An Ordinary Man with a Peculiar Tale

The dining hall had been empty when I sat down to my miserable dinner. Suppose I got there just in time to eat before it went out to the pigs, though, I think even pigs would have turned their snouts up at this. But I ate it. The grease and stale bread filled me up but it did nothing to warm my bones from the freezing rain the sky was spitting, so I ventured to the bar. All I saw in attendance were a bunch of dying old men and a bartender who’d been pouring whiskey since time began. A few bills got me a bottle of his cheapest whiskey and a glass. I sat myself down in a raggedy velvet chair by the fireplace and poured myself a hefty drink. 

It stung the gullet going down and I could already feel it mingling with the greasy mass lumped in my stomach. It was going to be one hell of a night but I had a full bottle, a full belly, and a long wait for the storm to pass.

Dark and warm in the bar, it was difficult to see much of anything other than outlines until lightning struck. These old men preferred to hide in the shadows, aching over something that happened long ago. I could see it in the way they blocked their faces, even from the dull glow of the fire, and drowned themselves in pity and absolute quiet. All but one. I hadn’t noticed him when I sat down but across the round side table in the other crusty velvet chair, sat an old man. Nothing out of the ordinary in his appearance but there was a lost, almost disconnected, look in his eyes. His empty glass sat on his knee and, normally I wouldn’t offer, but on a night like this it would be nice to have some company in this veritable dusty tomb.

“Hey.  You want a little liquid to fill up that glass, old timer?”

His blue eyes shot towards me and I realized he had been just as unaware of me as I had been of him. A smile broke across his face as he gave a hearty chuckle. His voice was lighter, easier than I expected. “Scared the hell out of me. You look a little young to be in here. Usually this bar collects nothing but dust and old farts.”

He set his glass on the table and I filled it up to the brim. “I’m riding out the storm. And you looked like you could use a drink.”

The man took a sip of the gut rot and gazed into the small fire, gleaning secrets from its dancing flames. “I can always use a drink,” he grunted.

I finished off my first and poured a generous second as I asked him, “So, old timer, you got any stories for rainy nights spent by the fireplace?”

His eyes never left the orange glow of the fire. “You live this long and you get to have too many stories. But I suppose I could spin a yarn for the free drink.” He took a large gulp finishing off his whiskey and held the glass out for a refill. “You believe in ghosts?” I obliged him and filled his glass but couldn’t stop the laugh from escaping my lips. “That’s all right,” he kept on, “Neither did I until I came across one. When they touch you they leave a mark on you, you know? Nobody ever gets away without losing something, especially from the ghost of death.”

I sat back in my increasingly comfortable chair and watched the fire pop and roll, eager for his ghost story. It’s not often I find an old man willing to spin drunken tales like this.

“It was, I don’t know, about twenty or so years ago. I was traveling through this dusty dirt pile of a dying town when I walked right smack into the middle of a shootout. I wasn’t always a wise old man,” he laughed. “Well, I made it out with only a bullet in my arm, luckier than some of the other passersby. The hospital had been burnt down before I arrived and the doc was working out of one of the two hotels. They’d spared him a few rooms to help some of the worse off and I ended up in a cramped room with two other men. One lunger and another, who, like me, needed only a treatment and a few days rest before being on his way. It was the second day, after they had taken the slug out of my arm, that I learned what a ghost really was.”

The window was open letting the cool night air breeze clear the scent of bandages and medicine from the room. None of us could sleep. The lunger had been coughing nonstop and now bits of organ meat were coming up with the blood. He was on his last leg and I hoped that death would come for him soon so I could get some rest.

Through the closed door, music from the main hall wafted through the cracks and creases in the walls and was soothing, until interrupted by the coughing and sputtering of the corpse across the room. I was ready to leave but the damn doctor wouldn’t let me go til my arm had healed up some more. Damn docs, always think they know best.

I drifted in and out of sleep, waking each time to the raucous laughter and music coming from below. My mouth was watering for a drink and I wanted to go down for one, just one. But that doctor would be right outside, I knew. So, I laid my head back and slept more. When I awoke again, I thought it was to my roommate dying. There were gargled screams and hollers and they seemed so close at the time, but when I opened my eyes, our room was the same. Both men were sleeping and apparently could not hear the screams coming from beyond our door.

“It’s just a fight,” I told myself. Something had broken out downstairs and there was no reason it should make it up the staircase, but I listened to it nonetheless. Time passed as I watched the outlines of the other men sleep soundly, but the cries didn’t dissipate. Instead they grew closer. I was ready to bail out. I didn’t hear any shooting but it could be a fire, damn, it could have been anything as far as I knew, and I was wondering why no one had come for us yet. Then, someone opened our door. I thought it was the doc, or at least someone coming to wake us if a fire had broken out below, but he said nothing. No urgency in his movement, nothing to indicate an emergency of any kind. He just stood there in shadow, the dim light behind barely giving away the lines of his tall, slender body. He could easily have been a shadow himself. When he moved into the room he seemed to me to be gliding graceful and mute. He went to the sickest first. I couldn’t tell what was happening, but I saw him lean over the boy and there was a scraping and a great gasp and then nothing.

I was too afraid to call out. I didn’t know if the boy was dead. If he was, this dark visage could be death himself and what crazy fellow would dare call out to death and provoke him? It felt like all I could do was watch this dark figure. Before I knew it, he was floating to the next man, then the same clawing, scraping noise and a gasp. Something inside told me he wasn’t going to leave without coming for me.

There were matches and a worn candle next to my bed and with one arm in a sling, I had little time. I wanted to see my killers face before I met my maker. I set the candle on my chest and lit it with shaking hands. My arm burned to move but I wasn’t going to go in the dark. The figure came my way, and when I lit the candle the form in front of me was gone. I thought I was going insane. That I was either dreaming or my mind had made the whole thing up, until I noticed that whoever had come for us wasn’t gone. The tangible body was gone but its shadow remained on the wall. It was unbelievable. I had never seen anything like it before in my life. Standing from the bed, stumbling the whole way, I fell against the wall and reached for the man but all I felt was wall. There was nothing physically there, but I could see him striking his pose.

The candle threw my shadow next to his when I placed it carefully on the bed behind, and I groped the air in front of me to see if I could feel something. I could see him plain as day, but by God, there was nothing tangible, nothing to grab hold of. I thought nothing of it when this shadow turned towards mine. If I couldn’t touch him then, surely, he couldn’t touch me. He raised an elongated arm high into the air and razor sharp claws shredded my shadow like fragile paper, tearing it into strips that grew smaller and fainter until it was nonexistent. He made no sound as he tortured me all I could hear was a whoosh of wind and the rain battering the window. The excruciating pain lasted only a few seconds. My body felt on fire, my limbs numb, and my breath had gone so I could not cry out. Then this phantom spoke. He bellowed a soul scarring scream and disappeared as I watched from my place on the floor.

I knew tears had stained my face and I felt as if I had been dragged by horses. I’m not ashamed now to say that I was scared as hell. I sat there until I could contain my shaking and the ache in my body had stilled. When it seemed he wouldn’t be coming back, I went to check on the other two men. They had been horribly shredded from sternum to toes. I threw on my clothes, keeping the candle close, and left as quickly as I could. There was no one left in the hotel. They had all fallen prey to that man, that monster, and I was the only one to leave intact. Almost. 

I don’t know what made me different from the others or how I even managed to escape. I know he was death now. Who else could have come in like the night air and stolen the lives of everyone in the building? It doesn’t seem I was saved for any particular reason. I haven’t led a very good life, no children, no woman. All I’ve done since is wander and cower in the night, expecting to see him there in the darkness. I’ve lived too long to care about life any longer, but still he won’t come and take me. I wonder if he ever will.

When he finished his tale, I was utterly speechless.  I didn’t care to believe his unexpectedly creepy ghost story. Something in it rang too true to me. I refused to believe he had lived through this ordeal but when he lifted his glass to me to be filled, yet again, I couldn’t help but notice that the shadow I cast on the floor behind was met with only the mere outline of a floating glass.