The Red-Faced Visitor

In the autumn of 2012, I moved into a small, drafty apartment on the outskirts of a town that seemed to be perpetually shrouded in fog. My name is Daniel, and I had just taken a job as a night auditor at a motel that had seen better days. The apartment itself was cheap, and I was drawn to the thick oak door that groaned when it swung open, and the tall, narrow windows that let in a sliver of sickly light during the day. The previous tenant had left behind a musty armchair, and I often found myself sitting in it, staring at the wall, feeling an odd unease I couldn’t shake.

One night, about a month in, I was lying in bed, the flickering television casting dancing shapes on the ceiling. I reached for the remote on the nightstand, and as I turned my head, I saw a figure standing in the doorway to my small kitchen, which was open, not a closet, but the effect was the same. My blood ran cold. The figure was tall, wrapped in a black, hooded cloak, but the face was not hidden. It was the face of an older man, deeply lined, with a ruddy, flushed complexion, and eyes that burned with a malevolent anger. He didn’t move, just stared at me with a sneer of contempt. I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. Ten seconds felt like an hour, and then, as quickly as he appeared, he was gone, leaving only the hum of the refrigerator.

I tried to rationalize it as a trick of the light, a shadow, a hallucination from exhaustion. I didn’t sleep for the rest of the night. I told myself it wouldn’t happen again, but the air in the apartment felt heavier, as if something lingered.

A year later, I had moved to my aunt’s house, a sprawling Victorian on the edge of a pine forest, to help her recover from hip surgery. She was a kind soul, but the house itself was oppressive, with creaking floorboards and rooms that were always slightly too cold. One afternoon, I was in the kitchen, washing dishes, when I glanced out the window over the sink. The yard was enclosed by a tall, white picket fence, and beyond that, the forest pressed close. And there, standing just beyond the fence, was a figure, again in a black hood. But this time, the face was a stark white, like porcelain, expressionless, eyeless, yet I could feel its gaze boring into me. It was facing me directly, motionless.

I dropped the glass I was holding, and it shattered on the floor. My aunt called out from the living room, ‘What was that?’ But I was frozen, staring at the thing. It didn’t move, didn’t blink. It was as if it were waiting. After a long moment, I forced myself to look away, and when I looked back, it was gone. I told my aunt it was nothing, but my hands were shaking.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that this thing was following me, that it had chosen me for some reason. I started to see it in my peripheral vision, always at a distance, always watching. It would appear in my dreams, standing at the foot of the bed, its white face tilted slightly, as if curious. And then, one night, it spoke. Not in words, but in a feeling, a pulling sensation at the back of my mind, a whisper of images: a dead tree, a rusty key, a door that shouldn’t be opened.

The key appeared three days later. I found it in the garden, half-buried in the soil, near the fence where I had seen the figure. It was old, black iron, with an intricate head shaped like a screaming face. I showed it to my aunt, and she paled. ‘Where did you find this?’ she demanded. I told her, and she made the sign of the cross. She told me that the previous owner of the house, a man named Arthur, had gone mad and disappeared into the forest. They found his body in the woods, his face frozen in a look of terror. She said the key was his, and that it opened a cellar door that had been sealed for years. She had never gone down there.

I was obsessed. I had to know. The key felt warm in my hand, as if it were alive. I found the cellar door in the pantry, hidden behind a shelf. It was padlocked, but the key fit perfectly. With trembling hands, I turned it, and the lock clicked open. I swung the door open, revealing a dark, stone staircase descending into the earth. A cold, musty air wafted up, carrying the faint smell of decay. I heard a voice, a whisper, coming from the darkness below. It was my own voice, but wrong, distorted. ‘Come down,’ it said. ‘Come see what I have to show you.’

I stepped down, my heart pounding. The stairs creaked under my weight. The air grew colder, and the darkness seemed to swallow me. At the bottom, there was a small room, lit by a single, bare bulb that flickered. In the center of the room was a heavy wooden table, and on it lay a black hood and a white mask, just like the ones the figure wore. And behind the table, in the shadows, stood the figure itself, its red face twisted into a grin. ‘Welcome home,’ it said, and I understood that this was not a new beginning, but an end. I had been led here, to this place, to become its vessel. The last thing I saw as I screamed was my own face, reflected in the mask, smiling back at me. Then the lights went out, and I knew no more.