“My mother used to think I was getting abused somehow. Back when it first started. I was only nine then, and the first time I woke her up crying, welts and bruises on my arms and back, she assumed her current boyfriend, Gary, had done it. Now Gary was a bit of a loser, but he wasn’t a bad guy and he never laid a hand on me. He wasn’t even there the night it happened. It was just that she refused to believe what I told her.”
I looked at Rebecca and waited expectantly. We had been dating six months, and I felt like I knew her fairly well. When she had said with a worried expression that we needed to have a talk about something from her past, I didn’t know what to think. My mind had spun wild scenarios involving an old boyfriend that had turned back up or a tearful recount of her secret teen years as a crack addict. Rationally I’d expected something much more mundane, and I never thought it’d be something about her being abused. I wanted to hug her, but I also didn’t want to break her momentum if she needed to get it out, so I just sat still as a deer waiting to see which way the wind blew.
“What had really happened is that I woke up in my bed one night—the night before Halloween, as a matter of fact—and there was a small, bald man standing by my bed. He was larger than a midget…or do they prefer little person? I never know. Anyway, he was very short and wide. I couldn’t make out much detail other than moonlight from the window shining off his bald head and outlining his bushy facial hair in silver.”
“I didn’t really scream…I just whimpered a little. I was still half-asleep and my waking brain didn’t know what to do. Then it was too late. He grabbed my arm and yanked me off my bed onto the floor. He started beating me with something…I never knew what.” She swallowed, and I could tell the memory still terrified her. “I…I don’t know how long it went on. Not long. He never said anything until he was done. Then he leaned over and whispered to me.”
”See you next October.”
“With that he stepped back into the shadows. I never saw him leave out a door or window—he was just gone. I stayed still, frozen in pain and terror, afraid that any movement would bring him back. After some time, I couldn’t hold on any longer. I started to scream and cry for my mother. She came running in, and it went from there. She didn’t believe what happened. Thought I was either lying out of fear of naming who hurt me or making things up to somehow block what had really gone on. I don’t know. Her logic made no sense, but I know she wanted to protect me. The police were called, Gary was questioned, and my mother got investigated by family and children services. All for nothing. By Christmas things were somewhat back to normal.”
Rebecca’s lips trembled and she ran a hand through her hair. “Except it wasn’t. Not for me. I knew what had happened, and I knew what that strange man had promised. I spent the next year dreading the return of autumn, and when October rolled around, I didn’t have long to wait.”
I was always slow changing after gym, and one day I was the last one in the locker room. It was the last class of the day, so I wasn’t in a huge hurry. I had become paranoid and hypervigilant all the time since the first attack, but I kind of assumed that if the man did come back, it would be in my room in the middle of the night. Turns out I was wrong.
I was getting ready to leave when I sensed someone watching me. Looking up, I saw the man staring at me, his face half obscured by the bathroom stall he was standing behind. I felt a flood of panic and fear, but also like I was in some kind of nightmare. Because there was no way he should have been able to get in there like he did. There was only one door in and out of the place, and he would have had to go past me to reach the stalls. The idea occurred to me later that he could have just been hiding in there since before our gym class let out, but that didn’t make sense either. Me and at least a couple of other girls had used those stalls after gym, and there was nowhere else he could have hidden. It was like he just appeared out of thin air.
At the time, all these things were just half-formed whispers in the back of my brain, unable to compete with the roar of fear that was driving me to run, to get away. I took one last look at his expressionless face, his black eyes, his pale skin, and I ran.
He let me get as far as halfway across the basketball court before leaping on my back, bringing me down and busting my lip in the process. This time he punched me repeatedly in the sides of my head. Hard enough to make me scream and bring blood trickling out of my ears, but not so hard as to kill me or do permanent damage. And as before, after a few seconds, it was over. His only greeting or farewell as he stood over me, looking down stonefaced, was to mutter the same phrase again.
“See you next October.”
“Jackson, I’m 29 years old and this has happened to me 19 times now. It’s always the same man. Dressed in plain, normal clothes and looking like his face is carved from some white rock run through with black quartz for his eyes. I…Fuck, I don’t really know what else to say. I could recount every time he’s attacked me, but what’s the point?”
A high static buzz had slowly filled my ears as Rebecca had told me her story. I could feel my breathing coming quicker as my chest tightened with fear—not of some mystery man that kept attacking Rebecca, but because I knew she had to be sick somehow. I’d never known her to be delusional or have any real mental issues, but there had always been a darkness about her. A part of herself she kept closed off. Now I knew why.
But it didn’t matter. She believed it, and for the moment I would humor her. It was already Halloween, so when tomorrow passed without any attack, I could suggest she see someone and get the help she seemed to need. I loved her, and the idea she had been living with such terror for so many years…terror that could have been prevented if she had gotten help earlier…it saddened and angered me. I’d get her the help she needed though. I wouldn’t abandon her the way her mother and friends apparently had over the years.
For now…For now I needed to act like I believed.
“So does the man ever age or does he always look the same? Do you have any idea who or what it is?”
She shook her head, eyeing me warily. “No, he always looks the same, and I have no idea where he comes from or why he comes for me. I thought over time he would move on to hurting me worse or doing something sexual, but he never has. The worst injury I’ve ever gotten is a fractured wrist once at 12 and a few bruised ribs last year.”
I frowned, remembering her telling me before about having bruised her ribs a few months before we met. She’d never said how it happened, and I hadn’t thought to ask at the time. “So how does he find you? It’s not like you live in the same place any more. Hell, you’re not even in the same state.”
She shrugged, tears forming at the corners of her eyes. “I don’t know. He always does though. When I turned 18, I ran away. Went under a different name, didn’t talk to my mother or anybody else from my old life. Worked a waitress job for cash and was 300 miles away from my hometown. Not a soul knew where I was for over six months. Then one day I was in the freezer of the restaurant I was working in. I heard the door close behind me and turned around to find him looking up at me. I was a good foot taller than him by then, but it didn’t matter.”
“When he was done, I went back out and told the boss I needed to take off. That I was coming down with a stomach bug. It was close to the truth. My stomach was so sore I couldn’t eat or sit down without crying out until the next day.”
I frowned. “Why didn’t you tell anybody? Why didn’t you keep telling people until you found someone who believed you? Or some way to prove it was happening?”
She let out a watery laugh. “Oh, I tried. But cameras and stuff like that…they don’t work around him. And he never comes when other people are around. And I learned early on what telling people would get me. It’d get me that look.” She pointed at me, her face hardening. “That look that says that you’re patronizing me. That you think I’m crazy. That I’m fucked up.”
I reached out and grabbed her arm lightly. “No, baby. I…look, this all sounds bizarre. And yeah, being honest, I do have some worries that you could have something going on mentally. Not because I don’t trust you, but just…it’s so weird and hard to explain if its true.” She tugged away and I held up my hands. “But…but, I love you and I do trust you. So I’m going to keep an open mind and help you however you want me to. All I ask is that if we don’t see any sign of this guy tonight, we talk again about what that means and what you want to do next. Fair?”
She nodded as her expression softened slightly. “Fair. But don’t worry. I’m not crazy. And I don’t think we’ll have to wait too long. It’s only three hours until midnight.”
While I didn’t expect us to have any late-night invaders, it seemed stupid to not try and prepare just in case, if for no other reason than to show Rebecca I was taking it seriously. So we double-checked all the doors and windows and set up in the living room. There was only one doorway in or out of there, and sitting together on the couch, we both had a good view if anyone tried to enter.
For the next hour or so we held hands as she flipped between channels on the t.v. It was Halloween, but my initial plan of suggesting horror movies seemed like a bad idea now, and this was confirmed by the speed with which she would move past channels showing some monster or killer terrorizing a hapless victim.
Before we had settled in, I’d found us both makeshift weapons as well. Initially I was going to give her a large knife from the kitchen, but—though I hated myself a little for having the thought—I had a flash of her suddenly deciding I was the attacker and stabbing me to death. So I took the knife and gave her a small hammer, figuring I could take a hit from it easier than a stab to the gut.
I know this sounds like I was afraid of her, but I wasn’t. I trusted her, and I had no real concern she might hurt me. But I also didn’t know what I was dealing with and wanted to avoid a bad accident if I could. At first I was on edge, but as the minutes crawled by, I felt myself getting drowsy. I glanced over at Rebecca and she was wide awake—every few minutes she would look toward the windows or peer around the room as though searching for some sign of the strange man peeking at her from some shadowed corner. I gave her hand a squeeze and tried to focus on the latest thing she had flipped to, but it was some kind of infomercial and I felt myself jump as the knife began to slide out of my hand.
I had been dozing off. I blinked furiously and gave my head a slight shake. I had to stay awake. Not to protect her—because I felt more and more sure as time passed that nothing was coming—but to show her that she could rely on me to try. If she knew she could trust me, then she…
I woke up to Rebecca screaming.
The thing had her down on the ground and was sitting on her chest as it pummeled her thighs and groin with some kind of small cudgel wrapped in brown leather. It was just as she had described. A small, abnormally wide man with almost glowing white skin that looked carved from bright ivory. He wore a button down flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up and cargo pants, but his feet were bare and terminated in strangely well-groomed obsidian nails. When he looked up at me with a yellow smile, I saw his eyes were two balls of shining black as well.
Standing up groggily, I yelled at him to stop as I started forward. He just continued to stare at me as he struck her, his blows falling accurately despite his eyes being pinned to the knife in my hand. His silent smile never faltered as I plunged the knife into his chest. I felt his powerful hand grip the back of my neck and the bones of my spine creaked in protest as he flung me away, the knife still protruding from his chest.
I slammed into the coffee table and felt pain flare across my left shoulder. I ignored it and rolled back to my feet, coming back at him, this time aiming a kick at his grinning face. His head rocked back when my foot landed, but the only thing that changed was that the smile left his face and he returned his entire focus to her. He was working his way down her legs now, striking her knees hard enough to cause fresh wails of pain from Rebecca as she struggled feebly.
Regaining my balance after the kick, I leaned forward and pulled the knife free from his chest. I had half-expected him to grab me again, but he didn’t even acknowledge I was there as I retrieved the weapon from the bloodless wound in his chest and moved to his back. Using both hands, I started plunging the knife into his back again and again. It wasn’t until the fifth blow that he started to show signs of faltering. It wasn’t until the tenth that he stopped still.
As I pulled the knife from him the final time, he toppled over, his body shattering as it struck the floor. Rebecca began crawling out from under his debris and I reached down to help her, my eyes still transfixed on what was happening to the man’s body. It was continuing to shatter and crumble as though being ground down to dust by some invisible giant. In a matter of seconds it was no more than a white dusting over the clothes the thing had worn; and then even that dust was gone.
I looked down at Rebecca, ready to console her, get her to the hospital, whatever she needed. Because I was looking at her upside down, it took me a moment to realize that she was smiling at me. That was all the time she needed to grab my legs and pull me down.
Then she was on me, crawling on top while pulling me toward her with tremendous strength. She didn’t make any sounds, and as she settled atop my chest, her knees pinning down my arms, even the smile fell from her face. I realized with growing horror that the small brown cudgel had not dissipated with the man’s body. Instead it was in Rebecca’s right hand.
The next few minutes were a confused haze of pain, anger, and terror as Rebecca beat me savagely. The initial flashes of white as she struck my head and face shifted to red and then grew speckled with black as I teetered on the edge of unconsciousness. My ears rang and my nose bled, and I could barely see at all when she stood up.
For a moment I just laid there, too hurt and in shock to know what to do. Then I felt something brushing my face. I jerked back, blinking, afraid that another attack was coming. Hesitantly I touched my swollen face and felt what had fallen onto it.
It was hair. Rebecca’s hair.
I blinked again, trying to clear my vision enough to see her standing over me. She was taking off her clothing, but that was the least of it. Her hair was falling out in thick locks even as her skin grew ghastly white and took on an unnatural sheen. As impossible as it was, she was changing shape as well. Getting shorter. Wider. And her face was slowly shifting into a closer approximation of the man that had attacked her minutes before.
Then she was naked, and looking from her new and unfamiliar face down to her body, I saw that her breasts were gone as well as her more feminine shape. Lower, just inches from me, I saw that her groin no longer had genitals. Instead, the smooth, hard ivory skin was interrupted by an irregular patch of tiny glistening black stones that spread out from where the genitals should be to create an uneven fan across the bottom of her stomach and the top of her inner thighs. The pattern of it looked like some kind of rash or rot, but I also thought of miniscule volcanic pebbles scattered like beads across a starkly white patch of hard earth.
That’s when I realized those pebbles, those stones, were watching me. Blinking occasionally and considering me with a thousand dark gazes, weighing me with endless inhuman glares from a sea of black pinprick eyes. Looking back now, when I force myself to remember, I could sense intelligence in that multitude of eyes that pockmarked her once beautiful skin. Intelligence and ill will of a magnitude that made me feel like a crude and frightened ape as I tried to shuffle back and away from the horror.
I was stopped by her foot on my stomach, bearing down enough to hurt and stop me, to bruise but not rupture my organs. I forced my gaze back up to her face—well, to his face now, as there was no trace of Rebecca left, and the blue-black shadow of his facial hair was already starting to grow in at his mouth and on his cheeks. But I found its eyes and went to speak. To try to plead with her, reason with her, get her back somehow. Even though I knew it was impossible in my heart, maybe even more impossible than the rest.
It stopped me, putting a finger to my lips to silence me as it bent down to pick up its old clothes. The way it touched my lips caused me to choke back a sob. It was something Rebecca would do to me playfully when we were joking around. I felt hope and sadness rising in my chest at the gesture, and I was going to try and speak again, to reach her somehow, when it spoke in a rough, male voice.
“See you next October.”
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