During a hazy summer in the 1980s, a boy from my neighborhood in Annapolis went missing.

His name was Tiger. He was plucked from his life.

Then found decades later as a pile of bones at the bottom of a murky creek in Truxton Park.

Four other people went missing around the same

time, and I'd come to find out their remains were alongside tigers, and a wooden shipping

creek nestled in the creek's rancid sentiment. I was following the news alerts about all this

from my hometown paper, and one article quoted a cop who said a serial killer did this.

Some predator who was active in the 80s.

These bodies would help them find out who it was.

But the police were lying or wrong.

I knew the truth.

It wasn't a serial killer.

Because I remembered that summer. and I knew the thing that

stole Tiger away was an evil, otherworldly behemoth with thin antenna-like ears and a towering

bloated body, with a blade for a hand that'll slash your belly and let your guts fall clean

out.

I knew this, I know this this because that freak stalked me

for an entire summer. It tried to kill me. And when I read the article about the bones,

I got this feeling, can't explain it, just knew. The bones were a message from the monster

to me. See, I was the one that got away, and the wraith was telling me after all these years that it wasn't finished.

And I knew, if I didn't go back home, show myself, it would come and find me. You're listening to Run Fool.

I'm Rodney Barnes, and this is episode 83, The Death of Summer, part two.

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