The Man in the Pale Linen

It was a Tuesday, the third of June, when I first caught sight of him. I was in the break room of the Meridian Trust Bank, stirring my coffee with a plastic spoon, when a flicker of movement snagged my periphery. I turned my head sharply, but the corner was empty—just the water cooler and a wilting fern. I shrugged it off, chalking it up to a late night and too much caffeine.

But a week later, on the tenth, I saw him again. I was in my apartment, the one overlooking the old train tracks, and I’d just poured a bowl of cornflakes. I glanced out the kitchen window, and there he was: a man in a pale, almost luminous suit, standing perfectly still on the overgrown lot across the street. He was staring straight at me. My bowl slipped from my fingers and shattered on the tile, milk and cereal pooling around my bare feet. I blinked, and he was gone. I called my landlord, a gruff old man named Mr. Havelock, and asked if there was anyone selling something or doing construction. He said no, and told me to stop imagining things.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I lay in bed, listening to the hum of the city, when my stereo—a dusty relic from college—suddenly blasted a garbled, static-laced version of some old show tune at full volume. I nearly jumped out of my skin. I scrambled to turn it off, but the power button did nothing; I had to yank the plug from the wall. As the music died, I heard a clink from my bedside table. My glass of soda tipped over, spilling dark liquid across the wood. I hadn’t touched it.

My mom, when I called her that weekend, said it was my guardian angel, trying to get my attention. She’s always been religious like that, but I’ve never believed in angels or luck. I’ve had too many bad breaks to believe in any cosmic order. The man in the suit, though, he felt real—more real than an angel. He felt like a warning.

I started digging online, but searches for ‘man in white suit’ only brought up old movie stars or religious figures. I tried ‘pale suit apparition,’ ‘phantom in white,’ even ‘the man who watches.’ Nothing. I began to think I was losing my mind. Then, on the fourteenth, I saw him again. This time, he was on the platform of the subway, across the tracks. He stood out among the morning crowd, his suit impossibly white, his face shadowed under a wide-brimmed hat. He was looking directly at me, and as the train rushed past, I saw him raise a hand and point at me.

The train left, and he was gone. But I noticed something else: a woman in a red coat, standing where he’d been. She was staring at me too, but her face was a mask of terror. She mouthed something I couldn’t understand, then turned and fled up the stairs. I ran after her, but by the time I reached the top, she had vanished. I was left with a cold knot in my stomach.

That evening, I found a note slipped under my door. It was printed on cheap paper, with block letters: ‘HE SEES YOU. HE HAS ALWAYS SEEN YOU.’ I checked the hallway, but it was empty. I called the police, but they said there was nothing they could do without a threat or a clear suspect. They suggested I take a break, see a doctor. I almost believed them.

But then I remembered something from my childhood—a story my grandmother used to tell. She spoke of a ‘Walker in White’ who appeared to those marked for death, or to those who had witnessed something they shouldn’t have. She said he was neither angel nor demon, but something older, a watchman of the in-between. I had never believed her, but now I wasn’t so sure.

On the morning of the seventeenth, I woke to find my apartment in disarray. Drawers were open, books were thrown from shelves, and my laptop was on, displaying a single image: a black-and-white photograph of me as a baby, but in the background, standing in the doorway, was the man in the white suit. I hadn’t scanned that photo; it was in a box in my closet. I grabbed the box, and the photo was still there, but on the back was a handwritten date—the day I was born.

Then I heard a knock at the door. I peered through the peephole, and there was no one. But when I opened the door, I found a small, leather-bound journal lying on the mat. It was old, the leather cracked, and the pages were yellowed. I opened it, and the handwriting was mine—but not my current handwriting. It was older, more shaky. The first entry read: ‘June 17, 2024. He finally found me. I should have listened to grandma.’ I dropped the journal as if it were on fire.

I fled my apartment, running down the stairs and out onto the street. The heat of the day was oppressive, the pavement reflecting the sun. I looked around, half expecting to see him waiting. Instead, I saw a young girl on a bicycle, stopped at the corner, staring at me. She pointed at me, exactly as the man had done, and then rode away. Panic seized me. I ran to the nearest café, ordered coffee with shaking hands, and tried to calm down. But as I sat near the window, I saw it again: a reflection in the glass, just behind my shoulder—a figure in white, standing so close I could feel a chill. I spun around, but there was only a waiter carrying a tray.

I stayed at a friend’s house that night, unable to face my own apartment. My friend, a skeptical guy named Max, tried to convince me it was all in my head. But as we talked, his lamp flickered, and his TV turned on by itself, showing static. We both stared at it, and then, in the static, I swore I saw a shape forming—the outline of a man in a hat. Max turned it off, but his face was pale. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘maybe there’s something to this.’

The next day, I went back to my apartment to pack some things. The journal was still where I’d dropped it. I opened it again, flipping through the pages. There were entries from different dates, all in my handwriting, all describing the same thing: a man in white, watching. The last entry was dated ‘Tomorrow.’ I felt my blood run cold. I closed the journal and put it in my bag. I had to know more.

I went to the library, desperate for anything about the Walker in White. I found a dusty volume of local folklore. According to the book, the Walker appears to those who have ‘seen beyond the veil,’ a curse that passes through bloodlines. It said the only way to break the curse was to confront the Walker at a crossroads at midnight, with a mirror in hand, and say his true name. But the book didn’t give the name.

I drove to the old crossroads on the edge of town, the one with the dead tree. It was eleven-thirty. I sat in my car, waiting, my heart pounding. At midnight, I got out, holding a hand mirror I’d taken from my bathroom. The wind had died, and the silence was oppressive. I looked around, and then I saw him—standing under the tree, his suit glowing faintly in the moonlight. He raised a hand and beckoned to me.

I walked toward him, trying to keep my voice steady. ‘Who are you?’ I asked. The man didn’t speak, but he pointed to the mirror. I lifted it, and in the reflection, I saw not my face, but a face I recognized from the photograph—the baby, but older, my age. It was me, but different, haunted. The eyes were hollow. And behind that reflection, I saw the man in white, and I knew his name. It was the name my grandmother had been terrified to say.

I opened my mouth to speak it, but the man in the mirror moved first. He reached out of the glass and grabbed my wrist. I tried to pull back, but he was strong. The man in white was walking toward us, and I saw that in the mirror, his suit was not white, but black—it was a reflection of death. I screamed, and then everything went black.

I woke up on the ground, the mirror shattered beside me. The sun was rising. The man was gone. I felt different, though—emptier. When I got back to my apartment, I saw a new entry in the journal, dated today. It read: ‘I confronted him. I said the name. But the name was mine. And now I see what he sees. The world is full of pale suits. They’re everywhere. They’re watching. And they know my name.’

I closed the journal and looked out the window. In the reflection of the glass, I saw a man in a white suit, standing behind me. When I turned, he was gone. But when I looked into any reflective surface, there he was. And I knew that he would never leave, because I had become him. I have become the watcher.

Now, as I write this, I see him in the screen of my laptop. His hand is raised, pointing at me. I wonder how long I have left before I fully become the man in the pale linen. I wonder if anyone else sees me now. I wonder if someone is looking at me from the corner of their eye, just as I did that first day. I wonder if they’ll search for answers on the internet, and find nothing, just like I did. And I pray that no one finds this, because if they do, they might see me. And I might see them.