The Chalk Man’s Last Shift

My father spent thirty years as a master mechanic, but not in some shiny dealership. His shop was carved into the base of a white cliff, reached by a narrow, treacherous road that switchbacked down from the coast road above. The chalk face loomed over the building like a dead white eye, and the sea air mixed with the smell of oil and rust. He called it the Pit, and he loved it with a stubborn, superstitious loyalty.

One winter, he hired a kid named Danny to watch the cameras overnight. Danny was fresh out of school, eager to prove himself. The first few nights were quiet. But on the fourth night, my father got a frantic call. Danny’s voice was shaking. ‘Boss, there’s someone down here… a man, just standing at the bottom of the slope, staring at the workshop. But the cameras don’t show him.’ My father told him to lock the doors and not go out, but Danny insisted, ‘I can see him through the window, plain as day. He’s all white, like he’s covered in chalk dust.’ My father could hear Danny’s breathing, then a thud, and a long, wet scrape. Then the line went dead.

When my father arrived, the workshop was silent. The front door was locked from the inside. Danny was not there. The only thing out of place was a fresh set of chalky footprints leading from the window to the back storage room, where they disappeared against the wall. On the wall, someone had scratched a crude map of the local area, but the roads were wrong. They didn’t lead anywhere recognizable. My father traced the lines with his finger and felt a cold draft. Then he heard it from behind him – a faint, rhythmic scratching, like nails on a rock.

Years later, I worked at the Pit myself during a summer break. My father had told me the story, but he warned me not to investigate. I didn’t listen. One night, I decided to stay late, alone, with the cameras on a loop. I wanted to see if the legend was true. I sat in the office, watching the monitor, when the power flickered. The image was replaced by a static of pure white. When the picture returned, the camera angle had changed. It showed the inside of the break room, but from a weird, low perspective – as if the camera had been knocked to the floor. In the center of the room stood a figure, its skin like the chalk cliffs, its eyes hollow pits. It didn’t move, but its mouth opened, and a voice came through the tinny speakers, my father’s voice, but stretched and wrong: ‘We should have buried it deeper.’

I didn’t wait to see more. I ran for the exit, but the slope was gone. The road outside wasn’t the coastal path; it was a winding dirt track through a forest of pale, leafless trees. The chalk cliff above me wasn’t a cliff – it was a giant, upturned hand, the fingers curling over me. I stumbled into the forest, and every tree had a face contorted in despair, their mouths open in silent screams. I kept running until I woke up in my bed, drenched in sweat, my phone showing a missed call from my father. I called him back, but he didn’t answer. When I drove down to the Pit the next morning, the workshop was empty, the tools rusted, and the ceiling was covered in a fine white powder. On the workbench, there was a note in my father’s handwriting: ‘The chalk remembers. Don’t come back.’

The police searched for my father for weeks. They found his truck abandoned at the top of the cliff, the tires coated in a strange, white mud that couldn’t be traced. The Pit was sealed off, but I knew better. I had seen the truth. The burial ground wasn’t beneath the workshop; it was the workshop itself, a vessel for something ancient that had been waiting. And now, every time I see a chalk cliff, I think of my father’s last words, and I can feel the cold grit between my teeth, and I know that somewhere, still, he is digging, trying to bury something deeper, but the chalk just keeps giving it back.