The Pajama Man

I’ve never considered myself psychic. No premonitions, no visions, just a family tree that’s a little crooked. My great-aunt Mildred used to swear she saw her dead husband in the garden, and my cousin Theo once told me he could hear the whispers of the departed in old houses. I always chalked it up to grief and imagination. But the night I met the Pajama Man, I stopped doubting.

I was a line cook at a diner off the interstate, and that evening had been a relentless parade of hungry truckers and frazzled families. By the time I got home, my feet ached and my mind was a fog. I lived in a second-floor apartment in a converted Victorian, the kind with creaky floorboards and radiators that clanked like bones. My roommate, Jared, was already asleep, and I collapsed onto my bed, not even bothering to change out of my work clothes.

I must have fallen asleep instantly, but it felt like only minutes later when a jolt ran through the mattress, as if someone had shoved it from underneath. My eyes snapped open, and in the dim light from the streetlamp filtering through the blinds, I saw him: a man crouched on the ceiling above me, his knees bent, his bare toes curled against the plaster. He was wearing a set of old-fashioned pajamas, white with thin blue stripes, and his face was gaunt, with sunken cheeks and a faint, mocking smile. His eyes were dark, almost black, and they bore into mine with an unsettling calm.

I couldn’t move. My breath caught in my throat. I wanted to scream, but no sound came out. He tilted his head slightly, as if examining a curious insect, and then he began to descend, moving down the wall beside my bed with a fluid, boneless grace. His feet touched the floor with a soft slap, and he stood there, just a few feet away, watching me. His smile widened, revealing too-white teeth.

‘Hello, Elsie,’ he said, his voice a dry whisper. ‘I’ve been waiting for you.’

I finally found my voice and shrieked, a raw, terrified sound that tore from my throat. Jared burst in, flicking on the light, and the man vanished—not like smoke, but like he was never there. The room felt suddenly cold, and I was shaking so hard I thought I’d fall apart.

‘What happened?’ Jared asked, his face pale with concern.

I told him everything, and he listened, but I could see the skepticism in his eyes. He chalked it up to a nightmare, a stress-induced hallucination. I wanted to believe him, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something had been in the room with us.

The next night, I barely slept, and the following nights were a blur of exhaustion and paranoia. I started seeing things out of the corner of my eye—a flicker of movement, a pale shape in the hallway—but whenever I turned, there was nothing. My co-workers at the diner noticed my jitteriness, and I nearly dropped a plate of hotcakes when a customer’s voice sounded too close, too familiar.

Then, on the third night, I woke to find him standing at the foot of my bed, his head cocked, his dark eyes gleaming. He didn’t speak this time; he just pointed a long, thin finger at the window. Outside, through the glass, I could see a woman in a white dress, floating just above the fire escape, her face a mask of anguish. She mouthed something I couldn’t understand, and then she faded.

‘She’s lost,’ the Pajama Man said, his voice echoing in my skull. ‘But you can help her.’

I wanted to refuse, to scream at him to leave me alone, but he was already fading, leaving a chill that clung to the air. That’s when I realized the truth: I wasn’t just seeing things—I was seeing into the void between worlds, and he was my unwilling guide.

Every night, the Pajama Man returned, and with each visit, the spirits became clearer. Some were harmless, like the old man who just wanted to sit in the armchair and watch TV. Others were desperate, clawing at the edges of my vision, pleading for release. It was exhausting, and my grip on reality began to fray. I stopped going to work, stopped answering the phone, and spent my days huddled under blankets, trying to block out the whispers.

One night, the Pajama Man led me to the bathroom mirror. As I looked at my reflection, it shifted, revealing a face I knew—my mother, as she appeared in an old photograph, young and vibrant. But her eyes were hollow, and she was crying blood.

‘You must let go,’ I said, not knowing if I was speaking to her or to myself.

The mirror cracked, and the shards splintered into a thousand pieces, each one showing a different face—some familiar, some not. And in the center, the Pajama Man stood, his smile now sad.

‘You’ve seen enough,’ he said. ‘Now you must choose: close your eyes, or be their guide forever.’

I closed my eyes, and when I opened them, the mirror was intact, and the apartment was silent. The Pajama Man was gone, and I never saw him again. But sometimes, late at night, I catch a glimpse of a figure in white out of the corner of my eye, and I know he’s still there, waiting for me to look back.