That Creepy Little Kid in the Wrinkled Black Suit

WEDNESDAY

10:30 PM.

If I had to choose my absolute most favorite time of the day – at least on weekdays – 10:30 PM would rank right up there. Why, you ask? Because back when I worked at the Sav-Mart, 10:30 PM meant just one thing to me.

Time to clock out.

Don’t get me wrong. Cashiering at Sav-Mart wasn’t the worst job in the world. But then again, it wasn’t a great gig either. It was just your ordinary entry-level position at your average big-box retailer, monotonous and unexciting but satisfyingly straightforward. When I worked there I earned just enough money to pay my rent and purchase the occasional bag of reefer, which was really all I ever needed back when I was 24. But I never nearly enough money to make me actually enjoy the job.

So it was about 10:30 on a Wednesday night when I kicked open the swinging double doors that lead to the employees-only area of the Sav-Mart, like a Wild West sheriff entering a saloon. I sauntered up to the time clock, really making a show of it for all the poor saps still milling around who had only just clocked in for the graveyard shift.

I grabbed the handy dandy Sav-Mart lanyard that was draped around my neck, raised my laminated employee ID badge to the scanner and let the flickering red lights dance across the barcode beneath the embarrassing photograph of me with the sleepy, stoned-looking eyes and the uncooperative cowlick jutting out of the side of my head, and with one wonderful beep from the punch-in machine, I became a free man once again.

Jiggling my foot furiously, I waited for the system to spit out my shift report, that ridiculously long strip of paper covered in a million indecipherable numbers. When it finally finished printing I crumpled it up, not even bothering to look it over, and then I skyhooked the ball of paper over the heads of a few fellow employees and into a nearby trashcan à la Kareem Abdul Jabbar.

“Nothin’ but net!” I cried triumphantly, and I went for a high-five from an elderly fellow employee who I didn't really recognize, some rotund lady that I imagined might work in the garden department or perhaps produce or something. She rebuffed me with extreme prejudice, so I turned to the half-dozen other co-workers who were still standing around, all of whom were about a hundred years old and none of whom I knew by name, but they weren’t too enthusiastic about my accomplishment either.

That was the problem with working at a place like Sav-Mart. With sheer size of our staff as well as the ruthless rate of turnover, employees never really had much of an opportunity to get to know one another. So even after working there for three years, I had no idea who most of my colleagues were.

I strolled over to that deep, dark corner at the back of the break room that always smelled of feet, the employee locker area. I peeled off my dirty blue Sav-Mart shirt and stuffed it unfolded into the back of my musty little cubbyhole. Then I grabbed my car keys and cellphone and got the hell out of there as quickly as I could.

* * * * *

Winter was rapidly approaching and the sprawling Sav-Mart parking lot was enveloped in darkness and ever so lightly dusted with snow. Since employees aren’t allowed to park their cars in any of the first fifty rows nearest to the store, I had quite a walk ahead of me, so I sparked a cigarette and fiddled with my phone for a little while. I parked in the same place every day and knew the walk to my car like the back of my hand – hell, I could probably do it blindfolded – and I effortlessly avoided the ice patches and oil slicks littered along the way, my eyes fixed upon my phone all the while.

Approaching my trusty old Toyota Camry as well as the end of my cigarette, I fired off the text message I was typing and stuffed my phone back into my pocket, and I was digging around in there for my keys when all of a sudden some creepy little kid in a wrinkled black suit came darting out from between two parked cars and scared the living shit out of me.

Even though he was clearly a few feet shorter and a few decades younger than me, I cried out and reflexively threw my hands up as though I was being robbed at gunpoint, nearly swallowing my cigarette butt and inadvertently flinging my keys under a pick-up truck parked nearby.

“Holy crap, kid. You almost gave me a heart attack!” I said breathlessly.

The little boy scampered away and as he disappeared into the darkness he giggled, one of those devilish little laughs that evil children in old horror movies always have. And as something of a horror film aficionado myself, it immediately gave me goosebumps.

* * * * *

I just stood there for a while, frozen in fear, my heart about to leap out of my throat, nervously looking around the dark parking lot for any sign of that creepy little kid, but he was long gone.

Leaning against the back bumper of my car, I struggled to catch my breath and it took several minutes for me to regain my composure, and when I was finally able to I actually began to chuckle.

Get a grip, Clark, I told myself. You just got scared shitless by a six year-old. Grow up, dude.

I got down on my hands and knees to retrieve my keys from beneath a big blue Dodge Ram, and was annoyed to discover that I’d thrown them just about as far out of reach as was possible. I had no choice but to lay flat on my stomach and slither under the truck like some sort of clumsy snake.

After a good bit of wiggling, I was almost there. The tips of my fingers could just barely touch my keychain, I almost had them, so I lunged forward with all my might and my hand miraculously wrapped around the keys. I was about to slide my way back out when two scuffed and untied little leather dress shoes suddenly appeared underneath the pick-up, and I knew that the creepy kid had come back.

Foolishly, my first instinct was to try and stand up and I banged my head hard on the undercarriage. Howling in pain and profanely expressing my displeasure, I dragged myself out from beneath the truck and sprang to my feet, ready to read this kid the riot act, but when I looked around the parking lot he was nowhere to be found.

I felt the lump on the back of my head, which was already swelling into a large knot the shape of an egg like something from an old cartoon. I cursed aloud a couple times, rubbing at my smarting scalp, and then I climbed into the old Camry and headed home.

* * * * *

Later that night, I took a few bong rips with a bag of frozen peas perched atop my head while watching a delightfully bad b-movie called Chopping Mall that oddly featured no chopping at all, only lasers. The weed had successfully driven the creepy little kid from my mind, but when I dozed off on my couch he returned to me in a dream.

I dreamt I was driving along one of those desolate country roads you always see in scary movies, where there isn’t a streetlamp in sight and the only source of light is a thin sliver of moon shining behind a few wispy clouds, and the only things you can really see through the darkness are the lane lines and road reflectors and the branches of those menacing-looking trees that surround the road and seem to reach out and try to grab you as you’re going by. 

In my dream, I was nervous for some reason that was not readily apparent and I was driving way too fast, as though I was trying to escape from someone. Turning to my right, I saw that creepy little kid in the passenger’s seat, wearing the same wrinkled old suit he had on earlier. He was staring straight ahead with his hands folded neatly in his lap and I tried to ask him what the hell he was doing in my car, but my mouth would not cooperate with brain and I couldn’t seem to get any words to come out. Right when it seemed like my lips had finally formed a word, the kid calmly raised his hand to silence me, then pointed one of his tiny fingers at something through the windshield.

I turned my head to look at whatever he was pointing to and suddenly the kid was no longer in my car, he was standing out in the middle of the road. Desperately I tried to swerve around him but my steering wheel wouldn’t budge, it felt like it was locked in place, and I wanted to scream but I couldn’t seem to do that either.

Right before the boy was struck by my front bumper he seemed to smile at me and then he disappeared under the car, accompanied by the sickening sound of what I imagined were bones being ground up in a big blender.

I woke up in a cold sweat, screaming my head off, and even though I lived alone I immediately felt embarrassed about it. I took two big bong rips in an attempt to tranquilize myself, but it still was almost an hour before I calmed down enough to fall asleep again.

THURSDAY

The next day I worked my shift at the Sav-Mart, which went by uneventfully enough, but when I went to my car at the end of night that creepy kid was back.

Thankfully the little boy didn’t scare the bejesus out of me this time around. I could see him from quite a distance away as I crossed the parking lot. He was standing right behind my Camry’s back bumper, and when I approached him I tried to act nonchalant about it even though my heart was starting to race.

“Oh, it’s you,” I said and rolled my eyes. “Here to scare me again?”

The boy responded with one of those terrifying little laughs, made all the more chilling by the fact that his face was completely and utterly expressionless. It made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I continued to act cool and casual but I was a lot less convincing about it now.

“You’re a bit of an oddball, aren’t you?” I said, looking him over.

The kid looked like a miniature mortician in his crinkled black suit, the coat just a little too large and the pant legs just a little too short, leaving a flash of bright white tube sock showing around his ankles. His outdated paisley tie was stained, sloppily knotted and far too long for him, falling nearly to his knees, and it dangled out from under the hem of his coat. His skin was ghostly white as though he had been carved out of ivory, and his lips and eyelids had a purplish tint to them like he had never encountered daylight in his life. His emotionless eyes were dark and beady like a dolphin’s, and his coal-black hair was slicked to the side and plastered to his head with an excessive amount of gel.

“What’s with the suit and the snazzy hairdo, kid?” I asked, trying to coax him into saying something, anything. “Got a hot date tonight?”

The little boy remained unresponsive and just stood there staring at me with that unsettlingly vacant look on his face, so I simply turned on my heel and walked away from him.

I climbed into my car, crammed the slightly crooked key into the ignition and started the engine but the kid continued to stand there behind my back bumper, turning around to make awkward eye contact with me in the rearview mirror.

Drumming my fingers on the dashboard, I waited impatiently for the kid to get out of the way so I could back out but he didn’t so I honked the horn, which I expected to startle him, but it didn’t, and he just stood there and stared at me for another few uncomfortable moments.

And then, without warning, he nimbly ducked down and climbed underneath my car.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I cried, throwing the door open and nearly strangling myself when I tried to exit without undoing my seatbelt. When I got myself untangled I kneeled down beside the car. “You little dumbass, you could get seriously injured doing stupid shit like this!”

I got down on my hands and knees and peered beneath my vehicle but the kid wasn’t there. I leaped back up to my feet and spun around in a circle, trying to see where he’d run off to, but he was gone.

As I climbed back into my car I heard that sinister little giggle coming from somewhere off in the distance and I quickly slammed the door shut and locked it, then gunned the engine and got the hell out of there.

* * * * *

I was passed out on the sofa with a can of Dr. Sav – Sav-Mart’s economically priced knock-off of Dr. Pepper – balanced on my chest and a DVD of the infamously awful horror flick Silent Night Bloody Night 2 looping endlessly on my television set when I dreamt about that damned kid again.

This dream seemed to continue from right around where the last one had left off. I was pulling my car over onto the shoulder of that eerie road that seemed to come from straight out of an old horror movie. The front fender of my Camry was crumpled, the engine was rattling like a giant metal maraca, and black clouds billowed out from under the hood like someone was trying to send smoke signals. I stepped out of the vehicle but didn't bother to assess the damage and instead I began to walk back down the road toward whatever it was that I’d just run over.

I kept saying to myself Please be a dog please be a dog please be a dog over and over again, but as I approached the thing sprawled out in the middle of the road I knew it wasn’t a dog, it was that creepy kid in his wrinkly black suit. He was lying on his back with two tire treads cartoonishly tattooed across his flattened little body, and there was a curious absence of blood on the asphalt around him.

Strangely, I did not feel particularly panicked about the whole situation and just sort of accepted what I was seeing. I intuitively knew that this kid was already dead, there was nothing I could do for him, so I really didn’t beat myself up about it too much and just knelt down solemnly beside him.

His eyes opened and an eerie red light was flickering within them, and then he suddenly sat bolt upright and started to peel himself off of the pavement in a way that sounded like strips of Velcro being torn apart. I wanted to scream and run away but couldn’t do either; I was completely frozen in fear, unable to move.

Then the little boy stood up. He bent over at the waist, putting his palms down on the pavement, and then he started to walk around on all fours like some strange sort of animal, a quadrupedal human, not crawling on his hands and knees but rather walking on his hands and feet, both arms and legs fully extended.

It was a truly bizarre sight to behold.

The kid slowly crept towards me, his bare palms slapping against the cold concrete, and then he stopped and crouched down. He raised his head up at an unnatural angle and we locked gazes for a few terrifying moments, and I could see the little red flames dancing around inside his beady black eyes, and then he snarled like a rabid dog and lunged for my throat.

For the second night in a row I woke up screeching like a banshee, but this time I wasn’t just soaked in sweat, I had spilled Dr. Sav all over myself as well, and it took forever for me to fall asleep again.

FRIDAY

The next day I went to work with only one thought on my mind, a sort of mantra I kept chanting to myself: Thank God it’s Friday. At the very least, I could avoid the Sav-Mart parking lot and that frightening little boy for the following two days. All I needed to do was make it through this shift.

I went about my business with every expectation that I would be seeing that creepy kid in his ill-fitting little suit when I went out to my car at the end of the evening, but this time he didn’t even wait until I was off work.

It was painfully slow in the store that night and Bill Lozaida – the only manager on duty at the time – had disappeared into the office and was probably taking a nap with his feet up on the desk, so I abandoned my cash register to go on an unauthorized smoke break out back by the dumpsters. To keep from locking myself out, I propped the back door open with one of those ubiquitous cinderblocks that are always left lying around the dumpster area for no obvious reason. I pulled out a cigarette and started puffing merrily away when all of a sudden that creepy kid jumped out from behind a recycling bin, and the sinister little spawn of Satan giggled in that weird way that really chilled my blood.

At this point, I’d pretty much had it with the spooky little brat so I launched into a tirade.

“Listen, you little shit!” I barked at him. “I’ve had it with you! If you don’t stop following me around, I’ll wring your God damn neck!”

The boy giggled again.

“Look, kid. I don’t care how young you are,” I growled, trying to sound as menacing as possible. “I’ll kick the crap out of you if you ever try to scare me again.”

Defiantly, he giggled again, and that was the last straw.

Uncomfortable with the idea of actually kicking a kindergartner’s ass, I came up with a new idea on the fly. I threw my cigarette at him like a dart and it bounced off of his forehead, burning him just above his left eyebrow. The kid yipped like a kicked dog and ran away howling in agony.

Immediately afterwards, I felt pretty bad about what I’d done. After all, it was only a little kid. Sure, he was annoying as all hell, but did he really deserve to be burned by a lit cigarette just for bugging me a bit? I finished off my shift with this weighing heavily on my mind.

Later on while I was walking through the parking lot, I decided to act like an adult and apologize to the kid if I saw him, but he wasn’t standing next to my car that night. To be honest, I was more than a little relieved to discover that he wasn’t out there waiting for me.

As I was backing out of my parking spot, I took a glance in my rearview mirror and spotted the kid standing next to the shopping cart corral, staring at me. Perhaps it was just my imagination but he seemed to be scowling, as opposed to his ordinarily blank expression. I suppose this was understandable considering what I’d done to him earlier, but that sour look on his face immediately made me forget any plans to apologize. I stomped on my brakes and rolled down my window to yell at him.

“God damn it!” I shouted. “Didn’t you learn your lesson back there by the dumpsters after I –”

When I poked my head out of the open window to get a good look at him, the kid was gone.

* * * * *

That night’s dream was entirely different from all the other ones. First of all, it unfolded in a peaceful sunlit setting. And more importantly, that creepy little kid wasn’t in it.

On a bright, beautiful day, that might have been a bit on the nippy side but still somehow warm enough for me to be wearing a tank-top, flip-flops, and some ridiculous floral board shorts, I was washing my Camry out in the driveway. The car was nice and sudsy and just begging to be rinsed off, so I went and fetched the garden hose.

I uncoiled the enormous green hose and ran it out to the car, then I cranked the faucet open but nothing happened. I heard some strange, distant whine like the sound of a faraway train and then the hose kicked once, followed by a loud whirring noise not unlike a blender. The hose kicked again, more forcefully this time, and now it sounded like something had been jammed into the blades of that big invisible blender.

And then the hose finally began to flow.

But it wasn’t water that came out. It was blood.

I didn’t seem to mind. In fact, I pressed my thumb down over the nozzle and sprayed that blood all over the place and even danced around in the ghastly red mist that hung in the air, making strange little rainbows in the sunlight.

When I woke up I was a little bit sweaty but at least I wasn’t screaming my fool head off this time, and all I could do was just sort of scratch my head.

SATURDAY

It was Saturday and I had the day off, which I could not have been happier about. I spent the day doing absolutely nothing in particular, just eating Doritos and watching old reruns of The Twilight Zone.

Late in the afternoon, my best friend Mike Futch came over to smoke some weed and watch a few cheesy old horror flicks with me, which had been our weekend ritual for the better part of a decade. Mike worked at a Video Maniacs across town and had access to some of the most obscure and awful films on Earth, so he could always be counted on to come with an armful of DVDs, as well as all the Orville Redenbacher we could eat. We never really paid too much attention the movies we watched, just putting them on for something to poke fun at while we burned through enough reefer to bring down an angry elephant.

Sometime between I Bury the Living and Ozone: Attack of the Redneck Mutants, I mentioned to Mike that a creepy little kid had been following me around the Sav-Mart, waiting for me at my car every night, and that he had even begun to invade my dreams.

Mike’s response: “Dude, you need to stop smoking so much pot… Actually, scratch that. You need to smoke even more pot.”

And in typical Mike Futch fashion, he handed me a freshly loaded bong.

* * * * *

Mike crashed on my recliner that night and I fell asleep on the couch as usual. I often wondered why I even owned a bed.

Of course I began to dream about that creepy little kid in the wrinkled suit the moment my eyelids were shut.

This dream started out almost identical to the very first one. It was the dead of the night and I was driving along that lonesome, moonlit road, the one with all those evil-looking trees that tried to snatch you up in their outstretched branches.

There was definitely something different about this dream. It was a whole hell of a lot more vivid than all the others. And this time around, I recognized the road. Without a doubt it was Rural Route 9, a thin ribbon of asphalt that meandered through the forested hills outside of town.

Once again, I was driving way too fast like someone was after me. The kid was in the passenger seat beside me, staring straight ahead with his little hands folded in his lap, but I didn’t try to talk to him this time, I just kept on truckin'. And I seemed to already know exactly what was going to happen next, but was powerless to stop it.

Without warning, the kid reached over and grabbed the wheel, forcing it sharply to the left, and we lurched across the center stripe. I tried to straighten us out and pull back into our lane, but the kid was apparently much stronger than me and I couldn’t turn the wheel, not even an inch.

Then the kid was suddenly outside of my car and standing in the middle of the road. I wanted to stomp on the brakes, but my foot could not find the pedal.

The kid’s thin, purple lips cracked into a wry smile only a split second before the front fender struck him squarely in the chest, a bone-cracking sound accompanying the collision, and then he was slowly sucked under the vehicle like a reluctant dust bunny being dragged into the mouth of a vacuum cleaner, cartoonishly curling around the bumper as he was pulled under.

The noise that followed was one of indescribable horror. The best description I can offer is that it sounded like a live animal being slowly fed into a wood chipper, with all the screaming and splattering that might entail. The car rocked and rumbled violently like it was caught up in an earthquake and then came skidding to a halt.

As usual I woke up screaming, which caused Mike Futch to wake up screaming as well and he fell out of the recliner and hit his head on the hardwood floor. He sprang quickly back up to his feet but experienced some sort of head rush and almost fell over the coffee table, bumping into the bong and nearly knocking it over, but even in this stressful situation his stoner senses were firing on all cylinders and he caught it before it crashed down onto the ground.

“What was that?” Mike asked, his voice shaking. “What in the hell is going on around here?”

I tried to explain to him that I’d had yet another dream about that God damned creepy kid, but within a matter of moments Mike was snoring loudly on the recliner once again.

* * * * *

For the rest of the night I was unable to sleep, not even a wink. I kept thinking about all the dreams I'd had of that spooky little child, trying to make some sort of sense of them, when suddenly an unpleasant memory came flooding back to me.

Five or six years ago, there was a party down on Lake Hapner. I think it might have been someone’s birthday or something, but I don't really remember. My friend Terry was hosting it at his parent’s summer house, which they weren’t using at the time because it was almost winter. It was supposed to be a real rager so I drove out there with a case of Natty Ice and a bottle of Sailor Jerry, ready to tear the roof off the joint.

Of course the party turned out to be a serious sausage fest and needless to say, us guys drank all the beer our bellies could accommodate while smoking ourselves silly. Eventually I made the pretty poor decision to head home, even though there was more than enough sofa space available in the lake house for me to crash there. I said goodbye to the few dudes who were still awake and stumbled out to my car, and then I backed into a couple trash cans on my way out.

I headed back towards town down Rural Route 9.

It must have been around four in the morning and I was blasting some sort of booty-bouncin’ gangsta rap music in an attempt to keep myself awake and alert, but the music must have been just a little too lively for me because every time I glanced down at the speedometer I was exceeding the speed limit by a good twenty-five miles an hour.

As I skirted around the eastern edge of Lake Hapner, I noticed a car parked down the narrow gravel road that led to the public slipway where rich people offloaded their boats in the summertime, and as I passed by the its headlights flickered to life.

I was convinced that this was a police officer, and being as drunk and high as I was, I continued down the path of poor decisions and decided to get the hell out of there as quickly as I could.

I whipped my Camry around a big bend in the road and shot out onto a long straightaway, at which point I really put the pedal to the metal. I watched my rearview mirror closely for any sign of headlights coming up behind me, and although I saw none I still felt far from confident that I had successfully escaped just yet.

When I lowered my eyes away from the rearview mirror and peered through the windshield once again, I saw a short black figure scurry out from behind some trees and run onto the road. It was so dark that it was really hard to for me to determine what it was, but this thing was about two-and-a-half, maybe three feet tall and appeared to be walking on all fours. And it definitely had some very peculiar posture.

It clearly wasn’t a deer, and it seemed a bit too lanky to be a dog and was shaped unlike any breed I’d ever come across. It was sort of shaped like a goat, except its ass was pointed way too high up in the air and its hind legs were about twice as long as they should have been, so it probably wasn't one of those either.

I really had no idea what the hell it was. I couldn’t even venture a guess.

As the thing ran out into the blinding light of my high beams, it froze. I tried to brake but didn’t have enough time. There was a sickening crack as whatever it was bounced off the bumper. My tires screeched as I dragged it under the car for about thirty feet, and then the car shook violently as the thing slipped under one of the back tires and was pitched out onto the road behind me.

I started to pull over onto the shoulder but when I looked in my rearview mirror I saw a set of headlights come around the bend about a quarter mile behind me, and I suddenly remembered that I was running away from what very well might be a cop, and if drunk driving wasn't enough, I may have just committed vehicular manslaughter as well. I had to get the hell out of there.

My tires squealed as I swerved back onto the road and punched the gas, and for the rest of the ride home I just kept repeating to myself I hope that was a dog I hope that was a dog I hope that was a dog.

The next day I woke up with a painful hangover and went out to assess the damage to my beloved Camry. I was pleasantly surprised to find only a small dent to the front bumper, nothing major. There was a considerable amount of blood on the undercarriage – hell, the whole underside had practically been painted red – but there was nothing else there that could shed any light on what exactly I had hit, no strips of flesh or clumps of hair or anything. I was stumped, so I simply washed all the blood away with a garden hose and went back in the house for a nap.

I never told anyone about it. And eventually I just forgot that it had ever happened.

Until now.

SUNDAY

I was supposed to have Sunday off, but Bill Lozaida called me in because one of my fellow cashiers – some lady named Stacy who I had never heard of before in my life – was sick with the flu.

About a minute after clocking in, I remembered why I hate working weekends so much and generally avoid those shifts at all costs. Sav-Mart was packed with hordes of Sunday shoppers and the long line to my cash register seemed to snake endlessly around the store. Business was relentless all afternoon, continuing unabated into the evening, and I was absolutely exhausted from not sleeping the previous night but I put my head down and powered my way through the shitstorm.

With about a half an hour to go on my shift, I was finally beginning to see some light at the end of the tunnel. As I scanned and bagged merchandise at a furious pace, swiping credit cards left and right and saying Have a good one for the bajillionth time that day, the creepy little kid in the wrinkled black suit was the furthest thing from my mind.

It was almost time for me to count out my drawer, the last task to complete before I could clock out, so supervisor extraordinaire Bill Lozaida came over to cordon off my aisle so that no new customers could enter the line. Just before he clipped the metal chain across my aisle, I caught out of the corner of my eye one last customer rushing to join the end of the queue.

It was the kid! 

Bill did not seem to notice that this little boy was apparently shopping all alone at ten o’clock at night, or perhaps he just didn’t care as long as the child intended on spending some money.

I anxiously rang up the final few customers that separated me from the little boy, keeping one eye on him at all times. When it was his turn he slammed a toy down on the counter and looked at me in that strange expressionless way he always did. Well, at least he doesn’t look pissed off like he did the other night, I was thinking.

Seeing him under the blindingly bright fluorescent lights of the Sav-Mart, the kid looked more frightening to me than ever. His skin was as white as a sheet of paper except for the purple rings around his eyes and a touch of blue on his lips. His eyes were so dark brown they were almost black and I could see the flickering red laser light from my barcode scanner reflected in them, and it looked just like in my dream.

“Good evening, young man,” I said, pretending not to recognize him though I’m sure my trembling voice betrayed me. I gulped loudly. "How are you doing this evening?"

The kid didn't respond and continued to look at me unblinkingly, his face frozen in that unnerving, impassive expression. I fumbled for the toy he was trying to purchase, which was in a little box with a clear plastic window on the front panel.

It was a die-cast replica of a Toyota Camry.

And it was the same color as my car.

My hands began to shake uncontrollably and I had a hell of a time getting the scanner to properly pick up the bar code. When I finally managed to ring it in, the kid paid in exact change, which struck me as extremely odd. I mean how in the hell did this tiny little kid calculate the price of the toy car with the sales tax included? He gave me eleven crumpled dollar bills and thirty-seven cents in assorted coinage, which he insisted on placing down upon the counter instead of into my outstretched hand.

I tossed his money into the register and tried to hand him his receipt, but he just stood there clutching the toy car to his chest with that blank look on his face.

“Listen up, you stupid little shit,” I grumbled at him under my breath, leaning over the counter. Bill Lozaida was only about fifteen feet away so I had to keep my voice down. “You need to stop following me around. Seriously. And if I find you waiting for me out by my car again tonight, so help me God, I am gonna strangle you.”

If the kid was at all frightened by my threat he did not show it, and gave me one of his signature scary giggles while slowly backing away, still clutching his new toy car – my car – to his chest.

I watched him as he walked backwards all the way to the exit, his eyes on me the entire time, and when he was finally gone I realized I was still holding his receipt in my hand, so I crumpled it up and threw it in the wastepaper basket. Then Bill Lozaida came over to remove my drawer from the cash register.

“Did you see that creepy little kid?” I asked him.

“What kid?” Bill said, not sounding particularly interested.

“That creepy little kid in the suit, the one you let into my line right before you closed it,” I said. “He’s been following me around for days, and he’s really starting to spook me out. Didn’t you see him?”

He sighed. “I see so many customers in the course of a single day, I really don’t remember him. A little kid, you said?”

“Yeah. A little kid in a suit and tie. He was all by himself and he just came through my line and bought a toy car.”

“A little kid in a suit and tie… shopping by himself… at this hour?” Bill scoffed. “I’m pretty sure I’d remember seeing something like that.”

* * * * *

And then the startling realization hit me like a ton of bricks.

All those years ago, when I was driving drunkenly down Rural Route 9 on my way home from that lame party down by the lake, I didn’t run over a dog, or a deer, or a goat, or anything like that.

I had run over a little kid. Some strange kid who – for whatever weird reason – had  been wandering around in the woods during those predawn hours.

I smashed him with the front bumper of my little Toyota. And I dragged him down the road, his helpless little body trapped beneath the car.  And I ran right over him with one of the back wheels, probably flattened him like a pancake. And then I fled the scene. The very next day, I washed his blood off the bottom of my car with a garden hose like it was nothing. And then I promptly forgot it ever happened.

And now his ghost, that creepy kid in the wrinkled black suit, had come for revenge.

* * * * *

Naturally, I was dreading that night’s stroll through the parking lot more than ever before. It seemed inevitable that the creepy little kid in the wrinkled black suit would be waiting for me out by my car.

It was terrifyingly quiet out there in the Sav-Mart parking lot. I slowly tiptoed to my car as silently as I could, my eyes darting from side to side, scanning every row, searching for the little boy.

By the time I got to the Toyota there was still no sign of him and I unlocked the door and climbed into the driver’s seat thinking maybe – just maybe – I was going to get away without seeing him again tonight.

I jiggled my crooked key into the ignition and for the first time in all the years that I’ve owned it, my trusty Toyota had trouble turning over. I cranked the key again and again and the engine revved and revved, but it just wouldn’t catch. I cursed and pounded my fist on the dashboard, then reluctantly climbed out of the car to take a peek under the hood.

As I came around the front end, I shrieked like a little girl when my eyes fell upon the creepy kid sitting cross-legged on the ground, the back of his head resting on my front bumper. He was playing with his new toy car, that replica of the very car he was now leaning against, rolling it back and forth along the cold asphalt.

“Son-of-a-bitch!” I cried, finally reaching the end of my rope. Ghost or not, it was time for me to lay down the law on this little punk. “What the hell did I tell you back in the store? I’m gonna fucking kill you!”

I was about to lunge for the little bastard and snap his neck like a No. 2 pencil when he suddenly did something so strange that it made me gasp and gave me the uncontrollable urge to turn around and run like hell, but I couldn’t get my legs to cooperate and my feet felt like they were strapped to cinderblocks.

First, he planted his palms flat on the concrete. Then he straightened his legs so that he was standing on all fours, his bony butt pointed straight up in the air, and he slowly began to lurch towards me.

“Get away!” I shouted, staggering back and trying to hide behind my car. “Get the fuck away from me, you freak!”

He continued to creep towards me like some demented spider that had half its legs plucked off, and I was on the verge of pissing my pants.

“Get back! I’m warning you!” I said although I hadn’t a clue what to do. I didn’t have anything even remotely resembling a weapon at my disposal, so I simply clenched my fists and held them out in front of me. “I’ll fucking beat the shit out of you if you come an inch closer! I swear to God I will.”

But the kid kept on coming, his bare hands slapping the pavement with each strange stride forward.

I frantically looked around the parking lot, hoping to see someone that I could cry out to for help, but I was all alone with this horrifying little monster and he just kept coming, slowly but surely he kept coming for me and my legs were too weak to run away, just like in a bad dream.

“I’m not gonna tell you again!” I yelled at the top of my lungs, and the intense fear I felt could be heard in my cracking voice. I thought I was about to start crying, but I was too scared to even do that. “One more step and I’ll fucking kill you!”

Slap. Slap. The kid lurched forward once more.

It was at this point that I resolved to use the strongest weapon I had available to me: my legs. I was determined to kick the kid square in the face as hard as I could, like an NFL kicker booting a fifty-yard field goal.

I took a step back, got a good windup and came rushing forward, ready to kick his teeth down the back of his throat, when I suddenly heard a woman shout.

“Thomas!”

I hesitated and tried to stop my leg in mid-swing, which caused me to step on a small patch of ice and I slipped, flew high up into the air, and came crashing down flat on my back. I tried to sit up but I’d knocked the wind out of myself and I flopped back down, gasping for air.

“Thomas!”

The kid crept towards me like a spider approaching a fly trapped in its web, and I could hear him growling softly, a demonic rattling that emanated from somewhere deep down the back of his throat. I wanted to scream but my lungs felt completely empty and I still couldn't catch my breath. My throat was so dry I couldn’t seem to keep it open long enough for even the shortest gasp of air and my sandpaper tongue stayed glued to the roof of my mouth.

The kid crawled up alongside me, and he leaned over and held his face just inches above mine.

I could see red lights flicker in his dark eyes as they bore into mine and I was sure that my life was about to come to a premature end, so I squeezed my own eyes shut and tried to prepare myself as best I could for what was surely going to be a gruesome demise.

“Thomas Stanley Gore! Get over here this instant!”

Just when I was certain he was about to bite my face off, the kid suddenly stood upright on his hind legs – or just his regular legs, I guess you could say – and he walked off in the direction of the woman’s voice.

For a few moments I remained on my back with my eyes squeezed shut, shaking uncontrollably and still gasping for air. When I realized I was still alive I opened my eyes, picked myself up off the grimy blacktop, and looked across the parking lot.

The creepy little kid was running over to an idling minivan – a turquoise Nissan that was the quintessential soccer-mom-mobile – and when he got to it he threw open the sliding side door and climbed in. A heavyset lady who I vaguely seemed to recognize sat in the driver's seat, and when she spotted me she smiled and waved congenially.

“Oh, hi there, Clark,” she said through her open window.

I stared at her in silence, completely flabbergasted. She stared back, waiting for me to say something.

"Is everything alright, dear?" she asked. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

I couldn't come up with any sort of response and just sort of stood there with my mouth agape. After another long, awkward silence, she shrugged and looked away. I continued to stand there in a state of slack-jawed disbelief, and I was watching her slowly ease the minivan out of the parking spot when it suddenly hit me.

I remembered where I knew her from: she was just another one of my many colleagues at the Sav-Mart whose name I’d never bothered to learn, and who I'd never even spoken to before, as far as I can recall. I was pretty sure she worked in the gardening department, or perhaps it was produce. I seemed to remember seeing her standing beside a case of avocados once.

Before she drove away, the lady called out to me again.

“See you tomorrow, Clark!”

She waved good-bye, and so did her spooky son, that creepy little kid in the wrinkled black suit. And for the first time ever he smiled at me, just like a perfectly normal little boy.

And all I could do was offer a sheepish wave of my own as I watched the van slowly pull out of the parking lot and disappear down the road.