Aaron was a bullshitter. Everyone in our class knew it. Even at the age of ten you could see the wild imagination in his eyes writing his stories mid-way through telling them.
His dad knew the president and his uncle was in the rocket that went to the moon but ‘he doesn’t like having his photos taken so you won’t recognise him from anywhere.’ It was fun not believing but indulging him.
I spent every school year with him following that enjoyment, but there was something different in those eyes when he spoke about the midnight man. A lack of the imagination the rest of his tales required.
He said he first saw him whilst disobeying his bedtime orders, glancing at the vacant sidewalk through his bedroom window.
“He’s just like… weird. He has one of those big foreheads like Daniel’s dad and one eyebrow that’s as long as two. He wears a coat like mine, but it’s black.” Aaron gestured to his red cagoule and ignored Daniel’s sulking that began after his Dad’s receding hairline got used as a description.
“I can sprint to your house in like 23 seconds and I never saw him!” Daniel snarled at him.
That’s because you go to bed early! He only goes walking at nighttime twelve! Like midnight. He must be the midnight man.” Aaron blurted out at the surrounding gang, darting his eyes around to see if we all looked onboard with his story.
We all just stared in silence which was the usual cue for him to continue.
“He didn’t see me but he stopped and was looking at my house. He had loads of rings on one hand like bikers have but he didn’t have a bike. My brother could’ve beat him up anyway since he was staying at our house and he was the strongest marine in his squadron and helped Obama kill Bin Laden. He says I’m already stronger than most of the guys he trained with.”
We all giggled and resorted back to the usual teasing that occurs whenever Aaron goes on such tangents, but I could tell we all shared the same curiosity about the midnight man.
We all left the playground with the agreement that Aaron and Daniel would stay up until midnight to see if they both spot the midnight man. If not, Aaron had to be in goal when we played soccer during tomorrow’s recess.
“You need to stay up too!” Aaron pointed at me.
“Why do I have to stay up?”
“Because he walks the same way me and Daniel did when we went to your mums barbecue at your house and if he breaks Daniel’s door down and punches him to death with his biker rings you need to tell everyone I was right!”
Daniel shot a look of mildly frustrated betrayal at his involuntary sacrifice.
“Fine.” I said, and with that, we were all going home to look out for Aaron’s midnight man.
It took me a good minute just to get to my bedroom window from my bed. My mum and dad always went to bed late and the plan was ruined if they knew I’d stayed up.
I’d turned my own TV off when they told me to but kept my Xbox on so as soon as I pressed the television remote power button, my Xbox messages screen reappeared so I could talk to Aaron and Daniel. The sound was all the way down so I quietly moved my analog stick to type a message from my windowsill once the time read 23:55pm.
“Waiting now”
I squatted down so only my nose and above was visible from the street and I stared into the night. Nothing moved but the gentle sway of tree branches and bushes in the summer breeze. I played Aaron’s story back over in my head and felt a faint burning of nerves in my stomach which slowly faded as the boredom set in.
I was thinking about getting back in bed and messaging Aaron to tell him he’s in goal tomorrow by 00:05, then I saw the glow of my TV shift as a message from xX_NinjaAaron_Xx came through.
“He’s back”
The nerves returned, but I reassured myself that Aaron isn’t the one I need confirmation from. Daniel’s message is the one that makes it real. I mentally noted that I’d give it until 00:20.
The nerves weren’t fading this time. It felt like I was checking the time every half an hour just to see it unchanged or only a minute later. I wished there was a way to hide even more of myself from the world outside the glass. I was begging to see Daniel’s gamer tag pop up on my screen.
I glanced back over at my TV, but before my brain could even register the time, I heard him.
A faint but audible thud of shoes hitting the sidewalk was growing closer, bouncing around midnights silence. As I lowered my head further until I could barely see the street, I saw him.
Aaron’s description was uncanny. A tall man in all black marched past my house and began slowing in pace as he reached the path leading to our porch. His hands were in his pockets as his legs began moving too slowly to even propel him forward.
He stared towards our front door then began scanning the garden, his movement matching a corpses from the neck down. I kept my eyes fixed on his hands to try and catch a glimpse of his rings. By the time I went back to study his face, his emotionless gaze, shadowed by a thick mono- brow was climbing up to my bedroom window. I lost my nerve and dropped out of sight, trying to keep my breathing quiet.
I pleaded with the universe to end the peace I was happy to endure just minutes ago until I heard the thud of his shoes continue and waited before slowly resuming my hidden stance by the windowsill. He was out of sight. All that was left to suggest he was even there in the first place was the faint swishing of a moving cagoule sinking back into the soft wind and darkness.
I stared out a few seconds longer until I was startled by a flicker of light coming from my muted TV. DannyBee63 messaged.
“He’s real n I think he saw me”
Aaron was cockily slumped in his chair like a king as Daniel told a group of kids what he saw when I got to class the next day.
“He’s like that robot guy with the European accent in those movies my dad watches! He saw it too!” Daniel pointed at me.
I joined the excited rambling and watched my classmates faces jump between terror and enthralment as I described whoever it was that turned my warm summer night into an eery horror intro. Some other boys said they were gonna start staying up for the midnight man too.
The teacher ordered us all to our seats and before I could empty my pencil case, Daniel leaned over from his desk and spoke in a tone much more quiet and disturbed than the one he’d just been spitting all around the classroom.
“Did you see his monster eyes?”
I shook my head.
“It was like he was mad at us or something.”
The teachers bellows began overpowering Daniel’s whispers. Despite the giddiness the midnight man gave Aaron and Daniel, I had a strong urge to never force myself awake for such a reason again; an urge that was drowning in the certainty that as long as midnight returns, the man would too, and his visits wouldn’t go without a witness.
Some other boys began joining what we’d call “hunting the midnight man night” despite said nights just being us hiding behind our curtains and windowsills. Most nights I wouldn’t even stay up, I’d just say I did.
I didn’t like the feeling the midnight man gave me when I felt his presence near my home. That cold, pale face and those stiff strides made me feel a way nothing else of this world could.
During spring break we’d all stay up late gaming together and you felt the brink of tomorrow drop it’s shade of black when someone mentioned midnight approaching. We’d nervously joke through those distant thuds and that’s all it became after a while.
By the time we all started high school the mysterious and mythical became the homeless and/or mentally ill. The midnight man became more of an inside joke we’d rarely make the effort to crack, let alone hunt.
The only thing regarding him that remained unchanged over the years was the severity in which Daniel spoke about him with. Sometimes it felt like we were making jokes about God in front of a Christian. He never breached the subject but would go somber if anyone else did and would only speak to retell all his sightings of the midnight man without a shred of humour in his voice.
Me and Aaron stayed pretty good friends but we grew apart from Daniel. Maybe that was one of the reasons why. By the time we had reached sixteen Daniel had moved across the country with his family. Something to do with his Dad’s job.
I just remember fist-bumping him on his last day and seeing his car go past my house as he drove away from the past sixteen years of his life, leaving mine and Aaron’s without him from that day forward. The Daniel we knew when we were ten was nowhere to be found in the Daniel who drove down my road that day.
I could tell Aaron was saddened by his leaving because he’d constantly bring up old times and ask me to start my Xbox up again to play with him; a hobby I’d left behind once I hit thirteen. It now sat under my desk, gathering dust, probably with thousands of game invites from him and Daniel over the past three years, all unanswered.
Mine and Aaron’s friendship was never awkward, but like a lot of teenagers we just began meeting new friends and going to parties and hanging out without each other. There was always a seat for him next to me and vice versa, but time slowly turned him into a face I’d acknowledge whilst passing in the halls.
We shared a hug when we both graduated high school and had a drunken, reminiscent talk at the after party where we brought up his bullshit stories from all those years ago, how we should both find our Xbox’s again, the midnight man antics and where we think Daniel and other kids from our class had and would end up.
That was the last time I spoke to Aaron. 10 years have passed now and despite the love I still have for him, I would happily accept that as the end of our story in exchange for eradicating the bubbling dread that has since nested within me.
I unexpectedly lost my job two weeks ago and immediately made the decision to mentally tie myself to my desk with my laptop and phone in front of me, barely moving to eat or sleep but regularly doing so to grab another beer and extinguish the anxiety regarding my next bill payment.
Ad after ad, phone call after phone call. I began speaking in a mental script, only communicating to pursue a wage and begging fate to give me an opportunity. After two days it must’ve been the twentieth time I refreshed my email to see I’d received another automated chunk of text stating my application was unsuccessful and all the suppressed frustration since getting laid off left my body.
I swiped my laptop and phone off of my desk counter, launched an empty bottle at the wall and stormed out of the room to my bedroom.
I opened the window, lit a cigarette and inspected the night, wondering what the hell went so wrong so fast. I’d been bound to my desk so long that I didn’t even realise it was dark out.
I was watching the smoke disappear into the void of the sky when I looked down to see a man three stories below me walking past the small patch of grass just before the sidewalk outside my building.
I watched in confusion as he slowly came to a holt and began examining the bricks. I saw his head freeze when it reached my window and I was in too bad of a mood to break the glare first. We stared at each other in silence and I raised the two fingers I was using to grip my cigarette to acknowledge his presence.
He kept starring.
I gave him a puzzled nod, unsure anymore if he even knew he was looking at someone.
He kept starring.
“You alright there, buddy?” I shouted into the night.
He kept starring.
My eyes were beginning to adjust to the darkness and I started studying his face. His severely receding hairline, that thick mono-brow, the pale complexion and gaunt look.
Those monster eyes.
My mind began whirling around the pillars that held up the part of my brain that stored those childhood memories and just as some ancient nerves caught fire in my stomach again, I saw the sparkle of silver wrapped around the fingers of one of his hands as he removed it from his pocket and began making his way towards the buildings entrance.
My hands went numb and the cigarette landed in his path. I heard the thud of his boots as he stepped on it before disappearing below me. I staggered away from the window like a hit soldier and dashed back to my desk where my phone lied underneath, resting on a damaged laptop.
I went to dial 911 and saw the time as I scrambled to work my phone. 00:03.
The operator asked my emergency, but my breath and words were sucked out of my lungs when I heard the clink of rings clutching the metal rails of my buildings stairs three stories down.
“Hello? Do you have an emergency?”
The swishing of a cagoule was joined by the thud of thick boots as the clanging grew louder.
I slowly lowered the phone from my ear, ignoring the faint questioning of the operator.
The noises ceased, and in the hallway light that seeped under the crack of my door, I saw the shadow of two feet waiting in dead stillness outside my home.
They didn’t budge an inch. It was like an empty pair of shoes rather than human limbs. I couldn’t bring myself to make any sudden movements and the phone in my limp arm felt like it was a mile journey from my face.
I mustered up all the energy I could find the guts to use and clicked the speaker button on my phone with my thumb.
“Is everything alright? Do you need an ambulance?” Bursted out of my phone and I felt the vibration from the volume.
One shadow disappeared shortly followed by the other. The thudding began vanishing and the clanging disappeared with the same urgency it arrived with.
I shivered in the silence for a few seconds before collapsing onto the floor, allowing my body to fold into the foetal position.
I began crying uncontrollably. He was the exact same. It was eighteen years later and the clothes, the face and those emotionless eyes were the EXACT same.
“Are you okay? Can you hear me?” My terror was replaced with confusion for less than a second.
“Everything is fine. Sorry.” I whispered, doing a poor job of fighting the shake in my voice before hanging up the phone. I didn’t want the police. I didn’t want it to feel real. I wanted to run a million miles away and forget who I was and what I was going through.
My thoughts ricocheted off of the inside of my head and images I hadn’t seen for eighteen years flashed before my eyes.
In the midst of chaotic panic, my mind acknowledged a question from all those years ago I could finally answer differently.
“Did you see his monster eyes?”
Daniel.
I didn’t know who or where Daniel was anymore and I hadn’t lived in the state that we started this in since I was in my early twenties. All I knew was he saw what I just did long before I had to and he lived with it.
I wasn’t thinking logically anymore. There wasn’t any logic in a situation like this. I knew what I was going to do whether it made sense or not. I had to do something. I grabbed my wallet, my keys, my beers and a kitchen knife on the way out.
I set up the directions for an old address on my GPS and started the engine. I knew finding Daniel was hopeless. I’d search for him and many other old classmates on social media yearly. Nothing ever came up, but there was one more way back into the life I’d forgotten about.
I leant on my dashboard and remembered seeing Aaron’s parents at his graduation, telling them I hope their son ends up someplace great. I made two quick prayers. One begging that they haven’t moved and the other hoping that wherever they send me to find their son, it was much greater for him than the place I’ll be dragging him back to.
With that, I pulled out of my buildings parking lot with adrenaline in my veins, alcohol in my system and the swishing of a cagoule in my head…