Everyone was home and sleeping.

I asked Dan what happened. What did the police say? He said someone on an early morning walk found human lungs in the street. So there’s the lungs then.

I worked all day, then went for a long, long walk. It was hot outside, so I worked up a little sweat. I was trying to work things out in my mind, but coming up empty.

It was around 6p.m. when I got back home, and as I was walking up to my backyard gate, the sound of whispering started. It was coming from all directions. I did a full 360 and didn’t see anything, so I spun around again.

A car drove past, the passenger staring down the strange woman spinning in circles in the yard. The whispering continued.

I took a deep breath, lifted the handle of the gate, and stepped through to my backyard.

The man was standing at the end of the path, his back to the wall. His hat was pulled down low, and his jacket was billowing all around him. It seemed like the whispers were coming from him, making his jacket move in and out around his body.

“What do you want?” I asked. My voice shakier than I wanted. The fear I was feeling creeping into my bones.

When I spoke, the whispers became louder. They crescendoed into yells, then screams.

I covered my ears, but kept my eyes on the man. He slowly lifted his head. He was smiling that yellow-toothed smile.

“WHAT DO YOU WANT?” I shouted. That is when the screaming stopped, my words hung in the sudden silence, and were carried over to the man on the breeze pushed through the distance between us.

“I want to come inside,” he said.

Then he crumbled into black sand and floated away on the wind.

Where he was standing, what he left behind was a beating human heart.