I Tried to Save a Boy Locked in a Car — What Happened Next Still Haunts Me (3 of 4)

The next day, I went back. Same car. No boy. Backseat littered with fast-food wrappers and a stuffed bear missing an eye.

Still, I felt eyes on me.

Inside the store, I stopped cold. A child’s white T-shirt hung in the clothing aisle. Damp. Warm.

Then came the soft knock. I turned. A freezer door sat ajar, empty except for a juice box — and a sticky note taped inside:

You saw me.

That night at 3:12 a.m., another photo arrived. Me. In bed. Taken from the foot of it.

The police called it stress. But the photos kept coming. Me brushing my teeth. Me on the balcony. Me crying.

I left my job, moved across the ocean to a quiet Welsh village. For a while, nothing.

Then I saw it — the sedan. Same plates. Parked outside the tiny market. In the backseat, a boy with brown hair and a white shirt. Watching me.

That night, another photo. Me, standing by the car.

I told a journalist. He found a case from five years earlier — a boy left in a hot car. Same make, same plates. The boy had died. The mother was cleared. The car had been spotted in towns all over. Sometimes empty. Sometimes not.