Ksb1981

“You’re not real,” I whispered.

A sound emerged from the ground: a low, harmonic whistle, the same three-note tune I’d whistled into a well on my tenth birthday. My shadow shuddered, then began to grow. It tipped an invisible hat. ksb1981

“What happens now?” I asked.

“I’m the echo you left behind,” it replied. “The part of you that stepped into the well and never climbed out. I’ve been waiting forty-three years for you to come back and finish the story.” “You’re not real,” I whispered

My job was to classify and destroy unverified anomalies. But I’d grown up in 1981. I remembered the summer the radio played only static, and the grown-ups whispered about the boy who whistled back . It tipped an invisible hat

I looked down at my hands. They were translucent. The boy in the Polaroid had grown up, but only as a ghost. The shadow in the fedora was the one who’d lived my life.