Specter

The Specter

Last night I was sitting in my car singing the lyrics to Triller along with Michael Jackon. I was parked outside my wife's restaurant where she works as a chef. I was there to pick my wife up from work. The streets are usually bustling at ten pm but the town of New Haven was deserted because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Yale university and Gateway Community College were closed.  Most of the restaurants in the area were open for deliveries only, but all of them were closing up at this time. Very few people were walking or driving along the streets...it was a ghost town; it was spooky.

Just then a small Kia pulled up behind me. The driver, a man, flashed his headlights on me. The man got out of the car and walked up to my driver's side window. It was Charlie. Charlie is an American-Thai man about forty years old of average height and weight. He was wearing a dark blue short sleeved shirt. I opened my driver's window and greeted Charlie.

“What's up Charlie? Just get off from work?”

“Yep, and what a horrible day I had at the shipping warehouse. It was so busy.”

“How are you and your co-workers doing with the virus?” I asked.

“We have about two hundred workers in the warehouse and twenty have the COVID.”

“Be careful you don't bring the virus home to your wife.”

Charlie shivered a little and said: “I'm going in the restaurant now, I feel cold.”

The temperature was about thirty five degrees. A little cool for an October night. I started to feel a little chill myself so I closed the car window.

The streets were dark and I barely see this figure walking down the street. It looks like a woman...but then again it might be a man...not sure. 'She' is walking slowly toward my car. As I look at her, it appears that she is shuffling her feet; sort of sliding them, getting ever closer to my car.  At first it looks like one of the many homeless people that roam around New Haven; especially at night. But something about her looked different. She was about fifty feet from my car when she crossed the street still walking towards my car.

There was a garbage pail that she walked by; she didn't stop to look in the pail searching for cans or bottles for deposit. When she was about twenty feet from my car, Charlie exited the restaurant and stood in the entrance way. I observed that this homeless looking 'woman' was wearing a long, brown, woolen, hooded coat that came down to her shins. I couldn't see her feet, it was as if she had no feet; that she was floating towards me.  She had long brown, dreadlocks that fell from the inside of her hood.  Her skin was brown and her eyes blue but the whites of her eyes were not white but yellowish with distinct red veins. As she walked by my car, she glanced at Charlie who was still standing in the doorway waiting for his wife to lock up the restaurant. Then 'she' turned left and looked me dead in the eyes. I saw death in those eyes...a horrible death...as if she had seen horrors from many years ago. As 'she' continued walking and still staring at me, she took her hand, and with her sharp claws, scraped the scaffolding structure that had been constructed in front of the restaurant. The sound of her claws scraping the metal scaffolding poles sounded a little like fingernails scratching a chalkboard in grammar school. Her hands did not have flesh on them. They were the hands of a skeleton, with long claws as fingernails.

As she passed, I noticed that Charlie was reading something on his phone, not paying any attention to this strange 'woman' that was floating by. As she continued passing by, I looked at the ground where her feet were supposed to be. There weren't any feet, instead I saw a half dozen Goliath beetles following her. The beetles were about four inches long with big jaws and they were black. These beetles were running fast while keeping up with their strange host.

I didn't know what to think of this strange person as she floated by me. Fear was definitely one feeling that I felt. When “she” was about thirty feet passed my car, I got out of my car and went up to Charlie who was still looking at his phone.

“Did you see that Charlie?” I asked excitedly.

“See what?”

“That woman...she had no damn feet, and all those bugs following her, and, and her hands...they were all bone. You mean to tell me you didn't see her?” I asked Charlie.

“No...I didn't see anyone. And what do you mean no feet,bugs, bones!  Are you okay?”

“I can't believe you didn't see that 'woman' Charlie...at least it looked like a woman. She looked right at you... she was less than five feet away from you!”

“Sorry...I don't know what to tell you-I didn't see anyone.”

By the time I finished my conversation with Charlie, a group of four Caucasian teens on skateboards were skating down the parking garage ramp that was located to the right of my car. These were teens looking for trouble in a town plagued by the COVID-19 virus. As these teens skated down the ramp and down the street, there was a homeless man walking up the street towards me. The homeless man was also Caucasian, about sixty years old, with long gray hair and a long gray beard. His sneakers were old and torn as well as his pants and jacket. The homeless man was minding his business just walking up the street, with his head down. The teens spotted him and I knew the teens were going to harass him. The boys looked like punk rockers: dyed black hair, piercings, tats, skateboards with skulls and bones marked on them. The boys surrounded the homeless man and began taunting him. Meanwhile the strange 'woman', who I will now refer to as the specter, was watching from about fifty feet away. The boys appeared to have not noticed her but I saw her, as plain as day. The boys began yelling at the homeless man, and spitting on him, telling him they had the COVID. The homeless man looked scared, he was not looking for trouble, but just looking for some food to eat. The boys kept spitting on him. Then the real ugly, tall teen kicked the homeless man in the ass. It was a hard karate style kick and the old man went flying onto his face. When the old man looked up I saw that his face was badly cut.

Meanwhile the specter was watching the attack on the old man. I saw the specter raise her skeleton like hand at the teens. A blue 'mist' emanated from her hand and floated to the tall, ugly teen and landed on him. None of the teens noticed the specter or her blue mist.  Another one of the teens, a broad shouldered one, said to the tall ugly teen to leave the old man alone. The teens left the old man and ran up the garage ramp preparing to skateboard down the ramp again. When I turned my head to look at the specter, she had disappeared.  Charlie had also watched the teens attack the elderly homeless man and he said to me: “They were 'low-lives' for doing that.

Just as he finished his sentence, we heard the roar of skateboards racing down the ramp. The teens were traveling down the ramp at about thirty miles per hour. They were really flying down the steep ramp. The tall, ugly punk rocker teen was way out in front. He appeared to be the leader of this evil group. Meanwhile a delivery van just turned the corner and was racing down the street. The van was headed straight for the tall, ugly teen. Charlie and I cried out to warn the teen but it was too late. The van had struck the teen with the front bumper. The teen went flying over the van and landed about ten feet in front of my car.

Charlie, the other three skateboarding teens, the homeless man who was attacked, and I ran over to the teen who was struck by the van. The body was still. He did not appear to be breathing. A bone was protruding out of his left shin and his neck looked like it was broken. I knelt over him and checked his pulse. There was none. As I looked at his face and saw that his mouth was open about an inch, one of those Goliath beetles came running out of his mouth. The beetle ran quickly to the curb and down a storm drain.

“Did anyone see that?” I exclaimed to the others standing around the body.

“See what?” one of the teens asked

“Oh forget it.” I replied.

I don't know if I will ever see that spooky Specter again but I do know that after my encounter with 'her' I believe in spirits. The way that Specter cast that blue 'mist' onto that evil skateboarder and then the skateboarder suddenly gets killed by a speeding van makes me wonder.

Stay Tuned!

The End

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