The Boy in the Park: A gripping psychological thriller with a shocking twist. A Grayson J

They weren’t there to help him: they were going to hurt him. They were menacing beasts, that’s how I saw it. My Jaegermeister vision. So I crawled up onto my knees, then my feet, and snuck to the back room to a payphone and called the police. My friend was being assaulted. Violently. They were trying to kill him. Get here quick. I read the address off the typeset note behind the plastic sheath of the payphone.

      The police arrived a few minutes later with guns drawn. Two shots were actually fired, thank God not at any people but as warnings into the floor when the bouncer and an associate, charged up on emotion and surprised at the sight of firearms, initially lunged at the intruders. But the badges that the officers held high stopped them before real damage was done.

      Greg was fine. Sick as a rat, and had to have his stomach pumped; but I was jailed for the first time in my life. A fucking monumental overreaction, dipshit. If you can’t hold your liquor, stay the fuck out of a bar. That’s how the booking officer put it. Not wrongly. I still cringe when I think of it.

      I cringe right now. I’ve already charged into the police station over this boy. I’ve already run around the park accosting elderly couples. Overreaction. Stop it. Don’t pull another Nashville. But there’s a force inside me, the same, perhaps, that possessed me on the floor of that Southern bar. Don’t stop. Something is wrong. Something is very, very wrong.

      I peer down at the ground beneath my feet. The parallel lines of heel scuffs I’d noticed two days ago are still there, though slightly less distinct now. Mud doesn’t hold shape for long. The only witness to the something that I know I saw is fading. Soon there will be nothing left at all. No testimony. No—

      I can’t finish the thought, and it’s not for overemotive speculation. There’s something else, there in the mud, something I’ve only just spotted. Less distinct than the fading trails, but there. Footprints. Little ones, the size a child’s shoes would make. Right there, following the same path as the trails.

      And more importantly, the footprints are pressed on top of the trails. First they point forwards, out to the water; then back, towards the trees.

      I squeeze my hand so tightly around the stick that its rough edges begin to cut into my palm. I’m shaking. I don’t know why, but I’m instantaneously certain. The boy has been back. He’s come back here, and he’s left me his stick.

      In the next seconds I try to figure out what this could mean. Why return at all? It certainly hasn’t been at his usual times; I’ve been here every day. And he’s never before left anything behind. Not until—

      They say realization ‘hits’ you, and I know exactly what they mean. It comes at me like a two-by-four straight across the eyes.

       He’s come back to leave a message. He’s reaching out to me.

      There is no reason I should think like this. Part of me knows immediately that it’s illogical. Spectacularly unlikely. When I’d called out to him before he hadn’t responded, hadn’t shown any sign at all he’d heard. Yet maybe he had. Maybe my voice had reached him and in the midst of his – I struggle to find an emotion to apply to his consistently emotionless visage – in the midst of his whatever