25

Tall, dark, has a knife. Not much to go on, Steven thought to himself. Although it is creepy.

He looked up from his phone. The soccer match was nearing its conclusion—twenty-two kids chasing after a ball with no semblance of order while their coaches yelled meaningless instructions and ordered them back into position. He saw one of the young girls chase after a loose pass, showing an impressive turn of pace to backtrack and reach the ball before it went for a throw-in. She tried to volley the ball downfield, but it sliced off the outside of her foot and smashed into the face of an unsuspecting soccer mom.

Steven grinned and lit another cigarette, watching as a crowd gathered around the red-haired and now red-faced spectator, treating her minor injury and moderate embarrassment with the care reserved for an injured soldier on the battlefield.

A notification drew his attention back to his phone. He saw a voice-mail notification appear, sighed, and then ignored it, telling himself that he would deal with it later.

His attention switched back to the image on his phone—the specter of death, as one commentor called it.

It had been taken by a friend of Matthew Graves, a local musician murdered in an alleyway less than a mile from the field where Steven stood. Graves had been speaking to the friend seconds before his murder. He had snapped a picture of the alleyway to brag about a recent sexual conquest, and the camera had caught his eventual killer.

The picture was dark. The killer was wearing black, and there was little to go off except that he probably wasn’t too short, too tall, too fat, or too thin. And he had a knife. Some were already suggesting that the police should work their magic and find the killer. But this was real life, not CSI. No amount of zooming, clarification, and near-supernatural image alterations could help them. For all they knew, the man in black was Scooby-Doo standing on his hind legs and strung out on Scooby Snacks.

Still, that didn’t stop the local Facebook groups from going crazy. In the last few hours, the picture had gone viral on Reddit and now it was all over the internet.

Fake as fuck, one commentor wrote.

Definitely Slenderman, said another.

Whoever it was, it made Steven feel uneasy knowing that they could be someone he knew, someone he had met before.

He remembered seeing Michael on the night of his death. He knew that Abi had a connection to him, but he didn’t want to tell her about the musician’s death. She was scared enough without knowing that she could have been mere feet from the killer.

He heard the final whistle and looked up from his phone. The game was over. The kids could collect their participation medals and receive praise from their parents. Everyone could move on and forget the whole dreadful affair. Steven smiled, opened the camera on his phone, and pointed it at the girls as they dispersed from the pitch, shaking hands and hugging their opponents as they did so.

He zoomed in on one of them—blonde hair, blue eyes, the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

She immediately ran to the opposing goalkeeper to praise her, having made several big saves. She then shook the referee’s hand before quickly doing the same with everyone else on the pitch, leaving no hand unshook.

It was sweet. It showed a level of maturity not usually seen in seven-year-olds, and it made Steven happy. He hadn’t taken many pictures during the game itself, but he took several of these humble gestures.

The girl ran over to one of the spectating couples and Steven’s smile disappeared. He groaned, turned off his phone, and dropped it in his pocket. Putting out his cigarette, he trudged over to where the girl was, his smile returning when she saw him and ran to him.

“Daddy!” she yelled. “Did you see that? Wasn’t that great?”

He picked her up, kissed her cheek, her forehead. “Yes, sweetie. It was. But you lost … you know that, right?”

“Yes, but did you see that shot I had in the second half?”

He nodded. He had seen it. She had intercepted a pass from the fullback, but rather than taking it in her stride and dribbling through on goal, she’d hit it the first time, crashing it against the crossbar as everyone—goalkeeper included—looked on in awe.

“Mommy said they should have given us the win because of that shot. That’s how good it was.”

Steven offered a meek smile in reply.

That’s because your mother is a fucking idiot.

“Speak of the devil …” he muttered under his breath.

“Lilly, remember to shower when you get to your father’s house.” The sour-faced woman and her stone-faced husband regarded Steven with a cursory glance. “And Steven, remember that she has a sleepover tonight. A few hours. That’s all you have.”

“Yes sir.” Steven nodded, eliciting a frown from his ex-wife and a warning glare from her new male victim.

“No funny business,” she warned.

“That’s a shame. I was going to suggest that we watch a comedy. Should we stick with horror instead?”

Lilly found that amusing. No one else did.

“Don’t be late,” she warned again.

Steven stood to attention and saluted. She shook her head, gave her daughter a kiss, whispered something in her ear, and then left without saying another word to Steven.

Steven watched her go, waited until she was out of ear shot, and then said, “I’m not joking. We’re totally watching a horror film.”

“Awesome.”

“And then we’re going to play some violent computer games, listen to satanic music, eat fast food, and if we have enough time, we’ll get out the Ouija board.”

Lilly looked disappointed. “Oh, you’re joking.”

He took his daughter by the hand. “What did your mother say to you? Was it one of her witchy incantations? Saying a prayer to her lord and savior, the antichrist?”

“She said that if I get bored or you get too annoying or weird, I should give her a call.”

Steven nodded. “Of course she did.”