I have spent fifteen years looking at the worst parts of people. I have seen the way a man looks when he knows he is caught, and I have seen the way a city burns when the lights go out. You think you get tough doing this job. You think your heart turns into a piece of old leather that nothing can pierce. But the truth is, your heart just gets brittle. It does not get stronger. It just gets easier to shatter.
My name is Blair, and three weeks ago, I tried to kill the worst part of myself. I drove out to a patch of dirt in the middle of the woods. I took a shovel and a heavy black bag. I told myself it was just a ritual. I was burying the old me: the drinking, the lies, and the way I let people down. I dug a hole deep enough to hide a secret and I covered it up. I felt lighter for exactly ten minutes. Then, on the drive home, my car flipped four times and I ended up with a metal pin in my hip and a head that feels like it is full of wet sand.
Artie is the only person who still talks to me. He works at the impound lot where they took my car. He is a greasy guy who smells like old cigarettes and cheap coffee, but he has a soft spot for reporters who have hit rock bottom. He handed me the memory card from my dashcam this morning. He looked at me with eyes that were too tired for a Tuesday.
“You might not want to watch this, Blair,” Artie said. He rubbed his neck. “Some things are better left in the dark.”
I laughed, because when the world is a joke, you have to laugh at the punchline. I took the card. I needed to see the moment my life broke. I needed to know if I hit a deer or if I just fell asleep at the wheel.
I am sitting in my dark apartment now. The only light comes from my laptop screen. My leg thumps with a dull, wet pain every time my heart beats. It feels like someone is hitting my bone with a hammer wrapped in velvet. I clicked play on the file.
The video starts with the sound of the engine. It is a steady hum. The headlights cut through the trees like two yellow teeth. It was raining that night. The water on the glass looked like tears running down a face. I watched the road, waiting for the crash.
Then I saw it.
About a mile before the big turn, something moved in the red glow of my taillights. The dashcam has a rear camera too. I switched the view.
A figure was running behind the car. It was not a person, not really. It moved with a weird, jerky motion. Its limbs were too long. Its knees bent the wrong way. It looked like a person who had been folded like a card table and then forced to stand up.
My stomach turned over. I felt a sudden coldness in my chest that had nothing to do with the air in the room.
The thing was wearing my clothes. It was wearing the same yellow raincoat I had used when I was digging that hole in the woods.
I leaned closer to the screen. My breath hitched in my throat. The figure was gaining on the car. It was running at sixty miles per hour. Its feet hit the pavement with a heavy, wet sound. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.
It reached out a hand. The fingers were long and pale. It touched the back window. The glass did not break, but the whole car shook. On the screen, I saw myself in the driver’s seat. I saw my own face in the rearview mirror. I looked bored. I did not even know it was there.
The thing behind the car looked up. The camera caught its face for one second.
It was my face. But it was wrong. The eyes were just black holes. The mouth was open too wide, like the jaw had been snapped off the hinges. It looked like a mask made of wet paper.
This was the thing I buried. I thought it was a metaphor. I thought I was being poetic. But there it was on the screen, chasing me down with a hungry, screaming mouth.
The video showed the car swerving. The thing in the yellow coat did not trip. It jumped. It landed on the roof of the car with a sound like a falling piano. The metal buckled. That is when the car started to roll.
The camera spun. Trees, sky, dirt, trees.
When the car finally stopped, the world was quiet. The rain kept falling. I watched the screen, my hands shaking so hard I could barely hold my coffee mug.
The thing crawled out from under the flipped car. It stood up and looked directly into the camera. It leaned in until its dead, black eyes filled the whole frame. It stayed there for a long time. It did not move. It just watched.
Then, it began to dig.
It used its bare hands to claw at the dirt right under the camera. It dug until its fingernails were gone. It dug until the bone showed through the skin. It was looking for something.
A cold sweat broke out on my neck. My skin felt too tight for my body. I remembered that night. I remembered waking up in the wreck. I remembered the smell of gasoline and the taste of copper in my mouth. I thought I was alone until the paramedics arrived.
On the video, the thing stopped digging. It pulled something out of the ground.
It was a small, silver locket. My locket. The one I wear every single day. The one that is around my neck right now.
I froze. I reached up and touched the cool metal against my skin.
The thing on the screen held the locket up to its face. It didn’t have a nose, just a flat, wet spot where a nose should be. It sniffed the air. Then it turned its head toward the road. It looked toward the city. It looked toward my apartment.
The video ended. The screen went black.
I sat in the silence of my room. My heart was a panicked bird hitting the inside of my ribs. I tried to tell myself it was a prank. Artie was a jerk. He was good with computers. He probably did this to scare me.
But then I heard it.
Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.
The sound was coming from the hallway outside my door. It was the sound of bare feet hitting the carpet. Heavy feet. Wet feet.
I looked at the bottom of the door. The light from the hallway was bright. A shadow moved into the gap.
Two pale, thin feet appeared. The toes were bruised and purple. The skin was peeling off in long, gray strips.
The doorknob began to turn. It moved slowly, with a clicking sound that made my teeth ache.
“Blair?” a voice whispered.
It was my voice. It sounded like my voice if I had been screaming for a hundred years. It sounded like dirt and dry leaves.
“Blair, you forgot something in the woods.”
The door creaked open. I did not move. I could not move. I felt like my blood had turned to lead.
The thing in the yellow raincoat stood in the doorway. It was dripping wet. The smell of old earth and rot filled the room. It reached out a hand, and I saw the raw, red bone of its fingertips.
It smiled. Its mouth kept opening and opening until the skin on its cheeks began to tear.
I realized then that you cannot bury the past. You can only give it a place to wait. And my past was done waiting.
The thing stepped into the light. It was not a ghost. It was solid. It was heavy. And it wanted its locket back.
I looked at the silver chain around my neck. I looked at the thing with my face.
The world is a joke, I thought. And I am finally going to hear the end of it.