The Man With The Brick Face

Christmas Eve

The family began to gather around the brick fireplace. I grabbed the old Polaroid camera from the table beside me. My daughter laughed when my dad kicked a present accidentally, causing something within it to begin singing a corny toddler’s song.

“Move closer together,” I said.

My mom and daughter started to take their places and smile. My younger brother was standing there unamused and ready for the picture to be over with already. My pregnant wife was trying to angle herself to hide her enlarged belly.

“Oh, get over yourself. You’ll be thin again in no time,” my wife’s mother said to her.

“Wait! Where’s Oscar?” My daughter called out. 

As soon as she did, the little mutt ran into the room. She picked him up. Okay, finally, I thought. Everyone is in place.

“Okay, say cheese on three. 1, 2, 3…”

“Cheese!”

I snapped the picture. I told them to hold still. I needed to make sure the picture came out well. Taking a family photo is literary the most challenging part of the night.

The photo was ejected from the camera. I shook it. The image began to materialize. I was laughing, and then I looked down. The air around me suddenly became stuffy. The sounds became like distant muffled music from another room. My hand holding the photo began to shake terribly.

“Daddy, what’s wrong?” My daughter called out.

20 Years Earlier

I woke up screaming. Well, It wasn’t me. I had my mouth open like I was screaming. I wondered if I had actually screamed or was just screaming in my dream. The dream had already escaped me. I couldn’t remember.

I looked at the clock on my nightstand. It read 2:00AM. Then I heard the scream again. It wasn’t me, after all. It was a blood-curdling scream. The sounds you’d make if enduring extreme amounts of pain. Or maybe even fear.

It was my little brother. He’s only seven years old. I’m sixteen. His second scream really got me. It was real. I burst out of my bed. The blanket wrapped around my legs like a large snake trying to prevent me from escaping its grasp. I fell. I kicked the blanket off of me.

When I entered the upstairs hallway, it was dark. I’ve lived in this house since birth, yet the dark still makes the house feel unknown. It’s eerie even when I know where every corner leads and what I will find around them.

He’s chasing me! He’s trying to get me!

What was chasing him, I thought. Is this the end? Will I run into the darkness after my little brother, only to be killed by whatever is chasing him? Perhaps it was a mimic. Perhaps it wasn’t my little brother after all, but something trying to lure me into the void below.

I descended the stairs. I went down another hallway and into the kitchen. I flicked on the lights. My little brother came running out of the darkness of the living room.

The man with the brick face is trying to get me!

I kneeled down, and he ran straight into my arms. He went limp immediately.

I stood there staring into the darkness of the living room. Every molecule that made my body whole jolted, and every hair on it stood up as sharp as a needle. I anticipated something to come barreling out of the darkness like an angry bear.

Nothing came. No bear. No rat. No man with a brick face.

My little brother had fallen asleep in my arms. He had the flu. He was hallucinating. This was the third time he had sleepwalked this week. The first time though, to do something this extreme.

I walked back to the stairs with him in my arms. I saw the outline of my mother standing at the top of the stairs. She looked dead. She wasn’t. She was just distant. I nodded in the darkness. She turned around and went back to bed.

I laid my little brother back down into bed. He was still asleep. He was burning up, though. I retrieved a wet rag from the bathroom and padded his forehead for a while. The clock on his nightstand read 2:30AM. I left his room and went back to bed.

The next morning I woke up around 8:00AM. It was Saturday. No school. I walked downstairs and heard my little brother talking. I was surprised. My mother and him hardly ever spoke. She barely spoke to me now. I walked into the living room. My mother wasn’t there.

My little brother was sitting in front of the brick fireplace. It was the craziest thing. Maybe it was because I had little sleep last night. Perhaps I was even coming down with the flu, but I swear I saw the pattern of the bricks from the fireplace move.

I rubbed my eyes and looked again. They were as still as they should be.

“Hey buddy,” I said to my little brother. “Are you feeling better today?”

He turned around and shrugged. I walked to the fireplace and looked at the pattern. I touched it. It was hard as a brick, as it should be. It wasn’t some monster that achieved the ultimate camouflage, and when I pressed on it with my hand, it would turn and eat me right then, right there.

“Who’re you talking to,” I asked.

My little brother said nothing. He just pointed at the fireplace.

“Breakfast is ready,” my mom called from the kitchen.

My mother is distant but still serves her motherly purpose, even if minimal. She gives us a Christmas. She’ll feed us. Sign us up for sports. That kind of stuff. She doesn’t talk anymore, though. She has become sad. Tired. 

If one morning I woke up and found she had killed herself, it wouldn’t surprise me. Therefore, I’m grateful she is still alive. She’s stronger than she thinks. She hasn’t chosen the easy route yet. Maybe it’s because we’re still here.

We ate. I left for the day. I worried about my little brother while I was gone with friends. I knew he would be fine.

When I got home that night, I went straight to bed. I was tired. My dreams were weird. In one of my dreams, I had picked up the old family album sitting on the display shelf in the living room. I rummaged through it.

Everyone in it all had brick faces. They weren’t smiling. Bricks protruded from where their faces should be. It was awful. I slammed the book and woke up.

8:00AM again. Right on the dot. Sunday. I walked into my brother’s room. He still slept. I descended the stairs quietly. The new morning air was always quiet within this house. It was much quieter than late at night. So strange how that it is.

I walked to the family album. I picked it up. I opened it. I began to rummage through it. Nobody had brick faces like the nightmare from last night.

Just as I was about to close it, I noticed something. I tried to justify the coincidence of yesterday, the dream, and today. Coincidence is like a correctly solved math problem. All the numbers and symbols somehow work together to give the answer you have been trying to solve the whole time.

The brick fireplace in these photos has a different pattern than what it is now. I rummaged through more pictures. Some photos in it have the same patterns. Others don’t. The pattern had changed at least five times.

I set the book down and walked over to the fireplace. I was hesitant to touch it. I was alone now. What monster it could be could grab me, and nobody would ever know.

“Don’t touch it.”

I jumped. I turned. My mother stood in the entranceway.

“What?” I asked.

“It,” she said. “The fireplace.”

I turned and looked at the fireplace. I had forgotten my hand still rested upon it. I removed it.

My mother stepped into the room.

“I don’t know what it is,” she began to say. “It’s like an ugly leech. A bad memory that won’t fade. I’ve seen it once. Barely. It hardly goes unnoticed.”

I stood motionless. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I almost thought she was messing with me. I almost thought I could still be dreaming.

“It never goes away,” she began to say again. “It follows you. It can’t be destroyed. Once it finds its place in your mind, there it will remain. Like it has with you and your little brother, It will also take over your future children. It’s an uncurable generational virus.”

I looked at the fireplace. I pressed my hand upon it. Did it move? I couldn’t tell. Was it breathing? I just couldn’t tell. This was a joke. I turned to my mother. She had already left the room.

That night I set up a camera to take pictures when movement was detected.

I stepped away slowly and went upstairs to bed.

The next morning I awoke a little earlier. I checked on my little brother and then ran downstairs faster than my legs wanted to go. I almost slipped but caught myself. It was Monday morning. I’d have to leave for school in an hour. I had footage to review.

I woke the camera up. Ten photos were taken. The first five were of a moth. He was sabotaging the operation. I should’ve turned the sensitivity down. The following three photos were of nothing. Just darkness and the fireplace in the background.

The ninth photo made my hands begin to sweat. The air started to feel stuffy. The hair across my body began to shoot up as sharp as needles.

The brick pattern. It had moved. I almost didn’t want to see the tenth photo. I looked up at the fireplace. It didn’t look scary at all in the day. In the photos, though, in the darkness, it looked like the passage to hell.

I clicked next, and I stepped back. The plant on the cabinet I stepped into fell on my shoulder. I screamed. I stepped passed the broken plant on the ground and closer to the camera.

The tenth photo was displayed, and on it was some kind of blurred human form materializing from the fireplace. His face was made of bricks.

Ten minutes later, I returned from the shed with a sledgehammer.

You can’t destroy it…

It’s like an ugly leech…

A bad memory that won’t fade…

Once it finds its place in your mind, there it will remain…

My mother’s words rang in my head. I lifted the sledgehammer. I waited for the man with the brick face to come out after me when he saw me preparing to kill him. The bricks sat still. Nothing moved. Coward, I thought, and I struck the brick.

The most diabolical piercing pain shot through my head. It was as if someone had struck me over my head with a sledgehammer.

I shook it off and swung again. The brick chipped, and the pain pierced through my head like a finely sharpened sword. It brought me down to my knees. I couldn’t take it. I fell back on the ground. My vision began to fade, and I passed out.

20 Years Later (Christmas Eve)

The photo was ejected from the camera. I shook it. The image began to materialize. I was laughing, and then I looked down. The air around me suddenly became stuffy. The sounds became like distant muffled music from another room. My hand holding the photo began to shake terribly.

“Daddy, what’s wrong?” My daughter called out.

I dropped the photo.

“No!” I screamed.

“Daddy, what’s wrong?” My daughter called out again.

I looked up, and all of my family stood there motionless with brick faces.