The Son Who Came Back

I had just finished my night shift and was eating tacos at a roadside stand when my phone suddenly buzzed. "Are you Kevin Weston's father?" "Please come to the Southvale police station. Kevin smashed the windshield of a luxury car parked by the road. The owner is demanding 50,000 dollars in compensation!" The officer's stern voice came through the phone. I froze. The taco I had just picked up with my fork slipped right back onto my plate. "Officer, you must have the wrong person. My son drowned and died three years ago. We even have his death certificate." But the officer clearly didn't believe me. He flipped through some records and continued, "You're Justin Weston, a security guard at the Empire Textile Factory. You live in Apartment 402 at Harmony Heights. This is the phone number you left with us." "Does the boy really say his name is Kevin?" But three years ago, I had personally buried my son's ashes in the cemetery. Chapter 1 The cold night wind made me shiver. The taco stand owner was about to take my food away when I quickly put 10 dollars on the table. Then I ran to the roadside and frantically waved down a cab. Once I got inside, my hands were shaking so badly that I couldn't even light my cigarette. What happened at Southvale Reservoir three summers ago was a nightmare I never wanted to remember. Kevin had drowned because he had been fooling around. By the time they pulled him from the water, his body was bloated and his skin had turned deathly pale. My ex-wife, Mandy Carroll, and I had cried our hearts out. I had personally watched every single procedure after Kevin's death. Yet now, someone was telling me that Kevin had smashed another person's car. By the time I arrived at the Southvale police station, my legs were cramping from the long run. The atmosphere in the mediation room was heavy. A bald man was slamming his hand on the table and yelling. "I don't care who he is! He smashed my Maybach, so he owes me 50,000 dollars! If he doesn't pay, I'll make sure he regrets it." A young police officer frowned as he took notes. A teenager sat on a bench in the corner. He was covered in dirt and kept his head down, so I couldn't see his face. But when I saw his shoes, I froze. They were a pair of faded blue sneakers. A tiny picture of Superman had been drawn on one side with a marker. They were Kevin's favorite shoes. I had personally put them on his feet before he was buried. "You're Justin Weston, right? Please, have a seat," the officer said when he saw me. But I didn't sit down. I stared at the boy and asked in a trembling voice, "Officer, my son really died. Who is this kid?" The boy suddenly flinched when he heard my voice. Then he slowly raised his head. His face was thin and pale. There was a small mole under his eye, exactly like Kevin's. Even the shy look in his eyes was the same. "Dad..." Chapter 2 I collapsed onto the floor and pointed at him with trembling hands. "Are... Are you even human?" The bald man immediately lost his patience. He stormed over and grabbed me by the collar. "Damn! Stop pretending! This brat gave your SSN when we asked for his information. He even knows you work security at that factory. Just pay me the money!" My mind was a complete mess. My SSN and workplace were both things that could be found with a little digging. But how could there be someone in this world who looked exactly like Kevin? "Officer, can I get a DNA test?" I asked. It was my last hope. The officer sighed. "A DNA test will take time. Besides, this is a civil dispute. The car owner says he won't press charges if you pay him. If you refuse, the boy will be sent to juvenile detention, or you can take custody of him." "I'm not taking him! He's not my son!" I shouted. The boy suddenly burst into tears. "Dad, I'm Kevin... The water was so cold. I barely made it out..." His words broke my heart. People around us started whispering. "He's so heartless. He won't even admit his own son just because he doesn't want to pay." "Yeah. That poor kid." "The boy looks just like him. How could he not be his son?" The bald man sneered. "You don't want to pay, huh? Fine. I'll have the cops arrest this brat. He could get serious time for this!" The moment the boy heard that he might go to jail, he ran over and wrapped his arms around my leg. "Dad, save me! I don't want to go to jail. Look! You burned me!" He rolled up the sleeve of his left arm. A round cigarette burn scar stood out on his forearm. I froze. When Kevin was five, I had been drunk and accidentally dropped a lit cigarette onto his arm. That scar had the exact same location, shape, and size. If this boy looked like Kevin, maybe it could be a coincidence. If he knew my personal information, maybe he had found it through some kind of investigation. But only my ex-wife and I knew about that scar. Could it be that the bloated body we buried three years ago wasn't Kevin? Or... Had Kevin really come back? In the end, I signed the papers and promised to pay the 50,000 dollars within a month. After everything was settled, the bald man gave me a dark smile. "Justin, don't even think about running. If you don't pay me by the deadline, I'll make sure you regret it." I ignored him and numbly led the boy out of the police station. The yellow streetlights stretched our shadows across the pavement. The boy kept his head down and held tightly onto the edge of my jacket. His hand was freezing cold. "Who... are you really?" I stopped at a quiet street corner and asked him. He looked up at me with a blank expression. "Dad, I'm hungry. I want Charlie's Tacos." Charlie’s Tacos was Kevin's favorite place to eat. It was right downstairs from our old apartment. I was nervous, but I had no choice. I took him there. By then, the owner, Charlie Conrad, was getting ready to close. The moment he saw me walking in with a child, he froze. The utensils in his hands slipped and hit the ground. "Justin, who is this?" Charlie had watched Kevin grow up. He was just as shocked as I was. "He's... a kid from a distant relative of mine." My voice was hoarse as I forced out the lie. Charlie looked at the boy suspiciously several times before bringing over a plate of tacos. The boy picked one up. But he didn't eat it right away. Instead, he carefully picked out every single piece of cilantro and lined them up neatly on the table. Chapter 3 Kevin hated cilantro. He also had a habit of doing things in a very particular way, so he always had to line up the cilantro neatly. He did it so naturally that I could hardly believe my eyes. I stared at him, trying to find even the smallest clue that he was pretending. But there was nothing. The way he held his utensils and even the way he blew on his food were exactly the same as my dead son, Kevin. "Dad, why aren't you eating?" he suddenly asked. I swallowed hard before answering, "I'm not hungry." "Dad, where's Mom? Why didn't she come to pick me up?" He asked the question in such an innocent voice while eating his taco. My heart sank when he mentioned Mandy. After Kevin died, Mandy blamed me for not taking good care of our son. She divorced me, and we had lost contact a long time ago. "She moved overseas." After he finished his tacos, I took him back to Harmony Heights. It was an old apartment complex. The motion-activated lights in the hallway were broken, so they kept flickering on and off. When I reached Apartment 402, I pulled out my keys. Before I could even put the key into the lock, the boy suddenly asked, "Dad, is the lock acting up again? You have to lift the handle." My hand shook. The key slipped from my fingers and hit the floor. The lock really was broken. I had to lift the handle to open the door. But that problem had only started six months ago. Three years ago, when Kevin died, the lock had worked perfectly. So how did this boy know? I spun around and slammed him against the wall. My eyes were red as I demanded, "Who are you? Who told you all this? Who sent you here?" The boy's eyes filled with tears as he trembled in fear. "Dad, what's wrong? I'm Kevin. Look..." He reached into his pocket and pulled something out. Then he held it out to me. It was a rusty piece of metal that had been filed into a crooked five-pointed star. "This is the dart you made for me. I was afraid Mom would throw it away, so I hid it in a crack under the floor beneath my bed..." I completely broke down when I heard those words. I had secretly made that dart for Kevin myself, and he really had hidden it under his bed. After Kevin died, I could never bring myself to touch his room. I had never even cleaned under his bed. My hands were shaking as I unlocked the door. I rushed into the spare bedroom and dropped to the floor. I used my phone to shine a light under the bed. There was nothing in the crack. But the shape of the crack matched the metal dart perfectly. I sat on the floor and stared at the boy standing in the doorway. He stared back at me. For a moment, it looked like he was smiling. But then his face quickly changed back to that same hurt expression. "Dad, I'm tired." As he spoke, he casually took off his shoes and placed them on the bottom shelf of the shoe rack. Then he walked straight into the spare bedroom and climbed into the small bed that had been empty for three years. I stood in the living room. As I listened to his steady breathing from the bedroom, the whole apartment felt suffocating. That night, I sat on the couch with a kitchen knife in my hand. I didn't dare let my guard down for even a second. At exactly three in the morning, a steady dripping sound came from the spare bedroom. It sounded like water dripping from completely soaked clothes. I tightened my grip on the knife and held my breath. Then I quietly walked to the bedroom door. The door was slightly open. Through the moonlight, I saw the boy standing beside the bed with his back to me. He was completely soaked. Water dripped from his clothes and spread across the floor. A dark puddle slowly formed beneath his feet. He lowered his head and muttered something. I moved a little closer. Finally, I heard what he was saying. "Bad Daddy... He won't pay. He deserves to die..." I was frozen with fear. The knife in my hand struck the doorframe with a loud clang. The boy suddenly turned around. His face was deathly pale. His eyes had rolled so far back that I could only see the whites. There were no pupils in sight.