Daddy Didn't Escape That Night

When my son was born, I made the decision to divorce my wife. For the past year, she had been incredibly rude and just not the person I married. She, however, was very bitter about it. She screamed at me and left the house after I finally received custody of my son, hurting my former wife most of all most of all.

A few weeks after the official divorce papers were signed, my ex-wife accidentally drove off the road into a lake and drowned, trapped in her car. I didn't attend her funeral and was just glad that my son wasn't there to die with her.

After years of raising my son, he finally started to learn how to write sentences a couple months back. He usually would write out simple sentences such as, "The cat is nice." The usual, normal stuff.

About 2 weeks ago, I came into his room to check on what he had recently written and how his skills had been progressing. I chuckled a bit, figuring what he had written would probably be quite cute.

My eyes widened when I began to read off the crinkled piece of paper.

"Daddy was walking down the street when a figure came after him. He ran and ran, but the figure kept going. Daddy went in a car, but the figure went in one too. Daddy didn't escape that night."

Later that day, I confronted my son about the story, and he looked at me in confusion when I showed him it. He kept claiming that he didn't write it, no matter how much I asked him. I eventually dropped the subject and simply passed it off as some weird story he was writing.

However, as the days passed, I began to see more and more little stories, all of them including this shadowed figure chasing me in the car. Every single story ended with, "Daddy didn't escape that night."

Yesterday, I had to work late to catch up on a project I was doing. When I finished work, I walked out of the office and noticed it was eerily quiet. Then, I turned behind me to see a dark shadow running towards me.

I ran as fast as I could, but I soon realized that this is exactly what the story had predicted. Whether it was by my son or not, it didn't matter. All that mattered was that I needed to get out of there.

The figure was not too far behind when I reached my car. Remembering the stories, I knew I couldn't do it. However, I looked behind me very quick to see the figure a couple feet away, wearing a mask with some sort of weapon in his hand.

I dashed into the car and started the ignition. I started to drive when I saw the figure brake into the car behind me and begin to give chase.

I looked back so much that I missed the bridge in front of me. There wasn't enough time to pull back onto it. As I plunged into the lake, I looked up to see a final image of the ghostly shadow, no longer with a mask, standing there.

I recognized the face.

It was my wife.

She looked down at me, grinned, and then vanished.