Horror Stories from Horrified - Volume One (2)

simply wait for the situation to just disappear.
For months he scanned newspapers for stories of the dead girl; looked for press
conferences from distraught parents on the television. There was nothing to
incriminate him. It was as though she had never existed.
In the years that followed, the memory of the girl?s contorted body surprised him at
times. Sometimes he thought he saw her, just a glimpse of her. Her accusing eyes in
the rear-view mirror as he drove to work; her face hiding among supermarket aisles;
sometimes she was just an ordinary girl in a green velvet coat, playing on swings in
the park. Eventually, the memory of her face faded. Just another ghost of his youth.
Sometimes, he wondered if she had ever existed at all. He wondered if the therapists
were right. If, like Y2K, she too had been a myth, threatening to bring his life crashing
around him when, in actual fact, it had had no significance on his life whatsoever.
A decade later , her e he was. Sam. Thir ty-tw o year s old. Mar r ied. A teacher. A
gr ow n-up. Responsible.
He looked dow n at the pictur e he held in his hand in disbelief. A dr aw ing, so
detailed it had to be him r unning fr om the car. The gir l lying in the r oad in her
gr een coat, her bent neck and hideous gr in star ing out of the page at him.
"I w on?t ask you again Chloe. Who told you about this?"
His daughter was cr ying now.
"She did." She pointed to the dr aw ing of the gir l in the gr een coat, her face r ed
w ith tear s. "The gir l told me."
"What ar e you talking about? What gir l?"
"The gir l in the gr een coat. The gir l standing r ight behind you."
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