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Deep in the heart of the Appalachian coal country, the night shift doesn’t just feel dark—it feels heavy, like the mountains themselves are leaning in to listen. I work in a remote medical billing office on the edge of a small town in West Virginia. It’s a repurposed brick building that used to be a clinic back in the 60s, tucked right against a steep, wooded ridge.
At 3:00 AM, the silence out there is absolute. No crickets, no wind—just the hum of the office lights and the smell of damp earth.
I was on my scheduled smoke break, perched on the low stone wall that separates our small parking lot from the encroaching treeline. I was hunched over my phone, scrolling through mindless videos just to keep my brain from slipping into that 3:00 AM fog. I had been sitting there for maybe three minutes when I felt that prickle on the back of my neck—the sensation of being watched that you only get when something is truly focused on you.
I looked up, and my heart did a slow, sickening roll.
Standing at the edge of the woods, about twenty feet away, was a man. He was hunched over in a jagged, “zombie” pose, his torso twisted at an angle that looked physically painful. He was wearing an oversized, dirt-stained trench coat that reached his shins, blue surgical gloves, and a faded medical mask that covered everything but his eyes.
Those eyes were what got me. They were wide, unblinking, and sunken into dark hollows. He didn’t look like a hiker or a vagrant; he looked like a specimen that had crawled out from under a rock. Even though I was near the building, the streetlights were flickering, and the shadows from the trees seemed to bleed toward him.
I tried to play it cool. I went back to my phone, but my thumbs were shaking. I kept glancing up. He hadn’t moved an inch. He just stood there in that broken posture, his shoulders slumped, staring directly at me over the top of that mask. In the moonlight, the blue of his gloves looked like dead skin.
I heard the sound of a heavy truck down in the valley—a coal hauler, likely—and the distant noise gave me a surge of “bravery.” I figured if he tried anything, the sound of a struggle would carry. I glanced down at my phone one last time to check the clock.
In the three seconds my eyes were down, the air suddenly turned freezing.
Before I could even look up, the “Surgical Zombie” was sitting on the wall. He wasn’t just near me; he was within an inch of my side. I could hear his breathing—it was wet and rhythmic, like someone blowing bubbles through a straw.
Every instinct I had screamed run, but that “polite Appalachian girl” upbringing kicked in like a reflex. I didn’t want to provoke him. I gave him a weak, terrified smile.
He didn’t return it. He didn’t even move his head. He just held out a gloved hand. “Cigarette,” he rasped. It wasn’t a question.
I fumbled with my pack and handed him one. He took it with those blue-gloved fingers and just held it. He didn’t put it to his mouth. He didn’t tuck it behind his ear. He just sat there, staring at the wall across from us with that unlit cigarette pinched between his fingers.
“Do… do you need a light?” I stammered, my voice cracking in the mountain air.
Slowly, his head turned toward me. He didn’t say a word. Instead, he raised both hands and gave me a stiff, double-thumbs up. He held the pose for a long, agonizing ten seconds, his eyes boring into mine.
“Does that mean you have one?” I asked, my skin crawling.
Another double-thumbs up.
I took a final, shaky drag of my smoke, planning my escape. But then, just as I went to stand, he spoke. “Yes. I need one.”
I handed him my lighter. His gloved hand brushed mine, and it was unnaturally cold—colder than the night air. He lit the cigarette through the mask, the paper smoldering against the blue fabric, then handed the lighter back.
I crushed my smoke out and practically bolted to my feet. “Have a nice night,” I managed to choke out.
As I reached the heavy glass door of the office, a sound erupted from behind me. It wasn’t a shout or a threat. It was a laugh. A deep, wet, belly-shaking laugh that echoed off the ridges and seemed to multiply in the trees.
I didn’t look back. I pulled the door shut and locked it. When I finally gathered the courage to look out the security window a minute later, the wall was empty. There was no sign of him—just a single, unlit cigarette lying in the gravel, snapped perfectly in half.
