I first met Eddie when he came into our clinic eight months ago for a broken hand. He was quiet and reserved, not like he was shy so much as he was afraid of the world. Something, or someone, had hurt him in the past, and he still carried the bruises. It made me feel some sympathy for him, but it wasn’t why I liked him.
He was smart—talking to him for five minutes would tell you that—and by the time he came back for his second follow-up, he’d gotten familiar enough with me to talk more as I checked his hand. He was funny, and underneath his shaggy hair were kind eyes set in a sad, but handsome face. This was his last scheduled visit, and I was already dreading it being over—we lived in a big city, and the odds of us crossing paths again seemed small.
That’s when he laughed at some joke I’d made, and in that moment his face lit up—not just the cautious smile he usually gave, but a moment where I could see him without whatever baggage he seemed to carry around all the time. Seeing that, I knew. Before I could overthink it, I asked him out.
His eyes had gone wide as he sucked in a breath. You’d think he’d gotten punched in the gut instead of having the girl who was his PA ask him out. I felt sure he was going to say no, but when he met my eyes, something changed there. His expression was still troubled, but he gave a small nod as he began to smile.
“Yeah…I…I’d really like that.”
We dated for six months, and for the most part, it was great. Being with him was different than anyone I’d ever dated, and not just because of how I felt or how I could tell he felt about me. We got along well, had fun together, and over time we grew really close, but there was always a…barrier. Not like he wasn’t in touch with his emotions or he didn’t want things getting too serious, but more like he was always distracted or had something weighing on his mind. When I’d ask about it, he’d just shrug it off with a laugh, telling me he was just a moody prick. I didn’t buy it, but I didn’t want to push it either. I figured he’d tell me more when he was ready.
Then three weeks ago he broke up with me.
It was out of the blue, no explanation. Just a text that said: I’m sorry, but I have to stop seeing you. I should have stopped this earlier, but I liked you so much. Now I love you, and I’m sorry I ever put you at risk. Don’t contact me again, please.
When I tried texting and calling, there was never any answer. I even went by his apartment a couple of times, but he wouldn’t come to the door. I told myself I needed to just let it go and move on, but I couldn’t. Not just because I wanted to be with him and thought he was making a mistake, but because I knew that whatever he was talking about in the text was connected to the shadow that seemed to haunt him all the time, the same darkness that made him afraid of living.
So I started following him. Not all the time, and it sounds more stalkerish than it really was, but I admit to feeling weird as I sat outside his apartment some evenings and tailed him a few times when he ventured out. He never went anywhere other than work, the grocery store and the Sunday morning ferry—a ritual I’d always known about but never questioned. I admit to being relieved that there was no sign of him being with someone else, but that had never been my main concern. There was something going on with him, something bad, and if I couldn’t figure it out by watching him, I’d have to find a way to make him talk to me, at least one last time.
After two weeks of studying his habits, the ferry was the obvious option. Based on the little bit he told me, it was just something he liked doing—riding the Sunday ferry roundtrip—being around people without being a part of them. He never got off the boat, just rode the hour each way and then went back home. It had sounded odd at the time, but knowing him now, it made more sense. Just because he tried to avoid making connections with people didn’t mean he wasn’t lonely. And whatever was eating away at him, there was something just a strong in Eddie that loved and wanted to be loved. Something wonderful that was worth fighting for.
That next Sunday, this last Sunday, was Eddie’s birthday. I’d considered and discarded other options for contacting him—sending him a gift, going back to his apartment, calling until he answered or turned off his phone. But none of that would work, and if anything it would just drive him further away. As weird as it felt, ambushing him on the ferry while we were on the water seemed like the best and only way to get him to talk to me.
So that’s exactly what I did.
“Happy Birthday, stranger.”
Eddie jumped a little as he turned to look at me. “Emily, what’re you…” He glanced at the water and then around at the deck where he had been propped against the railing. “Did you follow me here?”
I tried to smile, but I could feel it twisting into an embarrassed wince. “I did, yeah…but…look, I know this looks like I’m stalking you or something. I’m not. Or if I am, it’s not like I’m crazy or something. I just…look, I care about you. Fuck, I love you. And…”
He was shaking his head. “Emily…you can’t be here. You can’t be around me, especially right now. You need to go. Get away from me…”
I felt tears springing to my eyes. “What is wrong with you? Not you being with me. If you don’t want to be with me, that sucks, but I’ll deal with it. But that’s not why I’ve been following you or whatever. Something bad is going on with you, and you’d never tell me what it was. So that’s why I’m doing this, okay?”
Eddie took a step back, looking around us again. “You don’t understand. You need to get out of here. Go to the far side of the ferry, and when we dock, I’ll get off. You ride back and then go home. Forget that you ever met me.” His eyes were glistening too, and he wiped his face distractedly as he continued to backpedal.
Lunging forward, I grabbed his hand. “Please tell me what’s going on. Are you in some kind of trouble? Is someone after you?” He tried to pull away, but only weakly. Gripping his hand tighter, I stepped closer, looking up at him. “Please. Tell me. I won’t leave until you do, but after you do, if you want me to go, I will. I promise.”
He let out a long, ragged sigh before giving me a defeated nod. “Fine. I’ll tell you.” Looking up, he met my eyes. “But you have to go after, okay? For good.”
Sniffling, I nodded. Then he began.
When I was in college, I pledged at one of the fraternities. It wasn’t something I planned, but my roommate was doing it and I was looking for a way to make more friends and meet girls. For the most part it was fine, but every pledge had to go through an initiation of sorts—some kind of prank or punishment that their sponsor came up with.
Mine was Mrs. Everett.
Mrs. Everett was a retired college professor that lived on the edge of town—apparently the fraternity had an ongoing beef with her from a few years back when she’d been a big part of flunking out a couple of members, and my sponsor, a guy named Dudley, thought it’d be funny to mess with her.
I never felt good about it. She’d retired because she was going senile, a decline that had apparently started a few years earlier when her husband disappeared. Honestly, the little stories my prospective “brothers” told me about her made me feel sorry for her more than anything else, and when they got to the man on her porch, I already knew where it was going.
Since her retirement three years earlier, Everett had taken to sitting a dummy or scarecrow out on her front porch year-round. Every day she’d go out on the porch and talk to it, barely noticing passerby that watched the old woman talking to the odd figure occupying the rocking chair across from her. Dudley told me that she must think it was her old man, come back from wherever he’d run off, and that didn’t seem unreasonable, but it just made everything he was telling me worse.
Because he wanted me to take the dummy off the porch and burn it.
I’d like to tell you I didn’t do it. That I was better or stronger than that. But I wasn’t. I was stupid and weak and I knew it was wrong, but I did it anyway. One night, Dudley drove me over there and parked across the street. Sure enough, there they were, the little old woman sitting on her porch talking to a slouching figure in stitched together clothes and a large-brimmed straw hat. It was the saddest thing I’d ever seen, but something about it made me shiver a bit too. I was about to tell Dudley that this was a bad idea, that she was never going to leave the dummy alone anyway, when he poked me in the side.
Look there, he said. The old bitch was finally going in.
I forced myself to do it before I could chicken out. I had a hood on and a scarf around my mouth, so even if she came back out, she’d never be able to give a good description. But there was no sign of her as I jumped up on the porch and grabbed the dummy. It was heavier than I was expecting, but I was scared enough that it didn’t slow me down much. I just dragged it down the steps and over to the driveway. Once I had it there, I squirted lighter fluid all over it and tossed down a match.
I could hear something behind me now, coming from the house. It was an awful sound, a thin, warbling wail. Looking back, I could see Mrs. Everett on the porch, looking past me at the burning dummy with shining eyes and a mouth slack with some form of sad horror. She started down the steps and I took off running for the car. Dudley was laughing as I jumped in, and twenty minutes later we were back at the frat house where everyone was slapping me on the back and telling me how fucking awesome I was.
But I didn’t feel awesome. I felt sick. Sick and ashamed. And when I finally went to bed, I barely slept at all before Dudley was texting me and telling me to check the local news.
Apparently, Mrs. Everett had tried to put the dummy out by smothering the flames and had gotten badly burned in the process. She was in an ICU, but the bigger story was what police had found in the dummy itself. Human remains, still unidentified but presumed to be parts of her missing husband, Harris Everett.
I spent the next two weeks constantly terrified. The police would find out that I’d burned the dummy, and they’d arrest me. And then she would die, and they’d charge me with murder.
Except no one ever found out. I don’t credit the fraternity with being that loyal—if anyone had asked, I’m sure they’d have turned on me in a second. But no one really cared about the burning dummy that much, or if they did, they didn’t have any idea she hadn’t done it herself. And once the body was identified as Harris Everett and there were signs that he’d been poisoned, well, they were focused almost entirely on his widow.
Maybe they would have looked at it all closer if things hadn’t worked out the way it did. Everett never left the ICU. I read she got a staph infection and died after a couple of more weeks. After that, everyone just kind of let it go. I was still ashamed, but I tried to tell myself that she was a crazy murderer and it wasn’t my fault she’d jumped on the flames. Over time, I got where I thought about it less and less.
Then the next year, on my birthday, I received a card.
It was in a plain orange envelope, and the cover of the card itself was one of those weird paintings of ships, like sailboats, that you see on some cards? Above it, it just said “Happy Birthday”.
It was funny, because I knew my parents were actually out on a boat that day. They were in Portugal, taking a trip out on a sailboat with some friends they were visiting for a couple of weeks. They’d called to wish me a happy birthday, telling me we’d have a big party when they got back. Wondering if the card was from them, I opened it. It was unsigned, with only three words written in small, black letters across the empty space.
Masts ahead deny.
It was so weird and random. I figured it was a joke, but when I asked my friends, no one admitted to it. It wasn’t until the next day that I heard about the accident.
Apparently the boat my parents had been on had never made it far past the harbor. I never knew the details, but two boats collided at the edge of the bay and my parents’ friend, who wasn’t that experienced piloting his new sailboat, couldn’t turn in time. They rammed into the other two ships and sank, killing two people.
My parents.
“Oh God. I…I knew they were dead, but I always figured it was like a car accident or something. You never wanted to say, and…”
Eddie met my eyes. “That’s just the start.”
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
We were sitting down on a bench near the railing now, and as Eddie looked away, he leaned forward onto his knees. “The next year, I got another card on my birthday. Same orange envelope. On the outside, was a cartoon of a wooden platform with a big block sitting on it. I could tell it was a chopping block because of the fat executioner standing next to it. He had on overalls and a black hood, and he was holding a big axe.” He laughed bitterly. “I was already fucked up by then, but I still didn’t really know what it all meant. When I opened it up, I saw that same handwriting and three words.”
Headsman Day Set
“That afternoon I got a call from the sheriff’s office back home. My sister had been driving when her brakes failed heading into a turn. It might not have been so bad, but there was a farmer coming from the other direction, driving one of those big combines up to his other field.” Eddie swallowed. “When she went under, it tore her head off.”
I reached out and grabbed his arm, but he didn’t seem to notice. He just kept talking in that dead-sounding monotone as he stared out at the water.
“After that…I just shut down for awhile. I flunked out of school. I had enough money from my parents’ estate to just…exist for awhile. So I didn’t go out. Cut off all my friends. Kept myself almost entirely separate from the world.” He glanced at me. “And it worked. That next birthday? No card. The one after that? No card.” Eddie smiled bitterly. “By then, I’d convinced myself it was over. Whatever it was…it was done. So I started back to school. Reconnected with a few old friends. Even started dating a girl named Jamie.”
I felt my stomach twisting. “What happened?”
His smile turned hard. “It became my birthday again. And I got another fucking card.”
This one was of a knife plunged into a heart—it almost looked like an anti-Valentine’s day card, but I already knew better. It had been laying on my bed in the same orange envelope, and above the pierced drawn heart it said “Happy Birthday”. Inside, just three words.
Hated Damn Essay
I didn’t know what it meant at first, but then I got a text from Jamie. She told me she’d just gotten her paper back from her English professor, and he’d hated the damn essay she’s spent almost a month busting her ass on.
I tried to call her, but she didn’t answer. I wasn’t sure where she was, but I thought I’d try her house first. The police cars were already there when I arrived.
They said she’d surprised a burglar. Her flat-screen t.v. was sitting in the middle of the floor, splashed with blood from where she’d been stabbed twice in the chest. They told me later she’d died quickly. One of the hits had gotten her in the heart.
No one was ever caught. They looked at me for awhile—not just because I was the boyfriend, but they managed to figure out the pattern of tragedy that seemed to follow me around. Still, what could they really do about it? My family had died hundreds and thousands of miles away from me and Jamie had been murdered when my phone and multiple cameras showed me as being across town. I finished out the year and then I moved away, determined that I was going to figure out what was going on and stop it, or if I couldn’t, I’d just live my life alone, as that seemed like the only way to keep people safe.
It wasn’t hard for me to connect it back to Mrs. Everett. Not that I could say for sure, but it had started the year after I burned her husband’s body and inadvertently contributed to her death. Maybe they had a child or friend that was trying to get revenge? I spent a long time looking into it, interviewing neighbors and cops and older faculty under the pretense of being a reporter working on an article on strange murders. I figured they must have someone else in their lives, but I could never find anyone. In fact, aside from each other, they seemed to be as isolated as I was.
Then I focused on the cards themselves. I found a woman on the internet that does forensic consultations on documents and handwriting—it cost a couple of grand, but I got her to look at the cards in person. She said they were all custom-made on the same cardstock, and while she couldn’t say for sure what ink was used, the medium and the writing itself seemed to be consistent across all the cards. I was starting to think I’d wasted the money when she told me something else.
“These messages, they’re all the same.”
I frowned at him. “What does that mean?”
Eddie shook his head slightly. “I’d never noticed it, but that lady saw it right away. All three messages: ‘Happy Birthday, masts ahead deny. Happy Birthday, headsman day set. Happy Birthday, hated damn essay.’ They’re anagrams. Just the same letters swapped around different ways.”
Staring, I felt myself begin to tremble. “Who would do that?”
He started to respond when his eyes went past me. “Oh God.” Turning, I let out a small scream at the figure coming toward us. It walked with a stooped, shuffling gait, its blackened clothes stitched together and smoking as it crossed the deck, its wide-brimmed hat only partially covering the ruined horror peeking out from beneath.
I looked around for help, but the deck was empty, and as I stood to run, I saw Eddie had already gotten up, pushing past me to meet the thing before it reached us. He never said anything as he ran forward, wrapping his arms around the figure as they staggered toward the rail. There was a terrible moment where they were still, and then they slammed into the railing hard enough that they both went over into the murky water below.
I called for help, of course, but they never found him, and the cameras on that end of the dock had somehow stopped working a few minutes before. I was left with nothing but sadness and fear and questions, endless questions of what had happened and why.
Nothing but an orange envelope that I found laying on the dock near where they’d gone over.
My hand shook as I held it. There was so much I didn’t know. What had been behind it all. Had it really been tied to Mrs. Everett and her murdered husband? If he had really been murdered at all…and if he had…why would he haunt and torment a boy just for playing an awful prank on the woman that took his life? It was then that it struck me that I didn’t really know Eddie that well either. I did love him, but how much of himself had he really shown me, and could I trust everything he had said? Had he ran at that creature to save me or just to finally make his own pain stop? And what good would come from opening the envelope now that it was all done?
In spite of myself, I broke the seal and slid the card free. It was a drawing of a man, much like Eddie, sinking down into the dark depths of a black sea. Framing his terrified face were charred arms and fingers, and above that, drifting up like dying air, were the words “Happy Birthday”. I opened the card and read the words before dropping it to the ground.
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