Short Ghost Stories: The Man with the Axe in his Back

The teenage boy stared, gesturing at the man’s back with his thumb. Beside him, his girlfriend gave a loud snicker, twirling one finger around her temple and looking to her friends to join in. They stared back at her in tentative silence, unsure of whether laughter was an appropriate response in this situation.

It was Sunday morning at the mall, and they had just gotten into an elevator with a weirdo in it. A weirdo whose face was completely hidden from the security cameras, since his entire body was crammed into one of the back corners of the elevator. He was facing the wall of the elevator, baring the back of his frame to the litany of puzzled shoppers entering and leaving this enclosed space.

The elevator spanned seven floors, encased in a glass shaft that let its inhabitants look out into a large open space in the interior of the shopping centre. The inside of the lift was plain, with a glass wall at the back, so shoppers can watch the people on the ground shrink as the elevator moved up. It was most popular with small children, of which there were a lot of today. They pressed their faces against the glass wall, leaving smudges of their noses and handprints as they squealed and pointed.

The man who was the focus of the teenagers’ attention gave a glance at the small child beside him. Her parents clutched her hand protectively – they were also unnerved by the man, though he had never once moved from the back corner of the elevator. He was reasonably tall with broad-shoulders, and was neatly dressed in a dark grey suit, as if going to work. He had cropped black hair, and wore a starched white shirt with a black tie.

It was bland to the point of funeral garb, but that was not what caught the attention of the shoppers. Above the white collar of his shirt was a blood red line as thick as a man’s thumb, circling the man’s entire throat.

The teenage boy stared and stared at that red line. It was the ruddy colour of an angry rash, but the skin was unbroken, and the line was too neatly wrought for it to be a skin condition. Rather, it resembled a vicious gash or sorts, the kind that a thug would land in a darkened alleyway – perhaps in a robbery gone wrong.

It suddenly occurred to the boy that perhaps the man once had a violent encounter in an elevator. This nice middle-aged man was standing with his face shoved into the corner of the elevator, his back to everyone, because he feared something.

Eventually, the boy could not withstand the mystery. Against the hissed warnings from his friends, he spoke.

‘Mister, what’s wrong with your neck?’

Also, why are you standing in an elevator in the mall, with your face buried in the corner?

Silence.

Then, the man slowly turned his head, revealing a square-jawed, well-set face in the throes of fleshy, middle-aged handsomeness. He looked the teenager in the eye, and gave a courteous smile. As he opened his mouth to speak, the red line around his throat twitched and jumped in a twisted little dance.

‘Something tried to strangle me once,’ the man replied.

The boy’s jaw dropped, and his girlfriend took a startled step backwards. The elevator came to a halt, giving off a loud ding as the group of teens reached their floor.

The man had a voice that sounded like a spade scraping over gravel.

It was highly unnatural, like the rasp of a heavy smoker, only lower and stranger. It sounded like as if someone really had opened a hole in his throat, and that thick red line was really a wound in disguise. But if that was the case, then that would mean this man was actually a headless ghost, and he was haunting this elevator––

The elevator doors opened with a muted whirr, and the teenager suddenly felt several hands grab him by the shoulders. It was his friends, who were so eager to get out of the elevator that they half-dragged, half-manhandled him out. The rest of the elevator followed suit, having heard the sound of the man’s voice and felt his unnerving presence. They all wanted to leave this tiny space as soon as possible – all except for one person, standing in the opposite corner to the man.

It was a middle-aged woman, conservatively dressed in a floral sweater and with her grey hair styled in a perm. She looked utterly ordinary, and unlikely to bear such an interest in the macabre, but she was looking at the man with a gleam of grisly interest in her eyes.

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