A sharp gasp escaped my throat when I bolted upright in bed. A cold sweat engulfed me. I wiped the haze from my eyes after I realized it was just a bad dream. My phone displayed the time, “3:33am” before I unlocked it to check social media. The distraction was helpful, but somehow my mind kept veering back to what had happened earlier in the day on my way to school. I don’t know what that thing was, but its putrid bleach white flesh was the last thing I’ve been able to smell.
“Ada! Are you alright?” Had been the words my dad spoke to me when I got back to the house earlier today. I was still in shock at the time, but no matter how hard I tried to block out or justify what it was, I couldn’t burn the image already seared in my mind.
A newly finished bottle of water by my bed and a full bladder was enough for me to get up and go to the bathroom. “What’s Alecia doing tomorrow? When should I do my homework this weekend?” Questions filled my mind so I wouldn’t overthink things. I heard the familiar tick of the light switch and the woosh of the sink when I turned it on. Splashing my face with warm water I looked at my reflection in the mirror. “It wasn’t real Ada.” I told myself.
But then I blinked.
A loud crash erupted from my body jolting forward into the mirror and sink. I stumbled down and hit my back on the toilet before settling against the bathtub. My vocal cords thrashed in my throat because of how hard I screamed. There it was again. Standing right behind me, still with a pale crooked finger pointing towards my face. The feeling of my soul leaving my body encapsulated my being and I just kept screaming. The bathroom door burst open, cracking against the wall behind it. Before I knew it my father was cradling me in his arms, demanding to know what happened.
Tears flooded my eyes, and I just couldn’t catch my breath. Slowly I looked around the bathroom, fearing I might throw up if it was still there. My mind was racing a thousand miles an hour and I explained I had seen it again. The eyes that looked not quite human, sunken into bloody rings of skin around them. The long narrow slits where a nose usually is and the mutilated mouth that had teeth protruding outwards, perpendicular to its own narrow lips positioned above a chin, offset to the left by a seemingly dislocated jaw.
As moments passed the numb feeling hadn’t gone away. “My God, Ada Jane, you’re bleeding.” My father spoke in a voice of concern that normally sent chills down my spine, but now I felt nothing. He helped me back to bed and cultivated a makeshift cot for himself on the floor, promising to stay with me until the morning.
A low and slow scratching sound against my doorway brought me to a fully alert state when I arose that next morning. I darted my eyes to the floor and noticed my dad wasn’t there anymore. “Um, dad? Is that you?” I savored my words fearing the response, but the scratching only continued. Slowly I slipped out of bed and cautiously approached the door, still calling to my dad. The scratching grew louder, but its cadence didn’t change. Hot tears filled my eyes once more and my stomach twisted into knots. I reached for the door handle.
The door flew open, and I stumbled backwards onto the floor. “Good morning, Ada!” My dad held a tray full of breakfast, but I saw it again. Standing over his shoulder and still pointing at me. I yelled for dad to turn around quickly, but by then it had disappeared. I felt so stressed out that breakfast seemed impossible to eat, but that didn’t worry me, oddly enough I couldn’t taste it anyways. That’s when I pleaded to my dad; we needed help fast. The realizations came flooding in. I couldn’t smell the coffee he brewed, I couldn’t feel the egg sandwich that still had steam floating above the top, and now I couldn’t taste it either.
I looked into my father’s face with desperation painted over my own, but the look he gave me wasn’t quite remorse or sympathy. I felt like I was going crazy, but the way his cheeks sank and his eyes were heavy, I think it was guilt.
“Ada Jane, there’s something I need to tell you.”
A sickening roar echoed throughout the house from downstairs, and heavy footsteps perpetrated the stairs. I was on the floor, positioned facing the door when my father jetted towards the door to close it, but not before I caught another glimpse of it. That was the last thing I saw.
“Dad? Dad?” I cried desperately, fumbling my way around the room.
“Ada, I’m so sorry. Please forgive me. I was so dumb. I was so dumb.” My father was sobbing, and I could only hear him across the room.
“What are you talking about? What’s going on?”
“You have to understand. I was your age when it picked me. You would probably do the same thing if you could! I hope not, but.” He paused, and I could hear him struggling while something pressed hard against the other side of the door, slamming its body repeatedly. “It came for me, and it took my sense of smell. I was so scared like you are now, but I heard of a way out of it, Ada Jane. You can’t get rid of it, but you can pass it on.” His silent cries filled the space between the loud shocks of the creature slamming into the door.
“Dad? Are you saying you did this to me? Why dad? Why would you pass this thing on to me?” I pounded my fist into the floor and felt nothing. Tears filled my eyes, but the salt couldn’t sting them.
“If I could take it back, darling I would. I promise! I was so stupid. I wish you could just pass it again, but it only works once.” I screamed at the sound of exploding wood and the thud of my father hitting the ground. I tried to crawl around to escape, but I couldn’t feel where I was going. The pleading cries of my dad wrestling the creature filled my head and there was nothing I could do but whimper in place. The sound of a sharp object slicing through meat sickened me and I gagged. Crunching sounds and the snapping of bones followed me as I began scrambling away again into my own dark unfeeling abyss. I clasped my hands over my ears, trying to block it out when I heard my dad’s frail and raspy voice one last time.
“We couldn’t escape the Pickerman.”
Chaz Casey is a senior at Lindenwood University who competes in track and field and minors in creative writing. He first took up writing as a young child and has since cultivated his hobby into multiple 200-page rough drafts and was published in the 15th edition of Arrow Rock with a story titled, “A Solemn Night.”
Arrow Rock Literary Journal 
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