Faceless

My whole life, there has been this figure always looming behind me, only visible to me. No noticeable features, no noticeable clothing, just this dark humanoid figure. It’s never really done anything. It is just…there. Sometimes it is simply standing there, sometimes it’s messing with something in the background like a ball or phone, sometimes it’s even crawling on the ceiling. It stopped bothering me when I was six or seven. The only thing about it that has always bothered me is the chill I feel when I see it. The feeling isn’t the same kind of chill as being scared. It’s similar to the chill you get on a winter morning while waiting for the school bus. I actually felt a little safer when I remembered it was there. It was almost like a guardian angel, constantly watching over me. The difference being that it looked more menacing than protective and kind.

Nobody has ever believed me, so when I got my first phone, I started trying to get a picture of it. But every single time, it disappears and reappears somewhere else. At first this was terrifying to me, but after a while I got bored of its disappearing act and became more annoyed. I'd end up making myself dizzy, spinning around constantly, spamming the picture button to try and catch it, but the fruits of my labor have only gotten me blurry pictures of my surroundings. So, I came up with a plan.

My friend, Emma, was the only one who believed that I was telling the truth. She was really into the paranormal, so when I first told her, she was intrigued. When we first started talking, she was really only interested in the annoying figure that was “obsessed with me like I was famous,” as she put it. Her jokes about the figure made the whole situation much less scary. She’s the biggest reason it never really bothers me anymore.

We came up with the plan over text. It was very uncomfortable, since I had to make sure it couldn’t peek over my shoulder. I wasn’t sure if it could read, much less see. It was better to be safe than sorry. I covered myself with a blanket while sitting against the wall. The only place it could be while staying as close to me as possible was right in front of me. Its head peeking over my phone, staring at me with its nonexistent eyes was more awkward than scary.

The plan was that she would take the picture with her polaroid camera from the second floor of the school in a classroom. We passed each other and waved, the signal that the plan was still on. I sat down under a tree and started reading. Leaves from the tree fell onto the pages. I looked up and saw its “face” hanging from the tree, inches away from mine. I scooted over to make some distance between us. Its head followed me like it could see me moving. I looked at its legs to see that they were wrapped around a tree branch, making it hang upside down. I just sighed and continued reading, but it was hard to focus with its void of a face hanging so close to mine.

Then, its head suddenly snapped towards the school. It seemed like it was looking at the window Emma was supposed to take the picture from.

“Damn, still camera shy?” I said to the figure with a smirk, thinking we had gotten it.

I looked up to see that it was gone. I turned my head around, expecting to see it behind a tree, under one of the picnic tables, or in a bush, trying to hide from the camera. After a good 30 seconds of not being able to find it, I started to feel uneasy.

I tried to keep myself calm, but the out of character behavior wasn’t right. The behaviors of the figure were always constant. Its reactions to different situations stayed the same. If you threw something at it, whatever you threw would go right through. If you tried to touch it, it would back away. If you tried to get a picture of it, it would vanish then appear somewhere close by, sometimes in a hiding spot that would barely put it out of view. This is why it reacting differently to something made me so uncomfortable.

I felt its gaze on my back again, despite it being nowhere in sight. Looking around frantically, I got a glimpse of a figure in a window on the second floor of the school. For a second, I thought that it was Emma, since it was the same window she was supposed to be taking the picture from. But I got that familiar chill that told me otherwise.

A pit in my stomach opened up. It was painfully nauseating. With wobbly vision, I sprinted towards the front doors of the school, stumbling up the stairs to the second floor. I ran to the classroom and flew open the door.

Emma wasn't there. The only thing that was there was a single polaroid picture on the floor by the window. My skin turned white as the nauseous feeling grew stronger, and the unnatural bitter cold pierced my body.

I spun around to see it leaning over me, much taller than it usually was, like how the sun casts a shadow in a certain way so that it appears taller than you on the floor. Its blank face was inches away from mine, as if it was ready to bite off my head. I stepped backwards and ran to the picture and picked it up. 

The only thing in the picture, taking up the whole frame, was its face. The face that it didn’t have. The face that it never had. The face that didn’t exist.

Its wide, hollow white eyes. Its drooling, sharp smile that stretched to the back of its head. The faces of agony etched into its skin like an art project.

It was the last thing I saw when I lowered the picture from my view.