The Tally Man.

The summer of 2005 was long, hazy, and smelled of cut grass and impending thunderstorms. For my friends—Liam, Sarah, David, and me—it was a season of boundless freedom, spent in the woods behind our suburban neighborhood. Our days were a blur of scraped knees and shared secrets, but it was the twilight hours that we lived for. That’s when we played the game.

It was our own version of hide-and-seek, a ritual with rules that felt ancient and important. We never questioned where they came from. The seeker was never one of us; it was an unspoken, invisible presence we called the Tally Man. We’d gather at the edge of the woods, by the old, splintered oak tree. We would all close our eyes, count to one hundred in a hushed chorus, and then whisper the invitation into the darkening woods: "Ready or not, here you come."

Then we’d scatter, our hearts pounding with a delicious, thrilling fear. The goal was to stay hidden until the moon was high. If you were found, you didn’t just lose the game. The Tally Man would claim you with his mark. You’d feel a cold spot on your arm, a strange, tingling numbness, and when you looked, there it would be: a single, sharp, black tally mark on your skin, drawn in ink that would never wash away.

We wore our marks like badges of honor. I had three from that summer. Liam had five. Sarah, the best hider, had only two. They are still there on our skin today, faded to a soft grey, a strange souvenir from a childhood game that ended in tragedy.

David was the bravest of us, always pushing the boundaries. On the last day of August, as the sun bled into the horizon, he declared he would find the ultimate hiding spot. "A place not even the Tally Man can find me," he boasted, his eyes gleaming with defiance. We counted. We whispered the words. We ran.

I was found first that night, hiding behind a cluster of ferns. A sudden chill, a tingling on my forearm, and my third mark appeared. Then Liam was found. Then Sarah. We gathered back at the oak tree, as was the rule, waiting for the game to end. But David never came back. We called his name until our throats were raw. We searched until the woods were pitch black and our parents' frantic calls replaced the chirping of crickets.

The police searched for weeks. Volunteers combed every inch of those woods. But David was gone. He was never found. After that, the game was forbidden. The woods behind our houses became a place of sorrow, not adventure. And the tally marks on our arms transformed from a childish trophy into a grim, permanent reminder of the friend we lost.

Twenty years passed. We grew up. We moved away. We built lives that were safe and predictable, lives without strange rules or twilight games. The memory of David became a sad, distant ache, and the Tally Man was relegated to a half-forgotten ghost story.

Until this morning.

I was standing in my bathroom, the sterile white tiles a world away from the deep woods of my childhood. I knotted my tie for work, and as I rolled down my sleeve, my eyes caught the faded grey marks on my forearm. Three faint lines, a map of my youthful fears. But my blood ran ice-cold. My breath hitched in my chest. There, next to the three faded marks, was a fourth.

It was stark, black, and glisteningly fresh, the ink so new it seemed to be still settling into my skin. It hadn’t been there yesterday. I scrubbed at it with soap, my heart hammering against my ribs. It wouldn’t smudge. It was as permanent as the others. A wave of impossible, primal fear washed over me. The game wasn't over. I had been found again.

My hands shaking, I called Sarah. "Don't freak out," I started, my voice strained, "but check your arm. Your left arm."

I heard her confused silence, then a sharp intake of breath. "Oh my God," she whispered. "There's a new one. How is this possible?"

I called Liam. Same panicked reaction. He had a new mark, too. We were all accounted for. All the hiders had been found. A new, more terrifying question began to form in my mind: If the game has started again, and we’ve all been found, then who is the Tally Man looking for now?

My phone buzzed in my hand, vibrating against my sweaty palm. An unknown number. My thumb hovered over the screen, every instinct screaming at me not to answer. But I had to know. I swiped to accept the call and pressed the phone to my ear.

There was no voice on the other end. Just a faint, dry static, like the sound of dead leaves blowing across an empty road. Then, a whisper emerged from the static, a sound that was ancient and cold and utterly devoid of life.

"Ready or not..."

The whisper stopped, but the call didn't end. In the silence that followed, I heard another sound, faint and distant, but perfectly clear. It was the sound of a child's voice, whispering from a great distance, as it began to count.

"One... two... three..."