The Next Time You See Me by Holly Goddard Jones

Sheila’s house now out of sight behind him, when the little fingers clutched his left upper arm again, and his mouth flooded with bitter liquid. He braked, struggled with the gears, and managed to get his truck onto the gravel shoulder. Then he rolled down the window, bracing himself against the cool drizzle. The air smelled moldy, like piles of leaves gone slick and black. His lips were numb.
    There was a flicker of movement ahead, along the tree line, and his heart set off again immediately, wham-WHAM! wham-WHAM!, the fist not knocking but beating, as though there were some guy inside him, some watchman, and he was saying, Do you see this, Wyatt? Do you see this? Put the truck in gear. Drive. Get out of here.
    He couldn’t, though. He stared, paralyzed, as a figure climbed the hill toward him, the shape slumped but vaguely human, pale, blurred in the drizzle on his windshield. It moved in an awkward but oddly quick shuffle, and when he opened his mouth wide to choke down a breath, nothing came. It was as if his body was tightening all over, fingers around his arm and his heart, fingers clamping his throat until he could only wheeze with the whistling uncertainty of an asthmatic.
    “Scott!” someone shouted. “Scott, I told you to wait for me!”
    The pale figure stopped.
    “If you take another step, I swear to God we’re going home!”
    A woman rounded the turn, run-walking, pausing to put her hands on her knees and slumping over to catch her breath. Wyatt lifted his hand, feeling the last of his energy burn away with the motion, and let it drop on the toggle that triggered his windshield wipers, increasing their speed. The pale figure was a child, he could see now—he could see it plain as day—with a white sheet draped over its head, the material dangling almost to the ground, and a plastic jack-o’-lantern clutched in one hand. A little ghost. A trick-or-treater. Yesterday was Halloween, Wyatt remembered, and the boy must have insisted on wearing his costume a second time.
    The woman and boy were walking uphill, coming straight toward him, and he tried to turn the key in the ignition three times before realizing that the engine was already running, the truck in neutral. The tightening in his chest hadn’t dissipated. He took the knuckle of his thumb and kneaded it into his sternum, circling the spot he called his crumb catcher. He put his right hand on the gearshift and grimaced around a fresh spike of pain. He’d seen that child and thought—Lord, he didn’t want to admit what he thought. He needed to go, to not be seen here, but he couldn’t even get the emergency brake released. He was stuck.
    “Mister?” the mother was saying, peering cautiously into his window. “Sir, you all right?”
    Wyatt managed to nod. “Okay. I’m okay.”
    She grasped the child’s hand and looked up and down the road. “You don’t look okay,” she said. The child, the little ghost, was tugging on her arm, making an ennnh sound, and she grabbed his chin through the costume. The ghost face was exaggerated and mournful: a warbled O of a mouth, long black eyes, the boy’s whites glinting in the slits his mother had cut. “Knock it off,” the mother said. “Or we turn around and go home.”
    “I’m fine,” Wyatt gasped, gripping the steering wheel against another knife of pain, and the woman said, “I’m going for help. I’ll be right back.”
    No, he tried calling, realizing he hadn’t spoken aloud. There wasn’t any breath left. There was only the metal ping of rain on the roof of the truck cab, the cold mist blowing into his window, the intermittent squeal of his windshield wipers, and the agony in his chest.

Chapter Five
    1.
    “Hey, cowboy,” a voice was saying. “Snap to, cowboy. I need to roll you over.”
    Wyatt lifted an arm to rub his eyes, grunting when its progress was stopped by a cord or cuff or something. He felt nauseous. There was a spike of pain in the center of his forehead.
    “Sick,”