I saw a person with a widow’s peak today. I couldn’t help but shudder. It’s the memories…

There was this girl in my third grade class. She came in as a new student after Christmas vacation. I suppose one would describe her as ethereal. She didn’t look like a kid. I don’t mean that she looked like an adult. She just lacked all of the things going on with a kid’s appearance. She never had a runny nose, she never wore pigtails, her shoes were never scuffed, her pants were never too long (so she would grow into them) or too short (because she grew out of them), she never had any scabs on her elbows, no food stains ever appeared on the front of her shirt, her nails were always clean and clipped, no missing teeth or even loose teeth…none of that stuff. She always looked…in complete control of every facet of her existence.

That was weird for a third grader. Her name was weird, too. Alyana Esmerelda. Alyana is a name that has kind of come back into circulation in recent years, but I’ve never heard of Esmerelda used outside of fairy tales.

And she had a widow’s peak. Alayna’s hair was so black, it looked like the widow’s peak was drawn on her forehead with ink. Her hair might have been the weirdest part of her. I imagine that if there is a hole a mile deep on the dark side of the moon, it would be the color of her hair. Sometimes her hair even seemed to move. I noticed these things because I sat behind her in the rear corner of the room. I’d be working on my multiplication table, catch something out of the corner of my eye and look up to see strands of her hair moving, almost like they were reaching out for me. Then I’d blink, and the illusion would be gone.

Even though I was not one of those boys who thought girls had cooties (heck, I later went on to risk my life against a Bigfoot for a girl), I hated sitting by Alayna. She set your nerves on edge, like how your tongue feels when you put a penny in your mouth. To make matters worse, whenever we had to partner up with the student near us, I had to partner up with Alayna (I sat next to two BBFs, so they always chose each other, and since I was in the back corner, I couldn’t get to my friends before they partnered up with someone else).

One day Alayna and I were working on this project where we had to match up colors with the colors it took to make them. For example, orange went with yellow and red. Green went with yellow and blue, etc.

“You’ll have to do this project yourself,” she said.

“Why?”

“Because I only see red.”

Combine stuff like that with her appearance…and her hair, and it all came out to weeeeird…

Now then, all of this was back when teachers still used chalkboards, and students had to clean the erasers. The students would take the erasers down to the janitor’s room and run them through a vacuum-like device that sucked out the dust. The teacher picked two kids to take the erasers down to the janitor’s room once a week. Guess which two students got picked that day?

I didn’t want to go. I told the teacher I felt sick, and I did. I had a bad feeling. But this teacher was old school. You weren’t sick unless you were barfing up school cafeteria tater tots and milk. So next thing you know, I’m out in the hall with an armful of dusty erasers and Alayna trailing along behind me, not saying a word. Sweat pricked my forehead. Closed classroom doors stretched down the hallway. I heard class going on behind them. Reading, writing, ’rithmatic whispers. It sounded like the sound of blood through veins.

Swish…swoosh…swash…

We get to the janitor room, which smelled like floor wax and dirty brooms. Shelves are stocked with jugs, tools and boxes. Broken desk in the corner. Cobwebs. Old calendar with curled pages on the wall. Never seen a neat, clean, well-lit janitor room yet. I get down to business because I want to get out of there. I start cleaning the erasers. The vacuum thing going vrooooooom, vrooooom, the dust making me want to sneeze, and Alayna isn’t helping. Rather, she moves between me and the door. I’m trying to reach the last eraser to finish up, and then I see her smiling at me the way a person smiles at a perfectly-done steak.

“What’s so funny?”

Alayna doesn’t answer. Her hair starts blowing about, and I think, I didn’t notice a fan on when we came in…

And then her hair started…shaping itself. That’s the best I can describe it. Her hair formed itself into cords that wrapped and hooked under her armpits. Then the top of her head simply lifted up, and I could see inside.

I saw a tongue. It licked the lips of her forehead and hairline.

Alayna’s scalp was the roof of a mouth. Her hair was the tendons and sinew used to muscle that mouth open. And her widow’s peak was a tooth, like an egg tooth on a bird. She came at me, and I understood she meant to use that tooth to peck open my skull and get at my brain.

I don’t remember any conscious decision leading me to do what I did next. I think it was divine puppet work that saved my life. God looks after drunks and little children, they say. He was looking after me that day. My hands ripped the bag off the eraser cleaner that collected all of the chalk dust and threw it in Alayna’s face. The mouth on top of her head coughed and gasped and heaved and I ran. I ran down the hall, feet echoing like fists on a coffin lid. I ran for the third-grade classroom. I ran through the door and sat at my desk, like it was some sort of sanctuary against more than oncoming adulthood — a sanctuary against evil.

“What’s wrong?” the teacher asked.

I just kept staring at the door, waiting for Alayna to come through and finish what she started.

Alayna never did, though. She never returned to class ever again. The investigation revealed she didn’t even have a home in the area, or parents, or anything for that matter. She had just appeared and then disappeared into thin air…

I had nightmares for years. Sometimes I convinced myself it didn’t happen, but the sweat that soaked me when I awoke said otherwise.

That is why I can’t see a widow’s peak without shuddering. And how do we know there aren’t more like Alayna out there? Science has shown us that red heads are creatures of the night, and blondes survive on instinct alone, and green-haired people are leprechauns or musicians, and blue-haired people are old, but what if people with widow peaks aren’t even human?

I don’t know the answer to that question. All I know is that if you see someone with a widow’s peak approaching you, and there is no one else around, and that widow’s peak looks drawn on, black as a doll’s eyes, my advice to you is to turn.

Turn and run.

Turn and run like your brain depends on it…