“Finally.” I muttered as the foreman dismissed me for the night.
“What was that?”
“Nothing sir, I’ll see you tomorrow!” I called over the whirring machinery. I headed into the attached locker room and threw my heavy gear up onto the racks. A cursory look at the mirror revealed bloodshot eyes peaking through a face caked in dark grease. I looked about as drained as I felt.
With my only remaining plans that night being a boiling hot shower and an intimate date with my bed, I walked right by the sinks and pushed through the heavy door leading outside.
“Ah, shit.” Night had fallen a while ago, it seemed.
I cursed my luck and, with great difficulty, extracted my phone from beneath tattered overalls, using the torch to light my way through the pitch black treeline. During the day, this dirt path was a doddle to manoeuvre and was alive with people plodding to and from the industrial area. Now, it might not have existed if not for the small halo of light I held in my hand.
As I trudged through the darkness I tried to remind myself of all the extra money I’d made from overtime that day, but it turned out it wasn’t enough to stop me grumbling. The five minute woodland walk ended up being closer to 10 as I emerged out on a dimly lit roadside and took a short jog to the nearby bus stop.
Running a finger down the timetable, I breathed a sigh of relief. There was one more bus coming that night, due in about 15 minutes. The bus stop consisted of a dirty metal bench propped up under a heavily graffitied shelter, but I slid onto it gratefully.
I’d just begun tapping away at my phone to whittle down the minutes, when a message popped up from a colleague of mine.
Carl: Hey Andrew, heard from Sam you got stuck working late tonight. Just thought I’d give you a quick heads up if you’re catching the last bus out of Greenwood. Stay where you are, don’t take your eyes off it, and try to keep calm. Good luck, hope to see you Monday pal!
One of my eyebrows felt like it might fly off the top of my head as I stared incredulously at the text. If anything was true of Carl, it was that any fair character assessment of the guy would classify him as an oddball, so it wasn’t as if spouting gibberish like this was anything out of the ordinary for him. However, the message was enough to send a prickling sensation down the back of my neck, compelling me to pry my eyes from the screen.
I gasped and nearly fell off the bench when I saw it. The dark silhouete of a man had materialised silently out of the woods on the pavement opposite. Light from the sparse street lights didn’t quite reach him so I couldn’t make out details, I might not have known he was there at all if not for the bizarre message I’d just received. Before I could really grasp the situation, the man spoke, interrupting any unfinished thoughts I might have had.
“Hey man, got a light?”
It was the most average of voices, so much so that I couldn’t help but relax a little.
“Ugh, no. Sorry, I don’t smoke.” I lied.
An uncomfortable silence followed.
“Sorry.” I repeated.
“What’s your name?” The stranger said.
“Andrew. And you?”
There was another drawn out pause, as if it was a difficult question.
“Ca…rl. Hey man, my name’s Carl.”
Great, another weirdo named Carl. There was something very off about the way this Carl spoke. It was as if he was just splicing together words he’d heard and was only vaguely familiar with what they meant. His pitch was all over the place on some words, and others were completely fine.
I was wary, but decided it’d be dumb to just flat out ignore the guy.
“So Carl, what are you doing out this la-“
With that, I was cut off by the unmistakeable sound of a car horn blaring at me from where the stranger stood.
I couldn’t stop myself from crying out and recoiling. It had little to do with the sudden deafening noise that left my ears ringing, and more to do with the fact that I could still see ‘Carl’s’ mouth flapping open and shut whilst it happened.
“I live here.” He said, casually mashing the words in right as the horn sound stopped.
Now, in my line of work, it wasn’t uncommon to unintentionally inhale a foreign chemical or two, so I seriously considered whether or not I was just experiencing a particularly nasty trip as a result. Regardless, I was unsettled.
Remembering my coworker’s message, I looked briefly back down to the phone in my lap to re-read his advice. Stay where you are, don’t take your eyes off it, and try to keep calm.
Don’t take your eyes off it.
I raised my eyes in time to see the man gliding toward me in a blur of motion, coming to an abrupt halt just meters away in the middle of the road, arms and legs swaying forward with the momentum before coming limply back to rest.
I shot to my feet and scrambled as far back as I could get whilst keeping my eyes locked on the tattered corpse of a man I didn’t recognise and, more importantly, the thing propping him up.
My heart threatened to burst from my chest and I forgot how to breath. I could see spindly grey legs standing right behind the dangling dead man’s, as though it were a child with a poor understanding of the game hide and seek. Fingers, impossibly long and thin, were wrapped around the back of the corpse’s neck and stretched up to work his jaw as it spoke once more.
“Hey man, got a light?”
Tears formed at the corners of my eyes. It had never occured to me before just how precious my own life was to me and I was surprised at how much I wanted to keep it, if at all possible.
I didn’t know what else to do, so I begged and pleaded with the thing while it waited patiently for me to finish. Though the creature was mostly concealed, I got the sense that it was considering me as it’s fingers picked at the gaping holes in the corpse’s cheeks. Then it stopped. Dug into the corners of his mouth, and pulled them into such a ridiculously wide smile that the dead man’s lips burst open at the seams, spattering the tarmack with curdled blood.
He rose higher into the air and started to quiver as though the thing holding him was giddy with excitement. A low, gutteral heaving sound accompanied the now swaying corpse, growing louder and louder until a blinding light suddenly burst into my peripheral vision.
I instinctively turned my head to see the approaching bus round the bend, and when I looked back caught a fleeting glimpse of the corpse flying back into the darkness as if being reeled in on a bungee cord.
With a squeak my rusty saviour rolled to a halt. I could only grunt at the driver when she greeted me cheerfully and stumbled my way to a seat at the back. My heart thumped painfully in my chest as the engine purred into action and I said a prayer in my head.
My phone buzzed with a message.
Carl: You good Andrew?
I considered for a moment, gauging how I felt about Carl’s rather cryptic advice. On the one hand, I’d probably be dead without him. On the other, I really wanted to beat the shit out of him.
I concluded it was probably best to leave him in suspense for the weekend, so with sweaty thumbs I typed out a response.
You’ve got some fucking explaining to do. See you Monday asshole.