Ray had always been around, just like the weathered storefronts on main street or the rusted shell of that car on the corner by the gas station he was a fixture of the community, a landmark. He had piercing blue eyes and smiled so big that his eyes would crinkle into squints. Those eyes were the first thing most people noticed, they had a light to them, a sharp intelligence, an energy that invigorated you just being around him. He had a comfort to him when he spoke. I was never sure if it was his voice, or his mannerisms, or something else, but even a short interaction with him would turn a lackluster afternoon into a vibrant one.
Ray had always been one of my favorite customers, he’d sit with his coffee and sometimes a slice of apple pie and chat with anyone who would listen and sometimes people that didn’t. He was there most evenings and as we became better and better friends I noticed a depth to him that not everyone saw. He was a man who understood the world. I remember he once told me that there was a lot in the world he couldn’t change but he could choose how he faced it and what kind of energy he put into it. That always stuck with me, I like to think that he was who he was because it made other people happy, and that made him happy too. At least that’s who he used to be.
At first, I didn’t think much of it when I didn’t see him for a couple days. People come and go around here all the time—there’s nothing strange about someone not showing up for a few days. But then I started hearing the whispers, the kind that pass through a town like smoke, curling into the corners of every conversation tainting them with the acrid smell of rumors. Folks said Ray had heard something—a melody that wasn’t there, a tune that followed him home, lingering in the quiet moments when the world goes still. Some said it was just the wind, others that it was something else, something you couldn’t quite put your finger on. He wasn’t the first to hear it, some people say that Linda had talked about a distant song that filled the corners of her mind with its music until one day she wandered into the desert and disappeared.
I still remember how relieved I was when I came in for a shift and saw him at a table, but when I asked him where he’d been and told him I was glad he was okay, Ray just looked at me. Only it wasn’t like before his eyes didn’t have that light to them, they didn’t crinkle with a smile as I sat down across from him, they just stared. At that moment I wanted to ask him what had happened, but the words stuck in my throat. Maybe I didn’t really want to know. Maybe some things are better left unsaid.
When Ray finally spoke, his voice was low, almost a whisper. He told me about the music, how he’d heard it one night while lying in bed, drifting between sleep and waking. It was beautiful, he said, the kind of melody that gets under your skin and stays there, gnawing at you. But there was something else, too—something dark, something wrong. He fought it, tried to push it away, but the music kept coming, kept calling to him. “I didn’t follow it,” he said, his eyes distant, like he was looking out over that precipice and seeing the abyss below. “But it didn’t matter. It took it anyway.”
He didn’t say what it took, and I didn’t ask. There was a part of me that didn’t want to know, that didn’t want to acknowledge the growing sense of unease in the pit of my stomach. But I knew, deep down, that Ray wasn’t whole anymore. Whatever he’d heard had changed him, had left him sitting in that booth with a hole inside him that nothing could fill.
Ray stayed for a while that night, longer than usual. He sipped his coffee slowly, as if trying to savor every drop, to hold onto the warmth for as long as he could. And I just watched, not knowing what to say, not knowing how to help. Because the truth is, some things you can’t fix. Some things are just broken, and all you can do is watch as they fall apart.
And that’s what Ray did, now he wanders the streets aimlessly, muttering to himself, his words a jumble of fragments that made sense only to him, if even that. Sometimes, he’ll stop in the middle of the sidewalk, staring off into the distance, as if he could still hear that tune, still feel the pull of that melody that had dragged him past the edge of his sanity. The people who saw him didn’t know what to do, so they did nothing, they just watched from a distance, whispering among themselves but never getting too close, as if they were afraid whatever had claimed Ray might reach out and take them too.
The worst part, though, was that Ray was still aware enough to understand what had happened to him. He knew he wasn’t the man he used to be, that something vital had been ripped away from him, leaving only a gaping void where his sense of self had once been. I think he could feel the madness twisting inside him, reshaping his thoughts, distorting his memories until he couldn’t tell what was real. And yet, he was powerless to stop it, to fight back against the tide that had pulled him under.
Ray had become a ghost in his own life, a shadow of the man who once knew every inch of this town and its people. Now, he wandered through it like a stranger, lost and adrift, with no way back to the world he’d once belonged to. The wrongness inside him was a constant companion, a reminder that he’d been to the brink of something unspeakable. And so he lived on, a man who had fallen into the depths of his own mind and was doomed to wander there, haunted by the knowledge that he’d stood on the edge of sanity and fell.