“I thought you had him!”
“I thought you had him.”
I glanced around the room, my heart pounding. “Danny?” I called. “Danny, where are you?”
Silence.
“Calm down. He’s around here somewhere.”
Our house wasn’t even that big. Yet somehow, our six-year-old son was always disappearing. Sometimes I’d find him in one of the lower kitchen cabinets. ‘Camping,’ he called it, pretending the cabinet was his tent and one of his fake fire lanterns was the campfire. Other times I’d find him hiding in the closet, opening all his boxes of old toys and too-small clothing, throwing it all over the place just because.
“Okay, you search upstairs, I’ll search down. DANNY!” I shouted.
“Geez, relax! He’s probably just playing with his Legos. Or hiding in the closet again.”
“Or drowning himself in the bathtub!”
My husband sighed, then started up the stairs. I went into full-on Mommy Panic Mode. I ran over to the family room—empty. Kitchen—empty. Then—
Fuck.
There he was.
Through the sliding glass door, I could see him. He was out in the yard. Or, at least, I saw his fake fire lantern. It bobbed up and down at the far end of the backyard. All the way down by the tree line.
How did he get down there so quickly?!
I threw the door open.
“DANNY!” I shouted. “GET BACK HERE, RIGHT NOW!”
The lantern stilled. Hanging just a few feet over the soft grass. I couldn’t quite make out his small form, his little hand clutched over the lantern’s handle.
“DANNY!”
He didn’t move. Dammit. I burst out of the house, barefoot. My feet slid over the cold, wet grass. “DANNY!”
As I started gaining on him, he started moving. The lantern bobbed with each of his little steps. Getting further away from me.
Going into the woods.
“DANNY!”
“MIRANDA!”
I skidded to a stop. Turned around.
My husband poked his head out the back door. “Found him!” he shouted to me. “He’s upstairs with his Legos.”
I froze.
Looked back into the forest.
The lantern hung in the air, not ten feet away. The soft, fake firelight flickering. And beside it… a figure, that I could barely make out through the trees.
“What the…”
I turned around and high-tailed it back inside.
***
I ended up calling the police. The person holding the lantern was clearly too short to be an adult. What if a child had gotten lost and wandered into our yard?
They told me there were no missing children in the area—and a quick search brought up nothing in the woods, either. Are you sure it was a kid? they’d asked. And honestly, I couldn’t tell them I was sure. It was a dark, moonless night. I’d only assumed it was Danny because of the lantern.
So I forgot about it, for a few days. But then, on Thursday night, I woke up around 2 AM to pee. And when I glanced out the window—
There it was.
Hovering just about ten feet from our back door.
“Kevin. Kevin, wake up,” I said, shaking him. “There’s someone out there.”
I threw on my clothes and poked my head into Danny’s room. Then I crept down the stairs, my heart pounding in my chest. Kevin followed behind. But when we got to the kitchen, the lantern light was no longer so close.
It was about halfway down our backyard, near the garden.
“It’s back. That’s what I was telling the police about,” I whispered.
I watched as it floated in the darkness, just a few feet from the ground. Absolutely still.
Like it was waiting.
Waiting for me to follow it…
“Should we call the police?” I whispered.
Kevin gave a sigh. And even though he didn’t say anything, I knew exactly what it meant. You’re overreacting again. “This feels like a prank,” he said, finally. “Some kid stealing our lanterns and taunting us.”
“It… doesn’t feel that way to me. What if it’s a lost kid—”
“The cop said there weren’t any kids missing in the area.” He reached for the door. “I’ll just go out there and tell them off.”
“You can’t go out there.”
“Why not? It’s just a kid.”
I bit my lip as he slid the door open and walked out into the night.
I watched his shadow walk into the yard, then stop. “Hey! You,” he called out. “I’m going to call your parents and tell them you’re out here.”
Silence.
“You hear me? Get out of here!”
The light bobbed.
And then it started coming towards him.
My blood turned to ice. I wrenched open the door. “Kevin! Kevin, get in here!”
For a moment, he hesitated.
And then he turned around and ran as fast as he could.
As soon as he got inside, he slid the door closed with all his might. Locked it. Yanked the string to make the blinds cover it.
“It—it’s not a kid.”
My breath caught in my throat. I immediately imagined some horrible monster, some Golem-like creature crawling around our yard with our lantern.
But what my husband said was far, far worse.
“It’s a man,” he said, barely able to catch his breath. His wide eyes locked on mine, and I could see the terror in them.
“It’s a man walking around on all fours.”