The man did not appear in Elias's dreams.
That frightened him more than if he had.
Dreams, Elias would later learn, were honest in their own way. They twisted truth, yes, but they revealed fear openly. The man outside the gate did neither. He stayed awake with Elias, present in the long, quiet hours when the house settled and the world pretended nothing was wrong.
Three days after the funeral, Elias saw him again.
Mrs. Calder had taken him for a walk—a simple loop around the neighborhood, she said, as though routine alone could stitch a child back together. The sky was pale and undecided, neither bright nor threatening. Elias walked beside her in silence, his hands tucked into the sleeves of a coat that was not his.
They passed the iron gate at the edge of Alder Row.
Elias slowed.
The gate marked the boundary between the old houses and the wooded stretch beyond. It was rusted, half-forgotten, its purpose long obsolete. Most people passed it without noticing.
Elias did not.
The man stood just beyond it, partially obscured by the trees.
He wore the same dark coat. The same hood. His posture was relaxed, almost casual, as if waiting for someone who was late. He did not move when Elias stopped walking. He did not wave. He simply watched.
Elias's heart hammered.
"Mrs. Calder," he said quietly.
She stopped and looked down at him. "Yes, dear?"
"There's someone there."
She followed his gaze. Her eyes narrowed slightly, then softened.
"I don't see anyone," she said. "Just trees."
The man did not disappear. He did not step back. He remained, solid and unmistakably real.
Elias said nothing else.
They continued walking. Elias did not look back, but he felt it—the unmistakable pressure of eyes following him until the gate was far behind them.
That night, he asked a question he had been holding inside since the police left.
"Why didn't they catch him?"
Mrs. Calder hesitated. "Catch who?"
"My father."
The word felt strange in his mouth.
She sighed and sat beside him on the couch. "Sometimes," she said carefully, "people leave before they can be found."
Elias absorbed that in silence.
Later, alone in the guest room, he pressed his forehead against the cold window and stared at the street. The world beyond looked harmless. Peaceful. That frightened him too.
Because he knew better now.
The man returned again two nights later.
This time, Elias was certain he was meant to be seen.
He woke suddenly, not from a sound but from a sensation—an awareness so sharp it cut through sleep like light through water. He sat up, breath shallow, and looked toward the window.
The curtains stirred.
Outside, under the dim glow of the streetlight, the man stood at the edge of the yard.
Closer than before.
Elias did not scream. He could not. His voice abandoned him, retreating somewhere deep inside. The man lifted one hand—not in greeting, not in warning, but in acknowledgment.
As if to say: I know you remember.
Then he turned and walked away, melting into the darkness between houses.
The next morning, Elias told no one.
Something had shifted. He understood it instinctively. Speaking would make him powerless. Silence, however, felt like armor.
Weeks passed. The investigation stalled. Words like unsolved and inconclusive drifted through adult conversations. Elias was sent away—to an aunt he barely knew, to a town that smelled different, sounded different, felt wrong in all the quiet ways.
But the man followed.
Not always in sight. Not always clearly. Sometimes as a reflection. Sometimes as a presence just beyond certainty.
By the time Elias learned to stop looking over his shoulder, it was not because the man was gone.
It was because Elias had learned something far more dangerous.
He was being watched for a reason.
And one day, he would understand why.