Fan Fears: A collection of fear based stories by Michael Bray Page B

I'll do it. The instant I stop blocking him out he's there, in vivid detail in my mind. It dawns on me that if I happen to live to be an old woman, then no matter how senile I get, no matter how much I forget, he won't be one of them. I start to talk, not thinking consciously about it, which could be a good or bad thing.  "He's tall, taller than the door frame. Slim too, he...." The tears. I didn't want them to come so soon, but nobody told them that. I feel embarrassed, but to the doctor’s credit, he doesn't judge me. He sits and waits. He's patient and for the first time, I'm glad he's here.
    "He wears a hat. A wide brimmed hat. It looks too big for his head."
    "What about his face? What color is his skin?"
    I shake my head. The pillow is wet with tears. "He hasn't got any. Not that I can see. All I know is that he wears a coat, maybe it's a cloak, I didn't know. The rest of him, it's just dark, pure black."
    "Isn't everything in the night?" the doctor asks.
    "No," I say. I'm getting frustrated. Explaining this is hard, much harder than I expected it to be. "It's different," I say as if that explains it in some way. I look at him hoping that's enough, but his pen is still poised. He wants more.
    My throat is so dry. I pick up the glass and take another drink. "It's a different kind of dark. At night, there are shadows different shades. Him....he's not like that. He's the color of space, the purest color of nothing, but that in turn makes him all the more visible to me. There are no details. No skin tone, no contours, just a solid mass."
    The doctor's pen glides across his clipboard again, and he looks at me. There is something new in his eyes, and I start to wonder if perhaps I might have given him a little rash of goose bumps.
    "What happens when he comes to you?" the doctor asks.
    I don't want to tell this, I really don't. Thinking about him in this way is terrifying to me. I know he'll punish me for it, but the doctor is waiting for answers, and I'm too far in now to back off. "Well," I say, unsure how to explain it. "He always appears by my bedroom door at first." I glance at the door to the room as I say it, then back at the doctor. "When he moves, it's kind of...jittery."
    "Jittery?" the doctor repeats.
    "Not fluid, it's like he skitters in slow jerks from one place to the other as he gets closer. And there's that sound."
    "What sound?"
    "Scratching, like dragging a chair across a wood floor. It cuts right through me."
    "Like this?" The doctor says, and pushes his own chair back. The plastic stoppers on the legs scrape across the floor, and I feel like I'm going to be sick. I don't have to answer him and say that's the right sound. The heart rate monitor does that for me.
    "Please don't do that again," I say to him, but my voice is weak again, and I can feel my heart thundering in my chest.
    "My apologies, I didn't realize how deeply that would disturb you. Please continue."
    "What was I saying?"
    "About how he moves."
    "That's it really, he moves like that, jittery with that scraping sound. The only time things are different is when he's there standing next to me, next to my bed."
    "Tell me about that."
    "I can't move. I can never move. I'm just frozen there. He stands beside me, and he kind of waves his hands in front of my face. That motion is fluid."
    "And when he does that, can you see his features then?"
    I shake my head and glance at the door again. "No. Like I said, you can't see anything. Just black."
    "And what does he do then? Does he touch you? Speak to you?"
    I shake my head. "No. He just disappears."
    "I see," the doctor says, although I can tell from his tone of voice he's just like everyone else. He doesn't believe me. "And how often do these incidents happen?"
    I've lost faith in him, and don't feel there will be any benefit from telling him this, but if he's willing to go through the motions then so am I. "They used to be further spread apart, maybe two or three times a year. Recently, though...."