MILANCHOLY

I went to visit my Dad not too long ago. We have a good relationship, we just don’t talk all that much. His health is starting to decline. He was A little wistful. We’re just each having a beer not saying much, when he says he has something he needs to tell me. “You’re old enough you may as well know.” I didn’t know what he was talking about, so I ask him. “Remember that time I got home from work real upset and I wouldn’t tell you want happened?” I did remember. It wasn’t something I would ever forget. He wasn’t just upset. He was scared of something. I’d never seen Dad scared in my life until then. He was the kinda guy whose bar fights are town legends. I also remember he told me to never ask him about it, so I never did. What he told me disturbed me profoundly. I’ve been bothered by it ever since. I hope writing it out will help me deal. First, a little background.
FIRST INCIDENT:
When I was really young, like four or five, my Dad and I lived in a cheap apartment building on the ground floor. I don’t remember much about it. I know I didn’t like it there. The kids weren’t nice to play with. They’d steal my toys. And it was just A grimy area. But we were having tough times and it’s what he could afford. Probably what I remember most about the place was how I would get woken up from sleep every once in A while by flashing lights. I don’t remember being too worried about it at first. I just assumed there was lots of lightning in that area. I was five. I didn’t know jack about meteorology. One night, my Dad had my uncle and his wife over for A crab leg dinner. I remember it distinctly because it was the first time I’d ever eaten crab. While they were talking, I just casually mentioned the lightning last night. Dad said, “There wasn’t no lightning last night.” I thought he was just clowning around, so I laughed and told him how the flashing lights woke me up. He and my uncle got serious. That freaked me out. Because they were always silly when they got together. They asked me more questions about the lights, nothing I recall exactly. But they decided I was probably seeing headlights from cars driving by, shining on the curtains. I guess I believed them. But after that, I’d always get nervous when the flashing lights would wake me up. Because I knew it wasn’t lightning anymore. A few times I called for Dad when it happened, but when he’d get to my room there was nothing to see. He started telling me it was all in my head. We moved out of that apartment after A year or so when Dad’s handyman business picked up. The flashing stopped when we left. So I came to believe it was A combination of passing cars and my imagination. It wasn’t something I ever gave much thought to again until recently.
SECOND INCIDENT:
One time I was helping my dad out on A job. This was A bigger job, kinda rebuilding A whole house, so he had A few other guys working with us. Some of them I knew and some I’d never seen before. I was used to it. It’s what he always did on bigger jobs. I was sitting off on my own eating my lunch and listening to my CD walkman. Dad generally didn’t eat lunch. He’d just get too into the work. So he was still busy on site. Suddenly I notice A guy walking toward me from the general direction of the site. I didn’t remember seeing this guy before. But he was making A bee-line straight for me. He was an oldish guy. His head was shaved. And he was wearing A Ramones t-shirt. He sat down beside me—way too close—and didn’t say A word. I took of my headphones, because I didn’t want to be rude, and said, “Hi.” He told me my Dad was looking for me and I should get heading back as soon as I’d finished my sandwich. That was the plan anyway, but I said that was fine. To make things less awkward, I said I liked the Ramones. He didn’t seem to even know who they were. After sitting with me for A few moments longer, while I ate my sandwich uncomfortably, he got up and started walking away. I was relieved. I started to put the headphones back on when he stopped suddenly. I don’t know why, but it freaked me out. I froze. He turned around and fixed me with the most hateful stare I’d ever seen. I didn’t know what it felt like to be hated until then. It was like he wanted me dead. I remember thinking what I should do when he attacks me. But he didn’t attack. He just shouted, “Someone’s been sleeping in your bed and I don’t like it!” He stalked off, leaving me puzzled and terrified. It was probably eighty-five degrees out, but I was shivering. I put the rest of my sandwich away and went back to work. I asked my Dad who that guy was A little later. He said he had no idea what I was talking about. I described the guy. Dad said nobody like that even worked on the site! At the time, I figured it was just some weird drunk. But now it has A whole new meaning. Things I didn’t catch before stand out. Like, my sandwich was still in my box when that guy talked to me. How’d he know what I brought for lunch?
DAD'S STORY:
When I was fifteen, Dad was called out on A job some house way on the other side of the bay. In the town I grew up in, you have two sides. One side of the bay has all the beaches and the mall, the other side has downtown and lots of woods. The old apartment was on the beachy side. The house he was called to was A quarter of the way to the next town on the woodsy side. So he shows up in his van with all his tools. The front yard is really overgrown. No vehicles in the driveway, except A rusting husk of what used to be A ‘70s model Chevy. The house is in pretty bad shape. But he went up to the front door. Before he could knock, he saw A note telling him to come right in and they’d be back soon. He didn’t like going into someone’s home without them there, because he didn’t want to be accused of anything. But he’d driven far, so he went ahead. He got to work on repairing some wood rot around the window frames. He’d been there for nearly an hour when he thought he heard someone. He went to check. There was still no car in the driveway, except for his van. “Hello?” he called. He heard what sounded like A door slam. Dad was not the kind of guy to get nervous. He was A local legend for his bar fights. But he told me he was starting to get creeped out. And that just pissed him off. So he started stomping around the house. He saw the back door was wide open leading into the overgrown back yard. He wondered if it was just the wind moving the door. He closed it and was going back in to work, when he decided to just look the place over. Just in case. He looks around downstairs. There’s nothing much to see. The house is in bad shape, but it’s furnished. The place is kept fairly clean and tidy. The electricity still works. Someone’s definitely living there, just not able to keep the place up. He’s pretty much satisfied his concerns, but he goes upstairs to look around anyway. Upstairs is much the same as down. Clean and tidy, just in need of repairs. Something doesn’t feel right about the place to him. Dad’s never been much of an intuitive kind of guy, so those must be some bad vibes. The last room at the end of the upstairs hall is closed. It’s the only door that was closed. It’s jammed in the frame somehow, but he gets it open. It’s just A bedroom. All painted yellow with yellow furniture. He spots some wood rot around the window frames upstairs, too. He was told there’d only be three windows to do and this one made four. But he checks it out. When he does, the sill just lifts right off and there are papers and things stuffed between the walls. He’s seen it all. It doesn’t surprise him. He pulls the papers out because he plans to go ahead and do this window, too, ‘cause he’s like that. He wouldn’t ask for more money. He just wanted the whole job done. When he pulls the papers out, he sees it’s mostly photographs. Dad’s big on privacy. He just happened to see the photographs and he knew he was looking at something bad. He started flipping through them. They were all pretty much the same. The back of each picture is dated. But every one of them was A picture of A little boy sleeping. Dad recognized me and that ground floor bedroom right away. He remembered my stories about the flashing lights. It hadn’t been in my head at all. Someone had been taking pictures of me sleep for almost A year. He told me there weren’t any pictures of other boys either. Whoever took the photos was only taking pictures of me. He called the police, of course. The listed owner for the house was an elderly couple living in Vancouver. They used to summer in the home, but just hadn’t gotten around to it in years. They didn’t even notice they were still paying the electric bill. They had no idea about the pictures or hiring my dad. It was A dead end. I had so many questions after he told me this. For one, why would someone who was so far away from our apartment drive A 30-minute drive at night to take pictures of just me? How’d they even know me? How’d they fixate on that one apartment or kid? And why call my dad out to find the stash of pictures after A decade of leaving us alone? Dad actually had an answer for one of those questions. In A way, I find this creepier. Turns out he went out to the wrong address. He wrote it down wrong. When police checked his answering machine tape for clues, he was actually called to A much closer home by A completely innocent guy. He stumbled on this house and stash of pictures completely by A random misunderstanding. So who left the note on the front door?

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I got A lot of really insightful comments and questions from the last post I made. You guys saw things from perspectives I just didn’t think of and that got me thinking. There are things I really need to know. So here’s an update on what I was able to learn in the last few days. I feel more confused now than I did before. Maybe you’ll all see more in it than I do. First, I tried talking to my Dad, but he wasn’t in the mood. Shut it right down. I pressed him A little on the flashing lights and he told me I should ask my Uncle Matt. So I did. Uncle Matt and my Dad get along great. Never seen them fight in my life. But they’re very different. Matt’s easy-going, jokey, always has A kind word for everyone. That’s why I was shocked when he actually got mad. He told me to never ask him about it again and to leave him alone. That would’ve been the end right there, but my bi-weekly phone call to my Mom was due and I didn’t really have anything else to talk to her about. So I told her what Dad told me, what I remembered, and what happened with Uncle Matt. “What the hell were you thinking?” she scolded, pretty typical of her. “He still feels it was his fault.” The hushed way she said it, like someone might overhear, chilled me. I didn’t even know what she was talking about. There were some odd things in my family that I kinda knew, but no-one really talked about. This is the version of it my Mom gave me.
WHAT MOM SAID:
My Dad and Uncle Matt had A younger sister named Flora. I never knew her as ‘Aunt Flora,’ because she was gone before I was born. When Flora was eight or nine, weird things started happening to her. My Dad only talked about them when he’d been drinking gin, Mom said. Gin made him brood. She used to hide his gin, because it’d freak her out when he talked about these things. Like this one time my Dad woke up because he heard noises in the kitchen. He came out to see what was up. Flora was making A peanut butter and sugar sandwich in the middle of the night. He asked her what she was doing, because if their Mom caught them in the kitchen at that hour, they’d have their butts reddened. Flora told him she had to make A sandwich and A picture for “Mr. Chawed Froy”. Mom said Dad would shudder when he said that part of the story. His voice got real low when he’d say the name. So my Dad got mad at Flora, because he thought she was being dumb or half-dreaming. Then she showed him the picture she drew. It was A drawing of A boy sleeping with “Matt” written above it. My Dad, being the oldest child, was very protective of Matt and Flora. He immediately felt something wrong was here. He took the picture and tore it up. And he told Flora she had to get back to bed right away. She told him Mr. Chawed Froy would be mad, because she promised him. Dad asked her who this person was and what he looked like, because he meant to tell their Mom. She said she didn’t know what he looked like, but he talked to her from the drain in the bathroom sink. He told her all sorts of things and she’d been talking to him every night for A month. At this point, my Mom said she didn’t want to talk about it anymore. It was giving her the willies. She didn’t even like saying the name. Mom was always kinda superstitious about things. Like, she would be afraid to say the names of certain diseases. She’d never say ‘cancer,’ as if saying it causes it. She said just saying the name ‘Chawed Froy’ made her feel like she was being watched. But I asked her more questions and she kept going. She said my Dad didn’t believe Flora. She must have been dreaming or just imagined the whole thing. He took the sandwich and ate it himself after sending Flora back to bed, so his Mom wouldn’t find it. He remembered the sandwich well because peanut butter and sugar was not something they ever made in the household. He had no idea where she’d heard of it. He forgot all about what happened for A few days or weeks. Until one night he woke up to pee and could hear funny noises as he got near the bathroom. The light wasn’t on, but Flora was in there alone. He stopped outside the door to listen. She was whispering A whole conversation in there. He figured she was half-asleep and didn’t know what she was doing. He went into the bathroom to get her. Then he heard it himself. There really was A voice coming from the drain. Mom said he would get A distant look when he talked about this and just set the gin down, like he couldn’t drink anymore (and my Dad can always drink more). The voice he heard sounded cold and metallic. Probably from coming through the pipes, he figured, but it scared the crap out of him. What it was actually saying was even worse. Mom said he’d try to imitate the metallic voice, saying, “Come outside, Flora, come on outside, no-one has to sleep out here.” Flora whispered into the sink that she couldn’t, because her brother might catch her. And the strange voice told her, “He never should have et my sandwich.” Hearing it made my Dad's hairs stand on end. My Mom said it's the most scared he'd ever been. Not one to freeze, my Dad pulled Flora out of the bathroom and slammed the door. He warned her never to talk to Mr. Chawed Froy again, because he was bad. He ended up telling his Mom and they found where some pipes had been messed with under the house. They also found some drawings of my Dad and Uncle Matt sleeping. They were all burned right away and his Mom forbade them to talk about it. They didn’t handle scandals like that too well at the time. But my Dad saw some of the drawings before they were burned. And they weren’t drawn by Flora. I had never heard anything about any of this before. Dad and Uncle Matt almost never talked about Flora anyway and when they did, it was always cryptic. I didn’t know what this had to do with me, but my hand was shaking holding the phone. I thought she was done, but she said that was just the beginning. My Mom usually gets tired of talking after ten minutes or so. I was surprised. Maybe she needed to get it out of her system. She said that after that, Flora used to complain about flashing lights in her bedroom. Everyone just figured she was seeing the light from the lighthouse, because it was still active back then. She complained about it for nearly two years, saying she had trouble sleeping. Her Mom got sick of it and put thicker curtains in her bedroom and she kept complaining. They ended up getting her A sleeping mask. Problem solved. Not long after this, Dad, Matt and Flora went to A friend’s house to hang out, because he had A record player and his parents would get him any records he wanted. They’d all just listen to music together. She left to go home before Dad and Matt did. But she never made it home. They never found her body. In theory, she could still be alive, but nobody really believes that. Mom thinks Dad and Uncle Matt always felt personally responsible for it, because if they’d just left with her, she might still be alive. My Mom figures that’s why the flashing lights thing upset Dad and Uncle Matt so much. And I guess I was opening old wounds by asking about it. At the same time, I find it really spooky that the same thing would happen to both me and Flora. And upsetting that it wasn’t taken more seriously when it happened to me. I also felt really bad about hurting Uncle Matt. I visited him the next day to apologize. I told him my Mom explained everything and I really had no idea. He wasn’t mad anymore. Actually, he apologized to me, too, because he said I deserved to know.
WHAT UNCLE MATT SAID:
He said there was A little bit more to it than what my Mom described. A week before she disappeared, Flora had started complaining about the flashing lights again. They figured either she was forgetting to put on her mask or it had been in her head the whole time. Then A day or two before she disappeared, he couldn’t remember, she woke up and the mask was gone. She couldn’t find it anywhere. They figured she just didn’t want to wear it anymore. But now he wasn’t so sure. Another weird thing, around the same time, was they found footprints in the snow outside the house. It had snowed almost three feet overnight. These footprints lead out of the woods behind the house and went straight to Flora’s window. The thing Uncle Matt said creeped him out the most was that the footprints at the window didn’t face into the window. The faced back toward the woods where there was nothing but trees. For the footprints to not have been covered in by snow, someone had to have walked to Flora’s bedroom window sometime after midnight and stood there staring into the woods in A blizzard. Strangely, he said they never really worried about it much. Everyone knew everyone there. It just stands out in hindsight. The day she disappeared, they got A call from Timmy Jean, the boy with the records, telling them he just got A new one. Uncle Matt said Timmy was an only child. He thought the records were how Timmy’s parents got him off their hands and made him some friends. So he was normally really excited when he got A record to share. This day he sounded flat, emotionless. Matt had to ask if he was even speaking to Timmy. And the whole time, Uncle Matt felt like someone was listening in. He could hear A sound in the background that wasn’t quite breathing. It was like someone saying ‘yeah’ really softly. Around this time, where my Dad and Uncle Matt grew up, the phone lines were all what they called ‘party’ lines. Each home’s phone would have A different ring so they knew who should answer. But anyone could answer or listen in on anyone else’s phone call. So having someone else on the line wasn’t unheard of, just impolite. They went to Timmy’s, but when they arrived, Timmy said he didn’t call them and he didn’t even have A new album. Uncle Matt and Dad decided to hang out with Timmy and listen to some old albums anyway. But Flora was really disappointed and wanted to go home. So she left alone. He remembered thinking it was too bad she left, because they found her sleep mask in Timmy's room. That was the last time they ever saw her, Uncle Matt said. He was trying hard not to tear up. He said he remembered it like it was yesterday. Her little, brown shoes, bows in her hair, and, he said, the oversized Ramones t-shirt they’d found during A trip to the city. It was her favorite band. I felt an awful pit in my stomach when he said that. I don’t think I’d ever mentioned the detail about the Ramones t-shirt before. Not that Uncle Matt would pull my leg on something like this. I guess it could be A coincidence. A lot of people like the Ramones. But I’ve never felt so unsettled in all my life. I told him about the guy in the Ramones shirt. He told me to just drop it, because “it was A long time ago.” That was all he had to say. There's A lot of what Uncle Matt said that I find strange. Like how unconcerned he seemed that Timmy hadn't made the phone call. Or the sleep mask. I’m visiting my Dad for Thanksgiving tomorrow. I’m going to bring two bottles of DeKuyper gin. Have A happy Thanksgiving. I’ll let you know if I find out anything more. Or if I don’t.

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I just want to thank everyone again for your interest in my personal journey and for sharing your views. I might have walked away from it by now if it weren’t for your support. Because the more I learn, the less I seem to understand. But I did learn more from my Dad over Thanksgiving. I had to mull it over for A few days. Now that I have, I feel comfortable sharing it. When I first unloaded the bottles of gin, Dad looked at me like I was setting A trap. In A way, I guess I was. I wonder if he knew what I was up to? I know at least he hadn’t talked to Mom. They still hate each other. But Dad’s A man’s man and doesn’t turn down A drink. I kept waiting for the opportunity to start asking questions. But it never felt right. Turns out I didn’t have to. Dad asked me if Uncle Matt talked. I told him he had, but that there was A lot that didn’t make sense to me. “Get used to it,” was his answer. I was starting to get upset with all the secrecy. We’d always been A family of straight-talkers. Or that’s how we thought of ourselves. I didn’t see why this was suddenly changing. So I asked him why he wasn’t more alarmed by the flashing lights in my room when the same thing happened to his little sister? Or why he didn’t immediately think I was in danger when he found those pictures of me? Why didn’t he do anything? He told me he did more than I’ll ever know. That I was typical of my “video game generation.” And to go ahead and have another drink, ‘cause it’s Thanksgiving. I did, but I wasn’t feeling very thankful. After sitting in silence for A while, which is pretty typical for us actually, he said, “Never liked that little rat.” I just waited for him to elaborate. Dad talks at his own pace. “Timmy Jean, I mean,” he said. I hadn’t expected him to say anything about Timmy. He was about as peripheral to what happened as I could imagine. But Dad had A lot to say about him.
ABOUT TIMMY:
Dad said Timmy wasn’t really A bad kid, he was just strange and pale and weak. Most other kids didn’t like him. His parents didn’t seem to like him. Even the kids who did like him didn’t really like him. The general opinion was that Timmy’s parents were always gone, although it was hard to tell whether they were home or not. They kept to themselves. Rumors went around that they were brother and sister. One thing that was certain was that they’d inherited money. Unlike everyone else, they didn’t keep any livestock. They just bought everything from the general store for Timmy and disappeared. Dad said today it’d be called ‘neglect,’ but people watched out for each other back then. One thing that always struck Dad as peculiar was how when they wanted Timmy to do something other than listen to records, like go play kick-the-can, he’d say he was going to ask his parents. None of them had seen or heard his parents in the house, so they were surprised. But Timmy would go into this one room, close the door behind him, and they’d hear him talking to someone in there. He’d come out and tell them he had to stay put. This happened A few times, he said. Not that they invited Timmy Jean out all that much. Another thing he didn’t like about Timmy was he’d just do strange things. Sometimes he seemed pretty normal. Then he’d change just like that. This one time they were listening to some new record he had. He turned it off and told them he learned A new song and dance. Dad wasn’t interested, thinking it would be childish. But Flora and Matt wanted to see. Timmy started walking backwards in A circle, shaking like he was freezing, and making shrieking sounds. It was annoying the hell out of Dad, so he told Timmy to cut it out. But Timmy kept doing it. Dad had never seen Timmy show any emotion other than excitement over his records. When he was doing this ‘dance,’ he looked downright hateful. Flora started crying and Matt looked pretty scared, too. Dad never had patience for stupidity. He grabbed Timmy by the shoulders. He said he remembered how Timmy felt, his skin was cold and jelly-like and he could feel his small shoulder bones like they weren’t covered at all. He shook Timmy until he stopped and was back to normal. Timmy started playing the record again like nothing had happened. Dad said they left, because Flora was too upset. It was after that, Dad said, that he went to get Timmy for something, he couldn’t remember what, and Timmy wasn’t home. That was weird in itself. But Dad went inside to look for him just in case. He couldn’t find him. So he decided he’d just ask Timmy’s parents where Timmy was gone. He opened the door to the room Timmy always went into. The room was kept really dark. They could never see anything when Timmy slipped in. Now he knew why. It wasn’t A bedroom at all. It was just A closet. There was A cushion thrown on the floor, some bread crusts, and pieces of paper. Dad said he’d seen enough. He closed the door and got out, never went back to Timmy’s again. Because when Timmy would go in that room, they wouldn’t just hear Timmy talking. They’d hear someone talking to him. I’d already drank more gin than I should have, but that still sent shivers through me. But I thought of something. I asked Dad if this happened after Flora disappeared. He said ‘No.’ So I said, how was it he was at Timmy’s the day Flora disappeared? “Your uncle Matt doesn’t always remember things right,” he said. He gave me A stern stare when he said this, like it was something I should keep in mind to the end of my days. I know Dad’s looks very well.
ABOUT UNCLE MATT:
He said Matt came up to him that day and said they had A call from Timmy to come over and listen to the new record. He’d heard the call come in and that was nothing strange. But he never went with them to Timmy’s. He went to the general store to pick up A present for Betty Coffin, A girl he fancied, and Matt and Flora went to Timmy’s by themselves. When he was at the general store, he remembered being surprised to see Timmy in there just picking up some food with A big wad of bills. He’d never seen that much money in one place in his whole life, so he wasn’t likely to forget it. He told Timmy ‘Hello,’ but Timmy just paid for his food and walked out with his food and his bills. And Flora never came home from Timmy’s that day. “And that’s all I know about it,” he said. I told him Uncle Matt said he was listening to music with him and Timmy when Flora left on her own. Who was he listening to music with, then? “Wasn’t Timmy,” was all Dad said. It was so eerily matter-of-fact. I took another shot of gin right there. I hoped it’d stop me from shaking. When I looked at Dad, he was staring down, with A sad resignation I’d never seen in him before. My Dad could drink me under the table ten times over. So after that last shot, he had to put me to bed on his couch. That was the end of our talk. Lying there on the couch, I suddenly remembered something from way back, when my family would go down to the beach. We’d all sit around the fire, the adults would drink and tell stories about growing up in that hamlet, and the kids would roast marshmallows and shiver listening to these stories. There were true stories and ghost stories all mixed together. These were the only occasions where I’d ever heard them talk about Flora before. After what my Dad said, I remembered A story Uncle Matt told. He said he and Flora would go for these long walks in the woods together. My Dad used to go with them, since he was expected to watch them. But once he hit his teenage years, he got more interested in girls than babysitting. They’d decided to go back into the woods behind Hyman’s general store. There are no trails or anything. They just picked A spot and went into the woods. You can go back for miles and miles into just pure woods. It’s all national parkland today. Normally they’d walk about thirty minutes or an hour. Dad would have them walk parallel to the edge of the woods. Without Dad, they just kept going deeper. They’d been walking into the woods for well over an hour. Or at least he thinks it was. Flora wanted to turn back by this time, but Matt wanted to keep going deeper. She followed him because she was scared to go off alone. But she got upset and said she was going back on her own. He told her that’s fine and don’t get lost. Uncle Matt said she wasn’t gone thirty seconds when he felt her tugging at his arm. He got mad, because he thought she was bugging him to go with her again. But when he looked, she was pointing at something behind him. He said really seriously that he’d never forget how wide and scared her eyes were. He turned and saw A man standing out in the woods. It scared him, too. The man didn’t really look scary. He was just A man. But there was no reason for anyone to be out so far in the woods. They shouldn’t even be there. The man had his back to them, looking deeper into the woods. He wasn’t moving at all. They crouched down as quietly as they could to watch him. But he didn’t do anything but stand there. Matt said he didn’t like it one bit. He felt there was something really wrong about what was going on. He took Flora by the hand—something he never did—and they walked away making as little sound as possible. He kept glancing behind his shoulder as they walked. After A few minutes, he was satisfied they were well away from the man. He was long out of sight and probably hearing range. After A few minutes more walking, Matt heard A thudding sound. Flora squeezed his hand tighter, so he knew she heard it, too. But they didn’t say anything to each other. They were too scared. The thudding kept getting louder. Then he heard this scream, at the top of someone’s lungs, like he’d been hurt. Matt looked back and saw the man they’d seen earlier running right at them full speed through the woods, screaming the whole time. No words. Matt said he and Flora were so scared, they couldn’t even run. They backed up against A tree and crouched down. Matt thought the man was going to kill them or hurt them and he didn’t know what to do about it. When the man caught up to them, he stopped short only A few feet away. He took in A deep breath and shouted in their faces, “GET OUT!” They were too scared to move. So the man kept shouting it at them. “GET OUT! GET OUT!” Finally Matt tugged at Flora and they ran and ran back the way they came. When they were almost out, they heard Dad calling for them somewhere back in the woods. They were about to go running back to Dad, so he’d protect them. But then they saw him at the tree line and ran to him. He took them home and that was that. He said they never told their Mom because they figured they were just trespassing. After Uncle Matt finished his story, everyone was quiet for A good long time. The story seemed to bother Dad more than anyone else. I remember being especially upset by it, just because it bothered Dad. Then Dad said he remembered that when he first came to get them, he couldn’t find them. He figured they’d just gone home. But he couldn’t find them at home either. He looked in the general store and down on the fishing wharf, but they weren’t there either. So he went back to the woods. Just as he got there, he saw them running out of the woods screaming and crying. He asked them what was going on, thinking they’d just seen A bear or something, and they just kept balling. So he brought them home and questioned them to get the whole story. He said he never told Uncle Matt at the time, but he saw them coming out of the woods as soon as he got there. He never did call out for them. I don’t know why I suddenly remembered that story. It’s just another weird thing that happened to my family. Just an hour away from where Dad grew up, in the nearest bigger town, there’s A huge sanatorium up on A hill, looks over the whole town. The guy in the woods could be just some guy who got out of there and they had the misfortune of startling him. Could be completely unrelated to everything else. So that gave me A lot to think about. I don’t feel any more secure or confident after what Dad told me. If anything, I’m more confused and unsettled than ever. The last several days have been A strange ride. But I know there’s no way I can let it go now. I’ll try to find out more and I’ll continue sharing what I can.

┈──┈˖˚⊹ ⋆♡⋆ ⊹˚˖ ┈──┈

I managed to find out more about Timmy. I had to hit up people I haven’t spoken to in A long time or barely know at all, but eventually I hit A few relatives who knew more than I ever expected to find out. Before I share what I learned about Timmy, though, I’ve been asked in the comments how I can keep such A level head while I keep uncovering these weird incidents. I guess because it’s distant. I shake and shiver and feel dread when I’m hearing about or remembering these events. But it’s still way back there. Even my Dad finding the pictures in that house happened years ago. That’s been changing lately. Little things have been happening that have been making me uneasy. For one, my Mom has called me twice since Thanksgiving. I know this isn’t overtly creepy. But we normally only talk once every two weeks. On top of that, she hasn’t been herself. She’s been trailing off, going silent for long periods, and sometimes it’s like there’s an echo when she speaks. I started wondering if someone’s tapping into our conversations—like with A baby monitor, or something. And she’s been saying strange things. For instance, after being quiet for A while, she said, “It’s lonely down here.” I asked her what she meant by “down here,” since she didn’t live any farther south than me. She just said in A tone so flat she could’ve been reading it, “You should come. It’s wonderful down below.” She changed the subject right after and seemed normal after that. My first instinct was to worry she was depressed or something. But I don’t know. The last thing she said was if I hear anything strange about her to not believe it. I’ve also been receiving other phone calls. They started A little before Thanksgiving. First call was an instant hang-up. The next time just silence. Each time after that, I’d hear sounds. Cars going by, walking, wind blowing. The kind of sounds you’d hear from A butt-call. But they were distorted, almost like someone was imitating the sounds with their mouth. Last night it changed. There was A voice. The voice had A tinny, metallic tone and that same echo as when Mom called. The combination made the voice sound inhuman and evil. The words weren’t sinister at all, but the way they were said made me feel like I was in danger for the first time since I started this investigation. The first time, all he said was, “I’m on my way.” I tried to say, “Wrong number” back, but whoever it was had already hung up. I got A call A little later and the same voice said, “I’ll be there soon.” This time he didn’t hang up right away, so I said he had the wrong number. A moment after I said this, he hung up. On the third call, he said, “I can see your house now.” And, again, hung up immediately. I kept waiting for another call any minute, but after A few hours, I relaxed. I figure it really was A wrong number and they figured it out. I mean, given the last two weeks, I have every reason to be A little jumpy. I get about half-way through an episode of Gotham on the DVR before the phone rang again. I don’t say anything immediately. Neither does he. After A minute or so, he says, “I’m right outside.” As soon as he said that, I heard A noise at the front door. I don’t know if I’ve ever been so scared before. I don’t have any firearms, but I do have A machete. So I grabbed it and went to the front door. I opened it ready for that hateful face from the building site. Or worse. But my Dad was there, actually. He asked what the machete was for. And I asked him what brought him out to my house so late. It’s A long enough drive and Dad rarely visits anyway. He got pretty irritated about that. He opened his flip phone (yep), and showed me A text apparently from me. In the text, I asked him to come out immediately, “it’s an emergency.” I told Dad I didn’t send him that text. I didn’t send him any text. I’ve never lied to Dad before, and that carries weight. He believed me. To be honest, though, I was glad he was there at just that moment. We had A drink together and then he said he was going to get back home. I asked him A few questions about Timmy before he left. He didn’t much want to talk about it, but I’ll add what he told me into the account of what I learned. After Flora disappeared, Dad and Matt were expressly forbidden to have anything to do with Timmy. For Dad, that suited him just fine. Dad nevertheless told his Mom that Timmy couldn’t have been responsible, since he’d just seen him at Hyman’s general store. His Mom said there had always been something wrong with that boy and she felt if Flora hadn’t gone to his home that day she’d still be alive. While Dad and Matt hoped she was still alive, their Mom never really believed she was. She said she saw A dove fly into the house the day after Flora disappeared, but when she chased after it she couldn’t find it anywhere. Dad said it was just grief and these kinds of supernatural beliefs were common then. I tend to agree. Timmy made no efforts to reach out to Dad or Matt either. He started keeping to himself after Flora disappeared. They’d sometimes see him by himself at Hyman’s, buying lots of food, way more than one boy should require. They never talked. Suspicions about Timmy and concerns about his missing parents grew. The police had looked around Timmy’s house A little, since it’s where Flora was last seen, and found nothing. But now they were asked to search the house. They wouldn’t say what was wrong or what they found in there. The rumor was Timmy’s parents hadn’t been there in A long time and that the police had come out of the house pale and upset. Small towns always have rumors. Hard to say if they're true or false. Timmy was placed with some distant relatives in the larger town an hour away. They said he was strange and they didn’t like him. He was always up and walking around at night. Sometimes he’d stop over the vents in the floor and just stare into them. After he’d been there for A bit, they started to hear him talking to himself in the middle of the night. They’d come up to him to see what he was doing and there was no-one else around. They started watching him. They noticed he only did this when he was standing over the air vents. They even found him crouching down over one once. This girl, A third cousin of his, said it still creeped her out. Because she knows she heard someone answering him one time. Those vents couldn’t have been more than A foot and A half wide, she said, but she heard A man’s voice coming up with the air. She couldn’t make out what was being said, but she heard laughter that made her run and hide under her covers. She said she thinks this part may have been A dream, but she always swore she saw A finger poking up from the vent, too. She told her parents, but they said to stop making up stories and he’d been through A lot. Her sister said sometimes Timmy would walk out to the woods and just stand there, staring into them. They asked him why he did that. He said he was waiting to be taken. He went farther into the woods when she tried to talk to him more. One time, the same girl said, she heard him talking into the air vents like usual. She was tired and it was upsetting her, so she went to get her parents and have him sent to bed. On her way, she noticed Timmy was still sound asleep in his room. The talking had to be coming up from the vent all on its own. They said Timmy would sometimes steal food from the house and take it out into the woods. When he was caught, he said he had A treehouse. But they never saw it if it existed. They’d sometimes wake up and find him staring at them in the middle of the night. They had to start locking their doors. They would whine to their parents to send him away all the time. But they were careful not to do it when Timmy was around, because, despite everything, they didn’t want to be mean. One time he asked them why they wanted him sent away. They couldn't figure out how he'd heard. He was living with them for nearly six months, when something happened that changed him. They didn’t know what it was. But he stopped all of the weird behavior all at once. He wouldn’t talk to anyone. He hardly ate. Then one day he just ran away. He’s been A missing person ever since. His parents never turned up to look for him. There was no evidence either way. So the case went nowhere. They also said years later, when his house burned down, pictures of the fire appeared in the local newspaper. People talked about it for weeks, because in the picture, the smoke looked just like the devil. Horns and everything. They tried to find the newspaper in their closets, but neither of them could find it. I include that part not because I believe in A horned devil that manifests itself in smoke patterns. I think it’s interesting that his cousins thought he was so creepy the devil would be in the smoke particles coming off his burning house. That’s what I know about Timmy. He hasn’t been seen or heard from since, from all I can find out. Same for his parents. Where his home was is just A lush field of rhododendrons. One last thing. After Dad left last night, I noticed my mailbox lid was up. I knew I’d closed it earlier when I checked the mail. So I looked inside. I found an envelope with A Polaroid photo inside. An old one, too. It was of me, Mom, and Dad all at the park together. This park is actually the same place where Dad grew up. The houses are mostly gone. Hyman’s general store is still there as A museum. I had to be only four or five in the picture. I don’t even remember Mom going to the park with us. I wondered if Dad found it and stuck it in my mailbox. But Dad wouldn’t bother to bring it to me if he had found it. He wouldn’t see the value in it. I kept looking at it, wondering what it was doing there. It took me A surprisingly long time to see it. In the background, in the thick Johnson grass, there was A man crouched down and watching us. He was barely visible. I couldn’t discern his face or any expression in his eyes. I just had A vague but real feeling he meant to do us harm. I don’t want to be too alarmist. The "strange things" happening to me may all have innocent explanations and I'm just jumpy. And I still want to get to the bottom of things. My investigation’s hit A bit of A dead end. But I'll keep you all posted.

┈──┈˖˚⊹ ⋆♡⋆ ⊹˚˖ ┈──┈

CONFESSION:
Again, I have to thank you all for your input. I realize I’ve been stupid and glib. I’ve always been passive and I don’t like getting too excited about things. Thinking about it, maybe it all goes back to when I’d freak out over those flashing lights, my Dad would tell me it was in my head. He downplayed everything… so now I just kinda do the same. But still, it’s my character flaw, not his. I have to take responsibility. So I went ahead and called in A wellness check on my Mom. And I went ahead and called the police about the photograph and strange text. I called Dad over, since I knew they’d want to see his phone. This is where things got perplexing. The police officer who responded seemed to know Dad pretty well. He was an older man, about Dad’s age, maybe A little older. I’d never met him before. Dad introduced him as “Kirby” and said they used to live A few houses from each other, back where they grew up. Kirby did most of what I expected from the police. He looked at the photograph. He checked out the text. He took my statement. He decided to hold onto the photograph, just in case. But he said it wasn’t likely there was anything the police could do about it. Once he was done with me, he gestured for my Dad to come outside with him for A talk. I don’t think he realized I saw. Dad told me to wait inside and he’d be back in A moment. There have just been so many secrets lately. So I listened in at the door. “Does he know anything about it?” Kirby asked. If Dad answered, I couldn’t hear it. “That’s what this is, isn’t it? Sure looks like it.” Again, no audible answer. “What we did back then—“ he was saying, but Dad interrupted him to say, “It was A long time ago. This here’s just A dumb prank.” “Quit being stubborn and stupid, Francis!” he said. Nobody ever called Dad by “Francis.” It was always “Frank” or “Frankie.” Calling him “Francis” was A good way to break your jaw. So was calling him stupid. But Dad didn’t say anything back. “What the hell else could this mean?” “Smarten up,” Dad said. “We did the right thing, anyhow. You know it.” “Says you. Says me, too. Someone might not agree. Watch yourself, Francis.” Kirby got in his car and left right after that. Assuming “he” in the first question was me, I can say I don’t know anything about what they were saying. I asked Dad when he came back in. He didn’t get mad. He said it was just something that happened A long time ago and to mind my own business. I told him this had become my business. I reminded him that he told me about the pictures he found in that old house because he thought I was old enough to hear it now. He said, “I guess I was wrong.” That was that. I tried calling Mom to see if she had any insight, but there was no answer. Not unusual, though I’m still glad I called that check on her. I called Uncle Matt next. To my surprise, he said he had something he wanted to show me and he’d be over later. When he did come, what he showed me really shook me up. And it made things make A little more sense. Maybe that’s why it shook me.
UNCLE MATT'S CONFESSION:
Uncle Matt told me A lot more things happened when they were children than I’d ever hear about. Not that he wouldn’t talk about them, but he didn’t think he even could. Some of those things stuck with him, he said, and they’d bother him all the time. What he used to have fun doing started to make him feel sick. He thought about killing himself A few times. He even took himself to the Sanatorium for A day. I had no idea about any of this! Neither did Dad, he said. He didn’t want anyone to know. He started seeing A therapist after this. Something Dad would’ve made fun of. I don’t know if that’s true. But it’s what Uncle Matt thought. The therapist insisted he try hypnosis sessions, because he was just holding back too much. He agreed. What he brought with him was an old cassette tape the therapist let him keep of one of those sessions. We put it in my CD/Cassette/Record player and listened. On the recording, Uncle Matt was talking about the day Flora disappeared. He said he remembered getting A call from someone asking him to come to Timmy’s. He knew the person talking to him wasn’t Timmy. The person sounded weird and frantic. He tried to tell the person ‘no,’ but this man kept saying he really was Timmy and he was really lonely down here and he needed them to come listen to “the music records” with him. Especially the new one. On the recording, Uncle Matt said that he figured Timmy had to be there, at least, and he wanted to hear the new record. So he got Flora and Dad. He didn’t bother giving them any details about the phone call. On the way there, Dad left to go meet A girlfriend or something, so he and Flora went alone. When they got to the house, the front door was left open and they could hear the song “Love Hurts” playing from upstairs. They’d heard the song before, so they knew it wasn’t the new album. That was good, because they wanted to listen to it for the first time all together. When they got upstairs, Timmy wasn’t there. He remembered the room smelled like burning tires. It never smelled like that before. Uncle Matt took the needle off the record. Then he noticed Flora backed up into A corner and whimpering. Uncle Matt looked where she was looking, because she was looking right at something. He hadn’t seen it at all. But there was A man laying down under the bed. His face poked out of the dark just enough for them to see his blank stare and huge smile. His smile just didn’t look right. There was no happiness in it at all. He started coming out from under the bed. The man was looking straight at Flora and shouted, “I don’t see you in the dark anymore!” Uncle Matt stood between Flora and the man, because he was scared for Flora. The burning smell was stronger the closer the man got. He thought he’d seen the man before, A few years ago. The man put “Love Hurts” back on and laughed. The laugh sounded fake, like an animal imitating A human. He danced around them, laughing sometimes and then screaming like he was in pain. He kept putting the needle to the beginning of the track and dancing. One time, when the man went to move the needle back to the beginning of “Love Hurts,” Uncle Matt told Flora to get out. She ran, but the man put his hand on Matt’s shoulder. “I like you when you sleep,” he said. He held Matt around the neck and they danced backwards around the room, over and over. Sometimes he made sounds like A wounded creature. After A while, he let go and crawled back under the bed. He was lying on his back, looking up at the mattress. Uncle Matt figured he could leave. He was scared to try, because he thought the man might stop him. But he started out the room to the stairs anyway. He looked back, just in case. The man wasn’t under the bed anymore. He’d already gotten up and was just A few feet behind Uncle Matt. He froze when Uncle Matt looked at him and didn’t move A muscle. Uncle Matt backed the rest of the way, down the stairs, and out of the house. The man never moved. “If I just listened to my gut, we never would’ve gone there. If I kept Flora with me, she might’ve been ok. If I’d been smarter and gone with her right away, she’d be ok. All the time I know it’s my fault she’s gone and she ain’t coming back.” That’s where the tape ended. Uncle Matt listened to the whole tape with me, with his head down. He told me he really doesn’t remember it happening that way at all. He said he was sure he’d told me the truth. But he wanted me to hear this. I think Uncle Matt was so traumatized by what happened, he isn’t able to remember it. I don’t blame him. What’s on the tape matches up with the story my Dad told me. So it’s probably right. Uncle Matt didn’t know who that guy was or what happened to him, but if he was with Matt and Timmy was with Dad, that guy couldn’t have been involved in what happened to Flora any more than Timmy was. Or, at least, it’s not very probable.
DAD'S CONFESSION:
Another bit of information just fell into my lap. It’s funny the way things all happen at once. Like you’ll never have heard an old song, then suddenly you’ll hear it three times in one day. Mom called later that same night. She wanted to know what I’d called for. I told her about what I’d overheard Dad and Kirby saying. She said she never wanted to believe it, but it must be true. I told her she had to tell me and she agreed. What she told me isn’t what I’d expected at all. She said A long time ago, A sad, lonely man was placed in the Sanatorium when they found him living in the walls of the hospital. He had no family and no friends. After they determined he was harmless, they released him. He wandered through the woods for days. He wandered so far back, he got lost and was thirsty and hungry. Then he found A house. He thought it was strange for A house to be in the middle of the woods. But he needed food and water. An old man came to the door and let him in. He had no idea how long he was in there. Something bad happened in that house, so he ran and ran away from the house as fast as he could go. He ran until he came to A little one-store town, Dad’s hometown. Some of the children in the town would talk to him and bring him sandwiches, because he made them think he was A good ghost. One lonely boy in particular gave him A place to stay. Timmy showed him music and got him all the food he wanted. He taught Timmy all the tricks he’d learned in his life. Hiding and listening and crawling. And the things he’d learned from the house in the woods. He got so used to the boy, he would get mad if Timmy left the home or did anything but spend time with him. He tried to hide himself as much as possible, but when Flora disappeared, people noticed him. They figured out he’d been staying with Timmy. And they figured he did something to Flora. My Dad remembered what Flora had said about seeing A man in the woods. And he remembered the voice in the bathroom sink. He riled up everyone against the man. So he hid even more. He hid well enough everyone thought he was just gone. When he thought they’d forgotten about it, he figured he could go back to normal. But they hadn’t forgotten. Dad saw him. He got some people in town together. They chased him all the way to Dad’s house. Dad followed him under the house. When he thought he’d cornered him, he followed him up through A hole in the floor. It took him right under Dad’s bed. Dad saw there were trinkets and bedding under there, like the man had been sleeping right under him all along. Dad was so mad he dragged the man out. They beat him up. When they'd done beating him, they burned him up. And when they'd done burning him, they buried him. They never talk about it since. They agreed they just did what they had to do. But what they did was murder. That’s how Mom told it. It was such A weird story. It wasn’t like her to talk like that. I asked her where she’d even heard the story. She just said it was another one of those things Dad would say when he’d been in the gin. She said that one took A lot of gin. It bothered him more than anything else. I didn’t know whether to believe it or not. I changed the subject. I told her I called A wellness check on her, because I was worried. She told me I shouldn’t have done that. Why? She said I was wasting police time. She wasn’t even at her home. She was on A business trip. I guess this whole thing has made me bolder. The next day I confronted Dad about what Mom told me. I asked him if it was true. He just asked, “Where did you hear that?” I told him Mom said. I’ll never forget this for the rest of my life. He placed his hands on my shoulders like he’s only done once before, when he gave me the “life advice” I’d need after graduating high school. And he said, “Son, I never told your mother that. And she’s not from our town.” The way he said it, like he knew something was horribly wrong, scared the life out of me. This mystery is upsetting my life and family in the worst way, because it’s in my ideas. He brushed it off as Mom being A major B. I think there was something more. I still don’t know if the story was true or false. He won’t give me A straight answer. He won’t deny it, either. Lastly, I did get A response on the wellness check. They were let into Mom’s home by A house sitter. The sitter said she’s been in the home for A week and there’s nothing to worry about. The officer called Mom and she backed up everything the sitter said. Looks like Mom’s story checks out. The officer who called me said he was running A trace on her cell phone anyway, because something wasn’t “sitting right.” I’m not sure where to go with this investigation next. I’m A little scared to keep going, to be honest, even if I knew what to do next. If I find out anything more, as always, I’ll share.

┈──┈˖˚⊹ ⋆♡⋆ ⊹˚˖ ┈──┈

It’s been A rough week. I haven’t been able to reply to comments. You’ll understand why after reading. But I still needed to write this. Get it out. I don’t think you know what A support you all have been. After my last update, I did something I haven’t done since Mom left. I broke down. I called Mom up and told her everything that’s been going on and how it’s been affecting me. I told her I couldn’t take it anymore. I have A regular life I should be leading. I have A job and friends. But I’m trapped in this maze of lies and secrets. (Yes, I can get very dramatic.) She said she would book A flight immediately. Then we’d get with my Dad and talk things over all three of us. I told her she didn’t have to do that. I know she’s busy. Plus she and Dad still hate each other. She told me she still loves Dad and always has, they just had too many differences. He couldn’t accept her for who she was. But she always thought it was their destiny to be together. Her happiness in life was the hope that we’d all be A family, like we should be. I don’t know if she was just saying this to make me feel better. It did make me feel better. It also felt weird hearing Mom talk like this. She was never the most emotional person. I thought that’s why she was A good fit for Dad—because you have to be thick-skinned to be around him. She said she’d see me soon to put an end to this. And she said, “I hope your Dad makes the right choice.” I wondered what she was referring to, but she was gone before I could ask. I called up Dad right away to let him know, because her flight couldn’t take longer than 4-5 hours. She’d be arriving in time for dinner. As I expected, this wasn’t welcome news to him. But not for the reasons I expected. Turns out he’s been getting reacquainted with Betty Coffin. I said that seems like A strange coincidence. But not at all. Telling the story reminded him of her. “Curves, son,” is how he described her. She’d sent him A message A while back telling him she’d gotten back into town. He’d just been too busy to write her back and then he forgot. So happened they’d made dinner plans that evening, he’d be going to her place (!). Dad hadn’t really bothered much with relationships after he and Mom divorced. He’d tried. Every so often he’d meet A woman he really liked and seemed to like him. Well enough to introduce her to me. Something would always happen that scared them away. He used to joke that he was cursed. I think he probably internalized that. It was pretty much never his fault, though. Sonya accused him of calling her in the middle of the night and telling her weird things. I overheard the fight. I remember one of the things was, “You’d be so much better without bones” and that he kept calling her “Jellyfish.” I know Dad wouldn’t do that. He would never think of something so surreal in A million years. But she believed it was him. Andrea said she started to notice things in her house would move while she was asleep and it only started when she started seeing Dad. Her CD collection, in particular. She also said one night she woke up, because she heard Dad get up and go to the kitchen. She looked out into the kitchen and saw him staring into the fridge. She started drifting back to sleep again when she heard more noise. The fridge door was still open, but she couldn’t see him anymore. This got her mad, so she shouted for him to keep it down and close the fridge door. That’s when Dad said, “What’s the hell’s going on?” He was still lying in bed right beside her. She wouldn’t have anything to do with him after that. Parker was my favorite of all Dad’s girlfriends. She was A tomboy type. She loved camping and she’d traveled A lot, so I’d hear about all different countries from her. She also talked about strange things happening while with Dad. Like hearing him talk to her when he wasn’t in the house. But she didn’t let it get to her. They were together for A while. One night she had an accident while driving out into A remote stretch that leads to A dinky copper mining town nearby. She died A day later in the hospital from complications. It didn’t seem important at the time, but now I remember Dad wondering why she’d been driving out that way, anyway. And her sister yelling at Dad that he’d told Parker to meet him out there. There were other incidents. I probably don’t know about them all. But this one, back when I got Dad set up on ICQ in like 2000 or so, he started talking to this chick. He said she hit him up. He was A two-finger typer, so I imagine it took A while to bang out messages. After he got interested enough to ask for pictures, she sent him A zip file full of them. All pictures of himself with A black silhouette (MS Painted into the shot). I traced the account as best I could and it got me to an address: the general store out in the national park. He just wanted to drop it and we did. Anyway, with so much bad luck in love, I guess I was happy for him. He shouldn’t be alone forever. It was just awful timing. I wondered if he was even putting her in danger by dating her. But I couldn’t tell him that. I told him I’d deal with Mom and he could have his date. While I waited around for Mom to call and let me know she’d arrived, I decided to search my house for holes, bedding and such. I don’t think that’s paranoia at this point. But there were no holes under the bed. No nests in the closet. The plumbing seemed secure, the vents blew air smoothly. Then I noticed the fridge didn’t look straight. I actually thought I was being ridiculous, so I tried to distract myself. I ended up pulling it out anyway. I never believed anything would be there. But there it was, A little hole, size enough for A little boy to squeeze into. I got A flashlight and my machete. I was so sure someone’s hand would grab me the moment I put my head in. No-one was in there, though. The space was only wide enough for A very slim man to stand very stiff. And I didn’t see any holes in the wall where he could look into the next room (my bedroom). He would’ve just been standing there staring into the darkness behind my fridge. What would be the point? I kept wondering. Then I saw the doll. It was made of twigs and had my face on it. Just looking made me feel uncomfortable. I refused to touch it. Call me superstitious, but it felt unnatural. I’d only made that discovery when I saw another doll behind it, bigger and seeming to watch the smaller doll. Its face was A picture of someone who just looked evil. I don’t know what evil should really look like. I just know this face made me feel like evil was there. I’ve learned my lesson. I immediately called the police and requested Detective Kirby. When he got on the line, before I had A chance to speak, he asked me if I was ok and if I was alone. I answered yes to both questions, “as far as I know,” but I wanted to know why. He said he’d been about to call me. He said they’d just gotten word from the police department in my Mom’s town. He hesitated. I figured they’d found someone broke into her house or A creepy letter. But what he had to say was A lot worse than that. They’d found what they believe to be her body deep in A wooded area. It was so remote, it was pure chance A camper found her. I assured him that whoever they found was not my mother. I had just spoken to her. She was on her way. The line went silent. I insisted that I be allowed to make an identification so they can drop this nonsense. Kirby said the body was past identifying. She’d been dead for over A year. Dental records confirmed it was her. The only identifiable thing was her Ramones t-shirt. I hung up on him. I had no idea how to process this information. If someone tells you the sky is brown and salt is sweet, do you accept it immediately? I had been speaking to my Mom every two weeks for the last several years and never noticed A change in her behavior or personality—until the last few days. If she was dead, who was I speaking to all this time? It had to be her. I know my own mother’s voice, her mannerisms. She knew everything my Mom should know. So I started to wonder about this Detective Kirby character. Maybe he wasn’t on the level. He seemed to have A strange hold over my Dad, calling him “Francis” like that. So I called up the police department in Mom’s town. When I identified myself, I was immediately transferred to A detective. He told me the trace on the phone had come back. All calls from that phone were coming from my own town. Moreover, the phone is even registered to A local address. I felt an emptiness inside. I still feel it. It’s only gotten worse. I didn’t even have to ask about Detective Kirby anymore. I asked anyway and it was confirmed. But I already knew. It couldn’t have been my mother I’ve been talking to. She was dead. I needed to let Dad know right away. I tried calling him. It went straight to voicemail. I hoped this meant he was already with Betty and was safe. I decided to look up Betty Coffin, so I could call her and reach him that way. I found her number with an online phone lookup. It was A landline. I called it just in case. Maybe someone in her household knew her cell number. A young-sounding woman answered the phone. She sounded A little overexcited to get A call, like she’d been waiting. I introduced myself and explained that I really need to get through to Betty and it was an emergency. “Is this some kind of joke?” she asked. I almost lost my temper, but she explained first. “My mother has been missing for A week, sir.” I called Detective Kirby back. I told him he had to get to Dad’s right away, because he was in trouble. In as succinct A manner as possible, I told him what I knew. I was hyperventilating. I don’t know how he understood half of it. I’m so glad he listened and believed me, though. I couldn’t stand just waiting at home. I got in my car and rushed to Dad’s. The lights were on when I arrived. That was A good sign, I thought. The front door was unlocked. When I walked in, I heard music. I recognized the song, actually. It was Bobby Darin’s “Dream Lover”. I’d never heard Dad listen to anything but country. But maybe he was trying to impress the girl. Maybe she came to his place instead. I called out for him. But he didn’t answer. Dad’s always had such amazing hearing. Even at his age, he could hear way better than me. And he was A great Dad. I haven’t always made him sound great. But he’s my hero, y’know? I knew something was wrong when he didn’t answer. I searched everywhere downstairs. The damn song kept playing on A loop. It wasn’t even coming from Dad’s stereo. I went upstairs next. The song started over just as I got to the top. When I got to Dad’s bedroom, I saw where the music was coming from. A record player was on his bed. I stared at it, not really comprehending why I was so afraid to go near it. I wasn’t thinking straight. It took me too long to realize it. But the song couldn’t be on loop. Someone had to be hand-looping it. I backed into A corner involuntarily. I felt control of my bladder near slipping. I even screamed when I heard something downstairs. But I heard them say, “Police,” and I almost cried with relief. The whole time, he was watching me. All I saw was an eye at first. Looking at me through A hole in Dad’s box spring. I started to panic again. The officers, one was Detective Kirby, drew their guns. I pointed to the box spring as A hand reached out and set the needle back to the beginning of the song. They demanded the man get out. He started to make awful sounds. I’d never heard anything like it. Inhuman screams. And one intelligible thing in all the screams, “Sleep in me!” Cold chills swept over me like only once before. They finally dug him out. It was the man I’d seen at the building site. The weirdo that shouted at me. The same one that gave me chills before. He was wearing A dress and A wig, with some smeared make-up and A bloodied nose, but it was the same man. I could barely stand to look at the creature. But he wouldn’t stop staring at me. I asked where Dad was and he said, in my mother’s voice, “Giving birth to you was the happiest day of my life.” I felt nauseous. Then, in A perfectly normal voice, in the most reasonable and yet most sinister tone I’ll ever hear, he said, “He made me so, so lonely. But you don’t know. And I’ll never say another word as long as I live.” They took him away. So fast it felt like A dream. Detective Kirby took me with him. I was left to go home and rest. Rest only came when I passed out. And while I slept, they found Dad. The address my Mom's cell phone was registered to was the same house where Dad found the photos. “Betty” must’ve called him out there. He’d been stabbed in the neck multiple times. He’s the toughest guy ever, so he was still alive when police found him. But it was too much. He didn’t make it. That’s really all I can say now. This was almost impossible to write. I think I must still be in shock to have written it at all. There’s A little more I need to say. But it’s going to have to wait A few days.

┈──┈˖˚⊹ ⋆♡⋆ ⊹˚˖ ┈──┈

LOOSE ENDS:
I really wanted to just drop this. Crawl up in A ball and forget everything. But I have to put all the pieces together. What I have of them, anyway. I owe it to my Mom, Dad and myself. And to all of you for standing with me during this nightmare. After arresting that thing in my Dad’s house, police combed the old house, my house, my Dad’s. They found material that’s helped to shed some light on the events I described in the previous updates. Scraps of paper, A journal of sorts, photographs, combined with additional information from others who grew up with Dad. What I want to do here is not give you each little piece of information. We’ve all had enough mystery. I want to give you the whole story. And by the “whole story,” I mean how I think it all fits together. It may not be 100% correct, but I wouldn’t be sharing it if I didn’t think it was pretty close. So, let’s start at the beginning. A schizophrenic was released from the Sanatorium (really an asylum). He wandered the woods until he had some kind of episode back there. He came out in the little town of Grand Greve. “Chawed Froy,” since I have no other name for him. He went around convincing children to bring him food, like the peanut butter and sugar sandwiches. When he met Timmy, he even got A place to stay. Chawed and Timmy skulked around together. He got sandwiches. Timmy was interested in other things. In particular, the family that lived A few houses down. They were the only kids around that would hang out with him. He particularly liked Dad. Dad was handsome, tall, and athletic. So he got Chawed to ask Flora for more than just sandwiches. He wanted to see Dad and Matt sleeping. When Timmy’s parents found he’d allowed A hobo to squat in their home, though, they got mad. They never beat Timmy. They just yelled at him. Then they tried to kick Chawed out. So Chawed and Timmy killed his parents. Police first found the blood stains in the house and then the bodies beneath it. With his parents’ camera, Timmy started snapping photos of Dad, Matt, and Flora while they slept. Flora noticed the light. She was just A lighter sleeper, apparently. This didn’t stop Timmy. He kept taking pictures for over A year. Finally, one night, Flora caught him. She told him she’d tell her Mom and that he was going to be in big trouble. The next day, Chawed called them over to listen to records. I would guess at Timmy’s request, but who knows. When Timmy was coming back from buying food, he saw Flora walking away from the house. He didn’t want her to tell on him for taking the pictures. So he grabbed her and dragged her into the woods. He didn’t kill her right away. In all the photos they found hidden in that house, there was one faded photo of A teen girl. It was Flora. I’m sure of it. In the photo, she was in some sort of A cabin. She wasn’t tied up. But she looked so, so unhappy. The whole cabin seemed tinged with unhappiness. It was an awful-looking place. She was twelve when she disappeared. So she was kept somewhere after her kidnapping. Somewhere no-one ever thought to look for her. Only Timmy and Chawed knew where she was. Probably where Chawed hid while police looked for him. After Timmy thought it was safe for Chawed to come out, my Dad was first in finding him and was involved in the man’s murder. That much was confirmed for me by Detective Kirby. Timmy was already at his cousin’s home by this time. He’d been taken as soon as his parents were found. So wherever Flora was being kept, she was left alone once Chawed died. While he was at his cousins’, I think Timmy had A psychotic break. Chawed really was his whole world. He’d drawn Timmy into his delusions. He talked to what he thought was Chawed in the vents and in the woods, but I don’t think anyone was there. No fingers poked out of the vent. Because, if it wasn’t all in Timmy’s head, who was that? After some time with his cousins who didn’t even like him, he ran away. He probably had money stashed somewhere. Or maybe he just became A beggar. My Dad, on the other hand, grew up and moved on. He met A beautiful gymnast and married her. That’s where I come in. We were A reasonably happy family, from what I understand. Until something happened that made Mom and Dad resent each other. They divorced. Dad fought like hell for custody and Mom went back west where she’d originally come from. Not long after Mom was out of the picture, I started seeing the flashing lights. When I told Dad and Uncle Matt, it terrified them. The possibility that I could end up disappearing like Flora is just about the only thing that could terrify my Dad. What I never knew is that after I told them about the lights, they went out to the park together while I stayed with Uncle Matt’s wife. They spent all day looking for the place they’d buried Chawed, but they found it. And they dug him up to make sure he was really dead. That’s why Dad was so insistent that the lights were just in my head or passing cars. Because the guy they believed was behind Flora’s abduction was dead and buried. And they had to believe it was him behind it, because if they didn’t, they’d murdered an innocent man. (Since this man probably murdered Timmy’s parents, he wasn’t that innocent. But they didn’t know that.) Years later, when Dad found the pictures of me in that house, he knew he’d been wrong. Whoever it was, he figured, was the same person taking pictures of Flora. They’d murdered the wrong person and I was in danger. He went out looking for anyone suspicious. Roughed up A few guys. But nothing came of it. What I think happened is that Timmy was still obsessed with Dad. He did something to sabotage Mom and Dad’s relationship. Then when Mom was out of the picture, he inserted himself into the family in the only way he knew how. By sneaking pictures of me while I slept. I believe Timmy must’ve had our phones and home(s) bugged. He’d adapted to being A shadow in our lives. Maybe he imagined he was something more. After A while, this wasn’t enough to satisfy him anymore. He murdered my mother and pretended to be her for A year. I think this gave him what he really wanted. To be Dad’s wife and my mother. His obsession with my Dad wasn’t just admiration. He was in love with him. He resented my Mom, hated her even, for taking what he believed was his. He wasn’t taking my picture because he wanted to scare me or abduct me. He thought he was being motherly. He drew pictures of himself nursing me and Dad smiling behind. And whenever Dad found A new girl he was interested in, Timmy had to take her out of the picture, like A jealous wife. He believed his delusion sometimes. When I let him/Mom know that I was investigating these events, I think it made him feel more important in our lives. I think it also threatened him. Becoming aware of him was ruining his illusion that he wasn’t really my Mom. That’s when he started acting out. When he talked to me as Mom, telling me Dad had to make A choice, I think he expected Dad to see him as Mom and fall in love. Betty Coffin’s body was found. He killed her just to seduce my Dad into meeting him. The choice was between Betty or Mom. Because Dad chose Betty, he killed him. He ran back to Dad’s house and into the box spring, where he’d been living for A few weeks. The music, the make-up and dress, was all supposed to be for Dad’s reunion with “Mom,” if he’d chosen her. I wish I hadn’t encouraged Dad to go on that date. If I hadn’t, he might still be alive. The whole thing is so stupid. Insanity, obsession, and loneliness, all unprovoked by us. I hate him and I want him to rot, but then I don’t even know why. He really was just crazy...
KICKER:
I wrote all of this feeling real sure of myself last night. It was therapeutic, at least. I needed to put it all into some sort of order. This morning, I got news that just shakes it all up. You all remember the Etch-a-Sketch, right? Like that. While everything I said is, in A way, still true. There’s one very important part that’s wrong. A part that makes A lot of it make no sense at all. Detective Kirby told me they weren’t able to identify the man they caught at Dad’s home. However, they could positively state who he wasn’t. This man was not Timmy Jean. Timmy is A resident at A group home over three-hundred miles away, where he’s been for the past four years. He’s practically A shut-in, Kirby says. He never goes anywhere. Ever. The man they arrested has no identification, his prints aren’t in the system, no dental records, nothing. And he’s so far stuck to his promise: he hasn’t spoken since that night. Other prisoners avoid him like they’re afraid. They won’t say why, just that there’s “something wrong.” And they’re right.
ONE LAST THING:
The last thing I want to leave you all with is A strange story I heard from an old friend of Dad’s. Dad’s friend is A ranger at the national park where Dad’s town used to be. He said over the years he’s heard odd stories about things deep in the woods. But one, from not too long ago, stands out. And he felt the urge to tell it to me. I have no idea why. And I can’t say it connects to anything else. It has nothing to do with my family or Timmy. It just feels like it fits, somehow. A couple from out of town was in the area to do some hiking. The park connects to the Appalachian trail, so lots of experienced hikers come through. They decided to do A little off-trail hiking. As I mentioned before, there are miles of untouched woods back there. So they had plenty of room for exploring. After hours in the woods, the realized their compass wasn’t working at all. Their phones had no signal, of course. They were lost. That deep in, the woods were pretty dense and the sun was starting to set. They were experienced enough to have adequate water, rations, and camping gear, so they didn’t panic. But they kept walking, hoping to make it to A road or ranger’s camp. When it got too dark to see, they started to set up camp. That’s when the girl tells her boyfriend she can see A light. He looks and sees it to. It looks like artificial light. They weren’t sure if they were still deep in the woods or not, but it felt eerie. They walked carefully toward it, using an emergency flashlight. They couldn’t hear any traffic as they got near and saw no other lights. But the light seemed to be coming from A real house. A little aged, but no cabin or shack. There was A clearing around the house, large enough for two people to walk side-by-side. The guy insisted they examine the perimeter first. His girlfriend thought he was being ridiculous, but he told her he had A bad feeling about the place. She thought the woods at night was just making him jumpy. Still, she went along. Shingled roof, wood-sided walls, curtained windows, and even A front porch. What they couldn’t find was A road. Or even A path or trail. Nothing but woods. The woods surrounded the whole circumference as densely as any part of the woods. That didn’t sit right at all. But they needed help. They knocked on the only door. An older man answered the door pretty quickly. He looked well-groomed, dressed in A nice shirt and pull-over sweater. “Evening, strangers,” he says, like it was no big deal. The boyfriend apologized for bothering him, and explained how they’d been wandering the woods all day and his house was the first they found. The man was understanding. He invited them inside and seated them in his living room. It was nicely decorated and toasty inside. They didn’t even notice her at first, but there was A woman seated in the corner of the room. She didn’t say anything, but nodded politely to them when noticed. The guy and girl exchanged glances. They felt horribly uncomfortable. The man returned to the living room with A tray of tea. He set it in front of them, then sat across from them. They poured themselves each A cup. The man watched them very carefully. They didn’t like the way he scrutinized them. The fire crackled and popped sinisterly, it seemed to them, behind him. The tension of the silence kept mounting, so the guy decided to say something. He noted that he hadn’t seen any roads or paths around the house. “Nope,” the man agreed. So he asked how the man comes and goes. To this, he says he stays put. How about supplies? The man leans back in his chair and looks at the guy suspiciously. “You’re awful curious,” he says. They heard A strange, wet thudding noise somewhere else inside the house right then. The man doesn’t react, so they pretend to ignore it. But they were both starting to get nervous being in the place. The guy asked the man how far from the nearest road they were. He was calculating in his head if they had enough battery to see them to it in the dark. The man answered that they were very far from any road on all sides. The girl said it was weird to her that it the place was so hidden. Because unless someone knew it was there or stumbled on it by pure chance, no-one would ever find it. There couldn’t be an address, after all, if there was no road. The man asked which they were. And then said, “How do I know you didn’t come here to kill me?” They didn’t know what to say to that. They figured it was A joke and laughed uncomfortably. But he just smirked at them. He excused himself then and vanished around the corner into A dark hallway. While they were alone, they looked around the room. There was A painting hanging over the fireplace that kept catching the guy’s attention. He didn’t know why. He hated art. It was A scene of A couple walking through A clearing. There were thick shrubs around. Now that he looked at the painting more closely, he saw something that he swore wasn’t there before. Staring out from one of the shrubs was A man’s face, watching the couple with A look of pure hate. He was really creeped out, but he didn’t want his girlfriend to see it. They drank more of the tea, because it was warm. They’d taken A few gulps when they noticed the girl in the corner again. They only noticed her this time because she was shaking her head, almost imperceptibly. But she kept doing it. Shaking her head and looking at the tea cups. She became perfectly still again when the man returned. The guy tried to explain to the man that they must be going. He didn’t feel well and there had been way too many red flags to keep ignoring. But the words that came out of his mouth were slurred and ineffectual. And he passed out. When he woke up, he had an awful headache. He shook his girlfriend awake as well. They realized they’d slept for some time. The guy suspected they’d been drugged, but couldn’t be certain. The man was nowhere to be seen. Neither was the woman. And their gear was missing. They wanted to leave right away, but needed their supplies. They had no idea how far from any roads they were. So they went searching the rooms of the house. There were three doors down the hall. All led to bedrooms. They first two were empty. So was the last, but it had their gear on the middle of A child’s bed. They grabbed their stuff and prepared to leave. But the guy saw A curtain covering an opening at the very end of the hall and he had to know. He pulled it open. It was just A closet. The man and woman must’ve left the house, he thought. Then he noticed his girlfriend’s face. She was terrified of something, so much she was backing away and tugging at him. He looked back in the closet. It was the man, crouched down naked in the bottom of the closet looking up at them with A smile that crossed most of his face. But his eyes fixed them with the most unmistakably intense rage. He started crawling out of the closet toward them on all fours and making sounds like they’d never heard any living thing make before. They ran out the house and straight into the woods. They moved as fast as possible, cutting themselves and tripping several times. Something in their guts kept telling them that man was right behind them, like the man in the bushes in that horrible painting. And he was going to kill them. They finally came out of the woods on A dirt road and from there slowly followed it to A real road and found their way back to town. They told the park rangers about it and were advised to keep the story to themselves. Later, they looked the area up on Google Earth. It took them A while, but they spotted the clearing in the woods. It was even deeper in than they’d thought. As they zoomed in, the guy saw something weird in front of the house. He cleaned up the image as best he could. Still A little blurry, but the couple knew what it was. The man was standing in front of the house and looking straight up. Like he knew they were watching. They sent the image to the rangers as proof. I know there are still so many questions. What really happened to Flora? Was Timmy dealing with someone else? How’d he know so much about Mom? Who was that guy who got arrested? Why was the Ramones t-shirt on my Mom’s body? I just don’t know… So for now, that’ll just have to be.