Chapter 3: The Back Gate

Chapter 3: The Back Gate

The 5:45 AM alarm became a daily executioner’s bell. For a week, Leo’s hand shot out, silencing it with a frantic slap, as if the chime itself could summon her. The routine, once his shield, was now a trigger. He didn’t go near the path. He didn’t even look at his hiking boots, which sat by the door, gathering a fine layer of dust. The sanctuary was tainted, a place on a map he had mentally cordoned off with biohazard tape.

He tried to replace it with a new regimen, a desperate attempt to impose order on a world that no longer obeyed any rules. He made his French press coffee, but the bitter taste just reminded him of the morning chill he was now hiding from. He sat at his laptop, technical documents for a new irrigation system software open on the screen, but the words were just meaningless black squiggles. His mind was a looping replay of two images and one sound: the concave horror of a skull, a jaw hanging brokenly askew, and the wet, intimate click-tck-click of chattering teeth.

The house, his fortress of solitude, began to feel like a prison. The silence he had once craved was now filled with phantom noises. Was that the wind, or a faint clicking? Was that a branch scraping the window, or pale, bare feet shuffling on the gravel outside?

Buster was his barometer of fear. The dog, once a creature of boundless morning enthusiasm, now spent his days pressed against Leo’s leg or curled into a tight, anxious ball in his bed. He would stand in the middle of the living room and stare at a blank wall, a low whine catching in his throat. He refused to go near the windows that faced the fields, and when Leo forced the back door open to let him into the small, fenced-in yard, Buster would do his business in a frantic rush and scratch at the door to be let back in, his eyes wide with animal terror.

The isolation Leo had so carefully cultivated was now a weapon turned against him. He had no one to call. What would he say? “Hi, Mark, it’s Leo. Yeah, it’s been a while. Listen, I think a decaying, semi-corporeal woman with a shattered skull is haunting my morning walk.” They’d think he’d finally, completely snapped. They’d be right, he thought on the fourth day, as he stood staring into his bathroom mirror, seeing not his own reflection but the ghostly smear of a pale blue gown behind him. He spun around, heart seizing in his chest. Nothing. Only an empty hallway.

He was losing his mind. He had to be. It was the only explanation that allowed for a future where he wasn't perpetually terrified. The stress of his burnout was manifesting in a prolonged, complex, and horrifyingly specific psychotic episode. The thought was both terrifying and, in a strange way, comforting. A broken mind could be fixed. A ghost could not.

By the seventh day, a fragile, exhausted calm had settled over him. He hadn’t seen her for a full week, not even a glimpse from his windows. The phantom clicks had faded. Buster was still on edge, but he’d stopped whining at walls. Maybe it was over. Maybe the fever had broken. He managed to write five hundred words of coherent copy about water pressure and flow rates. It was a victory.

That evening, as twilight bled purple and indigo across the sky, he felt a flicker of his old self. He cooked a real meal, not just toast or microwaved soup. The smell of garlic and olive oil filled the small kitchen, a comforting, normal scent. After he ate, he scraped the leftovers into the bin. It was full. A mundane chore. Taking out the trash. He could do that. That was a normal thing for a normal person to do.

He pulled the bin bag from its container, tied the top, and unlocked the back door. “Stay,” he commanded Buster, who was already retreating from the door, his tail tucked low.

The cool night air was a relief against his clammy skin. Crickets chirped their relentless, rhythmic song. The security light above the door clicked on, casting a harsh yellow cone of light over the small patch of lawn and the five-foot wooden fence that marked the boundary of his property. Beyond it lay the deep, swallowing darkness of the fields. His back gate, a simple wooden affair with a latch, was closed.

He walked the fifteen feet to the large wheelie bin he kept by the fence, the plastic bag rustling in the quiet. He lifted the lid, shoved the bag inside, and let it slam shut. The sound was loud in the stillness.

That’s when he noticed the silence.

The crickets had stopped.

All of them. All at once. The entire soundscape of the rural night had just… ceased. An unnatural, pressurized silence pressed in on him, so absolute it made his ears ring.

A low, guttural growl came from the house. Buster was at the glass of the back door, his teeth bared, the fur on his back a rigid, angry line. He wasn't scared anymore. He was furious.

Leo’s blood ran cold. He turned slowly, his gaze sweeping the edge of the darkness, his heart hammering a frantic, painful rhythm against his ribs. He scanned the fence line. Nothing. He looked toward the back gate.

And she was there.

She wasn't in the field. She wasn't on the path. She was standing directly behind his gate, her rotted fingers curled loosely around the top wooden slat. The security light caught her, washing her in that sick, yellow glare. The boundary had been erased.

The decay had accelerated with a nightmarish speed. The skin on her face was now tight and waxy, splitting over her cheekbones. Her jaw still hung slack and broken, but the motionlessness made it seem even more grotesque. But it was her head, her neck, that made his stomach heave.

Her body faced the fields, away from him, but her head was turned to face him directly. It was twisted a full one hundred and eighty degrees on her neck, an impossible, horrifying contortion like a badly broken doll. The wet, lank hair hung down her back. He was looking at her face, but it was perched atop a body that was facing the other way.

And she was smiling.

It was not an expression of joy or any human emotion. It was a rictus of decay. Her lips, grey and peeling, were pulled back from her teeth in a wide, fixed grimace, as if the shrinking muscles and rotting tendons of her face had contracted, forcing this permanent, obscene expression onto her features. Her eyes, which he could see clearly for the first time, were milky and dead, like cracked marbles, but they were fixed on him. They saw him.

The terror was a physical thing, a shard of ice that pierced his lungs, stopping his breath. This wasn't a passive, shuffling thing on a lonely path. This was a predator. It had a purpose. It had followed him. It knew where he lived.

The silence broke.

From her broken, smiling mouth, the sound emerged, louder and clearer than it had been in the field.

Click. Tck-click. Click.

The sound of her chattering teeth was the only thing in the world.

Leo screamed, a raw, strangled sound torn from his throat. He scrambled backward, tripping over his own feet and crashing onto the damp grass. He crab-walked away from her, his hands slipping on the wet lawn, his eyes never leaving the impossible horror at his gate.

He reached the door, fumbled with the handle, and threw himself inside, slamming it shut and ramming the deadbolt home. He leaned against the wood, gasping, his body shaking uncontrollably. Buster was barking hysterically, a frantic, high-pitched sound of rage and terror.

Leo slid down the door to the floor, pulling his knees to his chest. He was trapped. The locks meant nothing. The walls meant nothing. The line had been crossed. The haunting was no longer out there in the mist.

It was here. And it was waiting for him.