There: He-s Out

“That’s not what happened.” But Sam’s voice was cracking now, the way it cracked when he was twelve and scared and so full of shame he thought his ribs would break. “He was drunk. He was always drunk. He would have—”

Sam’s legs went numb. He grabbed the doorframe. “Where is he? Where’s my father?”

“Out where?”

“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.” He-s Out There

“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.”

Sam walked out into the honeysuckle and the dark, and the woods swallowed him whole.

“He’s out there, Sam. He’s always been out there. And he’s still calling.” “That’s not what happened

But late at night, when the wind blows from the east and the honeysuckle is thick on the air, you can hear two voices in the woods. One old and rough. One young and afraid. Calling back and forth through the dark, getting closer, closer, never quite meeting.

The flashlight flickered once, twice, and died.

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. He would have—” Sam’s legs went numb

They wouldn’t find Sam.

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.