I will not name the city or street. If the place described seems familiar, then heed my warning, or share my fate.
Although I have lived here for several years, it was only three weeks ago that I found myself on X Street for the first time. It is a dark-looking street, even by day, threading its way between and beneath more traveled thoroughfares, barely wide enough for the two lanes of traffic its painted surface advertises. It is a path only the locals know to take, and this only when speed or circumstance make other routes unsuitable.
My circumstance was that my car was undergoing repairs that Thursday, so the more direct, high-speed roads were inaccessible to me. Bicycle was my mode of transportation—much slower by far, so any shortcut seemed a good one, especially after an exceptionally late night at the office.
I mentioned that X Street seemed dark even by day, and here I was navigating it by night. I felt as though I had fallen through the cracks in the city’s pavement. Looking up, I felt buried in the shadows of the buildings and expressways that rose indifferently above me. The distant roar of traffic was like static, reaching my ears as if from a radio in another room, a room from which I had been shut out. This desolate atmosphere was helped rather than hindered by the few lamps that flickered at uneven intervals along the street. I was the only living thing down there.
Perhaps ten minutes after I had first turned down X Street, I noticed that sheer concrete walls now loomed on either side. I found myself steering my bike through an artificial canyon that must have been at least twenty feet deep. The walls seemed to choke out the sounds of the city above, and in the silence I thought I heard something else. Something high, soft and distant, yet oddly piercing. Something about it caused my chest to tighten.
And then I came to it. Up ahead, in the wall on the opposite side of X Street, a dark archway. Just a simple opening in the concrete, unadorned save for a pair of dead lamps on either side. A tunnel.
And from inside the tunnel came that plaintive sound which I now recognized as crying.
A child crying.
I brought my bicycle to a skidding stop and stared across the street into that dark opening. I couldn’t see anyone, but my ears could not have been deceived. Some poor young thing was in there, alone in the dark, sobbing softly to themself.
I turned my bike and pedaled it across the empty street, stopping once more at the mouth of the tunnel.
“Hello?” I called.
The crying continued, although I still could not see anyone. Letting my bike fall to the sidewalk, I took a few steps into the darkness. Straight ahead, I could just make out the faint shape of the far exit: a pale semicircle of sickly gray in the middle of the surrounding black. And all around me, echoing off unseen walls, that hitching, high-pitched cry.
“Hello?” I ventured again. “Are you all right?”
I received no answer, but a moment later something eclipsed the faint light of the far exit. A low, bobbing shape.
Without thinking, I began moving toward it. The crying grew louder.
“Are you all right? Are you hurt?”
I now thought I could make out a clearer silhouette: a small human figure, hunched over so I could see nothing but the top of its head. It moved toward me with a limping shuffle, hardly gaining any ground with each labored step.
In response I increased my own pace until I was halfway through the tunnel, mere feet away from the sobbing child.
“Shh, shh,” I said. “I’m here. I can help.”
Its small shoulders trembled as it sucked in a breath. Then, still looking down so I couldn’t see its face, it said in a frail, high-pitched whisper, “W-who did it t-to me?”
“Who did what?” I asked. “Are you hurt?”
In reply, the figure only repeated, “Who d-did it to m-me?”
Then it began to straighten up. Two curtains of dark hair parted to reveal a thin, colorless face. A face with white, widely staring eyes, and an even wider, lipless grin.
And still, that crying.
The compassion that until now had been pinching at my chest froze up into something sharper and more primal. I took a half step back as the child reached a spidery hand up toward its throat. Its head tipped back, revealing a glistening patch of darkness beneath its pale chin. Thin fingers struggled with something for a moment, then found purchase. When they withdrew, they were clenched around something small and sharp.
I had only a moment to recognize the blade of the knife before the child lunged at me. There was a cold pain in my neck, and then—
I opened my eyes to a thin, jagged line of night sky peering down at me between buildings and expressways and the concrete walls that encased X Street. My head pounded. I gingerly stood up and looked around. My bike was lying on the sidewalk next to me. I could hear only the muffled roar of city traffic. Nothing else. Before me, the tunnel entrance gaped. The sight of that yawning darkness sparked an instant of panic. My hand went instinctively to my throat—I felt nothing. I took my hand away and looked at it. No blood. It was as if the encounter hadn’t happened. Nothing but a bad dream.
I shakily picked up my bike and mounted it. Looked around me one last time. Then began pedaling home. At first I could think of nothing except those mechanical motions that would speed me away from X Street: the pumping of my legs, the subtle adjustments to the handlebars. My memory of the encounter was but a driver that set my instincts alight, a darkness in the back of my mind from which my whole being recoiled, to the effect that I piloted my bike faster than I would otherwise have dared. But as the distance between me and that tunnel stretched, as I found myself on brighter and noisier paths, my pace relaxed. I began to consider the encounter more rationally.
What had I heard, seen, and felt? It seemed real in the way that a dream seems real in the moment. Yet unlike a dream, its reality did not evaporate upon waking. It still felt real, although it was a distorted reality, as if I was still caught in the dream’s grasp.
But I could not have been dreaming now, for otherwise I could not have entertained the notion of dreaming. And besides, I had clearly woken when I found myself lying on my back on the sidewalk. So this bicycle, this pavement, this rushing air were all certainly real.
What of the encounter itself? How could it have been a dream? How could I, riding home, have suddenly fallen asleep?
I thought over what I knew for certain. I had left work on my bike. Had taken the detour through X Street. Then something happened—I would not commit to anything more than that—and I woke up lying on the ground next to my bike. Could I have crashed? A wet patch of pavement, an unseen obstacle, something to topple me and knock me unconscious?
Perhaps. Though I would have expected more pain from an impact strong enough to plunge me into dreaming.
What other explanation could there be? That I had actually heard a child crying? That I had found one alive in spite of the knife embedded in its throat? Alive and with the strength to attack? And if I had really been attacked—and attacked severely enough to render me unconscious—where were the marks of it?
No, I concluded, it must have been an accident. A bump on the head followed by a trauma-induced dream.
When I arrived home, I checked myself in the bathroom mirror just to make sure. I tilted my head back and examined my throat. Not a scratch to be seen.
I slept restlessly that night. My dreams were dark, composed chiefly of sounds. My own rapid breathing, echoing off unseen surfaces. A distant, distorted sobbing.
The summer sun rose early that Friday morning, but my circumstances required that I rise even earlier to have enough time to ride my bike into work. It wouldn’t be a long-term arrangement, fortunately; I would be picking up my car from the garage that evening. But for that one morning, I readied for the day in darkness.
As I was finishing up my shower, I thought I heard something beneath the hiss of falling water. I shut off the faucet and listened.
Silence, save for the steady drip of leftover moisture from the showerhead. No matter how hard I strained my ears, I could detect nothing else. Strange. I thought I’d heard something like…
But that made no sense. I wasn’t entirely alert, owing to the early hour and my restless sleep the night before. The warm, humid air made my head feel heavy. I’d probably imagined it.
After drying off, I stood in front of the bathroom mirror to shave. Steam from the shower had formed a glaze of condensation, blurring and distorting my reflection. I paused now and then to wipe a towel over the glass so I could see what I was doing, but within thirty seconds the humidity in the bathroom would fog it over again.
This monotonous routine, combined with my drowsy state, allowed my mind to drift. I thought of my dreams. Those plaintive, hitching sounds. I could recall them so clearly that my ears rang. It hadn’t been just a mindless sobbing. It rose and fell in interrupted syllables. Syllables my conscious mind now stitched into words.
W-who did it to m-me?
I paused with my razor held mid-stroke so I could clear the mirror once again. As the towel cleared away the fog, I beheld my reflection clearly. My half-shaven visage, tinged crimson from the heat, stared back at me with exhausted eyes. Eyes that, in the next moment, darted to the space above my left shoulder.
Who d-did it t-to me?
With a startled gasp, I jumped and spun around, hardly noticing as my razor nicked the skin of my throat. The bathroom was empty, save for myself. But for a moment I thought I’d seen…
Impossible. The door was shut. There was nowhere for anyone to hide—except, maybe, behind the half-drawn shower curtain. Was there even now, showing faintly from behind the fabric, a wavering shadow?
Holding my breath, I approached the shower. The curtain hung still and heavy in the damp air. My shaking hand reached for it, then yanked it back with sudden violence.
No one.
Trembling, I turned back toward the mirror. A bright streak of red ran down my throat from where my razor had cut me. Nothing serious. My eyes were once again drawn to the space above my shoulder, that now-empty space that seemed to whisper:
M-make them like m-me.
At first I tried crediting the incident to nerves. Unfamiliar roads, a poor sleep full of nightmares, an early morning—these could all contribute to a frayed state of mind conducive to alarming fancies.
I took an alternate bike route into work that morning, one that kept me far away from X Street. In the afternoon, I left early so I could reach the garage before it closed and pick up my car. After paying the mechanic, I loaded my bike into the trunk, slid myself into the driver’s seat, and started the engine. The radio came immediately to life, playing my preferred station.
It felt good to be moving so quickly, to be joining the ceaseless stream of traffic on the expressway. No more dark and lonely alleys; here I was connected with the noise of life.
The sun began to set just as I reached my exit. In a few minutes I would be home in my apartment. I could get a proper night’s rest, and I could put the whole ordeal behind me.
As I turned onto my street, the song on the radio began to fade. A faint burst of static, then the music returned. But only briefly. The radio signal seemed to be failing. I tried changing the station, but it was the same everywhere. Hissing white noise, with only the faintest snatches of…no, it wasn’t music that came bubbling to the surface in those brief moments of clarity. It was…
Crying.
A chill spread through my veins once I recognized it. I turned the dial, trying to find a clear station, but without success. Each and every frequency greeted me with the same, uninterrupted sobbing. Now and then, I thought I heard a coherent word breaking through, little more than a shuddering whisper—
M-make them l-like me…
Movement in my peripheral vision made me look up at the rear-view mirror.
The car screeched to a halt as I stomped on the brake. My head nearly crashed against the steering wheel, and my heart pounded relentlessly against the inside of my rib cage. I looked in the mirror again. This time there was nothing. Had it been nothing the first time? I couldn’t have imagined it, could I? The memory was so crisp, so real.
Twisting my neck over my shoulder, I could barely see anything of the back seat. So I threw the car into park, got out, and opened the back door.
No one. No one lying in the seat, no one lying on the floor. Certainly no one sitting there staring at me with wide eyes and a frozen grin.
But I thought for sure I’d seen—
And then my eye alighted on something. I don’t know how I missed it at first. It was right there in the middle of the seat.
A small, dirty knife.
The sobbing on the radio began to fade into static. Fragments of music returned. But just before everything returned to normal, that high, plaintive whisper came one last time:
…or s-share my f-fate.
What comfort I might have hoped for within the walls of my own apartment was not to be found that night. It was too full of triggers. Shadows that seemed to flee as I turned on the lights. My own face reflected back at me from an unexpected surface. The squealing hinge of a cupboard door that might have masked the voice of a child. I don’t know why, but I felt safer sleeping on the couch than in my bedroom. So I did.
I dreamed of the tunnel again. Enclosed in darkness, invisible walls crushing me between the echoes of my ragged breathing. It was hard to breathe, like something was blocking my trachea. Something at the heart of a sharp, cold pain.
When I awoke Saturday morning, I was desperate for open space and fresh air. Once I was ready for the day, I headed out to my car with the intent of driving to a nearby park.
The back seat was empty. Somehow, this discovery wasn’t as comforting as I thought it would be. If the knife had still been there, I could have assured myself that I hadn’t imagined it. I’d have something concrete to point to. I could have blamed its presence on the mechanic—yes, it might have fallen from his pocket as he worked on my car. But now it was gone.
I tried not to look into the rear-view mirror as I drove. Tried not to think about what might have removed the small blade from my locked car overnight. What might be sitting there, just waiting for me to look so it could grin back at me. I considered turning on the radio so the music could distract me—but what if something other than music came through?
At the park, I locked my car and set out on a brisk run along a tree-lined path. It was early enough that the summer sun hadn’t yet boiled the air, so I ran fast, letting the relative coolness of the morning wash over me. Burning muscles and the fresh scent of the trees drove everything else from my mind. I allowed my eyes to close, just for a moment, to relish the sensation.
I opened them again in time to see the low, spindly branch rushing toward me. Too late to stop or evade. Only enough time to acknowledge its presence and anticipate the collision that must soon follow.
Fortunately, it was a thin branch, barely more than a twig. It struck me across the throat, then yielded to my momentum. I staggered to a shaky halt and rubbed my stinging skin. It felt damp, and when I examined my hand there was a faint smear of blood.
I stood there panting for several minutes, staring at my stained fingertips. The sunlight seemed to darken and grow cold. The shadows of the trees seemed to swell. My heart throbbed in my ears, and—
Or share m-my fate.
I spun to look behind me. That had been no imagined voice. It was as clear as if someone had been standing at my back, whispering in my ear. My skin still prickled with the sensation of icy breath brushing over it. But I was alone on the path. There was no one else as far as I could see in either direction.
But then I noticed something else. Something much closer. I was standing with my back to the sun. My shadow lay before me on the path. And next to it, overlapping it, was a second shadow. A small shadow. Thin and trembling.
I stared at it for a minute. Then, since my brain seemed to have relinquished control, my legs took over, propelling me back the way I had come, back to my car.
I had fallen outside the domain of normal experience. That was clear to me by now. But still I resisted the thought of doing anything about it; that seemed too great an admission. Acknowledging the disturbances through action would injure whatever pride was left to me—or worse: make the whole situation even more real.
But I was not allowed to continue in this stubborn ambivalence. The following Sunday evening, I was cleaning up after dinner, carrying my plate—empty save for a knife and fork—to the kitchen sink. Halfway across the kitchen, my foot caught on something. What it was, I never saw, but I remember how it felt. Soft and heavy. Cold against my bare toes. I lurched forward, upending my plate and sending the silverware flying. I landed on my hands and knees, breathless with shock. For a while all I could do was stare at the floor just inches from my face.
Then something appeared there. A single spot of red. A few seconds later, a second one joined it.
I scrambled back into a kneeling position, and once I was vertical I felt the tickle of fluid running down my neck. Wiping it away with my hand, I realized what must have happened. The knife, launched from its resting place when I tripped, must have spun and cut me as I fell.
I went to the bathroom to confirm it. Yes, there was a small, fresh wound on my throat. I couldn’t help but stare in morbid amazement. Not just at the cut from the knife, but also the one from the tree branch the day before, and my razor the day before that. Three wounds in as many days, and all of them after my encounter in the X Street tunnel.
This realization set me thinking, and I devoted the rest of that night to understanding exactly what was happening to me. I began by cataloging everything that I had seen, heard, and felt.
Seen? A frail child the color of death. Eyes that looked like they’d never been closed. A grin so wide it made my own face hurt. Also a knife, drawn from the child’s neck.
Heard? Incessant crying, and three repeated phrases:
Who did it to me?
Make them like me.
Or share my fate.
Felt? Pain, on three separate occasions, brought about by some accident which did violence to my throat.
The connections, once formed, shot ice through my limbs. My hand unconsciously went to my neck, as if to guard against some further harm.
My logical side attempted a rebuttal. Those were just accidents. They would have happened regardless. Could have happened to anyone.
But logic, it seemed, did not apply to this situation. For the only name I could give to this thing, the only name that could explain all that had befallen me these last few days, was one that logic dismissed out-of-hand:
Ghost.
So I smothered the voice of logic and logged on to my computer, searching the internet for news articles about the X Street tunnel.
The tunnel, I learned, had been constructed a hundred years ago. Its purpose was to allow pedestrians to pass under a large factory building—constructed at the same time—rather than walk all the way around it. Most of its traffic consisted of the factory workers themselves. After the factory shut down, the tunnel fell into disuse.
Ten years later, the tunnel made headlines when police found the body of a missing girl inside. She was lying halfway through the tunnel, hidden in the shadows where the wall met the ground. She had been stabbed in the throat, and the knife was still lodged deep inside the wound.
The investigation never produced any suspects. Some suggested that the girl had done it to herself—but the fingerprints on the knife did not match hers. The case went cold without a single arrest.
The hour had grown quite late. The windows of my apartment showed only blackness. I leaned back in my chair, pondering everything I had just learned. It was comforting, at first, to be able to apply an explanation to my circumstances. But how did it actually help? What could someone like me do with this knowledge?
I continued staring at my computer monitor until it went to sleep, and then all I could see was the reflection of my apartment in the black glass. It was unsettling, to see such familiar surroundings inverted and reflected so darkly. Even my own face appeared unfriendly.
Find the one who did it, I thought to myself. Do the same to them, or else…
In the reflection, the triad of wounds on my throat seemed exaggerated. I felt something in my stomach roll over.
Turning my chair to face the apartment directly, I muttered aloud, “But that was ninety years ago!”
As if in answer, a faint, high-pitched noise rose unevenly from elsewhere in the apartment.
I shrank back in my seat, then jolted forward again as something thumped against the desk behind me. I spun my chair back around.
The knife lay there in front of my keyboard. The knife that appeared and disappeared from the back seat of my car. The knife that I had first seen produced so gruesomely in the tunnel. It lay with the blade pointed directly at me.
“What am I supposed to do?” I whimpered.
Movement in the monitor reflection. A head of long, dark hair rising over my shoulder. A spherical, white eye blazing at me from above a rictus grin.
W-who did it to m-me? Make them l-like me.
“But they’re already dead!”
M-make them l-like me, or s-share my f-fate.
“I can’t!”
…share m-my fate.
It’s been three weeks since I first set foot in the X Street tunnel. Three weeks of hearing that sobbing plea. Three weeks of seeing that wan, grinning face.
Three weeks of accidents.
My throat is a lacework of scars old and fresh. Most are minor. Mere grazes. Such as that time when the woman in front of me in line at the café carelessly flung her arm out to point at something, and in so doing scratched me with her diamond ring. But others are far more serious. Yesterday after work, there was a collision in the parking garage, just as I was walking by. A piece of glass flung from one of the cars got stuck in my throat. Not deep enough to be life-threatening, but I was sent to the hospital for stitches.
I’m being as careful as I can. I don’t run anymore. I’ve thrown away all the knives in my apartment and I give my surroundings as wide a berth as possible. But I can’t control everything. And no matter what I do, I can’t do the one thing that would make them stop for good.
Sooner or later, I know, something will happen. Something I can’t avoid.
So again, I warn the reader. I have tried to obscure any identifying details, but perhaps I’ve let slip some clue. Perhaps you know the place of which I speak. If so, stay away! That tunnel is haunted by a being so consumed by pain that it no longer comprehends the passage of time, that the object of its wrath no longer exists. Nothing can satisfy it.
So stay away, or share my fate.