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After sarah left for school Sarah's mum was all alone with her thoughts. The house felt thin and full of listening things; every sound seemed to make the walls lean in. She made tea and pretended she could taste it. The memory of the police, their clipped questions, the neighbor's small looks—none of it left her skin.
She went out to breathe. The train station felt like an honest place: people moving forward, their faces busy and unreadable. She sat on a bench and folded her hands in her lap, waiting for movement to steady her mind.
She thought she was alone until an old woman eased onto the bench beside her. The woman smelled uuuof lavender and something older, like attic dust. For a second Sarah's mother did not recognize her—then the face slammed into memory: the old woman who'd warned her husband about the scarecrow months ago. The same one.
The old woman didn't smile. She simply watched her with eyes like polished stone. "You look like you've been running," she said, softly.
Sarah's mother's throat closed. "I—" She swallowed. "I'm fine. I'm fine."
The old woman reached out and took her hand, small and warm and steady. "I believe you."
The words were so simple and plain they felt like a blessing and a curse both. Sarah's mother stared at the bent fingers around hers, stunned that someone else could say it without pity.
"You—" she began, then the sentence broke. Tears came hot and fast. She gripped the old woman's hand like a lifeline. "Keep looking at me," she said, voice shaking. "Tell me I'm not crazy. Tell me I am not—" She could not finish the word without it sounding like a verdict.
The old woman's face did not soften. "You are not crazy," she said. "We see what others choose not to see. We see the things they bury in fields and wardrobes and in their sleep. But listen to me very carefully: your daughter—she is not your daughter anymore."
The bench blurred. The old woman's words landed like an animal pouncing. "What do you mean? What are you talking about?" Sarah's mother demanded, though the demand rattled.
"She is marked," the old woman said, almost gently. "He marks them in a way that looks like love. A scar, a stitch, a pattern you can barely see until you look for it. He picks the ones he wants close. He marks them so they remember him without knowing. It's what he does."
"No," Sarah's mother whispered. "No. That can't be true. She—she's mine. She's my child. I gave birth to her."
The old woman's hand closed on hers, hard now. "You did give birth to her. But that is not what I mean. The mark changes how they belong. It makes them someone else's. It makes them quiet in ways you will mistake for affection. You cannot bargain with it."
Panic surged like a cold tide. "Then I'll take her somewhere far away. I'll leave. I'll go where he can't find us."
The old woman shook her head slowly. "If he is what I think he is, there's nowhere to run. He does not only live in fields. He follows. He finds. And if he knows you know—" She looked at Sarah's mother in a way that made the skin at the back of her neck prickle. "—if he knows you know, he will come after you. He will do to you what he did to him."
"What did he do to him?" Sarah's mother said, the word 'him' catching like a thorn.
The old woman's mouth tightened. "I cannot tell you the whole of it. Some things are not for words. But the mark is a promise. Once it is placed, the hunger grows. The first man—your husband—he thought he could fight the hunger. He could not."
Sarah's mother felt the floor of the world tilt. Her mind reached for rational arguments and found only thin air. "No," she repeated, quieter this time. "No, no, no."
The station chatter slid around them: a child laughing, a pair of students shouting into a phone. Life continued as if nothing had tilted toward a darker axis.
"Please," she begged, clutching the old woman's wrists. "Don't leave me. Please. Wait. Tell me what to do. Tell me—"
The old woman's eyes were tired, and there was something in them like an apology. She stood up slowly and smoothed her coat. "I can tell you what I've seen," she said. "But I cannot carry you from what he chooses. You must choose—do you hold the knowledge alone, and risk the thing that will come, or do you try to make others see and be dragged to a place where they will say the sane thing: that you are unwell?"
The words were not a question but a cruelty and a logic. Sarah's mother clung to the bench as if the ground might give. "I—I'll do anything," she whispered. "Tell me what to do. Please."
The old woman paused by the bench, as if listening to a distant sound only she could hear. Her jaw tightened. "They are coming," she said quietly.
The sound started then: a low, steady footfall—people moving, boots on the concourse. Voices folding into procedure. Somewhere, a radio crackled.
Sarah's mother's phone vibrated in her bag. She fumbled it out with shaking fingers. The screen lit up with a name she both wanted and feared.
SARAH — Incoming call.
At the same moment, two plain-clothed officers rounded the corner of the concourse. Their faces were smooth with protocol. They paused when they saw the old woman and the crying woman on the bench.
The old woman looked at Sarah's mother as if deciding whether to go or to stay. "You must decide quickly," she breathed.
Sarah's mother clutched the phone and the old woman's hand. "Please—don't go."
The old woman's face was unreadable. "I warned them once," she said. "They won't listen until they must."
She turned and walked away down the concourse, her back a small dark shape swallowed by the crowd.
Sarah's mother stared until the crowd washed her from sight. She looked to the officers, to the radio in an officer's hand, to the phone in her own palm. Her legs felt like lead. She had to choose. She had to act. But the thing behind the old woman's words — the mark, the promise — had already started to rearrange the world.
She pressed the phone to her ear, hearing Sarah's voice before the girl even spoke. "Mom? Are you okay?"
Sarah's mother's voice came out small and broken. "I—" she began. "I'm not sure."
The concourse seemed to lean in to listen as if the city had become a court waiting to decide a fate. The two police ask weather Sarah's mum was okay
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