A Woman with No Face

 a woman with no face is knocking on my door at 2:00 am.

Preface: A straightforward prompt from r/WritingPrompts. The OP had been looking for scary and creepy, but they ended up being touched by my take on their prompt.

I was one of those people who much preferred the new social dynamics that came out of the pandemic. Being able to work from home, not having to go outside so much, getting to interact with barriers between myself and the outside world... a lot of the more reasonable people objected to how distant we were forced to be from one another, and how this might affect society more long-term. Sure, maybe they had a point there. But I was grateful for the forced isolation.

It made it less likely I'd run into the ghosts and spirits and other things out there.

Don't ask me to explain how it works. I've tried for years to figure it out, gone to therapy for it and taken medication to try to make it stop. None of it has worked. I learned to mask up well before I had to start wearing an actual one when I went outside.

I don't see them everywhere. But I see at least a dozen every time I go outside. Sometimes they're of the deceased, going through the same routines they always did, or repeating the action that led to their death. Seeing some suit stepping off the curb and turning into a smear on the road where the bus had hit them is horrible, true, but I've become numb to those. The initial shock passes quickly, because they didn't have enough time to react to it. Even the residual dismay that onlookers had felt fades after a day or two, because there was little to attach them to the victim.

The jumpers can be a lot worse. The same emotional pain or emptiness which had born them down to the moment continues to linger like a weight, and for whatever they might have thought about how no one else cared about them, there were those emotional attachments surrounding them which in turn keep that pressure bound in. I've stopped taking routes that lead past the bridge if I can avoid it.

The spirits aren't usually born of people directly, the way ghosts are. I've come to think of them as concepts given shape. They can look human enough, but there's always at least one thing that says otherwise. Other people walk past the homeless junkies without looking at them because they've dehumanized them and want to pretend they don't exist. I walk past them because I can see the specter of addiction clinging to them, drawing needle-fingers through their scalp like they were a favored pet, and the specter will grin at me with black teeth and far too many yellowed eyes.

I won't get into the other things. They weren't born of humanity in any real sense of the word, and they look it. I try to avoid their notice, and so far, none of them have bothered to take notice of me. I'm glad about that.

Going outside means I see all of this. The lurking warden of debt chained to a salaryman on his way to the office. The jabbering creep of anxiety hunched on the shoulder of some poor student pouring over their books for some exam. The smoldering hulk of rage behind the blue-collar worker waiting to be fed with booze. The lingering remnants of those who've passed on, unwilling or unable to move along to whatever awaits.

I stopped trying to block them out. It just causes problems of my own, which the medication helps alleviate. But I try not to invite the problems.

Today, though, while I was out picking up my prescriptions' refill, I made eye contact with one. After a fashion. It was brief, and I looked away quickly, but she'd seen me see her.

And now it's 2:00 A.M., and there's a woman with no face knocking on my door.

I try to ignore it. There's no actual sound being made, it's literally just in my head. If I wanted, I could pretend it was some wisp of a fading dream, forgotten upon waking, but deep down, I know it's still happening.

I sigh and go to the door to open it slowly. There's not a lot to say about her. She's wearing clothes, but these are just gray-- no, not even really that, they're colorless. (Anyone who tries to claim 'gray' is 'colorless' hasn't seen real colorlessness. Trust me on this.) Just a shirt, a skirt that trails down to where her knees would be, but she doesn't have feet. She doesn't have much in the way of a body, even. Just enough characteristics to say 'woman,' and that's it. Colorless hair framing a normal-shaped head, and just a blank featureless smoothness where her face should be.

She moves back as the door opens, a hand raised to knock again, then lowers it, clasping her hands before her, fingers knotting themselves anxiously. I look at her, then glance up and down the hallway, before I gesture her inside. She drifts over the threshold, shuddering slightly, and then turns as I take the can of salt and pour a circle around her. She looks down at this, then back to me, a frightful stance in her appearance.

"I'm sorry," I tell her. "I mean no offense, but I have to protect myself. I don't want to hurt you."

She hesitates, before she nods her understanding.

I take a moment to marshal my thoughts. "I don't know you. But I saw you at the store, when I was leaving the pharmacy. Right?"

There's a hopeful energy to the nod.

"I try not to see any of you, when I'm out," I explain, regretfully. I gesture vaguely at the side of my head. "I have my own problems, you know? But yes, I can see you. Just like I can see the other things."

She gives a heartfelt shudder. Being what she is, she can see them too, now, regardless of whether or not she could in life. It doesn't make it any better for her in the circumstances.

"I don't know you," I repeat. "But... I think I can guess some things. Probably didn't have a lot of friends or anything before, huh?"

She almost shrinks in on herself a little before shaking her head slowly.

"Acquaintances, maybe, but maybe the only people you knew were just workmates," I hazard, "and anyone else was just online, right?" She nods, with the same slow, mournful energy. "Anyone else in your life, they just kind of looked through you. Customers or clients, they didn't really know you, didn't really see you?"

Another shake of the head, and she lifts her hand, pointing to where her eyes would be, then mimes looking outward with them before opening her empty palm.

"They just... looked through you," I translate, and get another sad nod. I sigh, leaning back against the wall as I look at her. "I can sort of relate, but I ... well, it's by choice, with me. I won't guess how you ... passed on, but... you're lingering, aren't you?"

She shrugs at first, before turning her head away for a moment, clearly thinking about it. I let her get on with it. This is obviously a fresh ghost, I reckon. The older a ghost gets, the less cognizant and contemplative they get, more prone to repetitive patterns, more feral. There's more of whoever she was still in her. And exposed as she is now to the other side, she's probably seen more than a few of the other lingerers, seen how they degenerate.

"You're scared," I finally say, and she turns back to me in surprise. "Not just of ... everything else you can see now. You're scared of being forgotten. Or maybe of whatever comes next."

She looks thoughtful, inasmuch as I can tell without a face to emote with. Then she raises her hands, raising one, then the other, and after another hesitation, she wobbles both of them.

"A little bit of column A, a little bit of column B?" I suggest, and she nods. "Well, I can't offer much insight on column B. Just because I can see the other side, doesn't mean I know what lies past it. I don't want to lie and promise there's something better. You know?"

She lowers her head, nodding her understanding. I sigh again. "As for column A... well, I can't promise I'll remember you forever. I have... issues of my own, but..." I scratch at my head, trying to stop the sentiment from nibbling too much at me. If I do this for her, it might invite more attention from others, and I've lived a careful life to keep them at a distance.

"Hang on a second." I stand up and cross over to the hutch in the corner. It takes a minute or two of rummaging before I find it, and a few things out and over to her. I set one item on the floor next to her salt circle, then use the salt can to expand the hoop to encompass it. She looks down at the magnetic alphabet board, then back up at me.

I sit down facing her, with a notepad and pencil. "Let's start simple. You should be able to move things, if you concentrate."

It takes about an hour for her to work it out. Starting simple with moving the Y and the N, yes and no questions. And then she starts to move more letters easily enough, and careful phrasing of questions allow me to assemble a little bit of a picture. She starts out moving her hands and fingers to move the alphabet magnets around the board, and soon enough figures out that she doesn't actually need to do this, and the letters move by themselves.

Her name was Jenny Gaines. ("J E N Y" as the board only has one of each letter and number, but a follow-up question clarifies the spelling.) She was a cashier at the store where I'd first seen her, and housekeeper at the hotel down the block from it too. She was 26 and she had no family. Dad had left, Mom had died from Covid. Not even a pet or anything. She'd had the sort of basic interests in TV and movies and books in what spare time she'd had. After she'd died (she didn't want to talk about what happened, and I didn't pry) her landlord had cleaned it out a week later and found a new tenant by the end of the month.

I ask the questions, taking care to phrase them in a way to allow for simple answers given the limitations of the board, and give her the time to assemble her response, while my pencil works on the notepad. She gets a little more animated as she goes, even after she works out that she can move the letters without touching them. I can feel fatigue crawling around my eyes as I watch her answering, but I force the tiredness aside. I'm going to call out from work tomorrow, I've already decided. And Jenny needs the time.

By the time we finish, Jenny has less of that anxious energy about her. I finally set down the pencil. "I want you to see something, Jenny." She tilts her head at me, and then jumps as I show her the notepad.

I hadn't been writing down her answers, not exactly. I'd been spending the time sketching. Drawing out her figure, admittedly still somewhat colorless, but I had taken care to crosshatch in some shading. Her hair was loose and framing her face, and she was reaching up to tuck a lock back behind her ear, smiling to the viewer.

She had a face in the sketch, because as I'd asked my questions, and let her answer as best she could, definition had started to return to her. A mouth, first, silently moving as she had moved, speaking without sound, and then a nose, eyebrows, and finally a pair of pale eyes, as colorless as the rest of her.

Seeing it there on the sketch, Jenny moves to the edge of the salt circle nearest it, hand pressing to the invisible field keeping her inside, blinking in astonishment. She reaches up and feels at her face, shuddering and gasping as she feels her eyes, her nose, her mouth. Tears well up, and she racks with sobs, a smile creeping at the edge of her lips as she looks at me again.

"I see you, Jenny Gaines," I tell her. "I don't know how long I'll remember you. But you were here. And while it might be scary out there, I did see you, I will remember you for as long as I can." I write her name in the corner, then tear the page carefully from the pad. I walk over to the hutch again, taking out a few pieces of blue-tack and stick it to the front of the cabinet.

She watches this from the salt circle, and her mouth stretches into another smile, a fresh well of tears in her eyes. I nod to her, and finally allow a yawn to crawl out of my throat. "I have to rest, Jenny. And I can't let you stay. You know that, right?"

She nods slowly, shoulders slumping slightly. I walk over to the door, opening it before reaching over with my foot to swipe a section of the salt away from the circle. She slowly drifts toward the door, but pauses at the opening. She looks from the hallway over to my hutch, where her sketch will stay until the blue-tack wears off. Then she turns back to me, giving me another smile, gratitude evident in her expression, before she fades from view as she crosses the threshold. I hear the faintest of whispers as she goes.

"...thank you..."