bodies of people in the blast radius shielded the ground under their shadows from the immense heat. A chill ran through my body and I got back in my car and kept driving. When I returned home and had to pass the shadow again, the same chill ran through my body.

The man appeared again that night, like clockwork. Whatever forces have been allayed against me are rather punctual, though they show no clear motives. I fear for what they may cause and what they may want from me.

I am scared. Moving here was a big mistake.