As a child, I went to a small holiday village with my parents. My family was barely scraping by at that time, so it was a bunch of cheap houses and a small playground somewhere in the forest, not far from an abandoned factory.
Almost no one looked after the children, and we often ran away into the forest, to the realm of mysterious industrial ruins. What could have gone wrong, really?
Hooks, piles of shabby, rusty iron, whole torn off metal plates, which, apparently, they wanted to scrap, but were too lazy to drag, dilapidated buildings with huge gloomy machines. It felt that everything was sleeping in anticipation of something.
There was only one relatively well-preserved building. Apparently, it was the accounting department, administration, or something like that, but it was no longer possible to understand what exactly the two-story house with a triangular roof had previously served. The entrances were littered with debris, and all the windows were boarded up. Except one, right under the roof. Its glasses were shattered, the hole gaping with an empty black eye socket in a crumbling yellow face.
And there was something in the eye. It looked at us. Barely noticeable during the day, but in the evenings, in the dark, we could clearly see two ellipses floating in the air and something similar to a cylinder above them.
It did not move and was always at the same point.
Ii didn’t occur to me during that time that it was simply waiting.
Usually we stared into the window, which was dark even on a sunny day, until we felt scared enough to rush back to the village. We ran a hundred meters and then, breathless, repeated how scary it all was, and discussed theories about what was really happening there. An alien? A spirit of a tortured worker? A creature from a parallel world?
To be honest, it was fun. Of course, the building looked at us menacingly, especially since we were small, and it was big, and the motionless spots in the darkness of the broken window were frightening. But it remained there, in an abandoned factory, mere hundreds of meters away from the holiday village where our parents were. If not waiting for us, at least just being there.
We had somewhere to go back.
One day, when we once again came to get spooked by the spots near the roof, the window was empty. Only impenetrable darkness - and nothing more.
We didn’t run back, just walked. We talked about something and laughed, but awkwardly and unnaturally. We became uncomfortable. The Face in the Tall Hat seemed to be something permanent, unchanging. A safe, static secret of the vast and not-so-friendly world around us.
For a few more days, we could hardly fall asleep at night, thinking about the missing “face”. However, nothing happened, and we gradually forgot about this story.
But the secret of the unfriendly world turned out to be by no means static and not at all safe.
When I turned eighteen, I seemed to start seeing him again.
In the reflections on the glass of the windows, in the corner of my eye in the mirrors. A barely perceptible image flashing in the glare on the smartphone screen.
Then I chalked it up to fatigue. The year turned out to be difficult, preparation for exams and graduation, problems in the family and other worries were piling up and squeezing my shoulders more and more. Of course you will start seeing things that scared you in the past.
Gradually, with each appearence in the reflections, the image became clearer and more distinct. Soon I could make out the details that I did not notice as a child.
Inside the yellow ellipses was a spiraling whirlwind that went into darkness towards the middle. Just like pupils.
Thin red threads were connected to the ellipses. Like vessels.
Below hung thin lips, two scarlet uneven pads, the corners of which were pointed down. And a black crack between them.
Above the “eyes” is an iridescent blue “cylinder” with uneven, blurry outlines.
Glare on a smartphone. Reflection on the glossy ceiling that I stare at on sleepless nights. Mirror in my room. Reflection in a cup of coffee. Outside the subway window. On the window glass in the classroom. On some expensive metal-worked teacher’s pen. On a huge mirror in the hallway. On the hoods of all the cars in the yard. On TV displays. On the surveillance cameras. On the mirror in the hallway. In glare on a plate. On the ceiling. In the window. On the mirror.
Before my eyes when I lower my eyelids.
The next day I didn’t go to school. The image was everywhere. I couldn’t take it anymore, I needed the closure.
In just half an hour of searching, I managed to find where this holiday village was. I have a good memory, and I remebered it wasn’t too far from our old home.
A train with something lurking in the reflections, then half an hour on a bicycle and another ten minutes of walking through the forest, with shadows around me.
The abandoned factory has not changed at all. Even the garbage laid in the exact same places as before.
I scattered the rubble at the front door. The door did not yield immediately, it opened heavily, with a long groan.
Inside was clean and bright.
The building had modern minimmalistic design with smooth white walls, floors and ceilings. I saw my reflection on them, but not the face.
Nearby was a staircase. Also white. There were clearly more than two floors.
It was too late to turn back.
I started up the stairs, one empty, unnaturaly clean floor after another.
After a couple of dozen flights, oddly enough, there was no fatigue in my legs, the final scene was waiting for me. The closure I’ve been looking for, the ending I feared. In the middle of the white floor, a black spot stood out sharply on the floor.
I stepped closer.
It was a whirlwind with blurry edges which we mistook for a tall hat.
I didn’t want to raise my eyes and look up, but something made me decide.
It was exactly what I expected to see.
Two huge elliptical eyes, looking at me with unblinking stare. Above them was a mouth, lips closing and opening, perhaps speaking words in a language I didn’t know.
I gazed fascinated from the inside at the upside-down, strangely twisted face that had haunted me since my childhood… until my lips tightened and the floor disappeared from under my feet.
The whirlwind expanded and I fell into it, into a bottomless space.
I do not remember what happened next and how I returned home.
I didn’t see the face again.
It saw me from the inside, as I saw it in that abandoned… factory? Was it really a factory, and not a trap for the selection of new flesh vessels?
I feel it travel through me, move through my body. It is already in the neck and moving upward as I finish this post.
Soon.
Soon.