Creepypasta, Horror stories, and more

Creeppypasta #5

Am i dreaming or am i the dream?

I’ve decided that it must be one or the other. How else could I explain seeing the same person everywhere I went?

He’s impossible not to notice with his long gray mustache waxed to a pinpoint. Bushy eyebrows caught in a perpetual explosion, floppy white hair that looked like it was having an argument with the head. He doesn’t always speak to me, or even look at me, but for the last two years he’s always been there.

He first appeared as a substitute teacher when I was in my junior year of high-school. He introduced himself as Mr. Brice, although there was a long hesitation before he gave his name as though he couldn’t decide what he wanted to be called. His voice wasn’t right either — I remember him spending half the class switching accents, his speech collapsing occasionally into a variety of foreign languages before he caught himself and readjusted. The class found him “dapper” and charming in his fine tailored wool suit, and I didn’t initially suspect him of anything more than being eccentrically addled.

The next day he was working in the cafeteria. Substitutes go where they’re needed, I suppose, but oddly none of my classmates seemed to remember him. They remembered that we had a substitute teacher, but everyone was quite sure that it wasn’t him. He gave me an extra scoop of chili and winked at me, muttering in an English accent: “I won’t tell if you don’t.” I don’t think he was talking about the chili.

Mr. Brice spent the next few weeks rotating throughout the school. One day he was the janitor, next he was a guest speaker, or even the principal himself. I quickly learned to stop bringing up the phenomenon when it became obvious that I was the only one who noticed. Mr. Brice was learning too — it didn’t take long before his speech stopped fluctuating and his clothing adapted to nondescript khakis and a polo shirt.

I tried questioning him more than once, but the man stubbornly adhered to the role he’d currently assumed, pretending he knew me only as well as the character he played. At the same time, there would always be little winks or enigmatic phrases thrown in which conveyed our peculiar intimacy. I caught him alone one day when I’d forgotten my calculator and had to double back for it. Mr. Brice was on the phone, casually reclining with his feet flung up on his desk. I distinctly remember the words:

“Of course he’s caught on, but he isn’t frightened yet.”

He winked again when he met my eye. I stood in abject confusion while he politely disengaged from his phone call.

“Were you talking about me?” I asked.

The feet came down with a stomp.

“All the time,” he said, leaning forward to fold his well-manicured hands demurely on his desk. He cocked his head to the side, studying me intensely. “You preoccupy most of my attention nowadays, but I mustn’t get too attached to you.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“You don’t belong here. I don’t want it to hurt when I have to get rid of you.”

“Um…”

He coughed. Then the infuriating wink. “What I mean to say is: the teachers can’t go home until the last student leaves, so run along.”

I snatched my calculator without another word. The whole situation was so unnerving and I couldn’t think of anything to respond. Mr. Brice blatantly picked up his phone again as I left.

“He’s just leaving. No, I don’t think he’ll run yet. Where could he possibly go where I couldn’t find him?”

I didn’t see him at school much after that, but he was always somewhere, always watching me: on a bench reading the newspaper, or bussing tables, or working behind the counter at the gas station. I never confronted him, although I did try taking a picture of him a few times. The pictures would work, but only for a day. When I looked back at the photo after that, everything else would be the same except for Mr. Brice, who would invariably be replaced with the real person — the same person that everyone else remembered being there the whole time.