As I watched my wife lying strapped in a hospital bed, I wondered, “What did we do to end up here?” The entire event was so strange. My wife has always been a religious woman. She grew up in religion. On the other hand, religion has never been my jam. I didn’t have anything against religious people. I just wasn’t one. After a week of carpentry work, I’m the type of guy who likes to eat his meat and potatoes and watch a good football game on Sunday. The last thing I wanted to do was get dressed up and listen to a sermon.
I remember the day I first met my wonderful wife, Hannah. She was so beautiful with her blue eyes and long blonde hair. She had the face of an angel and the heart to match. She looked like a model, even without makeup. I guess you could say that I look more like a turnip. I met her while working on a hurricane relief project. I was rebuilding homes after a massive hurricane destroyed homes on the east coast. Back in those days, I didn’t even notice the hurt and pain of the people who lost their homes and loved ones. All I saw was a work opportunity. People were desperate and willing to pay for my services.
Hannah wasn’t like that. She was always putting people before herself. Always. When I was there, I was looking for opportunity. She was feeding the hungry and praying for the sick. She was a relief volunteer. She worked around the clock and didn’t get paid a dime. I watched her working the food line under that old ragged multicolored church tent every day. They had free food, prayer, and medications for anyone who needed it. They were lifesavers to a lot of desperate people. Some people would have died without their medications, and others without food. And I think other people would have killed themselves if it wasn’t for the prayers. The volunteers were filling a gap that the government was too slow to fill.
To this day, I don’t know what she saw in me. She said I made her laugh. I think I was kind of an ass, and I have always been hardheaded. One thing led to another, and we were married a few years after we met in that ragged, old, multicolored religious tent.
The Meeting of the Pale-Faced Man
I may be an agnostic, but I must admit that I have seen some weird things in my time. I have seen things that can’t be explained at the tornado and hurricane sites. I have read that the cause of such things is because so many traumatic deaths occur at these locations that it releases the spirits who roam around trying to find peace. I don’t know about all that. I just know what I saw.
One night, Bobby and I were finishing up some work on the roof. We shouldn’t have been out on the roof, but we were. Bobby was a young, all-American athletic type. He was volunteering to help. He was the quarterback of his high school football team.
Bobby slipped, and down he went, cracking his skull on the ground. I ran downstairs and outside as fast as I could. And that is when I saw him. I saw the man with the pale white face. I called him that because his face didn’t look human. It looked dead. I looked like dead, white smooth skin, kind of like Micheal Myers from those Halloween movies, but it wasn’t a mask. It was his skin. His eyes were black and not normal. His eyes looked more like the eyes of a shark than a human being. He wore clothes like Herman Munster, but he wasn’t built like Herman Munster. He was tall and unnaturally thin with long, skinny fingers with black fingernails.
For a brief moment, we just stared at each other. It was like we were both surprised to see each other. He looked at me with those black shark-like eyes, and I felt like I was being pulled into darkness, so I closed my eyes with my hand.
And when I lifted my hands, he hoovered over Bobby’s body like a vulture and lapping up Bobby’s blood with his tongue like a dog. I didn’t know what else to do, so I grabbed a wrench and ran toward the pale-faced man. The pale-faced man turned around and ran away into the darkness of the night. I have never forgotten that weird experience and that dark moment we both had. Unfortunately, Bobby died in the hospital that night. It wasn’t from a cracked skull but from dehydration.
(part 1)
Enjoyed your chapter . Hannah was a very sweet girl kind humble and compassionate. Sad about Bobby . Looking forward to the next chapter .