B-2 The Man Who Walked Backwards

A stranger came to town.

B1 The Man Who Walked Backwards

No one saw him arrive.

That’s what got people talking. That and the way he moved. Not just odd. Not limping or stuttering like someone who’s recovering from a stroke. He walked backward. One steady, careful step at a time, as though his life depended on keeping his back to something no one else could see.

I first noticed him outside the old Fillmore Motel, the one I work at weekends to help my uncle. He stood on the gravel lot with a small duffel bag, squinting toward the setting sun. His posture was too straight for someone looking lost. Then he turned, no, pivoted on the balls of his feet and stepped backward through the front doors like he’d done it a thousand times.

I watched him check in without ever facing forward. Uncle Dean was baffled but shrugged it off. “Man’s money’s green. Long as he’s not cooking meth in the bathtub, he can crab walk to his room for all I care.”

He paid cash. No ID. Signed the logbook: E. Worth. Just that. No first name.

He was given Room 3, which hadn’t been occupied in months. No reason It just sort of stayed empty. People always asked for other rooms.

The town's called Sutterfield, population just under 4,000. One bar, one diner, one post office, and an unsettling habit of forgetting the past. We lose things here; time, people, memories. They just sort of fade if you don’t keep them close.

By the third day, people noticed.

Mrs. Lantry from the diner told me she saw him walk backward across Main Street. He didn’t flinch when a pickup roared past behind him, even though it missed him by inches.

“He never looked,” she whispered, like saying it out loud might bring him back. “Didn’t flinch. Didn’t run. Just kept going. Like he knew it wouldn’t hit him.”

Others told stories. A kid swore the man was humming in reverse, like a record played backwards. A cashier said her scanner wouldn’t read anything he bought. A mailman claimed he saw the man standing in the cemetery, not moving, just slowly stepping backward through the headstones for nearly an hour.

I got bold and knocked on Room 3 the next Saturday. He answered the door walking in reverse, his head turned slightly to one side so he could see me. His eyes didn’t blink much.

“I just uh,” I began. “Just checking if you need fresh towels.”

He said nothing. Just nodded. Still walking backward, he stepped aside to let me in. The room was normal. Immaculate, really. No smell. No mess. But I noticed something strange about the mirror above the dresser. It was covered in newspaper. Taped tight.

The only sound was the soft click of his shoes as he paced backward, never touching the walls. He didn’t sit. He didn’t stop. Just that constant, deliberate reverse pace, like a VHS tape rewinding a scene only he remembered.

I left the towels and got out fast.

Weirdest thing happened the next day. A girl named Nina, maybe twelve, ran into the diner crying. I was on my break, eating pie. She was shaking, her eyes wide like she’d seen a ghost.

She said her dad was alive.

Only problem? Her dad died in a factory fire last fall. I remember the funeral. The town shut down for it. Nina had been quiet ever since.

But now she swore she saw him. on the sidewalk, just past the motel, standing still, looking toward Room 3.

“He said nothing. He didn’t wave,” she sobbed. “But it was him. Same clothes from that day. He looked sad. Like he forgot something.”

By evening, people were whispering.

The mailman got locked out of his own house. His spare key had vanished. When he called a locksmith, the guy said he’d already been there earlier and that the house had no locks at all. They were just gone.

A man named Griggs reported waking up and hearing his dead wife’s voice humming from the kitchen. He thought it was a dream. Until he walked in and found her old scarf, burned in a fire two years ago, folded on the table.

By now, I’d stopped sleeping well.

I watched E. Worth whenever I could. He never left town. Just circled it. Always backward. No one could follow him more than a block without getting turned around. One time I tried to track him and ended up in the school parking lot, staring at the flagpole, heart pounding, like I’d just run a race I couldn’t remember.

Then one night, Room 3’s lights went off all at once. Not faded. Just snap, total darkness. And the mirror, the one he’d covered with newspaper? The tape gave way. The paper curled off like something behind it had breathed.

I crept to the door.

It was open.

Inside, the room was cold. Not A/C cold. Deeper. The kind that bites bone.

He wasn’t there. But the mirror was uncovered.

And here’s where I lose people when I talk about this. But I swear I saw myself in the mirror, walking backward out of the room. Wearing clothes I hadn’t owned since high school. My old hoodie. My sneakers with the red laces. And I was younger, maybe sixteen.

Behind me in the reflection was my dad.

My dad, who left when I was ten.

He looked older than I remembered, but his face was the same. The scar on his chin. The crooked eyebrow. He was reaching out to me, as if he wanted to say something. And my reflection? It didn’t even glance back.

It walked away.

I reached toward the glass. My hand hit cold silver.

Then Worth stepped into the doorway.

Still backward. Still silent.

But this time, his voice came out low and distant, like a memory dredged from someone else’s sleep.

“You only lose what you ignore,” he said. “Most people look forward. They shouldn’t.”

Then he turned. For the first time since he’d arrived, he turned forward. His eyes locked with mine.

I staggered.

Because his face, it was mine.

Older. Worn. Tired. But definitely me.

And then he blinked and vanished.

Just gone.

They found Room 3 empty the next morning. The bed untouched. The logbook entry erased. You could still smell something faint, like dust and ozone.

That night, a power line on the edge of town fell, and when they repaired it, the old billboard by the motel lit up again. No one remembered what it said before. But now, in cracked red letters, it read:

“REMEMBER WHAT YOU WALKED AWAY FROM.”

It’s been three weeks.

The stories stopped. No more dead voices. No more ghostly fathers. People went back to forgetting. That’s how Sutterfield works.

But I still see the man sometimes; in dreams, in reflective windows, in moments where the streetlights buzz too loud.

I started walking backward, just once. Just to see. Down my driveway. Behind the gas station. Into the woods.

I didn’t get far. But I found something strange.

My old hoodie. Folded on a rock. Dry, even after the rain.

And next to it, a photo.

It was my dad.

And me.

Both of us facing the camera.

Both of us smiling.

I don’t remember when it was taken.

But now I keep it in my wallet.

Just in case the man comes back.