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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/SubjectState7 on 2024-09-23 11:48:45+00:00.
Life can take us in strange directions. No matter how intricately our best laid plans are, life has a way of disregarding them, as if they were nothing more than a fly buzzing around its head. For example, I wanted to be an electrical engineer. I’d had a few colleges in mind and was looking forward to graduating High School. Now, I’m in Ketchikan, Alaska, getting ready to head north. I’m gonna be leaving a lot of my technology here as it’ll be useless once I get where I’m going. Which, come to think of it, is nowhere, really. I don’t have a plan. But, regardless, I wanted to take a moment to recount the events of the last couple years that led me here.
For starters, my name’s Jake, and I’ve been living on the road for quite awhile now. I’m from a small town in the Midwest called Riverstone, where I was born and raised. Some people from small towns tend to dislike them, or at least can’t wait to leave. Not me though. I loved Riverstone, and it breaks my heart to know I’ll never be able to go back. All because of the events which took place my senior year.
It was a cool Friday night at the end of Homecoming week. My classmates and I sat on our school’s bleachers, cheering on our football team with enough energy to power the whole town. We were seniors, so this was gonna be our last Homecoming game. We wanted to enjoy it while it lasted.
At the end of the first quarter, there was a short timeout to let people get snacks and use the restroom or whatever while the teams got ready to play again. My friends and I were sitting at the back of the bleachers, so we had a pretty clear view of the field and surrounding area. Two of them had gone to get snacks while the other, a guy named Matt, was messaging his girlfriend on his phone. I, meanwhile, just stared out at the crowd and field, not really thinking about anything.
As I scanned the crowd, my eyes fell upon a girl across from me in the away team’s bleachers. It was hard to make out any details of her face, but from what I could see, she was gorgeous. Long brown hair, glasses, and a smile so bright it rivaled the overhead lights.
I continued to steal glances at her occasionally. Her looks aside, I was really just trying to see if she was there with a boyfriend or if he was playing for their team. She wasn’t wearing a jersey, which gave me hope, but that fact was made immediately irrelevant just before halftime.
After a particularly good play by her team, I looked up to gauge her reaction, only to be met by bare flesh where her face used to be, and she was looking in my direction. At least, the chill down my spine told me she was looking at me. It was hard to tell without any facial features. On top of that, she was dead still, like a scarecrow in a field of swaying corn. The people around her jostled and swayed but she didn’t move an inch. Not a single person took notice of her either. People bumped into her a few times but they didn’t react. As if the way she acted was perfectly normal.
Thoroughly freaked out, I nudged Matt and got his attention. Thankfully, I’d pointed her out to him earlier in the game, so he knew where to look. In the moments I looked away and back again, though, she had returned to normal. Matt gave me a quizzical look for pointing the girl out to him again, but I was too dumbfounded to care.
I thought maybe it was the distance, that my eyes had simply lost focus for a second and turning my head got them to refocus. An explanation which, at the time, made total sense. So I brushed it off and continued watching the game.
Now, I need to give a bit of context for this next part. From where my friends and I were sitting, we could see the opposing team’s sideline clearly. This was perfect, since their coach was an absolute hot head. I mean, like, forehead-vein-bulging, red-in-the-face kind of guy. Every time his team would mess up, he’d be shouting like his life depended on it and it was hilarious. So when his players made a mistake, I would scan their sideline to see his reaction.
After one such play, I did like I always had, but found the bare flesh looking up at me once again. Just like with the girl, the coach stood completely still despite all the people moving around him, and no one seemed to notice his odd behavior or lack of a goddamn face.
Afraid that looking away might cause it to disappear again, I tried to get Matt’s attention without breaking line of sight. Unfortunately, the universe had other plans as a man shuffled past me just as I was tapping Matt’s arm. By the time the man passed, the coach was back to his shouting, red-faced self.
Matt looked over at me. The look on my face must’ve caused him to speak up.
“Hey man, you alright?” he asked, placing a hand on my shoulder.
I continued to stare at the coach, but was pulled out of my dismay by Matt’s hand.
“Yeah,” I said, not facing him. “Just thought I saw someone we knew.”
“You sure? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
I turned to look at him. “Yeah man, I’m goo-”
My words were cut off as a lump lodged itself in my throat. Behind Matt were my two other friends, but next to them were people we didn’t know. The closest of those people, the one right next to my friend, was leaning forward in his seat. His arms hung straight down, limply swaying with the crowd, his head was turned at an angle just too sharp to be natural, and his face was gone.
I lost it. I stood up and barreled through the audience with instinct and adrenaline guiding my every move. Before I knew it, I was out of the crowd and racing towards the parking lot. My phone began to ring, but I didn’t answer it. All I could do at that moment was run, so I did. My feet hit the pavement and my lungs heaved air as I ran to my car, jumped into it, and peeled out of that parking lot faster than ever. Honestly, looking back, I’m surprised I didn’t get stopped by someone or pulled over. Guess I should count myself lucky, because in that state I would’ve probably been arrested.
But that didn’t happen and I made it home in one piece. I told my mom I wasn’t feeling good and locked myself in my room for the rest of the night. I tried to rest, but my mind wouldn’t stop thinking about the faceless people. No matter what I did to distract myself, the thoughts just kept coming. I did manage to fall into a restless sleep eventually, though. But when I woke up the next morning, it was into an entirely new world.
Over the course of the next school year, I continually saw the faceless entity. There was no consistency to it, at least not that I could notice, but it only popped up in crowds and only affected humans. Activity slowed dramatically as the weather grew colder, but picked right back up again in the spring. That was when I got the idea to try and get proof that what I was seeing wasn’t just in my head.
It started as a spur of the moment thing. I was out with some friends, including Matt, when I noticed it standing across the street. It had possessed a businessman, and was staring at me. Notably, it still held a cell phone to its ear with one hand and a briefcase in the other. My skin began to crawl with the chill of its gaze, but my phone vibrated in my hand, causing the light bulb to shine. Without a second thought, I held my phone in my peripheral vision, careful not to pull my focus away from the creature, and opened the camera app. I held the device as steady as I could and snapped multiple pictures. When I was done, I felt comfortable enough to look away so I could examine the photos, only to find they were useless.
The pictures were so blurry, it was impossible to make out any significant details. The shape of the man was obvious, as was his surroundings, but everything else was incomprehensible. I considered at first that maybe I’d been shaking while I took the photos, but when later attempts looked the same, I knew it wasn’t me. Disappointed, I deleted the photos like an idiot and sighed. I looked back to where the creature had been and found the business man walking by as if nothing had broken his stride while he talked on the phone.
I looked over to my friends and found Matt giving me a quizzical look.
“Thought I saw a cool bird,” I said.
“Since when do you bird watch?” He asked, grinning.
“I don’t. It was just a cool looking bird.”
“Well, lemme see.”
“The pictures didn’t turn out. The camera was out of focus.”
Matt gave me another look, this one a mixture of knowing curiosity. The subject was quickly dropped though, and we got back to just hanging out.
Ever since, I’ve tried multiple times to get pictures of the thing with multiple different cameras, both digital and analogue, only to get the same result. A blurry image with no discernible details. Which, I guess could be evidence in and of itself, or it’s just proof that I’m a shitty photographer.
From there, things continued to escalate as summer rolled in, and it got to the point where I was seeing the damn thing every single day. Even on my days off, when I never left the house, I’d see it standing in the street outside my house, just staring at me through the windows.
I tried researching it, believe me, but every time I looked up something about faceless people, I’d either get Slender Man or some obscure creepypastas. I considered talking to my friends, but I thought they’d think I was crazy. Hell, at the time, I thought I was losing it. So, I did the one thing I could, and confided in my parents.
One thing you should know abo...
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