Roddy Doyle, "The Child"

A man is haunted by a reappearing phantom child.

(from McSweeney's Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories)

Is it a real child, or a ghost, or is the man just crazy? He's crazy. This story starts out like an Edger Allen Poe descent into madness thing and then gets sort of dull and repetitive.
And the end. I like introvert goth types. Good people. Dreamers. But I don't want to read their unilayered do-I-scare-you mindfuck short stories. This story made me sleepy and distractable. Just 14 pages long and it took me two days to finish it.