Below that, a single Polaroid had been stapled. A boy, about ten years old, stood in the center of a bleached-white desert. He wasn’t looking at the camera. He was looking at his own shadow, which was not his own. The shadow was taller, leaner, and wore a fedora.
The shadow smiled. “Now, KSB1981, you whistle me back in.”
The file was a single, yellowed index card. On it, in typewriter script: Subject: KSB. Year of First Echo: 1981. Status: Unverified. Last Seen: The Salt Flats, 5:13 PM, June 22. ksb1981
A sound emerged from the ground: a low, harmonic whistle, the same three-note tune I’d whistled into a well on my tenth birthday. My shadow shuddered, then began to grow. It tipped an invisible hat.
I drove to the Salt Flats.
“You’re not real,” I whispered.
I looked down at my hands. They were translucent. The boy in the Polaroid had grown up, but only as a ghost. The shadow in the fedora was the one who’d lived my life. Below that, a single Polaroid had been stapled
“What happens now?” I asked.