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On the morning of June 21, 1983, a three-year-old boy disappeared into the forests of Shawnee, Colorado. One moment he was playing in a backyard sand box, watched by his mother through the open kitchen window, then in the blink of an eye he was gone.
The boy eventually emerged from the shadowy forest, and his parents thanked god tragedy had been avoided. However, they were unaware the child in their arms was an altered version. Their son had wandered down a dark path, and what returned was strange. What returned was me. And until recently, I’d intended to take that secret to the grave. You see, reader, I never wanted to write this book. But my conscience compelled me to give a warning. Many wander the dark place. Recently, I returned to it and set something free. It’s here now. I’d keep reading if I were you. |
Chapter 01 – Plowed
On the morning of June 21, 1983, a three-year-old boy disappeared into the forests of Shawnee, Colorado. One moment he was playing in a backyard sand box, watched by his mother through the open kitchen window, then in the blink of an eye he was gone. The young mother and father rushed from their small white house on the side of the hill, calling out in panic, alarming neighbors down the road, and helplessly staring up the ascending slope of forest. A peaceful dream of rural living shattered as the emptiness of midday silence sapped the warmth from their hearts.
Yet warmth returned even as the evening cooled and the sky blushed purple, because the boy emerged from the shadowy forest. He was dirty, but unharmed. The couple thanked god tragedy had been avoided. However, they were unaware the child in their arms was an altered version. Their son had wandered down a dark path, and what returned was strange.
What returned was me.
And until recently, I’d intended to take that secret to the grave.
For most, you will regard what you read in these pages as fiction, a tale spun by an overactive imagination, a lunatic, or a person seeking attention—which is fine. This book isn’t for skeptics. It’s for readers who know my words are true because you are one of us—even if reading this book is your epiphany. These events may feel familiar to you. This story might force you to relive things—I’m sure—you desperately try to forget. You may feel compelled to slam this book shut, throw it in the trash, or burn it—anything to make it go away. All because, like me, you’ve spent so much time wishing, praying it was nothing but a nightmare.
You see, reader, I never wanted to write this book. But my conscience compelled me to give a warning. Many wander the dark place. Recently, I returned to it and set something free.
It’s here now. I’d keep reading if I were you.
• • •
For whatever mysterious reason, memories of that dark path were gone until years later. My childhood was not as messy as you might imagine. There were no medical exams to reveal my dark nature, no mysterious powers to give me away. My humanity was never in question.
Strange occurrences happened throughout my childhood, sure, and in retrospect, they should have been obvious signs, but I excused them as illusions, dreams, or brief psychological episodes. As a child, I could be distant, temperamental, and defiant. Prone to nightmares, dark thoughts and the fantastical brewed within. My parents discussed psychological evaluation to understand my temper and gloom, but they didn’t want to stigmatize a young boy. Already, I had a misshapen chest from a birth defect, and early adolescence brought shyness and shame. They never wished to increase my burden.
In the end, they saw my moodiness as a phase I’d grow out of, and deemed the bizarre horrors astir in my mind as a case of overactive imagination. Before adulthood, I too was guilty of ignoring the dark within. We all deny the truth when it’s uncomfortable. But here’s a fun fact I’ve learned over the years: the truth doesn’t give a shit if you believe it or not. Eventually, it rises, and when I reached age seventeen, there was no more avoiding it. The darkness was ready to tear its way into my life.
So on with the story. Buckle up, reader, we’re going for a ride.
• • •
My family left Colorado shortly after my younger sister’s birth in November 1983 and headed east to land in southern New Hampshire. A small suburban town called Dover with rolling green hills flecked with cows and history, all underneath a brooding gray sky. The kind of place a wandering child can live out his wildest fantasies. There’s an expanse of trees near every neighborhood, and a brook running beside every country store. A ruined old shed sits in every back yard, and each town has a strange rock formation lighting the imagination to things such as trolls, faeries, and wicked old religions that made Jesus clench his butt cheeks and whimper. It’s easy to get lost in the nooks and crannies of old New England. As a child, I often did.
Through the years in Dover, we called different places home, but in 1991, when I was eleven, we settled on Applevale Drive. A nice white, two-story house with a yard, just big enough to make mowing grass annoying. There were friends close by, and an odd smattering of neighbors keeping things lively.
Across the street lived Dot and Todd, the middle-aged couple who each had a vanity license plate reading TODDOT or DOTODD, depending whose car pulled by while I walked home from the bus stop. DOTODD was angry and robust, and she often tried to run my friend, Jarren, over with her car (or so we thought). In contrast, her husband, TODDOT, was a smiley-faced, diminutive, distance runner and all-around nice guy.
The Fishers lived next door. Dan and Ruth, a friendly elderly couple, always grinning, and asking how school was going. We couldn’t hope for better neighbors, and my parents were thankful for their observations. Dan and Ruth stealthily monitored me and my sister when mischief was afoot. (I almost got away with driving my car through the yard on a dare. Almost).
On the other side of our house lived an elderly woman named Josephine, who lost her mind after her son’s death. Josephine muttered in a feverish, high-pitched way the kids in the neighborhood called yodeling. She did it even while shuffling out to the mailbox to retrieve her newspaper. NO TRESPASSING signs plastered the gray chain-link surrounding her yard. Balls lost over the fence were gone forever. This wasn’t a fairy tale like The Sandlot. Josephine would come out with a knife when children wandered into her yard. My sister and I were afraid of her. Thankfully, she received help and medical care years later.
Life on Applevale was happier than the outliers might suggest, even if the weird religious guy on the corner refused to mow his lawn until it was the length of two-foot field grass. There were families with kids close to me and my sister’s ages, and some remain lifelong friends. It was a pleasant neighborhood. I was happy and felt safe on Applevale. In my memory, it’s the place that stands out as “home.” It’s where I became an adult.
And while seventeen isn’t the official age of adulthood, I considered it close enough. Counted on to watch my fourteen-year-old sister while my parents were away one night in 1997, the directions were simple: no parties. I mostly stayed in my bedroom, alternating between video games and reading song lyrics while listening to my Discman. Downstairs in the living room, my sister watched television and gossiped about classmates with a neighborhood friend. I checked on them a couple times throughout the evening, meaning I walked past to get to the kitchen and scrounge for snacks. The girls took the Cheez-Its, so I chose cinnamon Pop-Tarts, untoasted--because honestly, who has the time to wait for a toaster? It was a boring evening. So boring, I fell asleep while playing video games.
Rain fell in sheets on the other side of my sloping bedroom ceiling. Its hypnotic static infiltrated my consciousness, building background noise to accompany the dreamed pixel battles behind my eyelids. The white cursor of the video game menu blinked to the rhythm of the storm outside until, all at once, it stopped.
I slowly opened my eyes to a dark, silent room, and only when distant lightning lit the window were silhouettes outlined against the wall. No thunder followed, yet another bolt lit the sky outside. I sat up in bed and wondered at the silence. It hung like a prelude.
The metal slap of a screen door opening and closing came from outside. I went to the window and pushed aside a curtain to see Josephine walking out of her house under the porch light, one hand gripping a butcher’s knife, the other clasping her kerchief just under the chin. She walked across the driveway muttering in her feverish high-pitched way, the sound like a conversation played backward at high speed. It stood the hair on the back of my neck.
When she reached the end of her driveway, she simply turned and stared back at the house, having accomplished nothing. She was expressionless, an empty vessel waiting to be triggered like a roving zombie. Why was she outside at this late hour? As if attuned to my thoughts, she stared at my bedroom window with wide, accusatory eyes.
“Give Marvin his fucking nickel, you little shit!” Josephine called out from her driveway below.
Lightning streaked the sky, and the blade of her knife reflected its brutality. I gasped and backed into the foot of my bed. Though I was seventeen, the haggard woman scared the hell out of me.
Marvin, I thought. How long had it been since I’d heard that name?
The groaning roll of thunder followed, and rain poured from the sky. The twenty-inch box television on top of my dresser blinked awake, and its white noise crackled with the storm. Lightning flashed and the full-length mirror next to my bedroom door caught my eye. Standing in its reflection was the doll whose memory was coming back to me, more with each passing second. Marvin. He was a bad dream from my childhood, an illusion I’d thought was in the past. This shaggy black doll with a pale face was the kind that usually had fat button eyes, but his were bright, shining nickels.
A gutting cry came from outside. Past the curtain, Josephine collapsed in her driveway, soaking in the downpour. She’d fallen and needed help, but my insides screamed to ignore her. An indescribable dread ate at my stomach, flushing my veins with panic and fear.
Go to her, I thought. She’s an old woman. She needs help. Why are you just standing here, you fucking coward?
Shame won out over fear’s instinctual warning, and I raced out of my bedroom in jeans and a tee shirt, down the stairs and into the night. As I loped across the wet grass, trying not to slip, Josephine laid in her driveway, overcoat slick with wetness and gleaming in the porch light. She moaned when I drew close. My eyes met hers and the muttering started again. Her thin lips jerked with incoherent ramblings, feverishly scrambling sounds. Something pushed behind her eyes, bulging unnaturally. I stood and stepped back in fear, trying not to run away screaming.
Josephine’s eyes bulged further and then popped out of their sockets. Behind them, tendrils of black pressed forward, unfurling from the holes in her head like creeping vines. Her mouth opened wide, making way for an outpouring. Vines fell into her lap and slapped the wet ground. Her entire body shook, as if possessed by the eerie horror growing within. I backed away. The rain soaked my clothes and blurred my vision. The wind was howling. Josephine’s body swelled as if it might burst, and then--
I woke with a start. The video game controller sat to my side, and the television’s blue light bathed my bedroom, the game’s command menu waiting for my selection. I rubbed my forehead and exhaled in relief. It was just a nightmare. Yet the storm outside had intensified. It was May, and in New England, that meant a lot of gray skies, rain, and muddy shoes. It also meant my family needed to make sure the sump pump in the basement was running to prevent water damage. So I shook the nerves off and headed downstairs.
Exiting my bedroom on the second floor, I saw light coming across the hall from my sister’s room, and heard her listening to Alanis Morissette. A couple hours must have passed since I’d nodded off. There were no more sounds of incessant giggling, which meant her friend had gone home. A quick knock on the door to say I was checking the pump before bed, and she replied, “okay, g’night.”
Downstairs, the kitchen and living room lights were on. If I didn’t turn them off, I’d hear about it when my parents came home in the morning. Also, the box of Cheez-Its still sat on the coffee table. Did my sister know how lucky she was? Doubtful. Once in front of the basement door, I swung it open and inhaled the familiar musty stink. I paused and—if you’ve ever lived in a house with a dark musty basement—you don’t need to ask why. Because despite time spent down there during daylight hours, going into a New England basement alone at night was unsettling. Ten years ago, the promise of a Cherry Coke couldn’t coax me down there. I reminded myself I no longer believed in things going bump in the night. I’d aged, survived puberty, and come out on the other end more confident—hadn’t I?
Reaching puberty—much like eating from the tree of knowledge—had brought with it shame, doubt, and a painful level of self-awareness. Despite my blossoming interest in the opposite sex, girls weren’t falling head-over-heels for me. In fact, they were more inclined to make fun of me. Quickly, the innocent child transformed into the self-conscious wallflower teen.
It didn’t help that I was born with a physical impediment called Poland Syndrome. Poland Syndrome can present itself in different ways, but my specific case came in the absence of my left pectoral muscle. As a child, it never caused much issue, as my little-boy chest was flat and my little-boy mind was unencumbered. Unfortunately, as my body developed, the left side of my chest appeared concave in contrast to the right. I became unwilling to remove my shirt around others, even friends. Summers filled with trips to the lake or the public swimming pool found me sitting on the sideline. Even athletics became embarrassing. My mother discreetly asked my basketball coaches to keep me off the “skins” team during scrimmages, and the football team taunted me, as I was the only member who couldn’t perform a single pushup.
Without the fundamental pillar of physical self-confidence, I grew shy, ashamed, and frankly afraid of other people. I was an easy target for bullies and ridicule. Not long after, solitude became the norm. Alone in my bedroom, with video games, movies, books, music, and a secret desire to disappear. Early adolescence stripped my self-worth and absolutely kicked my ass.
Yet from that crucible came my greatest strength and new confidence. In solitude, my mind developed into a churning, creative engine. Drawing and painting became strengths, enough to qualify for advanced placement courses in high school. I wrote short stories and poems, later turned into song lyrics after saving up for a bass guitar and starting a garage band. I was finding myself after time lost in the darkness of early adolescence. Now I was seventeen, an adult, yet young enough to remember childlike fears.
They were threatening again as I listened at the top of the staircase. The sump pump wasn’t running.
Fear is a strange emotion when you have both the logic to stifle it and the creative inclination to feed its fire. Staring down into the dark basement, there was a gravity in my chest, pulling me away like the moon dragging the tide. Unspeakable images flashed behind my eyes, and I had an undeniable longing for somebody, anybody, to be by my side. I flicked the light switch and the single bulb at the top of the stairs buzzed alive. The floor below was dry. That meant at least “my” room was safe.
You see, two rooms divided the basement, and “my” room was floored slightly higher. Why was it “my” room, you ask? Because my parents had basically let me claim it, in one of the cooler—if not the absolute coolest—decisions they had made in my life. Working weekends washing dishes at a local restaurant, I had saved enough money to purchase a gray Ibanez bass guitar. Plugged into a Peavey amplifier and a Boss distortion pedal, it made a terrible and delicious noise. After hearing it, my parents decided it belonged as far underground as possible, and in a stroke of teenage-motivating genius, they allowed me to paint the walls of a room in the basement however I wanted, as long as I only played the guitar in that room.
On one wall, I painted a giant Nine Inch Nails logo and a life-sized Darth Vader. On another wall, I painted R2D2 over the electric outlet to imply the most famous R2 unit in the galaxy powered the amp. Finally, I designed the floor as one gigantic black and white spiral. If you stood in its center and spun around, the floor might hypnotize you. I spent countless hours in that dingy room, crappily trying to master “Head Like a Hole,” as well as other songs.
So, yes, seeing a dry floor was a moderate relief. But it didn’t mean the entire basement was dry. Until I descended and peered to the left, my task was not finished. A clap of thunder shook the entire house, and I jumped.
“Jesus,” I said in frustration. “Let’s get this over with.”
The silence was too tense. I rubbed my hands together and talked to myself as if uttering something nonchalant would ward off things crawling from dark depths. Then I took my first step down the stairs.
Until I reached the bottom, uncomfortable seconds would pass with darkness to either side. The light above only reached so far. Another switch waited to be flipped. I had grown comfortable with the right side extending into “my” room, but the other side… That side was unfinished, concrete floor with sections open to dirt, boards exposed overhead, a workbench with tools and an old rusty vice, a washer and dryer against the far wall, and beside them an unused closet with broken shelves doing nothing but collecting dust and cobwebs. I never lingered there, and only entered to do laundry, or reach the sump pump.
A couple more steps now. Just a few remaining moments imagining freakish creatures with red eyes and wet fangs. I extended my arm into the shadows and—flick. There was nothing in the basement except me. Yet as the childish worries dissolved, the adult concerns came rushing back. There was an inch of standing water on the concrete floor.
After taking my shoes and socks off, I walked into the cold water and wrinkled my nose. My feet were pale against the painted cement. The sump pump sat in the corner with its cord hanging high in the air, away from the wetness. I plugged the pump into an outlet high on the wall and it kicked into gear, whirring like an angry little robot. I had earned my gold star for the night.
Now, I was ready to head back upstairs, dry my feet, and watch TV, when in my periphery something moved across the basement floor. Deeper into the room, the water’s surface rippled. Maybe a spider had fallen from the exposed boards above. Or the sump pump had caused an odd disturbance as it pulled water along the floor. Maybe bravery didn’t matter, because fear wasn’t only in your mind. It lurked in shadows, stalked you, and would never fade. I remembered that name in my nightmare: Marvin. Realization struck, because even water on the floor of a musty basement can give a reflection.
Just like a mirror.
The nickel-eyed doll scurried out of the shadows, and giant black vines burst out of the water like the tentacles of a kraken. Stumbling backward, I fell flat to the floor, my jeans soaked through, and a vine shattered the hanging bulb above me. Now the only light came from the stairwell as I tried to crawl away. Panic throttled my ability to reason. None of this was possible; none of this could be real. Marvin the rag-doll was supposed to be a long-forgotten illusion from my childhood, and what happened at Andy Newman’s house ten years ago was misremembered–it fucking had to be.
I scrambled into the corner, where the sump pump continued to purr like a mechanical cat. A vine wrapped itself around my leg and I rolled to see the little doll tracing its finger in the open air. He tore a path into a black abyss, just as he had when I was seven.
Now the vines had me. They dragged me closer to Marvin’s tear, which widened like curtains above the surface of the water. More vines shot out of the abyss and closed around my wrists. I wrenched one hand free and reached for the little doll, intent on squeezing it to death if I could. My fingers raked his face, ripping a nickel free. Then, after one final torrent of struggle, the vines pulled me through the tear and dropped me down onto a rough floor.
The vines had won and pulled me into a shallow cave beneath my basement. Rough walls surrounded me, with only a small amount of light coming through the tear above my head. The nickel I’d ripped from Marvin fell past me and hit the floor with a metallic ping. It rolled fifteen feet until it fell flat at the foot of a small child. He was ghostly in the dim light. Hair, face, hands, clothes, all so pale. He glanced at the nickel resting beside his feet, and then back at me.
“Memember,” he moaned. “Memember.”
I quickly stood and jumped for the tear, getting my elbows through it, pulling myself up as if fighting not to fall off a cliff. The boy in the cave howled, and the vines tried to grab me again, yet this time fear and adrenaline gave me feral strength. Wriggling out of the abyss and rolling on the wet basement floor, I found the little demon doll and gripped him in my fist. Marvin turned his gaze to the stairs, and then I heard my sister call down.
“Hey, you’re making a lot of noise down there,” she said. “You okay?”
“I am now,” I said quietly, out of sight in the wet basement.
I ripped Marvin’s head from his limp little body. The vines receded, melting into the water like shadows driven by the dawn, and the tear sealed itself shut. I panted on the cement floor, half of Marvin in each hand.
“Jeez, you’re soaking wet.” My sister stood wide-eyed when I reached the top of the stairs.
“Slipped and fell,” I said. “But I’m okay, and the basement should dry up soon.”
The commotion brought my sister downstairs, and flushed her face with concern, but I could only think of getting rid of the doll. Marvin hadn’t disappeared, and with his body stuffed in the back of my jeans, wishing him away didn’t feel like a realistic option.
“I’m gonna change and then take a quick drive to the store. You want anything?”
“You’re going now?” my sister asked incredulously. “It’s almost midnight, and it’s pouring out.”
“I know. But I’m hungry, and don’t want anything we have.”
There was a 24-hour convenience store about a mile from the house, uninspiringly named Store24.
“I don’t want anything,” she said. “Don’t be long. I was going to sleep, but it’ll be creepy in the house alone.”
I gave my sister a reassuring nod. “I’ll be quick.”
In my bedroom, I changed into dry clothes and rifled through a desk drawer to find an old keepsake: a red plastic pencil box filled with trinkets collected through my childhood. Inside was a turquoise ring once belonging to a Native American princess (so my parents said), a pewter Jesus hanging on the cross given by my aunt as she felt every child needed one, a rusty old black key I’d found in the woods, a transit token from Bermuda with the number three cut out of its center, and a few other unremarkable trifles. Now I needed the red box for a higher purpose. After emptying its contents into the desk, I stuffed Marvin’s inanimate ass inside and sealed it with duct tape. With the doll secure, I tucked the pencil box into my jeans. It was time to move.
Sprinting to my little Ford Festiva before the rain soaked me, I tossed the box to the passenger side and slid into the driver’s seat. The convenience store had been a lie. My plan was to head downtown and pitch the taped up red pencil box into the Cocheco River, hoping one of two things would happen. One, the action of casting the box into the river would be such a grand symbolic moment my psyche would finally break from the ridiculous, albeit terrifying, illusion. Or two, the river would carry away the decapitated host of a demon, freeing me forever. It would only take maybe ten minutes longer than a trip to the convenience store, and even if my sister stayed awake until my return, the delay would be easy to explain. So, with headlights shining and the wipers on full tilt, I backed out of the driveway and onto Applevale Drive. I shot a furtive glance at the box in the passenger seat. It hadn’t moved an inch.
The little car tore over the wet roads. I was driving too fast, letting anxiety get the best of me. Luckily, the streets were devoid of traffic because of the rain and late hour. When I finally pulled to a jilting stop in a parking spot on the downtown bridge over the Cocheco, lightning flashed over the old mill building and sent a chill up my spine. The pencil box still hadn’t moved. Maybe Marvin wasn’t actually in there. Maybe I was going to end up like Josephine, madly muttering nonsense while clutching a kitchen knife. I grabbed the box and held it up to feel its weight. Was Marvin truly in there? The box felt too heavy to be empty, but nothing shifted around.
“What are you doing?” I asked myself out loud and shook my head.
The answer was losing my mind and getting ready to throw an empty pencil box into the river. I should open the box. Those words echoed in my head. Open the box. A mantra to repeat endlessly. Breathe in and breathe out. Picture a warm beach with perfect crystal waters, while the wind whispers: open the box.
Open.
The box.
My fingers found the edge of the duct tape and began working at it. Centimeter by centimeter, unwrapping the tape as it made its horrible, wonderful suction noise. I peeled the tape away, and a weight lifted. It felt good, and it felt like--
PRAP, PRAP, PRAP on the window.
I fumbled the box as my eyes shot open, and my heart hammered in my chest.
“Roll the window down,” came the commanding voice of the officer standing outside my window. She shined her flashlight into the car, and the rain threw the light into a kaleidoscope of chaos.
As I rolled the window down, a fresh wave of dread swept over me. The blue flashing lights of a cop car were a couple parking spaces away, and a frowning police officer in a poncho had her flashlight directly in my face.
“What are you doing out here?”
“Uh, nothing,” was my genius response.
“Nothing,” she sarcastically echoed. “What’s in the box?”
I glanced at the half untaped red pencil box, and then back to the officer.
“Are there drugs in there?” she asked.
“No.”
“Give it to me,” she said.
I didn’t move.
“Now,” she exclaimed, more like a disappointed parent than an officer of the law.
Unwillingly, I gave her the box.
She tucked the flashlight under her arm and used both hands to unwrap the rest of the duct tape. I just knew it would be empty. Unable to explain myself, the officer would take me to the police station. I’d have to call my sister, she’d call my parents, and then someone would need to call a coroner because I would be dead meat.
The officer opened the box and swore. “Holy fucking shit!” She jumped as if there was a tarantula crawling up her arm.
The flashlight fell to the ground, and the officer slammed the box closed. She looped the flapping duct tape back around it as fast as she could.
“Roll your window up,” she yelled. “Roll it up!”
I rolled the window up with my hands shaking. What the hell was happening? The officer fumbled her flashlight off the wet pavement, and then rounded the back of the car, eventually letting herself in the passenger side. My whole body went rigid with shock. For a moment, she just sat there, catching her breath, staring down at the red pencil box in her lap. Her hands white-knuckled it like the devil itself might come out. She trembled and a long lock of blond hair fell from under her officer’s cap to rest on her shoulder.
“Where did you get this?” she asked.
“My basement.”
The officer turned to me, and her eyes grew wide. Then she squinted as if trying to look into me. Finally, she turned away and swore.
“Dammit, Molly, you should’ve known,” she mumbled. Then to me, “I should’ve known as soon as I saw your face.”
“Should’ve known what?”
Officer Molly paused and furrowed her brow, as if her statement had said it all. Shadows swelled in my subconscious, vague memories I’d pushed away. They made me feel uncomfortable and stupid, as if I should’ve known exactly what she meant.
“Okay,” she said and raised a finger. “Tomorrow, at nine a.m., you’re gonna meet me for coffee at Harvey’s.” She pointed to the towny little coffee shop next to the bridge. “If you don’t show, I will, at your house, to arrest you for some made-up bullshit. I ran your plate and know who you are. Are we clear on this?”
I nodded stiffly.
“Good.” The officer took a business card out of her breast pocket. “If anything else happens tonight, you call me immediately.”
The business card read, Officer Molly Vincent, Dover Police Department. My mind reeled as Molly opened the door.
“But—” I said.
Molly turned to see my eyes locked on the red box in her hands.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “Marvin won’t leave my sight.”
On the morning of June 21, 1983, a three-year-old boy disappeared into the forests of Shawnee, Colorado. One moment he was playing in a backyard sand box, watched by his mother through the open kitchen window, then in the blink of an eye he was gone. The young mother and father rushed from their small white house on the side of the hill, calling out in panic, alarming neighbors down the road, and helplessly staring up the ascending slope of forest. A peaceful dream of rural living shattered as the emptiness of midday silence sapped the warmth from their hearts.
Yet warmth returned even as the evening cooled and the sky blushed purple, because the boy emerged from the shadowy forest. He was dirty, but unharmed. The couple thanked god tragedy had been avoided. However, they were unaware the child in their arms was an altered version. Their son had wandered down a dark path, and what returned was strange.
What returned was me.
And until recently, I’d intended to take that secret to the grave.
For most, you will regard what you read in these pages as fiction, a tale spun by an overactive imagination, a lunatic, or a person seeking attention—which is fine. This book isn’t for skeptics. It’s for readers who know my words are true because you are one of us—even if reading this book is your epiphany. These events may feel familiar to you. This story might force you to relive things—I’m sure—you desperately try to forget. You may feel compelled to slam this book shut, throw it in the trash, or burn it—anything to make it go away. All because, like me, you’ve spent so much time wishing, praying it was nothing but a nightmare.
You see, reader, I never wanted to write this book. But my conscience compelled me to give a warning. Many wander the dark place. Recently, I returned to it and set something free.
It’s here now. I’d keep reading if I were you.
• • •
For whatever mysterious reason, memories of that dark path were gone until years later. My childhood was not as messy as you might imagine. There were no medical exams to reveal my dark nature, no mysterious powers to give me away. My humanity was never in question.
Strange occurrences happened throughout my childhood, sure, and in retrospect, they should have been obvious signs, but I excused them as illusions, dreams, or brief psychological episodes. As a child, I could be distant, temperamental, and defiant. Prone to nightmares, dark thoughts and the fantastical brewed within. My parents discussed psychological evaluation to understand my temper and gloom, but they didn’t want to stigmatize a young boy. Already, I had a misshapen chest from a birth defect, and early adolescence brought shyness and shame. They never wished to increase my burden.
In the end, they saw my moodiness as a phase I’d grow out of, and deemed the bizarre horrors astir in my mind as a case of overactive imagination. Before adulthood, I too was guilty of ignoring the dark within. We all deny the truth when it’s uncomfortable. But here’s a fun fact I’ve learned over the years: the truth doesn’t give a shit if you believe it or not. Eventually, it rises, and when I reached age seventeen, there was no more avoiding it. The darkness was ready to tear its way into my life.
So on with the story. Buckle up, reader, we’re going for a ride.
• • •
My family left Colorado shortly after my younger sister’s birth in November 1983 and headed east to land in southern New Hampshire. A small suburban town called Dover with rolling green hills flecked with cows and history, all underneath a brooding gray sky. The kind of place a wandering child can live out his wildest fantasies. There’s an expanse of trees near every neighborhood, and a brook running beside every country store. A ruined old shed sits in every back yard, and each town has a strange rock formation lighting the imagination to things such as trolls, faeries, and wicked old religions that made Jesus clench his butt cheeks and whimper. It’s easy to get lost in the nooks and crannies of old New England. As a child, I often did.
Through the years in Dover, we called different places home, but in 1991, when I was eleven, we settled on Applevale Drive. A nice white, two-story house with a yard, just big enough to make mowing grass annoying. There were friends close by, and an odd smattering of neighbors keeping things lively.
Across the street lived Dot and Todd, the middle-aged couple who each had a vanity license plate reading TODDOT or DOTODD, depending whose car pulled by while I walked home from the bus stop. DOTODD was angry and robust, and she often tried to run my friend, Jarren, over with her car (or so we thought). In contrast, her husband, TODDOT, was a smiley-faced, diminutive, distance runner and all-around nice guy.
The Fishers lived next door. Dan and Ruth, a friendly elderly couple, always grinning, and asking how school was going. We couldn’t hope for better neighbors, and my parents were thankful for their observations. Dan and Ruth stealthily monitored me and my sister when mischief was afoot. (I almost got away with driving my car through the yard on a dare. Almost).
On the other side of our house lived an elderly woman named Josephine, who lost her mind after her son’s death. Josephine muttered in a feverish, high-pitched way the kids in the neighborhood called yodeling. She did it even while shuffling out to the mailbox to retrieve her newspaper. NO TRESPASSING signs plastered the gray chain-link surrounding her yard. Balls lost over the fence were gone forever. This wasn’t a fairy tale like The Sandlot. Josephine would come out with a knife when children wandered into her yard. My sister and I were afraid of her. Thankfully, she received help and medical care years later.
Life on Applevale was happier than the outliers might suggest, even if the weird religious guy on the corner refused to mow his lawn until it was the length of two-foot field grass. There were families with kids close to me and my sister’s ages, and some remain lifelong friends. It was a pleasant neighborhood. I was happy and felt safe on Applevale. In my memory, it’s the place that stands out as “home.” It’s where I became an adult.
And while seventeen isn’t the official age of adulthood, I considered it close enough. Counted on to watch my fourteen-year-old sister while my parents were away one night in 1997, the directions were simple: no parties. I mostly stayed in my bedroom, alternating between video games and reading song lyrics while listening to my Discman. Downstairs in the living room, my sister watched television and gossiped about classmates with a neighborhood friend. I checked on them a couple times throughout the evening, meaning I walked past to get to the kitchen and scrounge for snacks. The girls took the Cheez-Its, so I chose cinnamon Pop-Tarts, untoasted--because honestly, who has the time to wait for a toaster? It was a boring evening. So boring, I fell asleep while playing video games.
Rain fell in sheets on the other side of my sloping bedroom ceiling. Its hypnotic static infiltrated my consciousness, building background noise to accompany the dreamed pixel battles behind my eyelids. The white cursor of the video game menu blinked to the rhythm of the storm outside until, all at once, it stopped.
I slowly opened my eyes to a dark, silent room, and only when distant lightning lit the window were silhouettes outlined against the wall. No thunder followed, yet another bolt lit the sky outside. I sat up in bed and wondered at the silence. It hung like a prelude.
The metal slap of a screen door opening and closing came from outside. I went to the window and pushed aside a curtain to see Josephine walking out of her house under the porch light, one hand gripping a butcher’s knife, the other clasping her kerchief just under the chin. She walked across the driveway muttering in her feverish high-pitched way, the sound like a conversation played backward at high speed. It stood the hair on the back of my neck.
When she reached the end of her driveway, she simply turned and stared back at the house, having accomplished nothing. She was expressionless, an empty vessel waiting to be triggered like a roving zombie. Why was she outside at this late hour? As if attuned to my thoughts, she stared at my bedroom window with wide, accusatory eyes.
“Give Marvin his fucking nickel, you little shit!” Josephine called out from her driveway below.
Lightning streaked the sky, and the blade of her knife reflected its brutality. I gasped and backed into the foot of my bed. Though I was seventeen, the haggard woman scared the hell out of me.
Marvin, I thought. How long had it been since I’d heard that name?
The groaning roll of thunder followed, and rain poured from the sky. The twenty-inch box television on top of my dresser blinked awake, and its white noise crackled with the storm. Lightning flashed and the full-length mirror next to my bedroom door caught my eye. Standing in its reflection was the doll whose memory was coming back to me, more with each passing second. Marvin. He was a bad dream from my childhood, an illusion I’d thought was in the past. This shaggy black doll with a pale face was the kind that usually had fat button eyes, but his were bright, shining nickels.
A gutting cry came from outside. Past the curtain, Josephine collapsed in her driveway, soaking in the downpour. She’d fallen and needed help, but my insides screamed to ignore her. An indescribable dread ate at my stomach, flushing my veins with panic and fear.
Go to her, I thought. She’s an old woman. She needs help. Why are you just standing here, you fucking coward?
Shame won out over fear’s instinctual warning, and I raced out of my bedroom in jeans and a tee shirt, down the stairs and into the night. As I loped across the wet grass, trying not to slip, Josephine laid in her driveway, overcoat slick with wetness and gleaming in the porch light. She moaned when I drew close. My eyes met hers and the muttering started again. Her thin lips jerked with incoherent ramblings, feverishly scrambling sounds. Something pushed behind her eyes, bulging unnaturally. I stood and stepped back in fear, trying not to run away screaming.
Josephine’s eyes bulged further and then popped out of their sockets. Behind them, tendrils of black pressed forward, unfurling from the holes in her head like creeping vines. Her mouth opened wide, making way for an outpouring. Vines fell into her lap and slapped the wet ground. Her entire body shook, as if possessed by the eerie horror growing within. I backed away. The rain soaked my clothes and blurred my vision. The wind was howling. Josephine’s body swelled as if it might burst, and then--
I woke with a start. The video game controller sat to my side, and the television’s blue light bathed my bedroom, the game’s command menu waiting for my selection. I rubbed my forehead and exhaled in relief. It was just a nightmare. Yet the storm outside had intensified. It was May, and in New England, that meant a lot of gray skies, rain, and muddy shoes. It also meant my family needed to make sure the sump pump in the basement was running to prevent water damage. So I shook the nerves off and headed downstairs.
Exiting my bedroom on the second floor, I saw light coming across the hall from my sister’s room, and heard her listening to Alanis Morissette. A couple hours must have passed since I’d nodded off. There were no more sounds of incessant giggling, which meant her friend had gone home. A quick knock on the door to say I was checking the pump before bed, and she replied, “okay, g’night.”
Downstairs, the kitchen and living room lights were on. If I didn’t turn them off, I’d hear about it when my parents came home in the morning. Also, the box of Cheez-Its still sat on the coffee table. Did my sister know how lucky she was? Doubtful. Once in front of the basement door, I swung it open and inhaled the familiar musty stink. I paused and—if you’ve ever lived in a house with a dark musty basement—you don’t need to ask why. Because despite time spent down there during daylight hours, going into a New England basement alone at night was unsettling. Ten years ago, the promise of a Cherry Coke couldn’t coax me down there. I reminded myself I no longer believed in things going bump in the night. I’d aged, survived puberty, and come out on the other end more confident—hadn’t I?
Reaching puberty—much like eating from the tree of knowledge—had brought with it shame, doubt, and a painful level of self-awareness. Despite my blossoming interest in the opposite sex, girls weren’t falling head-over-heels for me. In fact, they were more inclined to make fun of me. Quickly, the innocent child transformed into the self-conscious wallflower teen.
It didn’t help that I was born with a physical impediment called Poland Syndrome. Poland Syndrome can present itself in different ways, but my specific case came in the absence of my left pectoral muscle. As a child, it never caused much issue, as my little-boy chest was flat and my little-boy mind was unencumbered. Unfortunately, as my body developed, the left side of my chest appeared concave in contrast to the right. I became unwilling to remove my shirt around others, even friends. Summers filled with trips to the lake or the public swimming pool found me sitting on the sideline. Even athletics became embarrassing. My mother discreetly asked my basketball coaches to keep me off the “skins” team during scrimmages, and the football team taunted me, as I was the only member who couldn’t perform a single pushup.
Without the fundamental pillar of physical self-confidence, I grew shy, ashamed, and frankly afraid of other people. I was an easy target for bullies and ridicule. Not long after, solitude became the norm. Alone in my bedroom, with video games, movies, books, music, and a secret desire to disappear. Early adolescence stripped my self-worth and absolutely kicked my ass.
Yet from that crucible came my greatest strength and new confidence. In solitude, my mind developed into a churning, creative engine. Drawing and painting became strengths, enough to qualify for advanced placement courses in high school. I wrote short stories and poems, later turned into song lyrics after saving up for a bass guitar and starting a garage band. I was finding myself after time lost in the darkness of early adolescence. Now I was seventeen, an adult, yet young enough to remember childlike fears.
They were threatening again as I listened at the top of the staircase. The sump pump wasn’t running.
Fear is a strange emotion when you have both the logic to stifle it and the creative inclination to feed its fire. Staring down into the dark basement, there was a gravity in my chest, pulling me away like the moon dragging the tide. Unspeakable images flashed behind my eyes, and I had an undeniable longing for somebody, anybody, to be by my side. I flicked the light switch and the single bulb at the top of the stairs buzzed alive. The floor below was dry. That meant at least “my” room was safe.
You see, two rooms divided the basement, and “my” room was floored slightly higher. Why was it “my” room, you ask? Because my parents had basically let me claim it, in one of the cooler—if not the absolute coolest—decisions they had made in my life. Working weekends washing dishes at a local restaurant, I had saved enough money to purchase a gray Ibanez bass guitar. Plugged into a Peavey amplifier and a Boss distortion pedal, it made a terrible and delicious noise. After hearing it, my parents decided it belonged as far underground as possible, and in a stroke of teenage-motivating genius, they allowed me to paint the walls of a room in the basement however I wanted, as long as I only played the guitar in that room.
On one wall, I painted a giant Nine Inch Nails logo and a life-sized Darth Vader. On another wall, I painted R2D2 over the electric outlet to imply the most famous R2 unit in the galaxy powered the amp. Finally, I designed the floor as one gigantic black and white spiral. If you stood in its center and spun around, the floor might hypnotize you. I spent countless hours in that dingy room, crappily trying to master “Head Like a Hole,” as well as other songs.
So, yes, seeing a dry floor was a moderate relief. But it didn’t mean the entire basement was dry. Until I descended and peered to the left, my task was not finished. A clap of thunder shook the entire house, and I jumped.
“Jesus,” I said in frustration. “Let’s get this over with.”
The silence was too tense. I rubbed my hands together and talked to myself as if uttering something nonchalant would ward off things crawling from dark depths. Then I took my first step down the stairs.
Until I reached the bottom, uncomfortable seconds would pass with darkness to either side. The light above only reached so far. Another switch waited to be flipped. I had grown comfortable with the right side extending into “my” room, but the other side… That side was unfinished, concrete floor with sections open to dirt, boards exposed overhead, a workbench with tools and an old rusty vice, a washer and dryer against the far wall, and beside them an unused closet with broken shelves doing nothing but collecting dust and cobwebs. I never lingered there, and only entered to do laundry, or reach the sump pump.
A couple more steps now. Just a few remaining moments imagining freakish creatures with red eyes and wet fangs. I extended my arm into the shadows and—flick. There was nothing in the basement except me. Yet as the childish worries dissolved, the adult concerns came rushing back. There was an inch of standing water on the concrete floor.
After taking my shoes and socks off, I walked into the cold water and wrinkled my nose. My feet were pale against the painted cement. The sump pump sat in the corner with its cord hanging high in the air, away from the wetness. I plugged the pump into an outlet high on the wall and it kicked into gear, whirring like an angry little robot. I had earned my gold star for the night.
Now, I was ready to head back upstairs, dry my feet, and watch TV, when in my periphery something moved across the basement floor. Deeper into the room, the water’s surface rippled. Maybe a spider had fallen from the exposed boards above. Or the sump pump had caused an odd disturbance as it pulled water along the floor. Maybe bravery didn’t matter, because fear wasn’t only in your mind. It lurked in shadows, stalked you, and would never fade. I remembered that name in my nightmare: Marvin. Realization struck, because even water on the floor of a musty basement can give a reflection.
Just like a mirror.
The nickel-eyed doll scurried out of the shadows, and giant black vines burst out of the water like the tentacles of a kraken. Stumbling backward, I fell flat to the floor, my jeans soaked through, and a vine shattered the hanging bulb above me. Now the only light came from the stairwell as I tried to crawl away. Panic throttled my ability to reason. None of this was possible; none of this could be real. Marvin the rag-doll was supposed to be a long-forgotten illusion from my childhood, and what happened at Andy Newman’s house ten years ago was misremembered–it fucking had to be.
I scrambled into the corner, where the sump pump continued to purr like a mechanical cat. A vine wrapped itself around my leg and I rolled to see the little doll tracing its finger in the open air. He tore a path into a black abyss, just as he had when I was seven.
Now the vines had me. They dragged me closer to Marvin’s tear, which widened like curtains above the surface of the water. More vines shot out of the abyss and closed around my wrists. I wrenched one hand free and reached for the little doll, intent on squeezing it to death if I could. My fingers raked his face, ripping a nickel free. Then, after one final torrent of struggle, the vines pulled me through the tear and dropped me down onto a rough floor.
The vines had won and pulled me into a shallow cave beneath my basement. Rough walls surrounded me, with only a small amount of light coming through the tear above my head. The nickel I’d ripped from Marvin fell past me and hit the floor with a metallic ping. It rolled fifteen feet until it fell flat at the foot of a small child. He was ghostly in the dim light. Hair, face, hands, clothes, all so pale. He glanced at the nickel resting beside his feet, and then back at me.
“Memember,” he moaned. “Memember.”
I quickly stood and jumped for the tear, getting my elbows through it, pulling myself up as if fighting not to fall off a cliff. The boy in the cave howled, and the vines tried to grab me again, yet this time fear and adrenaline gave me feral strength. Wriggling out of the abyss and rolling on the wet basement floor, I found the little demon doll and gripped him in my fist. Marvin turned his gaze to the stairs, and then I heard my sister call down.
“Hey, you’re making a lot of noise down there,” she said. “You okay?”
“I am now,” I said quietly, out of sight in the wet basement.
I ripped Marvin’s head from his limp little body. The vines receded, melting into the water like shadows driven by the dawn, and the tear sealed itself shut. I panted on the cement floor, half of Marvin in each hand.
“Jeez, you’re soaking wet.” My sister stood wide-eyed when I reached the top of the stairs.
“Slipped and fell,” I said. “But I’m okay, and the basement should dry up soon.”
The commotion brought my sister downstairs, and flushed her face with concern, but I could only think of getting rid of the doll. Marvin hadn’t disappeared, and with his body stuffed in the back of my jeans, wishing him away didn’t feel like a realistic option.
“I’m gonna change and then take a quick drive to the store. You want anything?”
“You’re going now?” my sister asked incredulously. “It’s almost midnight, and it’s pouring out.”
“I know. But I’m hungry, and don’t want anything we have.”
There was a 24-hour convenience store about a mile from the house, uninspiringly named Store24.
“I don’t want anything,” she said. “Don’t be long. I was going to sleep, but it’ll be creepy in the house alone.”
I gave my sister a reassuring nod. “I’ll be quick.”
In my bedroom, I changed into dry clothes and rifled through a desk drawer to find an old keepsake: a red plastic pencil box filled with trinkets collected through my childhood. Inside was a turquoise ring once belonging to a Native American princess (so my parents said), a pewter Jesus hanging on the cross given by my aunt as she felt every child needed one, a rusty old black key I’d found in the woods, a transit token from Bermuda with the number three cut out of its center, and a few other unremarkable trifles. Now I needed the red box for a higher purpose. After emptying its contents into the desk, I stuffed Marvin’s inanimate ass inside and sealed it with duct tape. With the doll secure, I tucked the pencil box into my jeans. It was time to move.
Sprinting to my little Ford Festiva before the rain soaked me, I tossed the box to the passenger side and slid into the driver’s seat. The convenience store had been a lie. My plan was to head downtown and pitch the taped up red pencil box into the Cocheco River, hoping one of two things would happen. One, the action of casting the box into the river would be such a grand symbolic moment my psyche would finally break from the ridiculous, albeit terrifying, illusion. Or two, the river would carry away the decapitated host of a demon, freeing me forever. It would only take maybe ten minutes longer than a trip to the convenience store, and even if my sister stayed awake until my return, the delay would be easy to explain. So, with headlights shining and the wipers on full tilt, I backed out of the driveway and onto Applevale Drive. I shot a furtive glance at the box in the passenger seat. It hadn’t moved an inch.
The little car tore over the wet roads. I was driving too fast, letting anxiety get the best of me. Luckily, the streets were devoid of traffic because of the rain and late hour. When I finally pulled to a jilting stop in a parking spot on the downtown bridge over the Cocheco, lightning flashed over the old mill building and sent a chill up my spine. The pencil box still hadn’t moved. Maybe Marvin wasn’t actually in there. Maybe I was going to end up like Josephine, madly muttering nonsense while clutching a kitchen knife. I grabbed the box and held it up to feel its weight. Was Marvin truly in there? The box felt too heavy to be empty, but nothing shifted around.
“What are you doing?” I asked myself out loud and shook my head.
The answer was losing my mind and getting ready to throw an empty pencil box into the river. I should open the box. Those words echoed in my head. Open the box. A mantra to repeat endlessly. Breathe in and breathe out. Picture a warm beach with perfect crystal waters, while the wind whispers: open the box.
Open.
The box.
My fingers found the edge of the duct tape and began working at it. Centimeter by centimeter, unwrapping the tape as it made its horrible, wonderful suction noise. I peeled the tape away, and a weight lifted. It felt good, and it felt like--
PRAP, PRAP, PRAP on the window.
I fumbled the box as my eyes shot open, and my heart hammered in my chest.
“Roll the window down,” came the commanding voice of the officer standing outside my window. She shined her flashlight into the car, and the rain threw the light into a kaleidoscope of chaos.
As I rolled the window down, a fresh wave of dread swept over me. The blue flashing lights of a cop car were a couple parking spaces away, and a frowning police officer in a poncho had her flashlight directly in my face.
“What are you doing out here?”
“Uh, nothing,” was my genius response.
“Nothing,” she sarcastically echoed. “What’s in the box?”
I glanced at the half untaped red pencil box, and then back to the officer.
“Are there drugs in there?” she asked.
“No.”
“Give it to me,” she said.
I didn’t move.
“Now,” she exclaimed, more like a disappointed parent than an officer of the law.
Unwillingly, I gave her the box.
She tucked the flashlight under her arm and used both hands to unwrap the rest of the duct tape. I just knew it would be empty. Unable to explain myself, the officer would take me to the police station. I’d have to call my sister, she’d call my parents, and then someone would need to call a coroner because I would be dead meat.
The officer opened the box and swore. “Holy fucking shit!” She jumped as if there was a tarantula crawling up her arm.
The flashlight fell to the ground, and the officer slammed the box closed. She looped the flapping duct tape back around it as fast as she could.
“Roll your window up,” she yelled. “Roll it up!”
I rolled the window up with my hands shaking. What the hell was happening? The officer fumbled her flashlight off the wet pavement, and then rounded the back of the car, eventually letting herself in the passenger side. My whole body went rigid with shock. For a moment, she just sat there, catching her breath, staring down at the red pencil box in her lap. Her hands white-knuckled it like the devil itself might come out. She trembled and a long lock of blond hair fell from under her officer’s cap to rest on her shoulder.
“Where did you get this?” she asked.
“My basement.”
The officer turned to me, and her eyes grew wide. Then she squinted as if trying to look into me. Finally, she turned away and swore.
“Dammit, Molly, you should’ve known,” she mumbled. Then to me, “I should’ve known as soon as I saw your face.”
“Should’ve known what?”
Officer Molly paused and furrowed her brow, as if her statement had said it all. Shadows swelled in my subconscious, vague memories I’d pushed away. They made me feel uncomfortable and stupid, as if I should’ve known exactly what she meant.
“Okay,” she said and raised a finger. “Tomorrow, at nine a.m., you’re gonna meet me for coffee at Harvey’s.” She pointed to the towny little coffee shop next to the bridge. “If you don’t show, I will, at your house, to arrest you for some made-up bullshit. I ran your plate and know who you are. Are we clear on this?”
I nodded stiffly.
“Good.” The officer took a business card out of her breast pocket. “If anything else happens tonight, you call me immediately.”
The business card read, Officer Molly Vincent, Dover Police Department. My mind reeled as Molly opened the door.
“But—” I said.
Molly turned to see my eyes locked on the red box in her hands.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “Marvin won’t leave my sight.”
