“Is it fun?” Teresa asked.

“R-really f-fun. We always h-have a n-nice t-time.”

Diego, too, had decided to trust her.

“And is it just you, down there?”

The kids looked at each other.

“That man was spying on us,” Mathias explained. “I noticed him.”

“Me, too,” said Oliver.

“Which man?” Teresa asked.

“The man who came to us when Lucia found her mom. We got scared and we screamed, but then we realized he just wanted to play.”

“Play?”

“Yes, he had painted his face like a clown.”

Lucia looked at Teresa.

“I told them he’s a ghost, but they won’t believe me,” she said.

“It w-wasn’t a gh-ghost!”

“What game did he want to play?” Teresa asked.

“He was walking on his knees, like he was a kid, too,” Oliver explained. “But we had seen him before, moving around like an old person. He was outside the school, wearing a cape like a wizard in a fairy tale.”

“Did he talk to you? Did he ask you to do anything?” she asked, feigning calm.

“No. He doesn’t know how to talk. And we haven’t seen him since,” Mathias told her.

“I wasn’t there when he came,” said Lucia. “But he left this for me at home.”

She unzipped her jacket and took out a rag doll with berries for eyes.

Teresa glanced at Marini. She had what she needed.

“Thank you,” she told them. “I feel a lot better now. I’m not scared anymore.”

“I told you it works!” said Lucia.

Teresa stroked the girl’s hair.

“Go on, finish your cocoa and we’ll take you home.”

“Will you put the sirens on?” asked Oliver.

“For sure!”

Teresa took Marini aside. She tried to ignore his inquisitive look; he was wondering whether the story she’d told the kids was real or made up. He didn’t yet have the perceptiveness, or perhaps the experience, to know that it wasn’t possible to trick children. They had an infallible instinct for rooting out lies, and when they did, their trust was lost forever.

“He avenges the children,” she whispered.

“He eavesdropped on their confessions.”

“Yes. And he punished the grown-ups who hurt them. They each had someone in their life who was making them suffer. For Diego, an emasculating, emotionally distant father. For Lucia, a drug-addled, absent mother. For Oliver, a sadistic janitor.” Teresa’s gaze sought out the fourth child. “And finally, a violent parent for Mathias. The skinned animal left outside the girl’s house wasn’t a threat. It was a gift. We feed those we love.”

“But he didn’t punish Mathias’s father, he kidnapped his brother,” Marini objected.

Teresa didn’t get a chance to respond.

“The man from the forest brought us gifts,” Oliver interrupted. “Would you like to see them?”

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