The Last Lap

It was a humid August afternoon when my cousin Mateo and I decided to cut through the old quarry on our way to the abandoned train depot. The quarry had been closed for decades, but the paths were still clear, worn by years of teenagers sneaking in to drink and smoke. To reach the flat stretch of land where the old cinder track lay, we had to duck through a narrow culvert under the highway. The culvert was dark and smelled of wet earth and rust, and Mateo always joked that it was a gateway to nowhere. That day, the joke didn’t feel funny.

I went first, scrambling up the steep gravel slope on the other side, eager to get out of the claustrophobic darkness. The sun was high, bleaching the sky to a pale white, and the quarry stretched before me like a forgotten battlefield. The track was still there, a perfect oval of cracked asphalt, bleeding into the dirt. And on the far side, running the inside lane, was a figure.

He was running with a smooth, effortless stride, his arms pumping in rhythm. But there was something wrong. He was too white, a pale flicker like heat haze on a hot road, and I could see through him to the weeds beyond. He wore a sleeveless jersey, striped in faded maroon and gold, and shorts that ended high on his thighs, topped with knee-high socks. It was an outfit from another era, the kind you see in old photographs of Olympic trials. He didn’t look at me. He just kept running, his feet barely touching the ground, his form perfect and silent.

I stood frozen, my heart pounding in my ears, watching him complete another lap. The world around me seemed to dim, the sounds of distant traffic and birds fading into a dull hum. I couldn’t look away. He was so real, so solid in a way that ghosts shouldn’t be, yet he cast no shadow. He passed the starting line again, and this time, as he came closer, I saw his face. It was young, maybe nineteen or twenty, with a determined set to his jaw. And his eyes—they were fixed on something far away, something beyond the track, beyond the quarry, beyond time itself.

Then, as if he’d crossed an invisible finish line, he vanished. One moment he was there, the next the air was empty, and the world snapped back into focus, sounds rushing in like a flood. I was gasping, my legs weak, my mind reeling. Mateo scrambled up beside me, breathless, and looked around.

‘What’s wrong? You look like you saw a ghost,’ he said, half-laughing.

‘Didn’t you see him? The runner?’ I grabbed his arm, pointing at the empty track. ‘He was right there, wearing those old track clothes, just running…’

Mateo stared at the track, then back at me, his smile fading. ‘There’s no one here, Leo. It’s just us.’

I knew what I saw. I described the outfit, the stride, the way he vanished. Mateo listened, his face growing pale. He told me that the quarry had a history, that back in the ’70s a local athlete had collapsed and died on this very track during a training run. His name was something like Avery, and he’d been a rising star, just short of qualifying for the national team. They said he never left the track, that his spirit still ran the laps he never got to finish.

I wanted to believe it was just a trick of the light, but I couldn’t shake the image of that determined face. It felt wrong to leave, like I was abandoning him. But Mateo was already pulling at my sleeve, urging us to go. We made our way back through the culvert, and I didn’t speak the whole way home. That night, I lay awake, replaying the moment over and over. Why had I seen him? Why now?

A week later, I went back alone. I needed to prove to myself that it was just my imagination. The quarry was the same, the track empty. I stood at the edge, waiting, listening to the wind. Nothing. I felt foolish and turned to leave when a glint of something in the dirt caught my eye. I knelt and found an old stopwatch, its face cracked, the metal tarnished. On the back was engraved ‘Avery—1974.’ I picked it up, and as I held it, I felt a cold breeze pass through me, and I heard a faint rhythm, like footsteps on asphalt, growing softer, fading away.

I have never told anyone about the stopwatch. It sits on my nightstand now, a constant reminder of that day. Sometimes, in the early morning, I think I hear a soft ticking, and I know he’s still out there, running his endless laps, waiting for someone to finish the race with him. I’ve never gone back to the quarry. But sometimes, when I close my eyes, I see him, and I feel the pull to join him, to run alongside him on that track, just one more lap.