The Shrine at the Edge of the Playground

Luna recalls a summer night in 1997, when she was twelve and the new girl in the small desert town of San Patricio, New Mexico. The kids at the edge of the cul-de-sac dared her to touch the shrine at the far end of the abandoned playground—a white wooden box nailed to a dead cottonwood tree, filled with a child's toys and a sealed mason jar. She didn't touch it, but she went back alone the next night, and she saw the man in the beige windbreaker standing in the dark beneath the tree, his hand resting on the box as if it were his own child's grave. The story is not about what was in the jar. It's about the fact that the man came back the next night, and the next, and that thirty years later, Luna still checks the obituaries for San Patricio, looking for the name of a child who died the summer of '97. #FexingoHorror #HorrorPodcast #SaintsOfTheSaltFlats #Anthology #SmallTownHorror #AbandonedPlayground #Shrine #ChildhoodFear #1997 #NewMexico #SanPatricio #DeadTree #MasonJar #Windbreaker #SummerNight #Grief #Loneliness #Memory Keep every episode free: buymeacoffee.com/fexingo