The autumn afternoon was cold and dreary, the kind that makes you want to stay inside and build a pillow fort. Technicolor leaves decorated the city scape and framed the miniscule park that lay directly in front of the Second Empire home on the corner. Inside, Kay Jacobs, née O’Malley, sat by the first floor picture window that overlooked the lot, drinking a cup of cold coffee, black. Wind whistled through the brooding pines and exhaled into the early evening sky.

A loose corkscrew of hair tugged its way free from her slate-grey bun. She pushed it back absentmindedly, her eyes fixated on the long-abandoned playground across the street. It was silent, aside from the squeaking noises of the rusted swings and the muted gusts of air. There was no sign of him. Yet.

Long retired from her job as a real estate agent and with both sons gone, Kay spent her afternoons doing nothing for the most part. Her life was rather boring and dismal, especially in the fall when she couldn’t tend to the garden. For the past two weeks, however, she had noticed a tall man in a dark, well fitting suit and sunglasses had been arriving in a black SUV to the park - to the playground, specifically, and appeared to take notes. She assumed he was a real estate developer of a sort, but just in case, she had been taking notes on him: what he was doing, what he looked like, et cetera, et cetera.

It was odd, she thought. Everytime she pulled out her notebook to take more notes, she realized that they were a little off. He seemed taller each day, and more intimidating. Her description of his face was minimal, as well. She had never seen him without his oversized shades, infact had never seen him face her house, so she grew increasingly frustrated with her inability to know what he looked like. Kay did not like not knowing.

Again, she wondered what his intentions were. Was he looking at apartments in the area and wanted to see if the park was nice enough? Was he a relentless pedophile who was looking for his next prey? Or was he really scoping out the park for some developers?

Kay could not imagine that he was either of the first two, and while the last seemed most likely, she still had a gut instinct that it was not right either. The park itself was rather well kept, with trimmed grass that just beginning to brown now that it was October. Ancient, knotted trees had matured there for the 60 years the small park had been in the city. Families of squirrels retired among the graying oaks and chattered noisily. Really, the only thing that would need work would be the playground. Kay knew real estate and knew they wouldn't send a guy out for two weeks just for a playground.

Unless of course, they were going to rip the whole place down and put in a new housing development, or God forbid, a traffic circle. In Kay's eyes, traffic circles were the human equivalent to purgatory. If a traffic circle went in, she’d never again enjoy a peaceful afternoon like this. That would be absolutely awful.

Kay was a quiet person, and liked to keep everything in her life that way. This was the most excitement she had had in perhaps two decades - since her husband died. He had succumbed to liver cancer - ran in the family, plus the fact that he was an eager alcoholic. Kay scoffed out loud at the thought of her late husband. She had grieved his death of course, she wasn’t heartless; but he was a harsh, avid drunk. She did not love him in the end, and she hadn’t for many years. She likely stopped loving the night of their wedding, when he got drunk and gave a toast to her ass. She could still remember the way a burnt maroon flush creeped its way up her creamy Irish skin, how his buddies sounded like a tsunami of laughter. He never even apologized for it, Kay remembered bitterly.

And of course, she hated him for the other thing. Most people who knew them and their family had. But he had blamed her and she had blamed him. It was the one thing she hadn’t been quiet and docile about. She knew it was his fault, so she shouldn’t feel guilt, should she?

She was startled out of her memories by the feeling of a salty tear dripping off of her freckled nose. She hastily wiped it away, sniffing and peeking out of the corners of her eyes, as if someone would of seen her crying. She had no idea how long she had been lost on her thoughts, but it was long enough. He was here.

The man was facing the house.

He was not writing, or making any facial expression that indicated that he saw her. His glasses were on. In fact, he was virtually so expressionless that if Kay didn’t know any better, she would have thought he just had a very wrinkly, bald head. Then he raised his sunglasses.

The first thing she noticed was he didn’t appear to have eyes. They were the same color of his shades, dark and empty. In fact, it looked like they were his eye sockets. Kay let out a tiny gasp, just barely audible. The man seemed to hear her.

He c***ed his head and began to grimace - or was it a grin? His mouth widened and contorted into a twisted smile, the edges framed in black, with a slime-like onyx colored substance dripping from between his jagged, sharpened teeth. They stuck out like rocks along a foreboding ocean coastline. His eyebrows were dark and furrowed, which would have appeared angry if it weren’t for his maniacal smile. The skin on his face seemed fluid, shifting and stretching in a putty-like manner. In short, he was terrifying.

He took the smallest of steps closer to the street that divided them. His movement was graceful, giving her chills up and down her spine. Kay stifled a shriek and fought more tears - these ones of fear. She recognized him. Even with his disturbingly altered face, she would recognize the way he walked and moved anywhere. Why - how - was he here?

She blinked. Suddenly, she realized he was not facing the house. He appeared to have turned around extremely quickly, inhumanly fast. She blinked again. He stood facing the park, taking notes. It seemed so completely ordinary that she had trouble believing anything she saw was not the usual. But a part of her mind whispered, It was him. You know it.

But she couldn’t be sure. Perhaps it was one of her episodes. In fact, now that she thought about it, that had to be it. She was likely triggered by the memories of her late husband.

There had been many, many occurrences like this before. The doctors had told her it was due to trauma left over from the incident. Her vision began to play tricks on her and she would start seeing things that weren’t there, like the face of the man. Sometimes her hearing would be affected too. The doctors said it was a mental barrier, stemming from feelings of hopelessness and guilt. The only way to get rid of them was to take medication, and no way did Kay want to be drugged up all the time. So she dealt with them in her own way: blink and count to ten. You can take ten seconds of anything. Even heart wrenching, traumatic, guilt soaked memories.

She glanced over at the clock in the kitchen and realized it was half past five. At this time, the man usually left. Yet he was still writing. He seemed to have much more to say today.

Fifteen minutes passed. She was growing impatient and anxious. If he left, everything would truly be okay again, she thought as she tried to convince herself. Her episode would pass and she would eat dinner and go to bed, safe in her own home. Perhaps he was taking longer because it was his last time visiting the site. A bubble of hope sprung in her chest.

“Yes, that must be what it is,” she said softly to herself. Somehow, saying the words made it feel more real. Which it definitely is!  she chided internally. It has to be.

Five more minutes. It was nearing six now, and Kay’s stomach growled in hunger. The only thing she had eaten all day was an apple and a chocolate croissant. Plus the black coffee. Just a quick bite to eat wouldn’t hurt, right?
Kay stood from her wooden chair, her back aching and knees feeling like sawdust and wandered over to the fridge, where she pulled out a slab of bacon, eggs and a hunk of cheddar.

She then opened the drawer where she normally kept the cheese knife. After searching half heartedly for a moment, she decided on using a steak knife instead. She grabbed a frying pan and turned on the top burners to make a quick omelet. Too tired to bother with more dishes, she removed a fork from the same drawer and pushed it shut with her hip.

She went over to the seat where she was previously and sat down. The omelet was warm and sponge like in consistency. She sunk lower in her chair and devoured half of her dinner. Mid-bite, she glanced out the window. The man was gone. Kay smiled a little to herself, congratulating her correct guess that he would leave soon. A moment later, her smile faded and the omelet soured in her mouth. His SUV was idling by the park still.

A jolt of fear traveled up her body. Maybe he was just waiting and finishing the notes in his car. Still, she felt that it wasn’t an entirely correct assumption. Now seemed like the perfect time to call the police. She dialed the number, and pressed it against her ear. Instead of hearing the ringing of the phone or a long, flat dial tone, the phone answered in silence. She followed the cord to where it connected to the wall. Right before it reached there, she saw what looked like a small fray in the wire. She blinked. The fray was gone. The wire was a perfectly smooth, pearly white. A second later, she heard the calm voice of the operator saying, “911, what’s your emergency?”

Radio silence on Kay’s end.

“Hello?”

Her head pounded.

She hung up the phone and placed her head in her palms. What was she going to say to the police? She needed to think first. Her eyes burned with pain and there was a dull steady thump behind her eyelids. Migraines often came along with the episodes. She prayed to God that she wasn’t getting one. That would just be the icing on the cake. Her headache screamed louder to her, overriding any thoughts that could possibly form.

She hadn’t had a headache this bad since the day of the incident. It had been a cool fall afternoon much like this one and she had woken with terrible pain in her skull. She had been in the first trimester of her second pregnancy and spent most of the morning hovering over the toilet bowl. David, her firstborn, was only five at the time and didn’t have full weeks of school yet. He had been bouncing around with the energy of a child cooped up in the house all day, and finally Kay had yelled at him in frustration to go find his father so he could go to the park across the street. David had shrunk away with heartbroken Bambi eyes but Kay was in one of those moods where she was annoyed beyond the point of caring.

Her husband, Jack, had quietly taken David out of the house, but he had also taken a bottle of “coke” and a hangover from the night before. As David played on the swings, Jack sat and drank himself to sleep. Meanwhile, Kay collapsed into a much needed sleep in the house. With no supervision, David traveled out of the chain link fortress of the playground and into the park. Unbeknownst to both parents, a man had lured David to his car, a large black vehicle, before speeding away into the impending night.

When Kay had woken from her nap, it was dark out and the house was quiet aside from a muffled wailing. The sound soaked through the floorboards, and Kay followed it into the kitchen. It was Jack, sitting on the floor, empty liquor bottles spread around him. He was crying.

His sobs pricked at Kay’s veins and she felt the swell of a headache begin again. “What the hell’s the matter with you?” Kay whispered to him. “Get yourself off the floor. Where’s David?”

Her husband raised his watery eyes to her steel blue ones. “He’s gone. Th-the man took him.”

Kay remembered the anger and the fear she felt, the primal instincts to protect her child and the vicious need to blame her self-centered alcoholic of a husband. She remembered how she called the police and how they said We traced him, we found David. She remembered how gratitude bloomed within her but then terrible guilt as she realized what it meant that they found David. She remembered the funeral and how the killer was never found and she remembered how the entire community hated Jack; but she hated him most of all. She remembered how one day in a drunken rage he swore to her that he would kill her one day and she remembered when he died how safe she felt. Now, nearly 40 years later, alone in her home, across the street from where her beloved son was taken, she tried to redirect some of those feelings of the hatred and fear, to make her bold. 

She tried to gather her strength. But before she could, the power briefly went out. She let out a little shriek and clutched a fist to her chest, feeling her heart accelerate to speeds that could surpass a cheetah. A tiny sob escaped her. She felt as hopeless as she did the day of the incident. She blinked, praying it was part of her episode. The light from the hallway behind the kitchen flickered on. Her shadow fell in front of her, toward the picture window.

A silhouette of a figure appeared through the window, three yards in front of hers. The man seemed to be standing in the dark front yard, grinning his twisted, oozing smile. Her heart nearly burst through her chest. He was in her goddamn front yard! Why didn’t she call the police? How could she be so stupid?

It was at this moment that she noticed that he had a key in his left hand. She froze in place, her mouth agape in a silent scream, her hand raised as if she were stifling a yawn. It was her house key, the extra one that she kept hidden in a place only she knew.

Her eyes widened as she watched him walk closer and raise his other hand. He was holding a very familiar knife. In particular, it was the knife she used to cut the cheese for her omelet earlier.

But how…? She thought. He couldn’t have that knife or the key unless…

Kay blinked. All of a sudden, her headache disappeared and she realised exactly two things.

The first was who the man was. The second was that he was not in her front yard. He was a reflection.

Kay turned around just in time to meet the knife with her chest. She blinked again and saw the face of her husband leering over her, his skin gray and his smile horrifying. He grinned a wide maniacal grin.

“Hello, Kay. I’ve come to make good on my promise.”