His backpack lay beside
him. He was running late. He should
have left for school fifteen minutes ago. He tried to convince himself
that he was postponing his departure because he didn’t want to walk
outside in the cold, but surely it was for another reason. Tightening
his favorite jacket around himself, (the bulky, olive-colored one with a
hood that reached way passed his head) he flipped open his umbrella and
started down the foggy street.
It was quiet.
The street he
lived on was long and curved slightly as he
continued further, which lead to the main road, but every morning the
road seemed longer for him and more deserted. Cars, parked perfectly
along the curb like caskets, were frosted and hollow inside. The trees
that lined both sides of the street were just as gnarled as the ones in
his backyard, except these branches were thicker and hung lower towards
the sidewalk. He tilted his umbrella forward and sank into the hood of
his jacket so he would not have to glance at the crippled fingers that
dangled and swayed above him.
An icy breeze flushed his
cheeks as he turned the
thoroughfare to the main road. He could only pretend that there wasn’t
the long, empty field across the way. His eyes cast downward at his own
steps. Leaves crunched under him. He shielded his view of the field with
his umbrella, believing that the man could not exist if he did not see
him, but strangely that only made him feel as though the man was right
on the other side of the umbrella walking next to him. However, a
feeling- a fighting urge made him want to peek beside him. Perhaps it
was his own suspicious desire to see if what he came to suspect was
true. He never believed in the man before.
“He drags you in and
takes you away,” his friends would
say. “Only when it’s foggy you see him.”
“He just stands there with a
hook in his hand, watching
people walk by,” another would say. “He’s demented- just stares, even if
there isn’t anything to see. You’re brave to walk alone on Lone Ridge
Rd.”
Before,
he chuckled at those who even mentioned the man;
even joked about him himself, but ever since that tragic incident just
on the other side of the field along Bluff Rd.-the one who’s dark and
icy street swirled his mother’s car upside down into a ditch and took
her life, he couldn’t help but to now question. Every morning was the
same way. He’d pass the cluster of prickly, red weeds that grew
sporadically down the road and the dusty remains of a woman’s shoe
lodged beneath a water pipe. A murder of crows perched and watched
silently atop the wires of a telephone poll. And that old, faded car
tire which lay within a cluster of weeds filled him with a sudden urge
to turn around and run, but there was no where else he could go by then.
There was no other way to school.
His breath was ice now. He
could see it.
He lifted his umbrella slightly- just enough
to peer
beneath his brow. A trail of water dribbled down the umbrella’s ribs
onto the moistened dirt. He’s not there, he assured himself. He
never was. A deafening silence surrounded him but the shuffles of
his quickening steps. The fog, which parted as he walked, began sucking
back into the field from once it came. His heart thudded in
anticipation, but he forced himself to look- only if it was for a
second. He quickly searched for that lonely tree far off in the
distance, the one who’s branches looked like it was weeping over what
seemed to be a man-made ditch.
That’s were his friends said
he’d stand and watch.
Giant tumble weeds blocked his view, though
he could see
the tree between their branches. Further down the field the tree finally
appeared, isolated and trapped in a sheet of fog. Where is he?
the boy thought, struggling to keep his eyes fixed as to not show the
man that he was looking. Then, a shadowy figure, tall and distorted came
into view. It took many shapes as he walked, but soon realized that it
was nothing more than a loose branch growing up from the tree’s trunk.
He sank into himself and averted his eyes, believing that he had seen
enough, but feared that if he looked once more the man would be there.
After his mother’s death, he never had the courage to bring himself to
look longer than he had when before it seemed as though the man did not
exist. But now he couldn’t help but to assume that the man had stood
there on that evening looking out towards Bluff Rd., witnessing his
mother’s last breaths.
He could only hope that he didn’t drag her in.
At school his
thoughts were disturbed. The image of that
weeping tree alone within the middle of the field consumed his mind. For
a brief moment he wished that the man would have been there to greet
him, to meet eye to eye so that he could finally believe that the man
was real to end his suffering.
“Have you seen him yet?” his
friend asked him, nudging his
shoulder.
“I haven’t- maybe it’s not foggy enough.”
How could he
admit that in fact he feared him? An
after-school project forced him to stay longer than expected, but he
hurried through to finish as he seen the daylight was fading . By the
time he began walking home the sky was dimming to a grayer and much more
shadowy world. There was no need for his umbrella now, but he used it
anyway to shield himself from the phantom-like figures that grew around
him. When he finally reached Lone Ridge Rd., he knew that the walk would
seem endless as the street lamp’s glow made the moistened road appear
to be a sea of black sludge.
One lamp flickered overhead before dying out.
The field
became a pit in the dusk- the endless swirls of
branches and twigs shot up from the ground, forming shapes like
despairing arms reaching the sky. Two young woman passed the boy along
the sidewalk. They bundled themselves within their coats, laughing and
joking about how cold it was, but the boy thought, why hadn’t they
noticed the field? Why couldn’t they see what I see? A frosty
breeze from within always swept his feet during this time in the
evening- he could feel it in his shoes. The long, curved street to his
house was just ahead. He could reach it in a few minutes if he had
quickened his steps, but something else was more important. He had to
see the man- a form of him, anything to make him believe.
It obsessed him.
The tree was in
front of him now, looming in the darkness,
its shape resembling a black crow in silhouette. Below it, the ditch was
only a spot of darkness darker from the rest of the field. He was
determined to look longer this time even though a feeling inside urged
him not to. From beneath the hood of his jacket, he gazed over towards
the field. Amongst the shadows, one in particular stood out from the
rest. Below the only swaying vine of the tree, which reminded him of a
hanged man, a figure stood and watched him. Nothing could be
distinguished of the figure but its lengthy, unyielding stance, looking
out toward the street. He could not see the man’s eyes, and he
desperately hoped that the man couldn’t see his.
The handle of his umbrella
slipped from his hand when an
unexpected breeze parachuted it across the street into a small bush. His
backpack slid down the side of his arm; his school papers scattering
off into the breeze. He rushed over to retrieve them but stopped before
they were swallowed into the field. As he glance up, the figure was
gone- simply a shadow amongst the other shadows. He knew that the man
was chasing him now; he could sense his presence thrusting through the
dead weeds towards him.
A sinking feeling filled him and he ran home.
As he lay in bed
that night, he wondered about death. The
shadows that danced around his room from the headlights of passing cars
sent him back to Lone Ridge Rd. The crippling weeds of the field were
now in his room. Maybe the man with a hook in his hand was watching him
sleep from beside the closet door. A tear fell down the side of his
cheek onto his pillowcase. He tried to think of something more pleasant
like his mother’s smiling face in order to fall asleep peacefully, but
he knew inside that there was no escaping the man anymore. He might even
be waiting in his dreams for all he knew. It was never like this before
his mother’s death. She never believed in those tales. Neither did his
father. The boy would feel a fool to admit to his father that he
believed in something like that, but he thought, what if the man is
real and took her away? What if he’s waiting for me?His fear began
to take over now. He couldn’t help it. The man only lived in the field,
but now it seemed he lived deep in his mind. Images of the man began to
form as he lay watching the ceiling. He had seen him as a featureless
shadow at first, but then he pictured a tall, solid man with scraggly
gray hair and blackened eye sockets. When his eyes popped open just an
hour before his alarm clock would go off, he decided it was time to meet
him.
He
staggered out of bed and slipped on his jacket and
shoes. Leaving his umbrella aside, he left the front door and rushed
down the street.
The fog was thicker than yesterday.
The trees around
him were all too familiar, but he was
determined not to notice them. When he reached Lone Ridge Rd. and passed
the car tire in the dirt, he only had a few more steps until the
weeping tree was in front of him. He stood and watched it for a moment
until the fog shifted for a better view. And there, from within the
ditch, the man finally appeared. A face with hollowed eyes sockets,
caused by the man’s furrowed brow stared back at him. He was tall with
wide-set shoulders and buckled knees and a mouth that gaped as if he was
crying out. The man’s arms hung down by his side, but in one hand, an
object too dark to see hung and draped to the dirt. Fright paralyzed the
boy into place, so much that for a moment he thought he was dead. He
could hear his heartbeat pump in his ears as blood slowly drained from
his feet. For the first time they met, eye to eye, soul to soul- and for
a single second he believed that he was looking at himself, alone,
trapped, and lost in an endless field. Strangely, the man no longer
seemed like a stranger to the boy, but of someone he knew for many
years. He could come to peace knowing that he had finally seen the man,
even if he knew that one day as he walked to school the man may drag him
in.
Slowly,
the man diminished with a trail of passing fog, but
the boy remained in place; eyes drawn in, unblinking.
“He’s demented-
just stands and watches, even if there
isn’t anything to see.” That’s what they’d say about the man, but now
the boy, along the street of Lone Ridge Rd. did the same.
From:
http://www.shortnscarystories.com/the-man-in-the-field/
