This night was different, though. Instead of walking alone, I was walking with my friend Rachel. We went to a late-night movie at a theater that was less than a mile away from our street. I go there every weekend; Rachel accompanies me occasionally.

Something else was different too. There was a strange feeling in the air. I looked over at Rachel, about to ask her if she felt weird too, but the look on her face shoved the words right back down my throat.

She looked like a zombie. Her face was pale and her eyes were distant, extremely distant. Maybe she didn’t look exactly like a zombie, but more like she had just seen a ghost.

“Rachel?” She didn’t answer. “Rachel,” I said, talking louder, “hello?”

She turned to me. The more I looked at her, I saw that distance change into fear. We both stopped. “Emily?” she asked.

“What’s wrong, Rachel?”

“Do you see a man way down there, under the street lamp?”

My heart started beating faster. If someone was after us, we wouldn’t have anywhere to go.

I looked and looked, but I couldn’t see anything. “What does he look like? I can’t see him.”

She pointed. “He’s right there. I can’t see him well. He’s just a silhouette, but he’s there. He waved at me like he knew me.”

I looked again. It was probably just the shadows playing tricks on her mind. “I still don’t see anything…”

Rachel turned and looked toward the street lamp again. “He’s beckoning to me,” she whispered frantically, her eyes wide. “And I think…he’s smiling!”

I looked; the street was empty. A chill ran down my spine. “Listen, Rachel. This isn’t funny anymore. Can we just go home?” I was starting to get angry. “Don’t play jokes like that, especially this late at night.”

The rest of the walk home was silent. Rachel didn’t even make a sound, except when we reached the corner. I felt a slight change in the air, and when I did, she gasped, as though we had just walked through her imaginary man. I dismissed the air change and shook my head. The joke was wearing thin.

It was 11:30pm when I got home; Rachel had gone inside 5 minutes before. I went inside quietly, so as to not wake up my family, and got ready for bed. It had been a long day at school, but now the weekend was ahead of me, and I could sleep in.

Once I was in bed, though, I found I couldn’t sleep. Rachel had really disturbed me. I tried to take it as a joke, but the look on her face and the tone of her voice still hung in my mind.

The phone started ringing. I looked at the clock. 1:00am. Who would be calling me now?

“Hello?” I said irritably.

“He was beckoning to me,” a voice said. “I have to meet him.”

“Rachel? Rachel, are you there?” But she was gone. If this was her idea of a joke, it wasn’t amusing. I tried to call her back, but she didn’t answer. I figured it was a joke; the phone call confirmed it. I wasn’t worried anymore, and I went to sleep.

The next day I received a phone call. It was Rachel’s mom. “Do you know where Rachel is?”

“No,” I said. “She went home lost night. I watched her go inside.”

“I don’t know where she is,” her mother said. “I never heard her leave this morning.”

“I’m sure she’ll show up. Don’t worry…” I told her.

“But Rachel never did show up, and the cops never found any traces.”

”Wow,” my friend Brittany said. “What a spooky story.”

It wasn’t a story, but I figured I wouldn’t tell her that. “And do you know that tonight is the night it happened?”

“That’s a good story,” Brittany said. “It gives me the chills.”

Brittany and I were walking back from the same movie theater, and walking down the same road Rachel and I had walked down a year ago. I wasn’t worried though. I believe she ran away. I looked down the road towards the lone street lamp on the corner, and what I saw caused my heart to skip a beat.

“Brittany, do you see anyone up there?”

“No,” she said. “The street looks empty to me.”

I looked again, thinking I was seeing things, but I still saw a man there. He was just a silhouette, but there was no denying his existence. He was waving at me.

“Are you sure?” I asked. “He’s waving at me…”

Brittany burst out in laughter. “Oh, you’re trying to scare me! Nice try, Emily.”

I saw the man motioning for me to come closer. “I’m not joking,” I said, starting to get worried. “He’s really there.”

Brittany said nothing but kept on laughing, and as we approached the silhouette, the more I tried to convince myself he wasn’t there. He was smiling at me.

We walked around the corner, me walked directly through the shadow. I looked behind me but it had vanished. I already knew I would meet him here later.