The Linen Man

My first memory is not of my mother’s face, but of a linen-wrapped thing that should not have been. It was the summer of 1984, and we had come to my grandmother’s farm in the rural outskirts of Christchurch to sell the property after her stroke. I was four, an age of unformed language and unshakeable impressions. The farmhouse was a gaunt, two-story relic, its weatherboards bleached by decades of Nor’west winds, and the fields around it had gone to seed, a sea of dry thistles and dead grass.

On the morning of the funeral, my mother and aunts were inside, arguing over the disposition of her china and the cost of a headstone. I was left to wander the yard, a plastic toy truck in my hand, my small boots crunching on the gravel. The day was harsh, a white sun in a washed-out sky, and the only sound was the creak of a windmill that turned slowly, almost lazily, despite the heat. I drifted toward the old barn, a structure that leaned precariously, its red paint flaking like dried blood.

It was behind the barn, in a strip of shade cast by a dead poplar, that I saw it. A shape, perhaps three feet high, wrapped in what looked like old, dusty linen—the color of bone, with frayed edges. It had a roughly humanoid form, with arms and legs too thin, too jointed, and it moved with a scuttling, insectile gait, darting from the barn’s shadow to the cover of a rusted tractor. It paused, as if aware of my gaze, and I could see a dark, mottled face beneath the tattered cloth, with eyes that were not eyes but hollows, and a mouth that was a lipless slit.

I was not afraid. I was four, and everything was new. I watched it as it zigzagged among the weeds, as if playing a game, and I laughed. It froze at the sound, then tilted its head, and I swear it seemed curious. I took a step forward, holding out my truck as an offering. But then my aunt called my name from the house, her voice sharp and impatient, and the thing darted under the barn’s broken door. I did not see it again that day, but I remembered it.

The funeral was a muted affair in a small country church, and afterward, we gathered at the grave. I stood at the edge of the crowd, bored, kicking at clover. The windmill was visible in the distance, and beyond it, the barn. And there it was again, standing at the edge of the cemetery, half-hidden behind a stone angel. The linen man, watching. I pointed, but no one looked. My mother pulled me closer, told me to behave.

That night, I lay in the narrow bed that had been my mother’s childhood bed, the curtains billowing in the hot wind. I heard a scratching at the window, like a branch, but the nearest tree was far. I sat up, and there it was, pressed against the glass, its hollow face staring in. It raised a hand—a gloved, mummified hand—and pressed it to the pane, leaving a greasy smear. I did not scream. I whispered, ‘Hello.’

It vanished.

In the days that followed, I saw it everywhere: in the long shadows of the paddocks, in the reflection of the kitchen window, in the gap between the fence slats. It never approached, only watched. My grandmother, in her final lucid moments, called me to her bedside. She was a wizened shell, her eyes milky. ‘The Linen Man,’ she whispered, her voice like dry leaves. ‘He was here when I was a girl. He took my brother. You must not follow him, no matter what he offers.’

I did not understand then. But on the last day, as the moving truck was loaded, I saw him at the end of the drive, standing beside a burnt-out car, his arm raised as if in farewell. I ran toward him, ignoring my mother’s shouts. As I got close, I saw that the linen was not cloth but skin, peeling and grey, and the hollows were not shadows but black, and the mouth opened wider than any human’s, wider, wider—and I stopped. He dropped a small, wooden toy—a horse, its paint faded—and then he was gone, leaving only a smell of dust and vinegar.

I picked up the horse. It was cold, and the wood was slick with something that stained my fingers. My mother grabbed me, shook me. ‘Don’t ever run off like that,’ she said, her face pale.

I never saw the Linen Man again. But sometimes, when the wind is hot and dry, I hear the sound of scuttling in the walls. My son, now ten, asked me last week if I had ever seen monsters as a child. I told him no. But I keep that wooden horse in a drawer, and I have never told anyone that its eyes are not painted—they are real, and they follow me still.