The Long Way Home

I’m not the one this happened to. It was my cousin, Elias, and his friends, Sam and Marcus. We lived in a small desert town where the weekends started on Thursday, so Wednesday nights were always restless. Elias and his friends would often go for late-night walks to escape the heat and the boredom.

That particular Wednesday, my brother Daniel and I were home. Daniel was buried in his textbooks for an upcoming exam, and I was messing around on my laptop. Elias came back around eleven, his face pale and his hands trembling. He burst into the room and looked straight at Daniel, ‘Were you outside earlier? Like a few minutes ago?’ Daniel looked up, confused. ‘No, I’ve been here studying the whole time. Why? What’s wrong?’

Elias sat down heavily on the edge of the bed, his eyes darting between us. He spoke in a low, shaky voice. ‘We were finishing our usual loop around the block. You know the path that goes past the old abandoned water tower? As we rounded the corner, we saw him. A figure, at least seven feet tall, completely black, like he was made of shadows. He just stood there, staring at us. Then he turned and walked away, disappearing into the darkness between the buildings.’

I tried to laugh it off. ‘Maybe it was just a shadow or your imagination playing tricks.’ Elias shook his head, his voice cracking. ‘No, Sam saw him too. He grabbed my arm and whispered, ‘Is that your brother?’ And Marcus, he looked like he’d seen a ghost. We all saw him. He was real.’

Daniel put down his book, his face serious. ‘What did he look like? I mean, besides being tall and dark.’ Elias swallowed hard. ‘He had no features. No face. Just a black shape, like someone wearing tight black clothes from head to toe, but even his face was covered. And his movements… they were wrong. He didn’t walk. He glided, barely moving his legs. And he seemed to know we were there, but he didn’t care. He just… vanished into the night.’

Sam’s phone buzzed on the table. It was a message from Marcus, who had gone home in a hurry. ‘I can’t sleep. That thing… it followed me. I saw it in my window.’ Elias went pale. We all stared at each other. The room felt colder.

Daniel, ever the skeptic, suggested we go back to the spot to check for footprints or anything. Elias refused, but Daniel insisted. So we did, the three of us. The street was empty, lit by flickering sodium lamps. We reached the corner near the water tower. There was nothing unusual, until I noticed a strange mark on the ground, a patch of black, like something had burned the asphalt. It was cool to the touch.

As we stood there, a sound came from the dark alley beside the tower. It was a low, guttural hum, like a broken engine. We froze. The hum grew louder, and from the shadows, the figure emerged. He was even taller now, maybe eight feet, and his shape seemed to writhe, as if made of smoke. He didn’t have a face, but I felt his gaze on me. Then, he raised a long arm and pointed directly at me. A whisper, cold and dry, brushed against my ear, ‘You see me now.’

We ran, not looking back, until we burst through our front door and locked it. We didn’t sleep that night. The next morning, we found out that the entire town was talking about a ‘shadow man’ that had been seen near the water tower for the past week. Some even said he was a Djinn, cursed to walk the earth. But my brother Elias knew the truth. That thing wasn’t just a spirit. It was something that had been waiting, and it had chosen us.

We moved away shortly after, never speaking of it again. But sometimes, in the dead of night, I still hear that hum, and I see that black figure standing at the foot of my bed, pointing at me, as if to say, ‘I know you see me now.’ And I wonder if he ever truly left.