Two months after the Eastfield train massacre, the little girl in the white dress returned. Polly appeared at Maplewood Playground on a Tuesday afternoon, just after 3:00 PM. Children swarmed the slides and swings. Parents scrolled phones on benches. Nobody noticed her climb onto the empty swing set, ankles crossed, patent leather bag beside her, humming that tuneless song.
By 3:15, a man and a woman had settled on a shaded bench near the sandbox. They looked like any other couple. The man wore glasses and a button down. The woman had a kind smile and a bag of groceries. They watched the children with what seemed like casual affection.
Polly stopped humming. She rose from the swing and walked directly toward them. Her white dress left no footprints in the sand.
"Hello, Mr. Hendricks. Hello, Mrs. Dawes."
She said. The man's face went pale and the woman's smile froze. Those names had not been used in seven years. Not since they'd fled across state lines, wanted for crimes involving children too young to testify.
"How do you—"
Hendricks started. Polly reached into her bag. What came out was not a weapon. It was a photograph: a boy, age six, last seen alive in their company a decade ago. The boy's eyes had been scratched out in the photo. Polly had done that herself, just now, with her thumbnail.
"You took turns, then you buried him behind the shed."
She said quietly. Mrs. Dawes tried to run. Polly's hand shot out. Small, pale, impossibly strong and closed around the woman's throat. The sound that followed was not a scream. It was a wet, rhythmic crack, like someone stepping on dry twigs in a forest. Over and over.
Hendricks scrambled backward. A child's tricycle blocked his path. Polly turned to him, still holding what remained of Mrs. Dawes's neck.
"You first, or him. He's been waiting."
She said. Onlookers ran. Children cried. By the time police arrived twelve minutes later, both bodies had been rearranged into positions that spelled out a home address and the shed where the boy had been buried.
Polly was gone. But on every swing set in the park, someone had left a small patent leather bag. Inside each one: a photograph of a missing child, eyes scratched out, location written on the back in blood. The cameras caught her leaving again. This time, no detective asked where her parents were.