The Dirt Mound at Noon

In the fall of 2019, I was walking through Willow Creek Park, a modest green space on the outskirts of a small Nebraska town, when something made me stop. It was just past noon, the sun high and unforgiving, casting short shadows. I saw a little girl, maybe four or five, standing near a large, irregular mound of fresh earth at the edge of a construction site adjacent to the park. She was wearing a torn, dirt-stained nightgown, and her face was streaked with tears. I called out to her, but she turned and disappeared behind the mound. I hurried over, but there was no one there. I chalked it up to a child playing a trick, but a cold unease settled in my chest. I later learned that seven years ago, a five-year-old girl named Emily had been killed by her mother’s boyfriend, her body buried in that very mound of fill dirt from a nearby foundation excavation. The dirt had been carted away, but the mound remained as a scar on the land. I couldn’t shake the image of her face, so real, so desperate. I began returning to the park, sitting on a bench, watching the mound. A few weeks later, I saw her again. She was closer, and this time she pointed at the ground, then looked at me with an intensity that made me shiver. I reported it to the police, and they dug up the mound, but found nothing. They dismissed it as my imagination. But on the anniversary of Emily’s death, I saw her standing at the base of the mound, and she mouthed the words, ‘He’s coming.’ I fled, but I couldn’t stay away. I kept seeing her, always at noon, always pointing. I finally understood: she wasn’t pointing at the ground. She was pointing behind me. I turned one day, and there he was, Emily’s mother’s boyfriend, released from prison, standing at the edge of the park, watching me with a knowing smirk. I never went back to Willow Creek Park after that. But now, whenever I see a mound of dirt, I check the time. If it’s noon, I run.