Figures In The Darkness
Kristi, PA, USA
October 2001
My brother (I'll call him "Jim") has always had a bit of odd luck about him. For instance, he wins the vast majority of contests he enters (the type where the odds are like a million to one); also, he once narrowly missed being struck by lightening. Odd things just seem to happen to him. Odd things like this one:
About ten years ago, my brother was sixteen years old and a new driver. In the middle of the night (*way* past curfew), my brother was driving his friend, "Matt", home. As Jim and Matt cruised through our suburban neighborhood, they passed the small field (maybe the 3/4 the size of a soccer field) in front of an elementary school. In the dark, illuminated by streetlights and the car's headlights, Jim and Matt saw something *very* strange.
Jim told me it was clearly a human, dragging something long and plainly very heavy behind him, across the field in the direction of the school. "Is it a dog?" Jim asked Matt, wondering what about object the person was dragging. "I dunno," Matt answered. "Looked too big to be a dog, to me." It was the length and width of a person; plainly very heavy; and wrapped in a tarp or large sack. While the boys were having this conversation, they had pulled into a driveway next to the field and turned the car around.
The boys drove past again and shone the headlights on the field, and were astonished at what they saw: nothing. Nothing was there. The man and his burden had disappeared. On the other side of the field is the parking lot, and then the school (which is locked at night). The school itself is long, and there are open fields and playgrounds on either side of it. In other words, there was no place that person could have hid. My brother couldn't have taken more than a minute or so to turn the car around and shine the headlights.
The history of our suburban town is short: forty or so years ago, a housing developer started building on cornfields. Cornfields have always creeped me out, because they're the perfect place to bury a body. Maybe, my brother saw the ghost of a murderer, who is damned to carry the burden of his deed again and again, forever?