He walked out of the Dillons grocery store, a plastic bag in each hand.
In the parking lot he passed a young couple, the girl hugging her boyfriend’s arm and both of them staring forward, barely blinking and not looking anywhere else but straight ahead while they passed him.
He noticed an older woman standing on the other side of the aisle, watching him. He kept walking but turned his head to look at her and when he did she looked down to the ground and turned and quickly walked towards the store.
Weirdos, He thought; and at his van he opened the door and climbed in behind the wheel. “You okay? I told you I wouldn’t be very long didn’t I? Just a few minutes,” He said while he put the bags on the passenger seat and turned the air conditioner and radio down and the silence inside the van swelled.
He turned around and saw the passenger-side sliding door was not closed all the way.
His son’s booster seat was empty.
He got out of the van as fast as he could, yelling his son’s name and looking around the parking lot. He saw a group of people (a crowd?) standing by the entrance of the store looking at him. He yelled at them, asking if they’d seen a little boy!
The people just looked back at him.
A man stood a few parking spots away and the father yelled at him, asking if he saw anyone get into his van? The man just looked at him.
The father ordered the stranger to answer him, but the man said nothing, he just stood there, and the father looked around and saw again the couple he’d passed just moments ago, standing in the parking lot, looking at him. “Call the police!” He yelled and looked around while he moved towards them, and closer now he looked to them and saw that the woman was crying, and even her boyfriend seemed to be close to tears.
The father looked around and saw another man standing by a car and he called out to that stranger and started to make his way towards him begging for help . . .
“And that’s how he is, every Sunday. Now when he makes his way back to the entrance and disappears we’ll have the next group go out into the parking lot.” The guide looked from the boarded up grocery store entrance to the people around her. “Just remember that he can’t hurt you, and he can’t hear you.”
“Or doesn’t want to hear us.”
The guide nodded as someone else from the group spoke up. “But I thought he just couldn’t hear, because he’s a ghost and all.”
“Well, we don’t know for sure. Some say he can’t hear us because he’s a ghost and others say he doesn’t want to because he doesn’t want to know the truth.”
“That he’s a ghost.”
“Well, yes, that, but also that his son was taken while he was in the store. When his son’s body was found a few weeks later, he felt so guilty he took his own life and now he haunts the parking lot. We can see and hear him, and he can see us but can’t – or won’t – hear us, and he moves from one person to the next seeking answers until he returns to the store to go through it all again.”
“It’s hell,” Someone says, and the guide does not argue.
He walked out of the Dillons grocery store, a plastic bag in each hand.
Two young men were walking towards him; smiling, and when they were just a few steps in front of him the one closest to the father pretended to lunge towards him. The father flinched back and the two laughed and continued on.
He looked back at them and watched them high-five.
The father shook his head and looked to his van and with a sigh he imagined how good it would feel to finally get home with his boy.
