The Mysterious Man

The darkness surrounded me like a warm cloak as I walked along the cobblestoned street toward home, and bed. It had been a late night at the Haversham's housewarming party, which seemed at times to draw the whole village into it. When I departed, the contrast between crowded dining hall and empty outdoors was as welcome as it was sudden.

I had never been one for crowds – indeed, my only reason for staying so late at the Haversham's was a conscious effort to not appear anti-social. I had been to the barber's not long ago, and to my horror he had informed me that I had a growing reputation as a hermit. Apparently my love of peace and quiet had begun to take on a life of its own, and so since then I had resolved to become more involved in the affairs of my community. Tonight had been such an occasion.

I had doubts however as to the value of the night – beyond the obvious good purpose of welcoming the Havershams into the community – for it was only the most fleeting of conversations which I had with others, and from what I could tell any real conversations of substance were rare, with most of those seeming to center on Mrs. Haversham's paintings, hung here and there throughout the house. Her subject was invariably religion, painted in various styles with most of her creations being of the crucifixion or of famous icons of religious history. Her skill in this regard, although questionable, was politely commended.

There was one, however, which garnered unanimous approval – an impressionist rendition of Lazarus being cast down from Heaven. She seemed to have caught the essence of that ancient myth with her oil and canvas, and of the subject himself especially. The ruddy skin, high pronounced cheekbones, long thin nose and thin lips gave form to the horror incumbent. His black eyes followed me around the room as I made my circuit, seeming to peer down into the very core of my soul.

Idle talk notwithstanding, the Havershams appeared quite pleased with the way the night had turned out. In keeping with the town's friendly tradition of welcoming newcomers, mostly everyone showed their face at one point or another. All the "village regulars" were there – that crowd which seemed to be omnipresent at any event or gathering of even the slightest merit – and even old Biddy Horne had been there, taking a break from her nightly ritual of staring out her front window at passersby, while sitting on an antiquated old rocking chair which creaked incessantly.

Biddy was at least 90 years old, and still had enough spit and spirit to get around on her own with as much apparent energy as someone only half her age. Nobody knew much about her, only that she had been living in the house of her birth for her entire life, and had never married nor had children. She was therefore the subject of a myriad of rumors and tall tales, not the least of which was that she lured passersby into her home only to render them unconscious with a skillet-blow to the head, at which point she threw you into her basement via a trapdoor where you instantly graduated to the new career of being a tasty supper for the dozen or so wild dogs she kept down there.

Another tale - which I admit had kept me frightened of her for many years - was that if you walked in the late hours along that night-blackened road in front of her house, she would follow you right to your home where she would seek to enter any window she found open and come into your bedroom as you slept, with the intent of suffocating you, for whatever strange purposes as childhood imaginations could muster.

Those tales I had heard for the first time when I was seven years old, and incredible as they were, it was only in later years that I came to think they were just stories such as those meant to keep young children away from strange people. They served their purpose well however, for I never went near the old house until many years later. Now, every time I hear of or remember those stories, I feel a pang of pity for old Biddy Horne.

It was past that house that I now walked and, casting a sidelong glance toward the front window, saw it to be empty, the old woman probably sound asleep now after having left early from the Haversham's. The spontaneous thought entered my mind that I would not be skilleted and fed to the dogs tonight.

As I was pushing through the subtle feeling of guilt I felt at having had such a thought about a person whose only crime was liking her solitude, I heard a noise from behind me, a horse walking on the cobblestones. A look over my shoulder revealed nothing but a road engulfed in pitch blackness, with the now-distant light from the Haversham house being absorbed almost entirely by the thick surrounding forest of pine and spruce. I proceeded toward home with the steady clop-clop sound continuing behind me.

It wasn't until I rounded the bend in the road which signaled my own home to be only a few minutes away, that I suddenly realized the sound to be getting distinctly closer. By now, I was approaching the most populated area of the village, and here and there oil lanterns were hung from posts outside the doors of people who had not yet returned home from the party. I looked back, and could faintly make out a figure walking behind me on the road, perhaps 80 feet distant. His pace seemed to match my own, but as I passed through the soft glow of one of the lanterns I could once again discern him getting closer. I waited until it seemed to my ears that he was only 20 or so feet behind me, and then again stole a quick glance to see who it was.

In the pale yellowish glow of a post-lantern I saw his face, and recognized it as one which I had seen before, but couldn't remember from where, or when. The logical assumption was that he had been at the Haversham's tonight and that I had seen him fleetingly from across a crowded room, but the memory seemed older than that, and had an almost surreal flavor to it. Being a small remote village of less than 200 people, I had occasion to know everyone over the years, at least in passing, and recognized him to be not a local. A relative perhaps, or a friend of the Haversham's from out of town?

I was just about to stop and turn around for the purpose of greeting the gentleman when a sudden wave of fear came over me, and I kept on walking, not breaking my pace. For the first few seconds I found I couldn't even turn my head. The feeling gradually waned, only to be replaced with an inexplicable caution not unlike the feeling one gets when one knows danger is near but cannot place it exactly. The man now kept pace with me, not getting any closer, the sound of his boots on the cobblestones echoing thick and heavy.

I was getting nearer to a grouping of three post-lanterns – the brightest part of the village at this time – and I fixed in my mind the intent of forcing myself to greet the stranger when he passed through the middle of the glow cast on the road by the lanterns. Fear or no fear, there was no skillet, no dogs and no sense in being afraid of a stranger. I wondered with no small amount of alarm if my earlier sudden sensation of fear was born of my apparent propensity for hermitness. That thought only resolved me more firmly to turn around and force myself to be friendly to the poor fellow.

At any rate, I passed through the lantern's glow and waited until I judged the stranger to be within the glow himself before forcing myself, feeling my heart racing, to stop walking and turn around. The man's facial features looked ruddy in the pale yellow glow, and it was as I opened my mouth to utter greeting that the realization of where I had previously seen him sprang into my mind with such force and horror as to render me unable to speak, or even move for several seconds.

The man approached and stopped only four feet away from me. How I wanted it to be four miles, or 4000! I forced my eyes closed and fought the wave of nausea which washed over me, but my closed eyes had no effect, for still could I see that man, that face, as plain as if I were looking straight at him. The ruddiness of his skin, the high pronounced cheekbones, the long thin nose and thin lips, the eyes – those black eyes which ripped through my flesh and bone and went straight into the very core of my soul.