The Smiling Man Under the Birch

My husband saw him first and said nothing for two nights, which tells you about my husband. Then I got up for water at three in the morning and saw him myself: a man standing under our birch, ten metres from the kitchen window, face tilted up at the house. Smiling. Not a threatening smile — worse. The patient kind, like someone early for an appointment.

He did not move. That is what unstitched me. Wind moved the birch, moved his coat hem, and he stood in it like furniture. After twenty minutes — my husband timing it, phone in hand, both of us whispering in our own kitchen in the dark — he was simply not there anymore. Neither of us saw him leave. You understand: we were looking AT him, and then we were looking at where he had been, and our eyes flatly refused to explain the transition.

Six nights, always 3:00 to roughly 3:20. The police did a drive-by on night three and found the yard empty — he was there again forty minutes after they left. Night four we aimed a camera. Here is the inventory of what three different devices recorded across three nights, while at least one human eye watched an unmistakable man in an unmistakable coat: grass. The birch. Rain once. Nobody.

I stood at the window on the sixth night while my husband watched the live camera feed beside me. I could see the man. The screen showed the empty yard. I would look up: man. Down at the screen: no man. That is the exact moment we decided to stay with my sister for a while.

On the seventh night, our neighbour — who knew nothing about any of it — texted at 3:15: 'Is that guy in YOUR yard waiting for someone? Been there ages.'

He never came back after we returned. But the birch died that autumn, alone among every tree on the street, and neither of us was surprised, and neither of us has said why out loud.