The Shadow in the Night

The Shadow in the Night: Growing up in a quiet rural area, I lived in a house perched atop a small hill, surrounded by thick woods. The place had a history — one marred by an atrocity
committed by native tribesmen against the European settlers who had once lived there. While I can’t say if the past had any connection to what I witnessed, it has always
been in the back of my mind.

As a child, I remember my bed being positioned against a bank of windows, and I
often found myself staring out into the night sky before drifting off to sleep. One
particularly bright, moonlit evening, when I was only six or seven years old, something happened that would stay with me forever. As I lay there, I distinctly sawthe shadow of a boy dash across our yard.

It seemed impossible. Our house sat about 150 feet from the road, on a hill, far awayfrom any other homes or lights. The boy moved so quickly that by the time I gatheredthe courage to stand up and chase after him, he had already disappeared. My youngmind dismissed it as a trick of the light, or perhaps my imagination.

Years passed, and I forgot about it… until I was 16. It happened again. I had begunsneaking cigarettes from my mother’s pack, and one evening, as I sat on a concrete
step behind the house, enjoying one of my forbidden smokes, the same shadowranpast — this time, not more than ten feet away. There was no sound, no body to
explain the shadow. Just the unmistakable silhouette of a boy, no older than ten, running swiftly across our lawn and toward the woods that bordered the northern sideof our property.

I was shaken, but I kept it to myself. I didn’t want to seem crazy, so I said nothinguntil a few days later, when I brought it up to my older sister. She paled immediately, abandoning her usual cheerful expression. She looked at me, wide-eyed, and
whispered, “You saw him too?”

Apparently, I wasn’t the only one. My sister revealed that the boy had appeared toher
as a solid, living child, around nine or ten years old, wearing overalls and a weatherednewsboy-style hat. She described how he would beckon to the girls, urging themtofollow him into the woods. Interestingly, it seemed only females saw himin this form.

As I recounted what I saw — the shadow of a boy running —my sister grewevenmore serious. She told me that our oldest sister, their friends, and even our mother hadseen him too, always in the same form: a child in overalls, with a hat. Years later, I
brought up the boy to my cousin, who immediately described him just as my sister
had — a little boy in overalls and a hat, running through the woods.

The story doesn’t end there. A couple of years ago, I was hired to do some electrical
work at the home of a woman who had once visited our farm with her mother whenwe were kids. She and my mom had stayed in touch over the years. One morning, out of the blue, she asked me if I remembered seeing the boy in the overalls and hat bythe woods when I was younger.

That question struck me like a bolt of lightning. No one had spoken of himfor years, yet there she was, bringing it up as though it were yesterday. I couldn’t help but
wonder: is he still there, running through the deep night, as he had before, calling tothe girls to follow him into the woods? Some lingering presence, forever bound totheearth by an old danger, trying to lead them into the forest, where time and reality seemto blur.

Is the Shadow Still There?

Today, I often wonder if the boy in overalls is still running through the woods at night, trying to lead the girls into the forest. Is he bound by some ancient tragedy, tryingtoescape a long-forgotten danger? Some mysteries are never meant to be solved, but his
shadow remains, running through the night, just beyond the edge of reality.