She didn’t know. No one knew.
Not angry. Not drunk. Just lost. Just a father who wanted to come home.
In the morning, the neighbors would find his truck with the keys still in the ignition, the driver’s door hanging open. They’d find the flashlight on the floor of the Packer house, its batteries corroded, its bulb shattered. They’d find the child’s shoe—size three, red—and they’d wonder whose it was, because no child had lived in Packer’s Corner for fifteen years.
Sam took a step toward the door. Then another. He-s Out There
In the dark, Sam heard the front door swing open. He heard the crickets start up again, loud and frantic. And he heard his father’s voice, clearer now, coming from the edge of the woods.
Sam got to his feet. His hands were shaking. His heart was a trapped bird against his ribs. He looked at the thing—at the empty face wearing his father’s clothes—and then he looked at the woods.
“You came back,” the thing said, and the voice came from everywhere—the walls, the floorboards, the dust motes dancing in the flashlight beam. “After all this time. I knew you would.” She didn’t know
Sam’s hand went to his hip—old habit, even though he’d left the service weapon in the truck. He’d promised his wife he wouldn’t bring it. It’s just your father, she’d said. What’s he going to do, hurt you?
Behind him, the thing in the chair began to hum—an old song, one his father used to whistle while he worked. The one about the long black veil.
“You can fix it,” the thing said softly. “You can go out there and find him. Bring him home. Bury him proper. And then you can stop running.” Not drunk
“Will it end?” he asked. “If I find him?”
Sam’s legs gave out. He hit the floor hard, the flashlight skittering across the boards, sending wild shadows up the walls. The thing stood over him, and Sam saw that its feet—his father’s boots, the ones with the steel toes—weren’t touching the ground.
Sam’s legs went numb. He grabbed the doorframe. “Where is he? Where’s my father?”
“He would have what? Hit you? Screamed at you?” The thing was close now. Sam could smell it—not rot, not decay, but something worse. The smell of a basement after a flood. The smell of things that should have stayed buried. “He was your father, Sam. And you left him out there. You let the woods take him.”
The chair turned slowly.
