The Man Who Came from Nowhere

By Peter Bowden


He arrived just after dusk, when the heat still clung to the pavement like a ghost reluctant to leave. No car, no dust trail, no footfall before or after. One moment the porch was empty; the next, there he sat on the top step, hat in his hands, watching the last of the sun burn out behind the trees. The dog didn’t bark, the wind didn’t shift, and the air didn’t so much as stir. He looked like he belonged, in the way some old trees do—without explanation
The townsfolk whispered, as townsfolk do. Said he spoke gently but never of himself. Said he fixed things that no one could fix: a wristwatch frozen since ’89, a radio that hadn’t caught a station in years, a boy’s heart broken by too many goodbyes. He worked with quiet hands and eyes that saw too much. No one ever saw him eat, or sleep, or weep, though something behind his eyes made you think he remembered how.
Then, one morning, he was gone. No goodbye, no sign, just the wind brushing the porch like it was trying to remember him. The boy swore he heard the radio play a hymn it never knew. And the old woman’s watch ticked, right on time, as if the world itself had reset by his touch. They never learned where he came from, only that things were better while he was there—and emptier after.


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