Real Horror #1: The Man Who Wasn't There

A series of nonfiction horror stories

Years ago I wrote a nonfiction horror piece about dating a woman who could see ghosts. It was published in the old Tor Nightfire blog. Also, one of the very first pieces I shared here was about staying at a haunted motel room in South Central (room 105 at the Full Moon Inn in South Figueroa). Long story short, I love horror, and that includes nonfiction horror.

Not assuming you have because we all know what assuming does, but if you’ve read my work, you know there’s a lot of personal/biographical stuff in there. In many instances, memories I’ve carried for years suddenly come back and demand to be turned into fiction and be put in a book. Sometimes, like with House of Bone and Rain, the memories become at least half the novel. In any case, I recently struggled with writing and life and depression and whatever else (that whole thing will be in a future post), but I had a few ideas while that was going on. One of them was sharing real stories in a series. You know, talk about stuff that really happened that I found creepy, weird, supernatural, horrific...you know, something you might find in a Brian Evenson story. So yeah, I dig nonfiction horror and hope you do too. You ready? Let me tell you about Jay.

Jay is a fake name. I’m sure the handful of high school friends who read my shit will be able to figure out who I’m talking about, but most people won’t, so “Jay” is safe. Anyway, Jay and I hung out with some of the same people from time to time, but we weren’t good friends or anything. We weren’t enemies, either. There was no animosity there, we just hung out with different people. Then music changed all that.

I’ve always loved music, but in high school, music and books truly became my life. I skipped school to play guitar. I was in shitty bands. I adopted a basic drum kit and learned to “play” drums from a friend. I learned how to do a thing or two on congas. Got a crappy bass with an off-brand Marshall guitar amp that sounded like it was full of static and dirty cans. Point is–and I’ve said this before on social media and in a few interviews–I was convinced music was going to be it for me. The thing. I was going to make music and play music and write about music for a living. I listened to everything. Rock. Jazz. Salsa. Reggae. Flamenco. Ska. Blues. Folk. Long story short, I got heavily into music and the more I got into it, the more alone I was. My friends and I were into some of the same things, but even those who shared my passion for music had different tastes. The life of a music nerd can be lonely. Then I ran into Jay one night and we drank and talked music and that was that. A week later we randomly ended up at the same beach hangout and we smoked weed and talked about Coltrane and our love for Bob Marley. We talked about Hendrix and Joplin and Pink Floyd, which was normal, but then it turned out he knew Cesária Évora and Koko Taylor and was starting to get into Brazilian music–Caetano, Os Mutantes, João Gilberto, Jobim, etc. After that day, Jay and I spent a lot of time together. For a few couple months, all we did was listen to music and talking about music. The other thing we did was get high, and that’s where this starts turning into a horror story.

Jay was into getting high the way I was into music. Almost everyone loved booze or pills or weed, but Jay was different. Getting high was the center of his life. He moved away from weed quickly, was doing acid and shrooms before anyone else.

Life happens, you know? I had things to do and my own crew and Jay had things to do and his own crew and just like we started hanging out, we stopped and drifted apart. Again, there was no animosity there, just the way things go. Now the clock does that magical thing and our story travels a few years into the future. After high school. I was with some friends and ran into Jay. I went up to him, said hello, gave him a hug. It quickly became evident he had no clue who I was. He was much thinner than the last time I’d seen him. Dude looked tired, gaunt. I mentioned a few people, asked about his mom, and he suddenly recognized my, couldn’t hide his surprise.

Running into people you haven’t spoken to in a long time can be weird, but this wasn’t that. No, this was something different, something a little darker. Jay looked lost, his eyes swimming. I mentioned music, asked if he had any new recs. For a moment, he didn’t know what I was talking about, so I helped him out again, told him I remembered the three huge CD books he had in his car. He told me someone stole them and didn’t say anything else. I asked him what he was up to, what he was doing with his life. He replied in Spanish, of course. I memorized the answer: “Yo…” (translation: “I…”). That was it. He looked sideways at nothing, stayed like that for a while. I thought he was collecting his thoughts, maybe remembering something. A minute went by, both of us standing there, me waiting, him quiet, somewhere else. I asked him something else. I can’t remember what. He smiled, didn’t answer. I grabbed his shoulder, told him it was good to see him. He looked at me. A moment later, he said, “Hey, I remember you!” and gave me a hug. I asked him if he was okay. He said nothing and then started nodding.

I walked away, leaving him standing there, nodding at nothing. Obviously, my first thought was that he was high as fuck. Then more time went by and I heard things from other people. Similar encounters, mostly. I learned he had moved out for a while and then moved back in with his mom because he wasn’t well. About a year later, I ran into a girl Jay had dated. She told me he got into acid really heavily and one day she realized his memory was fried and he kept getting lost, losing track of time, not following conversations even when sober. Way she told it, Jay went on one really big trip and never came back. He had no clue who I was when I ran into him because I was the same guy, but he was someone else. He was the man who wasn’t there.