Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve been seeing the man down the hall.
I don’t really know how to describe him, since he only appears when it’s really dark, and he’s always bathed in shadow.
It doesn’t matter where I live. We moved twice when I was younger and it didn’t change the fact that he showed up every night when I was heading to bed.
My parents told me stories that I didn’t even remember, telling me that I never wanted to go to bed at night. They said I would get upset and cry, saying “the man was going to get them.” But they always just thought it was an excuse to stay up late.
The first memory I have of seeing him was when I was about five years old. I had just left the bathroom from brushing my teeth when I looked up and saw him, just standing there, staring at me, from down the hall. Not moving, not doing much of anything, just watching. I remember getting into bed and thinking whoever that was, they were going to kill my parents. I wondered why they hadn’t noticed him, and why they weren’t screaming and telling him to get out.
“Mom, is the bad man gone!?” I yelled to my parents after a few minutes.
Eventually my mom came in and told me everything was okay, and that I’d just been imagining things.
I had a bad dream. That was what they always told me. But I wasn’t even asleep yet, so how could it be a dream?
And it got worse and worse.
I started seeing the shadow man in the hallway every single night, and realized he’d been there all along and some nights I just hadn’t noticed him. He blended in so well with the darkness - it was like he was made of the night.
Soon, I started to notice that he was getting closer. He was no longer in the living room, where my parents were. He was just inside the threshold of the doorway leading into the hallway.
It started to happen every night when I left the bathroom from brushing my teeth. I would open the door and look down the hall and he would be standing there. A little closer every time.
Why was this happening to me, I’d wonder to myself, ducking into my bedroom and hiding beneath the covers. I’d have trouble sleeping, picturing that hideous shadowy figure inching closer and closer all the time.
When I moved out from my parent’s house and went to college, the shadow man actually went away for a little while. Or at least I tried not to notice him. I tried not to think about him. I brushed my teeth in my bedroom and went pee in plastic bottles, doing anything I could to avoid that dreaded look down the hallway before bed. That was where I always saw him, so I thought maybe I could get rid of him by just avoiding looking.
It seemed to work for a while. Ignorance is bliss, after all.
I went through college and graduated with honors, finally able to focus on my studies.
I got married and had kids. We got a dog and moved into a house in the suburbs.
And I forgot all about the shadow man in the hallway. If I did think about him, it was dismissed immediately as a childhood nightmare, a bad waking dream.
But something happened tonight. I did something which I haven’t done in a long, long time. I left my bedroom during the night to go to use the toilet.
The ensuite bathroom we have next to our master bedroom was having plumbing issues. I’d have to use the one down the hall, I realized.
I broke out into a cold sweat for reasons I couldn’t understand. Why was I so scared to walk down the hall?
Still, I did it, entering the bathroom and turning on the light, scared for a second of what might be lurking in the darkness waiting for me.
But there was nothing.
I did my business and washed my hands, then exited the bathroom and looked down the hall, taking a step and then freezing mid-stride before I moved another inch.
He was there.
The man in the hallway. The shadow man from my childhood nightmares.
He’d always been so far away, impossible to make out the details of him. But now he was SO CLOSE.
Just inches away from me, moving almost imperceptibly closer by the second. I could finally make out the details of his horrifying face - the decaying, gray skin, shriveled and torn. Riddled with sores and weeping wounds. Fat black worms crawled out from holes in his flesh.
I slammed the door of the bathroom shut, hiding inside.
Breathing heavily, I locked the door and sat down with my back pressed against it. I was just waiting for him to try to force his way in.
But he didn’t. Instead, he’s just waiting outside for me. Getting closer. Always inching closer.
And I don’t know what’s going to happen when he finally reaches me. But I have a pretty good guess.
I’m hiding in the bathroom now, typing this up. There’s nothing else to do but sit here and wait for the sun to rise. I’m not going back out there again until then…
Except…
My wife is calling for me. I can hear her opening the bedroom door.
“Honey? Why are you just standing at the end of the hall like that?” she’s saying to the shadow man outside.
I want to yell, I want to scream, to tell her that’s not me. But before I can, she’s already speaking again.
“Come to bed,” I hear her say, and the sounds of floorboards creaking can be heard moving up the hall away from me. The bedroom door closes softly.
He’s not in the hallway anymore, I realize with horror.
Now he’s in the bedroom. With my wife.