The Man on the Bench

It had been another one of those days at work. The reports that should have been due the day before were changed to be due to this day, and I still didn't get them done. Everyone around me, especially Eric, the head of my department, was getting on my nerves. Some of the files he was supposed to get to me never arrived, and then he blamed me for missing the deadline. I heard he did that to everyone. My friend Anna showed up to my desk just as I was about to sneak out to get something at the vending machines by the parking lot. Of course they had the same things that the break room did. That one was farther. Plus, I liked talking to the security guard for a bit before coming back to my desk to waste some time. I could hear Anna's bracelets clanking together as she walked up behind me. If you say one of them days to me, I swear I'm gonna... Chill, Anna interrupted. There's something up with Eric today, isn't there? I rolled my eyes. Everyone had known that for a while. Everyone except for Anna. He always treated her differently, to put it simply. A group of us co-workers used to tease her about it, saying that one day he was going to put her on the chopping block too and she shouldn't get too comfortable. It's like something has gotten into him, she continued, her tone changing a bit. Yeah, the devil, I said, in a half-serious tone. Anna started cracking up with that loud, crackling sound that for some reason she couldn't hold in. Don't joke about that, she said. The devil doesn't like it. She looked at me, trying not to laugh. Because, of course, we both knew, at least at that point in our lives, that the devil didn't actually exist. But then, as you know, I changed my mind. To this day, I'll tell you my story. And I still won't know what to think. So I'll let you decide. My name is Edwin. And here's a scary story. Anna and I started talking at my desk for a little bit. I complained about Eric as usual, and she complained about him too. But that specific day, something different had happened. There was a new hire out in the deliveries area, and Anna did not like her. I could barely listen to her story as she was telling it. I thought that work was getting beyond what I was able to manage mentally. And I hate to sound like this. I know that I should have been grateful for my job and everything. But when it comes to having to drag myself onto my cart, and hypnotizing myself all the way to the parking lot with loud music or by talking to myself, just to make it there and not drive myself into a tree or something, I know something's wrong. Plus, the report I had to turn in was one of the simplest things I've ever done. I did it every single week. But this time, oh man, it was tougher. Anna took me a little more seriously when she proposed that we go out with a couple of other co-workers to get our minds off things, and I declined. I would normally be into that. I really just wanted to curl in bed and watch a movie on Netflix or something before dozing off and then begin dreading having to do this work thing all over again the next day. She used to tell me of another co-worker, Joanne Jinston, JJ as it called her, who had an episode there at work after reaching her breaking point. And so it made her worry about me. Listen, she said, go out for a walk. Sit at a park bench for a while. Talk to a stranger. Maybe go to a new restaurant. It'll help you. Really, it will. Anna said that with a tone that was a little bit lighter now, hopeful and genuinely trying to help. Gotta keep the devil out, I said. Not sure what I meant by that, but it was enough to make Anna laugh all over again. Maybe at how awkward it sounded, and she didn't know what else to say. It was quiet for a few seconds before I asked her if she thought that it was genuinely something about that office, the building, or something that made things feel like that. Some HR person had done a presentation on walks and natural light during our breaks. I don't think we even had windows by where we were. Never really noticed. There were some places that just made you feel groggy as soon as you step into them. I remember feeling that way at my dad's house after my parents' divorce. It was like all I wanted to do was sleep when I got there. It might be, Anna said. Sometimes I feel like that here too. I don't know how I made it through that day, but it was five in the evening and everyone was starting to head out. Anna passed by my desk on her way out and tapped me on the back of my chair. Head on out. Remember, go for that walk. She smiled and walked down the hallway. There was a strange comfort in that place right at that instant when I knew I was going to go home. but it was only for that split second before I thought about the following day. But yeah, I had nothing to lose. Mantis Park was three blocks away from my house. I could head home, leave the car in the driveway and walk to the park, circle around two or three times, head back. Simple. That's what I was going to do. I passed by the park. The orange light from the sunset was shining through the trees at that moment. a sign that the day was almost over and that I had missed all of it. Time-sucking devils, I whispered. Every single one of them, I said, a little bit louder. I hate this stuff so much, I yelled. All of them, I screamed with all of my might. The blood was rushing away from my head now, and I could feel that warmth dissipating once I was pulling up to my house. I fought every urge not to go inside and head straight for my bed. But instead, I grabbed my jacket from the back seat, and I walked straight down the block. I crossed the street without looking both ways. I walked, crossed, walked, crossed, until finally I caught the last rays of sun going through the metal fencing this time and onto the park. Something always scared me about it. Ever since I was a kid, my mom would bring us there to play with the other kids. I never liked it. Not really a friend type. Plus, I remember an old elementary school rumor that talked about a boy who stayed at the park too late and never made it home. because a witch got him or something. But I think now, as an adult, what scared me the most about it was that it was always empty. Streets were empty too. Maybe they just felt that way. I don't know. I walked around the outside of the park, looking at everything, speaking my thoughts out loud every once in a while. The lights had gone on to replace that fading sun in a different type of orange light. The evening wind started blowing the leaves around. I looked at the inside pathways made out of concrete that would lead you in between the trees in a pretend walk through nature. Paths that would lead you on walks to nowhere. The next time I go around, I remember thinking, I'm going to go there. Before I knew it, I had gone around the park again and I was facing the inside of the park through that dark and inviting path. Without thinking about it, I stepped right in. Again, it was that feeling of being somewhere you're not supposed to be in A place that you want to leave, but for that instant, you almost feel excited to be there. Nothing. No one around me. I kept seeing that shadow stretch and melt right into me before a new one appeared and did the same thing. Step after step, I continued until I reached two benches that faced each other before getting to the children's playground area. Without thinking, I sat on one. A cold, wooden bench that faced a small field enclosed by that metal fence. pointed to an empty lot that the city owned. Something was wrong. I knew something had to be up with me. I couldn't work. I couldn't think clearly. And I desperately wanted to believe what Anna said. That things would get better eventually. And that all I had to do was to keep looking for it. But there's something that most people don't tell you. And that's that when you stop believing, you leave a void. And it's right there when people lose it. When any person can come in there and show you the way, sell you a course, tell you that maybe there is a group of aliens that are running the government. Isn't that the perfect recipe for people that join cults and stuff? That's what scared me the most, to lose it like that. It's like when a lie gets repeated over and over and you start to believe it. Like your co-workers showing you day after day that losing all sunlight and being happy to get a solid performance review is enough. That it's what we should strive for. I leaned back on the bench and felt that cold wood across my back through my jacket. I don't know how long I was there, staring at the shadows, the ones that are made by the insects that like to fly around the light. They were bouncing around the concrete path, right by the grass in the park. That's when I heard a light tapping, coming from the direction I was still supposed to go to, the nowhere I hadn't gotten to just yet. My eyes couldn't tell exactly what it was, but a silhouette was forming across the park, Tap, tap, tap, it went, as it got a little bit clearer. This, of course, being a public park, seeing another person, even in the early evening, shouldn't have been a surprise. The surprise should have been the emptiness of it, right? The silhouette finally got close enough to one of those light posts, and I saw it. A man, walking with his hands behind his back, a hat that blocked his face. I tried to catch a glimpse of it the whole time he was approaching, as if I were invisible. I thought he couldn't see me either. He walked right in front of me, past me, then turned his head slightly, nodding his head. I tried to nod, but I didn't move and instead watched as he sat on the other end of my bench, completely frozen. I felt his weight shift the slab of wood we both shared and I immediately started feeling uneasy. The man was well-dressed, a button-up shirt, dark pants, older, probably in his 60s. I didn't get to see his face, and now it was too late for me to turn and look at him. I mean, I could have, I think, but couldn't find an excuse to. I couldn't get up and leave right then. It would be rude. I couldn't just talk to him, not knowing if he had sat there because of how quiet it was. Maybe I was at his regular spot. No, no, I was overthinking this again. So we sat there for a while, neither of us saying a word, not my mind completely blank compared to how it had been before. It must have been half an hour before I was uncomfortable enough to get up and leave, and suddenly I felt his gaze on the side of my face. It took me a couple of minutes before I acknowledged him, having been sitting there like a deer in the woods, hoping that if I didn't move, he couldn't see me. I was just about to turn my head when he spoke. Good evening, he said, his voice deep, not matching the rest of him. Good evening, I said, turning to look at him, but instead turning back away to the lamppost. I need your help with something, he said, as if he knew me. I felt him shifting his position on the bench. I got a good look at him now. His smile had a golden tooth or silver stained by the light around us, but his eyes were still hidden under his hat. What's up, I said. unfitting response to an old man I know. Do you believe in the devil? He asked. At the time, I remember thinking of how odd it was for a stranger to sit next to someone for so long and simply start a conversation. It took me a while, many weeks actually, to understand what he meant when he asked me such a dark question. No one else around us, and if this stranger wasn't actually an old man, but a person in disguise getting ready to rob me, to size me up. Us, in a place that I used to be so afraid of. No, I said. I don't. My voice shook a little bit on that second part. I watched him smile again. And then he managed to tell me thoughts no person should ever think. Ideas. Stories, if you will. That changed my mind. Continue only if you're ready to believe, too. I didn't even get to take back what I said in order to stop him, even just to humor him, before he turned his stare up in front of him and he started, with that deep voice that seemed to stem from deep in his lungs, with breath made of cold air that scratched as the words came out. Twice, he started. have seen death. A young girl had just gotten out of the hospital and was holding a lollipop in her hand. Red, it was. It had stained her tongue and part of her cheek. A Hello Kitty sticker on her arm that she tried to look at, but her arm didn't twist far enough. Mom and daughter crossing the street. The crosswalk sign was on for them and everything, but a large red truck sped right up to them and hit the brakes. The mother grabbed the child in an instant and the truck managed to stop, I say, about two inches away from both of them. Close call, I managed to think to myself for an instant. The mom put the child down and was now looking behind her. I watched it, that lollipop against the asphalt, and without a second to waste, that little girl ran toward it. In an instant, she was on the ground. the lollipop blending in with what remained of her as a white van stopped two yards past her body. But that scream, the one I heard that day, I knew there isn't another sound like that in the world. The devil, I say that was. What do you say to that? He stopped and looked at me with side eyes. I was too shocked to say anything. A sick joke to talk to a stranger like this. That's what I wanted to say. He chuckled a little bit. I guess she was able to see her twisted arm finally, even for an instant. I wanted to throw up at that moment, but he interrupted the thought. The devil, what do you say? Tragic, I whispered, low enough for him not to hear, and yet he did. He sighed, looked at his watch, and continued. I don't have much time left, so here's another one. His voice just a little bit raspier. Do you remember a man, tall, kind of lanky, used to hang out around here many years ago? He didn't wait for an answer. He used to stand right there, look, right over there by the large slide. That thing's new, you know. He used to be... A sandbox, I whispered. Exactly, a sandbox, he said, happy to have gotten interrupted. Well, that man, some say, knew some things that he shouldn't have. Ever hear of the Enriquez twins? The ones who used to live right across the street? It was that guy. He took them. It was at that point where my thoughts started barging in. Because I know that story. The whole town knew about it. And I knew my dad listening to the stories on the radio about those two girls who went missing. And they were never found. Everyone in the town used to talk about how strange it was. That no one had any information about it. I knew something that no one was ever going to take seriously. That tall, lanky man he mentioned? I had seen him before. He had come up to me and one of my friends in first grade when we were at the park after school. He had done so a couple of times and had offered to buy us an ice cream cone from the man that would park along the street. One time, we said yes. When he walked up to the ice cream man, he stared at the tall man and then he came out from around the truck. He told us to stay with him until our parents came. I didn't understand what he was doing then or why mom had scolded me over it so bad. But it wasn't long after that when those two girls went missing and everything broke loose. I never saw that man around the park after the twins disappeared. I was lost in thought when I realized that the man on the bench had stopped talking. His eyes were looking directly at me now. I could even tell through the shadow of that brim of his hat. Of course you remember, he said, smiling that wide smile again. The devil, what do you say? I stayed quiet this time. There were so many things I could think of around me that the devil could have taken credit for. And in that simple thought, I remained. The man on the bench sighed, more frustrated this time. He rolled up part of his sleeve to get a better look at his watch. He looked around the park. as if hunting for another soul out there, someone lost enough to be out there like me. Listen, he said, his voice even deeper this time. I felt the bench vibrate and thump with his anger. Long before you joined Gilben's sons, there was a woman, Anna knows her, and I froze right then. This man knew me. Joanne, he whispered. Ah, Joanne, I remember that pretty face, that long neck and Nervous smile we all like. You know what I'm talking about, don't you? I was looking at his mouth move now, my neck craned toward this man, this thing next to me, telling me things no one should know. Joanne Ginston was the woman that Anna said had an episode at work before I got there. Almost no one liked to talk about it, but that episode, the one she was referring to, was when she got up on her desk and tried to stab herself with a pen. Took a security guard and four other guys from the deliveries area to restrain her as she struggled and moaned in animalistic sounds that were beyond what anyone had ever imagined. Talk around work was that she had to be taken to an exorcist or something. Who knows, honestly. I lost interest in all those stories. Had been hearing them all my life since childhood. The legends of that very park I was sitting at right then, and there was one of them. Stories of witches trying to abduct you at night. monsters under the bed, and now this? The devil thing? Come on. It was this man with a disgusting joke trying to make me believe that the devil was real from these stories. No, I said out loud. In shock, he looked back toward me. I know your father, he said, in a desperate sprint to try to get me and react. He kept twitching and looking at his watch, his voice becoming fainter and fainter as he went along. He was a good friend, you know. He called me one day and we solved some problems. Your mother, that rat, thought she was good enough to be on her own and look at what happened. Look at you now, you pathetic little brunt. Have you been listening to those thoughts lately? You're the one who called me here, so here I am, and now you say you don't believe? I'll tell you how you'll go. Your building has six floors, and the side by the garden is a perfect spot. You know you've been thinking about it. I'll go with you, if you want. It doesn't take that long, and the relief is immediate, you know? That's what you want, right? The man on the bench was twitching uncontrollably now. His voice was shaky, and he couldn't even manage to get his wrist to stay still long enough for him to look at the time. This man could have easily checked out my statuses and known about how angry I was at my job. That story about JJ wasn't new. Someone had posted about it. But what if I had been sharing an evening with the real thing? The devil, as he said. I didn't want to take any chances. A sudden cold chill had run across my entire body, and I used it to stand up. You fool, he said, his voice now a faint, deep whisper. I started walking toward the playground, away from the bench. Then I heard the man get up. The tapping of his, wait, what was that? Hooves, like of a horse or a goat. were tapping against the cement. I could hear it clearly. I turned back around and I saw him. His legs were bent. And like an animal, he picked up a slow stride. Blood left my face completely and I could feel my lips turn cold. I had just been talking with the devil. And it was at that instant that his legs came back. Black, shiny shoes again. He chuckled as he turned toward me under the second light post. Of course you believe. I heard his whisper right next to me. As he turned around and vanished into the night. Scary Story Podcast is written and produced by me Edwin Covarrubias. Thank you to the supporters at Scary Plus for helping me keep this going, and thanks to everyone for your awesome comments, reviews, and messages. You've sent in some really good ideas for stories. Keep an eye out for them in upcoming episodes. Thank you very much for listening. Keep it scary, everyone. See you soon.