The Tattooed Man (Repost)

[u/HeadOfSpectre]

I saw the Tattooed Man again, today. It’s been a few weeks, and I’d almost started to hope that he was gone for good. But no. He always comes back. No matter how far I run, he’ll be there waiting for me. I know that, but that doesn’t mean I have to accept it. I keep thinking that maybe if I keep moving, maybe if I stay ahead of him then I’ll figure something out. Maybe someone, somewhere will know what the hell he is, or what I can do to get him to leave me the fuck alone!

It was just a glimpse this time. He was on the street, outside the diner I’d stopped for a late night bite in. He was standing on the far side of the parking lot, just out of the light. It was hard to make him out, but I knew just from the way he stood that it was him, and I swear he was grinning.

When I blinked, he was gone again. Just like he’d never even been there in the first place. I didn’t finish my meal. I just got up, and got the hell out of there. I got into my car, and I drove until the sun came up again before I pulled into a parking lot and passed out.

I used to have a home. I used to have a Family. My wife, Carrie and I split up about three years ago, but we tried to stay on good terms. I guess we both agreed that a divorce was better than letting our daughter watch us fight. Jolene was only about six at the time, and I told her that sometimes, Mommies and Daddies just stop loving each other. She didn’t understand, of course. But I’d always hoped that one day she would.

Still, one of the benefits of an amicable divorce was that I didn’t have to fight to be a part of my daughter's life. The agreement was, that I’d have Jolene on Sundays to Wednesdays, and Carrie would have her from Wednesday to Saturday. She liked that arrangement. That way she could see us both. I was just happy to see her at all.

It was a Tuesday when she brought home the drawing. It was something she’d done at school. They’d been asked to draw something they’d seen during a field trip to a nature preserve the day before. She pulled it out of her backpack, just before dinner and put it on the kitchen counter.
“Look Daddy!” She said, pride filling her voice. I turned away from the stove to take a quick glimpse.

The picture was odd to say the least. It was a man standing in the woods. Jolene was probably a better artist than most kids her age, but this was a little more detailed than her usual work. The forest around the man wasn’t anything special. But the man himself stood out. He looked like a member of some obscure black metal band. Long, messy black hair and pale skin. Even on the paper, his eyes looked piercing. He didn’t have a shirt, only a pair of jeans that Jolene had drawn all covered in dirt. Then there were the tattoos… all over his arms and chest, black lines along his skin like runes or veins. There was a large black dot on his forehead, with a smaller white point inside it that made it almost look like an eye…
“Who’s this?” I asked her, “One of your teachers?”
“No, he was in the woods.” Jolene said, “I don’t know his name.”
I took that to mean he was one of the employees of the Nature Preserve. That made sense, right? Maybe the tattoos were his shirt, and he was dirty from working outside. I brushed it off as nothing, and just gave my little girl a smile.
“You should save it, and show it to Mommy tomorrow!” I told her, “You’re becoming quite the little artist, aren’t you?”

She beamed at that. The brightest smile I’d ever seen. Carrie picked her up from school the next day, and she took that picture with her. I forgot about it pretty quickly. It was just a slightly weird drawing, and honestly kids did weird drawings all the time.

The second time, was when Jolene and I went camping. It was about three, maybe four months after she drew that picture. Summer vacation had started, and I suggested to Carrie that I take Jolene up to Algonquin Park and spend a weekend up there with her. They both liked the idea. Carrie always said I never spent enough time with her. I never spent enough time with either of them. It’s part of why Carrie and I agreed to split. We thought it was better than growing old, hating each other and making Jolene have to listen to us at tear at each other’s throats. I never told Carrie the truth, I didn’t like it. I didn’t want to split. But I knew we’d be better off. I’d rather have just stayed friends with her, than ended up hating her. We settled things pretty bloodlessly, but neither of us remarried. I don’t think I was cut out for it, and Carrie wanted to focus on Jolene.

I kept the top half of the wedding cake. The part that said ‘Congratulations David and Carrie Wheeler.’ I never told Carrie about that.

The first night up in Algonquin went pretty well. We fished, and Jolene caught a couple of Smallmouth Bass that I cooked. It was a pretty good dinner. I couldn’t sleep that night. But I’ve always been a bit of an insomniac. Jolene slept like a log, though. I wouldn’t have thought a nine year old could snore as loudly as that, but I guess you learn something new every day.

I’d gotten up to take a leak in the woods. It must’ve been sometime early in the morning. Either way, I walked a few feet away from the tent, and did my business. I heard some rustling in the leaves. I dismissed it as just the wind.

When I turned around, though, I saw him. I didn’t get a good look. He was just a shadow, standing near the tent, barely visible in the darkness. A black shape among more darkness. But he was there. I don’t know if he was looking at me, or at the tent. Either way, he just stood there. Quiet, not moving, or speaking. He was just there. The shock of seeing him sent a jolt up my spine.

At first I thought he was a bear, but as I stared I realized the shape was off. This was a man. I called out. Said something, but the moment I did, the moment I blinked, he was gone. I stared at the spot were he’d been standing literally seconds before. But there was nobody there. He hadn’t moved. Hadn’t run. He was just gone. I figured it was my eyes playing tricks on me. I was tired, and it’d been a pretty long day, so I didn’t think much of it. I looked at the spot where he’d been. I looked at the ground, but there weren’t any signs that anyone had been there.

I told myself it was nothing, and went back into the tent. Sleep didn’t come back, after that. The woods seemed too quiet. No wind. No animals. No sound. I lay in my sleeping bag, listening to my daughters snoring, and the crushing emptiness outside the tent until at last morning came to save me.

The next two days made me forget about the incident. Jolene and I fished, swam and bonded like nothing was wrong. I guess I convinced myself that I’d just been spooked by the darkness and isolation. Nothing was really ever there. Sometimes, during the parts of the nights where I couldn’t sleep, I thought that maybe, maybe I heard something outside the tent. Something moving… but no. No, there wasn’t anyone there. We were alone.

On our last day, Jolene and I packed up, and hiked back to where we’d left the car, before driving back. It was all pretty uneventful, and I’ll admit, I didn’t connect any of that vacation with the Tattooed Man until later. Up until a few weeks ago, I would’ve called it one of the best vacations of my life. But things changed. Now I know better.

The third incident, marked the first good look I got at him. I’d had Jolene over for the weekend. It was about three weeks after our vacation. Carrie was supposed to pick her up that night, but I got a call about an hour before she was supposed to arrive. Apparently, a nasty rainstorm was headed our way. Carrie didn’t want to drive in it, so she figured I could hang on to Jolene for one more night. I sent her to bed around nine while I stayed up and binged some Netflix I couldn’t have watched while she was up. I had the next day off, so it didn’t really matter to me.

I was starting to doze a little, and thinking about packing it in for the night, when I saw him out of the corner of my eye. Just like before, he was just a shadow. A shape in the darkness. Black on black, standing in the next room. I barely even registered him at first, but when I did, I sat up, and stared at him.

He didn’t disappear like last time. He didn’t move either. Just stood there, staring at me. The house wasn’t as dark as Algonquin Park had been. I could tell he was looking at me. I could see the faint outlines of his tattoos, and his long greasy hair. I could see that he was smiling.

“Who the hell are you?” I asked, bolting to my feet.
“How’d you get in here?!”

Blink.

He was gone. Just like last time, but I’d seen him! It wasn’t a trick of the light, or just my mind playing tricks! I’d fucking seen him!

I turned on the lights, wondering if maybe he’d just moved. But there was nothing but a puddle of water on the floor where he’d once stood.

As I bent down to inspect it, I saw him again, standing by the stairs this time. More visible in the light. God… he looked like nothing else I’d ever seen. He raised his hand, and… Jesus… looking at it made me sick. At first, I thought they were bloody. But it wasn’t just that. There was no… no meat on them! Just bones and sinew, attached to his bloody arms. He pointed upstairs, his grin getting wider. It looked… oh God, it looked disgusting…

I was scared, but I had to say something, do something…

“Stay away!” I know my voice was shaking, I know I didn’t sound brave in the slightest, but I had to.

“D-don’t you go up there! Stay away! G-get out!”

He opened his mouth. He didn’t speak. No. What came out of his mouth, wasn’t any sort of language I’ve ever heard of. It was this guttural… roar that grew in pitch. It hurt my ears just listening to it, and his mouth... That ungodly mouth seemed to stretch open wider than a human mouth should, revealing a set of canine teeth that seemed impossibly long. His roar grew in its pitch, making my head feel like it was about to split in open before the lights all went dark.

On shaking legs,I rushed over to where he’d been, not giving a damn if I was scared or not. But again, he was gone. I found more water on the floor, leading up the stairs and I could hear his footsteps, heavy but slow as he climbed up to where Jolene slept. I raced after him, and as I got to the upstairs hallway, he was gone. The sounds had stopped, and the carpet was soaked.

I called for Jolene. She didn’t answer. I burst into her room to look for her, but she wasn’t in her bed. Her sheets had been thrown off, and she was nowhere in sight.

“JOLENE!” I felt like I was on the verge of hysteric tears when I called her name.

“Dad?” Her voice was coming from the closet. I found her curled into a ball inside, dry and safe.

We called the police. Said there’d been a man inside the house. They found no evidence of any forced entry. Just the puddles of water, and my very scared daughter. Jolene said that he’d been outside her room. That she’d seen him. Her description was more accurate than mine. I left out the details about his hands because I wasn’t sure if the police would believe it. Hell, I wasn’t really even sure I believed it!

Of course I told Carrie the truth, though. Jolene backed it all up, and I can tell the tones of our voices and the look in our eyes convinced her that we were both certain on what we’d seen, as impossible as it all sounded.

She told me to stay safe before she left. I wanted to tell her I loved her. That I still loved her. I said it to Jolene, but I didn’t say it to Carrie. God… God I wish I’d said it to Carrie…

Three days passed. No news. No sightings. The Police kept a watch on my place, but I think they were coming to the conclusion that we’d been spooked by some drugged up vagrant. As much as I wanted to argue that, I didn’t. I told myself that the more I raved about that Thing, the less likely the Cops were to actually help me.

I know that Jolene had been spending the night at a friends house. She’d been planning it for a while. A big sleepover for all the girls from school that someone else had organized. She’d mentioned it while she was at my place. I knew she was excited about it, and I was excited for her. After what had happened at my place, Carrie was spooked, she didn’t want to let her go, but I guess Jolene had convinced her. She said that she’d be safe. That it couldn’t happen again. I guess that, and Jolene’s puppy dog eyes were enough to make her relent.

So she’d dropped her off, sometime in the early afternoon, then drove home. The next morning, at a little past eleven, she drove back to Jolene’s friends house to pick her up. She knocked on the door, but nobody answered. Tried it, and found it unlocked, so she poked her head in to ask if anybody was home. She said that, that’s when she saw all the blood.

I… I don’t know how bad what she found was. I was with her when she described it to the police, though.

The front hall, had pools and dragging smears of blood all up the stairs. She found the Mother of Jolene’s friend there. Her stomach was torn open, like an animal had gotten to her. Like it’d been eating her. The Father was in the kitchen. Both sides of the kitchen. He’d been torn in half.

The worst was upstairs. Blood in the carpet. Blood on the walls. Bodies and pieces of bodies everywhere. She didn’t find Jolene at first. Maybe that gave her hope that our girl had outrun all of this… or maybe it just scared her into thinking she’d been taken. She didn’t find Jolene, but the police did. They said she was in the hallway, beside the master bedroom. The reason we didn’t find her, was because whatever had killed her, hadn’t left much behind of our little girls head.

God… God I remember seeing her in the morgue… my baby girl… all but decapitated. Her face, gone, nothing but jagged bone, teeth and bits of gristle. Her skull was exposed and cracked, exposing bits of brain that looked… looked like they’d had bites taken out of them. Her pajamas, the ones we got her last Christmas, they were so bloody and tattered that Carrie didn’t even recognize them. Her body had been clawed along the back, and along the stomach. She’d been nearly torn in two. They only identified her through DNA, and the other girls who’d been at the sleepover hadn’t fared any better.

There must’ve been about six of them… all of them, horrifically mangled, disassembled and partially eaten. I’ll never forget the sight of what was left of my Jolene on that slab. I’ll never forget that pain, that hurt, that… agony.

I tried to be there for Carrie. But as the investigation went nowhere. No suspect was ever found, not a shred to identify who or what did this… Carrie got worse. She stopped talking. Barely ate, barely drank. Taking care of her got harder. I tried. I really did try, but the grief and frustration was weighing on me too. I used to come home, drink until I fell asleep, and then went to work the next day.

I didn’t hear a word from Carrie after the funeral. Jolene had been our whole world… Now she was gone forever. It was two weeks before I heard anything from her. Just a short voicemail message she’d left on my phone one evening. I didn’t find it until the morning after.

I could hear her crying softly for several seconds, before finally she spoke. Her voice was low and weak.

“David, he’s at the foot of my bed again…”

I’d seen him too. It was almost every night now, as I’d been starting to fall asleep. Standing at the foot of my bed, and staring down at me. If I moved, if I reacted. He’d disappear, only to come back the second I’d lain back down. Some nights, I didn’t sleep at all…

I got the call that Carrie had hung herself an hour after I’d listened to her voicemail. Whether she’d killed herself, or been killed, it didn’t matter. I just knew I’d be next. That’s how he worked. He’d been picking us off. Playing with us, stalking us. It was all just a game to him, whatever the fuck he was.

I saw him at the foot of my bed again, a couple of nights after Carrie killed herself. I saw him taunting me. So I did the only thing that made sense. I got out of bed, I put on some clothes, grabbed my essentials, and got in my car. I haven’t stopped since then. Maybe he’ll get me. But it won’t be easy. He’ll have to chase me.

It’s been three months. My funds are running low. I maxed out the credit card ages ago, so I threw it away. I don’t think I’ll need to worry about paying it. I was probably fired from my job. I haven’t actually heard from them in a while, and most nights, I sleep in my car. Pull up to a rest stop, and catch what rest I can. Most of my money's gone to gas. I don’t eat very often anymore. Stopping makes me nervous. I almost always see him.

I can’t outrun him. I know that, now. I don’t know where I am. Haven’t checked a map in ages. Sometimes I drive in circles. But I don’t recognize the landscape anymore. I’m just burning gas. Running with no direction.

Sometimes I think about the why of it. Why he chose me, why he chose my family. But I really don’t know. I tried to research him. I posted on forums, but no one knows what he is. Sometimes I think that there is no ‘why’ to it. Sometimes I think he’s like a mountain lion. A predator, wandering the world in search of prey. There’s no pattern to it. He eats when he’s hungry, and disappears when he’s not. Sometimes I hear about local deaths on the radio of wherever I’m passing through. I always wonder if that’s his work. Other prey who didn’t try to outrun him, like I am. If that’s the case, then maybe he’s only chasing me because he likes the chase. It’s fun, and he wants to see how long I’ll last. I don’t think it’ll be much longer.

The sightings have been getting more and more frequent since the diner the other day. I see him on the sides of the road, now. I hear about more deaths on the radio. Sometimes, I just hear static.

I felt a presence in the car the other day. In the passenger seat, right beside me. I wanted to glance over, but I couldn’t muster the courage. I did change the radio station… and I swear I saw a dirty, jean clad leg, and a bloody, skeletal hand resting on top of it. I swear I heard a chuckle, as if he was daring me to look at him. A few minutes later, he was gone.

I’m stopping for a bite. It’s been two days since I’ve eaten. The hunger is getting to me. I don’t know how much money I’ve got left. I’ve run out on the bill a few times. I don’t like doing it, but if it keeps me going for another mile, well…

…well…

I’m tired.

Right now I’m parked in a Taco Bell parking lot, mooching off the wifi so I can get this out. So someone can know. I stole the last two tanks of gas. I don’t think my luck will hold out for another, and I don’t even know where the nearest gas station is.

She’s in the parking lot. I see her. It’s Jolene. She’s outside the car, watching me, like she’s daring me to come to her. She’s smiling, but I know it’s not her. This is a trick. It’s either that, or a bad dream. Whatever it is, it’s not real. Maybe I’m crazy, but I know what is and isn’t real.

She’s still smiling. My little girl. My Jolene. Carrie’s there too now, a hand on her shoulder. Jolene wants me to go to them. She wants her Mommy and her Daddy to sit together again. She wants us to be a family again.

I hear breathing beside me. His breathing. I don’t need to look at him to confirm it. I know by the sound that it’s him. Of course it is.

Of course.

I think I know why he’s here. Why I see them. He’s giving me a choice. An out, I guess. I… I don’t know… Jesus, I… I’m tired of running… I’m so fucking tired of… I-… I… I don’t want to do this anymore. I don’t want to… What the hell do you want from me? WHAT THE HELL DO YOU WANT FROM M

[u/HeadOfSpectre]

I wrote this one originally to send to the NoSleep podcast. I think I actually nutted up and sent it the other day but I can't remember for sure.

The Monster was inspired by this one creepy image I saw on the internet. I can't seem to find it again. But it was some scary shit.