32

Despite his gruff voice, the stranger seems a little less hostile towards you than when he first appeared. You take that as a good sign.

"Um…do fires happen a lot here?" you ask. The stranger shrugs.

"It only has to happen once for it to be a problem. When you spend thirty years as a firefighter, the instinct kind of stays with you. I guess it doesn't help hearing all these stories lately about stuff getting broken or stolen, supposedly for no reason—I put most of 'em down to bored kids trying to find something to do, but I can't always turn off that thought of 'what if.' And then just now I could've sworn I saw a light in the park…"

He shakes his head and covers his mouth to suppress a yawn.

"Anyway. I'd best be getting back to bed. Oh," he adds as an afterthought, "if we do happen to cross paths again—I'm Ennis. And…I'm sorry, again, for scaring you like that. Maybe I'd better learn to mind my own business a little more. Take care, now."

With that, he starts back across the street.

You're not really sure what to make of the whole situation—or of Ennis himself—but now seems like a good time to head home yourself as well.

After a quick glance at the park gates just to make sure there's no sign of a fire, you set off.

Before you know it, you're back on your street. You see no lights on anywhere—looking over at the house opposite your grandma's, you start to think how weird it is that at one point, the people who live there must have been so familiar to you. Now, you hardly remember anything except in flashes, like quickly scribbled drawings, not even about the little boy you used to play with. You just know his name was Toby—or Tobias, as his parents call him now.

Watching the darkened house, you wonder what he's like now—what it might be like to see him again. To meet someone your own age again. To maybe make a—

"Huknock?"