The Fourth Park (summer horror story)

okay I wasn't going to post this but my friend Takashi told me something that happened to him in middle school and I genuinely cannot stop thinking about it.

So he'd just finished club activities and was speed-walking home through this residential neighborhood. This was back when streetlights weren't everywhere like they are now, so even on a regular street it was DARK. He said he just got this bad feeling out of nowhere and started walking faster.

He passes a few houses and comes up on this empty lot. And there's someone standing in it.

He couldn't really see well in the dark but the height was like... elementary school kid. Small. He thought "what is a kid doing here at this hour" and was just going to walk past when the kid spoke.

"Where is the fourth park?"

"...huh?"

Takashi stops. Looks at the kid. It's a boy, short-sleeved shirt and shorts, kinda dirty-looking. Takashi could catch glimpses of what looked like scars on the kid's hands and feet.

But the face. the face was too dark to see.

"The fourth park... hmm."

So he actually tried to think about it. There were a bunch of parks near that neighborhood. The first park, big enough to have a baseball field inside. The second park, small but tons of playground equipment. The third park, all sand and sports facilities.

But a FOURTH one? He couldn't think of any.

While Takashi was standing there trying to remember, the boy reached out his hand.

"Please take me there."

He said the voice was bright. cheerful even. but there was something cold underneath it that he couldn't explain.

Takashi panicked and knocked the hand away on instinct.

And the boy just. vanished. Like smoke. Like a single drop of ink falling into water.

He ran home at full speed. Didn't look back.

The next day he checked every map he could find. There was no fourth park. Anywhere in that area. There never had been.