The Phantom Flagman

 The Phantom Flagman

The streetlights of Aberystwyth cast long, skeletal shadows down Corporation Street, their feeble glow barely penetrating the thick, inky blackness of the moonless night. A biting wind, smelling of salt and damp earth, whipped around the corners, carrying with it the mournful creak of unseen signs and the distant, rhythmic crash of waves against the promenade. It was a night tailor-made for unease, and Owen "Gwyn" Evans, the most dedicated—and some might say, obsessive—flagman in all of Ceredigion, felt it in his bones.

Gwyn wasn't just any flagman. He was an artist of the orange cone, a maestro of the Stop/Go paddle. Even in the dead of night, for a roadworks project that seemed eternally stalled, he was out there, a solitary sentinel in his high-vis vest, bathed in the sickly yellow glow of a single, flickering lamp. Tonight, however, felt different. An oppressive silence hung heavy in the air, broken only by the wind's mournful song and the tap-tap-tap of something unseen.

He’d been flagging for an hour when he first saw it. A faint, shimmering outline at the far end of the deserted street, just beyond the reach of his solitary lamp. It looked like… another flagman. But this figure was taller, impossibly thin, and seemed to float rather than walk. Its high-vis vest glowed with an eerie, internal luminescence, and its paddle, instead of displaying "STOP" or "GO," seemed to ripple with a shifting, unreadable script.

Gwyn, a man of routine, initially dismissed it as fatigue. Too much late-night flagging, perhaps. But then the figure glided closer, its movements smooth and silent, utterly devoid of the scuff of boots or the rustle of fabric. As it drew nearer, Gwyn felt a chill that had nothing to do with the biting wind. The air around the spectral flagman grew perceptibly colder, and a faint, sweet smell, like damp earth mixed with something ancient and forgotten, wafted towards him.

He gripped his own paddle tighter, his knuckles white. The phantom raised its own paddle, not to direct traffic, but as if in a silent, chilling greeting. The shifting script on its sign resolved into a single, stark word: "WAIT."

A cold dread seeped into Gwyn's very core. This wasn't a living person. This was something… else. He tried to speak, but his throat was dry, his voice caught. The spectral figure continued its slow, inexorable approach, its eyes, if it had them, hidden in the shimmering distortion of its form. As it drew within feet of him, Gwyn could feel the raw, icy grip of its presence. The wind suddenly died, and the silence became absolute, suffocating.

Then, the phantom flagman did something truly terrifying. It slowly, deliberately, lowered its glowing paddle, then extended a long, translucent arm towards Gwyn. A single, bony finger, glowing faintly, pointed directly at his chest.

And from somewhere deep within the silent street, a whisper, ancient and sorrowful, slithered into Gwyn’s mind: "You've waited long enough..."

Gwyn Evans, the unflappable flagman, didn't hesitate. He dropped his paddle with a clatter that sounded deafening in the sudden stillness and sprinted down Corporation Street as if the hounds of hell were at his heels, leaving the glowing spectre to its eternal, silent vigil. 

To this day, if you ask him, he'll tell you he saw a particularly aggressive gust of wind. But he'll also tell you he flags exclusively during daylight hours now, and he never, ever, looks at the far end of a dark street.

Do you think Gwyn will ever go back to flagging at night, or has this experience changed him forever?