Chapter 4: The Concrete Stare

Chapter 4: The Concrete Stare

The deadbolt on the back door felt as substantial as a line drawn in the sand. Leo sat on the kitchen floor, back pressed against the wood, until the first grey hint of dawn crept through the windows. Sleep was a distant country he could no longer visit. His house, his meticulously chosen fortress, had been breached. Every shadow was a waiting horror, every creak of the old floorboards was the sound of her approach. The phantom click-tck-click of her teeth echoed in the pressurized silence between his own frantic heartbeats.

He couldn't stay.

That realization hit him with the force of a physical blow. The pattern wasn't the 5:45 walk anymore. The pattern was her, and her territory was expanding. First the path, now the very boundary of his home. What was next? The living room? The foot of his bed? He wasn’t just being haunted; he was being besieged.

His journalistic mind, shattered but not obliterated, scrambled for a logical solution. Ghosts, if they existed, were tied to places. A haunted house, a cursed battlefield, a lonely stretch of road. She was tied to Blackwood Creek. To the fields, the path, the old stone wall. He had brought the contamination home with him, like mud on his boots. The solution, then, was to leave the place. To put miles of asphalt and steel between himself and whatever terrible energy held her here.

The decision made, a frantic energy seized him. He stumbled through the house, throwing things into a duffel bag with no thought or order. A laptop, a change of clothes, a half-eaten bag of beef jerky. He moved with the jerky, paranoid motions of a man who felt unseen eyes on his back. Buster shadowed him, a low, anxious whine a constant soundtrack to the frantic packing. The dog understood. They were fleeing.

He grabbed his keys from the hook by the door, his wallet, and stuffed Buster’s leash and a bag of kibble into a backpack. He didn’t write a note. He didn’t call his landlord. He just ran.

He threw the bags into the passenger seat of his beat-up sedan, coaxed a trembling Buster into the back, and peeled out of his gravel driveway with a spray of stones. He didn't look in the rearview mirror. He didn’t dare. He just drove, knuckles white on the steering wheel, his eyes fixed on the road ahead as if he could outrun the image of a woman with a twisted neck and a rotting smile.

The town of Blackwood Creek, with its quaint, sleeping storefronts, receded behind him. As he hit the county highway, the morning sun finally broke through the clouds, spilling golden light across the landscape. The oppressive grey mist was gone, replaced by a brilliant, almost cheerful blue sky. The tightness in his chest began to ease with every mile marker that flashed past.

Ten miles. Twenty. The knot of pure terror in his gut started to loosen. He was doing it. He was escaping. Buster, in the back, finally lay down with a sigh, resting his head on his paws. Leo risked a glance in the rearview mirror. There was nothing behind him but an empty stretch of road.

He drove for nearly two hours, heading east with no destination in mind, the simple act of motion a balm to his frayed nerves. The hum of the tires on the asphalt was a steady, calming drone. The world outside his car was aggressively normal. Billboards advertised local dentists and insurance agents. Families in minivans overtook him. It was a world where revenants with caved-in skulls did not, could not, exist. The events of the last week began to feel unreal, like a fever dream he was finally waking from.

The fuel light pinged, a jarring intrusion of mundane reality. He glanced at the gauge. The needle was hovering just above empty. Of course. In his panic, he hadn't even thought to check. He pulled off at the next exit, following a sign for a generic, 24-hour petrol station and convenience store.

The place was an island of harsh fluorescent light and cracked concrete in the middle of sprawling farmland. He pulled up to a pump, the engine ticking as it cooled. The air smelled of gasoline and hot asphalt. Normal. Everything was so beautifully, blessedly normal.

“Be right back, boy,” he said to Buster, who gave a half-hearted tail thump in reply.

He swiped his card, the machine beeped, and he began to fill the tank, the gurgle of the fuel a comforting sound. He leaned against the car, squinting in the bright sunlight, and for the first time in a week, he felt a genuine flicker of hope. He could just keep driving. Find a motel in some anonymous town, sleep for a solid day, and figure things out. He could build a new routine. A new sanctuary.

That’s when he heard it.

Faint, barely audible over the hum of the pump.

Click. Tck-click.

His blood turned to ice water. No. It was the cooling engine. It was his own damn teeth chattering. It was anything but her. He squeezed his eyes shut, shaking his head, trying to dislodge the auditory hallucination.

He opened them again. And scanned the petrol station. A trucker was heading inside to pay. A young woman was washing her windshield. Everything was normal. He was losing it. The paranoia was following him, even here.

And then he saw her.

She was standing at the edge of the station’s lot, where the concrete gave way to a dusty patch of weeds. Just standing. A flash of pale, mud-stained blue in the bright morning sun.

Leo’s breath caught in his throat. It couldn’t be. It was just a woman. Someone who lived nearby, out for a walk. But her feet were bare. Pale and dirty on the grimy concrete. And her posture was wrong, a subtle, broken contortion that made the hairs on his arms stand up.

She turned her head slowly, as if the muscles in her neck were grinding over broken glass. The curtain of lank, dark hair fell away.

It was her.

The same waxy, peeling skin. The same unhinged jaw, slack and askew. The same rictus of a smile, a permanent fixture of horror on her decaying face. Her milky, dead eyes, devoid of all life and light, found his. They weren't angry. They weren't sad. They were just… empty. And they were fixed on him.

The fuel pump clicked off, the tank full. The sound was like a gunshot in the sudden, roaring silence of Leo’s mind. The trucker, the young woman, the hum of the highway—it all faded away into a meaningless background hum. There was only him, and the woman in blue, standing barefoot on the concrete fifty feet away.

The hope he had nurtured for two hours didn’t just die; it was butchered. A horrifying, paradigm-shifting realization crashed down on him, annihilating every rational theory he had constructed.

It wasn't the path. It wasn't the house. It wasn't Blackwood Creek.

He could drive to the ends of the earth and it wouldn't matter. He could change his name, his face, his entire life, and she would be there. Waiting.

He couldn't run from her. He couldn't hide from her.

Because she wasn't tied to a place.

She was tied to him.

He stood frozen at the pump, the nozzle still in his hand, his momentary relief shattered into a million pieces. He was no longer a man escaping a haunted town. He was a man being followed. A man chained to a ghost. He was her anchor in this world, and she would never, ever let him go. Her empty eyes held his, unblinking, unwavering. A silent, concrete stare that promised him there was no escape. Not anymore.