jackfollmanwriter-blog

[jackfollmanwriter-blog]

Inside Reality Entertainment

Inside Reality Entertainment didn’t turn up a single accurate result when I Googled the company. That should have been enough for me to turn and run away from the “job opportunity” they are offering, but anyone who has been in the American job market lately can probably agree that when you get called in for a job interview, you pretty much just have to take it unless they make outright threats to you in the coordination.

The job I found in the always dicey “Marketing” section of Craigslist’s job postings called for a Senior Marketing Manager at a technology company in downtown Los Angeles and listed salary range of $50-60k. For a corporate tech slacker who had been kicked out on the street via equity firm-endorsed lay offs almost two years before, who had been trying to sneak his way back into a cozy office job in that time span, it seemed like a legit opportunity.

The second red flag was thrown when I noticed the company address for the interview I received from Nadia, the company’s human resources manager, directed me towards the murky sliver of downtown LA which has not been gentrified. Populated almost exclusively by seemingly-abandoned warehouses and seemingly-dangerous homeless people, I seriously wondered if I would be safe parking my car there.

Yet, desperate for a real paycheck and a break from Uber driving, I made my way to skid row and dodged the endless parade of riff raff which greeted me on the sun-bleached dirty sidewalks until I was at one of those seemingly-abandoned warehouses. I would have assumed the building had been used for nothing but filming cop shows for the past 30 years had there not been a small graphic sticker which read Inside Reality Entertainment plastered to the door and a one button call machine of sorts which looked a lot just an iPhone.

I pushed the soft, round, red button on the call system and listened to a pulsating dial tone broadcast out from the little box.

“Inside Reality Entertainment,” the cheerful voice of the young woman on the other end shocked me.

I fully expected to be greeted by just the grunt of a man of Eastern European descent at this point, but was instead greeted by what sounded like the voice of the young, attractive actress they get to play customer service people in commercials.

I stammered my reply.

“Uh, hi. My name is Eric Lincoln. I’m here for an interview with Nadia.”

There was no answer. The door just started buzzing and vibrating. I headed in.

I was greeted by a sparse, but clean lobby. The kind you might find at a nicer doctor or dentist’s office - white walls, a few plastic chairs, glass coffee tables and thick trade magazines. I instantly felt out of place, having spent 99 percent of the past two years sitting in my filthy studio apartment laying on my spaghetti-stained futon with my red hot laptop burning a hole in my bare stomach.

The sight of Nadia further put me on edge. Like the gruff voice I envisioned would greet me through the call box, she had an Eastern-European look, but the kind you see on fashion runways as opposed to driving a dirty cab. Tall, slender, with olive skin and dark eyes, I think she noticed me taking her in a little bit too much when she walked out from behind a pebbled glass door and greeted me with a lithe handshake.

“Eric, so excited to meet you. Come with me.”

“Really nice, to meet you, too,” I struggled with every word as Nadia led me out of the lobby and through the pebbled glass door.

Once through the pebbled-glass door, Nadia led me down a long, nearly-dark hallway lined with nothing but fresh white paint and the distant sounds of machinery I could hear over the small chit chat she made until we were at a thick steel door garnished with a serious-looking security keypad. I suddenly felt like I was in Jurassic Park. Why would you need a 10-inch steel door and a Mission Impossible security system to protect someone who was doing “marketing?”

The room the door opened up into reminded me of the dream apartment of most of the 20 something LA girls I had met through online dating the past few years. Lined on three sides with exposed brick, furnished with vintage couches, chairs, and tables made of fine wood, the only wall which wasn’t brick looked out onto a brick courtyard filled with plants.

Nadia led me over to the stiff leather couch and invited me to take a seat. She continued to make generic small talk, but I was fully distracted by the face mask I saw sitting on the glass coffee table before me. Some kind of virtual reality headset I had only seen on TV, I immediately knew it was going to be part of what I was doing.

I gave leaving the place one last thought, but my pathetic beta male, passive-aggressive meek nature won out when Nadia took a set next to me on the couch and my eyes caught a good glimpse of her toned, golden legs. I was still mesmerized when she reached over and picked up the virtual reality mask.

“So Eric, what we are offering here at Inside Reality Entertainment is an incredibly unique job experience. Because of that, we bring an equally-incredible approach to our interviews,” Nadia started in while working some instruments on the mask. “Our managers want to make sure those interested in the position bring the kind of iconoclastic thinking we believe our company works with to this position, so we do things a little differently.”

Nadia took the mask and handed it over to me.

“I apologize for the vague nature of our communication and company profile, but I promise all of the details that attracted you to our job posting are accurate, and so you know, we are a virtual reality company. What you will be doing in our initial interview process is interacting with our technology through an exercise which will reveal to our director of marketing and CEO how you think in a virtual reality environment,” Nadia went on and then locked eyes with me for the first time. “Is this something you are comfortable with?”

“Yeah, yeah,” I agreed even though I wasn’t sure if I was.

My agreement prompted Nadia up onto her high heels.

“Well great. Please put the mask on and the system will start up in a few minutes. The instructions are very simple and will be laid out for you on the screen. The exercise will last fifteen to twenty minutes. I will be back to let you out afterwards.”

I heard Nadia’s heels click out of the room while I strapped on the mask and adjusted it to my head.

The screen before me was black at the moment, but I saw it illuminate to a dull white.

It took a few seconds, but the white fog of the screen started to fade and form into a living setting. A few more seconds and the setting was fully formed and I truly felt like I had been transported to a new place, but new place I had been before, many times. My bedroom from the house I rented in college.

The sight kicked me in the stomach. How in the hell did they know the design of my college bedroom?

Had I not been so stunned by the situation, I probably would have left the room, but numb from the shock, I stared out into the room I hadn’t been to in nearly 10 years and was quickly intrigued by the sound of the dated ringtone I had set for my phone during my college years.

I instinctually started to comb around the room, searching for my cell phone. I overturned the stained flannel comforter on my full-sized bed, checked the mason jar on my guitar amp where I stored my cell phone, and checked over by the computer. I cringed when I noticed the front page of a porn site loaded up on the screen when I scanned my cluttered desk and listened to the phone ring. I blushed from behind the mask.

I was finally able to track the direction of the ring tone to underneath the desk, back over by the electrical outlet. There I saw the old Nokia brick I used in college, tethered to a charger, radiating with each tone.

I dove at the phone, hoping I caught it before it went to my embarrassing voicemail which started with me playing an acoustic, Dave Matthews Band-inspired guitar lick.

“Hello,” I answered the phone without looking at the caller ID.

The voice which started in on the phone took my breath away. My mom.

“Wreck?”

I wanted to respond to my mother calling out my childhood nickname, but couldn’t muster up the strength. Hearing her voice for the first time in nearly 10 years paralyzed me with nostalgic sorrow.

I fought back my sadness and responded, breathless.

“Mom,” I felt a couple of salty tears fall onto my lower lip once the word came out.

“There you are,” my mom’s sweet voice went on and I wondered if my cascading tears would harm the mask I was wearing. “I tried to call earlier, you didn’t answer. I just wanted to say hi. What are you up to?”

I didn’t know how to answer her question. I knew the situation I was in. The bits and pieces around me slowly came back to me over the past minute or so. I remembered the porn that was on my computer, I remembered what I was wearing, I remembered the cold tickle of the Colorado fall morning on my skin, I remembered the painful shrinking feeling my brain was experiencing due to the wicked hangover which mounted in my skull and stomach. It was a typical Sunday late-morning in college.

“Hey,” the return of my mom’s voice distracted me from cataloging the situation. “Macy keeps jumping on my computer.”

“Macy,” was my mom’s beloved, but obnoxious, orange tabby cat who had a penchant for wanting attention only when you were distracted. The authenticity of exactly something my mom would have said on the phone dropped my heart further into my stomach. I let out the kind of half-laugh I would have in the real situation and waited for my mom to go on. Tried to tell myself it was all a simulation.

That talking to myself wasn’t working though. I was lost in the virtual moment and couldn’t stop crying. Filled with tears, my mouth now tasted like I had swallowed a gulp of ocean water.

“Well, I’m heading to church in about ten minutes, but I just wanted to call and say hi. I hadn’t talked to you in more than a week. You aren’t hungover, are you?”

My mom’s conversational 180 was the final straw on the freaked-out camel’s back. I started to loosen the straps of the mask.

“I’m sorry,” I apologized, but was cut off by my mom’s voice.

“I love you Wreck. I’ll talk to you later.”

I ripped the mask off and it slipped out of my hands and fell to the hardwood floor. I cringed for a moment, but quickly pushed past it. What did I care if I damaged the machinery of some horrifying company that somehow just simulated the last conversation I should have had with my mom, but didn’t because I didn’t pick up the phone in real life?

Nadia walked into the room just as I was storming out.

“What the fuck was that?” I exclaimed and pointed a stiff finger at Nadia like I was a professional wrestler delivering a pre-match tirade.

Nadia couldn’t have kept her cool any better than she did. She placed a comforting hand on my shoulder and stalled my forward momentum.

“I completely understand how jarring our technology can be. That’s why we give any potential new hires an exercise like the one you just experienced to make sure they can handle any situation which could arise from technology and so they fully understand how it works.”

I was so wound up, I hadn’t even noticed that Nadia had led me back over to the couch. We sat down together with our hips touching and I tried to catch my breath with my eyes stuck on the VR mask which rested at our feet.

“I have to ask you,” Nadia went on softly. “Are you still interested?”

I didn’t even know what to think. Part of me wanted to run out of that room at that very second, go back to my sad apartment, crawl underneath a blanket, and cry for the rest of the week. However, another part of me was strangely addicted to what I had just experienced and wanted to know how in the hell they did it. If a company could produce something like I had just taken part in, they were ready to set the world on fire. Shit, the whole world was about to be a different place. Could I really just walk away and go back to driving a fucking Uber?

“How did you do that?” I asked softly, still shaken.

Nadia gave a coy smile, the kind someone gives when they are proud of something they did, but want to act like they aren’t gloating.

“Our system can access social media accounts and build worlds. Since you have a public Facebook profile, our system was able to go into your account before you came in, pull the environment of your former bedroom from pictures, pull the voice of your mother from a video from one of your birthdays. Same goes for what your phone looks like, oh, and the ring tone. Crazy, isn’t it?”

I let out a quick laugh.

“It is. It is. But what is this job even supposed to be? The only information I got from the posting was that it was a marketing job?”

“Good question,” Nadia replied. “The job is more of a marketing analyst or beta tester. Basically, you will be testing out the system, providing feedback to our marketing team, and offering your own insight and opinion into how the system can be optimized.”

“So you’re going to pay me sixty thousand dollars a year to basically try this thing out?”

“It’s not quite that simple, you will have to provide extensive reports and genuine recommendations along with working with the marketing team, but yes, that’s a bit of an elevator pitch of what you would be doing.”

“Okay, I can do that.”

I agreed with an uneasy nod of the head and a nervous laugh. I couldn’t believe what I had agreed to, but I also desperately needed the money, the stability of a full-time job, and something deep inside of me had a desire to see where their technology could take me.

*

The seven nights between the day of my interview and my first day of work were restless. I know everyone has the vision of the sunny paradise of Los Angeles they’ve seen in movies and heard in Beach Boys songs, but the reality is unless you make more than $150,000 a year, you will live in a small apartment without air conditioning, miles from the ocean, trying to sleep in sweat on endless hot nights.

The city was in the midst of a never-ending heat wave while I waited out the days for my job and it certainly didn’t seem to help me shake the sting of that first experience with the VR headset. The more time I had to think about it, especially in the middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep, the more I remembered the situation I played out in the virtual environment.

That cold Sunday morning in college I lived should have been the last time I ever talked to my mom, but it wasn’t. In real life, I didn’t pick up the phone that morning. I heard it ring. I saw the caller ID display my mom’s name and number, but I didn’t answer. Lost in the midst of a hung-over porn-watching session, I figured I would call her back in half an hour, but I wouldn’t get that chance. My mom was killed in a head-on collision on her way to church that morning.

I couldn’t help but wonder, would she still be alive had I answered that call? Would she have left a little bit later for church, missed that pick-up truck which smashed into the front of her little Yaris? At the very least, I would have had one last chance to talk to her and hear her sweet voice. Hear her say I love you before the call ended and I never saw her face again.

*

I had no idea what to expect when I came in for my first day of “work,” but was still incredibly surprised when I walked into an environment that was just like any other place I had ever worked.

Nadia ushered me into a standard cubicle farm with dated Dells, dying house plants, men in khakis and Target dress shirts in need of an ironing and the aroma of watered-down Folger’s. I knew I was back at home in the warm arms of soulless corporate America when the first thing I heard was two people talking about their preferences for egg bagels over sesame while they toasted their sad gluten treat.

Nadia led me to cubicle populated by an H-P from the mid-2000s and one of those tear-away Office Depot calendars which still have appointments penciled in from whatever departed office soul had sat there before me. She wiped away the scraps of what looked to be Chex mix by the mouse before she introduced me to my work station and the company email and instant message systems.

I was told to finish the basic setup of the systems and that, Graham, the director or marketing, would be by shortly me to get me started on testing again. I finished what I had left to do in exactly one minute and forty-five seconds and then sat there like an idiot, doodling on the Office Depot calendar for almost an hour before Graham swung by to introduce himself and whisk me back to the testing room.

Graham looked exactly how I imagined he would. Approaching 60 with a magnificent gut, receding hairline, Merona slacks and a cheap gray dress shirt, he looked like the guy who sat around the office long enough to where they had to eventually promote him to a position that sounded important, but was really just middle-management and paid $70,000 per-year in a city where rent on a cardboard box under the freeway was $900 per-month.

Fulfilling the sad office stereotype I built in my head, Graham lectured me on the joys of “bagel Monday” and explained that he had worked at the company, which apparently used to be called Urban Industrial Solutions until a year ago, for nearly 25 years as if that was a great thing.

Graham eventually ushered me into the testing room and explained that I would do the same thing I did last time, basically just explore the universe and interact the way I would in real life for as long as the simulation runs and then go back to my computer and record my observations. He walked out of the room before I could confirm I could do that and left me alone with the VR mask I strapped to my face.

The first thing I was able to make out was a crackling campfire which plumed black, acrid smoke which billowed in my direction. I squinted my eyes, almost feeling the scalding heat of the smoke in the way I would have in real life.

The setting became familiar once it all came into focus. I was at the deer hunting campgrounds in the foothills of central Washington where I would go with my dad, his friends and their sons for a week each October when I was a child.

An only child and the real loser of a divorce between my parents when I was six, I grew most of the year in the comfortable suburbs of LA with my mom and stepdad Steve, but spent most of the year dreading that week in late-October when I would have to head up to rural Washington state to go hunting with my dad. A soft suburban kid tenderized by shopping malls and Super Nintendo, I was no fit for the frigid, high-altitudes of hunting camp, the kick back a gun gives back when you fire it, the brutality of hunting, and the junior wrestling-hardened kids who were the sons of my dad’s friends.

The whole environment and experience was a yearly torture where I would intentionally aim to miss the deer or two I would see each season. About the only thing it was ever good for was slightly impressing girls on first dates when I told them about it by suggesting to them that I at least used to have a rugged side.

Taken back to that scene, I instantly remembered the specific night the screen had placed me in front of and felt a sense of fear spark and begin to stoke in my heart. Of all the awful nights at hunting camp, this one was the worst. I could remember it by the empty cans of meatball Spaghettios I saw burning in the campfire. The one time I can remember eating something I actually liked up there for dinner bled into to disgusting dessert I had yet to forget.

I felt the hard tap on my shoulder that I knew was coming. I turned around to see the scarred face of Jameson Watkins looking back at me in the light of the fire. Only seven, and already living a life that sounded like Jeff Foxworthy joke, Jameson’s face was dripped with scars which came from a hot pot of venison and gravy which fell off a stove and splattered on him when he was a toddler.

I dreaded what I knew Jameson was going to say next.

“You wanna see something cool.”

I didn’t know what to do. I knew the horror which was waiting in Jameson’s dad’s trailer if this was going to reenact what took place in real life. At the same time, I felt as if maybe I should make the decision I should have made back in time, the way I did with the call from my mom in the last simulation.

I agreed to follow Jameson to his dad’s mossy camper trailer at the edge of camp surrounded by long,straight rows of whistling pines which allowed you to see seemingly for miles into the woods in the moonlight. I felt the same feeling I felt that night when those delicious Spaghettios started to turn sour in the the bottom of my throat.

I knew what was waiting for me once I stepped into the musty camper, Jameson’s dad, Mike, was sprawled out across the bed in the heart of the camper, covered by just a camo sleeping bag with naked limbs dangling out and a bottle of Canadian whiskey and a can of Pepsi next to his head.

“Lil Oak,” Mike greeted me with the nickname only my dad’s hunting buddies used, referring to me as a “Lil” version of my dad, Oakley.

I put my head down, avoided looking at Mike’s bare hairy chest and military tattoo when he sat up and Jameson took a seat on the end of the bed.

“Big Oak pass out already?” Mike went on.

I nodded and finally looked up. Jameson had scooted a little closer to Mike on the bed and the blanket had fallen down a little further on Mike’s torso, the light brown patches on his hair and the thin sinew of his strong form almost made him look like one of the deer we were out there to slaughter.

“He didn’t lock you out of his camper again, did he?” Mike asked me even though my dad had never locked me out of our camper, no matter how drunk he got. “I think he told me earlier tonight he was going to lock you out, didn’t want you in there,” Mike went on and then took a sip of his drink.

I thought about what I did all those years ago in that forest. I remembered mumbling the word “no” with my eyes locked on Jameson as Mike slithered closer and closer to him and I remembered slipping back out of the camper and running through camp to my own camper and trying to sleep the rest of the night, but failing, and instead staring at the wall until morning came, wondering what went on with Jameson and his dad.

That’s not what I was going to do on this day. I eyed the black, six-inch hunting knife which proudly hung on the wall next to the kitchen table.

“You can sleep right here with us,” Mike went on while I walked over to the kitchen table. “You can grab some cereal out of there or something if you like in the morning, I have that kind with all the dry marshmallows in it.”

I grabbed hold of the hunting knife and turned to Mike and Jameson.

“Thing’s pretty badass, right?” Mike said.

I walked over to the foot of the bed with the knife clutched tight in my little hand. Stopped and stared down Mike.

“Get away from him,” I said in my manliest voice.

Mike pulled the blanket back up a little bit and sat up defensively.

“I don’t know what you think is going on here Lil Oak. I’m just being nice.”

I knew not to believe Mike. I knew what Jameson would tell us the next day when me and the other kids were around the fire eating our breakfast. I knew what Jameson would finally tell the cops when he was 18 and out of the house and on his way to Afghanistan with the Marines. I knew the page on the Wenatchee County sex offenders website which would begin to feature a picture of Mike starting in the mid-2000s. I wasn’t going to let it all happen this time.

I started to form the hero speech I was about to deliver to scare the shit out of Mike, but Mike cut off my train of thought.

“You better think real good about what you want to do here Lil Oak.”

“You’re not gonna do this, this time,” I started in and coaxed an instant laugh from Mike.

Without another word, Mike rose up out of the bed, dressed in just a pair of white briefs, and started in my direction.

“You’re gonna be really sorry when I get that knife from you,” Mike yelled at me from must a few feet away.

I turned around and ran down out of the camper with the slapping sound of Mike’s bare feet pounding on the floor behind me ringing in my ears.

I almost fell hard to ground when I literally jumped down out of the trailer, but kept my balance and took off towards the slow smoke of the dying fire with Mike still hot on my tail.

“Little piece of shit,” I heard Mike seeth from behind me.

The race between Mike and I didn’t last long. After just a few seconds, I saw my field of vision lift up off the ground and I screamed out.

“Stop it. Stop it.”

I wasn’t sure if my body was reacting directly to the experience happening in the simulation, or just what my eyes were seeing on the mask. Maybe my body didn’t even know the difference because I grabbed the back of the mask and started to pull it off.

The screen went to black before I fully got the mask off and stood in the testing room sweating and panting with my heart racing.

“Whoa,” I heard Graham speak from over by the door. “Intense one?” He asked as he walked over and I stuck the mask in his direction.

“Yeah,” I said while trying to catch my breath.

Graham refused the mask.

“You can just leave that here. Your testing time was up, so I was just coming to get you,” Graham said with a smile upon his face. “Looks like it ended just in time, huh?

*

The rest of the day was actually strangely a lot like it was at any other office job I ever had.

I logged a summary of what happened in the testing and my reaction into some kind of software system which was unnecessarily complicated for what it did.

I had to go to a meeting with my department of five people and listen to the only two people who wanted to be there have a one-on-one conversation while the rest of us sat there squirming in our chairs for 45 minutes.

I did a couple of hours of mindless data entry work I think they gave me just to keep busy.

I made small talk about my weekends with the few passerby who introduced themselves and all seemed to be tragically boring in different ways.

I left at exactly 5:01 p.m.

I considered not going back. The two VR experiences had been so heart-wrenching and bizarre I couldn’t imagine doing something like that every day. I was also utterly unhinged by how they could know the settings of where these “simulations” took place, but also the storylines of what happened. They could explain away the phone call from my mom situation with their Facebook research excuse, but how did they know the exact situation I walked into in the trailer with Jameson and Mike?

I kept myself from deciding to quit. It would be very hard to walk away from a fair-paying job at this point which seemed like it was only going to ask me to do some simulations and light office bullshit. I also found out just before I left that I was getting a $5,000 bonus for signing on which would allow me to actually pay my rent for the next two months and stop Ubering for good.

*

The next day start just like any other. I checked my emails, did a little light data entry I hadn’t finished the day before. Got coffee without having to make small talk with anyone and checked the NBA scores from the night before.

The day actually crept into the late-afternoon without anyone talking to me, any bullshit meetings, or a summons into the testing room to do some VR work. I was pretty stoked when the clock struck 5 p.m. and I was able to slip away. Maybe they realized they went a little too hard on me the day before with the testing and decided to give me a day off?

It wouldn’t just be that day though. The next couple of months would slip by with the same schedule. I would just do bullshit busy work, attended a few meetings each week, smile, nod, collect my first steady paycheck in two years, and go home each day seconds after 5.

It was the first time I felt stable in a long, long time. I actually started to relish waking up at 7:45 to get ready, smiling at my co-workers as I walked in, wearing a wrinkled dress shirt and stained khakis. Hell, I even started to get into bagel Mondays.

I was strangely kind of thirsty to get back to some VR testing after a couple months of monotony so I was a little relieved when Graham came by one Tuesday afternoon, and ushered me off to the testing room.

Graham gave me the directions loud and clear. Just interact in the simulation naturally, he would be back in about 30 minutes to wrap things up and then I would detail my thoughts back at my desk.

That thirst for VR washed away in an instant once the screen loaded up on my face and I looked at my childhood bedroom in the shallow light of just a nightlight. I gulped down a heavy load of saliva and took in my environment for a few moments.

Based on the dinosaur posters on my wall, my Jurassic Park bedspread, and Ninja Turtles sprawled out in a mess across the floor, I was probably seven or eight years old. In the dying days of my dinosaur period before it bled into my sports fan period. One of the most enjoyable eras of my life, I actually was relieved to do the math and see where I was, maybe they had finally cued up something enjoyable for me.

I laid in my bed, taking in the scene for a few more moments when I saw the door to my room, rustle. I focused in on the door for just a few moments and saw the darkened figure of my mom peer in, her red hair shining just a little bit in the soft light.

This image instantly took me back to the real scene and common childhood behavior of pretending to be asleep whenever my mom would come to my room to check in on me before bed. I really have no idea why I would pretend to be asleep, she wouldn’t be mad if I couldn’t sleep, but it was always my M.O. My mom would come to the door, walk in, see me with my eyes closed tight, the blanket pulled up almost completely over my head and then walk away. Then I would spring my eyes back open as soon as she left.

The scene the mask had dropped me into could have been any one of those nights, but I told myself I would do the opposite of what I did in real life again. I would take in a wonderful childhood night with my mother, knowing how limited my time would end up being with her in the long run,  I would savor it.

“Wreck?” I heard my mom softly whisper over by the light of the door.

I stuck my head up out of the blankets like a gopher on the prairie.

“Hi mom.”

My mom walked across the room and took a seat at the edge of the bed, ran a hand through my soft hair.

“Sorry, choir practice went long, but I wanted to say goodnight.”

“That’s okay. I can’t sleep.”

I felt my mom move closer to me on the bed, keep petting my hair.

“I’m sorry. What’s the matter?”

“Nothing really, I just can’t sleep.”

“Do you want me to read you a story?”

Back in the real world, I started to feel those tears well back up against the screen in front of me.

“That’s okay. Can you sing me a song?”

I loved when my mom would sing to me on my bedside. A drama student with a degree from Cal Berkeley, my mother had a singing voice which would stop you wherever you were when you heard it.  I had spent many a drunken night home alone in my 20s, playing the songs she would sing to me on YouTube and crying until I passed with my laptop burning my stomach trying to recapture that voice and the feeling it gave me.

My mom went into song and my knees became weak. I blindly took a seat on the couch in the testing room. I hadn’t heard that voice sing in so long I lost almost all control of my muscles and curled up into a ball on the couch.

“Baby mine, don’t you cry. Baby mine, dry your eyes,” my mother sang into my ears.

I felt my body shudder in the deepest of sobs. On the screen I saw my mom lock hands with my little paw.

“Rest your head close to my heart, never to part, baby of mine.”

I squeezed my mom’s delicate hand as hard as I could.

“Little one, when you play.”

My eyes drifted over to the door and the comfort which had plumed in my heart made a fast run for the exit.

Standing in the open crack of my bedroom door was a dark, faceless, human figure. About the size of an average grown man, the thing almost had the look of one of the aliens from the Alien movies - long, slender, completely black. The thing appeared to be eyeless from my vantage point, but it clearly seemed to be watching us.

“Pay no heed to what they say.”

My mom’s sweet song seemed to fade away in my ears, my entire consciousness overwhelmed by the dark figure at the door.

“Let your eyes sparkle and shine, never a tear, baby of mine.”

My heart went into my throat when I watched the figure take a slow step into the room.

My mom didn’t seem to notice, she just kept singing.

“If they knew all about you…

“Mom…

I broke the song. The figure took a defiant step forward.

My mom didn’t seem to notice first word. I squeezed her hand which was locked with mine and used the other one to tap her on the shoulder.

I was finally able to grab my mom’s attention when the figure launched itself at us in a hideous, black blur of muscle and teeth.

The last thing I heard before the screen cut out was my mom’s voice going from a sweet, sweet song to an ear-splitting sound of pain.

“Fuck this.”

I ripped the mask off of my face and threw it to the ground.

“Hey, hey, calm down,” I heard Graham’s voice pipe up from over by the door.

I looked over with wide eyes and a pounding chest to see Graham walking into the heart of the room with a clipboard in his hands.

“I’m fucking out of here,” I spat out while I worked my way back to my feet.

Graham rushed me with his arms out in what I assume he thought was a comforting posture, but instead made him look like a defensive crab.

“Please, these are just simulations,” Graham pleaded.

I stopped right in front of Graham, just out of reach of his sweaty paws.

“You got some xenomorph attacking me while my mom sings Dumbo songs to me? That’s too far. I can do the other shit, but that’s too much. Sixty thousand dollars a year isn’t going to make up for that.”

I pushed Graham out of the way and headed to the door.

“We are done with the sequences which involve your mother,” Graham shot the sentence out rapid fire, getting the last word in before I got to the door handle.

I stopped and looked over my shoulder at Graham like a perturbed cat.

“What?”

Graham’s face turned a deeper shade of red, he started to rub his beard nervously.

“We aren’t supposed to tell testers about the testing schedule, but we don’t want you to leave either. We’ve never done this before, but this was the last test which was going to involve your mother. I swear. We promise.”

“Well, okay, but what kind of fucked up, twisted shit, are you going to send at me next?”

Graham put his hands up in his crab defense again.

“Please just go to lunch with me, on me, and I can explain a little bit more. We can go now.”

*

Graham took me to one of those places where they charge you $13 for an arugula salad and $4.50 for an iced tea where the only soup flavors are either a plant you have never heard of, or a fruit soup. We sat there in awkward silence for a few minutes, nervously sipping on our drinks before he broke the silence.

“I have to tell you something about what we’re doing? It’s not as simple as you have probably been told,” Graham started in without making eye contact.

“Shocking?” I snorted back.

“They probably gave you the line about pulling everything from the simulations from Facebook and Instagram or something, and while that is technically true to a very small extent, most of it is being pulled directly from your brain. You know how the screen takes a little while, like ten seconds to load up once you put the mask on?”

“Uh huh.”

“That’s because the technology we have is reading your brain waves and constructing the world and situation you are going to be put in. I can’t even really explain to you the technical side of it, I’m not an engineer, but basically, it has sensors which read brain waves from the part of the brain which constructs dreams and goes from there.”

I almost choked on my five dollar Arnold Palmer.

*

I desperately needed a drink to try and forget about another horrifying VR experience, but unfortunately, the corporate comfort my bizarre job had provided had kept my liquor cabinet empty and the only option I was afforded so late on a Tuesday night was a bottle of Fireball cinnamon whiskey which had been in my freezer since a football trip I took six years ago with friends from college.

The college kid flavored whiskey would have to do the job. I mixed the syrupy swill with a little bit of Coke (the only mixer I had) and ice and drank the stuff down while plugging my nose like a high school girl taking her first shot of flavored vodka.

No longer on my A,B, or even C grade drinking game, it didn’t take long before my concoction which tasted like mouthwash started to hit me hard. I was quickly a stale piece of bread, sweating and stuck to my nylon futon with the thoughts of my Twilight Zone job tucked in comfortably to the back of my head.

It’s embarrassing, but I have to admit that the final step in my process to wind down the night without the crush of crippling anxiety to was pull up some good old, free American porn. The perfect activity to team with the whiskey and lift me off to a sweaty sleep, it only took me about two minutes to find something which would suffice my appetite and I was bathed in the blue light of my laptop watching two strangers fornicate.

My mission was almost complete when something in the corner of the room in the video I was watching. Sticking out of the crack of the open door was a long, slender, insectile leg. It just rested there in sight, motionless for a few seconds and pulled my attention away from the action I had come to see.

I felt my heart rate begin to rise when the bedroom door slowly began to open and reveal more and more of the dark figure I had seen earlier in the day in the simulation, until I was looking at the entire, hideous form from the earlier VR in my childhood bedroom, standing in the doorway, watching the action the same way I was. I frantically scrolled the mouse to click out of the screen, but stopped when the fake sex sounds produced by the two actors was replaced by a nostalgic childish melody which was all too familiar too me. I couldn’t put my finger on the song, but I knew it.

I was about to click out of the screen when the female actor on the screen broke the fourth wall and stuck her face right in the camera and locked eyes with me. I jumped in shock and bit down hard upon my lip. I bit down harder as she began to sing a tune in the exact voice of my sweet mother.

Baby mine, don’t you cry…

I didn’t even click out of the screen, just slammed the laptop shut and took a few moments to catch my breath and curse at the repulsive cocktails I had gulped down which I felt deepened the madness in my mind.

My heart rate back on the decline and my lungs filled back up with some oxygen, I figured I should at least close out of the window. I opened the laptop back up and prayed the ancient machine received for college graduation from my grandma wasn’t broken and that the black ant figure from my waking nightmares wasn’t waiting for me in the stale light of the porn set.

I was shocked when what greeted me on the screen wasn’t the video I had slammed the door on, it was one of those spammy pop-up porn ads where a webcam girl starts talking to you to try and get you to click on some kind of site which I imagine destroys your computer.

“Hey, hey you, yeah you,” the voice of the woman who looked and sounded as if she couldn’t be more than a few days past her eighteenth birthday grabbed my attention.

A veteran of the pop-ups of the free porn universe, I was used to these kinds of “interactive” ads and ignored it, went to click out, but stopped when I saw the box the nearly-naked 18-year-old girl was in go to black and then begin to slowly illuminate into a new scene. I took my finger off the mouse and waited for the new picture to fully take shape until I was looking at a reflection of my own living room and my nearly-naked self staring back in pale, freckled, doughy, confusion.

I waved my hand in front of my face and watched my movements reflect in unison on the screen.

“Holy fuck,” I muttered to myself.

I let out a feminine scream, the kind you hear in a horror movie, when I looked closer at the screen and saw the dark, nightmarish figure towering over me from behind, on the couch.

I whipped around and saw nothing behind me. There was no dark figure in the room to be seen,  but I could feel something there. I reached out my hand behind the couch and waved my palm around where I saw the figure on the screen, but nothing again.

I finally closed out of the browser this time and tried to collect my thoughts, but failed, the whiskey soaking the cells in my brain clouded my thoughts. I was a nervous wrecking ball of fear, nerves, and anger.

The anger was directed mostly at myself for taking the job with Inside Reality even with all of the red flags, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t burning inside with hatred for Inside Reality and Graham as well. I couldn’t do it anymore. I threw on some dirty shorts and a tank top and ran out to my car to try and drive somewhere I could sleep while creating deep, dark thoughts about those brain waves Graham told me about earlier in the day. What was I thinking?

*

Shit starts to get real when you wake up in an Arby’s parking lot in Hollywood to the sound of homeless man taking a piss against your door handle. The sight and sound may have been enough to be the final deciding chip I needed to lean towards never going into Inside Reality Entertainment again.

A funny thing happened though as I drove myself back to my apartment through the urban sprawl of the city, a thirst for getting back to Inside Reality and running simulations started to build in the back of my head. It grew and grew like a raging tumor, until I found myself taking a shower and getting dressed in my business casual clothes from Target.

I walked into the office on just a couple hours of sleep as if nothing was out of the ordinary. I nodded at a couple of my co-workers on my way in, drank some watery coffee, checked my email, my LinkedIn, Facebook, and basketball scores and passed the time just like it was any other day.

Until Graham walked up to my cube.

“Eric, can I speak with you for a few minutes?

Well… I knew all too well what that meant. Maybe they were going to make the decision of ending my employment there or not for me.

I sat down in the one of the two chairs in Graham’s stale office with the blank walls and stared at an empty calendar which rested on his desk, waiting for him to deliver the news.

Graham sat down in his chair, stared at the screen of his computer and took a deep breath.

“There’s been a glitch in the system,” Graham said.

“Huh,” Graham’s sentence caught me off guard. “What do you mean?”

Graham two fingers to the bridge of his nose, closed his eyes, and broadcast a look of deep pain that seemed forced.

“We discovered last night that something is deeply wrong with the V.R. system. There is a bug which has harmed the experiences.”

“What the hell do you mean by that?”

“It’s not easy to say this… what we worked so hard for has been compromised.”

“I don’t give a shit. What the hell happened? I had that thing strapped to my face like five times.”

My face heated up to a bright, tomato red. Graham refused to look at me.

“We were hacked,” Graham replied somberly. “There is a virus in our system. We don’t know who put it there, but it has been affecting the experiences...poorly.”

“Like how?”

“He has been hijacking the simulations, tapping into the resources we use to create the simulations, but he makes them too personal, too dark, and he’s created a character which he uses to sabotage the simulations. He calls it ‘The Angel.’”

“It’s that dark thing. It looks like the fucking angel of death.”

“Probably.”

“Dude, that’s not a good enough answer. What are we going to do?”

“Well, we certainly aren’t doing any more simulations any time soon and the product is probably going to be delayed at least another six months.”

“Does this ‘hacker guy’ have the ability to get into your head even when you aren’t doing the simulations?”

Graham started typing on his computer. Bit his lip.

“We don’t know that, yet,” Graham answered after a few nervous seconds of silence.

“What the fuck do I do?” I picked up the volume in my voice to a straight-up yell.

“You can go home for the day, maybe two, I’ll email you. Don’t worry about it.”

I started to speak up, but Graham halted me with a stiff finger.

“And yes, you will still be paid.”

*

It took me about two seconds to get out of the office and head home, but my apartment was far from a sanctuary at this point. Hell, the entire world seemed like a house of horrors.

Everything I laid my eyes on seemed to test my fear. If I saw the back of a head in a car in front of me on the road, I pictured that dark soulless face of the angel on the front of it. I swore I heard movement inside my apartment once I stuck my key in.

I kept my head on a swivel once I sat down on my dirty futon and tried to put my thoughts together. I always felt as if someone was right behind me, or next to me, no matter what I did. I felt as if I was the one who had been hacked.

Needing to get my mind onto something else, anything else, I looked to my TV and grabbed the remote off of my wobbly coffee table. I hit the power button and stared at the black of screen, impatiently waiting for it to come to life.

Before the screen could illuminate, I took in a dark, blurry image of myself stretched out on the futon, but my gaze was quickly drawn away to the open space behind me and the futon, where the dark figure from the night before towered over me again.

The TV came on before I could turn around and I saw a familiar cartoon broadcast out of my little 25-inch screen. Gloomy and dark with a blue hue, the heartbreaking melody of “Baby Mine,” started right when I spun my entire body around and expected to come face-to-face with the dark angel who had been stalking me.

“I’m sorry Eric,” my mother’s voice drifted into my ears when I turned around and saw her standing in my living room in the soft yellow summer dress I remember she would alway wear when we went to the park on sunny days.

My heart went into my throat, I couldn’t form a response. I choked on the liquid building at the back of my tongue. I wanted to collapse to the floor. My mom’s pale green eyes acting like a stun gun to my heart and soul.

“Mom,” I barely got the word out of my wobbly jaw.

I stayed frozen like a deer in the headlights as my mom walked around the side of the futon and came over to wrap me in a warm hug. Stiff and in shock, it was a heavy relief to feel her soft hand slide across the back of my neck and I swore I could smell her Coco Chanel perfume again on my nose as her hair tickled my neck.

“I’m so sorry I left you,” my mom whispered into my ear.

“It wasn’t your fault,” I whispered back.

At that moment in time, every other pain and anxiety in my life melted away. I was a little boy again, the sound of the coda of that sweet, sad song, provided the soundtrack behind me on the TV. I didn’t care if what was happening was fake, real, or a figment of my imagination or some evil hacker, it was what felt best.

I pulled away from my mom for a moment and looked down at her tired eyes through the blur of the tears in mine as the song on the TV drew to a slow close.

“Ple...ase, don’t, le..ave…” I stammered as I started to watch my mom fade away before my very eyes.

I reached to grab my mom one more time, but grasped just the lonely air. The song had finished. My mom was gone. I was alone.

*

I woke to the first rays of the morning sun shining through my blinds. A sweaty mess, still clad in the clothes from the day before, I felt refreshed, but infinitely groggy when I rolled off of my futon and onto the floor.

I stayed on the floor for a few minutes to try and catch myself and think about how strange the past few months, weeks, days, and hours had been. Everything seemed to be blurry haze, but at least it was something. My life before that had been a dull blur of anxiety, depression and driving strangers in my Civic.

My thousandth cycle of questioning my life of the week had come to close and I was ready to get up and start the day when something tucked underneath my futon caught my eye. I reached across the floor and grabbed hold of the football-sized object which rested beneath.

Once out from the shelter of the futon, the object was revealed to be one of the VR masks from Inside Reality. The recent past had certainly been cloudy, but I had no memory as to how that mask could have gotten there.

I took a closer look at the VR mask. It was exactly the same as the one I had used down at the office, down to the little inscription of the serial number 31161025 on the side. It was probably the exact one from the office, and it was probably best if I got the thing back there ASAP.

*

A pounding headache took over my skull again as I drove the 20 minutes or so in light traffic to the warehouse district of downtown LA and the offices of Inside Reality Entertainment.

I pulled into my usual parking spot on the street and walked with a nervous gait to the door of the office with my keyring already out in one hand and the VR mask tucked into my college backpack which I still used.

I watched my hand tremble when I reached the office door and started going through my ring of 10 keys of which only three I actually used. I ran through my collection of gold and silver keys a few times, but never found the long, square key I used to get into the office each day. I went through the keys again, making sure to take a few moments to scan each one. Again, no usual work key.

I was jarred by a flurry of approaching footsteps which came up to me in a flash. I looked over my shoulder and saw the outline of a young woman in business casual attire standing next to me.

A look of deep concern looked to me when I locked eyes with the young woman I knew as Nadia.

“Oh great, Nadia. I can’t find my key.”

“What?” Nadia shot back at me with a tone that made it seem she was discomforted by my statement.

Questioned by an attractive woman, my body went into panic mode. I looked away from her, and at the crimped steel of the door. I literally jumped backwards when I saw the company sign read: POWERHOUSE STUDIOS, not Inside Reality Entertainment.

“Excuse me,” Nadia said and stepped between me and the door.

Nadia stuck a key I did not recognize into the door and started to turn it with a nervous posture.

“Nadia…

She cut me off and turned around.

“Why are you calling me that?”

“I, uh…”

I looked down at her breast pocket and saw a company security badge for POWERHOUSE STUDIOS with her picture on it and the name Gabrielle Huff.

Nadia’s face slipped from a look of fear and confrontation to confusion after lingering on me for a few more moments.

“Why are you here?”

“What?”

It felt as if my brain fell out of my skull.

“You were here like six months ago for the marketing interview.”

She turned away from me again, opened the door.

“Please leave, or I am going to call security.”

I tried to say something back, but she was in the building with the door slamming behind her before I could.

*

Back at home and thoroughly embarrassed, shaken and unsure of a single thing in my world, I sat on my futon looking at the black, blank screen of my TV screen.

Even in just the dark reflection, I could tell I was a horrifying, absolute mess. Shaggy-haired, unshaven, filthy and dressed in shambles, I easily could have been mistaken for a homeless drug addict drifting around skid row.

My frame of mind was similar of that to a lost drug addict as well. I felt I no longer knew what was real, and what was not and I had no idea what to do.

Well…not entirely. I had one idea. I reached over to my coffee table and retrieved the VR mask, took a good look at it, and pulled it to my face.

I clicked the mask on and nervously waited for my new world to come to life around me.

Within a handful of seconds I was back on the sidewalk downtown by the Inside Reality Entertainment offices walking up to the door.

A few steps away from the door, I noticed the sound of a pair of high heels clicking behind me. I turned around and again saw the young woman I knew as “Nadia” approaching in a deep red business skirt and white top.

She greeted me with a smile this time as she took her key out of her purse.

“Morning Eric.”

I returned Nadia’s smile with a relieved grin of my own.

“Good morning Nadia.”

The rate of my heart began to ease when I watched Nadia open up the door which read INSIDE REALITY ENTERTAINMENT and usher me into the white hallway which smelled like fresh linen Febreze.

What was real and what was not had become a mystery, but I knew one thing. Walking into that office, my office, pouring myself a morning cup of coffee surrounded by people who knew me, knowing I would have the chance to soon reconnect with my mom in a simulation was home to me, and it was where I wanted to stay for as long as I could.

Originally published by Thought Catalog on www.ThoughtCatalog.com.

[jackfollmanwriter-blog]

The Yearbook

All Luke left in our old apartment for me was a single banker’s box of what he considered to be “my possessions.” One of those white cardboard boxes with the handles built into the side, the box truly signified that I had been fired from my seven-year relationship.

The move was cruel and calculated, but it was factual. A Texas vagabond who never left owned enough possessions to where she couldn’t pack up and move to another town at the drop of a hat, the few things which were truly mine sat cased in that box.

I tipped the contents of the box out onto the floor to take stock of my arsenal. A hairbrush, a stick of Secret with only 25% remaining, a frayed toothbrush, a half-filled pint of cheap vodka and a few changes of clothes (unwashed) fell out onto the stiff carpet. Stuck in the bottom of the box were my only non-essential possessions that Luke returned to me - my high school yearbooks.

I laughed out loud when I saw the yearbooks lying there next to a pair of stained socks. The yearbooks were the only possessions of mine recovered from my mom’s house after she died, mailed to me by my aunt Helen along with a note which scolded me for my lack of sobriety at my mom’s funeral.

Nothing else to do on a Winter’s Sunday afternoon and a pinch of sad nostalgia coursing through my veins, I sat down on the floor and started combing through the yearbooks. I never could have imagined my early adult life would get so sad that I would yearn for the days of acne, broken braces, 7:50 a.m. bells and my fickle group of friends from East Lubbock High School, but that’s where I was. Sad. Sad. Sad.

The yearbook at the bottom of the pile was not mine. Bound with leather, full-color and featuring a golden emboss of a stately-looking manor on the front, I figured it had to be from Luke’s private school in Dallas - Worthington Academy.

A few turns of thick pages confirmed my thoughts and sent me flipping through endless headshots of well-put-together teens bound for success or at least inherited money and inane messages written in permanent marker.

I stopped on the Class of 2000 which produced Luke Hanratty, a thin bastard from third-generation money with jet black hair that always perfectly fell to the side, dark eyes and years of suppressed rage he hid behind passive indifference. I found his portrait and stared into the face that I loved for almost seven years and felt those same emotions I had before he sent me a text saying it was over. I still loved the guy, even if I hated him.

I found the messages scribbled next to the portraits more interesting than Luke’s senior portrait. It was like an ancient Facebook - portraits of people’s best looks next to their names and their activities, but the best part was the photos which had comments written on them in black ink.

Luke had a lot of thoughts about his classmates and none of them were nice.

FAG...FAT...HORSE FACE.... BITCH....ASSHOLE….

I couldn’t believe I had attached myself for so long to a man so vile. Luke was known for having a caustic sense of humor, but this was over the top. He almost never went home to visit his parents in Dallas. Maybe it was because he hated everyone he grew up with, or vice-versa.

I skimmed through most of the insults, but one particularly caught my eye. A black-haired girl with a pale face and dark makeup named Kirsten Butler drew extra hate from Luke’s pen.

SLUT was written above her head, but that was just the start of it. Her entire profile was covered with a dark X, her name was crossed out - I could only actually read it because the ink had faded, and her eyes were dotted with red marker.

I at first assumed Kirsten was just one of Luke’s high school exs that we never really talked about, but I also recognized that name and that picture of the dark-haired girl half-smiling with the dimpled cheeks. I hit up Google on my phone for Kirsten Butler from Worthington Academy.

The results sucked the breath out of me and confirmed that I was vaguely familiar with Kirsten.

Kirsten Butler went missing from her dorm at Texas Christian University just a few weeks into her first Fall semester in October of 2000 and was never seen or heard from again. No body, no rumors of popping up in another country with a different name, no clothes found on a desolate country road out in West Texas. Nothing.

Kirsten’s case was before the days of social media where she would have become a national celebrity, but she was a brief regional celebrity around Texas and I was vaguely familiar with her case from back when it happened. I had no idea that she went to school with Luke though, let alone was in his class and a most-hated figure of his.  

Google produced a little on Kirsten’s case. I found some old Dallas newspaper articles, a missing person’s report, even a few posts on Reddit in a section for Unsolved Mysteries, but not much information.

The yearbook ended up unearthing more clues than the Internet. I noticed a message from Kirsten scrawled in the back pages of the book in the signatures section.

Luke - Creative Writing rocked with you in it. Let me know if you want to swing over to Fort Worth sometime next year if you get bored sticking around in the big D at SMU. 214-555-3116. Kirsten.

I called the number. No one answered. I thought nothing of it.

*

I received a call from a 214 area code I didn’t recognize when I was walking out of a depressing job interview.

“Hello.”

“Who is this?” An elderly woman’s voice crackled through the phone sounding confused and accusatory at the same time.

“Um. Who is this? You called me.”

“You called Kirsten’s pager.”

It took me a few seconds to register what a “pager” was, but I eventually journeyed back to the call I made to Kirsten’s number in Luke’s yearbook.

“Ooooooooh. Yeah, I’m sorry. I found that number in a yearbook and called it. Uh…”

I really didn’t know what to say. I never thought my random sleuthing would produce anything and I didn’t really have anything that I wanted to accomplish.

“Well, I’m Kirsten’s mother, Susan. No one has called that pager in seventeen years. You understand how I could be a little tuned up? Whose yearbook was that in?”

My first thought was to protect Luke. Then I thought about the breakup. The other woman. The horrible things he said to me in fights.

“Luke Hanratty.”

The other end of the line was silent for a good five seconds.

Susan’s confrontational abrasion melted away into the sweetness of a Southern grandma, sweet as molasses.

“Now sweet thing, do you think you could bring that yearbook to me up in North Dallas?”

“Can I just mail it to you or drop it off?”

“I can fix you dinner and explain you why it has to be this way if you can do that. There are some things you probably need to know I can only explain in person.”

*

Susan lived in a little house in a part of Dallas that will probably be cool in five years, but is just shitty now. I had to avoid 10 landmines of dog feces as I walked up to the faded and rotted pink front door. I knocked on the door softly as to not disturb a hornet’s nest which bustled above the door frame.

The yips and clawlings of what sounded like a dozen lap dogs erupted as soon as I knocked.

“Heavens,” I heard Susan growl from the other side of the door.

The door opened and five different dogs all only a little larger than your average squirrel darted at my feet. I tried to act like it didn’t bother me, probably failed.

Susan looked better than I thought she would. Thin, but healthy with a head of long blonde hair (dyed, but dyed well) and a classy outfit of black leggings, a black and gray cardigan over a plain white shirt and hipster glasses. She was far from the obese, elderly pile of ash I expected to find.

I handed Susan the yearbook, but she made no move for it.

“No, no, no. I made short ribs and peach pie for two, not one.”

Susan gave me a warm smile. The kind I yearned for from a parental figure my entire life. I relented and followed her into her home and held my breath, fighting against the burn of pet urine mixing with the scent of baking food.

*

Susan cooked the kind of food I always wished a parental figure would cook for me - gourmet, but down home, hearty and filling. I felt over-indulged about three bites in, but couldn’t stop eating.

“I’ve been waiting for someone to dial that pager for seventeen years,” Susan turned the conversation to the real reason I was there after about 10 minutes of small talk while I was in mid-bite.

I had forgotten why I was even there for a second.

“We got that pager for Kirsten as a compromise. She wanted a cell phone, but we didn’t want to give her everything we wanted, so we met in the middle with that thing. I liked that it helped us keep tabs on her when she headed over to Texas Christian, but Dave wasn’t sure.”

Susan nodded her head sideways at a headshot of smiling middle-aged man in a Sears photoshoot who I assumed was Dave. His mug was pinned up on the wall next to a toaster.

“Dave passed just a couple years after Kirsten went missing. Pancreatic cancer. Awful. I think he was poisoned by the awfulness of what happened to our only daughter. We spent all the money we had on his no good pancreas and the pursuit of any clue we could with Kirsten. Had to eventually downgrade to this jalopy, move out of the community we raised Kirsten in, but, the good news is, we got our first god forsaken clue, for free, fifteen years after I had given up, right?”

I didn’t know how to react.

“It’s okay. I’m as happy about it, as I can be,” Susan went on. “And I’ll give you a break. I had you come here because things aren’t as simple as you might think they would be.”

“Okay…”

I couldn’t help but be pensive, and not just because one of Susan’s dogs was licking my ankle.

“We believe someone was actively working against us in the Dallas Police Department. Anything we ever, I mean ever, turned in as evidence always seemed to go missing. Any question we had, we never got an answer to. They blamed everything on Dave putting the investigation into his own hands early on, saying he crossed a lot of boundaries that negated evidence, but it was bull. Dave only made a few calls. Checked out Kirsten’s dorm room, talked to her roommate, because the police weren’t. Kirsten’s roommate called us up one day asking if the cops were ever going to talk to her because it had been weeks and they hadn’t even contacted her.”

“Wow.”

“But supposedly, Dave inviting Kirsten’s roommate over here for salad one night was enough to poison the whole investigation. So...that’s why I don’t want you to just turn over that yearbook to someone. I also want you to know that...this is hard to say...but...you might want to be careful with how you handle this as well. We had some early potential leads from a couple kids at Texas Christian who may have saw something, knew something, but they quickly fell off into the ether, and we never found out why. So...I don’t know what in the world it is, but just know that dialing that number, may have changed your life.”

“Okay, well, thank you, I guess.”

“I’m sorry. It is what it is. I want to ask you if you are comfortable answering some questions though?”

“I guess I might as well.”

“You said the yearbook you found belonged to Luke Hanratty?”

“Yeah.”

“And what is your relation to him if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Ex-boyfriend.”

“Oh, sorry if I opened a wound.”

“It’s okay. It was already still open. It’s only been a few weeks.”

“Well, I hate to say it, but he might be Jake Doe. You see, we know there was a boy in Kirsten’s life around that time, but we have never had a slight inkling as to who he might be. They did everything in heavy secrecy, because she was technically still with her high school boyfriend, Brady, even though he went to A and M. They were trying to do the long distance thing, but her friends at TCU said they think she was hanging around with another boy. He would block his number before he paged her. She would call him from the phones in common areas around the campus. Maybe it was your Luke?”

At this point, I didn’t know what else I could do for Susan. I wanted to help her, but I didn’t want to spend anymore of my life doing anything that had anything to do with Luke Hanratty. I was ready to move on.

“I can give you the yearbook,” I said.

“I looked up Luke online before you came too and it looks like his parents own Hanratty and Hanratty, the big law firm downtown. They’ve worked defending the police in big cases. They might be blocking evidence through their connections knowing their son might have something to do with it.”

That made sense based on the soulless, yuppie, workaholic, only care about what people think image I got from Luke’s parents every time I met them. Luke told me once they would murder a baby if they thought it might help them get a big new case.

“Can I see it?”

Susan finally asked for the whole entire reason I was even there. I blushed when she quickly flipped to Kirsten’s picture and read the horrible things scrawled in there. I played with the last of the food on my plate.

“Well this is certainly interesting,” Susan whispered across the table.

I looked across the table and started to see tears form in Susan’s eyes behind her thick glasses.

“It’s just…

Susan had to stop and let out a few sobs.

“It’s just...I know Kirsten wasn’t a bad girl. She didn’t do these kinds of things. She was a good girl. She didn’t deserve this.”

As bad as I felt for Susan, the situation was just too much and too awkward for me. I wanted to get out. I figured I had helped her as much as I possibly could and I had my own problems. I was beginning to think my boyfriend of more than five years may have killed someone. No matter how good that peach pie in the oven smelled (and it smelled really, really good), I wasn’t going to stick around for it.

I thanked Susan for her time. Told her she could keep the yearbook and excused myself before dessert. I took the 20 minute drive to my home on my friend’s couch with the plan to not do a single thing more and hope everything just blew over and took care of itself. It was basically a smaller version of my overall life plan.

*

A few days passed with nothing. I held some brief relief that the whole thing would be over.

Then the calls from Luke started.

I ignored the first few. Let him leave vague voicemails about how I needed to call him back about something “serious.” This was his usual MO for when we were about to break up. He would start a horrible fight or do something really bad and then try to pull the romantic comedy move of doing something over the top romantic, or would buy me some piece of jewelry and the wounds scabbed over enough to drag our doomed relationship onward. Not this time.

The calls from Luke kept coming and coming and coming and I kept ignoring and ignoring and ignoring, but I knew he was going to do something drastic, I just didn’t know what. An oozing sense of dread seeped into me and stuck me on my friend’s couch for days where I was crashing, unable to move anywhere but between the couch, bathroom and refrigerator.

Luke made that drastic move in the middle of the night during one of my trips to the bathroom. I heard his voice whispering from outside the open window as I washed my hands in the near dark.

“Hey, Kayla.”

I screamed as loud as I ever have in my entire life. I looked out the half-opened window and saw the shadow of Luke standing in the bushes outside my friend’s ground-floor apartment. He looked at me through the cover of a dark hoodie, with his shaggy hair jutting out the front.

“Sorry, I knocked on the door, but no one answered and you won’t answer your phone,” Luke whispered.

“So you fucking go Norman Bates and look at me through the bathroom window? Get out of here!” I screamed back.

“No, you don’t understand. You did something you shouldn’t have done, now these people are after me.”

“No. You did something you shouldn’t have done!”

I slammed the window shut.

“If I see you again, I’m calling the cops,” I yelled at the closed window.

The texts started to come in from Luke as soon as I got back to the couch. I deleted them without reading them and eventually blocked Luke’s number after about the tenth call and text.

I covered myself in a blanket on the couch and planned on staying right there until the day I died.

*

I started to ease back into life as the days past without communication attempts from Luke. I got back up off the couch and started my job hunt again, went on walks to the park, went shopping for food with the little money I had a couple of times and even went for a couple aimless drives around town to clear my head after my friend said she had to move out in two weeks because she was going to move in with her boyfriend.

One of those blank-minded drives took me out to the edge of the city, to the parts of town where the urban sprawl started to melt into the hints of rural America. Little patches of woods and lonely gas stations dotted the roads.

Officially lost, I pulled over so I could load up directions to get back home on my phone. I slowed down next to a little patch of woods between run-down houses on a dark road.

A knock came at my window before I could get my phone out. I screamed even louder than I did when Luke confronted me in the bathroom.

I looked up at the aged face of a woman that I knew, but couldn’t quite put my finger on why I knew her.

“Can I talk to you really quick?” The woman asked, her voice also vaguely familiar.

I stared at the woman for a few seconds and it started to register. It was Luke’s mom, Nancy. She had aged a lot since the last time I had seen her.

I rolled the window down about two inches.

“What do you want?” I asked.

Another long look revealed exhausted eyes in Nancy’s skull and a coat of sweat.

“Have you seen Luke?” Nancy asked.

“No. I’ve been avoiding him, and I think you’re pretty disgusting, personally,” I spat back.

“What are you talking about?”

“I found out about Kirsten. The missing girl from TCU. It seems pretty clear Luke was involved, and you helped cover it up.”

“What?” Nancy shot back, sounding offended. “You have no idea,” she then muttered under her breath.

Nancy returned the long, hard look I was giving her.

“You probably don’t realize this, but you’re in serious danger. I need to know what you did, and who you talked to.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Just listen,” Nancy cut me off. “I’m guessing you talked to Susan for some reason.”

“Yeah, um.”

“That was a bad idea,” Nancy cut me off. “You have no idea what you did.”

A pair of headlights drove up behind us and stopped to the right of Nancy’s car which was parked behind mine.

Nancy looked over to the headlights. The last drops of life flushed out of her face.

A bang sound rang out in the night and Nancy’s SUV started to sink to the right.

“Shit,” Nancy seethed underneath her breath.

Nancy turned to me with her eyes wide.

“Let me in the car,” Nancy said.

“Why would I let you in my car?” I asked.

I was interrupted by the sound of a car door closing behind us, over by Nancy’s SUV.

Nancy started wrenching on the door handle. The door wouldn’t open. I already locked it.

“Please,” Nancy pleaded with a depth of desperation I had never heard come out of a human being.

I heard heavy footsteps come up towards the back of my car from behind.

“Pleeeeeease,” Nancy whined out.

I flicked the unlock button.

“Go to the back door,” I said.

Nancy jumped over to the backseat door behind me and slipped in the car. I hit the doors lock as soon as she opened the door.

“Go. Go. Go,” Nancy yelled as soon as she was in the backseat.

I floored it. My Ford Focus jetted off. The force snapped my neck back.

I didn’t let up off the gas until we were well away from the scene.

“What was that?” I screamed.

“What did you do?”

“I found Luke’s old yearbook, saw that he had written slut and all this horrible stuff on Kirsten’s yearbook picture and then found her phone number written in the back of the thing. I called the number, an old lady called me back and said I needed to bring the yearbook to her. I did.”

“I can’t believe you made it out of that place alive,” Nancy said with a laugh.

A pair of headlights entered my rear-view mirror.

“I think they’re following us,” I said, frantic. “Is that her?”

Nancy looked back, then back at me.

“Just keep driving.”

“Why is she...

I hadn’t been paying attention to the road, distracted by Nancy and the headlights. I stopped talking because the curve of a road was just feet in front of my car. I slammed on the brakes, but it was too late. We careened into a ditch and smashed into the hard ground.

The world went into slow motion for a few moments. I saw my cell phone fly by my face. I heard the sound of glass breaking. I felt something hard smack against the back of my head. Then the lights went out.

*

The coppery taste of blood stung my tongue when I woke up. I gagged and coughed before I opened my eyes and threw my body forward to hit the ground, but couldn’t. I was suspended by something which tethered me from behind.

I opened my eyes and saw nothing but a blank, white wall in front of me. I had never been so terrified in my life to see just a blank image. I screamed out without even knowing exactly what I was screaming about yet. My body had a thick, dull ache, my core tingled with sharp pain when I screamed.

“HELP!” I screamed. “Please, please, please, please,” I punctuated my bellar with pathetic pleads.

“At least you’re up,” a voice whispered from behind me.

I jumped from the sound of a voice, but calmed, once it registered in my brain as belonging to Luke.

I tried to wiggle in my seat and turn around, but couldn’t. The lashes of rope tied tight around my wrists and feet wouldn’t let me. I was stuck staring at the blank wall.

“Don’t fight. Save your energy. There is no use trying that yet, and you’re probably really hurt,” Luke said.

I stopped and took in a few huge breaths.

“What is this?” I asked with sobs building in my jaw.

“She locked us somewhere in her house, I think. She had me blindfolded when I got brought in here. Someone must be helping her, because someone carried me in here and I’m pretty sure she doesn’t have that kind of strength,” Luke explained.

“What is the deal?”

“This woman has always thought I was responsible for the disappearance of her daughter, and she is right, but not for the right reasons. I helped her daughter disappear her freshman year at TCU, but only so she could get away from her, and her sadistic husband. We were semi-dating and she told me all about the awful abuse she suffered and she worried because it was getting worse as she got older, more physically mature. The truth was the cops knew they could never prove anything against her parents and they believed me and my parents when we told them about why and how she ran away, so they didn’t care.”

“What does she want with me?” I screamed back.

“My parents were able to keep it so she never knew who I was, but now thanks to my wonderful ex-girlfriend, I’m tied up in this psycho’s basement while she probably prepares a Hansel and Gretel marinade for us. Congratulations.”

Guilt burned in my stomach. Or maybe it was just the overall pain from the wreck?

“But why did you write slut, and all those horrible thing on Kirsten’s photo?”

“Oh Jesus Christ. That was Daniel. Daniel tried to date her in high school, but she wasn’t having it and he vandalized the shit out of my yearbook one drunken night. He wrote horrible things on like a quarter of the school’s photos. You know him. He’s a ten times even bigger caustic dick than me.”

I believed Luke. I had met his friend Daniel around 10 times and he had greeted me with a passive aggressive semi-insult about my hair or outfit pretty much every time. He was one of those guys that thought every day was one of those Comedy Central roasts.

“Well, what do we do now?”

My question was answered by a creaky door opening from behind us and what sounded like above us.

“Too late,” I heard Luke mutter under his breath.

The lights went out. The room went into complete darkness. I shivered. The sound of footsteps descending wooden stairs squeaked out from behind.

“Please…”the word quietly leaked out of my lips.

My soft pleading was answered by the sounds of gut-wrenching screams from Luke which started just a handful of feet behind me. The steps went back up the stairs and I heard a door close again.

I let out a deep breath. I listened to Luke’s screams fade away. I held my eyes closed tight even though the room was still pitch black. I think I hoped that if I closed them long and hard enough that it would all go away.

Wishful thinking. I opened my eyes and still stared at the darkness.

I started to cry. I wiped the moisture which trickled out of my nose from the top of my lip and tried to suck it back up into my nasal cavity with a hard snort.

“Don’t cry,” a voice whispered from behind.

I jumped up in my chair. Probably got the whole thing a couple of feet off the ground I was so startled.

The chair hit the solid ground hard on the way down and I felt both of the back legs fracture to where my seat was now wobbly. I leaned back against them to test them. They hadn’t snapped yet, but I felt I could make that happen if I worked at them hard enough now.

“You remind me of her,” Susan whispered from behind me.

The lights came on. I squinted tight against the burn for a few seconds. I slowly opened my eyes and saw that a large mirror had been stuck up against the blank wall in front of me.

I looked back at myself with a dark wig stuck on my sandy blonde hair, a pale shade makeup and purple lip liner caked on my face a late-90s outfit of loose jeans and a jean jacket wrapped around my shoulders. I was pretty sure I recognized the jacket from Kirsten’s yearbook picture. The white makeup looked familiar. I looked like a Kirsten impersonator.

Susan stepped into the field of vision provided by the mirror. She walked up behind me and put her hands softly on my shoulders, looking like a hair stylist who is about to ask “how does it look?” After a haircut.

“I couldn’t help but think it once you walked into my house. I can see why Luke had such an attraction to both of you,” Susan said, locking eyes with me in the mirror.

I looked off Susan’s eyes and leaned back in the chair, felt those back wooden legs flex just a little bit. It would only take one hard lean to snap them and make an attempt at a bolt.

“He may have taken her from me, but he can’t take you,” Susan whispered into my ear.

I put all of my weight against the back legs of the chair. The wooden pegs gave out and threw me hard against the floor. I grabbed hold of Susan’s coarse hair on my way down and dragged her down with me.

I ripped my tied hands off of the back of the chair and pulled Susan’s frail neck into my chest with a strength I had never felt come out of me. I squeezed Susan’s neck as hard as I could until I could feel the bones in her neck flex just like the pegs of the chair had below me.

“You’re going to let me go right now,” I whispered into Susan’s ear. “You deserved whatever happened to you. Luke told me what you were doing to Kirsten. You’re not a victim.”

“That’s not true,” Susan gasped out.

“Cut these ropes off of me,” I screamed into Susan’s ear.

“You gotta let me move my arms,” Susan yelped out from the vice grip of my squeeze.

I let Susan’s arms get clear just enough to move, but to where she could only make a small range of motions. I felt her pull something hard from her pocket. I looked down and saw a thick pair of scissors.

“Cut me loose,” I screamed into her ear.

“You think I’m bad...you don’t even know about him,” Susan muttered under her breath.

“What”? I fired back.

Susan didn’t answer. She just silently sniped the rope that tied my wrists together.

I recoiled from Susan and stood in front of her. I snatched the scissors away from her and went to work on the rope around my ankles.

“What are you talking about?” I asked as I ripped away the rope around my ankles.

“You’ll find out,” Susan muttered.

I pushed Susan away from me. I didn’t have time for whatever she was trying to do.

I saw a flight of wooden stairs at the other end of the room. I ran at them as fast as I could, leaving Susan crumpled on the cement floor behind me.

I pushed the door at the top of the stairs open and burst into what looked like a barn. The thick smell of hay and musty animal feces overwhelmed me once I stepped out of the basement I had been held in.

I didn’t have time to analyze where I was anymore. I just ran straight forward until I found another door and opened it up.

The hot sting of a summer day said hi when I opened the door. I looked around and saw a rural backyard lined with dense forests of trees which formed a U around a pale yellow farmhouse. It was a beautiful, quaint setting for the most-horrifying event of my life.

Little did I know at the moment, that dash through the backyard would only be the beginning of the horrors I was going to experience. I was only a few strides into my run across the grass when I heard a frantic clicking sound ring into my ear and felt myself get flung high up into the air.

I hung in the air for a few seconds feeling weightless. I looked down and saw a crude crater in the ground where I just was. An ugly scar on the otherwise beautiful grass. I tried to form an idea around what had happened, but couldn’t before I fell hard back to the earth.

I felt footsteps approach me from the direction of the house as my ears rang. I looked up at the sky until my view was overtaken by the face of an elderly man who I vaguely recognized for a few seconds before I went out.

It was Susan’s husband, Kirsten’s dad, Dave, his face horribly weathered since that photo which rested in Susan’s living room that I saw when I made that fateful visit. He smiled at me before everything went dark.

*

My entire body seared with hot pain when I woke up. I felt like a piece of meat in a frying pan.. The pain was so intense I could barely breath.

I knew the feeling of a hospital bed from when I had my appendix taken out as a kid. I was all too familiar with that thudding pain which develops in your lower back when you lay down in a stiff bed for too long.

“Ugh,” I groaned.

I looked around the lonely hospital room thinking about how much whatever happened was going to cost me. Well, cost may be the least of my concerns. Nancy walked into the room before I could even buzz a nurse for some pain medication. She sat down in a chair at the foot of my bed and looked at me with a stone face.

Nancy filled in the missing pieces from the incident. She had been left at the scene of our wreck, but I had been taken away by Susan. I was taken to a farmhouse Susan and her husband owned outside of the city where I was held with Luke. The story Susan told me about her husband being dead was fabricated. He was alive and well and was a doomsday prepper out in the sticks with a yard filled with homemade landmines, one of which I was unlucky enough to step on.

Stepping on the mine was actually a stroke of luck though. The neighbors were always on red alert for one of Dave’s land mines going off so they called the cops the second they heard one explode and ran over seconds after to find me knocked out in the yard, scaring Dave back into the house. It actually probably saved my life.

Luke wasn’t so lucky. He was still missing. Luke’s mom was pushing to get Susan and her husband arrested for taking Luke, or killing Luke, she wasn’t really sure, and kidnapping me for a period of time. She needed me to talk to the police to tell them what happened.

I agreed, but I just needed to heal up in the hospital for a few days. Luke’s mom was pleased. She said officers would be by soon to take my story right before she left.

It has been a day now and officers have not yet been by. However, something came by this morning that has given me alarm. It is probably just a coincidence, but a heaping piece of seemingly-homemade peach pie was on the food stand next to my bed this morning. It smelled delicious, but I didn’t care.

I threw the thing in the trash next to my bed and pushed the button for the nurse so I could ask her to remove the basket as soon as possible.

Originally published by Thought Catalog on www.ThoughtCatalog.com.

[jackfollmanwriter-blog]

The Shower

I remember the apartment being eerily cold when we walked in. It was probably in the low-60s outside, but it somehow felt even colder in our one-bedroom domicile than it did in the draft courtyard. I mentioned it to Ben. He didn’t even respond. He already had the game on and was complaining about the luck of the football team from some city across the country he would never even go to.

“I’m gonna warm up in the shower,” I put the statement out there 60 percent as a notification and 40 percent as an offer.

Ben responded with a sound that I’m not even sure qualifies as a grunt.

I let the shower warm up and then slipped in. I felt the grime of the workday, the after work drinks we had to have with Ben’s boss and the chill of the night wash off me as soon as the stream of water hit my body.

The first couple in minutes of the shower were utter bliss. One of those moments when you feel like nothing else in life could ever be better. I never wanted to get out.

Then I heard the sound of Ben peeing on the other side of the shower curtain.

“Ben,” I said in a thoroughly-annoyed tone. “Please just don’t flush the toilet.”

I heard the urine stop. I didn’t hear the toilet flush. I heard Ben walk out of the bathroom. I showered for another 10 minutes before I got out.

I dried off and headed back to the bedroom. I glanced over at Ben on the couch, still glued to the game, I heard him muttering something about a fumble.

“Thanks for not flushing the toilet,” I said before ducking into our bedroom.

“I didn’t go to the bathroom,” Ben fired back.

I stopped in the doorway then walked back into the living room.

“Don’t lie. I heard you peeing when I was in the shower.”

Ben threw his hands up, eyes still on the game.

“I have not gotten up from this seat since we walked in. It’s overtime,” Ben insisted in his tone where I know he is telling the truth about something.

The warmth of the hot shower slithered off me in a second.

“Dont mess with me,” I stated coldly to Ben.

Ben finally looked at me.

“I swear to God I didn’t go in there.”

The entire room started to feel dangerous. I didn’t even know what to do. I stood there shivering in nothing but a towel.

Ben rose to his feet and walked towards me. I watched his eyes scan the room with a fear in them I had never seen before. He stopped in the doorway and grabbed me. He covered my mouth and perked his ear.

I didn’t hear anything other than the distant, ominous ring of a siren.

We stood silent for a few more moments. I heard nothing. The siren gone.

“We would hear something if someone was in here,” Ben said in a flat tone.

Ben reluctantly agreed to search the apartment. We searched the place up and down and found nothing. It was actually worse than finding a stringy junkie with a bloody knife or some hideous monster. The mystery of the whole thing was worse than any nightmare I could have imagined.

*

The next few weeks were tense. I wouldn’t stay in the apartment alone. Ben told me my brain must have just played a trick on me. That was a bad idea. He said there was no other possible way it could have happened. It was not a good idea on his part to tell me that. I lost trust in him.

What happened was definitely not in my head. I knew it. I got my confirmation a few weeks later when I stood in the shower getting ready for work.

I was almost done with the shower when I heard a flush ring out from the other side of the shower curtain. I couldn’t dodge the water in time and took a stinging-hot stream to the face. I screamed out and ripped open the shower curtain…

No one was there, but I heard footsteps walking away from the open bathroom door and towards the apartment door. I heard the front door unlock, open and then close again.

“Ben?” I called out, my body cold despite the hot water pounding on my back.

No answer.

I shivered into a towel and walked into the bedroom. No sign of Ben. I checked out the living room. There was a handwritten note on the coffee table - had to run to work early...Ben.

Thanks Ben. Very helpful.

I called Ben. He was bristly and clearly annoyed. Worse yet, he confirmed that he did not flush the toilet when I was in the shower. He left before he even heard the shower come on.

I listened to the space around me in the apartment. I don’t even know what Ben said after that point. Everything was silent, but it felt like the entire apartment was alive at that point. I ended the call with Ben.

One thing was clear at that point. Whoever had been sneaking around the bathroom while I was showering had a way to get in and out of our apartment, or it was Ben, and he wanted to deeply disturb me for some reason.

Ben continued to swear up and down it was not him doing it. He brought up the idea or me inventing the whole thing in my head, again. I melted down, but also offered a solution...what if we set up cameras in the apartment?

*

I wanted to cam the entire apartment. Ben didn’t want to spend that much. We settled on recording the front door and the bathroom.

I reviewed the tapes each day at work. Weeks went by without so much as a hint of anyone doing anything at any moment of the day, let alone when I was in the shower. All I saw was Ben and I going about our sad daily existence of barely talking to each other and going back and forth to work.

The fear that all of this was in fact in my head started to bubble. I felt a tension from Ben when he asked me about every other day if I saw anything on the camera. Our already-strained relationship felt like it was hanging by a single thread. We were barely talking.

Then it came to a head when I reviewed the footage about a month after I set up the cameras. The footage from the bathroom proved fruitful while I was in the shower.

I felt I could almost smell the soap and feel the moisture in the air when I stopped the bathroom footage once I saw a shadow appear in the screen of the bathroom window. I stopped breathing as I watched that shadow pull away the screen and then slither into the room through the opening of the window.

The light wasn’t very good in the bathroom with me taking the shower after my nightly workout, just around dusk, and I hadn’t turned on the bathroom light. However, I could see what looked to be a stout man, clad in black pants, a hoodie and wearing a pure white mask, standing in my bathroom right next to me as I took a shower.

I couldn’t believe I still showered with the curtain closed at that point. I hated myself almost as much as I was scared as I watched the footage. Those feeling burned as I watched the man just stand there for a few seconds before he headed over to the toilet.

The sound of the shower stopped on the video, replaced by the pouring sound of the rest of the shower water exiting via the bath faucet. I would open the curtain any second. I wondered how in the hell I hadn’t caught the man dressed in black the night before when I got out.

What I watched next made the vomit literally bubble up in the back of my throat. I couldn’t believe what I saw. In a flash, the man reached down, stuck his fingers against the floor of our bathroom and yanked on one of the tiles. I watched about half of the bathroom floor rise up and about a foot off the ground. The man slipped into the dark opening he unveiled and then disappeared into the floor before it slowly eased back onto the ground right when I opened up the shower curtain.

I watched myself get out of the shower, grab a towel, and head to the bedroom in real-time and then fast forwarded through the rest until the new video ran out. The guy never got out of the floor, meaning he had been in there the entire night until I left for work and could still be in the apartment.

One burning thought simmered in my mind when the realization washed over me. It was the day before Veteran’s Day and Ben had the day off, while I didn’t. He was still at home, with the man in the bathroom floor.

I scrambled to call Ben as soon as possible. No answer. I called again. No answer. One more time. No answer again. I called the cops and drove back home without telling my boss anything.

The cops were already there when I arrived. They busted down the door under my phone direction and found the apartment entirely empty. There was no one in the hollowed-out section beneath the bathroom floor and Ben’s cell phone was in the bedroom, but he was not.

The police found spikes stuck in the side of the building which led all the way up from the alley behind our building to our third-floor bathroom window. They looked to be what a mountain climber would stick in the rock of a cliff to pull their way up. They believe the man had a prying device made to pull away screen windows to get in out through the screen without tearing it. They believe he must have lived in one of the other tall apartment complexes nearby and spied on me (possibly with binoculars) to target my bathroom.

They believe he broke in during the day some time back over and over again while the two of us were at work and cut out our bathroom floor and then dug out the area to create a cubby area a little bigger than himself where he could hide when need be. They said he seemed incredibly skilled at what he did and likely had been doing it at apartments all around our neighborhood.

The story of Ben was far more disturbing because there wasn’t much of a story. The police found his car parked on the sidewalk a few blocks away in its usual spot and his cell phone on top of the bed, but that was it. He vanished without a trace other than that. Nothing of suspicion.

I have since moved out of the apartment and Ben has yet to show. I moved a few cities over, back to my parents’ home to try and throw the scent off from whoever was doing it. The limited clues and leads the police possess have been shared over the past few months, but none of them seem to lead anywhere.

There is one insight the officers gave to me that has stuck with me throughout the process and my lonely days of working, watching TV on my parents’ couch and struggling to sleep. One of the officers told me that they don’t think Ben had anything to do with the sneak ins of the masked assailant or his own disappearance, but they think I should be on the lookout for people in my life.

I can still remember the cop’s exact words. They were: generally in cases like this, people think it is some random mystery man that is coming in and doing something creepy, but in reality the perpetrator almost always has something connected to the person they are terrorizing. Most of the time, it’s someone they know, in at least some capacity. Good luck ever trusting anyone again.

Originally published by Thought Catalog on www.ThoughtCatalog.com.

[jackfollmanwriter-blog]

The Kids Who Always Talked About Monsters

The checkout line of the local grocery store in the home town you left behind might be the single most torturous place. I tried to keep my eyes forward and avoid eye contact as I paid for my frozen dinner and dessert and hoped to get the hell out of dodge before I had to talk to someone I knew, but hadn’t talked to in 15 years.

“Sam Ross,” I heard a woman’s voice chime from behind me.

I couldn’t help but utter the word “fuck,” drawing a grin from the high school-aged checkout girl who rang up my Lean Cuisine and Dots.

I put the smallest smile humanly possible on my face and looked over my shoulder to see a woman with a poof of frizzy gray hair standing at my hip with an armful of groceries sloppily spread across the chest of the dirty Garfield Christmas sweatshirt she wore in September. I don’t think I had actually seen the woman since I was eight or nine years old, but I instantly recognized her as Barbara Daniels, the woman who ran the daycare I went to when I was very young, .

I stuck my credit card in the machine and started the process of paying for my groceries before I spoke.

“Barbara Daniels?”

Barbara’s cracked lips spread into a wide smile across her wrinkled face.

“Yeah, I can’t believe you’ve grown into...a man,” Barbara said.

The cashier handed me my receipt and gave me a stern look which suggested I move on, but I lingered.

“When I used to watch you, you were like this tall,” Barbara said and then held her hand flat at about the level of my waist.

“Yeah, yeah,” I agreed.

I let out a nervous chuckle and started to backpedal, away from the checkout line.

“Are you staying at your folks’ place right now?” Barbara asked.

“Yeah, yeah.”

“The funny thing is, I ran into your sister about six months ago. I’m so sorry to hear about your mom,” Barbara went on.

Barbara ignored the cashier and stuck me with a hug before I could slip anyway any further. I felt her bosom awkwardly smash up against my rib cage.

“Thank you,” I muttered.

Barbara thankfully pulled away from me.

“I told your sister I remembered two things about you. One, you walked on your toes for some reason. Two, you and your sister constantly talked about monsters. You two were always really, really scared of ‘bloody monsters.’”

*

I couldn’t get the second thing Barbara said out of my head as I drove up the highway towards the house I grew up in and both my parents had died in within the past couple of years.

I called up my sister. She didn’t answer. She hadn’t answered her phone in months. I don’t know why I even kept trying. I left a voicemail.

“Hey Mandy. It’s Sam. It’s funny I just ran into Barbara Daniels. The lady who ran our daycare as kids at the store and she said something weird. She specifically mentioned that we always talked about monsters and being scared of bloody monsters. So weird she specifically mentioned that, but I wanted to talk to you about it. See what you might have remembered since you were a little older. I kind of remember being scared a lot, but would never have thought it would be something enough for her to mention fifteen years later. Anyway. Call me back. Bye.”

I wrapped up my message just as I pulled up to the dirt driveway which snaked up to my parents’ house and the tin mailbox with the name “Ross” printed on it in big, sloppy white painted letters which were so faded they could almost no longer be read.

I expected to feel the familiar touch of dry paper envelopes when I stuck my arm in the mailbox, but instead brushed up against the stiff plastic of what felt like a VHS tape. I grabbed hold and pulled the thing into my car to confirm it was an unmarked VHS tape.

Luckily my elderly parents still had a VCR hooked up and ready to go in their living room. It ironically sat next to a DVD player I gave them about 10 Christmases ago that they never set up.

My fingertips started to sweat when I pushed the tape into the VCR, hit play and looked up at the blue screen of the TV. I had no fucking clue what I was about to watch.

I took a deep breath when I saw the video open up to a grainy shot. I gulped that breath down when I immediately recognized the setting.

The fake wood panelling of the play room in Barbara’s double-wide trailer which housed her day care was unmistakable. I can still remember the box of a room which was kept empty except for one basket of toys and was lined with a shockingly-thin carpet. All those years later, the stale, empty space still gave me a hollow feeling and tingle in my spine.

The video cut back to blue again then crackled back to life with a grainy image of myself at age seven. I could tell my exact age by the white character date read out in the corner of the screen. Dressed in Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtles pajamas and a bowl cut with a cowlick which sat atop a melon head which was too big for my skinny, little body.

“What’s your name?” A groggy male voice I remembered as belonging to Barbara’s husband Dale asked my younger self as I looked away from the camera.

“Sam,” the younger me mumbled on the camera and winced against the sharp lighting which seemed to be shining in my face.

The camera quickly zoomed out and panned a little to the right to reveal my sister Mandy standing next to me in Little Mermaid pajamas.

“And what’s your name?” Dale asked.

Mandy took a little longer to answer. She quivered. Appeared on the verge of tears. I took some time to take in the setting again. Out the window behind both of our little bodies, I could see it was night. Yet, I had no memory of ever being at Barbara’s daycare at night.

“Mandy,” the word barely dribbled out of my sister’s pursed lips.

I heard a woman’s voice mutter something I couldn’t make out off the camera and then the room went dark. I could now just barely see the outlines of my sister and myself in the almost complete blackness.

The sounds of myself and my sister beginning to cry filled the darkness for a few seconds before being drowned out by the sound of a quick shake of the entire room. It sounded like someone had thrown down a basketball on the floor as hard as they could and then caught it on its way back up. Then again. The crying sounds got louder.

“There it is,” the woman’s voice off-camera got a little louder and I was able to identify it as belonging to Barbara.

“Please. No,” my sister cried out.

One more thud sound reverberated through the room followed by a few seconds of silence and then a horrible screeching sound of a siren rang out.

The screeching siren went for a few seconds and then came to an abrupt stop. The lights flicked on and Mandy and I stood in our same spots, panting and trying to catch our breath.

The thud sound returned. This time, the thud sent my sister and I flying into opposite corners of the room. We each hit the fake wood wall hard and crashed down to the ground.

I cringed as I watched all this play out on the TV.

“Stop. We gotta stop,” Barbara’s voice yelled out from off-camera.

I saw a younger Barbara walk into frame for a second and then the video cut out.

The video came back on and changed to a close up shot of Barbara sitting in a chair in the blank play room with her plume of blonde hair done up in spectacular fashion and her cheeks rouged. She looked like she was doing one of those old video dating personals from the early-90s.

“My name is Barbara Daniels. I am from Adams Grove, Oklahoma and I believe we have discovered paranormal powers in our home manifesting themselves in the bodies of two young siblings who attend our daycare. What you will see on this video tape is either a spirit or the work of a demon, some kind of pol-ter-a-geist, and we would like to request the Supernatural Advocates come to our home, in Adams Grove, and help us in an episode figure out what is happening with these children,” Barbara stopped for a moment to collect herself.

“Can you please explain the situation with the kids?” Dale asked from behind the camera.

“Yes. The children are ages seven and ten and attend my daycare. These episodes seem to start when they fall asleep in the night and they wake up in a daze before they fall asleep again shortly after. After they wake up they seem to have absolutely no memory of what happened. However, they constantly talk about how they are scared of ‘the monsters,’ and ‘the bloody monsters,’ though they do not have many details about what these monsters are. We made these tapes to show what is happening to these kids in hopes they can get the help it appears their parents don’t want to get them before something bad happens.”

Barbara looked on the verge of breaking down before the video cut out again.

The video opened again with Mandy and I standing in the room in our cartoon pajamas trembling.

Barbara walked into frame and put her hands on each of our shoulders.

“We’re right here. We’re right here,” Barbara said so quiet the camera barely picked it up. “And this is the last time.”

Barbara got back behind the camera. The lights flicked on and off in the time it took for her to get out of the shot.

The thud sound from the earlier footage began again and the room shook. The younger me dropped to the floor and stuck his face into the carpet. Mandy just kept staring at the camera, seemingly frozen.

Another thud. Mandy dropped to the ground like a bomb went off.

“Fuck you,” Mandy screamed at the camera. “I’ll fucking kill you,” she screamed again and her voice seemed to drop about 10 octaves.

“Has this happened before?” Dale asked quietly from behind the camera.

“I don’t think so,” Barbara’s voice answered back, hushed.

“You’re a fucking cheater. Mike Blake is a fucking cheater and everyone needs to know it. You probably have fucking herpes now or something from her dirty pussy,” Mandy took a few defiant steps towards the camera and pointed a flexed finger at the lens with hate burning in her eyes.

“Who is Mike Blake?” Dale asked.

“No idea,” Barbara answered back.

I knew the answer to the question. Mike Blake was my sister’s soon-to-be ex-husband she broke up with just a few months before because he was cheating with a bar slut from town.

Mandy collapsed onto the floor on the screen and younger me rose to my feet at just the same time as the lights started flickering every half-second the way they do when you take the light switch and flick it up and down as fast as you can.

“No, no, no,” my young voice cried out over the sound of my sister sobbing next to me. “That isn’t what you promised Kylie.”

I dropped to my knees in my parents’ living room. I had screamed those exact words, just about five years before when my long-time girlfriend Kylie left me just after college and moved to Austin. My seven-year-old self was screaming out the most-painful sentences of my life nearly 20 years before they happened on video tape.

I almost had to shut the tape off, but stopped myself.

While I looked away, Mandy had risen to her feet and put her arm around me as we both sobbed horribly and looked down at the floor.

“She loved you more than you even knew,” Mandy said to me.

Mandy said those words to me as we consoled each at my mom’s grave less than a week before I watched the tape.

I reached over to stop the VCR, but stopped when I noticed something in the window behind the two of us in the old playroom.

I wasn’t going to waste time with a call now. I got back into my truck and drove straight to Mandy’s house on the other end of town.

Much like my parents, Mandy lived down a long, muddy private driveway which snaked off the highway and led up to a large, but worn-down and rustic house at the top of a steep hill. A pack of filthy dogs announced my arrival when I pulled into her gravel driveway and looked up at her house as a thick stream of smoke billowed out the chimney and into the tall trees.

The dogs nipped at the dirty cuffs of my jeans when I walked up to the porch and noticed there didn’t seem to be a light on anywhere on the property despite the fading sunset and near darkness of the wooded world around the home. The only light I was able to see came from a candle lit in the window of the living room which sat next to the front door.

I knocked softly on the wooden front door with my eyes stuck on the living room window. I noticed a breeze walk by the lit wick of the candle a few moments after my knock. I held my breath as I listened to footsteps approach the door on the other side.

I was shocked by what greeted me when the door opened. I recognized Mandy, but it looked as if she was wearing some kind of Hollywood special effect makeup which made her look like a real life witch. Wrinkled and just slightly hued yellow, her skin looked like that of an 80-year-old dying woman’s, not that of a woman just in her early-30s. Her eyes were sunken in her skull like a shrunken head and her hair was a tangled rat’s nest on the edge of dreadlocking.

I feared I visibly winced.

“You shouldn’t have talked to her,” Mandy said before I could get a word out.

“So you got my message?”

“You shouldn’t have talked to her,” Mandy repeated.

Mandy waved me into the darkness inside her home and shut the door behind me.

The house was as cold as it was dark. I shivered through my winter coat when I followed Mandy into the candle-lit living room. I took a seat on the dewy couch in front of a coffee table littered with dirty dishes and dirty laundry.

“Jesus Christ it’s freezing in here,” I muttered through clenched teeth.

I looked across the room to see Mandy offering me a cigarette from her seat in a stained easy chair.

“No thanks,” I said with a shake of the head and took the VHS tape out of my jacket pocket. “So about Barbara Daniels…

“You shouldn’t have talked to her,” Mandy cut me off and eyed the tape I had slipped out into my lap. “And I’ve seen that tape too. Or, well, I have my own copy of at least something like it.”

“At Barbara’s house? The lights going on and off, us flying around the room and talking about horrible things that happen later in life?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“What the hell is that?” I asked.

Mandy lit up another cigarette.

“You know that thing Barbara told you about us always talking about monsters? That was the monsters on that tape. She told me something where we had to stay the night there and they noticed we had night terrors and these poltergeist abilities and they recorded it to try and get us on some nineties paranormal show where some experts would try to help us, but they ended up never sending in the tapes. I eventually told her to get lost, but regardless, we’re both fucked, because I think talking about it, made the monsters come back.”

One of Mandy’s cigarettes started to sound really good after that piece of information.

“I couldn’t really remember the monsters or ever really thought about them until I ran into fucking Barbara at the deli, but now, I think they’re back. I think they are probably coming back for you too. They terrorized us as kids. I keep seeing this horrible, dead-looking man all around the house...and I’m not talking about Mike. He took off to fucking Tulsa,” Mandy explained.

“What are they? The monsters? I asked.

“They seem to change, but they come when you try to go to sleep and they hide in the shadows - cling to the corners, closets, where it is dark. I don’t actually get a good look at them much, but they seem to just look like hideous people. The one I see the most is this guy covered in blood.”

The images started to come back to me just a little bit. Like the mismatched puzzle pieces of a night of blackout drinking might after weeks or months pass by. I could picture myself waking up in the middle of the night in my parents’ house, tip toeing in the dark on the way to the bathroom, or Mandy’s room to seek shelter and seeing the shadows down the hall or behind the shower curtain or shaking the doors of my closet.

I suddenly felt as if the monsters were crawling all over the room. The childhood fear which paralyzed my every step once the sun went down started to come back. My panicked eyes scanned the room, looking for them. I saw none, but I felt them.

“If these things work in the dark, then why don’t you have any fucking lights on?” I asked.

“You try paying electricity bills when you can’t sleep and your piece of shit husband who had you stay at home for nearly ten years to watch his kids takes your kids and leaves you alone. They shut the power off,” Mandy finally seemed to show some energy when she spoke.

“Well, what are we going to do?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Mandy mumbled.

“Should we go to Barbara with the tapes?” I asked.

Mandy slowly nodded her head.

*

I hadn’t been in Barbara’s driveway for about 20 years, but everything was exactly the same. Raised double-wide with brown and tan paint and a wooden deck raised up off the ground level and a big tool shed. I almost felt like I had traveled back in time just going to the place.

It took some coaxing to get Mandy to join me at the door when we knocked, but she eventually did it. We stood there together as we heard someone approach.

Barbara gave us a frazzled look when she saw us standing on her porch. She followed it up with one of those looks someone gives when they pretend to be excited to randomly bump into someone, but are actually horrified about it. You could see the breath get sucked out of her in an instant.

“Oh hi,” Barbara finally spoke after a few frenzied seconds. “Do you want to come in?”

“No,” I answered flatly. “Here’s fine.”

I whipped the VHS tape out of my jacket pocket and pushed it in her face.

“What is this?”

Barbara squinted at the tape for a few moments.

“That’s the tape we made for the paranormal help show.”

“Why did you stick it in our mailbox?” I cut off Barbara.

“I didn’t put that in your mailbox,” Barbara said defensively.

The gears started to turn in my head. She was telling the truth. Barbara was behind me in line at the store when I bumped into her and I went directly to my truck and raced to my parents’ right after that. There are ways she could have gotten that tape in there before, but they were all pretty elaborate.

“I admit,” Barbara going on broke me out of my thought process. “I took that video, but I gave it to your grandmother years ago, both tapes.”

*

My father’s mother was a very complicated topic and figure in our lives. I vaguely remember her as a steady presence in our lives in my very first memories. A rail thin woman with long red hair and pale skin, I seem to remember her always giving me really good salty, sweet cookies that she made, so I thought she was pretty cool.

Then, suddenly, she was completely out of our lives. No Thanksgiving, no Christmas, no birthdays, no weddings, funerals, just gone. Without any explanation from either of my parents. It was like she had never even existed.

I didn’t think about my grandma after she disappeared until high school, when Mandy told me she found out our grandma was the person who ran the psychic business along the highway a few towns over in Branchford. I thought about dropping in there for years, but I never actually did it.

However, I figured it was high time to finally pay that palm reader by the highway a visit.

The red and purple neon sign I remember from high school still buzzed in the window of the little house on the edge of the little village of Branchford. It was nearly 9, but the sign still burned the word OPEN into the night.

“You think she’s still alive?” Mandy asked as we sat in the truck, looking at the house. “Mom and dad are already dead.”

“Well they died super young. I think she’s only like in her late-seventies, or something. We’ll just have to find out, I guess,” I answered.

We walked up to the door and pressed an electronic doorbell. Classical chimes rang out from inside of the home.

The door opened before the chimes stopped and we came face-to-face with the grandma we hadn’t seen in more than 20 years. Her long red hair was shorter and had turned gray and her face was a lot less sharp, but it was definitely our grandma.

“I knew you were coming,” grandma said before ushering us in.

Grandma sat us down in her fortune telling/palm reading room and poured us cups of hot tea without asking if we wanted them.

“You watched the tapes?” My grandma said once we all sat down on deep purple furniture.

“Yeah, look, I don’t know what happened between you and mom and dad, but I don’t care. I just want to know what this is and what the hell we can do about it,” I explained. “I don’t want to end up like her,” I finished and pointed to Mandy..

My grandma took a deep breath and started in...

“It’s a lot more simple than you might think. When you two were young, I started to notice you had some of the psychic traits I have. They say things like this skip generations and it’s true. You are more like your grandparents than your parents in many ways. The two of you could see things that hadn’t happened yet, or see people in places before they were there or in states, ages, they had not appeared yet. Understandably, this scared you. Your parents wanted to put you in therapy, to block it all out, but I knew the only true way you could get through it all was to fully understand it and embrace it. Otherwise, you would just be putting a band-aide on a wound which needed stitches and medicine. I tried to tell your parents that, but they wouldn’t have any of it. They just put you straight in therapy to block it all out, and it worked, for a long time, but not forever. I instead tried to work with your babysitter, who was a client and it started to work, but your parents somehow found out. Then they cut me off. I had to wait until they died to reach back out to you about it and it is good timing, because I can tell your powers have come back and they only come back in this way, when something very big is about to happen. Something the power wants to tell you about. That’s why I put those tapes in the mailboxes.”

“Great, well now what?” I asked.

My grandma’s face lit up.

“You need to come back. I can explain to you that what you might think are monsters are not really monsters at all, they are probably just people you know flashing before you at different stages, moments, of their lives that you will see. You need to be prepared for the night visions experienced on those tapes as well, because they are coming back. They are terrifying, but they can help, but only if you are ready and trained.”

“Okay, great,” I said sarcastically. “I know my vision. It’s of me, getting on my flight back to Houston tomorrow with a good night’s sleep.”

I got up and Mandyr followed me out the door.

Grandma stumbled after us with tears in her eyes.

“Please, you have to come back. I feel something very big coming very soon, my grandma pleaded from her open doorway.

Mandy and I ignored grandma. We walked out to my truck, got inside and drove away leaving her crying in her doorway.

We pulled away with a tension sweating out of our pores and into the cramped cab of the single bench truck. Mandy wasn’t talking, but I sensed she may have thought I made the wrong decision in leading us out of grandma’s office.

I reached over and turned on the radio to try and cut through the animosity in the air.

All that came out of the speakers was static. I scanned through more stations. Nothing but static.

I stopped the dial when I finally reached a station which appeared to have sound. The nasally drone of a newscaster speaking in a monotone leaked out the blown speakers.

“Tornado warnings have been issued for Shelby, Brockton and Ogden Counties. Residents are advised to seek shelter immediately,” the newscaster’s voice announced.

“Shit!” I yelled.

The world outside had seemed to maintain an eerie calm all night, but I noticed the tall tree which lined the highway were swaying violently. Large piles of debris and shrubs were skating across the highway in front of us. We drove into a tumbleweed which lodged in the grill of my truck.

“Shit!”

A branch broke off a tree and landed in the bed of my truck with a hard thud.

The world outside the truck had turned into complete chaos as we drove into the meager downtown of Branchford. Branch after branch was falling off of trees and crashing down, smashing into parked cars and buildings.

A strangely familiar sound cut into my ears as I slowed the car next to an abandoned church. It was that siren screech from the VHS tape where my sister and I were in the playroom at Barbara’s house. It was a tornado warning siren, bellowing from the fire station in the middle of the town.

I parked the car in front of the church.

“Come on,” I screamed as loud as I could as I opened the door and let in a horrifying gust of wind.

I pushed myself against the wind and out the door. I dodged a small row boat which was rolling end over end through the grass front yard of the church.

I kept running until I reached the open front door of the church and dove in to avoid a wheelbarrow which flew in my direction.

On the ground of the church, I struggled to breath and looked back out the open door where I saw no sign of Mandy. I waited for about five seconds before I crawled over to the rows of wooden pews and tucked myself under the first one I could reach.

I covered my head, clenched my teeth and prayed the tornado would pass without killing me. I had survived tornadoes before growing up in Oklahoma, but had never been this close to one and was sure I was going to die in the rickety church surrounded by abandoned Bibles and the guilt of leaving Mandy behind.

Looking back now, the time I spent beneath the pew was probably only about two minutes, but the time crawled when I was there, curled up, fighting against the wind felt more like two hours.

I at first thought I was going to be able to ride out the storm in the church, but then I felt my body lift up into the air the way it would have if I jumped off of a giant trampoline. I felt myself soar through the air for a handful of seconds with my eyes shut tight before I crashed hard into the ground and opened my eyes.

I was in the yard of the church facing where the church once stood. The faded white building had been reduced to a few scraps of wood which still stood and some pews which were flipped over on their side.

The siren still rung out at ear-splitting volume, but I heard what is the most-disgusting sound I have ever heard in my life. It sounded like someone coughing, sneezing and barfing at the same time.

I turned around to locate the noise and saw Mandy stumbling around the grass behind me, covered in blood which poured out of deep gashes on her forehead and neck. My heart stopped. I had seen this image before, but instead in the dark of my parents’ house, inside my closet when I opened it up to confront the monsters. The last images I had of my sister, stumbling around covered in blood from the tornado, trying not to die was the image of the monster. The bleeding woman who haunted my childhood was Mandy.

I tried to scream out to Mandy over the roar of the siren, the blasts of the wind and through my froggy throat, but I couldn’t even hear myself scream, I just yelled in vain until a coat of red blood washed over my eyes and I eventually passed out.

*

I woke up hooked up to an IV bag in a hospital bed with every single atom in my body aching. I could barely breathe, but I was awake, and I was alive.

There wasn’t a single other soul in the room, just the lonely periodic beep of some machinery, my pain and a little bit of light which came from the hallway through the open door.

I survived. Mandy did not. I would find out later that day that she bled to death in that yard in front of what was left of the church while I was passed out.

There was no one to help me pick up the pieces of what happened, but I was able to figure it out mostly on my own. The terrifying incident that Mandy and I kept having play out in the night that Barbara caught on camera was us seeing the future of the tornado incident where Mandy would die and I would almost die. The monsters we would see were each other, covered in blood, ripped to shreds, 20 years older and not looking anything like people we would recognize when we were kids.

Grandma was right, her feeling that she needed to warn us was true. The visions had tried to prepare us to survive the most-dangerous moment of our lives, but we weren’t able to harness it because we weren’t trained.

My grandma would be the only person who would come visit me in the hospital the week I was there. She accepted my apologies and understood why I dismissed her at first.

We never really talked about the visions or seeing into the future in the hospital. We mostly just bonded and it felt wonderful. She even brought by some of the amazing salted chocolate chip cookies she used to give to me as a kid on my last night in the hospital. We ate them and made plans for me to come back to her office and start working on properly handling my powers after I went back to Houston to get back into work for about a month.

My usual work routine and life helped put me back at ease and heal for the first couple of weeks back in Houston, but it would not last. After about two weeks, the night visions from my childhood started to come back. At first they were mostly just feelings or sounds or a sense that someone was watching me, but things came to a stomach-turning head last night.

I woke up because I felt the blanket pull off of my head as if someone had tugged it back towards my feet. Having to pee, I got up out of bed and headed to the bathroom.

Trying to keep myself from fully waking up, I didn’t turn on the light in the bathroom, just starting pissing in the near dark. Things were going smoothly until I noticed a shadow and heard the faint sound of something swaying behind the shower curtain.

I clenched my teeth hard and whipped open the shower curtain. Dangling from the shower head was the gray, naked corpse of my grandma.

I screamed and ran back to my bed before I was even finished going to the bathroom. I laid frozen until the sun came up.

I started calling the number my grandma gave me in the hospital first thing in the morning, but am starting to get very worried because she hasn’t answered any of my calls..

Originally published by Thought Catalog on www.ThoughtCatalog.com.

[jackfollmanwriter-blog]

The Jungle

People around town had taken to calling the place “The Jungle” and I couldn’t argue with their reasoning. A marshy little piece of land down by the lake surrounded by a halo of tall trees and loaded to the gills with the town’s rapidly-growing army of severe drug addicts, The Jungle, was a dark and mystifying labyrinth of dark woods, damp mud and dangerous animals.

I never imagined I myself would have to venture any further into The Jungle than the little clearing of brush on the edge of Baker Street that served as the entrance just a few blocks from the house where I grew up. Never, not possible, I always thought, but unfortunately, there I was, just after sundown, staring down that little entrance, knowing I had no choice but to follow the beaten path, littered with fast food wrappers and a few used syringes into the belly of the beast.

My fear almost got the best of my once I flicked away my last pre-game cigarette and started to walk towards the entrance under the light of the full, October moon.

I had no choice. I had to find my brother.

*

Hazard Creek used to be Mayberry. Well, at least it was in our heads. Maybe it was always a depressing piece of shit wiped on the northwest corner of the state of Washington and we were just too young and ignorant to realize it?

It never could have been this bad though. It seemed about 10 percent of the 1,200 residents of Hazard Creek had turned to hard drugs in the past five years or so since I left town. Now the latest and greatest news to come out of Hazard Creek was my kid brother Tom was a portion of that 10 percent.

I myself was already worried about Tom before I received the call from Uncle Winnie on a Tuesday afternoon:

“Can’t believe I just saw it with my own two eyes, but I just saw your lil baby brother walking into the god damn Jungle with that piss ant Chode Massey. Just thought you should know. Bye.”

I had to call Uncle Winnie to clarify what that stream of words actually meant. I will translate it for you:

My Uncle Winnie saw my younger brother Tom walking into the wooded area of town where the heroin addicts have been living for the past few years with Chad (sadly nicknamed “Chode” Massey, a career criminal/drug addict who was in his class in high school.

I already had my worries about Tom, no doubt. He had grown equally distant and unreliable in the past few years since my mother passed away and he moved into our childhood home in our small town and essentially retired in his mid-30s. I thought it was a horrible idea at the time, but what was I going to do? My little brother told me in the midst of his daily endless tears shed for our mom that he just wanted to take some time off, take care of the house and figure out his wayward life. I let it go and got back on that plane for LA to try and lick my own wounds.

All those growing fears I had about Tom came to a head when I went on an investigation after Uncle Winnie’s calls. Each and every one of Tom’s old friends who I connected with said they had been seeing less and less of him over the past few years and had noticed him hanging out with some unsavory characters as of late. I found record of a DUI/driving without a license arrest on Tom’s record from about a year before and he rarely returned texts or calls, and it usually took him at least a few days when he did.

My investigation came to a head when I called the landline at our childhood house one morning, hoping to catch Tom off-guard and received an answer, but not from Tom.

“Yeah,” the bristly voice which sounded like it had been gargling gravel since birth froze me in my verbal tracks.

“Who is this?” I eventually forced the words out.

There was a long break of silence before the person on the other line finally let out the word “Steve,” and then hung up.

That phone interaction was the final straw which got me on a plane up to Washington.

*

I was greeted by a cold, empty house, once my boots were on the ground in Hazard Creek. The only signs of life in my old childhood house was 100 killed Camel Crushes in a my mom’s old oyster shell ashtray in the living room and a melted bucket of mint chip ice cream curdled in the sink.

The house looked, and smelled, like no one had lived in it in weeks, but I couldn’t shake the presence of someone, or something, while I walked through the place and thoroughly broke my heart. The house where I was brought home by my parents on the day I was born looked like an episode of Hoarders.

I spent a good 10 minutes in the tight little hallway that led back to the bedrooms, looking at all of our family portraits which now rested crooked on the wall, the glass cracked, some even lying on the dirty carpet of the floor. My mother used to keep our little personal family art gallery in impeccable condition. She would have been horrified to see the documentation of our family so horribly neglected.

The tears finally started to come when I saw the military portrait of my father which usually hung at the end of the hall, just outside of my childhood bedroom, lying face down on the floor. I wiped the tears away, bent down and picked it up and sobbed while looking at my father, who had now been dead for 20 plus years, staring back at me in his Navy hat.

I picked the picture up, glared at the jagged crack which ran across my father’s face now one more time and hung it back on the wall before I turned my attention to my childhood bedroom. I had planned on staying in the room my mom had kept almost exactly as I had left it before I went off to college, complete with a twin bed with a Seahawks comforter, but was wondering if I should even stay in the wreck that was the house. The thing could have had a meth lab in the basement or something.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers poster which greeted me at my bedroom door was the first thing to warm my heart in weeks. It instantly took me back to wasting countless hours in the that bedroom with my headphones on dreaming away to my favorite music. The skeletal, opening guitar riff to “Under The Bridge” played in my head when I opened the flimsy wood door and looked into my old stomping grounds.

All that nostalgia and whimsy blew away as soon as my bedroom door opened and I laid eyes upon an emaciated young woman, possibly dead, lying naked on her back on top of my Seahawks comforter and not moving.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I seethed to myself as I took a few cautious steps into the room.

I turned around to go get my phone and call the cops, but stopped when I heard a disgusting cough rumble from over by the bed.

“Tom?” the thick coughing fit was interrupted by the mumbling of my brother’s name.

I stood in the door and watched the naked young woman come to life, wondering if she was even 18. Her face so sunken, her body so frail, she looked like she couldn’t have been much more than 100 pounds. I felt pained myself when I watched her sit up and look at me with raccoon eyes.

“Tom isn’t back?” I was alarmed with how casual the girl was about waking up naked and seeing a complete stranger in the room she was sleeping in.

“No,” I answered while examining the girl’s face a little more.

That further glance strangely brought back that warm nostalgia which had tickled my heart before I had opened the door. The symmetry of the girl’s face, the gap between her two front teeth, the amber blonde/brown of her hair. I knew her. It was my high school girlfriend Valerie.

“Valerie?” the name dropped out of my lips.

I watched my first love’s drawn-on, black brow furrow and saw the gears turn in her clouded head.

“It’s Michael, from high school,” I gave an explanation I can’t believe I was giving to the girl who I lost my virginity to, who also came to multiple Christmases and Thanksgivings at my grandma’s house in Idaho.

“Oh my God,” the words appeared to hurt when they came out of Valerie’s cracked, white lips. “Oh my God,” she repeated before she fell down onto her back again and lazily scrambled to pull the blankets over her exposed pale body.

“Don’t worry, I’ll just be out in the living room when you are ready to talk,” I said and walked back out the door.

I passed the nearly 30 minutes it took Valerie to “get ready” and join me in the living room in one of my mom’s old bathrobes drinking one of those syrupy, bottled Starbucks coffee things. It was the only thing I found in the refrigerator.

“I can’t believe I woke up,” Valerie announced after a few moments of sitting next to me on the couch.

“What do you mean?” I asked while she lit up a smoke.

Valerie laughed and watched a hearty puff of smoke flow out of her mouth before she answered.

“We thought it was the big shot. Me and Tom.”

“The big shot?”

“Some crazy ass dude up river gave it to us. Said it was this new kind of heroin. Said it might kill us, but if it didn’t, it would be the best ride ever. He might have been right. I think I have been asleep for like a week.”

“Tom took it? Where is he?”

“Hell if I know. I’ve been asleep for at least three days, but if my ninety-nine-pound ass made it, I would assume he did too, but he might be somewhere fucking scary.”

“The Jungle?”

“How do you know The Jungle?”

“I’ve been told, but that’s where he is, right?”

“Could be. Not really sure.”

“Well, let’s go look.”

Valerie laughed.

“You’re just going to waltz into The Jungle like that?”

I looked down at myself dressed fairly casually in a flannel shirt, jeans I had worn more than 10 times without washing and well-worn New Balances.

“You go in looking like that, you will be coming out someone’s asshole. Especially with this big shot stuff going around. Stuff’s crazier than bath salts.”

“So what? Am I supposed to put on like a drug addict costume and go in there?”

*

Valerie and I sat in my red Kia rental car just about a block from the entrance to The Jungle while I questioned our next move in my head. Thankfully the clothes Tom had strewn about the house provided the perfect wardrobe for me to stroll in there and fit in, but that only did so much to calm my nerves.

I looked over to Valerie in the passenger seat dressed in her regular clothes which looked like blankets on her because of her level of emaciation. After taking in her bizarre get up one more time, I noticed her eyes were stuck on the entrance to The Jungle.

“Still want to go in?” Valerie asked in a mocking tone from the passenger seat.

I legitimately thought about giving up for a few moments - kicking Valerie out of my rental Kia, getting back on I-5, driving south to Seattle, going to Sea-Tac International Airport, flying back to California, never coming back.

“No, we can do this,” I confirmed.

The memory of waking up before 6 a.m. on Christmas morning to the sound of my little brother’s feet pitter pattering on the wood of my bedroom floor shot into my head. Then the feeling of his warmth climbing underneath my Seahawks blanket, nudging me awake to start pleading about how we should get up to start analyzing the presents while they were still in their wrapping paper, crept in.

I couldn’t shake it all, even when I physically shook my head back and forth to try and sober myself back up from the rush of fear which had taken over me.

I didn’t say another word, just opened up my door and stepped out into the cool, moist rush of the late-Fall night. I took a few moments to take it all in and listened to Valerie get out of the car from the other side and then felt her brush up against me, the outside of both our coats touching as a stiff wind pushed us from the direction of The Jungle, almost as if it was trying to tell us not to go.

Valerie and I ignored the wind’s warning and walked right through that entrance. Nothing but pure darkness and the sound of tall grass swaying in the breeze greeted us.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out my flashlight, but Valerie stopped me before I could flick it on.

“You’ll scare the shit out of everyone. Think we’re cops.”

Valerie pushed my flashlight back in my pocket and pulled a Bic lighter out of one of hers, quickly flicked it on. At least two inches tall, Valerie’s lighter looked more like what I have called a “crack torch” as it spewed out oil and light into the night air in front of us.

The world around us came a little bit to life. I could now see that we were in the middle of a small field of tall grass, making our way up a trampled path about five feet wide, which cut through the shoulder-high grass all around us. I felt like I was in a Jurassic Park movie, foolishly walking through the killing fields while predators moved in on my from every direction.

Those velociraptors would not come and slash our bellies with their clawed toes though. We would reach the end of the trail and met a charred, tipped-over refrigerator filled with scraps of dirty diapers, potato chip wrappers and used condoms. I gagged in the back of my throat when the smell of the wreckage tingled my nose.

That burning scent was quickly replaced with a smell I held much closer to my heart - the smoky haze of a crackling fire.

“Come one, I think I know where he is,” Valerie whispered into my ear.

Valerie darted off to the right, towards what looked to be nothing but thick brush, as opposed to the well-beaten, muddy path which lay in front of us. Unnerved by her sudden whisper, I grabbed her before she was out of reach.

“Why are we whispering,” I whispered into her ear.

“We just don’t want to disturb anyone who might be in here if we don’t have to. Come on.”

Valerie took back off in the direction of the brush.

“We’re going into that shit?” I asked at a regular volume.

Valerie turned around and glared at me through glazed eyes and put a silencing index finger to her lips before she turned right back around and disappeared into the dark brush.

I followed Valerie through the tangle of brush and instantly felt my entire body get soaked with the moisture which had been left on the leaves and branches. Mother of fuck. I pushed myself through for a good 10 seconds before I reached Valerie and an upright refrigerator nestled between two thick tree trunks and endless seas of sticker bushes.

I watched Valerie fumble around with a thick ring of keys and then go to a lock which was strapped across the handles of the refrigerator and the freezer portions of the dead appliance which laid rusted in front of us. I was truly impressed when I saw her stick a key in the lock, rip off the chain of a restraint and then open up the frig portion of the thing.

Valerie ducked down and led me through the heart of the refrigerator and out the back of the thing which had been hollowed out. Once back on standing feet, I found myself in a clearing centered around a massive oak tree which tangled out thick branches all around us.

I thought I remembered seeing the tree before when I was a kid. I thought I could remember sneaking into these woods with other kids from the school and climbing the thing’s sturdy branches, which were low enough to climb up on if you could throw a rope over one and pull yourself up, but I wasn’t exactly sure.

The one thing I was sure of was the white trash wet dream of a tree house which now rested in the heart of the tree was not there if I had been there before.

Constructed of what street signs, scrapped sheet metal, pallets and what looked to be remnants of parts of nylon camping tents, the tree house looked to be about 10-feet tall from the first sturdy branch of the tree and looked to stretch out about 15-feet wide. The thing looked like a shittier version of one of those huge tree houses you might see a group of children have in a Disney movie and drool over because you know your drunken parents could never build something like that and even if they did, tweakers would be living in it in about two weeks and shitting on the floor.

Well, actually, based on what I could see from the ground, it looked exactly like that drug addict taking dumps in coffee cans scenario may have been playing out.

“Follow me,” Valerie interrupted my daydreaming just as my eye caught glimpse of a lantern shining through one of the clear pieces of nylon on the side of the structure which appeared to serve as windows.

I followed Valerie through the mud which my boots sunk into past the tread until we were at the base of the tree.

“Tom,” Valerie called up at the treehouse.

There was no answer,  just a whip from the wind.

“Tom,” Valerie called up again.

There wasn’t an answer, but through the clear, nylon window, I saw the lantern get closer and then saw a familiar face through the stained fabric.

“Oh shit,” I heard my brother’s froggy, throaty drawl leak out of the treehouse.

Within a few seconds, I was looking at my brother’s sunken eyes resting above by what looked to be a beard of a few months, dangling out of the front door of the treehouse. Those eyes went wide when he fully laid eyes upon the both of us standing down in the mud. He looked at me confused for about five seconds, giving me the look a dog gives you when you pretend to throw a ball and then tuck it behind your back.

Tom’s anger appeared to melt to just annoyance. He shook his head and muttered.

“Just get up here.”

A chain link ladder dropped out of the front door of the treehouse, smacked the base of the tree hard and swayed back and forth while Valerie and I walked up to the tree.

The treehouse looked nothing like something out of a Disney kids movie once inside. Filthy, moist and crawling with pill bugs, I felt like my skin wanted to jump up off of my muscles and run for the hills once I came inside and took a seat on the rotting wood of the floor across from Tom. Making matters worse was Valerie, who was already shooting up in the corner.

Tom looked me over again in the pale light of the lantern for a few moments in a manner that suggested he either didn’t believe it was me, or still wasn’t sure who I was.

“Fucking Michael,” Tom confirmed he did know who I was and that he was not happy about my presence at the same time. “What the flying fuck are you doing in the god damn Jungle?”

“Well, I came to help you out, I guess?”

Tom laughed with a zest that suggest sobriety.

“Ah, the liberal white knight descends from the valhalla of California to save his small town junkie brother. Noble, noble indeed brother, but you should have kept your ass back in hipster town, because you only made things worse. You want to help the small town fuck up? You should have thought about that before you abandoned us all for Pussyville.”

Tom interrupted his tongue lashing to go peer out the window in the side of the room.

“What’s the problem, then?”

Tom pulled back into the room as soon as I finished my question and flicked off the lantern, sending us into complete darkness.

“I wish my problem was as simple as fucking heroin or meth or crack or something. That would be nice,” Tom’s voice cut through the night.

“What are you talking about?”

Despite what it might seem with your old flame over there hanging out with me. This whole Jungle, junkie thing is an act. Sure, I was smoking a lot of weed for a long time, smoked heroin a few times too, but that was it. What’s going on with me is a lot worse that that.”

“Cut the mysterious shit Tom. What are you talking about?”

Tom first responded with a nervous laugh, then a hiccup, before he finally gave a soft answer.

“Something was after me. Something in that house was after me.”

“What?”

The nervous laugh returned again.

“Something, I swear. I kept waking up in the middle of the night with this shadow standing at the foot of the bed. When I got up in the morning, I swore I heard something running down the stairs. I slept with the light on like we were six again for three god damn months. Didn’t sleep for like half a year. Then I started waking up with these bloody scratched and like slap marks all over me. Like the ones you know they talk about on those old Unsolved Mysteries episodes and stuff. Like, this ghost is cutting me.”

“What? A ghost, Tom?”

“I swear. That, or I fucked with someone I don’t even remember and they are playing some serious long con shit on me. Either way, I had to split from that old house and I didn’t have the money to go anywhere else. I figured adding a layer of looking like a junkie would make whoever was doing this to just forget about me like you did.”

“Stop it.”

Tom laughed.

“At first I thought it was just coming from the few times I did actually try smoking heroin and doing a little molly, but then I started getting the creepy ass notes, and that was the last fuckin straw. Here.”

Tom clicked the lantern back on. He reached around and found a little box while my eyes burned from the blue light.

Tom spread out a cluttered pile of various papers, receipts and napkins which had notes written in what looked to be red colored pencil.

Save yourself.

Stop. Just stop.

You’re going to die.

Stop. Or I’ll make you stop.

Each note seemed to be at least mildly threatening, cryptic and mysterious. Just reading them sent chills down my entire body, especially when Tom shut the lantern back off, and we were in the dark again.

“Why…

I started in, but was interrupted by the loud clanging of the chain link ladder crashing against the tree trunk below.

“Shit,” Tom muttered.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Just shut the fuck up for a second,” Tom whispered back.

I felt Tom move over to the window and held my tongue until he flicked the lantern back on.

“What happened?”

Tom didn’t answer at first, just looked around the room with a look of concern for a few second until I realized what that concern was about.

Valerie was gone.

“Was that expected?” I asked.  “Her bailing?”

Tom was staring at the floor and biting his lip.

“No. She doesn’t bail. I don’t think she bailed either.”

I followed Tom’s eyes to what he was looking at - a clump of stray long brown hairs and a fresh note lying right next to the entrance to the treehouse.

“Holy fuck,” I gasped.

Tom scooped up the note which read: RID HER FROM YOUR LIFE!

Tom let out a deep breath and I did the same.

“See what I’m talking about?” Tom started in. “Maybe I should just get into Valerie’s junk. At least it might numb this shit.”

I went over to the edge of the room and peered out the window. I couldn’t see anything down in the darkness of the little clearing all around the tree, but could hear rustling out in the brush.

“You think something took her?” I asked Tom.

I watched Tom slink into the corner of the room before he flicked off the lantern.

“I don’t even care anymore brother. I’m done.”

I felt Tom slump into the corner, his body shook the treehouse.

“You can peace out if you don’t want to be part of this shot?” Tom went on.

I heard those distant rustlings much closer once Tom stopped talking. It now sounded like they were right at the base of the tree.

“We should pull up the ladder,” I whispered to Tom.

Too late. I heard the ladder rattle against the tree trunk. Someone was climbing up.

“Better get out brother,” I heard Tom’s voice over from the corner. “I got a back escape exit on the other side of the room.”

Tom flicked the lantern on and shined it on a nylon piece of the wall with a zipper in the middle of it.

The light flicked back off.

“Come on,” I pleaded with Tom.

I heard the rattling chains of the ladder just below the entrance now.

“Better go now,” Tom replied.

I followed his directions, ran at the wall, ripped down the zipper and found myself in the outside world in the moonlight, standing on a thick tree branch which dipped down just enough to where you could jump off the end of it and be fine when you landed in the mud. I scurried down the spine of the thick branch like a squirrel and launched myself off of the end and down into the mud where I landed hard with a thud.

Once on the ground and collected, I looked back up at the treehouse, but couldn’t see anything in the darkness of the window. Had what I heard just been Valerie coming back? I blushed in the darkness thinking about my cowardice.

I toyed with going back to the treehouse, but I couldn’t face Tom after abandoning him again. It was time for me to do my thing and tuck my tail back between my legs and take off, at least for the night.

It was easy, but I found my way back out of The Jungle and, within a few minutes, was back in my little Kia, cranking the heat and crying like a baby.

*

Something pulled me back to my childhood night. It wasn’t just that it was 2 a.m. and there weren’t motels that would be open for more than 50 miles. I just felt like I needed to stay at least one night there.

I felt like sleeping a night in my old bedroom without the comfort of man made heat, serenaded by the sounds of the mice running through the walls might give me some perspective on the last 38 years and the last 24 hours. I wasn’t sure if Tom was going to be okay, but there was also nothing I could probably realistically do. He was right, I was a coward and should have stayed in the comfort of my urban cage.

But there I was, still wrapped up in my junkie costume, laying on top of my filthy Seahawks blanket, staring up at the ceiling, which still had brown stains from when a bottle of root beer exploded on my bed when I was 12, feeling like there had to be something I could do. However, that confidence went out the window when I hear footsteps walk past my bedroom door.

The last drops of heroic confidence which were dripping in my veins went down the drain once I heard those soft footsteps walk past the wood of my bedroom door and head to the end of the hallway.

I had locked all the doors. That I knew. But had someone already been in the house? Maybe it was just Valerie? That was probably it.

I barely had any ounces of energy left, but I figured I had to get up and investigate to confirm it was Valerie. So exhausted, I almost fell on my ass as soon as I worked my way to my feet and staggered to the door.

The house seemed to be about 10 times colder out in the hallway. I instantly regretted getting up, and walking out there and not just because of the temperature. Maybe standing up cleared my senses, but that paralyzing fear instantly washed back over me once I was out there.

The fear only cranked up when I turned around to retreat to the room and saw a note, just like the ones Tom showed me in the tree house, pinned to my bedroom door. It read: CLEAN YOUR ROOM MICHAEL!

I had received this note before, or one basically like it, written in that same red colored pencil a hundred times before. It was the kind of note my mom used to leave around the house when she was frustrated with me or Tom.

It all started to click and that was before I even heard the light tune of a familiar song seeping out from the closed door to my mom’s old bedroom.

Strawberry wine, seventeen…

My mom’s favorite song, the one from the mid-90s she played all the time that Tom and I would scream her to turn off. I hadn’t heard it more than 20 years. I hated it back then, but it couldn’t have sounded any more sweet at the moment. I followed the tune to the closed door of my mom’s bedroom where it grew louder and toned out the warmth of vinyl, instantly making me remember laughing out my mom’s insistence on playing records instead of CDs.

I stood there for a few moments, just taking in the sweet sound of some long-forgotten country artists whose name I couldn’t even remember. A tune never sounded so sweet. Its lullaby made me forget that I should be afraid in the situation. It was possibly a complete stranger had just been in the house or broken in and decide to listen to some music before they went to work on disemboweling me.

I didn’t care anymore, I reached my hand down and opened that door I had opened a thousand times and never even thought about it.

The open door revealed a record spinning on the turn table next to my mom’s old bed, the lingering smoke of a recently-killed cigarette and the scent of the perfume my mom always wore. Drawn in by the nostalgic scene, I stepped into the room and walked up to the bed, where I saw another one of my mom’s signature notes resting next to her beloved stuffed duck Bill.

I bent down and picked up the note.

Michael,

Thank you for coming back to help your brother. He needs it. I didn’t want to scare him, but I didn’t know how else to stop him from killing himself. Now you know who the ghost is. You can tell him. I tried. He never listened to me anyway. I think if you do that, then I can actually rest in peace.

Love mom.

*

I would have to brave The Jungle by myself this time. No burnt out ex-girlfriend to escort me, I walked through its dark little arbor of an entrance with my hands clutching a knife tucked into my jacket pocket. I may have known that the mysterious presence which was stalking Tom was the soft, loving ghost of my mom, but I still knew The Jungle was probably filled to the brim with unsavory characters who could spot the California pussy presence which had burned upon my soul the past 15 years.

Through the abandoned and unlocked (I assume by a high-as-fuck Valerie) frig door, I was back at the foot of the tree my brother now called home. I looked up and saw the little light his meager lantern gave off and felt a warmth in my heart despite the cold night all around me.

“Tom,” I called up to the treehouse.

I waited for a few moments, knowing I would see that lantern and his familiar, annoyed mug in the nylon window, but nothing came.

I saw the chain link ladder thankfully dangling just above my head. Thank you again, Valerie.

I grabbed a hold of the cold steel and pulled my exhausted body up into the treehouse, until I was at the zipper of the entrance, listening to someone loudly snore.

Relief. Tom was just sleeping. That’s why he didn’t answer.

I unzipped the tent zipper and slipped into the treehouse to discover that last thought I had was fucking wrong.

There in the corner, propped up against the rough wood of a pallet and out cold with a needle sticking out of his arm was Tom.

I was too late.

*

I had to wait outside my brother’s room for hours before they would let me in to see that he had survived the overdose.

I burst into the room as soon as they let me and saw Tom lying there in the scratchy light blue bedding of the hospital bed and fought back the instant desire to strangle him the way Homer would Bart in early episodes of The Simpsons. He looked so tired and innocent in that bed, I didn’t have the heart to really even think about doing it.

Instead, I just stood at the foot of his bed and watched him sleep peacefully for a few moments. I relished in each and every time his chest rose and fall.

Despite Tom’s metro ridicule, I had done what I could to save him. I would be lying if it didn’t feel good to not only do what I set out to do, but also defy the doubts and barbs of my little brother.

I could never let it show. I just walked over to Tom and kissed him on his forehead. Would never tell him how the pussy, hipster piece of shit from Silver Lake saved his ass. Then again, maybe the prideful blood which was pumping through my veins was exactly the kind of shit Tom was talking about?

Even I kind of hated myself, but enough of that. It was time to split from Tom’s room and let him keeping charging his batteries alone.

I laughed every time I looked at that little red Kia I was driving. Wasn’t it the car those hamsters drove in commercials? The world was funny again.

Just a few steps from that hamstermobile, I realized the country tune I thought was coming from another car in the hospital was in fact coming from the inside of the rental car I was  just about to floor board down to Sea-Tac. I picked up exactly which song it was before I opened the door and released the blaring tune out into the wild of the rainy parking lot.

Strawberry wine, seventeen…

I jumped in and cranked down the volume of the stereo. Hit eject on the CD player (yes, the rental car still had a CD player).

A familiar silver disc rolled out of the little slit of a CD player. The kind of plain print CD that used to fill up my prized soft pack CD collection back in the 90s and early-2000s.

The music now at a non-early-splitting level I turned my attention to the steering wheel where I saw a note waving in the wind above the wheel and up on the dusty dash.

I couldn’t have pulled the note to me any faster and the initial shock of the situation melted away when I saw that familiar red colored pencil and soft handwriting.

Michael -

I am so so proud of what you are able to do and I love you so so much. I couldn’t love you any more. And don’t worry about Tom. I will keep an eye on him ;)

Mom

I put the CD back in the player and let it fire up. Skipped ahead to track eight, which I knew by heart. I put the keys in the ignition and backed out of my parking spot. I was ready to go home. Back to Pussyville, as Tom would call it.

Originally published by Thought Catalog on www.ThoughtCatalog.com.

[jackfollmanwriter-blog]

Witch Graveyard

“I have a job for you,” is commonly the best phrase a person can hear. But not when it’s coming out of the mouth of my dad. In that case, “I have a job for you,” could mean a number of things. It could mean you are going to drive a flatbed truck across the Canadian border filled to the brim with used Peavey electric guitars, it could mean you are going to be a pallbearer for a guy you never met and it could mean you are going to need to dig up a graveyard in the back woods of Washington state.

My path to that last example started with a call from my dad over Memorial Day weekend.

“I bought a piece of property down in Skagit County and I want you to help me get it fixed up this summer. It’s an old farm, up past Rupertville, and I’m going to turn it into a Bed & Breakfast for your mom and me to run for when I retire in a couple of years.”

“Does mom know about this?”

“What do you mean does mom know about this?”

“But you mean you are making like an AirBNB of the thing? Maybe you should hire a professional, or two, to ‘fix it up?’”

“I have no idea what hair BandB means, but look, I know you don’t have a summer job lined up except for that radio show you keep trying to start.”

It never sat right with my dad that I was a teacher who never took a “summer job,” despite me telling him that 99 percent of the reason I decided to become a teacher was so I didn’t have to work during the summer. The “radio show” he referred to was a podcast I had given up on after six episodes that was about an unsolved murder in my hometown of Cedar Valley, Washington. A total of four downloads per-episode wasn’t enough for me to keep chasing my dream of being an NPR rock star.

“Well, my roommate offered to sublease my room to his friend for the summer for extra cash if I had another place to go, so it might not be the worst idea in the world.”

I envisioned my dad standing on the end of his fishing boat in the river giving a fist pump with his hand that wasn’t clutching a Coors original.

“I’ll pay you twelve thousand dollars the three months you are up there and you can stay on the property. Combine that with the money your roommate gives you, and you’ll be making the salary of an actual job instead of teaching.”

I hated every bone in my body for doing it, but I agreed.

*

My dad’s property was an abandoned apple farm that may have been a meth lab at one point at the end of a dirt road, halfway up into the belly of the beast of the North Cascade Mountain Range, a good 20 minute drive from the nearest town of Rupertville (population 642). The property consisted of a wooden homestead with three of the smallest bedrooms I have ever seen, a leaky roof, a bathroom full of wolf spiders, a guest house cabin full of discarded porn magazines from the 90s, a couple acres of undeveloped land and a rotting graveyard.

My dad tried to gloss over the graveyard, saving it for the end of his tour, after we had split a six-pack of tall Coors cans. My small buzz took some of the sting off of the cluster of wooden gravemarkers sticking out of the tall grass at the back of the property, but it certainly didn’t help his cause that saving it for last meant it was deep dusk when we went back there.

“Jesus Christ dad, you bought a bed and breakfast with an Indian burial ground in the back of it?”

“I believe the correct term is Native American burial ground.”

“But seriously.”

“The old owner told me it’s just from the old logging days in the eighteen nineties.”

“Oh yeah, I’m sure everyone buried in that ground died super non-horrifying deaths then.”

“If it makes you feel better, there’s a surefire way to figure out if it really is an Indian burial ground,” my dad said.

“How?”

“Dig it up and if the ground is full of old Potter’s Crown whiskey bottles, then you know…

“Oh my God dad.”

“Fine, I’ll give you eighteen thousand to stay up here and help.”

I walked back to the homestead thinking not much could have been worse than the summer I was about to embark on. My dad’s suggestion that he could bring up my old guitar and a tape recorder so I could make an album in a cabin and make it big like that “Bon Jover” hipster did help, but it in no way prepared me for the horror that was waiting for me in the gravel driveway in front of the homestead.

I stopped cold in my tracks about 10 yards from the driveway to stare at my cousin Goob’s blue and gray 1985 Chevy Blazer.

“Fuck no, dad. Goob?”

“Look, he’s the only guy who can work within my budget at short notice. The fucker is willing to do the job for basically four dollars an-hour.”

My dad and I stopped on the edge of the driveway and watched my cousin Goob sing along with some of the most-embarrassing lyrics off of Devil Without A Cause in between pulls off a Monster energy drink.

Goob was my cousin from down in Oregon. His legal name was Gabe Silver, but he couldn’t pronounce it properly until well into elementary school so everyone thought his name was Goob. Tragically stupid, he made it through high school in 4.5 years with the grace of a whiskey-drunk orangutan on roller skates before embarking on 12 years of being fully-employed sharing right wing memes on Facebook in his mom’s living room.

As much as it killed to know that I was going to be spending the summer with my cousin who may have still thought professional wrestling was real, I was relieved I wouldn’t be staying by myself. Even if it meant my nightly lullaby might literally be the Creed song “Lullaby.”

*

My dad left a bottle of what he called “hipster whiskey” (Bulleit Rye) and a six pack of “hipster root beer” (ginger beer) to take the edge of the first couple of nights. I let Goob borrow my iPad and it subdued him in his bedroom for most of the night while I read my Kindle and sipped stiff drinks until I wasn’t scared to lie down on the twin-sized bed my dad had set up in the master bedroom.

The days were strangely comforting. I’m sure my dad had his doubts of his 6’2, 155-pound sophomore English teacher son softened on nine years of Seattle citizenship would make a fine ranch hand, but I managed. It was almost comforting to replace the messy complication of working in the city at a private school full of urbane young adults with digging dirt and filling holes with a 2010’s version of Lennie from Of Mice and Men.

I was able to repeat my drinking process for a few nights to much success until I ran out of whiskey and ice and Goob seemed to run out of free Internet porn. I had Goob make a run into town late at night to replenish our supplies. I was thoroughly disappointed when he came back with bottle of Fireball (“It was all they had”) and jugs of Hawaiian Punch that was blue for some reason.

I had just decided that blue Hawaiian Punch and cinnamon whiskey might not be the worst thing in the world when I noticed something was amiss. Goob had gone outside to smoke a “fat one,” at least an hour before and hadn’t come back. My buzz and lack of interest in his well being kept me from investigating for about 60 minutes, but my conscience eventually got the best of me.

A cool chill greeted me when I walked out onto the pitch black front porch and I felt a mosquito buzz by my ear. Goob’s Blazer was in the driveway, but there was no sign of him. The only sign of any kind of life was the sound and scent of a distant crackling fire.

I walked around the side of the homestead and saw the source of the smoky smell and cracks in the night. Off in the distance, at the edge of the property, right smack dab in the middle of the graveyard, was a campfire with a handful of people sitting around it. I was pretty sure I could hear Goob’s signature slack-jawed laugh when I started off into the field which led out there.

Reaching the fire revealed the smell of skunky weed and the juvenile faces of three 16-year-old boys sitting around the fire with Goob laughing about some story he was telling which involved punching a guy in the face a lot of times. I walked into the scene and yanked the 30-year-old Goob off to the side without acknowledging the high school kids.

“Goob, you can’t be smoking with fucking teenagers out here!”

“They were already out here when I went out to smoke. You gotta hear their story about this place man,” Goob rebutted.

“I’m not going to listen to the fairy tales of some fucking high school kid. Get em outta here.”

Goob shook his head and looked back at the fire where each of the teenagers was giving us the look you give your friend’s mom when your friend would ask if you could stay the night as a kid.

“I swear to God you’re worse than someone from Beaverton.”

For some reason, Goob’s biggest insult was to tell you that you were someone from the next town over from his hometown of Tigard, Oregon.

Goob threw his joint into the grass at his feet and stomped it out with disappointed shakes of the head.

“This place has secrets man...you should know,” Goob muttered.

Goob’s cryptic muttering was enough to draw me to the fire and hear the kids out.

The kid with the saddest excuse for a chin strap beard I have ever seen, Braden, told the tale.

“Every kid in town knows about this place. I can’t believe your dad bought it. I mean, we were all laughing like...some dude bought the Witch’s Graveyard,” Braden interrupted his story by breaking out into laughter.

“Witch’s graveyard?” I asked.

“Dude, this place was a witch’s convent until like the nineties when they all got old and died. This is where they buried them because no witch is gonna wanna get buried in a Christian cemetery. Some of these graves are even for the kids that lived up here who died because they didn’t believe in western medicine. Kids at school are always talking about how if you come up here and burn sage and then go hide in the bushes, you can see the dead witches come out of the woods and take the sage. We figured we would get high and come up and try it out.”

I would have been thoroughly embarrassed if the kids could have been able to tell how genuinely scared I was at that moment. The chill of the night soaked me in cold through just the thin t-shirt I was wearing.

I looked over at Goob to see if he looked scared. He just looked annoyed.

“It’s a cool story, but you guys gotta go man. We can’t have you getting high up here,” Goob told the kids, sounding like the world’s least-responsible camp counselor.

The kids didn’t seem that bummed to pack up their stuff and go.

“I left a piece of sage roasting on the biggest grave out there,” Braden announced before the three of them piled into a minivan with two car seats in it.

“Yeah, thanks man,” I said.

The minivan tore away down the dirt road. Goob and I walked back into the house.

My fading buzz and the exhaust of another hard day’s work led me back to my bed, but a scan of the pockets of my shorts which turned up no cell phone got me right back on my feet. It must have fallen out of my shorts at some point when I was around the fire.

The fear which lingered in my blood told me I should just wait till the morning to retrieve the phone, but the moisture that hung in the air when I was out in the driveway told me I needed to go out and get the thing before it rained. The fear of having to buck up another $500 and not have a phone for at least a few days, beat out the fear of anything which may have been lurking out in those woods around the property.

I grabbed a flashlight and headed back out to the dead fire and the log I sat on where I hoped my phone would be. I tried to stare straight ahead and move at a swift pace to try and not think about what could be watching me in the darkness of the forest, but it didn’t work. I felt my hands sweat as I kept them in readied fists at my sides. I should have brought a gun up to this place, I thought, even though I hadn’t shot a gun since I was 12 years old.

I reached the fire the kids had built in an old metal trash bin which rested in the middle of the cemetery and felt the smell of the last burning amber smoke in my nostrils. I took a look at the bin and noticed a scalded bundle of sage rested on the top of a grave next to its rusted lips. I shook my head and turned my attention to the grass at my feet where I had been sitting.

My phone rested in the moist grass right next to the log where I sat. I squated down to pick it up, but stopped when I felt something whisk past my back. I sat frozen for a few seconds with my eyes on the phone. I listened to the sound of brisk footsteps continue past me and through the other side of the graveyard.

I was finally able to work my neck enough to look to my left where the footsteps went. I could see a dark shadow walking through the thin trees of the forest in the moonlight. I heard the figure trampling over brush as it disappeared deeper and deeper into the woods. I looked to the grave marker where the burnt sage had rested. It was gone.

I grabbed my phone and ran back to the homestead as fast as I could.

*

My dad showed up the next day to help for the first time in my stay. He watched as Goob and I cut down a thick patch of sticker bushes on the edge of the property.

“You ever hear anything about this place being a witch convent or something like that?” I asked my dad in between hacks at sticker bushes with a machete.

“I heard some bullshit when I was a kid about there being witches up here, but I doubt any of it is true. The owners for a long time were these long-haired ladies who I’m pretty sure were lesbians who probably got all these hillbillies freaked out thinking they were witches just because they were women who lived together who weren’t interested in shaving their armpits,” my dad explained.

“What happened, some old warty bitch come into your room last night and try to blow you?” Goob asked.

Goob’s laughter changed to a scream of pain.

“Ow, shit.”

I looked over and saw that my dad had thrown a thorny sticker branch at Goob. It stuck to the fabric of his shirt and he cringed as he tried to pluck it off his body.

*

Night fell again and I hit the whiskey even harder than I had been the nights before. It felt as if the entire dark world around the homestead was going to cave in on me. I thought about firing up my car and driving to my parents’ house almost an hour away.

I fought through it. I went out into the living room to be closer to Goob’s (somewhat) human presence as he played some kind of zombie game on my iPad and smeared boogers and chili cheese Frito seasoning all over the screen.

I was about to start a conversation with Goob, but was distracted by my phone receiving a text for the first time in almost a week. The number was a local 360 area code number, but it wasn’t saved in my phone.

Nathan?

I tried to figure out if I recognized the number at all off the top of my head, but couldn’t. The only thing I could think to do was check my call logs where I did notice something a bit strange. The number was in my outgoing call logs from the night before, around midnight. About the time everything that took place around the fire in the graveyard.

I replied: Who is this?

I waited for minutes upon minutes with my teeth gritted, but got nothing.

I followed up: ?

No answer. I fell asleep on the couch, spilled my blue Hawaiian Punch cocktail all over the faded flannel couch and woke up the next morning with my glass stuck to the bare skin of my leg.

I was first relieved when I woke up on the couch. 1 - I was okay 2 - I had been able to get some sleep.

There was just one problem. The phone which I left on the couch was nowhere to be found. I searched for the thing for 30 minutes, but never found it. I asked Goob if he knew where it was, but he was clueless. It vanished in the night, just inches away from me.

I tried to work off the fear by focusing on finishing up the sticker bush patches with Goob, but it didn’t work, I just kept thinking about the person who walked by me the night I went back to get my phone, the text I got from the unknown number, and my phone disappearing. It was time to go to my parents’ house and at least tell my dad what happened.

I was about the turn the keys in the ignition of my car to head out, just after four in the afternoon when I saw a Jeep rumbling up the driveway in the rear-view mirror. I had to wait and talk to whoever the hell it was showing up. Hopefully it wasn’t more high school kids invited up by Goob.

The Jeep parked behind me and off to the side. A sandy-haired woman who looked to be somewhere in her 20s in short jean shorts which showed off her equally tanned and toned legs jumped out of the vehicle and into the cloud of dust it created. I couldn’t help but think of a scene in a country music or 80s rock video when the small town vixen is first introduced as the woman walked in slow motion (in my head) towards me in a white tank top with her long, bright hair falling over her shoulders.

I jumped out of my car and caught her before she reached the homestead where I worried Goob was getting ready to jump out and destroy anything good which could have come from seeing the most-striking woman I had seen outside of Seattle in many, many years.

“Hi.”

I cut off the woman at the start of the front porch. She jumped back a little bit and I blushed. I was overzealous and jumped into her line of sight with the greeting before she even saw me.

“Sorry, uh…

“Nathan?” The woman asked.

“Yeah, hi.”

The woman closed her eyes and extended a thin hand my way.

“Hi, my name is Nicky,” the woman said as we exchanged a quick shake. “This is going to sound weird, but your dad hired me to work on this place as an interior designer.”

“My dad didn’t tell me that, but that sounds like something he would do.”

“Okay, even weirder thing...he said it would be cool if I stayed in one of these cabins up here. He said his son and nephew were staying in the main house, but there was a personal cabin I could stay in if I like. I live all the way up in Bellingham, so I would probably take him up on that offer during the week.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s cool. We’re in the main house, but the guest house cabin is open. I’m not sure how much interior designing you can do in the main house, the place is pretty run down,” I said, extremely glad that I cleaned out the old faded porn in that cabin a few days before.

“I think that’s the point. Do you know what interior design is?” Nicky answered back in a tone which walked the line between serious and sarcasm.

“I get your point.”

I ushered Nicky into the homestead, showed her around and hoped she wouldn’t be scared off by the looks Goob gave her the entire time she was in there. I also showed her the guest house, which was basically a small rustic cabin with an inflatable bed, a rusty stove, a mini-fridge, a bathroom the size of an airplane bathroom and a couch which faced a TV/VCR. It was actually a dead ringer for the cabin in The Ring. I was shocked Nicky said she would be cool to stay there when I showed it to her. I myself would have rather shared Goob’s jizz-stained twin bed with him than sleep in there.

Nicky went back to Bellingham to pick up her stuff and was going to come back that night. I spent most of the night slugging cocktails and wondered what was wrong with her to where she wanted to do the job. I figured my dad must have been paying her $30,000 or something and/or she had a drug problem and/or needed to hide out from a psychotic boyfriend.

I was deep in those thoughts and a hypocritical (because I made fun of Goob so much for something I was doing myself) porn session on my laptop when more sinister thoughts shot into my brain. A quiet moment on my screen revealed a sound out my window I was more than familiar with. It was the digital tone of my cell phone ringing.

I was quickly disgusted with myself for not covering the lone window in my room. I jumped up on my bed and looked out the square window and peered out into the dark line of trees between my room and the guest house cabin.

A yellow light shined out from the inside of the guest cabin. I was a little saddened that Nicky hadn’t stopped by the homestead when she got back to say hi and shocked with how fast she made it back from Bellingham (It was about 90 minutes away), but maybe I lucked out with her not knocking on our door during my porn watching?

The continued ringing of my cell phone pulled my eyes away from the light of the cabin. I scanned the dark scenery, wondering if I would see the blue tone of my phone screen flickering on and off somewhere near, but didn’t.

I pulled up my pants and headed outside.

From inside, it sounded like the ring of my cell phone had come from right outside the bedroom window, but a search of the area proved fruitless.

My attention steered towards the light in the guest house cabin. I had yet to confront Nicky on if she had sent me the text the night before. Her appearance the day after the mysterious chain of events with my phone made me suspicious.

I sadly probably would have not trusted Nicky in the least if she wasn’t attractive. I probably would have been outright afraid of her. Instead, I was totally comfortable with knocking on the door of her moss-covered cabin at 10 p.m. Her face was symmetrical and her body was tight. There was no way she could have been dangerous.

I couldn’t help but look through the small window in the door of the cabin when I walked up. I spotted Nicky in the bathroom, looking at herself in the mirror. It took me a second to confirm it was her because her long, blonde hair was absent, replaced by just under shoulder-length jet black locks.

I took in the sight of Nicky for a few seconds and knocked. I looked down to my feet to make it seem like I wasn’t some kind of peeping tom when she opened the door.

Nicky had her long blonde hair when she opened the door.

“Hey,” Nicky answered.

“Wow, you uh, moved in fast. I have a question for you. Did you get my number from my dad and text me last night?”

Nicky’s mostly-friendly look melted away.

“I, um, just got a text from a three-six-o number last night that just said ‘Nathan?’ and I was wondering if it might have been you?”

“No. I don’t have your number.”

Nicky started to laugh a little bit.

“What?” I asked, starting to panic.

“Why are your lips all blue?” Nicky asked.

That damned blue Hawaiian Punch. I probably looked like a nine-year-old fresh off guzzling a blue raspberry Slurpee.

“Ah, I’ve been using this blue juice as a mixer. It’s all we have up here right now.”

“Well have fun with that, but no, I didn’t text you, sorry.”

Nicky’s hand slipped onto the door. I assumed that meant she wanted to close it and bid me adieu.

“Thanks and sorry. Have a good night,” I said.

“You too,” Nicky said as she shut the door.

I may have took Nicky’s shortness more personal had I not heard my cell phone start to ring again just after she shut the door on me. I tracked the sound to over by the graveyard.

I looked over to the graveyard and saw the same low-flame fire that had been there the night the 16-year-olds showed up. Fucking Goob. He probably invited them up again or something.

My growing anger washed some of the fear out of my blood. I stomped over to the graveyard.

“Hey,” I called out when I was about 10 yards away from the fire and grave markers.

I could only see one figure around the fire. A medium-sized body cased in a dark hoodie which faced the fire. It didn’t acknowledge my holler.

“Hey man,” I walked around to the front of the figure and stopped dead in my tracks. Sucked in my breath.

The face of the figure sitting in front the fire was rotted out. A mangled mess of bloody viscera cased in ripped red skin, it looked like a giant blood orange which had been half eaten and thrown into the hood of a sweater. The face let out a filthy smell, like that of rotten milk.

The scent knocked me onto my knees and I retched, lowering my face to the grave marker closest to the meager fire. Face-to-face with the splintered wood, I saw my name, Nathan McIntosh carved into the thing.

I heard the sound of footsteps running through the tall grass at my back and felt every muscle in my body tense up.

“Please, please,” I screamed out from the ground.

The footsteps stopped just behind me. I felt a foot come down hard on my ankle and I rolled over to get a look at my attacker.

Standing above me wearing a cut-off shirt and shit-eating grin with a glass pipe in his hand was Goob. I looked next to him where the dead figure in the hoodie had been sitting and saw nothing.

“What the hell you doing out here?” Goob asked. “You tweaking bro? I told you, don’t get on that shit.”

I shook my head to try and get my brain back. What the hell had just happened?

“You must be going crazy because I found your phone out on the front porch. You must have dropped it,” Goob said.

Goob threw my phone at me, stuck his pipe in his mouth and took a hit. He exhaled and looked all around the graveyard.

I made my way to my feet and dusted myself off.

“Why did you start a fire?” Goob asked.

“I didn’t start that.”

“You didn’t? Well fuck me? Maybe this place is haunted,” Goob exclaimed. “I’m gonna go back to the house and get my four four.”

My lips ached for the pipe Goob smoked when we got back to the house as we sat at the kitchen table, both trying to act less rattled than we were. Goob ran the soft side of his thumb up and down the sharp side of a Bowie knife. I assumed it was the closest thing he had to a .44.

“Maybe that chick in the cabin started the fire?” Goob said.

“She was in the cabin when I stopped by a few minutes ago,” I dismissed.

“Look at you, you old cunt hound,” Goob said.

Goob’s cackle which followed halted as soon as a loud pounding sounded out on the front door.

“Did you lock that shit?” Goob screamed out.

I did not lock that shit. The door flew open and the two of us jumped up in our seats. Goob pointed the Bowie knife at the door and screamed.

“Come on motherfucker.”

Goob screamed to no one. I could see there was no one in the door once my adrenaline went from a 10 to a 9.99. There wasn’t a sign of a single soul in the doorway, just the open, wooden door, flapping in the night wind.

I can proudly say neither of us said something like “maybe it was just the wind?” We both just stood there staring at the open door, hearts racing.

I probably would have stood there for infinite had I not heard the familiar sound of my cell phone ringing again.

“Fuck this. I’m out of here,” Goob announced.

I didn’t say a word. I just went back to my bedroom to pack up my valuables. It took only a few seconds and I was out the door with my overstuffed backpack thrown over one shoulder.

I saw Goob’s tail lights burn down the driveway when I walked out to the car. I don’t think he even packed up his stuff.

The inside of my 2008 Ford Escape had never felt so comfortable. I sat down in the driver’s seat and snapped the locks shut. I started to turn the ignition, but stopped. I saw the lights on in the cabin where Nicky was staying.

Guilt.

I jumped out of the car and sprinted across a clearing until I was back at the doorstep of the cabin. I looked through the door window and didn’t see a sign of Nicky, but could hear crying coming from inside.

I knocked in a furious fury. I’m not sure if I imagined it, but I felt as if something was running at me from behind. It reminded me of being a child swimming in a lake when you suddenly feel like some horrible creature is zeroing in on you in the dark cover of the water and you swim back to the dock as fast as you can. I shot a quick look over my shoulder and thought I saw a white figure coming from over by my car, but looked back ahead when the cabin door opened.

Nicky looked to me with tears in her eyes. I barged into the cabin without a word and slammed the door behind me. I turned the two locks on the door.

“What the hell is going on? I heard someone burn out in a car?” Nicky asked as I stared at the door with my breath held.

I looked over at Nicky again. Unable to get another word out, my jaw aching like I had just had oral surgery. I was on the verge of tears myself. Not tears of sadness, but the kind you got when you were a little kid and just got too worked up.

Nicky might have actually looked worse than me. Long lines of tears ran from her eyes and all the way down to her bare chest which was barely concealed by a thin tank top. Her strong posture had been reduced to a tired slump and her blonde wig sat crooked on her head.

“Some scary shit has just been happening up here. So Goob and me were thinking about splitting for the night,” I explained, eyes still on the door. “I can give you a ride into town if you like.”

Fresh tears started to stream out of Nicky’s eyes.

“I can’t leave,” she said with a string of mucus running from her nose to her lips. “I’m hiding out,” Nicky choked out the second flourish of words.

Nicky and I sat down on the deflated couch in the room. She wiped her eyes and I suddenly started to care a little less about the monster that might be at the door.

“I applied to your dad’s job on Craigslist because I need somewhere to hide out for a little while. I was driving drunk up in Bellingham, crashed my car into a telephone pole and ran off so I wouldn’t get a DUI. The problem was, I didn’t think that the car was registered to my dealer boyfriend and the trunk was full of heroin. So now, I can go back to town and face either getting arrested by the cops and going to jail for years or face my boyfriend and probably getting the shit beat out of me. Either way I’m screwed. I figured if I hide out here for a while, at least I can prolong the inevitable.”

“You can come with me to my parents’ house.”

“He told me on the phone they live in Bellingham, so no.”

Nicky was right. She reached over and put a soft hand on my shoulder.

“Just stay here one night and we can figure it out in the morning. It’s probably just some townie high school kids messing with you.”

I looked out the living room window and saw nothing but darkness. Nicky’s grasp on my shoulder felt like a cool, damp towel on my shoulder, soothing my worries and putting me to sleep.

I eased back on the couch and looked over to Nicky. Her tears had stopped. I seemed to have the same affect on her that she had on me.

The pitter patter of rain began to fall on the small living room window in front of us. I felt Nicky’s hand slide down my shoulder just a little bit. Or maybe I just imagined it? Either way. I was staying in that cabin for as long as Nicky wanted.

*

Nicky instructed that I could sleep with her on the inflatable bed in the tiny bedroom in the back of the cabin. I tried to keep a polite distance as I laid there wide awake wondering if someone was staring at us through the window of the room, but failed as she seemed to slide her way backwards through the night until she was pressed up against me with my abs flexing as I tried to keep myself on the mattress without exposing the level of excitement she had instilled in my body.

It is very hard to gauge the passing of time when you are lying wide awake in a bed. Sometimes it seems like you blink and the clock goes from 2 a.m. to 4:30 a.m. It’s even harder when you don’t have a clock, or a phone to worry about.

The thought of my lost phone had been pushed out of my head by Nicky’s nearby body and the terror of what happened in the graveyard and the homestead with Goob, but it wouldn’t be gone for long.

I heard the muffled sound of my cell phone ring out from over in the corner of the room. It sounded like the speaker of the ringer was stuck up against something, giving it a bit of a silenced sound, but I could still hear it. I hoped it would not wake Nicky. I could still hear her lightly snoring next to me.

I slipped off of the mattress as stealthily as I could. I looked back at the bed once on my feet and Nicky didn’t stir. I tip toed over to the corner where a buzz and soft chime came out of Nicky’s purse which rested on a wooden chair.

I dropped my hand into the purse, felt the familiar chalky smoothness of my cell phone case and pulled it out. I recognized my phone once it was out of the purse and walked into the the kitchen at the far end of the cabin from the bedroom.

I answered the call without looking who it was and stared out the kitchen window at the woods outside.

“Son of a bitch Nathan,” I recognized my dad’s voice. “I’ve been trying to call you all day. I took off for Hawaii yesterday, but I gotta give you a heads up about something.”

“What? What?”

“I got tangled up with this crazy woman yesterday on the phone. I put this ad out on Craigslist looking for an interior designer to design that place, but some insane woman called saying that she owned the place. Apparently this sea hag thinks the place is hers and the old owner I bought it from took it from her unfairly. I think she might be full of shit, but she said she was going to go up there. I just wanted to give you a head’s up in case she showed up. Just call the cops.”

“What did she say her name was?”

“Nicky, or something like that.”

I turned around and saw Nicky standing in the doorway which connected the kitchen and living room. She looked like an almost completely different woman. The blonde wig fully gone, her short black hair a matted mess, her skin no longer tanned and golden in the sun was a putrid shade of yellow.

My phone suddenly grew red hot in my hand and my ear. I dropped it and screamed in pain. I saw it sizzle and smoke on the floor.

“You don’t belong here,” Nicky screamed at me.

The entire cabin shook when Nicky ended her statement. I turned back to the window and saw three pale naked female figures standing in the clearing in front of the trees, their bodies shining in the moonlight.

Nicky started walking towards me. I put my hands up in surrender.

“Look, I don’t know what you think or what you want, but I don’t care about this place. It’s just some stupid place my dad bought and I’m only here because he paid me. I’ll leave right now.”

“Too late,” Nicky said with a smile.

I heard the glass of the window shatter behind me. I couldn’t even think of which way to run before I felt a rope slide around my neck. The rope pulled me backwards up over the sink of the kitchen and through the window with sharp shards of broken glass digging into my back.

I tried to fight, but it was no use. I struggled like a hooked fish on a line, helplessly flopping on their way up to the surface. I slapped and pulled at the noose around my neck, but I couldn’t get the thing to budge either, just felt it cinch tighter and tighter and tear at the skin of my neck.

My painful ride came to an end after about 30 seconds when I felt my back squish into the soft mud I recognized as the foundation of the graveyard.

“What the fuck?” I squeaked out.

I looked up and saw the three pale naked women stand over me. I felt a hot fire roaring behind my head. I tried to crane backwards and look at the fire, but couldn’t.

That dead stench which came off the face in the hoodie earlier was back. A thin broth of vomit tickled the back of my throat.

One of the women knelt down to my face. She took a pricked finger, dripping blood and drew a symbol on my forehead. A cross? A bull’s eye? An X? I wasn’t sure. I tried to reason with her but I was out of breath. I felt I would pass out very soon.

The woman who marked me placed her hand on the symbol she had drawn. I looked up and watched her cold, gray pupils roll back in her head.

I closed my eyes and felt the weight of the world rush to my head. It felt like the time I took a hard hit in junior football practice and woke up in the locker room with my pants full of ice.

I didn’t open my eyes in a chlorine-drenched locker room. I instead stood in that graveyard, watching a handful of women who resembled my captors, fully-clothed in gray housedresses, watching a bear of a man drop a wooden coffin covered in white roses, into the ground.

My head took another rush and I closed my eyes.

I awoke to the same setting, but a different cast this time. The conservative women in their drab colors were now clad in earthy tones and dangling jewelry. They formed a circle around a tiny coffin, not much larger than a shoebox. They chanted together in prayer in a language I had never heard.

The rush came back again.

This time, the graveyard was on fire. Those women, old, gray and long-haired stood at a distance, screaming at the fire.

Standing in the middle of the grave markers with a torch was a hard-looking man. Every inch of the man’s tall, but stout body seemed to be covered in rich stubble. Standing behind him with a pointed rifle was a sheriff.

“You have no right to be here. This property has not been paid for,” the hard man yelled at the women.

“You are to be off of the property within the hour,” the sheriff barked out. “If you comply, we will gladly extinguish these flames.”

I watched as the women started to walk away and then felt the head rush come back, but only halfway this time. It was like a sneeze which comes on, but then never comes out.

The smell of burning wood tickled my nose. I woke up again in the graveyard, but I was on my back, looking up at a plume of smoke dancing in front of the starry sky.

The noose was still around my neck.I sat up and saw the nearest grave marker, a sloppy cross, crackling with flames. At its base laid a pile of broken glass.

A bottle whipped by my head, grazed my ear. I watched it crash hard against a cement grave marker and light the grass around it afire.

“Nate!”

Only one person called me “Nate.” Good old Goob.

I turned around to see Goob standing at the edge of the graveyard with his Bowie knife poised. The cluster of women circled him like a pack of hyenas.

I wriggled the noose around my neck. It loosened enough for me to pull it up and off.

“Help!” Goob cried out to me.

I spotted a dry branch the size of a baseball bat at my feet and grabbed it. I dipped its bristly end in the fire around the nearby gravestone until it grew into a usable torch.

I ran straight into the group of women with the torch in front of me. I felt it brush against a naked body. I heard a painful yelp ring out.

Goob and I met in a half sideways embrace in the grass before running for his Blazer which sat idling in the driveaway. We dove in, Goob saddled up in the driver’s seat and he put the pedal to the metal before he even shut the door.

It wasn’t easy, but I was able to get upright in my seat just before the driveway curved and the trees blocked the view of the property. I had just enough time to catch a glimpse of four female silhouettes standing in the yard in the light of the burning graveyard.

*

I tried to write down a description of exactly what happened to share with my dad, but I couldn’t come up with anything less than 5,000 words, or believable. Thankfully, Goob was able to inform my dad of what happened in an easier manner, and it seemed to be okay with my dad.

“All these crazy old bitches showed up and started fucking with us.”

Goob told my dad this at my dad’s kitchen table over whiskey and waters and a lot of deep breaths.

“What a bunch of rat fucks,” my dad said after another long exhale.

The situation really got to my dad. “Rat fucks.” was his harshest adjective, reserved for only his least favorite people (high school football players from the state of Washington with offers to play at the University of Washington, who chose to play elsewhere).

The drinks poured for hours and eventually Goob had to leave to go to a The Fabulous Thunderbirds concert, or a casino, or a combination of the two, leaving me and dad alone at his kitchen table, whiskey drunk and nostalgically angry.

I eventually loosened up to where I told my dad the entire story I just told you. He seemed to believe it, at least as far as I could tell, but maybe he was just really drunk.

“Son of a bitch. I can’t say they didn’t warn me,” my dad lamented the thing for about the fiftieth time that day.

“What do you mean by that?” I asked.

My dad just shook his head.

“Some men just can’t be warned,” my dad said and then kicked back in his wooden chair. “But I gotta confirm one thing with you about that story.”

“What?”

“You were really saved by Goob?”

I bit my lip. Shook the ice in my glass.

“I know? Isn’t that the most unbelievable part?”

Originally published by Thought Catalog on www.ThoughtCatalog.com.

[jackfollmanwriter-blog]

The Ghost Next Door

The music studio was the last place that still smelled like my dad. That, and the fact that it housed my dad’s vintage record player, collection of prime late-60s/early-70s classic rock and folk vinyl and an acoustic guitar collection resulted in me passing much of my final high school summer break in the little one-room studio tucked into the back corner of my parents’ suburban backyard.

We were in between the third and fourth lesson of my dad trying to teach me how to play guitar when he passed away. To be honest, we hadn’t made much progress on my lessons because I would usually get frustrated with my dad trying to teach me dull chords which strained my fingers and we would switch to just listening to his Rumours or Sweet Baby James LPs about 10 minutes in.

A fatal heart attack at 49 would prevent my dad from ever teaching his only daughter guitar. I’m still deep in the hard clutches of painful sadness from his passing, but trying to teach myself guitar and listening to my dad’s sad old vinyls in the studio during the summer after he died was my first semi-successful coping mechanism.

The studio was the perfect place to get high because of the silent “recording alarm” my dad setup in there. To ensure no one would barge in during him recording a song, he set up a system that silently flashed a red light on the wall whenever someone got within 10 feet of the studio door that auto locked to the outside until he turned it off. With the system on, I could always tell when my mom was coming.

My daily routine got started the day after my junior year of high school wrapped and about a month after my dad died. I woke up late in the morning, about two hours after my mom had already left for work. Ate an unhealthy breakfast. Headed out to the studio. Smoked. Tried to teach myself guitar. Smoked again. Listened to records. Smoked. Then went back to the house just after my mom got home. Picked at dinner. Retreated to my room and browsed around on the Internet until I fell asleep around 2 or 3 a.m.

I felt the daily regimen helped me cope.

The night where everything changed started out just like any other that summer. I around 3 a.m. and heard music coming from the studio on my walk back to my bedroom from the hallway bathroom.

I knew the song. It was my dad’s favorite track from Rumours - “Never Going Back Again.” I could spot the fingerpicked slinky guitar melody my dad could never get just right with his own fingers.

I headed over to a window and looked out into the backyard and the studio. It was hard to tell if the light I saw came from inside the lone window of the studio or from the outside light on the side of the building. Either way, the song played on.

Maybe my mom was out there listening to Lindsey Buckingham at 3 a.m? No. I could hear her snoring from her bedroom down the hall.

I threw on a sweater and headed out the back door.

The song was still playing when I followed the stone trail in the grass which led to the studio, but I noticed a distinct sound in the music. It did not sound like the music was coming from a record player. It sounded like a live acoustic guitar playing the song perfectly - avoiding all the little missteps which plagued my dad’s renditions.

The music stopped when I was halfway through the yard. The only light I could see was the little bulb which rested on the outside of the studio.

I went into the studio to investigate. The room was quiet and empty.

*

I couldn’t get to sleep the next night. It was still more than 80 degrees at 2 am and the intense heat seemed to be working its way through the glass of my bedroom windows. I sweated under my blanket as I f kept my ears on high alert for any unusual sounds from the backyard.

The music started again at 3:30 a.m. It was the sound of a guitar again, but a different song. I couldn’t recognize it at first, but I eventually decided that it was a Rolling Stones song. One of their ballads. Angie, I think.

I followed the sound of music out into the sweltering backyard. The sounds of the cicadas and the choking humidity made it feel like I was in a jungle and not in a backyard in Ohio.

I could definitely see the light on inside the studio this time. I actually thought I could see the red glow of the recording security system light as I made my way through the backyard and approached.

The music stopped once I got closer. I was left alone with the song of cicadas and the mysterious disappearing guitar picker was nowhere in sight.

I checked the studio again, but there wasn’t a single sign of life other than the vape pen I accidently left in there.

I started to form a plan. I believed whoever, or whatever was playing guitar in the middle of the night was utilizing the recording alarm the same way I did. They vanished as soon as they saw the red light come on. I decided the next day that I would unplug the recording security system before I left the studio for the night.

Over the course of those two nights, my brain had turned into a stew of curiosity, hope, fear and anxiety. While I did truly want to know what was going on, there was a still a dark fear of the unknown and the unexplained. How was the person who was playing guitar escaping in the night without using the only door to the studio and without leaving any trace of evidence?

Worst of all was the darkest, yet most hopeful fear of all which simmered within my troubled brain. Could the musician be the ghost of my father?

I pushed that thought back. It was too hard to even think about. If that was the case, I was okay with being surprised.

*

The heat subsided the next night, but my sweating did’nt. I laid in my bed tortured by nerves. I tried to sleep, but found myself rolling over to check the time on my phone about every 20 minutes.

It was nearly 4 a.m. and I had yet to hear any music come from the backyard. Maybe I got too close last night and spooked the spook? My heart sank just a little bit with each passing check of the clock and each passing chunk of minutes. I eventually could take no more and slipped away into sleep.

*

I had no idea how much time had passed when I woke. Was it light outside? I checked my bedroom window. Still pitch black.

I heard the sound of a guitar ringing out heavy chords from behind the house. I sprang out of bed and ran for the back door.

I ran through the backyard as fast as I had since I was a little kid, my eyes stuck on the lights of the studio, excited that I didn’t see the red lighting of the security system and could still hear the rumbling power chords and what I thought was the sound of singing.

I dove at the door handle when I reached the studio. My body was still in a bit of shock when I took in the scene in front of me.

Seated in my dad’s playing stool was a long-haired kid clutching my dad’s vintage 67 Taylor acoustic guitar. He looked at me in panic with his straight brown hair covering half his face and tickling his lips.

“Oh shit. I’m sorry,” the kid shot out.

The kid dropped my dad’s pristine guitar and scrambled, almost falling off the stool. He stepped away from me and held his hands out in surrender.

“What are you doing in here?” I screamed at him.

He looked me up and down with light eyes and started to collect himself. He wiped his face nervously and slunk into a relaxed posture. I noticed a vape pen dangled in his left hand.

“I just moved next door and I was in the backyard and saw this studio back here and fell in love,” the kid answered.

He started to play with the shaggy dirty blonde hair around his ear. His eyes remained locked on mine. He maintained a slight, nervous smile. To me, he looked like Chris Pratt if he had become a rock star instead of a movie star and adopted the slender physique of a heroin-gorged guitar hero.

“I figured if I came back here in the middle of the night I could play guitar and listen to some records. There is about the best vinyl collection I have ever seen in here,” he finished by giving a wave at the stacks of vinyl which took up almost an entire wall of the studio.

The kid seemed genuinely sincere and harmless. I was still completely on edge, but his soft voice and features wore me down with each second we held our stand off in the soft light of the studio.

“Okay…

“Look.  Here’s what I can do,” the kid started in and cleared his throat while taking a wallet out of his pants. “I can give you my driver’s license which shows that I do live next door and my ASB card which shows that we will go to the same high school next year.”

The boy produced two cards from his wallet and handed them over to me. The Ohio state driver’s license confirmed he did live next door and his name was Adam Long and the ASB card confirmed he would be going to Kirkland High School with me next year.

“I’m Adam by the way. Nice to meet you.”

I handed the IDs back.

“Nice to meet you,” I mumbled.

“You can call the cops if you still like. I understand. But, if you aren’t too totally freaked out, I would love to come back here, play some guitar, smoke out and listen to these great records if you are ever interested. I can even bring some of my own and my own guitar. Just head next door and knock.”

Adam walked right by me before I could get another word out and slipped out the door. Leaving me alone in the studio with the sound of the guitar still ringing in my ear.

*

The idea of knocking on Adam’s door and inviting him to teach me guitar or listen to records gnawed at me for three days before I finally made the trek down the street and found myself ringing his doorbell. I chewed on my lip as I waited for an answer.

Adam quickly answered with tired eyes and messy hair as if he had just woke up even though it was 1 in the afternoon.

“Uh, hi,” I mumbled.

“Let me get my guitar,” Adam blurted out.

Adam ran off before I could even get my question out.

Adam came back with a beat up old vintage guitar which looked like the one Willie Nelson plays. I think he calls it “Dolly” or “Darla” or something quaint that starts with a D.

Within minutes, Adam was picking out the opening to “Under the Bridge” on that ratty guitar and explaining to me that it was a 1964 Fender and possibly worth more than the two-bedroom fixer-upper he moved into with his parents about a month before.

I couldn’t help but laugh at Adam just about every minute. He had the demeanor of a puppy golden retriever, excited about everything and clumsy beyond belief. He actually fell off the stool before he launched into the verses of Under the Bridge.

Before he could even get up off the floor and before I could even stop laughing. Adam was insisting he wanted to teach me how to play guitar.

Adam seemed to have a knack for showing me the ropes of guitar my dad didn’t possess. He showed me the chords and how to hold the guitar, how to hold the pick, how to ring out notes properly the same way my dad did, but what he showed me seemed to actually stick in my brain. It was like he somehow could plant the directions in my brain before he actually showed them to me.

Adam’s guitar lessons became a daily routine. He would show up around 1 or 2 in the afternoon and meet me in the studio where I was already hanging out. He would teach me guitar for about an hour and then we would spend the rest of the afternoon listening to records with interruptions of him playing and singing my favorite classic rock songs.

It felt as if Adam’s lessons and companionship pushed along the healing process of getting over my dad’s death. Each day that passed with my new friend seemed to thread a piece of fabric over the giant, gaping hole in my heart.

I have to admit that Adam did more than just patch that heart though. He found a place for himself in it. Within about a week, our teacher-student-friend relationship crossed professional boundaries.

It was tragically cliche. We hinted at what we both felt through enough flirtations and lathered ourselves up with weed and some sips of vodka and lemonade I had stolen from my mom until we melted into each other halfway through Joni Mitchell’s Blue on the hottest afternoon of the summer.

We seemed to be the only other people either of us hung out with so it basically just felt like Adam and I were boyfriend and girlfriend from that very moment. Even though we had not been out together in public, neither of us had even seen the other’s parents and I had never been over to his house, it felt official.

It simply felt perfect and that was all I needed.

However, the problem with starting with perfection is you have nowhere to go but down, and we would go down a long, long ways.

The first chink in the armor of love took place on a night not long after that day of sealing the deal in the studio.

I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of music coming from the studio again. I checked the clock. It was 3:30 a.m. Right at the time when I first heard Adam playing in the studio.

I rushed out to the studio with visions of a romantic gesture by Adam waiting for me in the studio. Maybe him playing Blackbird in candlelight with some red wine pilfered from his mom in glasses or fresh picked flowers.

What waited for me in the studio was not the scene out of Nicholas Sparks novel I imagined. It was more like something out of a Chuck Palahniuk novel.

The unnerving Beatles track Revolution #9 blared through the door of the studio before I opened it. I didn’t even think the speakers of my dad’s record player could get that loud, but apparently they could damn near blow the doors off the building.

I opened the door to the studio to reveal pure darkness. Black was all I could see in the room. I could still hear the horrific song playing at full blast, but I couldn’t see anything in the room.

“Adam?” I tried to yell over the volume of the music.

The music cut out and the lights of the room came on, brighter than I ever thought they could. I can barely even summarize what I saw because of how much it still hurts...but, laying on the floor was my father, lying on his back, his arms limp and out to his sides, his face a sickening shade of purple, white foam coming out of his mouth, his hair wet and slicked back. I assumed it was the vision my mom came upon in their bathroom while I was at a friend’s house that day.

I wanted to run, but was frozen in my stance in the open doorway of the studio. The only thing I managed to do was pinch myself on my forearm to confirm that this was not a nightmare.

A quick shot of pain reminded me that I was very much awake in the moment I was in and a new song began to spin.

I recognized the song from the first note, “Starry, Starry Night,” it was my dad and my unofficial song that we loved to listen to together.

I was finally able to run. I ran away from the studio as fast as I could and made it to the pavement outside the backdoor to my house. I collapsed there. Fell on my side and curled up into a ball. I started to convulse. Sob uncontrollably. Right there, I was back in my friend’s car, on our way home from a movie, getting the news over the phone that my dad died and I couldn’t take it.

I laid there on the ground sobbing for what had to be nearly 20 minutes before I was able to pick myself back up and trudge to my bedroom and my bed. I shut the door and didn’t come out for more than 24 hours.

*

I wouldn’t interact with a single thing until the middle of the night, the next night. I had finally managed to get to sleep around 2 a.m., but it didn’t last. I flashed awake around 3 and looked around my room that was completely dark except for a periodic flashing of blue light and almost completely silent except for a period rumbling on the floor.

My disorientation held my brain from realizing the flashing and buzzing was coming from my phone on my nightstand. I looked over to the phone and saw it flash one last time before going back to sleep.

The end of the buzzing let the room go back into silence, but only for a moment. I heard a shuffling sound come from over by my bedroom door before I could even unlock my phone.

I panicked. I dropped the phone and looked up to the door. Standing there in the same sheepish stance he had when I first caught him in the studio was Adam.

He pushed his hair out of his face.

“You weren’t answering your texts so I just came in. The backdoor was unlocked,” Adam explained.

I sat up in my bed and tried to catch my breath.

“What the fuck? My mom hasn’t even met you. She might have stabbed you if she ran into you in the kitchen in the dark.”

Adam found a seat at the foot of my bed and looked at the floor. His usual clumsy and jovial demeanor was nowhere to be found. He seemed now like a child who had just been told his puppy had died.

“I was just feeling really sad and wanted to say that I’m sorry for what happened to your dad,” Adam said so quietly I could barely hear it.

I recoiled a little bit from Adam in the bed.

“I didn’t think I told you about my dad.”

I had no memory of mentioning anything about my dad to Adam other than saying that the albums and the guitars in the studio were his. I’m sure it was a little strange to Adam that he had yet to see any living presence of my dad, but I had never mentioned anything about him being dead.

Adam froze. He looked up from the floor and out the dark window of my bedroom. I changed my posture and leaned towards him.

“How do you know about my dad?”

Adam didn’t answer.

“It’s okay if you just Googled him or something. I get that it’s weird that I didn’t say anything about him. I just want to know.”

Adam mumbled something I couldn’t make out. I leaned further forward and focused in on him just a little bit, it looked like there were tears in his eyes.

“You can tell me,” I insisted.

“No, it’s okay. I just wanted to check in on you because you weren’t answering your phone,” Adam spoke up, clearly, before he got up off the bed and walked out of the room.

I got up and followed Adam to the door which he left open.

“Wait,” I called out the open door and down the hallway, but received no answer.

The heart of the house was silent other than for the rumbling hum of the air conditioning.

I went back into my room and tucked myself into bed. I grabbed my phone up from off the floor and unlocked it.

There weren’t any notifications on my home screen. I checked my texts. I didn’t have any new ones. Checked my phone log. No missed or new calls.

*

Adam went dark for days. He wouldn’t return texts, phone calls, voice mails...nothing. I knocked on his door each afternoon, but never got an answer.

I passed the days practicing the chords Adam taught me in the studio and listening to music alone and it just didn’t feel right. The studio no longer had the warmth and coziness he had brought back to it. It went back to being a dim mourning room for my dad filled with sad old records and lonely guitars.

The days drug on like your worst days at a horrible job. The routine which had once given me a sliver of peace of mind had now turned into a mundane test of mental stability. I felt like I was on the verge of breaking down at any moment of the day.

I figured it was time to set up another trap for my friend next door.

I ordered a pizza to be delivered to Adam’s house on a Wednesday night at 8 and waited in the bushes next to his house to see him answer the door.

I sweated and itched in the bush as I watched the delivery driver stroll up to the front door of Adam’s house and ring the doorbell. I chewed on a nail during the wait for the answer.

An answer never came. The delivery driver eventually cursed under his breath and took his big heated bag of pizza and retreated back to his car.

I guess I had never actually confirmed that Adam and his family were even home. Maybe they had left on a vacation or something?

No matter the case, I needed to do my own investigation.

I ran up to the front door of Adam’s house and tried the handle. It was unlocked. I opened the door, stepped in and closed the door behind me.

The smell was the first thing which I noticed. The house reeked of the scent of abandon. Like when you go into a vacation rental home no one has been in since the previous summer, or the guest room at a grandparent’s house where people rarely go.

The fact that the house was completely empty was the second thing I noticed. A quick stroll around the main floor showed that there wasn’t a single thing in the home other than my presence. Every wall was blank and white, the carpet still stiff and new with nary a piece of furniture on it, the kitchen spotless. Maybe it was possible that Adam’s family simply moved out of the house a few days ago when he went MIA and they had already spotlessly cleaned the place out, but there was no way. There would still be a hint of life and I hadn’t noticed any cleaning trucks or heard any sounds of work coming from next door.

The sound of footsteps coming down a staircase at the end of the dark hallway I stood in interrupted my thought. I froze in my tracks on the immaculately clean white carpet.

“Adam?” I whispered down the hallway.

I saw a pair of feet wearing the navy Converse sneakers Adam always sported come into view. I watched as skinny legs in torn blue jeans made their way down the stairs until I saw a faded grey t-shirt I had seen Adam wear come into view splashed with blood. I held my breath and finally took in the full site when he stopped at the bottom of the stairs and stared at me from the other end of the hallway.

Blood snaked out from Adam’s wrists, dripped down his forearms and all over his jeans and t-shirt. He looked to me with pained eyes for a few seconds.

I ran.

I stopped at the bottom of Adam’s sloped driveway and looked up at the front door. I tried to catch my breath, but couldn’t. I stared at the small windows built into the front door, wondering if I would eventually see him, but I didn’t in the minute I took before retreating home.

I locked my parents’ front door and turned on the alarm system before running up to my room.I grabbed my cell phone off of my desk. The only question was whether to call my mom or 911 first.

“Ruby,” Adam’s voice shot out from the corner of my room over by the bedroom window.

I shrieked in a way I don’t think I ever had before and clutched my chest. Truly wondered for a second if I had a heart attack.

Adam stood in the corner of my room without a drop of visible blood on him.

“What in the actual fuck?” I yelled across the room.

Adam started to move toward me.

“Are you fucking dead?”

I put it out there as clearly as I could. The blocks had all added up to that question in the past five minutes.

Adam stopped in his tracks. Looked away.

“Yes,” Adam confirmed. “But it’s not as bad as you think.”

“I don’t even know what that means. I’m not dead, am I?” I asked.

“You’re not, but things aren’t exactly what they seem. You’re going to need a lot of help, very soon and I’m probably the only one who can help you. Are you open to that?” Adam asked.

“I don’t even know how to answer that,” I whispered, realizing all the yelling might attract my mom to open the door and see what I imagined looked like me having an argument with myself.

Adam moved towards me again and put a soft hand on my shoulder.

“I don’t even know what to say,” I shivered the words out, salty tears falling into my open mouth. “This is the most freaked out I have ever been in my fuckin life.”

Both of us found a seat on the side of the bed. Adam put an arm around me. Nothing about his presence or touch felt dead. I questioned if Adam was telling me the truth about me being alive or not. I hadn’t left my house area in months, my friends seemed to be ignoring me and I barely saw my mom. This was all on my own accord, but I still wouldn’t have been shocked if there was a living, breathing barrier between me and the living world which was helping me stay away from it.

“You know that statistic you hear sometime that there has never been a recorded instance of a ghost causing the death of a person? I think they have mentioned it in a couple of horror movie trailers,” Adam said.

“I think so.”

“It’s not true. It’s not a lie. It’s just that people don’t understand how everything thing works. Ghosts kill people all the time. They just do it in a way that doesn’t make it seem like the case. Real ghosts don’t hide in the closet and then jump out with a knife or try to scare someone to death. If they want someone to die, they are much more covert. They’ll make it look like a natural cause or an accident. That guy cleaning the gun. Let’s make it ‘accidentally’ go off. The depressed woman soaking in her bathtub. Let’s slit her wrists. The overweight middle-aged man running on his treadmill. Let’s shoot him full of adrenaline and spark a heart attack. Make sense?”

“As much as it can make sense,” I said. “I’m going to go ahead and assume with your last example that something like this happened with my dad?”

Adam nodded.

“Why?” I asked.

Adam let out a deep breath. I watched him bite down on his lip.

“It’s a shitty world,” Adam said with an exhale. “You can’t always explain things. These dark spirits, some of them just wander the universe looking for someone to latch onto. I think this one lived in your house years ago and had some kind of unfounded grudge with your dad, and your family since you moved into their old place.”

“So it’s not just after him?”

Adam shook his head.

“That’s why I’m here. To try and protect you.”

“I don’t like that you used the word ‘try.’”

My statement seemed to set off a sharp pain in my stomach and I folded over on the bed, clutched my gut and struggled to breathe.

“So what’s this? This thing trying to kill me slowly and painfully?” I seethed through gnashed teeth.

“Unfortunately, yes,” Adam announced.

“What the hell can I even do?” I asked as the simmering pain finally starting to cool down in my stomach.

“That’s why I’m here,” Adam said and made eye contact with me for the first time in our interaction that night. “I can tr...I can protect you.”

I almost was able to force a smile when Adam stopped himself from saying the word “try,” but I didn’t really get what he could do. I felt like this thing was turning my insides into to rotting mush and I didn’t really see how a 17-year-old with a puberty mustache and acoustic guitar skills was really going to help. This wasn’t “The Greatest Song in the World.” You can’t beat a demon with an acoustic guitar solo.

“So you’re going to take the disease and pain this thing is sticking in my stomach and take it away?”

“I’m doing my best to just keep it there. You don’t want it to grow into anything more. That’s what it will do if I have to go away again. It will grow and grow until you are looking at that deep dark pain that you saw in the studio and you saw in my house again. That’s when it can really hurt you. The restrained pain, the one that gets in your insides you have now, that can take down an older man with some heart issues, but all it can really do to someone like you is make you sick. I’m going to do everything I can to make sure even that pain which has been reduced down to just a tickle in your stomach goes away.”

“And how are you going to do that?”

Adam leaned across the bed and kissed me softly on the lips. He reached around and gently placed his hand on the back of my head, he stroked my hair as we kissed on until I was tired, ready to go to bed and the burning in my stomach was a suddenly a distant memory.

*

I woke just before daybreak. Adam was gone, but I was perfectly tucked underneath my covers. I felt as if I could still sense him in the room with me, even though he was nowhere to be seen.

I went out to the studio at sunrise to smoke and make some progress on learning the chords to the first song Adam taught me - the simple chord progression of Wonderwall. I hoped hearing me play my choppy melody would coax him out of the empty house next door.

I broke out into a smile when the alarm system of the studio lit up and I anticipated Adam stepping in to join me in just a few seconds.

The jiggling of the studio door stirred my heart, I looked over to the entrance with the guitar in my hands, mid-strum.

“Welcome back,” I said, my throat still grumbling with morning grog. “Sorry...I.”

I stopped my tongue. Instead of Adam standing in the doorway, it was my mom. She was vomiting uncontrollably all over the floor and screaming at the highest pitch I have ever heard a human being emit.

“Mom!” I screamed out and threw the guitar off of my lap.

I ran over to my mom as she dropped to one knee and started to collect herself. I didn’t even think about the burning joint which fell to the floor behind me when I got up and ran over.

“Let’s go inside.”

I helped my mom to her feet and led her out of the studio. We walked through the backyard and back into the house.

I calmed my mom down in the kitchen with a tall, cold glass of water and a cold towel to the forehead.

“I don’t know what happened. I just woke up burning up at the crack of dawn. I couldn’t move at first and when I could I started throwing up everywhere. I tried to find you, but you weren’t inside. I didn’t know where you were.”

My mom started to break down and cry. I caught her tears with the moist towel and wrapped her in a hug. It was the first time we had physically touched since my dad’s funeral months before.

“I think I’m getting really sick,” my mom said in the midst of sobs into the fabric of my shirt where her face was buried.

I had pretty much forgotten about my mom in everything that had happened. I had been thinking she must have been worried about my withdrawal from the world and isolation, but I never thought about her doing the same. I joined her in tears as we embraced at the kitchen bar area.

My tears started to stop when I felt a wet mass wash down my back. I pulled away from my mom and looked her in the face.

The face I saw was not that of my mom at all. I was instead face-to-face with a bare skull dripping with melted skin, hair and viscera. It looked like the pool or wax that collects at the bottom of a red candle on a saucer. I vomited into my mouth and caught it with my hand. I staggered backwards in the kitchen and watched that face keep melting like a cherry popsicle in the sun.

The scent of what I thought was burning flesh stung my nose as I stood in the living room and watched the woman who I thought was my mother melt down into a puddle before my very eyes. I held my breath until I could watch no more and turned towards the door which led out to the backyard.

A quick look out the window informed me the smell overtaking my nose was not that of burning flesh, it was of burning wood and machinery. I could see the studio going up in flames at the back of the yard.

I screamed and ran out the back door, ignoring the final moments of the melting person who was reducing into a puddle in the kitchen.

A closer look from the backyard showed that the studio was already completely engulfed in flames. I ran to get closer, but couldn’t even get too close without feeling the power of the flames burn my face. There was nothing I could do. My sanctuary and memorial for my dad was gone.

I retreated to the house where there wasn’t a single sign of melting flesh anywhere in the kitchen and where my mom was waiting, screaming into a cell phone about the fire, looking fine and dandy. I confirmed with my mom that I was okay and ran out the front door, on a mission to get back into Adam’s house.

I wasted no time with knocks. I just ran right into the heart of the dark house and screamed out…

“Adam. Adam. Adam.”

I got no response. Just the faint echo of my voice bouncing off the lonely walls. I let out a pure and simple scream, hoping my raw emotion could draw out Adam, but no luck.

I swept the house on my own, but found nothing but empty rooms and the smell of dust and paint fumes. Adam was nowhere to be found.

The fire department was already at my house when I left Adam’s. I could hear the commotion of men screaming out directions and the distant spray of a powerful hose as I walked up to my front door with a hollow feeling carving out my insides. I had nothing left to even care about. My last safe place in the world was gone. Who I thought was my love turned out to be a flaky ghost who failed to deliver on promises and my mom was just as big of a mess as I was.

I retreated up to my room and tried to shut out the sounds of the sirens and the men trying to douse the fire which ravaged the studio. I dreaded knowing I would soon receive a knock on my door and have to be ushered out of the house by the dad of some guy I went to school with so I could be “safe.”

It felt like it only took two minutes for that dreaded knock to come.

“What?” I yelled at the door with attitude as if the person on the other side of the wooden door was trying to hurt me and not help me.

No answer was given. I looked up from the pillow I had buried my face in and saw what I thought was Adam standing just inside my bedroom door. I recoiled and climbed backwards on the bed, towards the wall.

I would have been scared to see Adam just appear like that in general, but my fear and recoil was inflamed by his appearance. Adam looked very much like the melted woman who showed up to the studio earlier in the morning. His scalp was burnt bald, just an oily slick of his hair left sticking straight up, his skin was scaly white and burnt away, like a shed snake skin you might find in your yard, his body was charred and his clothes were hanging off of him, scalded and stiff.

Adam made a couple steps toward me, but stopped.

“You were supposed to help me. Where were you?” I pleaded from my bed.

“I was there. I was the one who warned you. What you saw was your mom and your ghosts. You saw yourself melt in the kitchen and your mom barfing and burning in the studio from the smoke. I sent them for you to wake you up because you fell asleep in the studio and it was about to burn down and your mom was about to get burnt trying to wake you up and drag you out of there. That big ass fire wasn’t started by your little ass blunt. There was an electrical short in the studio right before you got out. The thing burned down in two minutes once it started. I saved you, and your mom. I saved you from the that fire by sending your ghosts to scare you out,” Adam explained.

Don’t worry. I didn’t 100 percent get it at the time either.

“And now I died again for you,” Adam said, but much more quietly than his previous statement.

“What?”

Adam let out a flurry of grotesque coughs. He fell hard to the floor and curled up on his side.

I got off the bed and ran to Adam. The gore on his body was much harder to take in up close.

“The ghost that was after your family is gone now. I trapped it in the studio as it burned down.

“I may have said something cliche in the moment like “no, you can’t go,” or “wait, please stay,” to Adam, but I can’t exactly remember. I only remember what he said.

“You already knew me,” Adam said then gasped for air.

“What?”

“Adam Rocket Central two-six-one. No spaces. Find it and you’ll find out. Just know overall that you and your mom are safe now,” Adam finished with another deep gasp.

That gasp would be Adam’s last. I watched Adam fade from vision shortly after those final parting words. Where Adam had laid on the carpet suddenly went back to just being a beige piece of fabric dotted with Diet Coke stains.

*

I took some time to (try and) absorb everything that happened before I took to Google to investigate Adam’s parting words. I’m glad I did because what I found warranted some calm and preparation.

AdamRocketCentral216 was a Twitter handle. Smiling back in the profile picture was a face which was instantly recognizable - Adam.

The profile’s tweets were protected, but there was a Tumblr link at the top I was able to follow.

The first post on the Tumblr couldn’t have been more clear. It simply read: Ruby, please start from the beginning.

The earliest post was from 2011, back when I was only 11. Fittingly, it was titled simply 11.

The post started with a picture of me in front of a glistening lake, smiling and flanked by a shaggy-haired boy I recognized as Zach Harris, my first boyfriend. I had never seen the photo before.

The copy of the post told the start of Adam’s story. He was a shy 11-year-old boy who developed a crush on your’s truly at the summer camp we both apparently went to, but he never got the guts to talk to me and watched horrified as I fell in pre-pubescent love with Zach Harris.

The posts went on for three more ages, each about the summers we attend summer camp together and how I accumulated boyfriends and failed to acknowledge he existed. Each featured a photo of me with a boyfriend.

The second-to-last post, age 14, told the story of the progress Adam was finally able to make. He found out I had a crushing break-up with my boyfriend and he tracked me down on the dock and comforted me for an hour.

Adam detailed a lengthy conversation of bonding over quoting The Simpsons, shit talking love and the awful summer camp our parents made us go to. He said we ended the conversation by him writing his phone number in my camp yearbook with a promise by me to call him when we got back to our respective home towns.

Memories of that afternoon on the dock started to come back to me. I vaguely remember a boy comforting me about breaking up with my boyfriend, but I mostly just remember crying my eyes out about said boyfriend and not a good samaritan. I understand situations like that where you view the interaction with someone as a deep, memorable event, but the other person simply sees it as a fleeting conversation with a stranger.

I rushed to the final post - 15. It started by confirming I never called Adam that summer and he talked his parents out of making him go to camp that year.

The post closed with a simple instruction: Find your summer camp yearbook from 2014. The name Adam Long is written on the last page with a phone number. Call the number and ask for Adam...the rest will take care of itself.

I dialed up the Cincinnati area code number and waited with my ear sweating against my phone.

“Hello,” a cautious female voice answered.

“Uh hi,” I had not idea how to start in. “I was told by Adam to call this number. Adam Long?”

The line went silent for a good five seconds. A deep exhale on the other side broke it.

“Is this Ruby?” The voice on the other end wavered with emotion.

“Yes.”

“Adam gave very specific instructions on what to do if this day ever came. I can’t tell you any more, but I am going to put a package in the mail for you this afternoon which will give you all the answers I can give. What’s your address honey?”

I gave the woman my address. We exchanged pleasantries. She hung up.

I don’t know if I thought of a single thing other than that package in the week and a half I had to wait for it to show up at the door.

I tore into the thing before even walking back to the house. The package was about the size of a shoe box, but contained nothing but a single flash drive. I smiled, knowing the mailing format was either a symptom of Adam being his over-dramatic self or him making fun of his over-dramatic self.

I opened up the drive on my laptop and saw it contained just one video file.

The video opened up on a shot of Adam sitting at a desk, looking around the age of 13 or 14 based on what I remember from the old summer camp photos on his Tumblr. He ignored the camera at first, but then looked straight at it with his soft blue eyes and smiled.

“Hey, it’s Adam. Welcome to my video blog. I started the Tumblr, but I thought this would be a better way to tell my story from start to finish.”

The first 30 minutes or so of the video explained the summer camp saga pretty well detailed on the Tumblr, but with a little more emotion and the painful image of Adam telling it himself just inches from the camera with me knowing I would never see his face again. I had to stop the playback at least a few times to collect myself and wipe tears from my cheeks, jaw and neck as they rolled down.

The last time I had to stop it didn’t have anything to do with Adam’s story. It was simply when the video stopped and then started again with him this time aged to 17. The age I knew him best. The little flecks of pathetic stubble on his chin. His hair a little longer and curled at the ends. His jaw a little stronger. He was as close to a man as he would ever get and had the same blue eyes I first connected with in the studio in the middle of the night.

I was able to get myself to eventually hit play again.

“This is it. The last message,” Adam said on the camera with a smile. “This is the hardest one.”

The tears started to come again.

“You might be watching this months later, even years later and be begging me not to do it, but just understand that I had to. It was the only way. I know this is crazy, but I think this is the only way I can get close to you. I’ve been reading a lot about love and the afterlife and how it all works on Reddit and I think I know how I can make this work,” Adam went on, tears falling down his cheeks.

Adam took out a long knife and flashed it on the screen. Long and thin, it was the kind you use for precise cutting.

“I’m ready to just do it. I’m bored of this existence. I Googled you and saw what happened to your dad and I think I can help this way. It’s not fair. That’s why I’m doing it. For you. Not for me,” Adam said with the knife flailing around in his right hand.

Adam took in a deep breath. His hands dropped below the view of the camera.

“You don’t have to see this. I love you. See you soon,” Adam whispered.

Adam let out a scream. He let out another and the screen went black.

*

I did my own search on Reddit and discovered the subReddit about the afterlife I believe Adam talked about in the video. It had all of the details about the good and the dark spirits Adam explained to me in that bedroom that night when he admitted he was dead.

Adam had been obsessed with me for years even when I didn’t know he even existed and even though we lived hundreds of miles away from each other. He thought he was in love, but it was just infatuation. He discovered through that Reddit afterlife forum that if he died, he could track me down and slip into my life. He also believed that a dark spirit had caused my father’s heart attack and was going to go after my mom and me. As a good spirit, Adam thought he could stop it, and, hopefully meet me and make me fall in love with him.

Now here’s where things get a little more tricky…

Things keep stacking up against Adam’s case. So much that I wanted to write it all down to explain why I am no longer so sure that what he told me was the truth and that he had my complete best interest in mind and not just his.

The Case Against Adam

The date stamp on Adam’s final broadcast where he killed himself was three days before my dad died, yet, he referenced my dad dying in the video.

I connected with the admin of the Reddit afterlife forum and discuss what happened to me and he mentioned that anyone who killed themselves does not enter the afterlife as a good spirit. They enter as neutral at best, and many times, come in as bad spirits due to the darkness of their passing. The spirits also may not know what kind of spirits they are. A dark spirit may assume it is a good spirit because of their own personal belief in themselves, but not actually be one.

I started talking to my mom again and she divulged a secret about my dad I never knew. When I was 15, my dad intercepted a package addressed from me, opened it and discovered a collection of love letters and racy self portraits. He also intercepted a call on my parents’ landline from the boy who asked for me, but my dad did not pass it on. Lastly, my dad discovered the boy hiding outside of the house one night and took him to the police station. My dad told my mom that he scared the living daylights out of the kid and got him to promise to leave me alone. My mom and dad didn’t want to scare me, so they kept all of this from me. My mom said she was pretty sure the boy’s name was Adam and my dad said he lived in Cincinnati.

To me, this suggest Adam may have taken the information from the Reddit forum, realized killing himself and using the spirit powers he knew existed to take out my dad from the afterlife so he could finally approach me without him in the way. Adam then died in the afterlife in the fire in the studio and fully passed on to the other side.

But, I’m not 100 percent sold yet, because…

The Case for Adam

I felt it. I truly felt Adam was genuine. I felt that he was telling the truth and we were in a strange kind of love. It lived in my gut, bones and heart.

And you know what they say...you should always trust your gut.

Originally published by Thought Catalog on www.ThoughtCatalog.com.

[jackfollmanwriter-blog]

Snoop

The most sickening feeling I got came from knowing the man must have been watching my house, waiting to see when I would come out and go for my daily jog just before dusk. I wondered how many days he had been watching me to know that the house would be empty at that time and the window he used to break into my house would be optimal in that 20 minute sliver of time.

It took me a few minutes to even figure out what happened when I got home. My heart was already pounding, my body coated with a cool sweat and my mind racing before I even saw the broken window in my laundry room.

Tucked in the far corner of the house with a floor-level window, it was the perfect entry point. I wondered if the intruder had already cased my house a couple of times, probably when I was still home, or sleeping in the middle of the night. Not sure why he thought my house was a particularly-attractive target, I have almost nothing of value and am a very obviously modest person.

What happened was a burglar (or burglers) broke into my house, stole some of my fake jewelry, an old bottle of antibiotics and a broken iPhone. All in all, the value of the loot pilfered was probably just over $100, tops.

What they accomplished was shattering my soul and trust in the world more than anything else. As they say, the best things in life are free.

After realizing what happened, I gave the rest of the house a quick look over as I talked to the 911 dispatcher and had him relay the cops towards my house and waited out front for them to arrive.

Law enforcement didn’t present me with any revelations I didn’t already know. Someone broke in, stole some items and ran out all in about the span of just a few minutes while I was on my jog. They were going to keep eyes out and ears open for any clues, but that’s about all they could do at the moment. At least a couple of them were nice enough to stick around and board up the broken window for me and recommend some cheaper, but non-scary motels I could check into if I didn’t want to stay in the house

Most-kindly, one of the officers offered me a video security system he had, but didn’t need anymore that could be installed in about 20 minutes. He said it was basically a glorified baby monitor, but it was a great to keep an eye on your place when you weren’t there and to place prominently next to your biggest floor-level window to scare off anyone sizing up the place. He ran home, brought it back, and hooked it up in my house while some other officers patched up the window.

I thanked them for the repair work and turned down the motel idea. My boyfriend Jacob would be over in an hour or two and that was enough to make me comfortable enough to stay in the house that night. I knew it was just some desperate tweaker willing to bust in for $100 worth of stuff and wouldn’t be back. The police confirmed as such. I just asked if one of them could park out front until my boyfriend got there and they agreed.

Jacob arrived around 9 p.m. and the night moved on. I told him all of the details and he didn’t seem to be particularly concerned. He agreed with my tweaker assessment and kept his hunting shotgun right next to my bed in case the person decided to come back.

It wasn’t easy, but I was eventually able to fall asleep. I got a few hours of the sweet embrace of slumber before the quick thumb of a text message sliding into my phone shook me awake. I groaned and walked to the bathroom to relieve myself. I forgot about the text by the time I got back to bed and didn’t check it.

I wish I had.

I checked the text first thing in the morning. It was from my mom. Ugh. I had avoided telling her because I knew she would freak out and drive all the way from Sacramento in the middle of the night to “comfort me,” when all she would do is make me more scared.

Apparently Jacob had posted a photo of his shotgun resting next to my bed with a little of the story next to it, my mom saw it and started texting me at 1 a.m.

Her first text was actually very helpful, and something Jacob and I should have thought about the night before.

Saw Jacob’s post about what happened. I’m so sorry. Did you MAKE SURE THE POLICE CHECKED EVERY SINGLE INCH OF YOUR HOUSE TO MAKE SURE THE GUY WASN’T STILL IN THERE?

My mom actually had a great point. I never even asked the cops how much they scoured the house. They just said he ran off sometime before I got home and that was it. Jacob and I never did a great job of checking either.

I woke Jacob up and told him we needed to search everywhere in the house. He was tired and unhappy, but agreed to do it, with shotgun in-hand.

What we found underneath my bathroom sink horrified me. There was a large cabinet directly underneath the sink in the bathroom in my bedroom about the size of a washing machine. I never even thought about it until we were in the midst of or all-encompassing sweep.

I casually pulled the cabinet open almost as an afterthought and was immediately overtaken by the hideous scent of male B.O. I started coughing, almost vomited as I looked away and connected my eyes with Jacob, who had a look of alarm on his face I had never seen before.

I followed Jacob’s eyes, and the stench, to the space below the sink where I saw a filthy jean jacket, what looked like human excrement and the bottle of pills which had been missing.

We called the cops and had the house 110 percent searched. Nothing turned up, but the cop who gave me the video system pointed out that we should review the footage to see if it showed anything.

Jacob and I watched the footage on my laptop with a few cops hanging over our shoulders. I was still almost frozen in fear, despite the amount of armed men in the room whose job it was to protect me.

We had set up three cameras, so we had three different shots we could watch at once - one from my bathroom, one in my bedroom and one in the living room which feeds out into the front driveway of the house. I could feel the heart of even the largest cop in the room stop as we watched the footage.

It started with the camera set up in my bedroom. The angle the camera provided showed my bathroom through the open door. The time stamp said it was just after 3 a.m. when movement finally started to happen while Jacob and I slept in bed.

We watched in horror as a dark figure of a man stretched himself out from underneath the bathroom sink and then took a moment to steady himself in the bathroom. He then slowly walked into my bedroom.

The camera set up my bed provided the perfect vantage point to see him as he walked right to my bed where Jacob and I were sleeping. We got the slightest glimpse of a cherubic, round face cased by the hood of a sweatshirt.

The man in the hood stopped right at the foot of our bed. He stood there for a good 10 seconds, staring at Jacob and I as we slept. Then he walked out the bedroom door.

We watched the intruder simply walk out the front door at that point. He even locked the front door on his way out. The whole thing had a slight air of politeness in it, but it was in no way friendly.

It would have been much better had the intruder rifled through all of my stuff, stolen belongs, almost even better if he had attacked me. Hiding under the sink where I had brushed my teeth and washed my face just a few hours before and then walking away long after I had gone to sleep was the worst thing he could have done. The whole thing felt much more personal than opportunistic. Maybe that was his plan?

*

I never stayed another night in that house. I moved a couple of towns over into a secure apartment building with heavy security, but still can never sleep easy at night. Even if Jacob, and his shotgun, are by my side. I am forever rattled.

I have done my best to fight against it though. My apartment had a little compartment beneath the sink when I moved in. My first night in the new apartment, I had Jacob come over with tools from work and take the doors off the thing. I feel a certain comfort each night when I am able to kick my feet into the now open space while I brush my teeth. It does just a little bit to calm my nerves, but I’ll never quite be the same.

Originally Published by Thought Catalog on www.ThoughtCatalog.com.

[jackfollmanwriter-blog]

The Aneurysm

Stark hotel room. Reidsville, Georgia. I pulled the drawer next to my bed open to take comfort in the Bible I knew that would be in there. God Bless The South for keeping things the way they should be. I never needed to read The Good Book more than at that moment.

Phil had escaped and he knew exactly who I was. Did he know where I was? That I didn’t know yet. I figured the rat shit motel room at the edge of town would be a decent place to hideout until my brain started convincing me that the lodge was right out of central casting for the place someone hiding from someone would duck into and I started to panic.

I didn’t necessarily believe those words I read on the faded print of the paper of The Bible. Words are just words to me, they can mean whatever they want to anyone, but the words I read on that night did their job, taking me back to my childhood bed where my mom read me scripture every night before I went to bed.

They called me The Aneurysm. I brought sudden, unexpected death, but with the caveat that I only brought it to those that deserved it. I was essentially a death row fixer. An undercover prisoner. The right people in the prison industrial complex got a hold of me when they had a prisoner they felt should have gotten the death penalty, but didn’t receive it, or someone they particularly wanted to do away with who was going to be under the protection of appeals for years.

They brought me into their prison. I pretended to be a guard, or an inmate who could get access to the targeted prisoner and then I would covertly do away with their target. Choking was my most-common way of death - stage it as an incident of choking on food, or a hanging with a bedsheet or underwear or something - suicide was always reliable. A former hitman who knew all the tricks of the trade, I knew just how to do it. Getting caught for my hitman gig was how they found me, told me I would be facing the lethal injection myself if I didn’t take the job and the rest is history.

I was seamless until I was assigned to Phil LaRoche in the Georgia State Pen. Phil murdered the husband of the woman he unsuccessfully tried to lure away from her beloved preacher husband. He likely would have been sentenced to death, but being the step-son of a politician helped Phil score a plea deal that landed him life without parole instead.

What Phil’s senator step-daddy didn’t foresee was me connecting with a warden in Phil’s prison who just happened to be a devout follower of the preacher he killed. I was Phil’s roommate within a few days of being locked up.

I pulled off my usual routine. The biggest guy in just about every yard, tattooed and powerfully-built, I made my presence known right away by kicking the shit out of Phil at lunch.

Once we were bunked up, I started with the psychological torture. I acted like I wanted to make love to Phil. I would score him real booze from the guards, get him liquored up and bond, but then wake him up with hard slaps on the side of the head. This usually got guys to break. Hang themselves before I even had to choke them out. I would lay out a nice, thick bedsheet and position the room in the right way so they could easily hang themselves. Beg them to do it.

The problem was Phil didn’t bite. Instead he woke me up in the middle of the night by biting me hard on the neck, drawing blood and sending me to the infirmary.

The last words I heard out of his mouth before I was escorted out of the cell are what had me twisted up in that motel room smoking Winstons and reading Bible verses like a zealot.

“I know exactly who you are fucker. Aneurysm. Aneurysm. Aneurysm. I’m out soon baby. I’ll find you!”

The wounds of Phil’s bites were easy to heal, the fear from hearing the news that he escaped from prison the night after he attacked me wasn’t.

The Atlanta news, hell, national news was glued to Phil’s story. He broke out of the Georgia pen and vanished into the country night without a trace. Was I the first person he would come looking for? No. The guy was going to find a way to get to El Salvador or some anonymous shithole?

That’s what I thought, until I didn’t. I got over it and went back to my normal life. I walked into the local grocery store to pick up my usual weekend supply of Evan Williams, sugar free Coke, ice and frozen dinners and my eye was caught by a young woman who was staring me down the whole way from my truck to the entrance.

The mental sound of a chiming slot machine announcing my sexual victory with the 21-year-old sweet thing was quickly snuffed out once she started talking.

“Sir,” she whispered quietly to catch my attention. “Follow me.”

I didn’t suck in a single breath as the young woman led me into the graveyard of a magazine section in the back of the grocery store. She shot a look back towards the distant entrance once we reached the sparse collection of Star and People magazines.

“I was behind you out of the road and I think I saw someone following you,” the young woman started in.

My manhood shrunk.

“There was this beat up S.U.V. behind you. I saw him take a picture of your license plate I think with a phone. The truck was hovering in the parking lot waiting for you to park. I noticed it because the guy gave me a really guilty look when I glanced at him taking the picture. It could be nothing, but I just thought you should know,” the young woman said.

The young woman started to walk off. I grabbed her by the shoulder. She glared at me.

“I don’t want anything to do with this. That all the info I can give you. Let go of me please.”

I let the young woman slip away into the produce section and felt my entire body radiate with the heat of fear. I scanned the store for the sight of Phil. Nothing. Just overweight housewives stocking up on unhealthy food in the middle of a weekday.

I forgot about the whiskey, the Hungry Mans and the sugarless Coke. I went straight for the Employees Only area and hustled through the stock area, ignoring the confused looks of a couple of stock boys and ducked out the back door of the place.

A sweltering summer day high noon greeted me at the back of the store. I looked deep into the thick woods behind a little employee parking lot. It seemed a lot safer than retreating back to my car and risking Phil seeing me walk through a wide open parking lot.

The woods were comfortable to me. It was far from the first time I had hid in the cover of the trees. I grew up running through the woods of Tennessee with my older brothers and neighborhood friends.

I couldn’t stay in those woods forever though. I needed somewhere to regroup. I knew a spot.  A little roadside motel on the edge of town. I had enough cash in my wallet to hold it down for the weekend and figure out my next move. I could sneak up on the place through the forest and hole up.

That’s how ended up in the musty room reading a Bible like I’m some kind of born again fool, sweating bullets and checking the window blinds every two minutes.

I swore I was just having one more peek out the blinds. After that, I was going to put that Bible back in the drawer, turn on ESPN, or something and wait for morning light to call my bosses to get me out of the pot of soup boiling in my head.

Okay, last look. I parted the blinds and looked out at the soft glow of the lights of the parking lot. Nothing new. A couple of P.O.S. cars, some scattered trash and a quiet, dead end street on the other side of the lot.

Wait...shit. I saw my car parked on the other side of the street which ran next to the motel parking lot - it’s dome light on, barely giving the thing some visibility from about 30 yards away. Fuck. The dome light went out. I saw the shadow of someone sitting in the driver’s seat. I heard the familiar sound of my door open and close.

I checked my pockets. Shit. I left my keys in the ignition, door unlocked.

Had Phil seen me looking through the blinds? No time to think. No time to do anything but head for the door. But no. The door faced the parking lot where Phil was likely strolling up. How did he know that I was there? Only so many shit rat motels in this small town. I should have bolted for the anonymity of Atlanta or Charlotte.

Too late. Time to run. I ran for the bathroom. There was a window in there above the sink that I could jump through. The phone rang as soon as I took off, almost as if it was announcing my flight.

Answer the phone or don’t answer the phone? Run or stay? I stopped in the room and gave it a second’s thought.

I went back to the phone and picked it up. I had left a message with my people up in D.C. Maybe they were calling me back with a plan of action. I picked up the phone…

“Hello….

“Uh, hi, sir,” the nervous voice I recognized as belonging to the pizza-faced teenager who checked me in was instantly recognizable. “I have a question, for you.”

I looked at the window. The blinds were still a little bit open. I stretched the cord of the phone and leaned over towards the window in hopes of closing that little gap. I stretched my arm out as far as I could, hoping to do it, but just couldn’t quite reach it.

“Sir, Mister, Um, I don’t know, uh, someone is here asking for you, can I give them your room number?” the check-in guy’s voice rang in my ear.

“Ah shit,” I squawked back on the line.

I had leaned too far over and fell to the floor, taking the blinds with me. The piece of shit plastic slats ripped off the top of the window and fell on top of me.

The cord of the phone must have fallen out of the phone. The line in my ear went dead. The room was silent again.

I worked my way to my feet, dusted myself off, and looked out the completely naked window. I saw a shadow standing in the middle of the parking lot. I only caught a glimpse, but I recognized the small, slacked stance, the too cool pose of Phil.

I dove back down to the ground. I crawled on my belly as fast as I could to the bathroom. I figured the bathroom window was my only chance.

I made it to the doorway of the bathroom before I heard the glass of the window break. I screamed out something ridiculous, regretted all my earlier decisions in life. Why did I do what I did? All the lives I ended over the years, even if those people deserved it. The last breaths and images of so many men I snuffed out ran through my head.

“Please,” the word dribbled out of my mouth.

I winced, readied for whatever was going to happen to me. I watched black shoes walk towards me in the carpet, couldn’t bare to look up. I closed my eyes.

“I need your help,” I heard Phil’s voice say.

I opened my eyes.

*

Phil explained how he tracked me down and it made sense. The town was tiny and he knew I would head to the grocery store at some point so he camped out in a parking lot down the street from the grocery store and waited for me to drive by. He was spot on about the one fleabag motel I would hide out in once he didn’t see me come out of the front of the grocery store and he watched the front desk kid punch in the room extension to figure out which room I was back at the motel.

Phil tracked me down, not to kill me, but because he wanted help and protection. Well, what he needed from me was probably going to get me killed, and he would have killed me had I said no, but he wasn’t some Terminator-like assassin on a machine to simply snuff me out.

For the second time in my life, I took on a job I shouldn’t have to save my life. I wonder if I will end up regretting this decision as much as the first? Fuck it. I had no choice.

*

Phil put me in the passenger seat of my own truck and talked as he drove off out of town and onto a road on the edge of town which seemed to wind endlessly next to a river. It reminded me of the kind of place where high school kids would sneak off to drink.

Phil stopped the truck in a little clearing centered by a burn bin and some stumps carved into chairs decorated with an endless supply of empty beer whiskey bottles. It looked like the setting of a nostalgic country music video.

I was led to a tree just outside of the party area and lashed to a steel bolt which stuck out of the thing.

“What the fuck is this?” I asked Phil while he lashed my wrists with thick rope.

Phil slapped me gently on the cheek.

“Sit tight, I’ll be back soon.”

What Phil meant by “soon,” was hours, until well after the sun down and I had rubbed my wrists raw trying to Houdini out of his lashing. I had finally given up when I saw the familiar headlights of my Ranger pull into the clearing. I could see two shadows in the car.

My heart dropped when I watched Phil walk over to the passenger seat of the truck and yank out a young woman. It took a few seconds, but I recognized the girl as the warden’s daughter. I had Facebook stalked him and admit to checking out a bit of her profile after noticing some clear bikini shots. I’m not made of stone, okay.

Phil dragged the girl over towards me kicking and screaming and clawing at him with her nails.

“No. No. No,” I barked at Phil.

The girl locked eyes with me. She already looked roughed up a bit. She gave me a look that was equal parts “help,” and equal parts “please don’t kill me.” I understood the mix of emotions, I’m not exactly the most warm and fuzzy-looking guy. She probably figured I was in it with Phil.

I looked away from the girl and saw a small metal baseball gripped in Phil’s hand and then spotted the bulge of a handgun in the pocket of his filthy Wranglers.

“Ah fuck no Phil. You can just shoot me now, because I’m not doing any shit like this,” I yelled as loud as I could, hoping someone might hear us through the woods.

“What shit? Doing what shit?” The girl screamed out even louder than I did.

Phil threw the girl at my feet and ripped the gun out of his pocket - pointed it right at my face.

“You know, this isn’t the first time someone has pointed a gun at my face,” I said, hoping my defiance could shake Phil’s confidence.

Phil smacked the gun up against my teeth. I felt my entire skull vibrate, felt a few teeth crack.

“What’s torturing and killing a fucking warden’s daughter gonna do Phil?” I asked with a bleeding mouth. You should just get your ass to Guatemala. I’ll help you.”

I heard a familiar sound. The distant whine of an outboard motor. A small one. The kind that pilots small little fishing boats you can only fit one or two people on. I looked over Phil’s shoulder at the calm river through the trees. I could see the faintest glimpse of one of those little metal boats skimming in our direction - saw a couple of good ol boys on the thing tipping back beers with fishing poles in their hands.

The fisherman were coming closer and closer, and based on the path of the river, they would soon be just about 20 yards away from us. Close enough to get an eye on what was happening. Maybe they had a cell phone to dial 911 or simply just spook Phil to stop? I just had to keep delaying Phil.

“Hurting a woman Phil, that’s really the kind of pussy you are?”

I got another hard smash across the face from Phil’s gun as soon as the last word of the sentence came out of my mouth. I saw the boat was almost to the closest point once the world came back into focus.

I screamed out as loud as I could to try and draw the attention of the fisherman.

“FUCK YOU PHIL. You’re a fucking pussy if that’s what you want to do!”

I made eyes at the young woman, trying to telepathically tell her to scream out as loud as she possibly could. She somehow knew. She let out a horrid screech. The fisherman were close enough to hear, I saw their gazes shift to us.

“Come on, Phil, let’s just get you out of here. We’re a few hours from the gulf. We’ll get a boat to get you to Cuba, they’ll never bring your ass back here,” I said each word as loud as I could.

Phil pressed the barrel of the gun against my head.

“I didn’t do anything wrong, and you’re going to kill me after you broke out of prison? And kill this girl?” I went on.

I shot a look over at the fisherman, I hoped my overly-literal statement would tip them off that this was prison escapee, Phil LaRoche who was going to kill us. I hoped they would call 911, even though it would probably take the cops hours to get out where we were. The fisherman were staring right at us. Phil didn’t seem to notice.

“Oh I’m going somewhere to disappear, but not before I do this,” Phil said to my face.

I looked to the fishermen again. My heart dropped to the bottom of my stomach. I saw both men aiming rifles in our direction.

Phil followed my eyes over the river.

“What the fuck do you keep looking at?” Phil asked.

The blasts hit dead perfect on in Phil’s chest and blew him back away from me. I let out the deepest breath of my life when I looked down at Phil and saw the life drain from his face in a couple of seconds - before he could even reach for his gun.

“Fuck you,” I muttered under my breath.

*

I’m now in a location I cannot name, but my exact locations isn’t that important. My state of mind is much more essential. Just know that it is in a good place.

My days of being The Aneurysm are long gone and I’m never going back. No way. I’m happy now. I’m just lucky that I saved up enough of a nest egg over the years during my work and had the warden’s daughter to vouch for me that I had nothing to do with what Phil tried to do to her.

It didn’t take long for the authorities to vet me.. I had met most of them over the years in my line of work. It was mostly smiles, handshakes, warm cups of coffee and apologies.

I tell people my story sometimes and I see them get physically ill. They wonder how I did it all those years and how I came out on the other end as a person who is relatively stable. I generally debate my stability with these people for a bit before moving on and explaining to them my nickname.

I just tell those folks that I meant no offense when I did my job, I brought no emotion, no thoughts, no feelings, I was just an aneurysm, I was there to end your life in an instant and for no particular personal reason. Needless to say, I haven’t made a lot of friends in my new hometown.

Originally published by Thought Catalog on www.ThoughtCatalog.com.

[jackfollmanwriter-blog]

Let’s Rob a Haunted House!

The Richards House was a staple of my childhood. A rotting Victorian perched atop a hill in the rolling hills of southeastern Washington; every citizen in my little hometown under the age of 12 knew the place was haunted, even though there wasn’t a shred of confirmed evidence suggesting so.

Packs of kids used to gather together on Huffys to ride up the dirt road on the edge of town that led up to the place just to stare at it and dare each other to walk up and knock on the door or go inside. I personally never saw anyone go further than the porch, but many adolescents in Uniontown, Washington will tell you they knew a kid who went in there and came back with scratches on his arm or said they saw blood stains all over the floor. This kid is likely the kid who also told everyone that Mountain Dew lowers your sperm count.

I dismissed the Richards House as some sad dying structure built by some old farmer who probably built the thing for his thriving family before his luck ran out and he had to abandon the place and look for a new pot of gold somewhere else. According to my dad, that was the story and all the little snot-nosed punks around town should just stay away from the place. In my dad’s humble opinion, the house was only haunted by a foundation that could probably give out and kill a kid at any moment.

The Richards House was an afterthought between the ages of 12 and 25, but the old place drafted back into my frontal lobe on my 26th birthday.

My best friend Ricky set the entire searing hot dumpster fire of a plan in motion when he showed up at my little birthday shindig uninvited, looking like an extra from The Walking Dead with sunken eyes, yellow skin, ratty hair and a frustrated look of hunger on his face. The guy kind of always looked like one of those Troll dolls with his big round eyes, coarse hair and stumpy stature, but he somehow found a way to make himself look like an even uglier pop culture character.

Ricky was one of those guys who you were permanently stuck with just because you were best friends when you were six. The two of us grew apart as we aged, but he always seemed to be able to hide in the back of my friend cavity like a sticky booger with a penchant for showing up at the very worst time.

With four of my “normal” college friends who had no idea who Ricky was and only a vague sense of my shitkicker upbringing in the wheat fields of southeastern Washington mixing around my dorm room with Jack and Cokes in plastic juice cups, this was one of those “worse times.” I caught a glimpse of each one of my “new” friends giving Ricky the look one gives right before they say “I’m going to call the cops.”

Ricky started into a manic frenzy of words, spit and thirsty eyes aimed at bottles of whiskey.

“Derek, you got this. I can help you,” Ricky said.

I heard one of my friends mutter “You know this guy?” from behind me.

I pulled Ricky out into the hallway and away from the judging eyes of my new friends.

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“I saw this thing on Facebook. You said you were going. Had the address.”

“Okay. Okay. What the fuck do you want?”

“I can help you stay in school?”

“What?”

Ricky took the upper hand with his last statement.

“How do you know that?” I asked.

“I ran into your mom at the grocery store. She said you lost your scholarship. Your grades are shit.”

Fuck. Ricky explained my three biggest problems at the moment in three quick sentences. My GPA dipped below a 3.0 in my second semester of college and resulted in the school pausing my academic scholarship. I had no money to pay for another semester of school without my scholarship and my mom was a raging gossip.

I checked the door to make sure none of my new friends had come out and could hear our conversation. I didn’t want them to know my struggle. They didn’t even know that I was on scholarship.

“Well thanks for driving all the way up to Spokane to tell me all this, but what exactly are you going to do about it? You look like you’ve been up for a week tweaking?”

Ricky wiped his nose and looked down at the filthy dorm hall floor.

“I uh. I uh. I uh. Have a quick, easy way for you to make a lotta money. Fast,” Ricky said.

I couldn’t believe I was going to hear Ricky out.

“You know the old Richards House, up on the hill, outside of town?”

My mind started driving down that dark, unpaved road off the highway which led through wheat fields for a mile before it started to snake up a rolling hill towards the dead shell of the grand house.

“These guys from way up in Vancouver are using it as a heroin stash house, big, big stash house. Asian guys. Like gang members. They go pick it up and fly it up to Canada with a helicopter in the middle of the night once a week in the middle of the night on Sunday nights. It just sits there in the house, untouched till then. Me and a guy down in town, Chad Thompson, you might know him as Chode Thompson, from high school...well, he dropped out freshman year, but Chad...me and Chad are gonna go in there, take just a little bit. Like fifty grand worth, sell it to these guys over in Montana where the Asians don’t go and split the cash. I thought you could use the cash. You want in?”

*

I couldn’t believe I was sitting in Ricky’s rusted Acura idling outside of our local gas station with one of those black ski masks with the eye and mouth holes cut out of it sweating through a pair of black sweatpants and a navy sweatshirt (we couldn’t find black in time). It was this, or drop out of school and start all over again, probably go to Tri-Cities junior college with my tail between my legs and take intro classes with all the losers I tried to leave behind.

Two of those losers (Ricky and Chad, or Chode) piled in the car with handfuls of snacks - pepperoni sticks, Pringles and Monster energy drinks. Ricky put the car in gear and cranked up some speed metal as we pulled out onto the highway.

“This is a robbery, not a road trip,” I screamed over the music, or at least tried to.

Ricky shook his head.

“Dude, you’re the one who dressed like the fuckin Hamburglar,” Ricky said.

I reached over and cranked the music down as we pulled onto the darkened road which led up to the Richards House.

“Probably not a good idea to announce our arrival with meth rock either.”

I hadn’t seen the Richards House in years, but it looked exactly the same as it always did when we pulled off to the side of the road in front of the wooden eyesore. It may have just been the intensity and nerves of the operation, but I felt a childish fear creep into the back of my skull when I looked up at the rotten wood of the house and saw it shining in the sliver of moonlight the spring crescent provided. Maybe it was the pepperoni stick mixed with the metallic taste of the Monster I had scrounged from Chad on the drive combined with the the grate of the metallic music, but I had a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach.

I followed Ricky and Chad up the steep walkway of loose dirt and long grass which led up to the Richards House with my eyes on the house the whole way until we were just a stone’s throw from the front steps. Something was off about the third-story crow’s nest of an attic. I swore I could see a light on, what looked like a lamp, shining through the thin sheet of white curtain which hung in front of the open window.

“There’s a light on up there,” I whispered up to Ricky and Chad.

Ricky and Chad stopped and looked up. The light was gone. I wished I hadn’t left that ski mask in the car because I was blushing.

The two guys I have already described multiple times as losers both turned around and just shook their heads at me.

“Lil Derek is gonna piss his pants,” Ricky said in a mocking tone. “Let’s just get this shit done and get the fuck out of here.”

I followed Ricky and Chad up the rickety stairs of the house and onto the porch. We stopped for a moment just in front of the door and Ricky stuck an ear up against one of the broken-out window spaces.

We game planned in the days leading up to the heist. Ricky had heard that the two stashes were in the top crow’s nest attic floor kept beneath a loose floor board and in the basement in the back of an old furnace. Being the fleetest of foot, I was going to run up to the crow’s nest, Chad was going to try the basement and Ricky was going to keep watch just inside the front door.

I took off up the grand staircase as soon as we stepped into the house, but immediately discovered something we didn’t calibrate for. There was no lighting in the house and we didn’t bring flashlights. Shocking, a soon-to-be potential college dropout and two guys with a combined 3.5 years of high school weren’t prepared.

I stopped in my tracks. Was about to speak up about the problem, but didn’t need to. Dim lights fired up all around the foyer area of the house just as I opened my mouth.

“What the fuck?” Ricky exclaimed from the base of the stairs.

Ricky looked up at me with all the confidence drained from his eyes.

“Maybe Chode got a light switch to work?” Ricky suggested, not sounding uber confident. “Go up and find that shit before things get weird.”

I followed Ricky’s orders because I didn’t know what else to do and traversed the last of the stairs, found myself on the second-story landing flanked by long, murky hallways on each side.

The lone light in each hallway flickered when I gave glances their way. I had no idea which path to take. They both just seemed to lead to dead-end hallways lined with doors.

Something pulled me left. Not a literal something...a feeling, an impulse. It was like a magnetic pole.

The hallway was tight. It smelled like rotten eggs, the taste of sulfur burned the back of my throat and my eyes. I wondered if someone maybe had a meth lab up there.

I tried the first door I came to. It let out a hideous screech when it raked across the wooden floor below me and revealed a nearly dark corridor. Past the door, I could see steep stairs which led up into complete darkness in the sliver of light the flicker in the hallway provided.

I started up the stairs. There was enough light from the hallway to where I thought I could make it up them and to the crow’s nest attic where I assumed they led.

Halfway up the stairs, the door shut at the bottom and the corridor went completely black. My heart stopped.

“Derek?”

I heard Ricky’s voice from down below.

“Dumb ass. You took out the light by shutting that door. Open it back up,” I barked down at him.

The door opened before I could finish. I saw Ricky standing below me, soaked in blood from head-to-toe.

“What the fuck?”

“Something was down there,” Ricky said with a pained whimper before he fell hard to the floor.

I saw a dark figure sprint by the open doorway at the bottom of the stairs. It went by so quickly I couldn’t make it out. All I could tell was it was bigger than me.

I paused for a moment until I heard whatever was out there stomp back towards the door.

I fled the stairs blind. I ran until I felt myself hit the top of the stairs and I stumbled up into the attic.

The attic reminded me of the little crow’s nest you would find on the top of old barns out in the country. It was about the size of an average bedroom, but circular. A bed in the middle, surrounded by dressers and a couple easy chairs, it harkened me back to the guest room at my grandma’s house.

I shouldn’t have wasted time taking in the room. I could hear footsteps coming up the stairs behind me. I turned and slammed the wooden door shut. I pushed a dresser across the entryway.

I spun around and inhaled the awful scent I smelled earlier down in the hall. It shot into my throat and almost knocked me off my feet.

Lying before me in the bed was the source of the smell. Sprawled across the white bedspread was a bleeding woman, naked from the waist down. She let out a horrible cry when we locked eyes.

“Did he send you up here?” The bleeding woman screamed. “Well you can go ahead and tell him it didn’t make it then.”

I followed the woman’s eyes to a pool of blood puddled between her legs. I looked only for a second. It was long enough for me to know what I saw.

“I...uh…

The woman cut me off by jumping off the bed. She grabbed a sharp piece of surgical equipment from a tray by the bed.

I panicked and ran towards a broken out window to my left. I dove out the window without even looking.

I opened up my eyes when I hit the grating shingles of the roof. I was out on the space of the roof that surrounded the attic. I scrambled to grab hold of a shingle to keep myself from falling off the slanted roof.

The roof gave out before I could steady myself or fall off the side. I felt my body gain momentary weightlessness as I tore through a sloppy nest of rotten wood and mortar.

I hit hard a floor and felt the wind knocked out of me. I gasped and wheezed, trying to take in air.

The room I had fallen into was much like the one in the attic - dated and musty with the feel of an old museum, but with a much more masculine touch. The large bed was framed in lacquered wood, rotten deer heads lined the walls and the room smelled like whiskey barf and a little hint of classic Old Spice deodorant - the kind in the red container.

I started to pick myself up off the ground, but stopped when I felt something hard smash against the back of my skull.

“Don’t piss your pants boy,” a gravely voice snarled from behind me.

The object on the back of my head adjusted enough to where I could tell it was the barrel of a pistol. My dumbfuck, backwoods buddies had put one to my head in high school playing grab ass on a drunken night so it wasn’t an alien sensation.

“Just like what you seen before, this is all about the luck of the trail greenhorn.”

Every fiber in my body wanted to turn around and see was making the old timey threats, but I knew better. There was enough whiskey just floating in the air to loosen up a trigger finger.

“What do you want?” The man asked in a flat tone.

“I don’t want anything. I just want to go home, safely,” I answered.

The man laughed right into my ear.

“Little boring, don’t you think?”

The gun pulled away from my skull and I sucked in a breath as if I had just come back up from the bottom of the deep end of a pool.

“I don’t care,” I reiterated.

The man grabbed my hair and pulled my face around. I looked up at a man with a face like a deflated leather balloon - dead, wrinkled and cinched - he looked pained.

“Well okay then,” the man started in again. “I got one of these dicklickers left in here.”

I watched the man spin the barrel of the gun and saw what looked to be a single bullet in the chamber circle around like a Tilt-A-Whirl with one carnival goer strapped into it.

“We’re going to play a game called lucky numbers boy,” the man said into my eyes with sour mash on his breath.

“I think it’s actually called Russian Roulette,” I shot back.

The man laughed a rotten laugh right in my face. His wind reminded me of the sickly aroma you get sometimes when you sneeze in the morning after a night of dealing with a really bad sinus infection - blood, pus and bacteria.

“Here goes,” the man announced before spinning the barrel.

The man clicked the barrel back into place. I took off for the door.

“Fucking shitheel,” the man yelled out like he was a drunk yelling at an underperforming athlete in a stadium.

I heard the clicking sound of a gun hammer snapping without a bullet before I made it to the door, ripped it open and tumbled through the doorway.

I opened my eyes in a dark hallway with the only light coming from a candle which was shining through an open door at the end of the corridor. Mother of fuck. What was I thinking getting myself into this shit? I couldn’t believe the dark lord who had led me into the most sinister of nightmares I felt was going to end my life at any moment was Ricky fucking Daniels. The guy probably couldn’t even wipe his asshole properly.

The sound of a boot smashing hard into the closed wooden door my back was pressed up against got me into gear. I crawled away as I heard drunken muttering come from the other side.

It took only a few seconds to get into the candle-lit room at the end of the hallway. Finally, a break. There was no one in the room. Just a short candle resting on a wooden table, a sewing machine and a few boxes covered with blankets.

I laid eyes on salvation on the other side of the room where I saw a broken out window pane which opened onto the ground-level porch. I ran at it as fast as I could and tried to jump through it once I got close enough, but no luck. I felt a hand wrap around my ankle when I was in midair and pull me down hard onto the floor.

I looked down at my foot and saw that the hand which had grabbed me came out of one of the boxes which was mostly covered by the blanket. I could see Chad encased in a thick bars in the section which wasn’t covered.

“You gotta help me out,” Chad said with his face pressed up against the thick bars which held him in the case which was about the size of a pet carrier you would use to transport a labrador retriever to the vet.

“Please man,” Chad pleaded on.

I cringed at Chad’s situation. The tiny confines of the cage had forced him into a little ball, he wore no clothes and almost every inch of his skin seemed to be covered with thin scratches. It looked like he had bathed in a pool of sticker bushes. Even his lips bleed when he begged.

“Come on Derek.”

I started to try and assess how I might be able to help Chad for a few seconds, but stopped my planning when I heard a chorus of three pained and panicked, male voices pipe up from the other cages which were still completely covered in blankets in the room.

“He’s coming. Oh God, he’s coming,” the voices whispered those words, or something a lot like them.

I gave Chad’s crying eyes one more look and thought the phrase, I’m sorry, but didn’t actually say it before climbing out the window.

I  scurried across the porch like a cat running out of the kitchen after being startled and made my way into the eight-foot stalks of wheat which surrounded the house.

I ran deep into the grain as long as I could. Until I had to stop and breathe.

A long spray of barf roared out of me when I finally stopped. I dropped my hands down onto my knees and collected myself in a little clearing in the grain stalks. I looked around with watering eyes and watched the tops of the stalks sway in the moonlight.

Safety. Life. Maybe not.

I heard a cluster of crunches behind me. The sound of feet crunching the dried-out bases of some wheat stalks.

I spun around and saw two beams from flashlights approach. They temporarily blinded me long enough for me not to move another muscle until I was face-to-face with my comrades who I had left behind. Ricky and Chad hacked loogies at me as soon as they came into focus.

The snot-laced piles of spit fell onto the tips of my boots and Ricky started laughing.

“Dude, you fucking bitched out in there,” Ricky said in between dorky laughs.

“Wha?”

“You ran off right when we were finding the shit,” Ricky went on.

“But we fucking got it,” Chad shouted out.

Chad lifted up a black plastic bag bulking with goods.

“Even more than we planned for,” Ricky said. “Got greedy. I bet we got a hundred large in that thing. But let’s get the fuck out of here. We followed your ass out here hoping you weren’t going to run off until you end up dead in the Snake River like your dumb ass frat boy butt buddies would.”

Ricky and Chad turned around and started to walk back in the direction of the house while I hung my head like a scalded dog. I worked through the pouting after a second though and followed them back into the thick of the crop.

“That house must have had some serious paint fumes or mold or something because I swore I saw you two bleeding all over the place and locked in cages like dogs. Thanks for running me down,” I said and finished with an awkward laugh.

Ricky and Chad stopped just before the wheat broke off into the rocky side yard of the house. They turned to me with stone faces glazed in sweat.

“Yeah, and you fucking left us,” Ricky said.

Ricky spat on the ground and walked off into the yard with Chad following.

“Wait. Hold up.”

I took off after Ricky and Chad but lost track of them as soon as I got out of the wheat.

“I…

I clammed up in the clearing. Ricky and Chad were nowhere to be seen.

The faint sound of painful moaning picked up on the wind. I followed it over to the house. It seemed to be broadcasting from the open main floor window I had jumped out of.

The single candle looked to still be lit in that room. I thought I could see the shadow of someone standing in there next to it.

I made a move south, towards the road where we parked the car. I was done with the madness. The headfuck of a maze. I didn’t care if the entire Yakuza gang was waiting for me back at the car.

Nothing waited for me at the car except for skid marks in the dirt. Based on the patterns the tires left, Ricky drove out of there in quite a hurry.

I walked the road to the highway alone then walked the highway to my parents’ house alone. I texted and called Ricky multiple times on the journey, but never heard back.

*

It has been three weeks now and I still haven’t been able to get a hold of Ricky, or Chad. I checked in with Ricky’s parents and they said they hadn’t seen him in a while, but weren’t worried. They said he went off the grid for weeks at a time, all the time. I also think they didn’t care. Their lives would be easier if he just never came back.

I had to drop out of school, but didn’t retreat all the way to my hometown yet. I moved about 30 minutes away, but came back to do laundry sometimes and check in with the folks.

My trips are usually pretty non-eventful, but something has been haunting me ever since the last time I pulled out of my parents’ driveway after dinner.

I noticed something was pinned beneath my windshield wiper when I walked out to my car. I walked around and pulled it off. It was a sloppy, handwritten note on a piece of paper that read:

You left us, but we’ll see you again soon enough.

Originally published by Thought Catalog on www.ThoughtCatalog.com.

[jackfollmanwriter-blog]

Retirement Home

6834 Miller Ave.

I dreaded each address which sounded even vaguely familiar when the order came in. I always hoped, prayed, the other delivery driver would walk through the door, "see" the ticket before me and head out on his way never the wiser.

I had no choice this time. My manager had taken the call - his lazy eye locked on me throughout the transaction. No ignorance could be feigned. I was heading to the western edge of town with six cooling pepperoni and anchovy pizzas in my 1994 Chevy Blazer. Poor decision making generally leads to a lack of options – in the grand and the day-to-day scheme of things.

I need to breakaway from the story for a few moments to offer some very important life lessons to you youngsters out there. If you are fairly bright kid who grows up in a small town in Minnesota, who is eventually voted "Most Likely to Succeed" in their high school yearbook, please do not go to Hollywood to "make it as an actor," never even book a lowly commercial in 10 years of work, and come back with your tail between your legs to get your high school summer job as a pizza delivery boy back. Just kill yourself or develop a drug problem or something. At least you will lower the bar.

I particularly don't recommend taking a job delivery pizzas. Your daily life will consist of receiving disappointed looks from former acquaintances over the smell of melting cheese. Seriously, get into heroin or something.

6834 Miller. 6834 Miller. I spent the seven-minute drive to my location wondering why the address was familiar. I definitely had not delivered a pizza there yet, but it stuck in my brain for some reason.

Oh God, I hoped it wasn't a party. Parties were the worst. Not only did the larger number of people raise the likelihood of me getting recognized, I had already delivered to a few parties of old friends who didn't even know I was back in town yet. Didn't know the depressing story they had to catch up on in the doorway of the home they purchased with a real job as they stood beside the spouse they obtained by living a normal life that didn't include acting classes and sad headshots. At least the tips were usually pretty good. The pizza delivery equivalent of pity fucks in the form of crumpled tens and fives.

6834 Miller Avenue was very much not home to a party. The familiar site of the retirement home on the edge of town greeted me when I pulled into its expansive parking lot. I remember they made us visit the place once a year in middle school and high school as if seeing a bunch of teenagers with bad attitudes and sagging pants was exactly what was going to cheer up a bunch of members of the Greatest Generation.

I remembered the stale, stinging smell of disinfectant that seemed to radiate in and out of the place when I walked up to the front desk, unable to see past the stack of six pizzas resting in my arms.

"HEY!" A powerful voice shook me as I approached.

I jumped in fright, the tower of boxes wobbled in my arms. I fell to one knee like a boxer on the verge of defeat.

"Jesus Christ," I muttered.

"Who is Jesus?" I crackly voice shot out from behind the pizza boxes in front of my face.

I set the boxes down for a moment to catch myself. Almost jumped when I saw what was in front of me – a small, bearded lady. I'm not describing her in that way to be mean. Even if her unnecessary shout caused me to nearly drop six scalding-hot pizzas onto my face. She was literally just a lady with a beard.  Her other features included, a rather small hatchet-shaped head topped with the same bowl-cut hairstyle I rocked in second grade and small, dark eyes, which were far too close to each other. The beard actually quickly kind of became an afterthought.

"Hi.. I started in, trying to not have my eyes on linger upon the long, curly hairs growing out of the bottom of her chin which danced up and down her jawline. "I...

"Why are you here?" She barked in my face before I could get another word out.

I held in the most-tempting of comments about how it couldn't have been more clear why I was there since I was wearing a bright red Frontier Pizza polo shirt and carrying a handful of pizzas. Just answered back super-condescendingly.

"Delivering pizzas. Suite seven."

"HE IS NOT SUPPOSED TO DO THAT," the woman shot back into my face, a tickle of loose saliva grazing my nose.

"Uhhhhhhh."

"That is it. Take it to him," the woman screamed in my face, stuck a sharp-nailed finger in the direction of a dark hallway.

I couldn't have been happier to be rid of the lady before I realized she was tailing me into the hallway, always remaining about five yards behind me while I combed the nearly-dark hallways scanning the doors for the number seven.

I shook off the perpetual vision of her slinking around in the corner of my eye and focused on the numbers... 1-2-3-4. Besides, the sights I was taking in through the open doors of the rooms were far worse than that of the tiny woman and her chin strap beard.

In my journey to the hallway, I received two full frontals – one male, one female – don't know which one  was worse – a view of a bedpan being filled and soiled sheets drifting in the breeze of one doorway.

5-6. Thank God. I was at number seven.

"I can smell it already," a friendly voice drifted out room 7, serving as a comforting beacon of light in a dark sea of disturbing waves.

"Frontier Pizza," I announced before stepping into the doorway, the tower of pizzas stacked up in front of my face.

"Come on in," I followed the voice into a room which looked like a mix between a hospital room and a dorm room. "I thought it was Cowboy Pizza though?"

I followed the voice to the face of a rosy, elderly man. He smiled at me from behind a short gray beard, thick Buddy Holly glasses which would have made him look like a hipster were he young and short gray hair parted to the side. He looked a lot like the old man from the movie Up, but with a beard and without any touch of the crotchety nature so many old men succumb too.

I walked the pizzas over to a small desk next to the bed which the old man sat on the foot of.

"Uhhh, our signature pizza is the cowboy pizza, but we have been called Frontier Pizza for as long as I can remember. But, I just started working there like a month ago, so who knows?"

"Ah a green horn, eh?" The old man retorted with glee.

"Sure," I agreed even though I didn't know what that meant.

The old man gave the pizza boxes a long, heavy stare. I noticed the awful woman from the front desk was standing in the doorway, giving me a similar stare.

"You aren't allowed to order food delivered here on any day other than Saturday George," the woman scolded him, but he seemed to pay it no mind.

"Ah hell, it is Saturday," George said with his eyes closed behind his glasses.

"It's Tuesday, George. You know that."

George shakes his head, messing up his neat hair just a touch. He looked up at me and gave a wink of a wrinkled eye.

"Well, how much do I owe you for the Tuesday special?" George asked while he eyes scanned my chest for a name upon my company shirt. "Tom-b-ston-e?"

George was trying to sound out the name printed on my shirt in the place a simple name would usually be but instead read Tombstone.

"Is that Tom-b-ston-e? Is that Filipino? Or is that Tom B. Stone? As in your full name?"

I gave a little laugh which I hoped didn't offend.

"Actually it's Tombstone. The company prints whatever your favorite Western movie is on your shirt instead of your name, I don't know why. I guess they think it's cute"

"Is Tombstone your favorite Western? I've never actually seen it. I prefer Shane myself"

"That's enough George," the awful woman's voice cut through the saccharine sweet drawel of George."What's the price young man?"

"Seventy-nine, eighty-six," I announced, hoping George actually had that much money.

"But, do you like the film, Tombstone, though?" George asked while he dug deep into his trouser pocket.

I chuckled.

"I've never actually seen it, or any other Western. They just gave me this shirt. It belonged to the guy I replaced."

My answer was interrupted by George handing me what appeared to be a collection of bills wrapped in a hundred.

"Oh, thank you, thank you," I said, starting to walk to the doorway as fast as I could, feeling the awful woman's eyes burning into me.

I counted the money as soon as I got back into my car.

100. 20. 10. 5 and a few crumpled ones. Whoa.

I was so distracted by the green shine of the money, I didn't notice the note tucked into the wad of bills until it fell into my lap.

I picked up the little scrap of paper, could barely read the blue, handwritten note.

You have to help me. This place is a death trap. No one believes me. Something is very wrong here. Please call me. I can explain. 218-360-3116.

Kindly, George

I read the note a few times before I literally jumped up out of my seat.

I looked through the frosty glass of the window on the passenger's side to see the awful front desk woman glaring at me.  She pounded on the glass again and pointed in the direction of the exit of the parking lot, back onto the lonely highway.

I tucked the bills into my wallet, let the note slip down onto the dirty floor.

*

Working Saturdays was always the worst. Not only was I eliminating myself from the potential of any kind of socialization for the week, the orders never stopped coming in and a huge percentage of them were the parties I dreaded delivering to. I had already dropped eight pizzas off at my high school vice principal's daughter's birthday party and had to tell the sad story of my adult life to someone while I saw the glint of disappointment appear in their eyes.

If I had made up the story of my acting failure, the early passing of my mother and my movement back to northern Minnesota as a tactic to milk more tips out of customers, I probably could have been defined as a bad person, but it was all coincidence.

I clung hard to the fifty-dollar tip when I got back into my car and remembered I had a second order to deliver. A small pepperoni and anchovy in the backseat, stinking up my car.

I double-checked the address on the ticket for the last pizza.

6834 Miller Ave. #7

It took a few seconds, but I remembered the address. It was the retirement home and room #7 belonged to George.

I spent the few minute drive over to the highway dreading having to see that awful woman at the front desk again, but strangely excited to see George. Sadly, my exchange with him the week before I had been one of the most-enjoyable social exchanges I had experienced in quite a while.  Plus, he tipped me like 40 percent.

I was relieved to see a new woman working the front desk when I walked in with the small pizza tucked into my arms.

Obese with rosy cheeks and a head of curly blonde hair, she greeted me with an unexpected smile that wasn't so unexpected when I saw her name tag identified her as "Bev." No way a woman named Bev could ever mean, right?

"Ummmmmmm, for me?" She asked playfully, punctuated with a giggle.

I gave a courtesy laugh.

"It's for George, in seven."

"Ah, should have known. I can smell the anchovies. Go right ahead."

The walk to George's room was just as dark and ominous as it was before. It kind of reminded me of the waiting/staging area before a darker ride at Disneyland or some kind of theme park. A mysterious wind seemed to trickle through the hallway even though I didn't see a single door or window, the low roar of the heater growled above from the rafters and the light was so dim it served almost as more of a trick on your eyes than lighting.

George was waiting for me on the foot of his bed when I arrived in his doorway. His eyes already locked in my direction before I could step in.

"Tombstone," he announced my arrival with glee.

"Hi there," I replied and set the pizza down on the table across from his bed.

"Now that's a Saturday night special," George went on. "You like Lynyrd Skynyrd?"

"Yeah, they're great," the sorrowful opening slide guitar riff of Tuesday's Gone played in my head. "It's just ten-twenty-three tonight."

George shot a cautious look over at the empty doorway.

"Oh yeah, last time I had a little party for everyone around here. Hardly even got myself a slice, so many people showed up to get their cut," George explained while the line "everybody's got their cups but they aint chipped in" played in my head.

It took George a while to pull out a stiff 20 from a thin leather wallet which looked homemade. He dropped his head next to mine when he slipped the bill over to me.

"Did you get my note?" He whispered, the hairs of his beard tickling my cheek.

The note? Oh shit. I forgot all about the note. Like it was a text from a friend I forgot to return. "Oh yeah, yeah. I got it. What's it exactly about?" I asked back, assuming it was something about the landmine of a lady who worked the front desk the last time I was there.  

"Exactly what is standing in the doorway," George whispered back.

My eyes shot over to the doorway, but were distracted before they could get there. A hazy mist slunk into the room like one of those strangers in the night Steve Perry sang about. Crouched in the back of the cloud of fog, clutching what I recognized as a Nambu pistol due to my love of military video games, was a young Asian man clad tightly in wet, forest green military garb and a soft green hat.

"I wasn't always a good man," George's words were wet against my ear, the room had grown incredibly hot. "They mostly come at night."

My eyes hadn't left the Japanese soldier who combed the entryway of the room like it was thick jungle. He didn't appear to see us, giving me ample time to further analyze his body. A further scan revealed the truly gruesome.

Dangling down from the young soldier's lower torso was a loose tangle of intestine. He occasionally reached down at it to try and collect it, but was always unsuccessful.

Trying to avoid looking at the gore, I looked to the young man's eyes and saw a kind of fear I had never laid my eyes upon. There was a tragic knowing and pain plastered upon the young man's wet eyes. He wiped away the moisture and steadied his gun as he approached the bed.

"I killed him," George's words slipped into my ear before they were interrupted by shouts from the young man.

"Akuma ga anata o mitsukerudeshou. Itsuka anata wa kono itami o shitte irudaroushi, wareware wa futatabi au yoteidesu."   

"I will never know what that means, but it will haunt me in my dreams till they take me out of this place in a coffin," George lamented.

The soldier had made his way through the hot fog, right next to us. My Frontier Pizza shirt clung to my heaving chest, coated in sweat. He leaned forward and screamed right into my ear.

"Anata mo shinde shimaimasu."

My body was stiff, frozen in shock. I felt the wind of the young soldier's hot breath on the skin of my scalp left naked by the part of my hair.

Then it was all gone. I looked over past George's gray head of hair to see no Japanese soldier pointing a gun at us, no fog billowing in like we were in a small town haunted house attraction around Halloween, no smell of past meals rotted between unbrushed teeth upon my neck. Just me and George, awkwardly stuck together at the foot of his bed.

"I found out what that last one means," George broke through the fresh silence.

"What?"

"The last thing he always says before he goes away. I heard the phrase so many times, I remembered it and asked Tokinari, the Japanese fellow in here, what it means. He said, you will die too. That's what it means."

"Oh," I said and started to pull my head away from George's.

George locked eyes with mine once our faces were a comfortable distance away from each other's.

"I killed that boy in Okinawa, but I didn't have to. We were done there. We were done. I walking back to my group and that little bastard ran right across my path. I tried to act like I didn't see him at first, we could each go our own way, back to our wives and kids, but he came at me. His gun must have been empty, because he tried to wrestle me. I had to rip at him with my knife. My muscles still have the memory of the tearing, the ripping. My heart still knows the race of seeing his knife flail wildly right past my vision until he stopped moving. I can still feel that hot blood seeping onto me. Have you ever felt hot, blood? I hope not."

George suddenly looked exhausted. His muscles slacked, his hair mussed, his wrinkled skin coated with a thin, glimmering coat of sweat, his eyes glued to the floor. He looked like he had truly just relieved that moment right there in his depressing little room at the end of the hallway with a random pizza delivery guy who just wanted the nine dollar and change tip he received.

It took me a few moments to realize we were holding hands.

*

Sleep became a challenge. I couldn't get the images, the sounds, the smells of George's room that night out of my head. However, the longer my sleepless nights went on, the more I thought the vision of the Japanese soldier was actually the "It's just a cat" scare of my interaction with George. The deeper horror lied in the firm grip George placed upon my elbow, the dejected look in his eyes when I told him I was leaving, the pleads when he begged to me to stay. The deep feeling of guilt in my gut which sank in once I sat down in my car. The fact it still had yet to leave in weeks.

Exactly what was more troublesome become irrelevant once I decided something simple. I would not go back to the retirement home for a delivery, someone else could handle that, or if I had to, I would just drop the pizza off at the front desk.

*

The days and weeks went by with no deliveries to that god forsaken old folk's home at the edge of the town. Even driving by it a few times on other deliveries sent shivers down my spine. I tried to not look at it anymore.

The thawing Minnesota Spring had done its good by boosting my mood as much as it probably could. I had moved back from the sunny Winter skies of California in the dead of Winter and it seemed to make my unmagical mystery tour of shame of delivering pizzas to disappointed faces that much worse. Now, the coming Summer sun had sucked the snow off of the trees and created a shining world of beauty accompanied by a promotion to assistant manager at Frontier Pizza. The promotion meant I would be done delivering pizzas before the end of summer, once they hired a replacement.

Other then when I occasionally drove by the home, I never really thought about the place, George or what happened in his room that night. Sleep started to come back much easier and I had never received a delivery request to get out there since.

3911 South Lake Drive

I took comfort in not knowing addresses. It usually meant there was a low likelihood of me knowing the home's inhabitants in any sort of  way. I could just be the shaggy-haired pizza guy they thought nothing about. Not the shaggy-haired pizza guy they felt sorry for or were disappointed in.

The house looked like the typical one which would belong to your grandma. Well-manicured, little front yard with rose bushes, a one car driveway with an old Cadillac in it and a small brick house with a wreath stuck to the white-painted front door even though it wasn't Christmas time.

I knocked on the door with a doorknocker which looked exactly like a giant version the Scottie Dog game piece from Monopoly.

Right on cue, steps I could tell were feeble approached from the other side of the door. They sounded like an injured horse clomping off of a race track.

I jumped back with the small pizza box cradled in my hand and almost dropped it into the green yard behind me.

George was at the door. I could smell the rich and savory aroma of the anchovies slow dancing with the hot burn of the pepperoni in the back of my car the entire drive over. I should have known.

"Tombstone, I was hoping it would be you," he said with a Cheshire cat grin and waved me in.

Fear. Hesitation. Fear. Indecision. Weakness. I could never tell people no. My teenage, homophobic friends in high school always joked that if a gay man got into my bed and wanted to have sex with me, I would do it simply because I was incapable of telling other people no.

They were right. I followed George's direction into the cozy living room of the house, my nostrils immediately attacked by the scent of ribbon candy and ointment.

"I need to explain something Tombstone. By the way, I did watch the movie. Horribly violent. I can only really handle Saving Private Ryan for that stuff. But have a seat."

An unrecognizable smell started to overtake the scent of the old lady candy, Ben-Gay and congealing pizza. Tickling my nose to the point where I felt I might sneeze, I couldn't could put my mental finger down anywhere near what it might be, other than that it was overwhelmingly intense. Burnt pork maybe?

"I'm sorry George, I would love to help you, but my own life is too heavy for anything like this right now. I have my own issues. The only thing I need from you is twelve-ninety-one for this pizza and you don't even have to tip if you promise to just leave me alone. "

George's entire body suddenly slacked like a dog's would after you discovered they went through the trash and spread it all throughout the kitchen when you got home. He went from sky high, to gopher hole low in the blink of an eye.

Guilt. Self-loathing.

"That's okay. Can you bring the pizza into the kitchen? George asked. "I left my wallet in there."

I hated myself for feeling like I needed to follow George into the kitchen. I should have just set the pizza on the floor, demanded the money in the living room or simply took the pizza back, said it was a prank delivery when I got back to restaurant. Ate that fucking pizza in old man spite. Choking down anchovies so salty they puffed up my fingers until they felt like they were going to burst around the edges of my high school state tennis championship ring.

Note to self: Stop wearing high school sports ring if you don't want to look like some kind of tragic, small town figure.

Instead, I followed George through the tight little living room with it's stiff furniture and well-oiled wood coffee table and into the kitchen – that aroma which greeted me just moments before growing more into a stench. It smelled more like someone was grilling a fat turd to me now, almost unbearable as I neared the entrance to the kitchen.

I laid eyes upon the source of the smell as soon as I walked into the kitchen.

Sticking out of the open oven which was radiating thick heat from across the room, was the lower two-thirds of a woman in a housedress – her head plunged deep into the red-hot oven. I fought back vomit and looked to George who had tears trickling down his eyes, looking like a college basketball senior on the losing end of an NCAA Tournament game, a manly cry.

"I wasn't there for her," the words dribbled out of George's lips which were fat with sorrow.

"Oh fuck this."

I swiftly whipped around to run back out the door. Halted myself before I even took another step.

Standing in the living room, directly between me and the front door was a little girl, stuffed rabbit, tucked underneath her arm, dressed in her Sunday best, pink dress and floppy hat.

She looked up at me with eyes bloodshot with childish confusion.

"What's that smell?"

I bit down hard upon my lower lip.

"It's okay darlin," George hollered over at the little girl like he was a cop trying to get control of a situation. "Just stay in the living room."

George drew his eyes over to me.

"You see why I need your help?" They won't leave me alone. I know I didn't do things right the first time around, but I don't deserve this nightmare," George explained to me.

George looked back at the corpse roasting in the open oven. Slowly wiped his palm over his mouth.

"I loved her Tombstone, but she couldn't be helped. I tried everything with her. Counseling, facilities, long trips to the desert, Mexico, the woman was gone, but they blamed me and I ran."

I fought back the vomit again, the fragrance rising in the room. Ignored the sounds of the girl now crying behind me. Watched George stagger over to the torso sticking out of the oven.

It was all a nightmare. It was all someone else's nightmare. I was a bystander. An innocent one at that.

"I'm sorry bubby. The bad part's over now," I heard George whisper from over by the oven before he cranked the heat off.

I watched a few of his tears fall down upon the body until the body was gone and those tears fell onto the floor and the sounds of crying coming from behind me faded into the ether as well.

I spotted a 20 sitting on the kitchen table a few steps in front of me. Tossed the pizza down next to the bill, snatched up the 20 and ran for the front door with George calling out pleads I paid no mind.

I could still hear George's wails through the wall when I ran out to my car. The smell from the kitchen clung to my the hairs in my nostrils, the back of my throat, my tongue for the next three meals.

*

"Last Dance with Mary Jane," my pizza chef Anthony sang the tune off key when he slid over a thick stack of cardboard pizza boxes across the counter to me. "Don't fuck this one up or their gonna realize they made a huge mistake," he added with a stoned cackle.

"Thanks, man."

This order of five pizzas was the last order I was ever going to deliver. It was 10:43 p.m. on the last day of August and our replacement delivery driver, who would report directly to me, was starting the next day. I was well on my way to climbing the corporate ladder of the business of pizza in rural, Northern Minnesota and even if I am being sarcastic, it did feel good to be good at something, finally.

Once I dropped off these pizzas at some house that was likely having some kind of party, given it was just before closing time on a Saturday. The address I didn't recognize, combined with the likelihood of a party and the 25 slices of pepperoni I snacked on for a dinner left my stomach uneasy during the drive - balancing out the sweetness of the coming relief of graduating from pizza delivery U.

The balance in my stomach began to tilt in the direction of nausea when the directions I followed led me to Powers Road. A dark, twisting path of rocky asphalt which snaked alongside a river lined with trees. There were only a few houses out here and each and every one of them was probably some kind of meth house. Closing out my career with edgy tweakers was like being a closer in baseball and having Barry Bonds be the last batter you have to face in the bottom of the ninth with two outs and the bases juiced.

A distant memory started to creep into my brain as I drove the long curves of the river with the clear summer moon shining off the chippy water like a fading hologram – I had been on this road many times as a very young kid. It led to a park I hadn't been to in ages. A park I honestly think most of the town forgot about after they built a brand spanking new park right in the middle of town with a European-inspired fountain, expensive play area and concert stage for those comfortable with keeping their rock n roll dreams on the ground to perform on.

Supervisor Park. That was the name of it. It even had a uninspired, non-memorable name.

I recognized the place when I left the rocky asphalt of the road and pulled off onto the sloppy gravel of a large, vacant parking lot.

I started to hope this was some kind of prank by chef Anthony, get me to drive out to the deserted park at the edge of town in the dark for an order for no one, but the five pizzas cooling in my backseat told me otherwise. It was unlikely he would drop 60 dollars worth of goods on a simply taking the shit out of me.

The park looked exactly the same as I remembered it – tucked a little bit out into the river, all it had was a wooden deck which stretched out just to the edge of the water, a couple of basketball hoops with broken backboards, a muddy baseball diamond, a BBQ area littered with small town gang graffiti and a Pepsi machine - glowing blue in the night. I soaked in the scene and put the car into gear until an unfortunate second glance at the deck on the river put my car back in park.

Someone was out there – the burning end of an active cigarette burning through the dark like a single bright star in a black sky.

"Shit," my entire body deflated when the word came out of my mouth.

I climbed out of the car, went to the backseat and wrangled the pizza boxes.

There was about 50 yards of open crab grass, blue in the moonlight, between me and the smoking stranger. I started on my way, my head cocked to the side of the cardboard hoping a clear vision of my customer would come into focus soon.

"Hey, hey," I called out in the smoking stranger's direction. "Did you order pizza?"

The stranger was still hazy. He tossed his smoke into the river and walked off through a cluster of trees next to the deck.

"Hey," I yelled out once more, trying to sound tough, failing miserably. "Fuck."

Just go back to the car. Drive away. Stop by an ATM. Get 60 out and bring it back. Take the pizzas home. Eat the shit out of them. Just go. My heart said.

My brain told me that 60 dollars was nearly two shifts of work and if some angry customer called up Frontier saying I fucked up my last delivery, maybe I would lose my coming promotion, maybe I would be a pizza delivery guy forever. Shit, maybe they would fire me. Had I worked there long enough to collect unemployment?

These thoughts tangoed in my head until I was at the splintered wood of the river deck, listening to the roar of the river, searching in the near darkness for the path the smoking man had taken.

I was shocked to see the path was paved and lit by towering lamps, topped with big, fat, round soft yellow bulbs. They lined the cement path which cut through the woods next to the river before it led to a clearing about 20 yards through the woods.

At the other end of the path, still smoking a cigarette, I saw the man. His features still obscured in the cover of dark. He waved to me..

"Frontier Pizza?" He called out to me through the woods.

Relief dripping into my blood like a slow IV, I made my way through the path, enjoying the charming lighting as much as I could. If I ever secured a date in this dead dog shit of a town, maybe I would take her here some night.

It took about 30 seconds of brisk walking to reach the man. He greeted me with a younger face than I expected, looking just a little bit older than me, but much more masculine and much better dressed. He wore a black pea coat, a well-manicured mustache which would have made the hipsters down in Minneapolis grovel at his feet and a nice pair of leather shoes.

"Yeah, I have your pizzas," I announced with the last of the breath in my lungs.

He greeted me with a thick puff of hard smoke. The guy must have smoked the non-filters I recognized from some of my old actor friends who tried to be kitschy with their death stick back in LA.

"Sorry, I left my wallet over here."

The man led me away from the trail over to another public gathering place I remembered not from my childhood, but from the past few months, when I would come to visit the resting places of my mother.

I had forgot the town graveyard was just through the woods from Supervisor Park. The man and I walked through the lines of gravestones, rotting flowers and unlit candles which comprised the rest of the population of the place on a Saturday night at 11.

The smell of the man's heavy smoke filtered through my body. A new scent developed which made the wind which whipped off the cold river behind us that much more frigid. Anchovies and pepperoni. I hadn't noticed it in the car.

I stopped, but it didn't matter, the man had already stopped as well, turned to me and grabbed the pizzas.

I looked down to see my mom's grave resting next to my Converses. I had been at her grave just a few days before, the peonies I left still there, wilting in the cold of the night.

The man had set the pizzas down on the ground next to the grave. He lit the candles which resting upon her headstone with the end of his cigarette. Handed me a 100 dollar bill.

Our eyes locked. I held the 100 limply, I didn't even care about the 40-dollar tip.

He broke the tension with a smile, flashing impeccably white teeth. He threw a flick of the chin down at the gravestone at our feet, the candlelight staging the names of my mother like it was on a marquee at a downtown theater.

"Alas, poor Yorick. I knew her, Horatio."

Before I could utter a sound, the man was gone. His smoke remained. The pizzas on the ground remained. The 100 dollar bill he handed me remained, flapping in the wind in my hand. The candles lit on my mom's headstones remained.

Another light I had yet to notice also remained.

I looked over to the small gravel parking lot of the graveyard and saw a well-dated Cadillac purring in an idle, the sound of southern rock trickling out of the vehicle.

I opened my mouth to call over at the car, but got cut off by the Cadillac tearing the gravel below its tires as it reversed out of the parking lot. I watched it ead back out onto the dark road.

A 100 dollar bill never felt worse in my hand. Hot pizza never smelled worse. My brain was a mush of unclear thoughts, emotions and fears. For some reason the only thing it seemed to be able to process was the first two lines of the song which had been playing from the car's stereo.

Two feet they come a creepin'

Like a black cat do.

*

Wednesday nights were always slowest on the frontier of pizza. We usually only got the few cops who came in for the pizza buffet and some loose middle schoolers who just bought Mountain Dews, got five refills and chatted on the benches.

I used to hate Wednesday nights, my love of laziness outweighed by a love of getting tips, but since I upgraded to my cushy assistant manager's salary, I no longer paid tips any mind. I instead paid game seven of the NBA Finals mind on the TV at the back of the dining area. The Warriors and Cavaliers were locked in a heated battle just above some 14-year-olds with bad parents who were sucking down gallons of soda for a $1.25 which would later equate to about $1,250 in dentist bills.

You can always tell the out of towners when they walk in. Besides the fact I can recognize just about anyone who walks in for one reason or another, the out of towners always seem to have their presence of anxiety and haste. I don't like serving them. They always have special requests – extra packets of parmesan or red pepper, no grease or asking if we have a "vegan" pizza.

This woman appeared as if she would be no different when she opened our conversation with the phrase: "I would like to speak with the manager."

"That's me," I hate to admit it sounded great to say that for the first time.

The woman's big city tension slacked as soon as she heard my answer. It was as if someone had pulled the rubber bands off the back of her head which had been pulling her features into an uncomfortable grimace.

"Oh," her face blushed like a shy girl's who had just been asked to slow dance in a middle school cafeteria.

"This is going to sound really strange," she pressed on through the awkwardness. "Is there anyone who can cover for you for the rest of the night?"

I returned her shy blush. Looked back up at the TV.

"I'm sorry ma'am, but I can't leave work. Plus, I have a girlfriend," I lied, instantly regretted it.

She machine gunned out a forced laugh.

"Oh don't worry about that hot stuff. You might not believe this, but we are related. So, no, I'm not looking for anything like that and you might want to hand over the reigns of this place to your co-worker for the rest of the night, because I don't think he is going to make it through the night."

"Who is he?" I asked.

*

The woman answered questions like a college football coach in a post-game press conference - dodging spilling any kind of information or opinions throughout my line of questions which I shot out rapid fire. Though, keeping my mouth and brain in fine-tuned unison was probably actually my own strategy to force myself to not thinking about how I was riding in a car with a complete stranger, going down the dark highway which led north, to Canada.

I had to say, the woman did hold a striking resemblance to my family. Dark haired and mousy with small features, ears that stuck out just a little bit too much and a pronounced overbite, she could have passed for my deceased mother, risen from the grave and clad in one of her hand-picked, pastel outfits from the ladies section of Kohl's.

My fears started to tingle when I saw the lights of the county hospital crest the horizon of the highway, shining in the warm darkness of the summer night. I hadn't been to the place since my mother passed away. I had hoped to never return, but it was assuredly our destination since the only information the woman had given me was that some mystery man of a relative was counting down the final minutes of his live, much in the way the teams in that NBA Finals game I wished I was still watching were.

The woman revealed no information other than that her name was Gabby when we walked briskly into the hospital where she seemed to know everyone who was working there already. She gave one last "hi" to a nurse before she led me to the open door of a darkened room at the end of a stale, clean hall.

The drip of an IV and the beep of a heart monitor greeted me when I followed her into the dim light of the room and she presented me with an elderly man crumpled into an upright bed and hooked up to about five different machines.

It was George. His eyes fluttered when I walked up to the foot of the bed to confirm his identity.

"Tomb...stone," the words dribbled out of his mouth pathetically like drool.

I jumped when a soft hand upon my shoulder interrupted my confused staring.

I whipped my gaze around to see Gaby standing next to me.

"Grandpa has been talking about you all day. You were the last person he needed to talk to. He said you've really been helping him say goodbye to the old ghosts rattling in his head the past few months," Gabby explained with her eyes locked onto George.

"Grandpa?"

A tired wave of the hand from George distracted me from Gabey. The frail hand waved me in his direction.

"Come here, Tomb...stone."

I winced. My mind raced. What the fuck was all of this? But yet, I followed George's hand to his bedside.

"Mark," I was immediately taken aback when George used my real name.

"Ye-e-e-e-e-s," I answered back  equal parts sheepish and soft.

"I want to thank you, and tell you something," George said with a whisper despite putting every ounce of his energy into speaking up. "Come closer."

I craned my neck down to George's dried lips, feeling them scratch upon the soft skin just below my ear lobe.

"The ghosts have went away," he muttered. "They are at bay. I think, because I found you."

I nodded furiously in agreement eve though I wasn't exactly sure what I was agreeing to.

"I never wanted to kill anyone. I never wanted to neglect anyone. I never wanted to abandon anyone, forget anyone, but I was a victim of my own circumstance. Us men are not perfect. We're wired in the wrong way and then the electricians come in all the time and rewire us the wrong way. At least for this world. I think they forgave me though."

"Who?"

"The soldier. Your grandma. Your mom. The younger man I was. They've left me alone since I have been seeing you. I think I just needed to say sorry to someone, flesh and blood. So again, I'm sorry. I should have been your grandpa. Not some creep in a hospital bed calling you a tombstone. Just make sure to visit mine, will ya?"

I'm not going to lie and say I was crying, but I the strings of my heart were pulled tight, yanking the air from my lungs and quivering the contents of my stomach. The man may have been flawed, Gabby would later confirm his neglect drove my grandmother to suicide and he soon after abandoned my mom for the sunny skies of Florida and Gabby's mother, but I held little contempt.

Gabby let me know he requested to be sent to the retirement in my hometown in hopes of tracking down either me or my mother only to discover cancer had already buried my mom and I had long fled for the dead dreams of Hollywood. It had been a simple twist of fate that I delivered those pizzas to him that day.

It turned out George was nearly nearing 95 years old, beaten, tired, fighting about five serious, lingering illnesses, but just couldn't seem to find a way to die. It wasn't until I started to come around that he started to strangely, thankfully slip away.

And I personally watched those last few moments slip away. Watched that flickering glimmer of life melt away from his gaze until he was just a sack of blood and bones coldly cased in skin in a darkened hospital room.

Life went back to its normal rhythm of slightly-depressing boredom once Gabby dropped me back off at my apartment and I failed to sleep the rest of the night, instead looking up every piece of info I could try to find about George Heatherton from Melbourne, Florida. Unfortunately the Internet fails to properly document those of the older generation. I found nothing.

I didn't bother emailing the email address Gabby slipped me before she dropped me off. I didn't bother trying to find out information about the funeral. I didn't bother taking the thing one step further. I was content.

The entire ordeal was about as out of my head as possible when there was a knock on my door in the middle of a Saturday night after a 12-hour shift at Frontier. The heaviest of pounding upon the frail door of my apartment shook me from the comfort of a deep sleep.

I staggered through the dark, nearly naked, to my door. Saw nothing out the peephole, foolishly just opened it.

Waiting for me was a small, poorly-wrapped gift package. The kind of wrap job you do for your mom's present on Christmas when you are seven-years-old.

I collected the gift and retreated to the warmth of the space heaters inside my apartment.

I tore at the green and red wrapping paper as fast as I could and was soon looking at a little note scribbled in sloppy handwriting which also looked like it could have belonged to a second grader, and a DVD.

Mark -

Hoping things are good on the Frontier and at home. Sorry I missed Christmas yet again, but I thought this might make up for it.  

Love,

Grandpa George

I pushed away the note and laid eyes upon a DVD I would immediately pop into DVD player – a fresh copy of Tombstone.

Originally published by Thought Catalog on www.ThoughtCatalog.com.

[jackfollmanwriter-blog]

The Phantom

No one knew more about the West Texas Phantom than grizzlymane415.

I exhausted all of the available information online - the Wikipedia page, the citations on the Wikipedia page, the weird blogspots, wordpresses and even a couple of Angelfires back in the day, the annoying slideshows which promised shocking revelations, but delivered none and just crashed my browser - they had all been laid to waste. My last bastion for any good information about the Phantom was an unsolved murder subreddit populated by other lonely weirdos who were probably collecting unemployment checks and ignoring the creepy messages on their numerous online dating profiles.

The group was great for the passionate discussions about the Phantom I could only have with complete, anonymous strangers who didn't assume I was some kind of sociopathic serial killer myself when I wanted to talk about my fascination with the still free killer of more than 20 people who stalked the plains and oil fields of West Texas in the late-80s. The group was also well-stocked with fascinating theories, like how the Phantom may have been a railroad conductor, or how he was a well-known high school football coach named Butch whose crimes were covered up to protect his legacy.

I also relished when some "newb" would wander into the group and start spouting out information we all had already dissected down to the finest molecule. It got to the point where I put a sticky on top of the page which focused on the six principle pieces of information which defined the Phantom and led to  my gang's particular fascination with him. Unless someone had NEW information about any of these principles, any posts about them would be promptly deleted.

The Phantom took all of his victims in broad daylight (whether or not they were killed during the day was up for debate)

All of the Phantom's victims were regular women, not the common prostitute victims most serial killers claimed

He used an 1894 Marlin Model rifle. An incredibly rare and valuable weapon.

It is likely he had a regular, white collar job as his killing sprees tended to take place just once a year in two-week spans.

It is possible he used railroads for transportation as nearly all of his killings took place near rail stops.

Tracks from a 1959 Chevrolet Apache truck were found leaving a few of the scenes.

However, none of this fully-satisfied my appetite for discovery. The only person who was able to do that was grizzlymane415.

It all started when grizzlymane415 posted viciously gruesome autopsy photos of one of the Phantom's first victims. The images were so horrifying I felt I should have put that white powder they use in autopsy rooms in cop shows/movies underneath my nostrils so I didn't vomit all over my keyboard. Full disclosure, about 90 percent of what I know about crime comes directly from TV and movies.

RachWhov: How did you get that?

I couldn't have typed the question fast enough. I never got an answer.

That would be far from the last juicy nuggets grizzlymane415 would post. Within days, he posted a copy of a letter to a news reporter at the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. The letter took credit for the first three murders which had been attributed to the Phantom and another I had never heard of which had never been connected to the Phantom.

RachWhov: Where did you get that?

I would get an answer this time from grizzlymane415, but not necessarily to that exact question.

(Note, for some reason, grizzlymane415 always typed in all caps. Sorry, I know)

grizzlymane415: THE PHANTOM LEFT CLUES EVERYWHERE. HE WAS ACTUALLY ONE OF THE SLOPPIEST SERIAL KILLERS TO NEVER GET CAUGHT. SOMETIMES I THINK HE DID IT ON PURPOSE. DID YOU KNOW HE USED TO TAKE MONEY FROM THE WALLETS OF EACH VICTIM AND THEIR JEWELRY TO RAISE AT LEAST SOME DOUBT IN THE COPS' MINDS THAT MAYBE HIS VICTIMS WERE SIMPLE VICTIMS OF ROBBERY?

RachWhov: I never heard that.

grizzlymane415: IT'S TRUE. CHECK ALL THE CASES. DO A LITTLE MORE GOOGLE SEARCHING. YOU WILL SEE SOME OF THE THEORIES.

grizzlymane415 was right. Everything I could find online suggest The Phantom had stolen money from each victim and their jewelry. Reports never seemed to focus on that too much, but it was occasionally mentioned. While it was never really mentioned in the stories, online threads and comment threads on stories frequently pointed it out, sometimes with foolish dissenters chiming in that he was just a random thief or many of his killings were just random robberies in the area which were attributed to him.

grizzlymane415: DON'T BELIEVE THE FOOLS THAT SAY IT WASN'T HIM EITHER. THEY DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT. THE COPS KEPT TABS ON ALL THE PAWN SHOPS AND GOLD BUYERS IN TEXAS AND NONE OF THAT JEWELRY EVER WAS SOLD AGAIN. SO IT WAS NOT SOMEONE KILLING FOR A QUICK BUCK.

RachWhov: I believe that, it wouldn't make a whole lotta sense.

grizzlymane415: AND YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW THE CRAZY PART YET. THE JEWELRY SHOWED UP AGAIN, BUT IT WASN'T SOLD.

RachWhov: What?

grizzlymane415: CORRECT. THE JEWELRY STARTED SHOWING UP ON STATUES AROUND CHURCHES IN TEXAS. ANY VIRGIN MARY STATUES THAT HAD FINGERS WHICH COULD FIT THE RINGS OR NECKS FOR NECKLACES.

grizzlymane415 attached a few pictures of virgin Mary statues with rings and necklaces on them in what looked like Texas settings. The hair on my arms stood at attention. It was enough for me to put the brakes on the forum, and grizzlymane415, for a little while. I slunk back to my other favorite haunts of the Internet – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, OKCupid – for a little while to stay safe and warm.

But I had to go back to the forum. At first I thought I would just ignore grizzlymane415, check out other cases, chat with my other super non-creepy, anonymous Internet friends, but I just couldn't do it. Here was my dream. Someone who could help me solve the crime which had engrossed and haunted me for years and I was going to run away because I was a scared, little girl? Plus, what's the worst that could happen? It was an anonymous board.

I cracked.

RachWhov: Where did you get those pictures.

grizzlymane415: THINGS ARE OUT THERE. HAVE YOU READ ABOUT THE JUDY PARCH AND PETRA HOLLIVER MURDERS?

RachWhov: Nope.

Tip – don't ever Google the Judy Parch and Petra Holliver murders. It is one of those cases which cues up first-page results of gruesome photos which will cling to your brain like an old stick of gum burned onto the sidewalk of a city street. My search pulled up a black and white photo of two women who I assumed were Judy and Petra clinging to each other in the backseat of a car, a blood-drenched blanket just not quite covering the damage of their faces.

To me, it wasn't even the gore of the photo which struck me so hard. It was the image of these two women who were clinging together like the last thing they wanted to do in the world was let each other know they loved one another before they suffered the world's great insult. They didn't even get the respect of having their final moments filled out with color. Nor, did they get the closure of having their case solved. Which brings me to one of the first major curiosities of grizzlymane415.

The murders of Judy Parch and Petra Holliver had never been connected to The Phantom in any way that I could find. Plus, they were murdered more than 1,000 miles away from The Phantom's stomping grounds of West Texas in Yucaipa, California, 50 miles or so outside of Los Angeles.

Overall there wasn't much information about the murder of Judy and Petra, other than a few archived articles from 1990 in the The Press-Enterprise in Riverside, California and some brief cold case pages. Not even a Wikipedia page frustratingly lacking of hyperlinks to other stories to engross yourself in. Their murder was just a little footnote in the murder history of the Inland Empire of California.

RachWhov: There is nothing at all on the Internet which connects The Phantom to the murder of Judy and Petra. Where are you getting this?

grizzlymane415: CHECK THE RECORDS ON THE CASE. OTHER THAN THE LOCATION, IT ALL POINTS TO THE PHANTOM. REMEMBER YOUR OWN PRINCIPLES ON THE TOP OF THIS PAGE.

I did live in California, but hours away from Yucaipa, so driving out there to check their public records search wasn't in the cards. However, my fascination with The Phantom runs deep, and I was able to get in touch with an old high school classmate who lived in Yucaipa who I Paypalled cash in return for wasting a Saturday morning and afternoon going through old murder records for me.

grizzlymane415 was correct, the Yucaipa muders covered all of the bases of my principles except the sixth.

The bodies of Judy and Petra were found just before sunset on a February day, meaning they were murdered sometime during the day.

Both women worked for the school district and were married, with children. They were in no way prostitutes or people who operated in "risky" behavior.

Ballistics showed the women were shot with an 1894 Marlin rifle.

The women's murder occurred in middle of the two-week stretch of The Phantom's last killing spree.

The bodies were found less than a mile from train tracks.

RachWhov: You were right. Everything adds up to Judy and Petra being victims of The Phantom. Why is this not out there anywhere? Couldn't that bring a huge break in the case?

grizzlymane415:

RachWhov: I get it, cops suck, but this isn't right. Have you told the police there?

I didn't get an answer. A week went by.

RachWhov: ???

Another week.

grizzlymane415: I THOUGHT YOU WERE CAPABLE OF NOT NEEDING HAND HOLDING ON THIS, BUT JUDY WAS THE WIFE OF THE POLICE CHIEF IN YUCAIPA. YOU THINK HE WAS VERY INTERESTED IN KEEPING THE DETAILS OF HIS WIFE GETTING MURDERED IN THE BACKSEAT OF A CAR, HALF NAKED WITH ANOTHER WOMAN IN THE PUBLIC EYE? YOU DO THE MATH.

Another curiosity. I couldn't find anywhere, or in anything my friend from Yucaipa sent me where it said Judy and Petra were "half naked" when they were shot. A self-taught expert on my murder myself, I knew this reeked of a detail cops would deliberately leave out of public record to filter out false confessions. Something only the actual killer would know about the murder.

My house grew cold in the middle of an 80-degree day even though I didn't have air conditioning. It's entirely possible grizzlymane415 was completely making this detail up, or it was something he had heard through word of mouth, but those goosebumps upon my arms also knew another thing most self-taught murder experts learn in their 101 class. Murderers love to brag about their work, even though they know it almost always leads to them being caught.

I went over to the front door of my house and checked the lock.

I cut off all communication with grizzlymane415. He probably wasn't really The Phantom, but at best, he was an asshole who was trying to get underneath my skin. I didn't need that. I already had three online dating profiles adept at connecting me with sociopathic beta males who get off on messing with your head.

I remained on the board. I couldn't pass the monotony of semi-employed life and single woman living in a town of just 16,000 without the comfort of faceless online companionship which revolves around the cold murders of human souls.

Things were fine for quite a while, probably a few weeks, before I received another message out of the blue from grizzlymane415.

grizzlymane415:

grizzlymane415: KNOW WHAT THAT IS?

I didn't have to even look it up. I just assumed it was an 1894 Marlin rifle.

He was probably some dumb fuck 15-year-old boy fucking with me who pulled the image off of Google or a gun message board or something, but I can't act like I wasn't totally scared shitless by the thing.

My response came in the form of deleting my account. It may have been the hardest thing I have ever done in my life, but it was all I could do to keep my sanity. It wasn't worth it. Sorry Reddit.

*

Tyler came back in the heat of summer. I flinched when I heard the familiar rumble of his old motorcycle pull into the gravel of my driveway. Tears welled into the corner of my eyes when I walked out onto my rickety porch to see him pulling his helmet off of his shaggy brown hair.

Tyler and I were engaged, technically maybe still engaged. We never officially broke it off.

We met just after college, when both of us were fighting off the adult world by being full-time snowboard bums in Tahoe. We moved in with each other in just a couple of months out of financial convenience, but somehow dated just casually for a few years before we turned up the heat.

Tyler finally proposed about a year before this. That's when things started to get weird between us. I don't think either of us could take the pressure. Engagement meant we were creeping towards adulthood – getting real jobs, paying taxes, moving off the mountain. We decided we would start working on getting "real jobs" in Reno - maybe even Sacramento. We got a rustic rental house in Truckee, California to stay in an earthy little town, but still get a little bit away from Tahoe and try to figure out our lives.

We were in no way ready and took it out on each other. I shocked myself when I discovered I was in no way interested in an office or professional job after a few interviews where I felt I wanted to rip the business casual outfit off of my body and run out into the snow to do what I truly wanted to do with life.

Even more shockingly, Tyler went in the other direction. A quick taste of an internship at a law firm stoked the fire of opportunity which apparently burned inside of him once you got past the haze of weed smoke, shaggy hair and dirty beard.

Tyler came home late from work one night, told me about his plan to move us to the Bay Area where he had a full-time job opportunity lined up and we slowly but surely slipped into a fight which led to him driving off on his motorcycle to go to "San Francisco."

It would be more than six months before he would come back.

I couldn't believe it was him when I saw Tyler walk up the porch, but he didn't let me get a word out before he grabbed me sternly on the back of the head and pulled me in for a kiss. We went inside the house without a word spoken and headed to the bedroom.

We would exchange a few words for the next hour or so, but it would be dark before we had a real conversation.

"How was San Francisco?" I broke the numbing sound of our breathing as we laid in bed.

Tyler just gave a dismissive laugh.

"Not good?"

"No. I was just only there for like three weeks, sleeping on Mike's couch. Couldn't get a job, couldn't afford to live there."

I could tell Tyler was embarrassed when he responded. He knew what question was coming next. He tried to distract me by grabbing the modest engagement ring he gave me months before out of the pocket of his jeans which were sprawled next to us on the bed. He slid the ring onto my ring finger.

"Did you go to your parents?"

"Yeah," Tyler almost whispered his answer before he kissed me behind my ear lobe.

I figured Tyler ran back to the comfort of his parents' five-bedroom house on the coast in Orange County once he said San Francisco didn't work out. I would have done the same, but swap out Orange for Marin.

"What...

Tyler pushed his index finger upon my lips.

"Let's not ruin the moment. Talk about that stuff now. We're just going to get into a fight about it."

"Okay," I agreed, upping the pitch on the second half of the phrase.

"How the fuck is it so hot in here?" Tyler broke the silence and jump up out of the bed naked.

Tyler shuffled over to the large bay window doors of the master bedroom of the house, unlatched them and pushed them out onto the little deck which housed a few pots filled with neglected plants about 10 feet up off of the ground below. I admired Tyler as he stood in the pale moonlight the open doorway let in, his back to me, his arms outstretched. I slipped the ring off of my finger and placed it in a little crystal bowl I kept by the side of my bed.

Tyler yawned when he turned back to me and crawled into bed. He pulled another item out of his jean pocket before I could ask another question.

"You still?" Tyler sheepishly offered up a pipe.

"Yeah, yeah," I took the pipe right after Tyler filled it.

I lied. I hadn't smoked since Tyler left. Too poor. Too depressed and honestly too lazy to go out and get weed myself.

I took a heavy, heavy hit and deflated back down onto the bed. It felt divine.

I watched Tyler take a stiff hit himself. Turned down his second offer.

The hit kicked the malaise and fatigue which was pumping through my veins into overdrive. It wasn't long before I was struggling to keep my eyes open. I could tell I was going to fall asleep before 10 and that was fine for me. I let it come, a cool, gentle breeze drifted through the open bay window doors and gave me a kiss goodnight.

*

I woke up with a calm in my blood I had not felt in quite some time. The comfort of no longer sleeping alone seemed to put my soul at ease. The fresh morning sun of Summer was shining bright through the open door, melting away the refreshing cold of morning. It was just about a damn perfect morning. The kind you would see in a commercial for coffee.

I yawned and looked over to Tyler asleep on his back next to me, the pipe comically rested on his shoulder like the parrot of a pirate. I moved a little bit closer to him but hoped to not wake him at the same time.

My attempt to keep Tyler awake didn't work. He weaved his hand into mine as soon as I slipped over to his side of the bed.

"What happened to the ring?" Tyler said with a froggy, morning throat.

"Oh, uh. I took it off. My fingers swell up in my sleep sometimes, so I don't sleep with rings on. But I can put it back on."

I stretched my body back over across my side of the bed and blindly dropped my hand down into the little bowl. The ring wasn't there. I furiously scanned my hand around the dish a number of times.

"What the hell?"

"What?"

"The ring is gone?"

"You sure you didn't just put it somewhere else?"

"Yes."

I got up out of bed and stood over my nightstand. The ring was not in the bowl or anywhere near it. I dropped hard down to the floor and combed the slick hardwood, looked underneath the bed and behind the nightstand. It was nowhere to be found.

Crawling on all fours, I turned my attention to the floor which led to the open deck door. Quickly stopped dead in my tracks.

Ever-so-faintly pressed into the dust of the floor were boot tracks – the tread of the boots looking like cookie cutter stamps of dog kibble upon the floor.

"Shit."

I traced the tracks to the open door of the deck.

"We didn't just lose a thousand dollars, did we?" Tyler asked from behind.

"That's the last thing I am worried about right now," I shot back. "I think someone came in here and took the ring last night."

It took Tyler a few seconds to reply, but when he did, his voice carried the tenor or building fright.

"Are you serious?"

I turned to see Tyler looking down at me.

"You're joking, right?" He added.

I looked down at the boot tracks one more time.

"Unless you walked around here with boots last night and lost the ring, I'm not."

My mind instantly went to grizzlymane415. I hadn't communicated with him for a while, but he was the last creepy thing taking up residence inside the dark recesses of my brain.

But how the hell could he have tracked me down?

I never shared any personal information with grizzlymane415. There was no information on my profile. I was unsearchable on Facebook and pretty much everything else and he didn't even have my real name. Even RachWhov didn't have a direct connection to me. Rach was short for my middle name and Whov was a play on my last name of Hoover, but the combination of those two would lead nowhere.

Oh shit. Nevermind.

The thought building in my brain shut down every single sense of my body for a moment.

Instagram. Fuck.

My username on the Instagram account I hadn't updated in nearly a year was RachWhov and it was a  picture journal of my life for the past few years, including a fine documentation where I visually bragged about our killer little house in Truckee.

"You think someone climbed up onto our deck in the middle of the night, snuck in here, grabbed just the ring, nothing else, and left without us waking up?" Tyler asked from over by the deck.

"Uh huh. We, were, high."

"Well that's comforting," Tyler snipped before turning back around to me. "Who the hell could have done that?"

"No idea."

I lied. I was not yet ready to tell anyone else about my online life and I myself was far from convinced grizzlymane415 was the one who took the ring. It was a pretty outrageous thought that he found my Instagram and was able to find exactly where I lived and snuck into my bedroom and stole the ring.

I logged into my Reddit account to see if I had received any new messages from grizzlymane415.  

grizzlymane415: WHERE DID YOU GO?

grizzlymane415: SORRY IF I WAS A DICK. HAVE YOU SEEN THIS SHIT?!?!?!?

What followed was a link to an article detailing a string of three murders which had taken place across the Southwest over the past couple of weeks – one in West Texas, one in New Mexico, one outside of Las Vegas. All three had the calling cards of The Phantom, including taking place in a two-week cluster. Worse yet, they occurred in the order which suggested The Phantom was moving in a Northwest pattern, right towards Northern California.

grizzlymane: HE'S BACK.............

I typed up: Where do you live?

Was about to hit Enter...

"Hey," Tyler's voice shot up from behind me in the living room.

I jumped up out of my seat, scrambled to close my browser.

"You looking at porn?" Tyler quipped from behind me.

"No."

Tyler let out a deep exhale.

"I found something weird in the mailbox."

Tyler pushed a bullet into my face. I don't think I had ever actually seen one in-person so it would have been a jarring vision even if he hadn't explained it was resting in our mailbox.

"It was just sitting in there. There weren't letters or anything else."

"Shit. Shit. Shit."

"What?"

"This just has me totally freaked out."

"Well let's go down and talk to the cops."

Tyler had a good idea for the first time in a really long time.

"I gotta take my motorcycle down to Devin's shop anyways."

He followed it up with a really bad one.

"Just take my car with me. We should go together."

"Devin just texted me. If I don't get it down there in like twenty minutes, I won't be able to get it looked at till Monday and I might need it this weekend. I'll just meet you at the station."

I didn't even want to know why Tyler might need his motorcycle for the weekend.

"Fine."

"Alright," Tyler grabbed his motorcycle helmet before he had even finished the word.

"Wait," I pleaded.

Tyler was already out the door.

"Motherfucker."

I could still see the dust lingering from the tires of Tyler's motorcyle when I walked out into our dirt driveway. I fought the urge to call him. He wouldn't answer anyway.

The morning glow which made the start of the day so glorious was long gone. A hazy sky of moist gray hung above, threatening rain and a cold wind whipped around the side of the house.

I jumped into my battered Ford Focus. Shook my head to myself about Tyler's ridiculous selfishness, wondered if I should just say fuck it and drive straight to my parents' house in Marin, but I couldn't do it. It was only about a 10 minute drive down the highway to the station and I was pretty sure the cops would be able to at least bring me some soul relief for a little while.                             

The road from our house to the main highway was probably the last road I wanted to be on at the moment. It was a glorified gravel road, lined with trees and tree-surrounded little shacks and shanties next to the river. Once upon the road, my eyes lingered on something sticking out of the tall grass next to the road - Tyler's motorcycle, propped up halfway between the road and the woods.

I took my foot off the gas, slowly pushed on the brake, felt the world outside my car window come back into regular speed.

Then I felt something hit my bumper.

What the?

I shot a hurried look into my rear-view mirror to see a black truck stuck onto the bumper of my car. The afternoon haze and the brevity of my glance didn't allow me to see the face of the driver behind the wheel, but I took in the outline of a dark hat and dark gloves draped upon the steering wheel.

Another thud hit hard upon my bumper, pushing me off to the side of the road. I tried to correct, but couldn't pull it off, my car went off the embankment of the country road and rumbled into the tall grass field which flanked it.

It now felt as if I was on some kind of rocky road amusement park type ride. My car bounced up and down, roughly and wildly, everything inside the cab, myself included, thrashed about violently. The seatbelt was the only thing saving me from smashing up against the windshield or the steering wheel.

I had much more sinister fears at the moment than smashing my head against the wheel and there was no way a seatbelt could save me from them. Another look out my rear view mirror while airborne allowed me to see more of the truck which had slammed into me from behind and I recognized it all too well. I knew nothing about trucks, but I could pick out a 1959 Chevrolet Apache in any lineup.

My car finally started to slow as I approached the line of trees which led into the woods. The entire world around me got darker when the front of my car smashed into the light shrubs at the edge of the tree line and started plowing over some of the younger trees. It came to a stop just under the cover of the tall firs.

I wasted no time in ripping off my seatbelt, going for the handle of my car door, but it wouldn't budge. The door appeared to be wedged up hard against the thick trunk of a tree.

I climbed over to the passenger-side door. My eyes threw a glance out the back window of my car and saw the black Apache parked on the side of the road.

"Ah, shit!" I screamed when the passenger-side door wouldn't open either.

I shot another look out of the back window – didn't see any movement, but heard the familiar sound of a truck door closing. I didn't wait to see if anyone was walking out of the truck, dove into the backseat and tried one of the back doors.

The highest I have ever felt in my entire life was when I felt that back door give and open out into the darkened forest. I piled out of it before I even got the thing all the way open.

I dragged my field of vision across the grass between the Apache and the back of my car when I climbed out of the car. The driver of the truck was out of his vehicle, his black cowboy hat obscured his pale face just enough to where I couldn't make it out. He took tall strides around the front of the truck in a long, black trench coat.

I wasted no more moments in observation, turned into the woods and fled, pissed at myself for leaving my cell phone in the center console. It didn't matter now, my only hope was running deeper into the woods, finding a house, the river or something, basically just losing the approaching stranger behind me.

For a second, I thought I heard the rumble of the river coming in front of me, but the sound quickly took a familiar form. It was Tyler's motorcycle. I slowed my sprint, shot a look over my shoulder. At the edge of the trees was Tyler on his motorcycle, he reared back on the cycle, tried to maneuver his way through the brush which served as the doormat for the thicker forest.

"Tyler," I screamed through the trees. "Call the cops. Call the cops."

But he couldn't hear me over the sound of his motorcycle. I came to a complete stop and watched him make his way into the forest where he would have a little bit more space to snake his motorcycle around trees. I tried to also look out behind him, where the truck was parked up near the roadway, but couldn't see that far.

Tyler put the motorcycle into a skid just before he reached me. He killed the engine and jumped off, was  greeted by me screaming out at him over the sounds of his dying engine.

"Where is he?"

Tyler whipped around, looked back through the woods.

"The guy in the truck. He ran me off the road."

Tyler lifted up the belly of his shirt to show a horrible road rash sprayed across his stomach.

"I hid in the woods for a while. I tried to call you, but you didn't answer."

"He ran me off the road too," I screamed in Tyler's face. "Where is he?"

Tyler kept his eyes off through the woods.

"He peeled out and drove off when I got back on my motorcycle. He's gone."

I followed Tyler's eyes through the darkening woods and had to agree. There were no signs of the driver, or his truck.

*

The cops had a really tough time not just believing what I told them happened, but even understanding it. I had to pull up Reddit on one of the officer's computers to show them all what it was and how it worked.

Honestly, it seemed like they all thought we were concocting some kind of elaborate alibi to cover up a domestic squabble and/or drunk driving accident. They basically did the least amount of work they could to document it and stopped returning our calls after a couple of weeks. I told them all of the details about The Phantom of West Texas. They didn't care in the least. I may have well just said The Phantom of the Opera.

Making it a little harder to believe my story, I deleted my account and apparently so did grizzlymane415. There was no record of our conversations, all of our comments within the board said they were posted by [deleted].

I found the generic form email for the FBI and a couple of police departments in West Texas, but I never even heard back from them. Maybe the only people who still cared about The Phantom were me and my weirdo Internet friends. Maybe it was a sign that I should just forget about that kind of stuff. At least that was Tyler's opinion.

We left Truckee that day, took the important stuff out of our house and never came back. We moved to Marin County where Tyler was able to get an entry level job with my dad's company and I could find a real job in the office of the local hospital with some of the friends I grew up with.  

Speaking of growing up, it was officially time to. I left the Internet serial killer groupie community behind me and focused on my job and trying to re-plan a real wedding with Tyler.

The months went by and I had almost completely forgotten about that old life and that horrible cloudy day, or at least I tried to, but I could not fully run away. My blood ran cold when I received a voicemail on my phone after getting a missed call from my former landlord, Dale, back in Truckee.

I initially thought the message would be a scolding for the state we left the house in or bailing on the last five months of our lease, but Dale actually seemed to have a softer tone than he usually used. He wanted to get in touch with me because someone had left what seemed like an important piece of mail for us in the mailbox. He just needed our new address so he could send it to us.

I chewed my nails down to the tender skin the next few days, feveriously anticipating receiving our unopened mail. Dale was polite in insisting he would absolutely not open our mail for us, even if we wanted him to (which I did).

I tore into the little forwarded envelope as fast as humanly possible when it showed up.

I recognized exactly what was in the envelope as soon as I opened it up. It was my engagement ring, the tiny little diamond perched upon the top of it glittering back at me.

A note fell out of the envelope.

It was just a cursive signature written in black ink.

It read: The Phantom.

Originally published by Thought Catalog on www.ThoughtCatalog.com.

[jackfollmanwriter-blog]

PTSD

I heard about how dangerous the drive between Baghdad and Fallujah were a million times, yet I still wasn’t as worried as I should have been. Riding in the back of the Humvee tended to zone me out and made me feel like I was riding in the back of my mom’s Suburban and not an armored truck filled with ammunition and unstable men with guns.

I didn’t even know what happened when we hit the roadside bomb. I suddenly felt myself flying through the air and my legs were burning. I landed hard on the side of the road in a pile of sand.

My legs felt like I had stuck them on a barbeque grill and left them there. I laid on the side of the road in the dirty sand, listening to the sound of the vehicle I had been riding in burning up and the sound of my comrades screaming out in pain. I wished I could have helped them, but I couldn’t even move my neck enough to look at them and see exactly what was happening.

I sucked in about 10 breaths before everything started to get blurry. At first I thought it was just tears welling in my eyes, clouding my vision, but I quickly realized my overall consciousness was being affected. I was slipping away.

The red hot cloudless sky of the desert faded. The burning hot landscape was replaced with a dark alley lined with brick walls on each side as far as the eye could see. I didn’t recognize the setting and it didn’t feel natural. It felt like part of a waiting area for a ride at an amusement park. There was nothing but the puddle-splashed dark asphalt at my feet and the endless walls of red brick that stretched as far as the eye could see in each direction.

I felt a warm splash of rain fall on my skull of buzzed hair. I looked up and saw a night sky of grey clouds hovering over me. A soft tap on my back interrupted my gaze.

I spun around and laid eyes on my younger sister, Bonnie, standing soaking wet in a white t-shirt fully stained with red blood and sopping wet with rain and her own bodily fluid. I jumped backwards when I noticed a savage, gaping wound on the side of her neck.

The sight before my eyes made me feel like my skeleton was going to run out of my body and turn me into a formless puddle of blood, guts and skin. My little sister Bonnie had been murdered three years before in Las Vegas and no one had the slightest clue as to who had done it.

Bonnie wrapped me in a soft hug. I felt blood trickle from her neck and run down my bare arm.

“I need you to help me,” Bonnie whispered into my ear.

Bonnie pulled away from me. The setting changed to that of a bustling casino. My nose tickled with the scent of stale smoke and cheap bourbon. The jingle jangle of the slot machines put me in a slight trance. I was almost knocked over by a cocktail waitress in a short skirt carrying a tray of watered-down drinks.

“Come find me,” Bonnie’s voice whispered in my ear, even though she wasn’t anywhere in sight.

“Where?” I muttered to myself.

I scanned the casino without an answer. All I could see were endless blackjack and poker tables and grizzled gamblers. Based on the quality of the health of the clientele and the casino’s decorations, I assumed I was at one of the lesser hotel casinos on the strip, or maybe one of the ones on Fremont Street.

“Bonnie?” I called out into the crowd.

My scan stopped at a blackjack table a couple of rows into the floor from where I stood. I saw Bonnie’s back in a white shirt. She sat at the table by herself, playing cards and sipping her signature drink - vodka-cranberry-lime.

I walked through the tables until I was to the side of Bonnie’s table. I looked over at her. Her neck was now intact, soft and delicate with her favorite thin, silver necklace draped across, ending at the bottom with a pendant in the shape of a bunny. Her white t-shirt was clean. Her face focused on the cards in front of her in a grimace with her tongue slightly sticking out.

Bonnie motioned for a hit when I sat down next to her. She took a sip of her bright red cocktail and shook the ice afterwards. She asked for another hit.

The dealer - a swarthy young fellow with one of those haircuts where it is buzzed on the sides, but long on the top and flopped to one side with a small tattoo on his neck gave her another card.

Bonnie busted. The dealer gave her a sympathetic smile. She finished the rest of her drink. Her eyes glazed over just a little bit more. She exchanged a long look with the dealer.

“Watch,” I heard Bonnie’s voice in my ear, even though her mouth didn’t move at the table, she just stared at the dealer, whose nametag said Timothy..

The image of an empty, upscale hotel room flashed before my eye. The materials the furniture and counters were made of clearly too expensive for me to ever afford. My view of the room started in the doorway and slowly panned into the heart of the room.

I flashed back to the blackjack table. I watched Timothy deal Bonnie a couple of more cards. His hand lingered on her’s for a few seconds.

I flashed to the hotel room again. My view was past the initial tight corridor of the entrance and into the larger room with the king size bed in the middle and the sliding glass door of the balcony on the far end.

The pristine white comforter of the bed was soiled with the face-down body of Bonnie. A thick stream of blood had poured out of the gash in Bonnie’s neck and puddled on the comforter next to her head. I felt liquid rush to the back of my throat.

A blink. Back to the casino floor. I watched Timothy close down his table. I watched Bonnie polish off another vodka cranberry. I watched them walk away from the table and towards the entrance of the nameless casino.

I got one last flash of Bonnie lying still on that hotel room bed. Then it all started to fade away…

*

That was almost a year ago. That roadside bomb ended up taking my legs below the knee. What my brain showed me as I laid disoriented on the side of the road until I was brought to a base to have my life saved was much worse. Not a minute has gone by that I haven’t thought about those images. I was convinced I was shown the sequence of Bonnie’s death.

I went back to my hometown of Reno with my artificial legs and made my home back in my childhood bedroom at my mom’s house. I had plenty of time to rehab physically, but was stranded alone mentally with an absentee father and a mom who now had an amputee son just a few years after losing her daughter to an unsolved murder and a dead-end job as a grave shift blackjack dealer in the Silver Legacy Casino.

I wouldn’t stop talking about the visions of Bonnie I was given. I told me my mom. She told me to stop. She had come to terms with never solving the mystery of Bonnie’s murder and dismissed my visions as PTSD. I told my friends. Same indifference and excuse. I told the Reno Police Department and called the Las Vegas Police Department and got the same treatment, but not in such words. I was mainly dismissed because Bonnie was reportedly in the Los Angeles area when she went missing and her body was found less than an hour outside of LA. No clue ever linked her to Vegas anytime around then.

The only thing I wanted to do since I arrived back in the states was to go to Vegas and conduct my own investigation into Bonnie’s murder, armed with the information of knowing what the inside of the casino I saw looked like, the name Timothy, and the look of Timothy’s face. Problem was, I had no money, hadn’t learned to drive with my new legs yet and no one I knew was signing up to escort the guy they thought had a serious case of PTSD to Vegas to look for a murderer.

I did the only thing I thought I could do. I hitchhiked the seven hours from Reno to Las Vegas, until a guy with a mouthful of Red Man dropped me off at the end of the strip by Circus, Circus. The baking, 120-degree sun greeted me with a sizzle. I felt like a pile of steak on a fajita platter.

I made my way up and down the strip. Not a single casino floor looked familiar. I trekked to Fremont Street with no luck. I was 400 miles from home. Dog tired. Without a single clue. Without a single dollar in my pocket and a maxed out credit card as the sun set on the city of sin.

The only thing I could do was check into a hotel off the strip which almost looked worse than some of the bombed-out places I saw in Iraq. I laid down on top of the stained blanket and figured I would spend the next day checking the rest of the casinos in the city that are off the strip and then find a ride back up to Reno.

*

A hot cut of dread sliced into me as soon as I woke up to the sound of a knock at my motel room door. Nothing good ever starts with a knock on the door of a cheap motel room

I checked the clock on my phone - 3:30 a.m. I heard the hard knock again. It was not a - I’m a drunk 25-year-old with the wrong room knock, it was a, get the fuck up and strip off everything you own shitbag, knock.

“Look, I can get the key in forty-five seconds if I really want it so just open the door piece of shit,” a powerful male voice boomed on the other side of the door.

“Fuck me,” I whispered to myself.

“You better get moving or I’m gonna spray this door with bullets.”

“Okay, okay. I’m coming,” I announced when I walked to the door.

I opened the door to reveal a guy covered in sores and tattoos with an irritated scalp of buzzed hair. He clutched a sizable handgun and carried an empty laundry bag.

“Sorry, it’s your unlucky day fucko,” the guy announced when he stepped into the room.

“Look man, I’m a disabled Iraq War veteran with nothing but the clothes on his back, a credit card with a maxed-out nine hundred-dollar limit and half-fake legs. You might have better luck robbing somebody else,” I explained.

“Ditch the sob story prick. I don’t give a fuck.”

The guy pointed the gun right between my eyes.

“You said fake legs. Titanium?”

I let out a defeated exhale.

“I think....

The guy squatted down and examined my artificial calves like a doctor who knew for a fact were titanium. He prodded them with the muzzle of his gun.

“They look removable.”

“Please man…

The butt of the gun hit me hard across the nose.

“Lay down. I’ve done this before,” the guy instructed.

I laid down. Blood gushed from my nose and down the back of my throat. I struggled to breath.

The pain from my nose blocked out the shooting pain from my legs. The guy wrenched on my false appendages until I felt them slide off of me.

“Nothing personal man. I’d rob my own mother...again,” the guy said.

I opened my eyes again to get a look at the guy. I only got a split second of vision. What I saw was the end of my own titanium foot coming hard at my face.

*

I came to in a darkened corner booth at the steakhouse in one of the casinos in Reno. The smell of one of the five or so restaurant-cooked steaks I have ever had in my life made my mouth instantly start to water. My hunger and its savor made me almost forget where I was.

My sad, pathetic trio family was clustered around the table. My mom to my left, probably just dying for a smoke and and for someone to order chicken so the bill would be a little smaller and Bonnie, clad in blue and white high school graduation garb to my right. I could tell Bonnie probably felt a little bit embarrassed that my mom was making such a big deal out of just graduating from high school. Her and I both knew it was just the bottom of the bar now, not an accomplishment that warranted aged ribeyes and Shirley Temples.

Nonetheless, we sat there, looking about as normal as we probably ever looked. A sharp sadness cut into me when I looked to my right again and saw Bonnie staring into the bottom of her pink soda. The girl never had a chance.

“Yes, I did,” Bonnie’s voice whispered into my ear.

I looked at Bonnie again, she stared at me with wide eyes and a straw stuck in her mouth, her lips sucking up the Shirley Temple.

“You should have been there,” Bonnie said to me, the straw stuck to her bottom lip.

“What?” I was in fucking Iraq,” I shot back.

“You two never took care of me. You think it sucks being a guy who had to grow up a poor piece of shit...well, it’s ten times worse for a girl. You have any idea how hard it is to turn down any guy who can ever offer you something, no matter how scary he is just because you’ve never had anything,” Bonnie went on.

“Bonnie, please. I’m try,” I felt tears hit the warning track in my eyes for the first time in a long, long time.

“And you’re fucking up again. You can’t even figure it out.”

“Please. I’m trying my best.”

“Well your best was never good enough,” Bonnie said just before my vision cut out again.

*

I opened my eyes and found myself back in a different dirty motel room. The layout of the room was almost identical, but the contents were different. A pink suitcase laid open, overflowing with women’s clothes on the floor next to the bed I laid on. A menagerie of unlit candles dotted the landscape. The smell of cheap perfume burned my nose.

“Thank God. I was worried you were dead, or in a coma, or something,” I raspy female voice cut off a heavy groan from my mouth.

I looked up and saw a woman I identified as a prostitute in .5 seconds standing at the foot of the bed. A tan face that looked like a hearty piece of beef jerky, teased blonde hair, a sloppy body cased in dirty jean shorts, a pink tank top and a few bad tattoos, she looked like a vixen from an 80s hair metal video who never left the strip club.

“I was going to take you to the emergency room, but I know that’s a risky move around these parts. Warrants and all. Plus, figure no one in this place has a sniff of insurance,” the woman said.

I focused in on the gal for a few seconds and let her come into full focus.

“The guy robbed me and hit me with my own leg?” I muttered, still dazed, phrasing it as a question.

The woman chewed on her lip for a few moments.

“If you say so. I didn’t see it. I was just walking back to my room and saw your door open with you lying bleeding on the bed. It was a bitch to drag you in here. You’re a few doors down now. You were out for about a half an hour since I found you,” the woman explained and then extended a hand with rings on each finger. “I’m Bobbi, by the way.”

I gave Bobbi’s dried-out hand a loose shake.

“Thanks.”

A shot of pain rushed to my head.

“I think I’m kind of okay,” I said through clenched teeth. “I’ve definitely fought through worse without having to go to the hospital.”

I wiggled around on the bed. Remembered that I no longer had my false appendages. Moving around was going to be very difficult.

Bobbi sat down on the bed next to me.

“I’m so sorry about everything that happened to you,” Bobbi said, what seemed like genuine empathy marinated her words. “I’ll do whatever I can to help.”

I laughed.

“Do you have a time machine that can go back and get me out of that fucking recruiter’s office five years ago?”

“Sorry,” Bobbi shot back, not sounding the least bit amused.

“Sorry, sorry, but no, really. You don’t happen to have a ride back to Reno, do you?”

“I actually gotta ride leaving to LA in a couple of hours,” Bobbi said.

I pushed myself backwards to the back to the bed and sat up. My vision was still cloudy. I felt dried blood plastered to the side of my face. I looked at the bleak picture of Bobbi’s face at the foot of the bed. She had one of those looks where just a glance at her made you feel sad and this is coming from a guy who is missing the bottom half of his legs.

My options were limited. I could stay in Vegas, without a cent, and keep on the trail of Bonnie’s death and try to find some way to live and/or make money there. I could call up my mom like a beaten dog and beg for the money to go home. I could hitch hike back to Reno. Or, I could go with this broken women to LA and try and figure it out from there.

LA won. I always meant to check in with Bonnie’s friend’s family where she was staying that summer it all happened. She was supposed to be down there for a summer job at a waterpark and to stay at the house of her friend’s dad somewhere in the suburbs. I was always wary of the whole thing. I heard rumors from the older brother of Bonnie’s friend that the water park job may have been a ruse, they may have actually been going down there to dance at a strip club, or turn tricks. I dismissed it as bullshit at the time.

I was friends with Bonnie’s friend on Facebook and figured I could hit her up to at least talk to her. She responded to my messages in the past and said that she didn’t really want to talk about what happened, but she would meet up with me to discuss as much as she could if I was ever in LA. I thought this might be my broke ass’s only chance to ever get to the City of Angels. I took up Bobbi on her offer.

Bobbi set me up in the shotgun of her 2004 Chevy Malibu with no air conditioning. I stuck my head out the window like a dog about every 10 minutes to feel the wind in my face and find some relief from the sun which baked us on our way out of the city.

From the moment we set off, Bobbi seemed set on being some kind of therapist for me. She kept prodding at me with difficult questions. Growing up with my single mom, Bonnie’s death, the tours in Iraq, losing my legs and going back home. I felt that I almost wanted to jump out of her car and let the flying asphalt take care of me, and not just because of the oppressive heat.

I was tempted to ask Bobbi about her past. I was sure it was probably somehow even darker than mine, but I fought through it. I just machine gunned short answers to her heavy questions and looked out at the burning desert, those old demons rattling my soul until I started to fade out again.

My eyes opened back in Iraq. That burning hot Nevada desert was replaced by the sparse landscape outside of Baghdad, the joshua trees and dead shrubs all around replaced with crumbling buildings of a dead town. I didn’t remember the name of the village, but I definitely remembered the image of it. It was not something I wanted to remember.

I didn’t want to go there, again, but I quickly found myself paralyzed. I drifted through those dirty streets lined with homes which bordered on rubble. I could hear people milling about inside them, inside their pockmarked walls. I was always amazed at the resiliency of people who would live in a place even if it had just been carpet bombed.

I heard the distant chatter of gunfire. I heard the powerful shake of bombs dropping from closer than from where the gunfire came. I knew what was coming next. I put my arms out in a Jesus Christ pose and let it happen again.

The bomb hit about 10 feet behind me. It sent me flying in the air, through a thin wall of rotted wood and into the shell of a meager home built around a single stove.

I landed hard on the ground. The wind knocked out of me. My brain rattled like the bits inside of a maraca.

I could see the image in my mind before I even opened my eyes. It had haunted me since the day I was tortured by it.

I opened my eyes. There she was. Dead. A dead girl. Dead teenage girl. A, literal, dead ringer for my younger sister. Her eyes were just inches from mine, still wet, but gone. I could smell her breath.

It was not just a dead ringer this time. I was instead face-to-face with Bonnie’s actual body. I recoiled and tried to crawl away in the sand, but just kept sinking deeper and deeper into the coarse floor.

*

I woke up in the passenger seat of Bobbi’s car covered in a coat of sweat, my arms tensed and convulsing. I was fighting a battle against the seat belt and cloth interior of Bobbi’s car.

Bobbi’s giddish laugh welcomed me back to the real world. She stood outside my window, looking down at me with the hot sun burning behind her.

“Are you so fucked that your dreams are twisted too?” Bobbi asked.

I shook my head. Felt as I might faint from the heat and exertion.

“Why’d we stop?” I asked.

“It had to take a piss and it’s too hot. We need a break.”

I looked out the window and saw what looked like a lone casino behind Bobbi off in the distance. It looked to have some kind of half-assed Wild West theme.

“Where the hell are we?”

“Primm. Ever heard of it?”

“No.”

“You know how Laughlin is for people who like can’t afford Vegas?”

“Yes.”

“Primm is for people who can’t afford Laughlin.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“It’s a good enough place to take a piss, that’s about it.”

“I could go for that.”

Bobbi lifted me out of the car and into a motorized wheel chair.

“Snagged this in the lobby for you. Don’t say I never did anything for you,” Bobbi said once I was set into the chair.

I drove and Bobbi walked to the mouth of the casino through the blistering-hot sun.

That rush of sweet, sweet air conditioning never felt better when I walked into the dark, smoky casino and surveyed the lay of the land. A cold too deep to just come from the AC came over me.

This was the casino from the visions I had of Bonnie. Where she played cards. Where she left with the swarthy dealer. Timothy. Where I believe she met her demise. At Buffalo fucking Bills in Primm fucking Nevada.

This was what I came here for. That piss could wait. I made my way right to the blackjack tables. Combed through each, looking for Timothy.

Only about six or seven tables were staffed in the dregs of the day, but I decided I needed to stay. I waited outside the ladies room until I could inform Bobbi of my plan. She decided she would stay with me through the night. She could probably find some work for the night and make some money before she went to LA.

It took about eight hours and about 12 watered-down Jack and gingers to catch a glimpse of the man I was looking for. I was fantastically drunk when I saw Timothy walk up to an empty blackjack table and start setting up. I watched him prepare his table from over by the penny slots Bobbi and I were patronizing.

“I need some cash,” I asked Bobbi.

“You’re gonna ask someone who is ninety-five cents down on a Jimmy Buffet slot machine for cash?”

“I’m serious. He’s here.”

Bobbi’s eyes followed mine over to Timothy and his blackjack table just as he turned on his green OPEN light.

I started to head towards Timothy’s table. Bobbi stopped me.

“I have a better idea of how we can do this.”

I watched Bobbi saddle up to Timothy’s table from over the slot machines. I could tell she went right to work on him. I watched her lean over much more than necessary to pull her chips closer to her side of the table. Saw her whisper something in his ear.

Bobbi’s plan was to lure Timothy up into a room she had booked for another client she met earlier in the night. I could confront him there about everything. I wasn’t so sure Timothy would go for what I considered to be spoiled bait, but Bobbi assured me she could make it happen. She had drugs to ply him with if her body wasn’t enough.

Bobbi quickly walked away from the table. I followed her over to by the bathrooms where she said to meet if things were going well.

“Go up to the room. Three-twenty-three,” Bobbi said and handed me a key. “We’ll be up there in a minute.”

I cranked the AC in the room, but it just wouldn’t seem to chill. I sat in my chair staring out the window and listening to the hallway. I couldn’t wait to hear two pairs of feet coming up the way.

I had my script all ready for what I was going to say to Timothy as soon as he walked in. I couldn’t wait to just start blurting it out. I couldn’t wait to hit dial on that number to the Las Vegas Police Department. Tell them we had the guy. I couldn’t wait to tell my mom that I wasn’t mad with PTSD. I was actually a magician.

The ding of the elevator arriving outside the door make everything suddenly become real. I heard footsteps approach and suddenly lost all my confidence.

The door opened and Bobbi ushered Timothy in. He was initially relaxed, but his eyes flew into panic as soon as he saw me.

He stared down Bobbi.

“What the fuck is this?” he asked.

I tried to launch into my glorious solique, but couldn’t.

“Uh, uh, uh…”

“What gimp?” Timothy spat at me.

“You killed Bonnie,” I blurted out.

“Who the hell are you talking about?”

Timothy was still talking tough, but I could tell my question rattled him. His posture tightened. He started to blink rapidly as he stared at me.

“Bonnie Bagwell. You met her in this casino. Three years ago, in July. She was never seen again.”

Timothy let out a single laugh. He was out of breath.

“What did you do to her?” I yelled.

“Does it really matter,” He muttered under his breath. “She was a whore just like this one right here.”

I rolled off of the bed and onto the floor. Timothy went for the door, but Bobbi sealed it off.

“You shouldn’t have said that,” Bobbi screamed in Timothy’s face.

Bobbi pushed Timothy. His slender frame fell over mine on the floor and he fell between me and the bed.

I pushed myself around and came face-to-face with his dark eyes. I closed mine.

I opened my eyes in a dark tent. The air was unbearable hot. I could feel my clothes had already been sweated through. I couldn’t see a thing, but I could feel that someone was in there with me.

My senses were confirmed when I felt the cold blade of a knife slash across my arm. I screamed out and recoiled until I was stopped by the thin plastic of the wall of the tent.

“Who is there?” I screamed into the dark.

“Ah fuck, I was just trying get that fuckin camel spider that got in here,” a raspy voice I didn’t not recognize answered back.

I felt the wind of the knife swipe at me before I could react. It seemed it barely missed the bridge of my nose.

I dropped down and put my hands out, reverted to my high school wrestling skills. I grabbed the dark assailant around the waste. I felt the knife flail over my shoulder. I had him in a hold which would prevent him from getting fatal leverage with his weapon.

My attacker gave me a hard kick in the gut, but I didn’t flinch. I drove my shoulder into him until I pummeled the wind out of of him and was lying on top of his panicking body.

I felt the knife fall out of his grasp and slide down my back. I grabbed the six-inch blade from behind me and wrapped it up in my hand, poised it at my side.

My wrestling partner fell on his own sword before I even had to do anything. I lost my breath when I felt the weight of the man slide onto the sharp blade of the knife. Based on the weight and tension on the end of the thing, it felt that it must have slipped just beneath the man’s rib cage.

A pained gasp let out in the dark, followed by a flurry of horrified screams. I yanked the knife out and felt the man fall hard on the ground next to me.

I slowly caught my breath as I listened to the man scream bloody murder next to me until I had to put my hands over my ears.

Light came back to my vision. I was no longer in that hot tent in the Middle Eastern desert. I was back in that steamy hotel room with the shitty air conditioning. I was on my knees looking down at the crumpled body of Timothy, forever stuck with his arms clutching his upper stomach/lower ribs. Blood flowed from his wound and onto the already-stained carpet of the room.

I looked at the knife in my hand. A thick coat of blood oozed down the blade. Timothy must have pulled the thing on me, I wrestled it from him and the blade ended up in his insides. Now he was dead.

“Ah fuck, what do we do?” I screamed at Timothy’s body.

“He came after you with the knife and then just fell on it,” Bobbi said from behind me. “I was a witness.”

“Shit. What do we do?”

“We should get the police involved. I can vouch for your story of self defense, but there’s something I think you should look at on this guy before we do that,” Bobbi said.

Bobbi walked around me and over to Timothy’s body. She unbuttoned a few button on his shirt and yanked down the collar area. She waved me over.

“Look at this. I saw a glimpse of it when he was dealing,” Bobbi said.

I joined Bobbi by the bed and saw what she was talking about. Tattooed just below Timothy’s collarbone were what looked like latitude and longitude degree numbers. Bobbi took out her phone and snapped a picture.

*

We called the police. It was messy. Luckily, Timothy had a lengthy rap sheet which kept the police from accusing us of too much. Bobbi mentioning that I was a freshly-mugged and disabled veteran about five times might of helped as well. We told them of our accusations about Timothy’s potential involvement in the death of Bonnie, but they didn’t seem to care. She was an already-forgotten dead person in another state.

The good news about the police’s disinterest was it left Bobbi and I to explore on our own. We punched the latitude and longitude marks into her GPS and set off back into the deep desert.

Our points took us to the a lonely road off a lonely freeway, off a lonely highway which eventually turned to an unmarked dirt path which Bobbi’s car could barely traverse. The points stopped next to a cluster of shrubs a few paces off of the road.

Bobbi hooked me up with some crutches before we left town, so I was able to push myself out to the points with her and squint against the sun and brace against the hot wind.

What waited for us was a patch of dirt with a tiny little black ball sticking out of it. Like one of those markers you might find on a golf course which marks where you can tee off. I pulled the thing off and got to work digging with my hands. Bobbi joined in with the crowbar which was in her trunk.

We found what Tom’s tattooed points led us to in the dirt. A dirty white arm bone, a couple of feet long, with a faded diamond ring hanging off of her ring finger and a silver pinky. I didn’t know the diamond ring, but I recognized the pinky ring as the one which came from her high school boyfriend on a Valentine’s Day that she always wore.

All that was left of Bonnie were some dirty bones in the desert. They never found her left arm, when they originally found her body in California, so it made sense that all we found was that piece of her body. The police always figured her left arm had been carried away by scavengers, not stashed in the Nevada desert by the man who had killed her.

What the police later discovered was that Timothy has been pimping Bonnie after he lured her into a relationship. He lived in LA, but worked weekends sometimes as a blackjack dealer in Primm for extra cash. He became enraged when he found out that Bonnie was going to go back to Reno in September to go to school after she had told him she was going to run away to be with him. The police suspected that he had given her an engagement ring and that’s why he buried her left arm closer to where he lived and tattooed its coordinates on his chest. They discovered old text messages on his phone and social media messages which confirmed everything.

*

Solving it all gave me some comfort, but it didn’t bring Bonnie back to life or stop me from getting horrific visions which seemed to be a mix of my past, my future and traumatic things connected to me even if I didn’t directly play a part in them. Every day is still a struggle.

Bobbi has helped. We bonded over the trauma of our destroyed lives. We went to LA to spend time together and cool off from the ordeal in Primm. I eventually convinced her to try and give up her profession for a while and get into therapy. She convinced me to do the same.

Bobbi and I live together with my mom in Reno, for the time being. It’s a difficult life, but it gets a little bit better most days.

The biggest positive development has been the evolution of my visions. No longer am I mired in the haunting violence of my time in Iraq, or of Bonnie’s bloody death. They have become more helpful visions of the future.

The best vision yet came last night. I saw Bobbi and I on the porch of a cabin, older. I watched as we held hands and supervised the sun as it set behind mountains in the distance above a glossy blue lake. I felt like this was a vision of things to come. It felt pretty damn alright with me.

Originally published by Thought Catalog on www.ThoughtCatalog.com.

[jackfollmanwriter-blog]

Out of State

Your first year of college is supposed to be a coming of age story. Meet new people. Make new friends. Learn things that change your perspective on the world. Drink. Study. Fuck. Not me.

I spent the majority of my first year of college lying in bed in my dead grandmother's house sleeping, eating horrible food, beating off to Internet porn and skipping class while a black cloud of fear, anxiety and growing social anxiety seeped into my being like fog off a dark bay.

The first mistake I made was following my father's advice of moving into my freshly-deceased grandmother's house instead of the freshman dorms to save money. My parents agreed to pay the astronomical out of state tuition, the least I could do was accommodate by living in my grandma's dusty old house which still smelled like her nine months after her passing.

I had a lot of reasons not to complain. My grandma's house was fairly large, within walking distance of the school and the beach. Had I not been petrified of the place my entire life, it could have been a dream come true.

I spent most Christmas breaks of my formative years at my grandma's house in Santa Cruz, but no matter how times I stayed there, I never shook an unnerving fear of the place. One of those typical grandparent houses that hadn't changed a lick since the 50s, the place was just a completely alien environment for a little kid raised in a brand new house. It was one of those old homes that seemed to have a personality itself. Every step made a sound. It had its own scent. The lighting was dim. The artwork dated and eerie - filled with portraits of long-dead relatives. I never seemed to be able to sleep all the way through the night there.

Plus, my grandpa was a simply frightening dude who I never had a single real conversation with in the 15 years we shared on this planet. All I knew about him was he was well-decorated in the Pacific theater in World War II, he worked the night shift at some kind of factory, he slept (a lot), he liked McCormick whiskey (a lot) and I found out down the road he wasn't my biological grandpa.

The most-terrifying moment of my life occurred when I was nine. I was watching late-night TV in the living room because I couldn't sleep and he snuck up behind me. I can still picture him walking into the doorway of the living room stark naked – hairy with a pale blue skin tone. He didn't say a word, just walked up next to me and shut the TV off.

But back to what I was talking about...

Come September, I packed up my Chevy Malibu and drove down to Santa Cruz from my parents' home in suburban Portland to move into my grandma's house and start my first semester of college. I should have been stoked as an 18-year-old with his own three-bedroom house right off of campus about to start his first year at a killer school, but I was far from. I was leaving behind my brand new girlfriend back at home, my dog, and I was still terrified of my grandma's house. I tried to pull out of the whole out-of-state college thing just a few weeks before the semester started, but my parents convinced me to stick it out and set me up with a therapist to meet with weekly when I arrived to help me through it.

Things got off to a rocky start when I showed up. I couldn't get a good night's sleep in the house for the life of me and not just because the place freaked me out. Apparently crickets invaded the house while it was empty all summer and were almost impossible to get rid of. Their horrible chirping was perpetual once it got dark and the local exterminators were 0-3 thus far with trying to get rid of them.

Also, college was nothing like I thought it would be. One, it was a mountain of work. Two, everyone at my school was a crunchy hippy who I felt judged me on everything from the beef jerky I ate between classes, to my Nikes, to my Oregon Ducks football shirt.

I instantly became a loner. Just walked to and from classes and the store to occasionally pick up food and then locked myself back into the gloomy dim light of my grandma's house.

The days turned into a rhythm. Wake up late for class. Porn. Quick shower. Force feed. Fast walk to class. Get in five minutes late. Eat depressing lunch by self at the fountain in the quad. Go to other classes. Walk home. Porn. Frozen dinner. Porn. Seinfeld. Sleep. Again.

Until it started happening about a month into the semester...

She came.

The only light in the room beamed upon my face from the computer perched on my stomach. The screen broadcast a short film which gave me a deep feeling of shame in my gut knowing this was all taking place in my mom's childhood bedroom. But hell, I was an 18-year-old boy, what do you expect me to do?

I was right in the middle of things when the blanket flew off of my body, leaving me completely exposed in the night. I threw my laptop to the floor without caution and jumped up in the bed to see the blanket  lying crumpled on the floor in the blue light of the computer screen.

Was there a gust of wind? No. All the windows were closed. The coastal sea air made it chilly on the October nights. There was no way that blanket could have flown off me the way it did unless it was pulled off by someone else.

I laid there, panicked and panting with my eyes glued to the laptop, coated in embarrassed sweat.

I felt the presence of a new weight introduce itself to the foot of the bed.

The dark and the adrenaline of shock and blush clouded my vision, but I could see a presence approach me from the foot of the bed. Sleek, slender and soft, I saw the hazy outline of a red-haired woman crawling up the bed at me. She slipped up my legs until she was rested her soft weight upon my wilted lap.

From a closer vantage, I could see the woman's face though it was still cloudy, as if she wasn't fully there. I closed my eyes tight as she pushed her face to my mine and kissed me softly upon the lips.

I opened my eyes once I felt her's push away from me. I saw the woman sitting on the end of the bed, her back facing me, shuddering with muffled sobs.

I pushed myself up against the headboard as much as I could and closed my eyes again.

I stayed up at the top of the bed, tucked up and frightened for hours until I felt the weight of the woman get up off of the bed and leave the room. Injected with a faint amount of relief, I uncoiled my body and relaxed, lying naked on the bed, wide awake until the morning came.

*

It's funny how the shining warmth and light of a burning ball of gas millions of miles away can provide so much comfort to your fears. The glow of the sunny day which greeted me when I walked outside to go to class soothed the troubles of the crazy night before.

My classes and lunch went by in the same quiet, dull, depressing way they usually did, but instead of rushing back to my grandma's house to drift away the night in seclusion, I was reluctant to go back. I hung around campus after my last class not knowing what to do. I considered calling my parents. But what was I going to say.

Hey mom and dad. I have to come home because grandma's house is haunted by the ghost of a hot young woman?

There was no way I could do that. Unfortunately by the time I decided on this, the Fall sun had set on the Pacific and the only place I had to go was back to the house where the aforementioned sexy ghost was.

I at least had a juvenile strategy. I heard about a mini-mart just off of campus known for selling beer to underage students and figured I could make a stop there to see if I could buy some of the world's oldest cure for fear and anxiety.

The rumors were true, but I made the grave mistake of purchasing two forties of Steel Reserve. I figured I should skip the usual Bud or Coors Light I would get and buy something I assume a person of age would buy with the four dollars and change I had in my wallet as not to draw suspicion. I sat in the backyard of my house forcing down the malt liquor and wincing in disgust.

The alcohol started to kick in about halfway through the second 40. The tension and fatigue from not sleeping last night smoothly started to melt away and the booze pumping through my veins made me a little bit bolder. Was I seriously scared of a female ghost? I could tell I was sufficiently drunk when I started to think to myself the ghost was really attractive and I almost hoped she would come back again.

I poured out the rest of the second 40 onto the grass and headed inside.

Even my blood alcohol level couldn't fully numb the uneasy feeling the house gave me. The chirping of a lone cricket and the presence of a half-full glass of red wine upon the kitchen counter when I walked in shot me with a jolt of sobriety.

A closer look at the glass revealed the faint hint of red lipstick stuck upon the top rim of the thin glass. A wave of cold fear overtook the warm glow of alcohol inside me.

I heard sounds of a shower running coming from the hallway which led back to the bedroom.

I thought about running back out the door, but stumbled towards the sounds of the shower, following a trail of women's clothing strewn upon the carpet. I bit down upon my cheek when I walked into the dark hallway and full absorbed the sounds of the spraying water in the bathroom.

The door to bathroom was open just crack, releasing moisture and the scent of fruity body wash into the air. I stood outside the door for a handful of moments, chewing my fingernails.

I took a deep breath and went in.

Her silhouette was there in the fogged-up, pebbled glass of the shower. Her back to me, I admired and feared her form at the same time for a few moments before I slipped back out of the room.

So drunk and so tired, I felt as if I almost melted into the bed when I collapsed upon it. I wasted no time undressing, brushing my teeth or conducting any other pre-bed time rituals, just laid down and let sleep take over me until my mind was thankfully blank.

*

The problem with an booze nap is once the alcohol wears off, you are left wide awake, sweating and starting a hangover in the middle of the night.

My eyes opened wide in the dark to reveal an alarm clock which announced the time as 1 AM and a window pelted heavy with thick rain and a stiff wind. Waking up almost immediately sent the tortorous surge of a raging, dehydration headache onto my skull. It quickly felt as if my brain was shrinking inside my head. I wanted to vomit.

I went to crawl out of bed towards the bathroom, but was halted by the feeling of a stir in the bedside at my back. I felt it again. A light shifting accompanied by the sound of a sigh.

I froze at the edge of the bed. I was too hungover and groggy for this shit but had to get up off the bed to shoot a look.

She lied there sleeping in the bed right next to where I had messed up the covers. Her long, thin arms draped over a naked body of golden skin and long auburn hair. The sight was something I probably usually would have liked to see, but not under these circumstances.

My answer to the problem? Go to the bathroom. Barf my guts out. Go out and sleep on the living room couch.

*

Thank God I had an appointment with my therapist the next morning. I usually dreaded our little parent-forced sessions, but I truly needed to talk to someone at that moment in time, or I might officially lose the last of the marbles I was grasping.

It was a while in the session before I broached the topic, but a back-and-forth about the consequences of my solidarity provided a nice, defensive segway.

"So how often do you interact with other people, on average?" My therapist asked from behind thick glasses and a clumsy plume of grey hair which tickled down at her eyes.

"At least a few times a day," I said in a tone I'm sure could not have sounded more defensive.

"I mean, true human interaction. Conversation. Feeling. Touch. Not just a please, thank you with the clerk at the store, an 'is that seat open?' From a classmate."

"Uh, I don't really know."

"I know it might seem hard, but I think you need to make an effort to include more interaction in your life. I understand it's not easy."

"I don't think you truly understand what I'm going through?"

"I think you're right. You haven't been overly forthcoming with exactly what has been troubling you."

"I'm haunted."

I couldn't believe I outright said it. I immediately swallowed my tongue.

"What are you haunted by?"

I waited a long time to respond.

"A girl."

"An ex-girlfriend? Your mom mentioned you left a girlfriend up in Oregon, but you broke up. Classmate who spurned you?"

"No. I have no idea who she is."

"So it's the idea of a girl?"

"NO. IT'S A FUCKING GHOST. A FUCKING GIRL GHOST IN MY GRANDMA'S FUCKING HAUNTED HOUSE."

My face was bright red, my hands trembling.

"You think the house you're living in is haunted?"

"Uh huh."

My therapist thought about it for a few moments.

"You know sometimes when people are isolated, don't have much interaction, they begin to invent characters in their head. It's how a lonely child before they attend school with other children might invent an imaginary friend. Our brains crave other characters in the little play taking place in our head."

"It's not an imaginary friend. This is what why I didn't want to bring up my true problems."

I watched her jot down something on her notepad.

"And I know what your thinking. I'm not crazy."

"Look, I'm only trying to help, but if you aren't willing to work with me, there isn't really anything I can do."

"Well, okay."

I got up out of my seat.

"I'll be on my way then."

I nodded at my therapist before I headed out the door.

A walk on the soggy beach sounded like a good way to calm my nerves. I shouldn't have brought up the ghost. The therapist was probably going to report to my parents I was going schizo or some shit and  I was going to get shipped off to some kind of crazy house with a bunch of weirdos.

The light rain thankfully mostly cleared the beach and I was left alone with my own troubles as I traversed the thick sand until I reached the boardwalk and ran into an old friend. The scent of freshly-burned marijuana.

My eyes instinctively followed the scent to a smoke trail which trickled below the boardwalk.

Clustered under the cover of the boardwalk was a group of about six or seven vaguely-familiar flunkies all clad in dark sweatshirts and jackets.

"Don't be starring unless you want to hit this," a bearded-member of the group interrupted my starring.

I blushed and put my head down for a moment, but eventually headed over to the cloud of smoke and was greeted with a chorus of laughter.

"That's what I thought," the bearded guy said with excitement.

I joined the group and took a hit before passing it to a girl with a shaved head and long eyelashes in a camo jacket.

The townies had some really good weed, not a huge surprise in Northern California. It hit me like a freight train after a few more passes of the pipe.

The group had been talking about a nice little "kick back" the entire time I was with them. Based on the steady eye contact they all kept making with me, I figured I was invited to said "kick back."

Not surprisingly, their sweet "kick back" consisted of sitting around someone's mom's dog shit-infested backyard in the run down part of town, smoking more weed, drinking some cheap beer and listening to the bearded guy play a ratty old Epiphone acoustic guitar (poorly) and cover Pink Floyd and Bob Marley songs (also poorly). The only thing that kept me around the gathering into the night was the conversation between me and the girl with the shaved head whose name I discovered was Loralei.

Loralei made it clear she lacked respect for me since I was enrolled at UCSC. The townies hated the disrespectful rich kids (especially the out-of-state ones) they believed made up the student body. However, she respected my mutual distaste for my colleagues. She also said she liked my accidental, lazy style. I had been reduced to wearing my dead step-grandpa's slacks, smoking jackets and never combing my longish hair out of pure laziness and only Loralei's fondness for my attire made me realize my get up actually probably made me look like some kind of aloof indie rocker.

The two of us slipped away from the group and a tone deaf version of Redemption Song to have a quieter conversation on the steps of the house where we could hear the sounds of someone's mom hacking smokes and watching Wheel of Fortune.

"This shit's pretty disappointing, isn't it?" Loralei asked.

I was so high, I could barely speak, but managed.

"It's better than what I usually do here, I guess."

"What's that?"

"Lay around my house by myself. Sometimes buy some beer and get a little messed up."

"Doesn't sound that bad, you have your own house? I thought you said you were a freshman here? Shouldn't you be in the dorms?"

"My family has a house in town, I'm staying there."

"Then let's go there. This shit is boring. I do this everyday."

Loralei was interrupted by the bearded guy, guitar in hand. I was alarmed to turn and see his eyes intensely glued to mine.

"Hey bro. Can I ask you something real quick?" He said and sent a nod in the direction of a quiet corner of the yard.

"Uh, yeah, yeah," I agreed with fear bubbling in my stomach.

The bearded guy (I still didn't know his name) got really nervous and jittery once we reached the secluded patch of grass in the corner. He could barely focus, but eventually started talking with his eyes on the ground.

"Uh, I have a question for you man."

"Okay."

"You think you are better than us just because you go to that fucking school?"

"What?"

"Are you trying to come in here and take our girls?"

I gave the guy a long, confused stare.

"Uh, no, sorry man," I said in the same way you would say to a homeless  person who asks you if you have a quarter. "I mainly just want to leave now."

The bearded guy didn't say another word. Just stared at me for a few moments before walking back towards the fire.

The whole interaction shook me up. I was instantly no longer comfortable in the situation I should have never been comfortable in to begin with.

I saw an opening in the fence next to me and slipped out onto the sidewalk.

I started off towards the better part of town and my home in a clumsy gait, tranquilized by the weed which was still bogging down my system.

"Wait. Wait," I heard Loralei's voice call out from behind me.

I turned to see her run up to me in the streetlight.

"What are you doing?"

"It was getting just a little too weird for me in there."

"Yeah, I know. It's weird. But you still want to hang out?"

*

Loralei and I locked arms about halfway through the 20 minute walk to my grandma's house. The touch of another felt so refreshing to my tortured body. I think it had been a couple months since I had enjoyed the true touch of another person.

I was a little bit scared of what Loralei might think when she came into my grandma's old school house and saw all the quilts, glass elephants and family portraits from the 80s, but I figured if she was used to the scene we just ditched, she wouldn't bat an eye. I let her in behind me. My brain raced with the usual fears you have when you have someone over unexpectedly. Did I flush the toilet? Is there porn pulled up on my laptop? Is my dirty underwear lying on the floor?

All my fears evaporated when Loralei grabbed me in the dark room and kissed me. She pulled me close and we stumbled over to the stale couch where she fell on top of me.

She covered my mouth and started unbuttoning her jacket. My heart began to race in a good way for the first time in quite a while. I started to take my clothes off while I admired Loralei. I was so excited I almost didn't know what to do.

I think she could sense my nervousness. She leaned down, bare-chested and we made out for what seemed like quite a long time. It had been so long for me and I was so high I thought we might have made out for an hour when we finally pulled away from each and gasped for air. I smiled at her and tried to catch my breath.

I was going to say something sweet, but something I saw out of the corner of my eye caused me to bite upon my tongue and quiver in pain.

Sprinting down the hallway with a lit candlestick in hand was my ghost, her dark hair whipping in her front of her face in her full dash, her speed nearly extinguishing the candle in her hand.

"Holy shit," I yelled out.

Loralei's eyes transformed from sensual to horrified in a flash. I tried to scramble out from under her, but wasn't fast enough.

The lighted candlestick flew into her head, fell down her jacket and landed on a quilt on the couch next to us, quickly igniting it.

"What the fuck?" Loralei screamed out.

I saw Loralei lifted up off of me by the back of her head. She squirmed before shaking away and tumbling to the floor.

I saw my ghost in as good of a focus as ever in the light the rising fire of the quilt provided. Her dark eyes glared at me from across the couch before she turned her attention back to Loralei.

The ghost chased Loralei to the front door. As soon as she left a gap between her and the hallway, I bolted and scrambled into the kitchen.

Once in the kitchen, I took a turn for the bedroom. There was a lock on the door. There was a lock on the door. I kept repeating to myself.

I burst into the bedroom, locked the door and ran into a big closet in the corner. There's another lock on the closet.

I slapped in the lock in the closet, tucked myself behind a collection of hanging heavy coats which still smelled like my grandma's stinky perfume and held my breath, waiting for the sounds of footsteps to approach the door.

But they didn't.

I stayed quarantined in the closet for what must have been hours. I wondered if I would see daylight when I finally took a deep breath, unlocked the latch and headed back out into the master bedroom.

It wasn't quite light in the room yet, but the blue aura coming from the bedroom window meant dawn was just greeting the world. I tiptoed in the shallow light over to my bed where I hoped to grab a couple of hours before the full stroke of morning but was greeted by a hand-written note placed upon my pillow.

Written in blank ink cursive, I felt just a touch of moisture upon the paper when I picked it up and read it.

It's okay if you don't want to be with me.

*

Weeks went by without another appearance from my ghost. The only thing left of her were the burns on my grandma's old quilt in the living room.

I myself actually slipped into becoming more and more of a ghost. I never went to campus. Was failing all of my classes. The only time I left the house consistently was to go to my therapist so she wouldn't tip off my parents about my falling apart and when I did, I played the part of the sane guy who was putting it back together. Never brought up any ghosts with beautiful faces.

I couldn't even really talk about my ghost anyway. She left me. I passed the days alone in my dark grandma house strangely missing my supernatural partner. Would she ever come back?

It seemed for those dark weeks, the answer would be no, but then I received a message from a  number I had never seen before.

The call came early in the morning (I was sleeping again, a lot actually) from a number I didn't recognize. Being it before seven in the morning and a number I didn't recall, I figured it was phone spam and went right back to sleep.

When I awoke a few hours later, I discovered a new voicemail connected to the missed call. When I hit play, I heard a voice I instantly recognized, but couldn't place where I had heard it at the same time.

Hi James. Last night was great. I hope we can do it again. Bye. Bye.

I played the message again and again and again, trying to figure out where the hell I knew the voice from, but still couldn't place it.

I thought a shower might help clear my mind but I shocked myself when I got off the bed and onto my feet. Lying on the floor, next to the bed was an empty condom wrapper, a rose petal and another note in the same penmanship of the one I had read weeks before.

See you tonight. ♥♥

*

The shower did nothing to help. The hot water cooked my troubled mind until I got out and slowly started to work my way to a resolution: I was going to embrace this thing.

My life was a hideous shamble. So why not have company? Even if it is dead company. I shaved (everywhere), combed my hair, put on a proper outfit for the first time in months and popped open a bottle of red wine I found in the cupboard that had probably been in there for years.

I took a seat on the uncomfortable couch in the living room, sipped on my vintage 2014 merlot and waited for my mystery guest to arrive - my eyes glued to the front yard outside the living window, my ears tuned to every little sound in the house. I had no idea from where she would come.

I would sit in that stale room with the stuck-together ribbon candy and Yankee candles, sipping my merlot until the bottle was almost finished and the sun began to set. No one arrived throughout the day, except for a postman who walked up to the door and avoided eye contact with the entire time.

*

I awoke on the couch to the sounds of a rumbling engine, which like that voice on my phone, was familiar, but still alien at the same time.

I opened my eyes and saw tall headlights burning through the open blinds of the living room window. I squinted, my head throbbing from the forming hangover, I faintly saw the outlines of a few people walking up from the driveway towards the front door.

I tried to scramble to my feet, but fell to the floor in the middle of the room and couldn't get back up. I was glued to the floor.

The footsteps were at the door now. Shit, I couldn't remember if I had locked it.

I heard the door handle turn. Okay, I definitely didn't lock it.

The door opened and the first person I saw walk through was not who I expected. It was not some kind of sultry, haunting figure vaguely familiar to my addled brain. It was someone I knew far too well.

My dad.

He was followed by another person deeply ingrained in my memory.

My mom.

They walked in together with one more person trailing them who was more in the hazy realm of my brain.

The ghost. Her scorching eyes burned into me once she walked into the room.

"Why the hell are you here?" I screamed up at them.

"James, you know why were are here," my said with tears in his eyes.

I watched my dad pull out a pipe and a small baggy out of his jacket pocket. He pushed the items down in my face.

"We already took these from the backyard."

*                                                                                                                                                                                        

I was addicted to heroin. It was as simple as that, yet not quite as simple as that at the same time.

I wasn't even fully aware I was addicted to heroin at the time I was in so deep. I smoked the stuff multiple times a day in the backyard and started the bad habit back in Oregon months before I moved  down to Santa Cruz. So by the time I showed up there, my brain was an unreliable fog of hazy addiction.

The "ghost" I was seeing was actually my ex-girlfriend Tory. I had been ignoring her texts and calls, deleted her from my phone and Facebook contacts and she was desperately trying to connecting with me, knew of my addiction and was trying to get me back to normal before my parents found out. I had only started dating her after my addiction had started so my strung out memory and hazy vision inside the dark house clouded her in my mind. She was going to school up at Humboldt State so she could only do the long drive to Santa Cruz periodically for short periods of time to try and rescue me in the night and then would have to get back on the road in the early morning to keep her own education from falling apart.

After seeing how bad I was, she eventually caved and told my parents. They immediately jumped on a flight and came down to have an intervention with me.

Now I am far, far from my grandma's supposedly haunted house in a rehab facility somewhere on the Oregon Coast wearing a white robe, sipping coffee all day, taking up smoking and watching country music videos on TV (for some reason that's all they watch here). It fucking sucks.

I sit in my white little room, with my born again roommate always telling me something about Corinthians or John 3:16 or some shit I have to tune out just wishing someone would actually haunt me.

Preferably someone sexy please.

Originally published by Thought Catalog on www.ThoughtCatalog.com.

[jackfollmanwriter-blog]

The Son

October 25, 2009

The smell of Danielle’s Child perfume still intoxicated my nose a good three minutes after she had climbed out of the back of our car with her arm around Jon like he was an injured football player she was helping off the field.

“Did you think he was going to get that drunk?” I asked my husband Richie from the passenger seat while he squinted out at the near darkness of the forested road and mouthed the words to the pop song on the radio.

“Uh, yeah, I mean, he basically won the lottery. Do you know how many people write and try to sell screenplays compared to how many actually sell them?” Richie explained with an annoyed tone.

“I know you did.”

I instantly regretted my reply, knowing it came off as cold and sarcastic.

“Thanks,” Richie answered back so quietly I could barely hear it over the radio.

“You seem bothered?” I confronted the issue.

Richie squinted and leaned a little closer to the windshield.

“Sorry, there’s just like ten million different little roads up here and all the names are almost exactly the same. I can’t remember if we turn left on Camino del Real or Camindo del Espernza. Plus, I’m not used to driving in the dark. I hate the god damn hills.”

“Oh okay.”

I turned my attention away from Richie and towards the impulses firing in my brain which told me I could still smell Danielle’s perfume more than I probably should have been able to. I craned my neck around to the backseat and saw her violet scarf resting in the backseat.

“Shit. Danielle left her scarf in the car.”

“Eh, we’ll give it back to her the next time we see her.”

“Oh, come on, you know how that happens. We see her six months from now, forget to bring it and then say the same thing again. She wouldn’t shut up about it, I think she really likes it. Let’s just turn around and drop it back off. We can pull up navigation anyways, because it seems like we’re lost.”

Richie didn’t respond with words, just whipped a U-Turn in the middle of an intersection and headed back the way from which we came, higher up into the hills of Hollywood.

It took less than five minutes before we were back in front of Danielle and Jon’s rustic, yet modern home which looked like it was straight out of a commercial for the luxury car that rested out front on the street.

“I’ll just run and knock,” I announced to Richie and jumped out of the car with Danielle’s sweet-smelling scarf in my clutches.

I ran my hand up and down the clean, immaculate wood of their front door after ringing the bell. I waited for about a minute, fighting of the chill of a Fall LA night in the hills, before I went to ring again and produced the modern, digital tone which sounded like the soft beep of an iPhone as opposed to that of a doorbell.

“Hey,” Richie’s voice yelled out from the car and made me jump up into the air.

I slowly turned around and glared at Richie from across the driveway.

“Just go around the back and put it underneath the deck,” Richie announced.

I followed Richie’s directions and walked around to the side of the house until I was in Danielle and Jon’s little cubby hole of a backyard. A ten-yard backyard lined with thick trees which just barely obscured the houses around them, the yard rested in front of a little patio that was covered by the upper deck of the house.

I tried to keep myself from giving into my own curiosity by not looking into the sliding-glass door which fed out of their downstairs den and out onto the patio, but couldn’t. I shot a quick look through the glass when I set the scarf down on a little wooden table.

Through the glass, I could see a dimly-lit room with a couch and a couple chairs and a small TV. I thought I had been down there before for a party and thought it was a completely underutilized room which didn’t match with the rest of their well-designed home. I remembered thinking it reminded me of the weird, retro basement in That 70s Show, but, what did I know? Maybe that was the cool new thing now?

I was scanning the room to see if it had changed and getting ready to walk away when I saw something move. I jumped and looked away. Shit. It was probably Danielle or Jon catching me staring into their home at one in the morning.

I left the scarf on the table and started to hustle away, but shot one last look into the room over my shoulder, figuring I should see what I actually laid eyes on, since I was already caught.

What I caught was sight of a young boy. Probably about 10 years old, he had a head of shaggy, sandy blonde hair which hung over his pale, cherubic face. He wore a light navy blue t-shirt with some sports team logo I didn’t recognize printed on it and white briefs, known on the elementary schoolyard as “tighty whiteys.” I couldn’t tell exactly what he was doing, but he was standing behind the back of the couch with his head hanging down and concentrating on something which was behind the suede piece of furniture.

I took in the sight of the young boy for a few more moments to try and figure out what he was doing, but cut it short when I saw him lift his shaggy head up and shoot a look out the glass door. I jumped off the patio and dove into the ragged bushes which lined the walkway next to the house.

“Shit, shit, shit,” I whispered to myself while I dusted the leaves off of my arms and dashed up the walkway on the side of the house until I was out front, running towards Richie’s Impala in my heels.

“Why the hell are you running?” Richie asked when I jumped into the car.

“Well that was fucking weird,” I said in between ragged breaths. “Go.”

“You didn’t kill my friends, did you?” Richie asked while he commanded the car down the hill.

“There was a kid in their house.”

“What?” Richie instantly shot back.

“When I was down on the patio, I looked in the window, into that den room down there and I saw a boy. Looked like he was probably around ten years old.”

“A boy?”

“A ten-year-old boy with Shaggy Scooby Doo hair doing something weird down there behind the couch.”

“Shit.”

“I know they don’t have a kid, but just to confirm, they don’t, right?” I asked just to be safe.

“No,” Richie confirmed flatly.

“Maybe they had someone babysit their dog or cat or something?” I reasoned.

“They definitely don’t have a dog or cat,” Richie shot back. “Jon is allergic.”

“Maybe just watch their house while they are gone? A neighbor kid?” I kept searching for answers.

“We were only gone for like three hours, but maybe?” Richie answered.

“It was weird they didn’t answer the door though. Not even the kid.”

Richie had finally successfully led us out of the hills and back to civilization. The sound of a honking car horn announced our arrival to Hollywood Boulevard.

“Should we call them, or call the cops?” I asked.

“No, I’m sure it’s nothing.”

I was bothered by Richie bringing his customary never bothered, never care, state of mind to the situation.

“I’ll text Jon in the morning,” Richie went on.

“Okay,” I quietly agreed, it wasn’t worth it to fight it right now.

*

My eyes fluttered open in the blue light of the night in our bedroom. Shit. It took me an extra hour just to initially fall asleep since my brain and bladder were still working overtime from the five glasses of the night before, and now, just 85 minutes into my slumber, I was up, staring at the clock on my cable box which announced the time as 3:34 a.m.

That last of the wine still processing, I got up to relieve myself, but stopped as soon as I stood up next to the bed. Something was off about the room. A childish sense of fear had started to seep into my sobering mind.

Someone was in our apartment.

I had no official clue as to why my brain gave me that feeling. There were no footsteps down the hallway, no crashes or clangs from the kitchen or the sound of the front door slamming, but it did and kept me still there, naked in the night, listening for any clue over the sound of Richie softly snoring. Lucky bastard. There was nothing I wanted more than to be fast asleep at that moment, not imagining the twisted grin of some psychopath rummaging through our silverware drawer, trying to pick out the perfect steak knife to disembowel us with.

I dropped back down to the bed to try and wake Richie, have him ease my fears. I was stretching out across our sea of blankets when the jolt of a buzz from over on the floor shocked me. I let out a spastic scream and clutched my chest with my eyes wide and scanning until they locked onto the source of the buzz - Richie’s iPhone, laying screen side down on the floor next to his jeans.

I turned my attention away from Richie’s snoring and focused in on whoever the fuck was texting my husband at 3:30 a.m. That was a lot scarier than any kind of psycho killer or monster which may have been lurking in the dark.

I slowly moved off the foot of the bed, making sure as to not stir Richie and crawled on the hardwood floor on my hands and knees over to his cell phone on the floor.

Richie’s phone greeted me with another buzz and flash.

In one swift motion, I scooped up Richie’s phone and caught it before the screen went to black. I was initially relieved when I saw his two fresh text messages were from Jon.

I checked both texts.

The first just read “Help.” The second was longer “We need to talk.”

I at first had no thoughts about the texts. I put the phone back where it was and went back to bed, completely forgetting about the presence I thought I felt earlier. Even if the texts came in smack dab in the middle of the night, they were from one of Richie’s best friends and were probably about something really stupid like fantasy football bullshit.

However, those texts would start to stir my mind, the longer it took me to fall back asleep.

Why was Jon texting him at 3:30 in the morning? Why did Jon send a text that just read “Help?” Did it have something to do with the boy I saw in the house?

It was time to wake up Richie.

Richie reacted exactly how I expected he would getting rushed up in the middle of the night. I gave him a few moments to power up before I jumped into him.

“Jon keeps texting you,” I whispered to Richie once the sleep was wiped from his eyes.

“Who cares?” Richie shot back, clearly groggy and annoyed.

“You should. One of your best friends is texting you for help in the middle of the night, and you don’t care?”

Richie rolled away from me and grunted, signalling that he was done with our conversation.

“I’m sure it was probably a mistake or something. Or something that can wait a few hours. He was probably still drunk and wanted to talk about the Lakers or something. Trust me. I know him. He’s my friend.”

*

Not a shock to me, but it turned out Jon’s texts were not a mistake and he did not just want to talk about the “Lakers” or something. I found this out when I was stirred from my half-sleep by some texts of my own from my friend Ali whose husband was friends with Jon through work.

Oh my God. Have you heard about Richie’s friend Jon? I’m so sorry.

I texted back as fast as humanly possible.

What are you talking about?

I got a phone call from Ali in about 1.5 seconds.

“Hello.”

I heard sobs before I heard words on Ali’s line.

“What’s wrong?” I asked frantically while I heard Richie rustle in the bed next to me.

Ali started in slowly, having a hard time getting any words out.

“Jon...killed himself...last night?”

“What?”

“You guys know him and his wife a lot better than I do, but a friend of mine who lives next to him told me, so I thought I would let you know. That’s all.”

Ali hung up before I could say any more.

I turned over to Richie with tears already running down my cheek and my mouth wide.

“Jon killed himself last night,” I could barely get the words out to Richie before completely breaking down.

*

The half pot of coffee Richie and I downed in about five minutes really did not help our nerves. We paced our dining room just before 8 a.m. trying to figure out what we should do. I wanted to talk to Danielle and the police about the boy I saw in their house, but Richie didn’t like that.

“You probably just saw something that wasn’t there. You know how you get wine drunk?” Richie insisted for about the third time that morning.

“Someone needs to say something, Richie. A guy who just sold his first screenplay for three hundred thousand dollars kills himself the next night and I see a creepy ass kid in his house while he won’t answer the door, and you don’t think I should tell his wife, or the cops?”

“I just think if something happened to you like that and Danielle called me up, talking some crazy shit about little kids in our house I would be fucking pissed and weirded out.”

“But I saw it Richie. I fucking saw it. This isn’t a made up ghost story or something. What if that kid did something to Jon and I saw him, and we said nothing.”

“Okay. I’ll call the cops about it. Let them know so they can look into it, but I’m not going to involve Danielle in that yet. If it is something, the cops can talk to her about it and they can talk to you about what you saw.”

October 29, 2009

The next few days were surreal. Richie talked to the cops and to Danielle a few times. He went to their house a few times to talk with Danielle and the cops. A cop came to our apartment and interviewed me about what I saw.

Things hit peak discomfort when we had to go to Jon’s funeral. I had never been to a funeral for someone who wasn’t a grandparent of mine, let alone someone who killed themselves at what appeared to be the zenith of their life and career and watch their parents (and even grandparents) cry at their graveside.

I gave Richie his space. He did what he needed to do. The cops and Danielle knew about what I saw and I can only imagine how bad he felt. I cried for weeks when my friend Lindsey just moved to San Francisco, so I can’t even begin to think how bad it would hurt to have a friend die.

Richie seemed to be doing okay though and I was glad. Things seemed to get more and more normal every day. Richie went back to work. We stopped talking to the cops and we stopped going to funeral and memorial services.

November 1, 2009

The cool nights which finally come to LA in October are my favorite. After months of sleeping with every window open to try and stave off the heat without air conditioning, I relish those first few nights when it feels like Fall might really be in Southern California and you can sleep without the distant sounds of sirens and car horns leaking through the open windows. It’s about as peaceful as it gets in Hollywood for me.

That peace would slowly start to be eroded that Fall after Jon died.

The first time I noticed something amiss about our apartment was about a week after Jon’s death. I woke at daybreak having to pee after a night of chugging water, trying to recover as fast as possible from a cold.

I sat there on the toilet, half asleep and staring at the towel rack when I heard the unmistakable sound of the front door of our apartment closing. I quickly relieved my mind by assuming Richie had jumped out of bed and gone somewhere or went to take out the trash.

That relief up and walked away as soon as I got up, walked out of the bathroom and into the bedroom and saw Richie fast asleep on the bed, no sign that he had gotten up anytime soon. Still in a daze of half sleep, I climbed into bed next to Richie and stared at the wall across the room, trying to convince myself I hadn’t heard that front door close.

“Richie,” I eventually had to speak.

“Ugh, hum,” Richie groaned next to me.

“Did you just go out the front door a minute ago?”

“No. You just woke me up.”

I no longer loved the cool chill of the middle of the Fall night. It now helped my blood run cold as I heard footsteps walk away from our building outside of our bedroom window.

November 9, 2009

I was able to slightly shake off the sound of the apartment door closing in the middle of the night. Richie reminded me of a time a few years back when I swore I could hear a radio on inside our old apartment, but it turned out just to be my brain, which was still sobering from a few glasses of wine, playing tricks on me. He reminded me, I had a little too much to drink that night and that our old building regularly produced the noises of a haunted house since it hadn’t truly been renovated since it was built in the 20s.

Richie’s assurances had helped put those fears towards the back of my head, but it couldn’t complete erase them. I hadn’t felt completely safe in our apartment since, and I did everything I could to never be there alone.

Those fears were on a break on a random Wednesday when I had to run back home from work during my lunch break to pick up my box of business cards for a job fair. Going to the apartment in the middle of an 87-degree day with the sun shining bright didn’t stoke my fears too much.

That Indian Summer sun and heat did little to calm my nerves when I fumbled in my purse for my keys outside of my front door and heard soft murmurs coming from the inside of my apartment. Nearly frozen in fright, I stood there for a few moments with my ear stuck towards the door listening to muttering and trying to make out what was being said.

The voice was clearly male, but I couldn’t make out a single word the man was saying until I heard the voice come closer and realized the man was speaking in Spanish.

“Lo que la cogida.”

I didn’t know exactly what the phrase meant, but I could tell by the tone I heard through the door, that it was said in confusion and frustration. I quickly realized I should have been running away and not running Google translate in my head when I heard the door handle, which was just inches away from my head, begin to rattle.

I screamed and recoiled, hoping someone else was home on my floor and heard me, because it was too late for me to get away from whoever was in our apartment if he really wanted to do something sinister to me.

The terrified face of our maintenance guy Julio popped out of our now open front door. We screamed in unison.

I jumped into Julio before he could get a word out.

“What the fuck Julio?”

“No, no, no,no,” Julio pleaded before I could tear into him further. “Please, please, please, listen.”

I gave Julio a few moments. He had been our maintenance guy for years and the only good one I had ever had in my entire life. I would hear him out for at least a minute. Maybe there was a leak or something in our apartment he had to go in and fix ASAP without letting us know.

“I only went in because I saw someone I had never seen before climbing through the window of your apartment. A boy. He was crawling through the window in your bedroom. I came in to see what was going on, but he was not in here.”

I couldn’t breathe and neither could Julio. His face glistened with sweat, his chest heaved and he hadn’t blinked since I started talking to him. Either he was giving an Academy Award-worthy performance, or the 40-year-old, testosterone-healthy, man who was standing before me was truly scared by something incredibly eerie going on in my apartment.

“I don’t know. Maybe it was a mistake? Maybe it was somebody else’s apartment. I am really sorry,” Julio went on, now looking embarrassed.

“No, no,” I stopped him. “Did you check the closets and stuff?”

Julio finally took a breath and blinked, probably realizing I wasn’t going to get him in trouble.

“No,” Julio said and shook his head profusely.

“Can you help me do that?”

Julio obliged and bravely checked each closet and the space beneath the bed the way my mom would before bedtime when I was a child. We found nothing, but that only turned down the heat on my fears just a touch. I was still utterly unnerved, and unlike Julio, I didn’t get to leave the place and go home and sleep somewhere else. I was stuck in my art deco apartment with the image of that boy from Jon and Danielle’s house crawling through our window.

With that dark image playing on repeat in my head, I walked over to the large window in our bedroom and slammed it shut.

November 19, 2009

It’s sad, but I had almost completely forgotten about Jon’s passing within a few weeks, until I was at a Starbucks across town, picking up a coffee in the 20 minutes I had to kill before a meeting.

The barista behind the counter, working on my iced, decaf Americano looked strikingly familiar. It took a few minutes to put my finger on it, but I eventually identified him as the cop who came to our apartment to question me about what I saw at Jon and Danielle’s house that night.

My face blushed, my entire body swelled with nervous heat. The two of us made eye contact and the guy looked away, back to the bucket of ice he was scooping from behind the thin-rimmed glasses he was not wearing when he sat in my apartment taking notes about what I told him.

The barista/cop kept his eyes down when he walked my drink over to the crowded counter and set it down without an announcement before he slipped out of the barista station and disappeared through a door.

I wasn’t sure what to do. Maybe the guy had lost his job as a cop in the past couple of weeks and quickly transitioned into being a barista? Maybe it was a part time job and he was embarrassed? Maybe he just looked exactly like that cop.

I left the Starbucks with my overpriced, under-caffeinated coffee and tried to shake the interaction off.

*

I probably would have been able to get over the incident had the night not grown strange once I got home. Richie left for his weekly workout class about five minutes after I got home and before I could tell him about seeing the cop at the Starbucks.

I considered telling Richie to take a night off because an October storm was rolling outside with stiff gusts of winds, and because the power had already flickered off once in the night, but I didn’t want to risk a fight, so I tucked myself onto the couch and prayed the power would stay connected for the 90-minute period of Richie’s class. The awful E! shows I watched did little to clear my mind though, I ended up sitting there for about 30 minutes, twisting and turning both internally and externally, listening to the wind pound the thin windows behind me and watching the lights flicker.

The tone and vibration of my phone about 45 minutes into the lonely night was sweet relief. I slapped the phone up off the coffee table and it immediately felt alien in my grasp. I went to unlock the screen, but my passcode wouldn’t work. I tried it three times, before I gave the back of the phone a once over, saw the distinctive long, white scratch on the back and realized it was Richie’s phone. Identical on the outside other for that long scratch, Richie and I were constantly swapping phones on accident and it must have happened again.

It took about 10 tries, but I was eventually able to crack the combination to Richie’s password (sadly a combination of his high school football and basketball numbers) and dropped the phone when I saw who the text he received was from...Jon.

Where are you…

I checked the number to see if maybe there was another “Jon” in Richie’s phone, but nope, it was the same, 858, San Diego area code Jon always had. So either, it was one of the most massive coincidences I had ever encountered, or Richie was getting a text asking where he was from his friend we watch get buried in the ground less than a month before.

I didn’t have time to ask myself anymore questions. A new text from Jon came through and the power flickered at the same time.

I can’t find him

The lights flickered again and full panic mode kicked in. I went to call my phone from Richie’s phone to see if I could reach Richie, but paused when a hard gust of wind hit the window behind my head. Another text rumbled in my hand and the power finally officially took a bow.

Lit by just the blue light of the screen of Richie’s phone, I read the next text with my nails in my mouth and my legs shaking.

Have you seen him?

The sound of footsteps approaching the door to our apartment drew me away from the screen for a moment. I slowly rose to my feet while I heard the heavy steps stomp up to the door and stop.

I made a run across the living room to the kitchen, thoughts of the sharp knives which rested on top of our refrigerator seeming like a better immediate option than calling the cops, but I didn’t make it before the front door started to unlock. I stopped myself in the doorway between the living room and kitchen and watched the door swiftly open and reveal a sweaty Richie standing there out of breath in a cut-off tank top.

“Oh my God,” I blurted out with the last breaths left in my lungs.

“What the hell is going on?” Richie asked before stepping through the door. “Is the power off?”

I took a few slow steps back towards the kitchen while I watched Richie walk in as if nothing was off. I wanted to confront him about the texts from Jon’s number, but actually thought better of it. Maybe it would be better to just do that investigating on my own? Especially since it seemed Richie may not have realized we swapped phones yet.

Richie met me in the middle of the room and embraced me with a sweaty hug I reluctantly accepted, not wanting to tip him off to any worry on my end.

“I’m going to jump in the shower,” the little phrase coming out of Richie’s mouth right after we broke off our hug was music to my ears.

I went right for the cell phone as soon as I heard the bathroom door close behind Richie and heard the shower fire up.

I wasted no time in getting the conversation going, wrote back:

Where are you?

Thankfully the response came almost instantly.

Home. But have you seen him? I think he has been going to your place recently. I’m worried.

The last two sentences of the text were enough to push me over the edge of leaving my apartment. I wasn’t waiting around for whoever “he” was to show up, especially since it had whoever “Jon” was worried.

Can we talk about it at your place?

I was in a dilemma. I was pretty sure “Jon” was actually Danielle, but knew I would give away I really wasn’t Richie if I asked too many specific questions. Richie had been in the shower for a few minutes now, I probably had less than two minutes to hit the road at this point if I wanted to have a head start on Richie when he got out of the shower and realized the situation.

A text buzzed back.

Please. ASAP.

I wanted to pat myself on the back when I thought of what I could ask to sideways confirm who I was talking to.

Wind is crazy, roads might be closed. What’s the best way to take right now?

I started to sweat. I knew the shower was going to cut out any second and Richie was going to walk out of the bathroom and I knew every second it took “Jon” to respond raised the likelihood of the person on the other line being wary of my question.

Alas, a buzz rang out.

Take Laurel Canyon. It’s fine.

That was the last hint I needed. Danielle and Jon’s house was just a couple streets off of Laurel Canyon Boulevard. There was no way these texts weren’t coming from Danielle.

I ran out of the apartment and down to my car in the garage, hearing the shower shut off just as I stepped out the door.

The drive to Danielle and Jon’s house only took about 20 minutes, but it felt like it took an hour since I was looking in my rear-view mirror the entire time, looking for Richie’s black Charger and checking his, and my phone, at every red light, waiting for something to go haywire. Neither of these things happened though, and soon I was parked in front of Danielle and Jon’s quaint, little dream house in the hills, suddenly wondering if I had the guts to go up at knock on the door.

I knew I had to make a move though. My time was likely running thin and as hard as confrontation was, it needed to be made at this point, living with all of the secrets that were clearly circling around me was much scarier than looking Danielle in her face and asking her what was going on.

With all of this forced bravery boiling in my head, I stepped out of the car and hustled up to the front door of Jon and Danielle’s house.

I held my breath when I reached the door and went to knock, but quickly had to stop myself. The door was already open a crack.

I gave a quick knock on the already-open door and then pushed it all the way open.

The inside of the house was clean, still and at least had some lighting, good to see the power wasn’t out up in the hills.

“Hello?” I called out into the foyer before I walked in the direction of the sunken living room I knew was just to the left of the kitchen in front of me.

I received no answer, but I quickly saw something in the kitchen which distracted me - a lone, yellow legal pad resting on the counter, filled with women’s handwriting.

I had to investigate.

The note read:

Richie -

Please know this was not your fault. It’s the world’s. I couldn’t live with the silent judgement anymore and knowing I would never get to live the life I wanted to live unless I did something awful I just couldn’t make myself do. This was the easiest way out. I hope everyone will understand.

Danielle.

I somehow imagined what was hanging there in the living room before I even looked to the left and saw it. I looked over and saw Danielle dangling from a thick rope hung from a ceiling beam, swaying over a glass table in the living room.

I saw no benefit in closer examining the scene, but I couldn’t help but be drawn in by another note I saw, this one resting right next to Danielle’s swaying toes.

I made my way over and took a look.

A closer glance revealed the paper was an envelope with my name written on it. I gave the room one quick, 360-degree scan before I bent down and picked it up.

I opened up the envelope and found another hand-written letter, written in the same handwriting as the one that was on the counter.

Mary -

I’m sure you have a million questions if you are reading this and I’m sorry I can’t be there to answer any of them for you, so I will do my best to answer as many as I can here.

This is probably going to be shocking, but Richie and I were together for years before the two of you met. We dated all through college and a couple years after, actually up until right when the two of you started dating. Richie broke my heart when he left me for you, but I understood, he wanted to try something different. The problem was, a few months later, I found out I was pregnant and about a year in, Richie realized he didn’t want me completely out of his life, but he also didn’t want to end what he had with you since the two of you were engaged. So we created a lie, we got my boyfriend, and now husband, Jon, to pretend as if he and Richie were old friends so we could still see each other, at least in a group.

When Jon died, it created a perfect opening for Richie and I to reconnect more than we had before and we slipped back into what we were. I am so, so sorry. It is one of the reasons I had to do this.

I had to interrupt my reading with my own internal question about the brief mention of being pregnant Danielle had yet to address again. What the hell was that about?

I jumped back into the letter.

You’re probably wondering about the child. Well, I had him, but I gave him up for adoption. His name is Trevor and he lives in Oregon. We have never met him, I never told Richie about him and he does not know who Richie is. I was told he recently filed to receive information on his real parents, but only my information would be available.

Danielle

The letter was a chilling revelation. I couldn’t have felt more vulnerable standing there in the middle of the room, and while I believed the bulk of the letter, something about it was off. Particularly that last paragraph about Trevor as the handwriting on that section looked just a little different than the rest.

Still, I was over the whole thing. My entire world was a smoldering pile of rubble and I just wanted to hose off the ashes and move on at this point.

I tucked the note addressed to me in my pocket. Dialed 911 on the landline at the house, left it ringing and ran out of the house.

October 2016

It’s funny how fast six years go by. I wasn’t sure if was the complete change of lifestyle, leaving it all behind, or being on island time out in Hawaii which made time go by in flash, but I didn’t really care. Each day was just a numb passing where I tried to suck as much joy out of life as I could, waiting tables, going to the beach and drinking… a lot.

I figured the little café I caught on up in the corner of Kaui where the highway almost ends was about as far as I realistically could get away without leaving the U.S. and without going to Alaska, and for years, it was. Other than the select few family members I gave very specific directions about how to contact me, I never had any little bits of my old life creep back in.

Well...until just a few afternoons ago.

It was towards the end of a quiet afternoon shift when a customer who another server had abandoned called me over. I was in such a rush to clean off the last of my tables, I didn’t even give him much of a look, just took his check and credit card and rushed off to the computer to punch in his order and bring him back his receipt. I could tell he was a very young man with lighter hair, but that was about it.

I went back later and collected his signed receipt and that was when things started to get memorable. First, he left a $20 tip on an $12 meal. Second, there was a little note written below the total line which read: SAY HI TO DANIELLE & JON FOR ME! :). Third, I noticed his name on the bill was Trevor Billings. Fourth, he left another note below his name which has been haunting me the past few days, written in the same handwriting I had not seen since those notes I read that night in Jon and Danielle’s house seven years before.

It read: I’LL SEE YOU AGAIN SOON.

Originally published by Thought Catalog on www.ThoughtCatalog.com.

[jackfollmanwriter-blog]

My Face on the Milk Carton

The warmth of the beer in my hand let me know it was time to step into the graveyard. The punishingly-cold April morning resulted in me conducting my new morning ritual of downing a Budweiser can at the San Juan County Cemetery District #3 inside the cab of my 1993 Ford Ranger as opposed to the foot of my father’s still-fresh grave.

Drinking a few of Budweiser cans each night in his easy chair was my father’s favorite past time. Just before he passed on, I promised him I would come to his grave each day that I could and drink a beer with him. The first three days since his burial, I made good on my word.

It was the third-straight day I laid my eyes upon it, but the sight of my father’s fresh grave still felt like a needle sliding slowly underneath my skin. If you have never seen a fresh grave, it looks more ghoulish than you might imagine. A patch of dirt juts out from the front of the grave until the grass the cemetery plants on the dirt grows. At least that is how they still do it in super-rural graveyards on islands in the Puget Sound.

It would not be the muddy ground of my father’s grave which raised the hairs on the back of my neck that day though - it was the fresh bouquet of flowers which rested upon the base of his headstone. This was the third-straight day there were a new bunch of flowers sitting there. This might not have been so mysterious had my father not been a borderline hermit all his life. He really only talked to two people - me and my mother- throughout his adult years. With my mother permanently stricken to a hospital bed for the past couple of weeks, ready to join my father in passing any day now, I was certain it wasn’t her leaving those flowers.

My entire body a coil of frozen nerves, I followed through with my usual ritual of cracking open a Budweiser and putting it on the base of my father’s headstone, right next to the flowers. I washed back the last little sip of warm domestic and placed my empty can next to my father’s full one.

*

The herculean task of completely renovating my parent’s rustic cabin home gave me plenty of time to contemplate the mystery of the constant flowers on my father’s grave. A gawky kid mowing the cemetery grass the day before had confirmed to me they didn’t have some operation where they put flowers on a grave daily. Whoever was putting flowers on my father’s grave was driving there every morning before I showed up around 9 am, putting new flowers down and taking the ones from the day before away with them.

My daily schedule went as follows:

9 a.m. Drink beer in cemetery parking lot and place beer on dad’s grave.

10 a.m. Visit my mom in the hospital.

12 p.m. Eat lunch.

1 p.m – 5 p.m. sift through the rat’s nest of clutter of my parents’ belongings, throwing away the stuff I didn’t need to keep.

5 p.m. – Get drunk.

Visiting my mom for those two hours was always the hardest part of the day.  Stricken with Alzheimer’s, my mother was extremely hard to follow or communicate with. In the two hours I spent each day by her side, I usually only got about one or two minutes where the demented clouds in her brain parted and a true conversation slipped through. When this happened, we would almost always talk about one of our childhoods while I fought against tears in a battle I almost never won.

The only thing that was making the visits a little easier was the presence of a new nurse. My mom’s previous nurse had been an unnecessarily hostile hag with glasses and Vaseline underneath her eyes who once kicked me out of the room for having my cell phone vibrate. Thankfully, she was recently replaced by a gray-haired ex-hippy named Debra who you would hear coming from miles away because of the amount of beads and bracelets she wore. Debra always took the time to ask me if there was anything she could do to make my mom feel better and regularly stole desserts from the dining hall for me. She had also followed me to the dining hall to get coffee and console me a couple times when the energy in the room got too heavy for a man who was not yet 40, but was saying goodbye to both of his parents in a calendar year.

*

The afternoon cleaning had become therapeutic for me. The thoughtless, mechanical process of throwing out old newspapers, magazines and trinkets allowed me to shut of the anxieties in my head for a handful of hours and clear out a bit of the neurosis.

I would occasionally stumble upon some intriguing relic covered in dust which would capture my interest for the rest of the day. One day while trudging through the expansive mess that was the closet in my old bedroom it would be one of those old newspapers I usually just chucked into a recycling bin which gave me pause.

Most of the newspapers were old, from about 10-15 years ago, but this one was from the late-70s and it was from Wilmington, North Carolina, while the rest of the newspapers had been the local Islands’ Sounder or regional Seattle Times. This caught my attention, but what snatched it away and took it to solitary confinement was what slipped out from the newspaper when I picked it up…

A flattened milk carton.

Plastered on the milk carton was a picture of what I recognized as me at an age so young my internal memory never ventured back there, probably about two years old, maybe three. The picture was tucked beneath the word MISSING and surrounded by information that was utterly foreign to me, including the name of the missing boy who looked exactly like me.

Jeff Clancy.

I had never known my name as Jeff Clancy, my name was John Thompson.

The location was also a mystery to me. Jeff Clancy had gone missing in Wilmington, North Carolina. A place I had no memory having ever been, let alone living. I was from Eastsound, Washington. Born and raised on Orcas Island.

Looking at the deflated thing with my little face plastered on it made my brain almost want to explode. The worst part is I would not be able to talk to the only person who might be able to answer my questions, my mom, until the next morning. Until then, I was stuck with the rotting piece of cardboard, my sorrowful thoughts, a 12-pack of Budweiser and a house in the woods without cable or Internet.

I planned to get up earlier the next day so I could catch the culprit who was placing flowers on my father’s grave, but my twisted up brain didn’t allow me to get to sleep until 3 a.m. the night before. I barely made my morning Budweiser stop and saw the new flowers before I had to head to the hospital for visiting hours.

I was still wiping the taste of watery beer off of my lips when I walked into my mother’s hospital room and was shocked to see a smile upon her face. It appeared a rare “good day” had shined down upon us at just the right time.

    “John,” her voice chiming my name when I walked in put a smile upon my face for the first time in literally months.

The warm greeting was unlike any I had heard in quite a while. I took a seat in the drafty room and held court with a casual conversation void of any specific topic for a few minutes to make sure I didn’t dive on top of my mom with an interrogation darkened with potential despair and misery right off the bat. We talked about the rain drizzling and collecting on the window, the amount of water in the food in the dining hall and how it reminded us of Swanson’s TV dinners and gardening.

After a handful of minutes, I could no longer resist to urge to start grilling my mother like a piece of meat on a grill in summer.

   “Mom… I gotta ask you about something...

I pulled the milk carton out of my pocket and nervously waved it in her face.

   “What’s this about?”

My mom’s eyes squinted, her brow furrowed… but then her face went blank.

   “I don’t know,” she said without emotion. “Who is that?”

I wanted to scream. I wanted to shove the little flattened box in her face and explain, but I knew I could not and it wouldn’t help anyway.

My mother would sometimes breakthrough with rays of lucid, conversational sunshine, but details like the carton I was parading in her face were still iffy. It was very likely she simply didn’t recognize my toddler mugshot on the thing. It didn’t mean I wouldn’t try again later though.

Debra caught me as I left the room looking dejected as a football player walking off of the field after losing the Super Bowl as the other team’s confetti fell upon them.

    “Someone looks like they need a coffee right now,” Debra said as I tucked the carton stealthily into my pocket.

My face smiled at Debra who somehow had a look upon her soft face which was joking, comforting and understanding all at the same time. She looked very much like my mom right when my dad was starting to get sick and she was spending her days reassuring me everything would be okay.

The aroma of watery coffee thankfully whisked away the hospital smell which had been permeating every tasteful cavity in my body. I praised the drink of crushed Colombian beans my tears fell into like drops of cream.

The touch of Debra’s soft hand upon my forearm gave me pause in my heartache.

    “I can’t imagine how hard this all must be.”

   “Thanks.”

    “I had a son who passed far too early,” Debra said with a tone that dialed in true sadness.

    “You did?”

    “Yes, I did. Well, it’s hard to exactly define, because they never found his body, but since it was more than forty years ago he went missing, it’s safe to assume at this point he is gone.”

I wasn’t sure how to react, Debra phrased what she said as if it was a joke, but she didn’t laugh.

   “He was my only son though, so it made it that much harder, but I’m past it now. Only have been really for about 10 years now though.”

   “Oh,” I didn’t really know what to say, took a long drink of coffee.

   “It’s hard to talk about, I know, but don’t worry. But if you ever, ever need anything, please just let me know. Even if it is just to talk.”

Debra reached across the table, grabbed my hand and hugged me with her eyes.

*

There is nothing worse than waking up to an alarm in the dark. I laid in bed for a good minute or two with the obnoxious beeping of the alarm blaring in my ear, feeling sorry for myself, but knowing I had to get up.

I was going to beat my father’s flower admirer to his grave this morning even if it meant I had to get up before the frost began to thaw on his headstone and the sun greeted the day. I threw on two jackets and jumped into my truck to immediately curse seeing the digital dashboard screen read out that it was not yet 6 am and the temperature had not yet risen to 40 degrees.

The frigid wind that ripped through the cemetery seemed to make the world seem even colder than the 38 degrees the car advertised. Even with my jackets and long underwear, I was shivering in the dark when I checked the grave to make sure the daily flowers weren’t there yet.

They weren’t.

I retreated to my truck and the welcome warmth of its air conditioning. I flicked on some sports radio and leaned back in my seat, my eyes stuck to my father’s grave getting glazed by mists of cold rainfall as the sun slowly rose behind the cemetery.

*

Apparently, I appreciated that heat and comfort of the seat too much. I woke some time later to see the world bright and shiny around me. My watch confirmed I had been asleep for more than an hour.

I looked out at my father’s grave and saw some pink flowers dancing in a light breeze before I opened the truck door and headed out into the cold.

   “Shit.”

A closer examination confirmed the pink and white tulips resting on my dad’s grave.

   “Shit.”

A furious look off in the distance behind the cemetery revealed all was not lost. Trudging into the edge of a forest behind the cemetery was a person in a bright yellow raincoat.

  “Hey.”

Dodging gravestones left and right, I ran as fast as I could through the cemetery with my eyes locked on the bright figure who was just starting to disappear into the trees.

  “Hey,” I called out again, but the figure didn’t slow.

The person appeared smaller and smaller with every yard I cleared, until I could tell the figure was a small woman. I followed the dirt path she was on to exit the cemetery and continued my pursuit in the near dark the tree cover above created.

I picked up my pace in the cover of the woods and was now just a few yards behind the woman, who continued to ignore my hollers.

   “Hey,” I yelled one more time before I got my hand onto her shoulder.

The woman whipped around in a frenzy and locked horrified eyes with me. Before I even examined her face I noticed white ear buds tucked inside her yellow hood and felt horrible for not realizing she just couldn’t hear me through her music.

  “Oh my god, I’m sorry,” I blurted out just as I realized I already knew the woman.

It was Debra.

   “Oh my god, Debra, I’m sorry.”

The panic and fear in Debra’s eyes didn’t dissipate in the slightest despite my apologies but I just kept on blubbering until something clicked in my brain.

Debra the one putting the flowers on my dad’s grave.

*

Debra and I agreed we both needed some coffee pumping in our systems before we talked about what was going on in the cemetery. We sat in our usual spot in the empty cafeteria trading off awkward eye contacts and repeatedly folding our napkins like neurotic origami.

  “This is going to sound crazy, but you are going to have to believe me,” Debra cut through the small talk.

I didn’t say anything back, just nodded and wiped my mouth.

   “That’s not your real mother over there in that hospital room.”

I continued not to speak, just gave Debra a confused look, she blushed and went on.

   “I know that is a lot to digest and you probably don’t believe me, but I can prove it, I swear.”

I looked around the cafeteria to make sure no one was in ear shot.

   “What the fuck are you talking about? Why are you leaving flowers at my dad’s grave?”

Debra gave a long pause and let out a heavy exhale.

   “It’s probably easier if I just show you some things. This is going to be a lot to take in. I understand. I also understand if you want to walk out of this cafeteria right now and never see me again.”

My gut instinct told me this woman was full of shit and I needed to just walk away, but something in her eyes seemed to familiar I wanted to believe her. Looking at her, I felt as if I had always known her somehow. It was like a subconscious memory from a dream.

  “Okay,” I agree with a nod.

Debra pulled her hefty purse out from under the table and started sifting through it until she produced a few items she spread out upon the table.

The first item she slid over to me made me want to jump out of my seat. It was a faded Polaroid and in the picture was what I recognized as me as a toddler held in the younger arms of what was unmistakably Debra, her grey locks replaced with shining red.

I picked up the picture and examined it closer.

   “There’s no other way to say this John, but that’s not your real mother.”

I took my eyes off the picture and looked to Debra’s soft blue ones, the same color as mine.

   “I’m your mother.”

I couldn’t get a word out or a breath in as Debra looked at me with crying eyes. She slid over the other two items. One was the same missing child milk carton I had seen before, the other an old newspaper clipping.

   “That article can back everything I am going to tell you. The dying woman in that hospital room kidnapped you from me when you were just barely three years old. Took you from my home in Asheville, North Carolina where I was raising you as a single mother and ran away to this tiny island with you where she thought no one could ever find either of you. But I found you Jeff, I can’t believe I found you.”

I stuttered. She cut me off.

    “Can I call you Jeff? That’s what I named you. That’s. What. I. Named. You.”

   “Yeah, that’s okay.”

   “I just really can’t believe I found you. I waited so many years and I didn’t know how to explain all of this correctly. I promise you. Even hearing my explanation now seems clunky to me. But look at the article, it’s all there.”

I had been reading the article while Debra talked and it was true, the newsprint confirmed everything she was saying. It said young mother Debra Clancy had her son Jeff abducted in Asheville by a woman named Susan Blum who had disappeared. There was no denying what was in print, but I still felt hollow. The woman who had raised me my entire life had stolen me from my real mother?

I wanted to still call Debra a liar, but I couldn’t. Especially because I could see some resemblance of myself in her. But, I also saw resemblance in my mother and father. I didn’t know what the hell to think. I just stared across that dirty cafeteria table at Debra with my mouth open until a very good question popped into it.

   “Why were you leaving the flowers at my dad’s grave?”

She snapped up in her seat.

   “He was the one who finally led me to you. I wanted to honor him in some way and that was the only way I could really think of. I thought I would never find you, but then one day I got a Facebook message from a man I had never seen before, your father. I thought it was really weird I even had a message because I had only started the profile about a few weeks before. I’m not good with technology. But I got the message, saying he had been looking for me ever since he started using the Internet at work himself and he found our story. He said he was dying and the last thing he wanted to do was let me know about you. He had only found out about your story a few weeks before because your mother had started spurting out random memories once she started slipping into Alzheimer’s and she had told him about what happened. He told me you had just moved back up here, you were okay and I was welcome to come up any time and meet with you, as long as his wife didn’t find out.”

I had an unintentional cringe on my face that I’m sure concerned Debra, she started speaking frantically.

   “I didn’t make it up here until your dad had already passed and I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t introduce myself to your mom or you when she was around, but I was relieved when I found out she was in the hospital. Hospitals are always looking for volunteer help, so I signed up and I couldn’t believe it when I finally saw you. The great thing too was she was so out of it there was no way she would ever recognize me all these years later.”

I believed her. The article really helped, but it was also just one of those things where you believe someone because of the natural things – the quiver in her voice, the look on her face, the tears in her eyes – she was telling the truth. I actually wished I thought she was lying because it would leave far fewer difficult questions and directions.

I looked down at the table, ashamed, and I didn’t know why.

   “Well, now what?” I said with a near chuckle.

   “I can’t give you that answer Jeff,” Debra said. “I would love to get to know you, spend time with you, but I understand how heavy and crazy this has to be, so you don’t have to. I’m renting a place on the island and I would be happy to have you over, or meet somewhere, whatever you are most comfortable with. We can talk more.”

She took out a pen and a scrap of paper and wrote a phone number and email address on it.

   “This is my contact info, take your time.”

*

I stood in the open doorway of my mother’s hospital room watching her sleep peacefully. Even if what Debra said was true, there was no way I wasn’t going to have affection for her. Just watching her sleep knowing I only had so much time to see her left in my life hurt.

I entered the room quietly and took my usual seat next to her bed and she rustled away when I cleared my throat.

She looked over at me with eyes that looked beyond tired, beyond pained.

I wanted to ask the questions that were now on my mind, but I couldn’t she was too frail, too vulnerable, now was not the time.

*

I wasted no time in connecting with Debra again. We met at a little cabin she was renting by the ocean and talked over coffee next to a crackling fireplace.

She officially brought me on board by showing me an old newspaper clipping from the Asheville Citizen-Times again which told her story. About how my mother had taken me from her and about how she was looking for me. There was even a picture of my mother in there to confirm that is was her they were talking about. I would call the newspaper to confirm the story just to be safe and the young editor I could get on the phone confirmed they never ran any retractions to the story based on their archives, but she would check with the one old timer on the staff she thought was working back then and they would call me back with the info.

I was speechless, but soon had endless questions and Debra was able to answer all of them.  

Who was my real dad? A man she had dated briefly who supposedly joined the Navy and then promptly disappeared.

Why did my supposed fake mother steal me? She was an obsessive babysitter she had worked with for years who lost her mind when she got into heavy drugs.

Why did they never find me? Things were different back then. There was no Internet. A lot of people didn’t even have TV and people didn’t obsess over kids the way they do now. They tried, but there was never a clue to where I was and the police didn’t care that much.

*

Debra and I would catch up almost every night over late decaf coffees and her fireplace until I just started calling her mom.

My other mom was deteriorating rapidly. I was still visiting her daily, but our meetings felt weirder and weirder and I kept thinking about Debra waiting for me out in the hallway. My mother could barely string together two words that connected to each other until one day more than a month after I first received the news from the Debra.

However, the morning when I was about to give up, she started making sense.

I walked into my mother’s cold room with a floppy cluster of violet tulips resting awkwardly under my arm. No better way to say your last goodbye to the woman who raised you than dead flowers.

I sat down next to her bed and was shocked to see her looking over at me with shockingly-lucid eyes.

   “Mom?”

A sly smile spread out across her weathered face.

   “Hi John,” she said softly, the way I always remembered.

Tears started to form in my eyes. I hadn’t seen my mom look and interact like this in months.

  “This is really pretty bad, isn’t it?” She asked.

I didn’t even know what to say. My brain was telling me this woman was a fraud, an imposter who made my entire life an elaborate lie, but my heart still had that unbreakable connection.

   “It is. I have to ask you something though.”

  “What?”

   “Are you my real mother?”

The deflated look that spread across my mother’s face got my heart racing.

   “I was hoping I would never have to have this conversation with you. It is why we are in this pitiful hospital, floating in the middle of nowhere on an island.”

She gave a long hard blink and took a deep breath of air. She was starting to fade back into the darkness.

   “Please, what do you mean?” I pleaded and moved closer to her.

Her eyes now locked to the ceiling, I feared I may have already lost her.

   “Mom?”

   “If she found you, it might already be too late,” she said ominously, still staring at the ceiling. “She probably never stopped looking. There is nothing she won’t do.”

   “What do you mean?”

   “She kidnapped you, back when we lived in North Carolina. It’s why we left.”

I had the milk carton in my pocket, I pushed it in front of her face.

   “This is what you are talking about?”

   “She was your babysitter, yes. She wanted a baby, couldn’t have one, so she tried to take you. It took months to get you back, then we came here. Changed everything, our names, I dyed my hair. They never caught her, but we always figured she was looking. Knew she could show up any day. I’m sorry.”

She closed her eyes and rested her neck further back onto the pillow.

  “Is there anyone I can talk to about this?”

   “I’m so tired. Too tired for this.”

   “No, no, no, no,” I pleaded as she fell asleep.

   “Don’t believe her,” were the last three words I ever heard her say.

*

I locked myself into my parents’ home and ignored two calls and three text messages from Debra. I wasn’t sure who to believe. I obviously trusted the mother who raised me, but I couldn’t argue with the newspaper clipping Debra had shown me. Debra had also pointed out numerous discrepancies in my life which fit perfectly with what she was telling me happened.

Yet, I was chilled to the bone with what my mother told me in that room. There was an uncontrollable fear now burning inside me. There were plenty of reasons to be suspicious of Debra as well and my body still had that sixth sense of a connection to the woman who raised me.

I jumped when my phone buzzed in my pocket. I had a voicemail. Assumedly from Debra.

I looked at my phone and was surprised to see I had just missed a call from another 828 area code number, not Debra’s.

I dialed in my voicemail as fast as I could and heard a hard knock upon the front door just as my voicemail system started talking into my ear. I ran up the stairs to the second story of the house with the phone stuck my ear, waiting for it to start the message.

There was another pounding on the door in the near distance as the message started up with a nearly ancient, groggy voice crackling through my phone speakers.

Hi there John, this is Vern McDonald from The Citizen-Times in Asheville. Sondra passed on your message, your request, to me a few weeks ago, but it took a long time for me to get to it. I move a little bit slower than the kids they have here now and I only work a couple days a week, so I apologize for the delay, but I have some stuff about your case I think actually raises more questions than it answers actually and it doesn’t make the ol Citizen-Times look too good. So basically, the story that you saw was mostly incorrect. Things were different back then and what happened is this kid went missing and no one could really get the real story until this lady, Debra, gave us a call and said that she was a single mother and someone kidnapped her son, Jeff Clancy, and she was looking for him. She claimed, he was abducted by her babysitter, Susan, who was obsessed with him, and her family and she ran off somewhere with him. Well, back in those days, you kind of just went with what the what you had and we ran the god dang story that way.

I could still hear the pounding on the door when I slipped into my parents’ room. I then heard the shattering of glass when I opened their closet and pushed a trap door to the side that concealed their secret gun room. I had already cleared all the guns out of there, but the room was almost impossible to detect if you didn’t know it was there. This thought made me feel a little bit better when I heard footsteps trudge up the stairs outside of the bedroom door.

Turns out though the story we printed was completely backwards. The lady who told our reporter was telling everything the other way around. The Debra lady was actually the one who had abducted the boy and she was trying to throw off the trail and muck things up. They eventually figured it out though, found the boy and that family disappeared into thin air, for good reason. They never did find the Debra lady though. As I said too many times already, things were different back then. Once she gave up the boy, they kind of didn’t look for her too much. Harder to track people back then.

The footsteps were in the bedroom, I gritted my teeth, praying they wouldn’t find the secret door in the closet.

But anyway, we eventually ran the right stories, they were all in The Citizen-Times eventually and I can mail them to you if you like.

The footsteps moved to the closet. I heard the closet doors open and ended the voicemail call even though the message wasn’t over yet.

I held my breath as the footsteps stopped and I heard rustling just outside of the trap door. I couldn’t make anything close to a sound. I prayed in my head for what seemed like hours as the footsteps patrolled just outside my secret door.

And eventually my prayers were answered.

I heard the footsteps walk away and go back downstairs.

I waited silently for countless more minutes before I took out my phone and called the police.

*

The small town police force that arrived was little to no help, but their presence was at least comforting. I was still trying to catch my breath hours later as they combed the house.

I was in the kitchen talking with an officer I unfortunately had gone to high school with when another officer brought over the only thing of interest they could provide.

   “Found this on the porch,” the officer announced before he handed me a hand-written note.

Jeff –

I am quickly assuming since you are hiding from me that you found out the “real story.” I hold strong to the fact that what I told you was true and what others might tell you is the lie, but I understand that is hard to believe. I just want you to know the days we spent together were the best of my life and now as an old woman with not too much time left, I feel I can rest much more peacefully when the time comes. I will leave now and let you live in peace as well. Just know you have a real mother out there and she truly loves you, even if you do not believe me.

However, I cannot guarantee that I will stay away forever. There may come a day when I decide that I need to see you again.

Love,

Your Mom

*

Life went back to normal after that day. For years.

I stayed on the island, but moved from my parents’ house to a small cabin on the other side of the island shortly after my mom finally passed and kept a low profile. I worked remotely for a large company, so I didn’t even really go to town that much to do anything other than buy food and once daily to maintain my sacred routine.

You can still find me every morning cracking a beer in the graveyard while most people aren’t even halfway through their morning coffee. I’m not going to give up my promise to my dad.

However, there is something that happened this morning that is making me reconsider my tradition.

This morning I saw a fresh bouquet of flowers resting on my father’s gravestone.

Originally published by Thought Catalog on www.ThoughtCatalog.com.

[jackfollmanwriter-blog]

Parachute

Working at a museum could not be any more boring. I can't believe I spent eight years in college to get a degree which granted me the honor of having a job where I sat around a dusty building all day and occasionally had to recommend restaurants to slack-jawed tourists.

The only saving grace of my job at the National Mining Hall of Fame and Museum was Ezra. Ezra was a chew-spitting volunteer who said he was 105-years-old whenever you asked him. He probably wasn't actually that far from that age and was the only person working in the museum who had ever actually been anywhere near a working mine.

Ezra spent his entire working life in the mines of rural Colorado and had the scars and stories to prove it. He technically was an unpaid volunteer at the museum, but he may have been the most valuable employee at the place, being the only person who truly knew what working in a mine was all about.

I always made sure to walk by Ezra's usual post next to the entrance when I came in with my morning coffee each day in hopes he would jump into a conversation with me. He didn't always bite. If he made a disparaging comment about my doctorate, it meant he was in the mood for talking, if he just nodded, it meant he wasn't.

"The good doctor is in," Ezra's rustic drawl stopped me once I walked into the museum on a brisk Fall morning.

"You know you're the only person who has ever called me doctor, Ezra? Even my parents don't."

"What cha got there in that paper cup ranch hand? Foam macchiato or somethin girly? Better if I call you ranch hand than doctor?"

"Ranch hand is fine, making fun of my Starbucks isn't."

Ezra let out a thick cackle.

"It's okay, I drink coffee too, just take it screamin hot and black. I got a question for you though chief? You got any plans for lunch?"

"I just brought a sandwich, nothing too exciting."

"Perfect, meet me on the back porch at noon, I got a surprise for you."

I spent the entire first half of the day thinking about nothing but my lunch date with Ezra. I never saw a single person invited for lunch with him, so it was a pretty serious honor. He usually spent every lunch sitting on the back porch, chain smoking Winstons and somehow chewing at the same time despite likely being in his 80s. A lot of us would go look at him to marvel for a few moments, especially since he would do this no matter what the weather, just throwing on a Carhartt jacket in the Winter.

I have to admit I was pretty nervous. I braved a stiff, mountain wind when I walked out with my turkey sandwich to break bread with the old man. He greeted me with a smoky smile lined with Copenhagen.

"Doctor ranch hand, take a seat."

I sat down next to Ezra on the edge of the porch, gazing out at a picturesque view of The Rockies. He tore at an old piece of fried chicken next to me before he cleared his throat and spoke up.

"I'm dying ranch hand."

I didn't respond, wasn't sure if he was joking.

"Now that might not come as a surprise to you, considering I am an old bastard, but it does to me. Thought I was invincible since I had been doing all this bad shit all my life and living. But I went to the doctor for the first time since I was a little kid yesterday. My stomach was hurting like hell. Turns out I got some kind of cancer down there. Probably from swallowin so much chew. But regardless, aint got that long."

"Oh, I'm so sorry," I said, breathless.

"Now you're probably wonderin why I'm telling you this, but there's one last thing I want to do in this world and I think you might be the only one around here who isn't too yellow to help me. Think you might like it."

"Okay."

"There's an old story about those hills up over there," Ezra pointed off to the mountains. "About my family and I want to see if it is true before I die and see if I can help out my granddaughter with some money. But I need help from someone younger, kills me to say it, and I don't know nobody else roudn here but maybe you who could do it."

"Okay."

Ezra looked over his shoulder, spit out a thick spew of chew and lit up another Winston.

"I come from the ol Foley clan. You've probably seen stuff about them in the museum here. My great granddad, he started the first mine in this part of Colorado and it was the only mine before the McCord family showed up. Well you may have heard about it before, but the Foleys and McCords, they became The Rockies' version of the Hatfields and McCoys. They fought like hell back then, old man McCord eventually killed my great grandaddy with a gun, but my grandpa, he eventually got that old bastard back. Poisoned him right up."

Ezra looked up over to the mountains on the dewy horizon with glassy eyes.

"I always heard the McCords buried that old man up there in a valley way up in those mountains in an old family graveyard. I heard they buried most of his fortune in gold right up there with him in that cold ol box. Cemetery's supposed to be almost impossible to find and a hard as hell climb, but his bones are still supposed to be up there with all that gold. I've always wanted to see if I could get up there and find it. Make me a killing. Give it to my granddaughter over in Salt Lake. This might be my last chance."

Ezra looked over to me with those same glassy eyes.

"You have any interest in trying to get an old man a little gold before he dies ranch hand?"

*

I couldn't believe I was actually doing it until I walked out of my apartment with my heavy pack of supplies lashed to my back. The cold of the morning tried to convince me to head back inside and spend the weekend watching Netflix in the warmth of my place, but the look upon Ezra's face and the romantic notion of chasing gold up in the ancient valleys and peaks of the Rockies intoxicated my 25-year-old brain.

I was to meet Ezra at the start of the Granite Mountain trail just a stone's throw from the museum. I prayed not to run into anyone as Ezra and I were calling in sick to leave Friday morning and have time to get to the cemetery and get back down by nightfall on Sunday.

A chuckle shot out of me when I arrived at the trailhead to see Ezra wearing just a t-shirt underneath some Carhartt overalls and a knit hat with a small backpack even though the temperature was around 40 degrees. He returned a laugh when he saw me lumbering over with my huge pack towering over my shoulders.

"What you got in there on your back? A five-star hotel?"

"Tent, food, clothes, some mountain climbing gear in case we need it."

"Well, you are prepared if you are anything. If it was just me I would just haul my dying ass up there with some chew, sunflower seeds and a Hustler."

We shared a laugh before Ezra led me to the trailhead and we slipped into the darkness of the cold forest.

The hike was instantly, lung-breakingly uphill. I huffed and puffed and had to remove my jacket because I was starting to sweat profusely. Yet somehow the geriatric, cancer victim who ascended the peak with me didn't seem to be phased until he accidently dropped his Copenhagen over a ledge.

"You ever hear of Ezra's ghost stories?" Ezra broke up the soundtrack of me wheezing and him spitting that scored the first couple hours of our hike.

"Uh, yeah."

I had heard about Ezra's ghost stories, but I regretably never went to one. They were always after hours at the museum and I wasn't about staying late at work. From my understanding, they were a series at the museum where Ezra told the historical ghost stories of the era and the mines and they were actually really good.

"These hills are full of those old scary stories, you know? Some of them are downright nasty. A couple of them I even seen."

"Really?"

"Well, the biggest of them all is where we are going?"

"The Old McCord Cemetery, I had heard a tiny bit about it before. I always heard it didn't really exist."

"Like hell it doesn't exist."

Ezra whipped a photo out of his pocket. Glossy, wrinkled and faded, I guessed the photo was probably from some time in the 70s. The photo showed a picture of a handle-bar-mustached man who bore a distinct resemblance to Ezra. The man stood in the ruins of a graveyard. Tall dead grass dotted with crumbling stones and rotten wood, the little area couldn't have been much more than ten yards in each direction before it went right back into thick woods. It was hard to make exactly everything out the photo was so faded, except for the man's eyes. They almost seemed to glow off the page.

"That's my dad, up there in that cemetery. They found the bastard's camera down at the bottom of the ravine. Never found him though."

"Are you being serious?"

"Yep, November second, nineteen-seventy-four. We knew papa was heading up into the mountains, but we hadn't seen him for a week and the sheriff came over, said they found his camera at the bottom of Elmer's Cliff, but that was it."

"Holy shit, man."

I was quickly not starting to feel good about this whole thing. I thought about turning around, but was worried about leaving Ezra up there all alone and wasn't even sure how to get back down. I pressed on.

"They always said the damned graveyard was haunted by the old dead McCords. If you found it, you would never come back. Sounds like BS, but that picture I showed you is the only known photo of the thing and the man who was in it disappeared without a trace after he stepped in that god forsaken place."

My skin grew cold even though I was still sweating from the challenging climb.

"You don't really believe that, do you?"

"I might say I didn't, but my daddy didn't go up there with anyone."

Ezra looked back at me with sweat finally starting to break upon his tanned and wrinkled forehead.

"So who do you think took that picture?"

I didn't have a response, just thought about walking back down the mountain again. Maybe I could make it out of the forest before nightfall?

"But I would be lying if I said that was the worst story about these mountains. We're about to come up on the coyote farm."

I had heard of the coyote farm, but I let Ezra elaborate.

"This old trail used to be the only way through this little strip of Colorado to get onto Utah in the Winter when the snow was high, but I wouldn't even think about trying this thing past the first week of November, would give you about a fifty-fifty shot at making it. But those old folks back in the day didn't think twice about it. About half would freeze or starve to death. Take your pick. But the real story is, it wasn't that simple. That was just a good alibi. The real story is this Mueller family, old German bastards, lived just down the hill and they knew a lot of people would die up here, so they would come up all the time and steal the leftover bodies for their food. Then, once they got a taste for it, they started straight up stealing people off these trails. They would take them over to their farm. The people still on the trail would say they would hear what they first thought were coyotes howling in the night, but it was really the folks plucked off the trail by the Muellers screaming into the night in pain as they got treated like breakfast pigs on their farm. You might hear the howls tonight. Probably actually coyotes now, but that still don't make it feel at least a little bit troublesome."

I didn't even respond to Ezra's story, I had actually heard a somewhat similar variation to it once at a park in Wyoming at a summer internship, I figured every region had their own version of it.

Ezra finally stopped for the first time in hours. He turned to me with a drooling smile and wide eyes.

"If you aren't too afraid, I was thinking we could set up camp pretty soon before the sun starts to set. Not too far from the farm?"

*

Ezra and I set up camp around an old fire pit on the edge of a cliff which looked down at the valley below where the museum and town lied. I couldn't believe we had climbed so high in just one day, it felt as if we were now up on the edge of the Earth. The air was razor thin. I was almost light headed.

We had just finished off a dinner of pork and beans and Potter's Crown whiskey Ezra drank straight and I splashed with Pepsi, making Ezra laugh. It had to barely be nine p.m. but Ezra and I both seemed to already be ready to go to sleep the way you do when you camp.

I sent up a tent next to the fire and saw the first crack in Ezra's tough guy façade when he said he would sleep in there with me. Earlier he said he was just going to sleep next to the fire.

Not too long after dinner, we retired to the tent. Exhausted from the day, we both immediately collapsed into our sleeping bags. I was ready to fully drift off to sleep when Ezra's voice stirred me.

"I wasn't going to sleep in this ol pup tent. But I gotta tell you, something got me real spooked out there."

I was suddenly wide awake.

"What?"

"Someone was watching us out there when we were eating dinner."

"What the fuck are you talking about?"

"Just sitting out there in the woods. Big guy, beard, he was sitting about ten yards out in the trees looking at us."

"Seriously, stop fucking with me man. I'm not as good as you with this shit."

"I'm not making it up. Got even me a little scared. Maybe it’s the cancer playing tricks on my brain, or the whiskey, but I could see him out there. Just outside of the light of the fire, just looking. Nothing else."

"Fuck you."

"I don't think we got anything to worry about. I think he's just an old mountain man. Just wants us to know he's there. Probably has a cabin around here, probably grows marijuana or something, just wants to get us on edge so we don't got peeking around. Don't worry. Look."

I looked across the near darkness of the tent to see a revolver glimmer for a moment.

"I got us covered if we need it, but we won't. Sleep tight."

Of course it wasn't easy to drift off to dreamland after Ezra finished the day with those statements, but a couple of hours after bedding down, the strain of the day finally outweighed my fears.

Sleep came to me.

*

I don't think I was out long before I woke up again, still in the pitch dark. A howling sound from off in the distance was just loud enough to poke me out of my slumber. I wiped my eyes and stayed frozen in my sleeping bag with my ears honing in on the distant song.

After a few seconds of careful listening, the sounds became unmistakable. They were of someone moaning in pain, howling. It was the siren song of the old coyote farm I had heard about before. These sounds would not be possible to confuse with the wails of a wild dog though, they were clearly the sounds of a human being tortured – deep, guttural, pleading, begging to die.

The howls came from what seemed like a safe distance, but I wasn't sure if that was going to be good enough for me. I would have to at least wake Ezra so he could ready his gun if need be.

I slipped out of my sleeping bag, braced against the cold of the night mountain air and squatted down next to Ezra's bag.

"Ezra," I whispered.

There was no response, I reached down to give him a gentle nudge, felt nothing.

I flipped open Ezra's flannel sleeping bag to reveal an empty sack.

I looked over to the door of the tent to see it flapping in the wind and bitter cold washed over me.

The fear, colder than the mountain air, made me so stiff I didn't want to move, but I knew it was the smart thing to do. I trudged out of the flap opening of the tent and approached the last simmering ambers of the fire.

"Ezra," I whispered out into the night as I scanned the surrounding forest for any signs of light.

There were none. Just darkness and an eerie breeze that pushed around the trees high above like they were in a mosh pit.

"Ezra," I whispered a little louder this time.

No answer, but looking out into the darkened distance of the thick forest, I saw something come into frame. A flame. A torch of sorts. It was too dark to make out who was carrying it, but the torch was sifting through the trees, zig zagging along a trail in my direction.

Then in a flash. It was gone. I was staring at darkness again. I heard a hideous laugh trickle out of the woods behind me.

Oh fuck this.

I ran as fast as I could back into the tent and dove at my pack. I started stripping it of everything I figured I didn’t absolutely need until it was about as big and heavy as a standard backpack. I threw it on my back, clutched my hunting knife and crouched facing the opening of the tent. I zipped up the opening just to where I could peer through a tiny hole.

I tried to keep my breathing in check when I saw a dark figure step past the opening of the tent and stroll up to the fire, his back facing me the whole time. All I could see was a shaved head, black shirt, black pants, black boots and a long, shimmering knife hanging down out of a hairy, greasy palm.

The figure stopped just in front of the fire and unzipped his pants. He proceeded to piss on the last of the fire and let out a heavy sigh.

Once the ashes cooled, the figure walked past the fire and headed over to the cliffside where Ezra and I threw our empty bean cans. He stuck his head over the edge and looked down for a few moments.

The figure let out a snickering laugh, reared back for a moment and then did a graceful swan dive off the cliff.

"Holy shit," I muttered to myself.

I let the zipper of the tent down just a little bit further. I had enough of this and I was sure whatever was out there wasn't going to be thwarted by a little bit of nylon if it wanted to get to me.  

In one swift move, I rushed out of the tent and started running in the direction from where Ezra and I had come. I was going to run all the way down the mountain in the middle of the night.

At least that was what I thought until I saw the face of the bald man I just watched jump over the cliff.

Standing still in the path I was taking down the mountain, the black-clad man, had a pale hairless skull, but his lack of hair was far from what was most alarming about his head. That was his mouth. His mouth jutted out in a canine snout as opposed to the friendly gaping hole of a human mouth. The man looked to have all the features of a human, except for possessing the mouth of a coyote.

I screamed and ran back the way from where I had come. I was running out of breath, but kept chugging along as fast as I could because I could hear the feet of the bald coyote man gaining on me from behind.

I ran directionless for what had to have been a few minutes until I realized I had no clue where I was and my lungs were going to exploded. I slowed to a gallop and started better taking in my surroundings.

The trail I was on cut through the thick trees with an uphill grade, but it changed a little bit just a handful of yards ahead of me. It appeared to lead into a wood-framed mine, cut into a wall of thick rock.

I gulped down the last of the oxygen I had and raced out the last of the distance like a racing horse  closing on the final furlough until I was completely enveloped in pure darkness in the mine.

Once inside, I whipped my flashlight out from my pack and steadily kept moving forward until I clicked on the light and illuminated the world around me.

I was walking through a tight mine shaft, the rock above me gave me just a handful of inches of space to pass through. I couldn't yet see an opening ahead of me, but I had yet to hear anyone follow me in. So at least I had that going for me.    

What was not going for me was what was printed all over the walls. Painted in fossilized blood were desperate clawings and scratches reaches all the way up and down the shaft.

I pulled my flashlight away from the terror, put my head down and staggered on until a bitter cold wind swept through the shaft and almost knocked me over. I grabbed hold of a waist-level boulder to my side to keep my balance and catch my breath for a moment.

My lungs huffed and puffed for a few moments until I felt the rock shift from under my weight. I whipped my flashlight down and saw the rock moving away from me in a slow roll, as if it was steadily tumbling down a hill, but we were on flat ground, I jumped away and dropped my flashlight in the process.

In the bouncing light of the flashlight, I caught a hideous look at what I had assumed was the boulder. Instead of a dusty rock, it was a hardened, molded-together, twisted clump of bodies – like a human ball of yarn. I stared at it just long enough for the pale face of a woman to blink at me before I collected my flashlight and sprinted away up the shaft.

I heard the ball let out a hideous gasp as I tore away with my flashlight frantically ripping through the darkness. My meager light seemed to reveal more of the same on the ceiling above me but I could at least see the hint of what may have been an opening dead ahead about 40 yards in front of me.

I ran as fast as I could to the opening until I heard a familiar voice call at me from further back in the shaft.

"Ranch hand."

I whipped around to see the silhouette of Ezra wobbling about 10 yards behind me. His eyes shimmered in the beam of my flashlight when I ran it up and down his body.

"Where you going ranch hand?"

I squinted  at Ezra. Something was off about him. It looked like him at first glance, but he barely seemed to be able to stand and his eyes were too bright, his skin too pale. He was an old man, but looked like a dried out mummy standing in front of me.

I slowly started to back away when I saw Ezra's skin crawl like it was alive. He burst out into a smile and spit a jag of tobacco at my feet. I looked down at the filthy tobacco for a moment. It slithered in my direction like an eyeless slug.

My eyes snapped back to Ezra. His skin turned from a crawl into a disgusting slither. He appeared to be made up of dozens of flesh-colored snakes.

He winked at me before he let out a soft hiss. I turned back around and ran for what I hoped was the shaft exit. My light beaming ahead of me, my hopes were high as it looked like it was illuminating swaying trees which got closer and closer and I thought I could smell the fragrance of pine trees tickling my nose.

I could barely breath, but pushed on until that little opening in the distance seemed to never get closer again. I was running as hard as I could, pumping my legs and arms and spitting out wind, but the opening seemed to be stuck about 20 yards ahead of me until my legs gave out from exhaustion and I fell to the dirty ground.

Simply out of gas, I felt like an elephant on one of those Discovery Channel shows that finally just gave into the herd of lions tearing at its flesh and laid down, ready to give up. I closed my eyes tight and waited for the next stomach-turning monster to step up to my heap of a body.

But I never felt that presence arrive. Instead, I felt a sudden rush of cold and heard the sound of an owl hooting in rhythm as if it was some kind of woodsy alarm clock.

I flicked my eyes open and was shocked to see I was back in the woods, surrounding by the swaying trees and the pale moonlight. I shook my head for a second and sat up just a bit to gain a better view of my situation.

It first appeared I was simply in just a clearing in the woods, but a further scan revealed a sprinkling of crumbling headstones of faded cement and crosses of splintered, rotted wood all around me. I was in the fabled McCord cemetery Ezra and I had been searching for.

I didn't even care though. All I wanted to do was go home, or die.

I was just going to lay there, until I heard the owl cry out one more time and watched it swoop down right in front of me and land on one of the crosses in front of me. Looking even more aged and beaten than Ezra did back in the shaft - the owl was missing about half of its feathers, splashed with dried blood, painful scratches and had one eye that didn't appear to open. It stared at me from its unsteady perch until its one good eye shot a look behind me.

I followed the old owl's gaze behind me to see I was resting just a few yards away from a steep cliffside which descended down into the great valley from which we had ascended the day before.

The owl shot me a wink with its good eye and took off back into the dark seclusion of the forest.

I took another deep breath and laid there in the tall grass staring at the old headstones and crosses. I was so exhausted I almost felt drunk. It seemed like my eyes were playing tricks on me when the ground before me, around the various cemetery plots started to shudder.

I watched in tired horror as the dirt in the plots cracked open and pale hands, feet and heads started emerge from the dirt. In just a few seconds, I could see about 10 cold blue bodies of old country prospectors emerge from the earth - still clad in shredded, dusty frontier garb. One by one, they laid their shining eyes upon and started to crawl upon the broken ground in my direction.

The surreal image froze me for a second, but my body twisted away just as the first of the dead miners reached me and I turned to face the windswept cliffside. I quickly saw my salvation or untimely end was going to come in the form of a thick rope which hung off the edge of the cliff and dangled endless feet down the side of the mountain.

I crawled over to the side of the cliff, grabbed hold of the rope and swung myself over the ledge of the cliff. I swiftly started working my way down until I felt I had a good distance between myself and the horror above me.

Feeling the slightest hint of escaping safety, I looked back up to the brim of the cliff to see 10 sets of cold dead eyes staring down at me just below the brims of tattered cowboy hats. I absorbed their gazes just long enough to fuel myself with the fearful adrenaline my muscles needed to keep moving down and continued on down the mountainside.

*

The climb down took the rest of the night. I found myself on solid ground just around sunrise and found a slightly-familiar path which led me to the trailhead after just about 20 more minutes of painful steps.

I collapsed upon the trailhead sign when I finally reached the end of my journey and almost knocked the thing over. I rested there for a few minutes with the rising sunlight just starting to trickle through the trees and warm my near frozen body.

The emerging sunlight didn't just warm my body, it also brought the world around me to life with the sound of tweeting birds, foraging rodents and brought a bright sheen to an object at my feet – a fresh Polaroid tucked just below my filthy boot.

I bent down and picked up the picture.

A glance revealed it to be a black and white shot of the McCord cemetery from which I escaped. Standing in the middle of the cemetery with a shovel, a handful of gold bars and an ear-to-ear smile was the unmistakable image of Ezra.

I tucked the photo into my front pocket and headed into the rising sun.

Originally published by Thought Catalog on www.ThoughtCatalog.com.