I found a little boy crying, barefoot in a car park but nobody knew him.
He stood beside a black saloon, sobbing so hard his whole small body trembled. His feet were bare, the back of his neck sunburnt, and his tiny fingers clutched the door handle as if he believed the car would open if he cried loudly enough.
I glanced around the car park. No one was running. No one called for him.
I crouched beside him.
“Hey, little one, wheres your mum or dad?”
He cried even harder.
“I want to go back inside!”
“Inside where?” I asked gently.
He pointed at the car.
“The film! I want to go back to the film!”
I wondered if he meant the cinema, further down in the shopping centre. I tried the doorlocked. Empty inside: no car seat, no toys. Just nothing.
I picked him up and walked toward the cinema, asking if hed come with anyone. He shook his head slowly.
“My other dad.”
I froze.
“Your other dad?”
He nodded.
“The one who doesnt speak with his mouth.”
Before I could ask more, a security guard arrived in a buggy. I explained the situation.
We walked with the boythrough the food court, the play area, the security office. Every parent we met said the same:
“Sorry, hes not mine.”
Staff checked the CCTV.
Then things got strange.
No one had brought him in.
No one had walked with him.
Hed just appeared.
One framenothing.
The nexthe was there, barefoot beside the black car.
Then the guard pointed at the screen:
“Wait look at his shadow.”
I leaned in.
The little boys shadow was holding someones hand.
I stiffened. On screen, the boy stared at the camera, but his shadow seemed alive. Stretched behind him, far too long for the time of day. It gripped the hand of an unseen figure.
The guard slowly stepped back, pale.
“Glitch, you think?” I whispered, not believing it myself.
He didnt answer.
The boy quietly watched the screen, as if he already knew.
“He came back,” he said simply.
“Who came back, mate?”
He looked at me.
“My other dad.”
He reached toward the screen, touching the pixelated face of his shadow.
Then he turned toward the security door.
And just then the lights flickered.
For a moment, the air conditioning cut out, the neon signs buzzed. And in that near-silence came a metallic scrape from the corridor.
The boy smiled.
“He found me.”
The guard and I leapt up.
“Wait, wait! You cant”
But the child was already leaving, barefoot, calm, as if following an invisible thread we couldnt see.
I ran after him, frantic, but in the corridor he was gone.
Only the black saloon remained. It stood in a restricted part of the car park, the engine still warm. This time the door was slightly ajar.
The guard hung back, too shaken. I stepped closer.
On the passenger seat: a single small shoe. A childs.
Stranger still, the inside of the window was covered in tiny handprints. But the car was empty.
I backed away slowly.
The guard called the police. But when they arrived, the car had vanished. No CCTV caught it leaving.
The boy was never found.
But sometimes, in certain car parks people swear they hear muffled cries and see a shadow reaching for a smaller one.
Some doors should never open twice.
