The Dark Somnium - "My Dad Finally Told Me What Happened That Day"

Episode Date: September 5, 2023

This Creepypasta Scary Story was written by Jared Roberts, The Author who did "The Hidden Webpage" story on my channel. Make sure to check out the original link and support the author:"My Dad Finally Told Me What Happened That Day" https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/5dr9fh/my_dad_finally_told_me_what_happened_that_day/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I went to visit my dad not 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 were just each having a beer and 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 asked. Remember that time I got home from work real upset and wouldn't tell you what happened? I did remember. It was something I would never 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 kind of guy whose bar fights were town legends. I also remember he told me never to 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 that recording this will help me deal with it. First, a little backstory. 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 would steal my toys. And it was just a grimy area. But we were going through tough times, and it was what we could afford. Probably what I remember most about the place was how I would get woken up from my sleep every

once in a while by flashing lights. I don't remember being too worried about it at first. I just assumed that there was lots of lights 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-legged dinner. I remember it distinctly because it was the first time I'd ever eaten crab. While we were talking, I just casually mentioned the lightning last night.

Dad said, There was 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. 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 got 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 he left, so I came to believe that 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, 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 C.D. Walkman.

Dad generally didn't eat lunch. He'd just get too into work, so he was still busy on site. Suddenly, I noticed a guy walking towards 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 older guy, his head was shaved, and he was wearing a Ramon's t-shirt. He sat down beside me, way too close and didn't say a word. I took off my headphones because I didn't want to be rude and said hi. He told me my dad was looking for me and that I should head back as soon as I 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 know who they even 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 was like to be hated. waited until then. It was like he wanted me dead. I remember thinking what I should do if he attacked me, but he didn't attack. He just shouted. Someone's been sleeping in your bed, and I don't like it. Then he stalked off, leaving me puzzled and terrified. It was probably 85 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 who 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 in my box when the guy talked to me. How had he known what I brought for lunch? Dad's story. When I was 15, Dad was called out on a job, some house away on the other side of the bay. In the town I grew up. up, 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 apartment was on the beachy side, so the house he was called to was a quarter of the way to the next town on the woodsy side. So he showed up in his van with all his

tools. The front yard was really overgrown. No vehicles in the driveway, except a rusting husk of what used to be a 70s model Chevy. The house was in pretty bad shape, but he went up. to the front door. Before he knocked, he saw a note telling him to come right in, and they'd be back soon. He didn't like going into someone's house without them there, because he didn't want to be accused of anything, but he'd driven so far, so he went ahead. He got to work on repairing some of the wood rot around the window frames. He'd been there for nearly an hour when he thought he heard someone. He went to check, and there was still no cars 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, like I said, 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 that the back door was open leading into the overgrown backyard. He wondered if it was just the wind moving the door. He closed it and was going back into work when he decided just to look the place over just in case. He looks around downstairs, there's nothing to see.

The house is in bad shape, but it's furnished. The place is 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.

Dad's never been much of an intuitive kind of. of guy, so those must have been 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 up, 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, because he's like that. He wouldn't ask for 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 in 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 sleeping 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 it as a summer home, but hadn't been 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 30 minutes at night just to take pictures of 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 to one of those questions. In a way, I find this creepier. Turns out he went to the wrong address.

He wrote it down wrong. When the police checked his answering machine tapes 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. completely by a random misunderstanding. So who left the note on the front door? 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, jockey, always has a kind word for everyone. That's why I was shocked when he actually got mad. He told me never to ask him about it again and to leave him alone. That would have been the end of it 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 had 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 was some odd thing in my family that I kind of 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. She used to hide his gin because it'd freak her out when he started talking 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 had asked her what she was doing, because if their mom caught them in the kitchen at that hour, she'd have their butts reddened. Flora told him she had to make a sandwich and a picture for Mr. Chod-Froy. Mom said Dad would shudder when he said that part of the story. His voice got real low when he said the name. So my dad got mad at Flora because he thought she was being dumb or half dreaming. When 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 that there was something wrong here. He took the picture and tore it up and told Flora. She had to get back to bed right away. She told him Mr. Chod Freud 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 and 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 kind of superstitious about things. Like she would be afraid to say the name of certain diseases. She'd never say cancer, as if saying it causes it.

She said just saying the name, Chod Froye, made her feel like she was being watched. But I asked her more questions and she kept going. She said 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 he 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 the whole conversation in there. He'd 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 could always drink more. The voice he heard sounded cold and metallic, probably coming through the pipes, he figured, it scared the crap out of him. What it was actually saying was even worse.

Come outside, Flora. Come 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 shouldn't have eaten my sandwich. Hearing it made my dad's hair stand on end. My mom said it was 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. Chod Frey again because he was bad. He ended up telling my mom, and they found where the pipes had been messed with under the house. They had 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 that 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. She 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. 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 deserve to know. What Uncle Matt said.

He said that there was a little bit more to it than my mom described. A week before she disappeared, Flora had started complaining about the flashing lights again. They figured 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 that they found footprints in the snow outside of the house. It had snowed almost three feet overnight. Those 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 the window. They faced back towards the woods, where there was nothing but to the window. trees. For the footprints not to have been covered in by snow, someone had to have walked to

floor'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 got a new one. Uncle Matt said Timmy was only a child. 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 else was listening in. He could hear a strange sound in the background that wasn't quite breathing. It was like someone saying, yeah, really softly. Around this time, where a dad and Uncle Matt grew up, the first time, the father 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 in polite. They went to Timmy's, but when they arrive, 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 of the old albums anyway, but Flora was really disappointed and wanted to go home. So she left alone. He remembered thinking it was too bad that 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, an oversized Ramon's t-shirt they found during the trip in 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 mention the details about the Ramones T-shirt before. Not the Uncle Matt would pull my leg on something like this. I guess it could have been a coincidence. A lot of people like the Ramones, but I'd never felt so unsettled in my life. I told him about the guy in the Ramon's shirt.

He told me just to drop it, because it was a long time ago. That was all he had to say. There was a lot of what Uncle Matt said that I find strange, like how unconcernment. He seemed that Tommy hadn't made the phone call or the sleeping mask. I'm going to be visiting my dad tomorrow for Thanksgiving. I'm going to bring two bottles of gin and see where the conversation goes. 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 there was a lot that didn't make sense.

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, because 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, I 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 his 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 even 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 can be 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 ever 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 that 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 do strange things. Sometimes he seemed pretty normal. Then he'd just change like that. This one time, they were listening to some new music he had. He turned it off and told them he'd learned a new song and dance. Dad wasn't interested, thinking it was childish, but Flora and Matt wanted to see.

Timmy started walking backwards in circles, 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 this, 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 him.

to look for him just in case. He couldn't find him, so he decided he'd just asked Timmy's parents where he'd 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 inside. 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 crust, and a piece of paper. Dad said he'd seen enough. He closed the door and got out and never went back to Timmy's again, because when Timmy would go in that room, they wouldn't just hear Timmy talking. They'd heard someone talking to him. I'd already drank more gin than I should have, but this 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 that 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 straight when he said this, like it was something I should keep in my 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 that they had a call from Timmy to come over and listen to the new records. 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 Floris. 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. That's all I know about it, he said. I told him Uncle Matt said he was listening to me. 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 stopped me from shaking. When I looked at Dad, he was staring down with a sad resignation I'd never seen on him before. My dad could drink me under the table ten times over, so after the 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 ever heard them talk about Flora before. After what my dad said, I remember. 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 in the woods behind Hyman's general store. There are no trails or anything. They just pick 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 for about 30 minutes or an hour. Dad would always 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 point, 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 to go back on her own. He told her that that

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, 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 around 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. there was no reason for anyone to be out so far in the woods. They shouldn't have even been 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 shoulders as they walked. After a few minutes, he was satisfied that they were well away from the man.

He was long out of sight and probably hearing range. After a few minutes of 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 they'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 was so scared because 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. He took 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! 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 that they were just trespassing. After Uncle Matt finished his story, everyone was quiet for a good long time. The story seemed to bothered 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 that they'd seen a bear or something, and they just kept bawling. 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. But he had never called out to 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 big town, there's a huge sanatorium up on a hill, looks over the whole. town. The guy in the woods could have just been some guy who got out of there, and they had the misfortune of startling him. It 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 before. 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 I eventually 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 it's 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 feel uneasy. For one, my mom has called me twice since Thanksgiving. I know this isn't overtly creepy, but we normally talk once every two weeks. On top of that, she hasn't been herself. She's been trailing off, going silent for long periods of time,

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 that I could have 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 dial, 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 tinium metallic sound, and that same echo as one 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 it sound like I was in danger for the first time since I started this investigation. The first time, Ollie said, was. I'm on my way. I tried to answer 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 figured it really was a wrong number, and they figured it out.

I mean, given the last two weeks, I had every reason to be a little jumpy. I get about halfway 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 in my life. 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 was a long drive, and dad rarely visits. He got pretty irritated about that. He opened his flip phone and showed me a text apparently from me. In the text, I asked him to come out immediately.

It's an emergency, it said. 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 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 this is what he said. After Flora disappeared, Dad and Matt were expressly forbidden to have anything to do with Timmy. For Dad, Matt 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 that if Flora hadn't gone to his home that day, then 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 kind of supernatural beliefs were common then.

I tend to agree. Timmy made no effort 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, more than any one boy should require. They never talked. Suspitions about Timmy and concerns about his missing parents grew. The police had looked around Timmy's house a little, since it was where Flora was

last scene 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. Some towns always have rumors, hard to say if they're true or false. Timmy was placed with some distant relatives in a larger town an hour away. They said he was strange, they didn't like him. He was always up and walking around at night. Sometimes he'd stop over the vents and the floor and just stare into them. After he'd been there for a little 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 him, said it still creeped her out because she knew she heard someone answering him one night. 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 part of it may have been a dream, but she always swore she saw a finger poking out from the vent, too. She told her parents, but they said stopped making up stories, and that he'd been through a lot. Her sister said sometimes Tommy would walk out into 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 girl said, she heard him talking into the air vents like the 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 Tommy was still sound asleep in his room. The talking had been coming up from the vent all on its own. They said Timmy would sometimes steal food from the house and take it into the woods. When he was caught, he said he had a tree house, but they never saw if it existed. They'd sometimes wake up and find him staring at them in the middle of the night.

They'd 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 night, 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 the weird behavior all at once. He wouldn't talk to anyone.

He hardly ate, and 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 included that part not because I believed in a horn devil that manifests itself in smoke patterns.

I think it's interesting that his cousins thought he was so creepy that the devil would be in the smoke particles coming off of 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 house 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 when I checked the mail earlier.

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'd 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. I still want to get to the bottom of things, though. My investigations hit a bit of a dead end, but I'll keep you all posted. 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 had 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 be 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 skin 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 four or five hours. She'd be arriving in time for dinner.

As 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. He reminded him of her. At 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 ride 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 have to have. That happened 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. Sonia accused him of calling her in the middle of the night and telling her weird things. I overheard the fight. One of the things was, you'd be so much better without bones and that he'd 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. Dreya said she started noticing 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 the hell is 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 traveled a lot. So I'd heard all about 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 into 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, but this is one. Back when I got Dad set up on ICQ in like 2000 or something, he started talking to this chick.

She said he hit him up. He was a two-finger typeer, 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, Microsoft painted into the shot. I traced the account as best I could, and it got 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 and 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, and 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, just big enough for a child to squeeze into. I got a flashlight in my machete. I was so sure someone's hands 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 don't see any holes in the wall where he could look into the next room, my bedroom. He would have just been standing there staring into darkness behind my fridge. What would be the point? I kept wondering. Then I saw the doll. It was made out of twigs and had my face on it.

Just looking at it made me 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 okay, 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 that they'd 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 worse than that. They'd found what they believed to be her body in a deep, wooded area. It was 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 here. The line went silent. I insisted that I'd be allowed to make an identification so that 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 Ramon's 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. No. 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. 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 over-excited 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.

She asked me if this was some kind of joke. I almost lost my temper, but then she explained that her mother had been missing for a week. 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. Though 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. It was Bobby Darren's dream lover. I'd never heard Dad listen to anything but country, but maybe he was trying to impress this girl.

Maybe she came to his place instead. I called out for him, but he didn't answer. Dad's always had 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, you 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, so it took me a long time 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 someone downstairs, but I heard them say police, and I almost cried with relief. That's when I noticed it. Something looking at me from under Dad's bed. The whole time it 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 Cross Spring. 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 making awful sounds. I'd never heard anything like it. 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 makeup and a bloodied nose, but it was the same man.

I could barely stand to look at him, 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, yet most sinister tone I'd ever heard, he said. He made me so, so lonely, which you don't know. and I'll never say another word as long as I live.

They took him away, so fast it was like a dream. Detective Kirby took me with him. I was the last 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 have 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 the police found him, but it was too much.

He didn't make it. Lou Sends. 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 materials that helped them 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 the others who grew up with dad. What I want to do here is 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% percent. 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 Grieve. Chad Freud, 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 Tommy, he even got a place to stay. say. Chod and Tommy 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. He got Chad to ask Flora for more sandwiches. He wanted to see Dad and Matt sleeping. When Timmy's parents found he'd allowed a hobo to squat in their house, though, they got mad. They never been to be. beat Tommy, they just yelled at him. They tried to kick Chod out, so Chod and Timmy killed his parents. Police first found the bloodstains 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 light 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. her mom and that he was going to be in big trouble. The next day, Chod 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 cabin. She wasn't tied up, but she looked so unhappy. The whole cabin seemed tinged with unhappiness. It was an awful looking place.

She was 12 when she disappeared. So she was kept somewhere after her kidnapping. Somewhere no one ever thought to look for her. Only Timmy and Chod knew where she was, probably where Chod hid while the police looked for him. After Timmy thought it was safe for Chod to come out, my dad was first to be. 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 house by this time. He'd been taken as soon as his parents were found, so wherever Flora was kept, she was left alone once Chod died. While he was at his cousins, I think Timmy had a psychotic break. Chod really was his whole world. He'd drawn Timmy into his illusions. He'd talked to what he thought was Chod in the vents and in the woods. but I don't think anyone was there.

No fingers poked out of the vents, because if it wasn't all in Timmy's head, who was that? After some time with the 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 Floor 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 was. I stayed with Uncle Matt's wife. They spent all day looking for the place they'd buried Chod, but they found it, and they dug

him up to make sure he was really dead. That's why Dad was so insistent the lights were just in my head or passing cars, because the guy they believed was behind Flora's abduction was dead and buried. 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 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 marriage. 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 was asleep. I believe Timmy must have had our phones and homes bugged. He'd adapted to being a shadow in our lives. Maybe he'd 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 my dad's wife and my mother. His obsession with my dad wasn't just admiration. He was a little. He was a was in love with him. He resented my mom, hated her even, for taking what he believed was his. He wasn't taking my pictures 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 a 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 delusions sometimes. When I let him and mom know 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. That's 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. 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 makeup, 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 want him to rot, but then I don't even know why. He really was just crazy.

Kicker. I recorded all of this feeling real sure of myself last night. It was therapeutic, at least. I needed to put it all in some sort of order. This morning, I got news that just shakes it all up. 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 men. they'd 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 300 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 had no identification. His prints aren't in the system, no dental records, nothing, and he's so far stuck to his promise, hasn't spoken since last 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 at 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's 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 mentioned before, there are miles of untouched woods back there, so they had plenty of room for exploring. After hours in the woods, they realized their compass wasn't working at all. Their phones had no signal, of course.

They were lost. That deep in the woods, the woods are 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 rangers 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. 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 examined the perimeter first. His girlfriend thought he was being ridiculous, but he told her that 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, curtain 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 circumference as densely as any part of the forest. 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 had been wandering the woods all day and his house was the first thing 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 the girl exchanged glances. They felt horribly uncomfortable. The man returned to the living room with a tray of tea. He sat 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, from behind them. 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. He asks how he gets supplies.

The man leans back in his chair and looks at the guy suspiciously. You're awful curious, he says. They heard a strange sound, wet thumping 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 that place. The guy asked the man how far from the nearest road they were. He was calculating in his head if he 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 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 figured it was a joke and laughed uncomfortably, but he just smirked at them. He excused himself and then 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 and they kept catching the gun. 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 wasn't 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 imperceptively. She kept doing it, shaking her head and looking at the teacups.

She became perfectly still again as the man returned to the room. 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.

The 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 have left the house, he thought. He then noticed his girlfriend's face. She was terrified of something, so much so that she was backing away and tugging at him.

She 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. His eyes fixed them with the most unmistakably intense rage. He started crawling out of the closet toward them on all fours, making sounds like they'd never heard any living thing make before. They ran out of 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 the 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 the 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 up the area on Google Earth. It took them a while, but they spotted the clearing in the woods. It was even deeper than they thought.

As they zoomed in, the guy saw something weird in front of the house. He cleared 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 that got arrested? Why was the Ramon's T-shirt on Mom's body? I just don't know. So for now, that'll just have to be. The end.