the first time you see him, he is outside of your car, and you jump, because it’s just the headlights on him, this man in perfect-white, with his pale face, in the total darkness. you are driving too quickly on a back road when this happens, and the vision of him standing on the side of the road, facing you, makes you check your review mirror, because – oh, you’re a child, aren’t you, but you’re alone, and he was looking.
he isn’t, you decide, the next morning, looking for you.
but you see him again, kind of, any time your headlights hit something big and white, and usually you are calm soon after – mailbox, you sigh, birch tree, broken signpost. you turn your music up because music feels like it can fill a car, the way backroads and dark woods feel they can empty it. you clench your jaw and press a little harder on the pedal but you walk yourself in baby steps back into normal.
sometimes you are in the car with people when you see him, but then you forget about it. sometimes you are not, and you do not forget, and then you are speeding, eyes flicking to that review mirror, knowing-but-not-knowing he will not be there. what will you do if he is there, after all, if he could follow you when you’re already twenty-over-the-speed-limit. and each time you glance you feel this tug in you, that primal fear of seeing him warring with the knifeblade need to prove you will not see him. because not seeing him means he is not there, probably, and not seeing him means he is not following you, probably.
once, just once, while you are laughing at something your friend said, your eyes catch white, and then, in the review, white-black, like a head turning to watch, to witness, to follow on. but you are speeding and life is real and your fears evaporate on the other end of a party. it was a mailbox, you think, even though you know you saw it move. or a tree, or a signpost.
there is nothing worse in your breastbone than the occasional whisper that one day, you will look, and he will be in the back seat, in his pure white clothing, just looking.
sometimes you go by white places and you have a mark for them, just in the way you must mark things, a small pin you tack. where the house-shell is, or the little fake lighthouse or that family’s stark garbage bins. these sometimes catch you, when you are foolish and late coming home, but you remind yourself more often than not. you see them in the day, when they are plump and normal, squat promises that the man does not follow you, because what is he if he could follow you. when you come around the bend, you warn yourself: it is not the man, probably. he is not here.
and sometimes, when you jump at just a bunch of balloons or a snowman or not him, not him, it couldn’t be, you ignore the fact that these things are gone in the morning. you swore that it was a broken white telephone pole, and your mind is playing tricks. there are no white telephone poles in your entire district. okay, you decide. you put it out of your mind, because nothing good ever comes of thinking of things like this. you only ever remember when you are alone again, and in the car, and you are raising your eyes to the mirror, hoping you don’t see him.
but you always look. because not knowing is worse, isn’t it.
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