Skurdulka VS Bystander: A Queer Family Horror Story (Complete!)

Part 8: Skurdulka's House

 Ari looked over the papers spread over their desk, their eyes running across each line without actually reading any of it. Everything was finished. Skurdulka's House was officially a B-Corporation, registered with the state as a haven for unhoused youth and—after months of repairs and improvements—finally up to code. The only thing left was the money. Or, rather, the appearance of making money in some kind of "legitimate" way. And it wouldn't have been a problem. Until that thing showed up.

Drawing a deep breath, Ari shuffled the papers back into a blue folder and set it aside. The air froze in their chest when they looked down at the photo across the open book on the other side of the desk. Taking the edge of the book in their fingertips, they pulled it gingerly closer, almost afraid to touch the photograph.

A faded press photo covered one glossy page; a devastated landscape, piles of brick and plaster and glass that had once been people's homes, smoking pyres and shattered spires extending to the gray horizon. In the middle of the photo laid a single white sneaker with red laces--a child's sneaker. The lonely shoe was eerily pristine, laying in a bed of mud, glass and ashes, as if its owner had only just dropped it and was about to come back for it. But they never would. That story was gone now, only a photograph remaining, and the inexplicable sadness that stirred every soul that saw it.

There should've been a different story. Ari thought that was where that sinking feeling came from. Where it started, at least.

It was a well-known photograph, iconic to photojournalists. That sad, storytelling white shoe and the destruction around it was heartbreaking and captivating. It was famous, but few had noticed the particular detail that drew Ari's eyes. In this book, it was impossible to miss. A red oval near the upper right corner of the picture encircled a figure standing between two building fragments. Deep in the background, the figure was unfocused but still clear enough to see; a man in a black suit, grinning, with no face.

Some said it was a strange optical effect, or a misshapen shadow. The authors of Urban Folklore: The Cryptids of the Modern Age had a different theory. Across the top of the adjacent page was the heading: Bystander, Omen of Doom.

Unlike the previously discussed modern folkloric characters, the act of being photographed seems to appeal to the strange and unsettling cryptid known in the English-speaking world as Bystander. Appearing as a male figure in a formal black suit, showing a mouth but no other recognizable facial features, Bystander is considered by some to be an omen of doom or a harbinger of destruction, while others consider the cryptid to be a servant or associate of Death. This is probably due to Bystander's more recognizable photo appearances, all of which take place during or shortly after massacres which claimed dozens or hundreds of lives.

This figure has been photographed numerous times around the world, including Serbia (Picture 3-A), Sudan (Picture 3-B), Vietnam (Picture 3-C), Oklahoma (USA) (Picture 3-D), and, most recently, in Egypt (Picture 3-E). Though the photos included here do not represent a complete record of Bystander's photo evidence—in fact, numerous photographic evidence of this subject exists—it is notable that there is no reliable photo evidence of the faceless specter haunting any natural disaster, such as the aftermath of a hurricane or earthquake. This has given rise to the unsettling notion that Bystander is not connected to the act of dying or Death as an entity, but rather maintains a connection to—or perhaps encourages—violence and the act of murder. The clearest images, as well as eyewitness accounts, place Bystander near particularly brutal events related to war, racial or religious persecution, or violent coup dé tat.

British writer Edwinna Grey provided what is known to be the first eyewitness account of Bystander in 1913 while reporting on the ethnic violence occurring in what is now Kosovo. "It was a figure, strangely in fine dress, and of a strange make, for the region, though through the devastation of the previous days, such a thing seemed hardly possible," Grey wrote to a confidant. "He merely stood there, amidst the rubble, amidst the bodies, unbothered, unshaken, and I had the queerest sensation of being in the presence some ghastly apparition, a horrid creature, perhaps a devil, that would delight in such carnage (...) when I looked closer, I saw a man, grinning, but it was not a man at all, for it bore no eyes, no nose, no feature at all that would mark even the most deplorable of God's creations, which seemed to me to be both wretched and pitiful at that time. That horrid face that was not a face and that ghastly grin, the manner it watched, so gleefully, so plainly, after the horrors I had witnessed man commit to man, I fear I shall only be rid of upon my merciful resting place."