The NoSleep Podcast - Penpal ~ Part I

Episode Date: October 26, 2011

The Nosleep Podcast is proud to present the first part of our Halloween Trilogy to celebrate Halloween Week!The six tales told by Dathan Auerbach (Redditor 1000Vultures) have had a phenomonal effect on Reddit.com’s Nosleep forum. To celebrate this series, we are releasing a special extended two-part set of recordings that feature all six stories.Part I features the first three stories:FootstepsBalloonsBoxesAll stories are narrated by Sammy Raynor (Redditor sammysimplicity)Part II of the series will feature the final three stories and will be released in the coming weeks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The No Sleep Podcast is proud to present part one of a special two-part extended edition, featuring the epic series of stories written by the Redditor known as 1,000 vultures. To lead you on the journey, the author himself will introduce you to his series entitled Pen Papp. My name is Dathan Auerbach. I'm the author of a series of six stories posted on No Sleep that I've come to title, Pen Pal. For this special two-part extended edition of the No Sleep podcast, I will be introducing each story to give you some background that will hopefully help you understand a little bit more about why I wrote them. In part one, the first three stories in this series will be presented.

Each story is narrated by Sammy Raynor. The first story in the series is entitled Footsteps. I've never had to tell this story with an episode. detail to actually explain it all the way, but it's true, and it happened when I was about six years old. In a quiet room, if you press your ear against a pillow, you can hear your heartbeat. As a kid, the muffled rhythmic beats sounded like soft footsteps on a carpeted floor, and so, as a kid, almost every night, just as I was about to drift off to sleep, I would hear

these footsteps and would be ripped back into consciousness, terrified. For my entire childhood, I lived with my mother in a fairly nice neighborhood, that was in a transitional phase. People of lower economic means were gradually moving in, and my mother and I were two of these people. We lived in the kind of house you see being transported in two pieces on the interstate, but my mom took good care of it.

There were a lot of woods surrounding the neighborhood that I would play in and explore during the day, but at night, as things often do as a kid, they took on a more sinister feeling. This coupled with the fact that, due to the nature of our house, there was a fairly large crawl space underneath filled my mind with imaginary monsters and inescapable scenarios which would consume my thoughts

when I was awoken by the footsteps. I told my mom about the footsteps and she said that I was just imagining things. I persisted enough that she blasted my ears with water from a turkey baster once just to placate me since I thought that would help. Of course it didn't. Despite all the creepiness and footsteps, the only weird thing that ever happened was that every now and then I would wake up on the bottom bunk despite having gone to sleep on the top. But this wasn't really weird since I'd sometimes get up to pee or get something to drink and could remember just going back to sleep on the bottom bunk. I'm an only child, so it didn't matter.

This would happen once or twice a week, but waking up on the bottom bunk wasn't too terrifying. But one night, I didn't wake up on the bottom bunk. I had heard the footsteps, but was too far gone to be woken up by them. When I was awoken, it wasn't from the sound of footsteps or a nightmare, but because I was cold. Really cold. When I opened my eyes, I saw stars. I was in the woods.

I sat up immediately and tried to figure out what was going on. I thought I was dreaming, but that didn't seem right, though neither did me being in the woods. There was a deflated pool float right in front of me, one of those ones shaped like a shark. This only added to the surreal feeling, but after a while it seemed like I just wasn't going to wake up because I wasn't asleep. I stood up to orient myself, but I didn't recognize these woods. I played in the woods by my house all the time, and so I knew them really well. But if these weren't the same woods, then how could I get out? I took a step and felt a shooting pain in my foot, which knocked me back to where I had just been laying.

I had stepped on a thorn. By the light of the moon, I could see that they were everywhere. I looked at my other foot, but it was fine. And as a matter of fact, so was the rest of me. I didn't have another scratch on me, and I wasn't even that dirty. I cried for a little bit, and then stood back up. I didn't know which way to go, so I just picked a direction. I resisted the urge to call out since I wasn't sure I wanted to be found by who or what might be out there.

I walked for what seemed like hours. I tried to walk in a straight line and tried to course correct when I had to take detours, but I was a kid and I was afraid. There weren't any howls or screams, and only once did I hear any noise that scared me. It sounded like a crying baby. I think now that it was just a cat, but I panicked. I ran veering in different directions to avoid big thicks of bushes and collapsed trees, and I was paying close attention to where I stepped because by that point my feet were in pretty bad shape.

I paid too much attention to where I was stepping, and not enough to where those steps were leading me, because not long after hearing the cry, I saw something that filled me with a kind of despair I haven't experienced since. It was the pool float. I was only 10 feet from where I'd woken up. This wasn't magic or some supernatural space bending. I was lost. Up until that moment, I thought more about getting out of the woods than how I got in, but being back at the beginning caused my mind to swim.

I wasn't even sure that these were my woods. I had only been hoping that they were. Had I run in a huge circle around that spot, or did I just get turned around and start making my way back? How was I going to get out? At the time, I thought the North Star was just the brightest star, and so I looked and found the brightest one and followed it. Eventually, things started to look more familiar,

and when I saw the ditch, a dirt ditcheditch my friends and I would have dirtcloth wars in. I knew I had made it out. By that point, I was walking really slowly because my feet hurt so much, but I was so happy to be so close to home that I broke into a light jog. When I actually saw the roof of my house over a neighboring lower-set house, I let out a light sob and ran faster. I just wanted to be home. I had already decided that I wouldn't say anything

because I had no idea what I could possibly say. I would get back in the house somehow, clean up, and get in bed. My heart sunk as I rounded the corner and my house came into full view. Every light in the house was on. I knew my mom was up and I knew I would have to explain or try to explain where I'd been and I couldn't even figure out where to start. My run became a jog, which became a walk. I saw her silhouette through the blinds and although I was worried about how to explain things

to her that didn't matter to me at that point. I walked up the couple of steps to the porch and put my hands to the hands. hand on the doorknob and turned. Right before I pushed it open, two arms wrapped around me and pulled me back. I screamed as loud as I could. Mom, help me. Please, mom! The feeling of being so close to being safe and then being physically pulled away from it filled me with a kind of dread that is, even after all these years, indescribable. The door had been torn away from open and a flash of hope shot through my heart, but it wasn't my mom. It was a man, and he was enormous. I thrashed around and kicked at the shins of the person holding me while also trying to get away from the person who had just come out of my house.

I was scared, but I was furious. Let me go. Where is she? Where's my mom? What'd you do to her? As my throat stung from screaming, and I was drawing in another breath, I became aware of a sound that had been present for longer than I had perceived it. Honey, please calm down. I've got you. It sounded like my mom. The arms loosened and set me down, and as the man approached me blocked out the porch light with his head, I noticed his clothes. He was a cop. I turned to face the voice behind me and saw that it really was my mom. Everything was okay.

I began to cry, and the three of us went inside. I'm so glad you're home, sweetie. I was worried I'd never see you again. By that point, she was crying, too. I'm sorry. I don't know. what happened. I just wanted to come home. I'm sorry. It's okay. Just don't ever do that again. I'm not sure me or my shins could take it. A little laughter broke through her sobs, and I smiled a bit.

Well, I'm sorry for kicking you, but why'd you have to grab me like that? I was just afraid that you'd run away again. I was confused. What do you mean? We found your note on your pillow, she said, and pointed at the piece of paper that the police officer was sliding across the table. I picked up the note and read it. It was a running away letter. It said that I was unhappy, never wanted to see her or any of my friends again. The police officer exchanged a few words with my mom on the porch while I stared at the letter. I didn't remember writing a letter.

I didn't remember anything about any of this. But even if I sometimes went to the bathroom at night and didn't remember, or even if I could have gone into the woods on my own, even if all that could have been true. The only thing I knew at that point was, this isn't how you spell my name? I didn't write this letter. The second story is entitled,

Balloons. There are a number of questions that arose from footsteps that made me curious about certain details of my childhood, and so I spoke with my mother. Exacerated by my question, she said, why don't you just tell them about the goddamn balloons if they're so interested? As soon as she said that, I remembered so much about my childhood that I had forgotten.

This story will provide some greater context for the previous story. When I was five years old, I went to an elementary school that, from what I've come to understand, was really adamant about the importance of learning through activity. It was part of a new program designed to allow children to rise at their own pace, and to facilitate this, the school encouraged teachers to come up with really inventive lesson plans. Each teacher was given the latitude to create his or, her own themes which would run for the duration of the grade and all the lessons in math, reading, etc., would be designed in the spirit of the theme.

These themes were called groups. There was a space group, a sea group, an earth group, and the group I was in, community. In kindergarten in this country, you don't learn much except how to tie your shoes and how to share, so most of it isn't very memorable. I only remember two things very clearly. I was the best at writing my name the right way, and the balloon project, which was really the hallmark of the community group since it was a pretty clever way to show how a community functioned at a really basic level. You've probably heard of this activity. On one Friday, I remember

it being Friday because I was excited about the project and it being the end of the week toward the beginning of the year. We walked into the classroom in the morning and saw that there was a fully inflated balloon tied off with string taped to each of our desks. Sitting on each of our desk was a marker, a pen, a piece of paper, and an envelope. The project was to write a note on the paper, put it in the envelope, and attach it to the balloon, which we could draw a picture on if we wanted. Most of the kids started fighting over the balloons because they wanted different colors, but I started on my note, which I had thought a lot about. All of the notes had to follow a loose structure, but we were allowed to be creative within those boundaries. My note was something like this.

Hi, you found my balloon. My name is, blank, and I attend blank elementary school. You can keep the balloon, but I hope you write me back. I like Mighty Max, exploring, building forts, swimming, and friends. What do you like? Write me back soon. Here's a dollar for the mail. On the dollar, I wrote four stamps right across the front, which my mom said was unnecessary, but I thought it was genius, so I did it.

The teacher took a Polaroid of each of us with our balloons and had us put them in the envelope along with our letter. They also included another letter that I assume explained the nature, of the project and sincere appreciation for anyone's participation in writing back and sending photos of their city or neighborhood. That was the whole idea, to build a sense of community without having to leave the school, and to establish safe contact with other people. It seemed like such a fun idea.

Over the next couple of weeks, the letter started to roll in. Most came with pictures of different landmarks, and each time a letter would come in, the teacher would pin the picture on a big wall map we had put up showing where the letter had come from, and how far the balloon had traveled. It was a really smart idea because we actually looked forward to coming to school to see if we'd gotten our letter. For the duration of the year,

we had one day a week where we could write back to our pen pal or another student's pen pal in case our letter hadn't come in yet. Mine was one of the last to arrive. When I came into the classroom, I looked at my desk and once again didn't see any letter waiting for me. But as I sat down,

the teacher approached me and handed me an envelope. I must have looked so excited because as I was about to open it, she put her hand on mine to stop me and said, Please, don't be too upset. I didn't understand what she meant. Why would I be upset now that my letter had come? Initially, I was mystified that she would even know what was in the envelope, but now I realized that, of course, the teachers had screened the contents

to make sure there was nothing obscene. But all the same, how could I be disappointed? When I opened the envelope, I understood. There was no letter. The only thing in the envelope was a Polaroid, but I couldn't really make out what it was. It looked like a patch of desert, but it was too blurry to decipher. It appeared as if the camera had been moved while the picture was being taken. There was no return address, so I couldn't even write back if I wanted to.

I was crushed. The school year pressed on, and the letters had stopped coming for nearly all of the other students. After all, you can only continue a written correspondence with a kindergartner for so long. Everyone, including myself, had lost interest in the letters almost completely. Then, I got another envelope. My excitement was rejuvenated, and I reveled in the fact that I was still getting a letter when most of the other pen pals had abandoned their involvement. It made sense that I received another delivery.

There had been nothing but a blurry picture in the first one, so this was probably to make up for that. But again, there was no letter at all. all, just another picture. This one was more distinguishable, but I still didn't understand it. The photo was angled way up, catching the top corner of a building, and the rest of the image was distorted by a lens flare from the sun. Because the balloons didn't travel very far, and because they were all launched on the same day, the board became a bit cluttered, and so the policy for the students still exchanging letters became that they could take the photographs home.

My best friend Josh had the second highest number of pictures taken home by the end of the year. His pen pal was really cooperative and sent him pictures from all around the neighborhood of city. Josh took home, I think, four pictures. I took home nearly 50. The envelopes were all opened by the teacher, but after a while I stopped even looking at the pictures. However, I saved them in one of my drawers that housed my collections of rocks, baseball cards, comic book cards, and a little miniature baseball batting helmets that I get out of vending machines at Wind Dixie after T-ball games.

With the school year over, my attention turned to other things. My mom had gotten me a small snow cone machine for Christmas that year, and Josh had really coveted it, so much that his parents bought him a slightly nicer one for his birthday, which was toward the end of the school year. That summer, we had the idea that we would set up a snow cone stand to make money. We thought we'd make a fortune selling snow cones at $1. Josh lived in a different neighborhood, but we eventually decided that my neighborhood would be better

because there were a lot of people who cared for their lawns. The yards in my neighborhood were slightly bigger. We did this for five weekends in a row until my mom told us that we had to stop, and I've only recently come to understand why she did that. On the fifth weekend, Josh and I were counting our money. Because we both had a machine, we each had a separate stack of money

that we put together into one stack, and we then split it evenly. We had made a total of $16 that day, and as Josh paid out my fifth dollar, a feeling of profound surprise consumed me. The dollar said, for stamps. Josh noticed my shock and asked if he had miscounted. I told him about the dollar, and he said, that's so cool, man. As I thought about it, I came to agree.

The idea that the dollar had made it right back to me after changing so many hands floored me. I rushed inside to tell my mom, but my excitement coupled with her being distracted by a phone call, made my story incomprehensible, and she responded simply by saying, Oh, wow, that's neat. Frustrated, I ran back outside and told Josh I had something to show him. Back in my room, I opened the drawer and took out the stack of envelopes and showed him some of the pictures. I started with the first picture, and we went through about ten before Josh lost interest and asked if I wanted to go play in the ditch, a dirt ditched down the street from my house.

before his mom came to pick him up. So that's what we did. We had a dirt war for a while, but it was interrupted several times by rustling in the woods around us. There were raccoons and stray cats that lived in there, but this was making a little too much noise, and we traded guesses at what it was in an attempt to scare each other. My last guess was that it was a mummy,

but in the end, Josh kept insisting that it was a robot because of the sounds that we heard. Before we left, he got a little serious and looked me right in the eyes and said, You heard it, didn't you? It sounded like a robot. You heard it too, right? I had heard it. And since it sounded mechanical, I agreed that it probably was a robot.

It's only now that I understand what we heard. When we got back, Josh's mom was waiting for him at the kitchen table with my mom. Josh told his mom about the robot. Our mom's laughed, and Josh went home. My mom and I ate dinner, and then I went to bed. I didn't stay in bed for long because I crept out and decided that, due to the day's events, I would revisit the envelopes since now the whole affair seemed much more interesting. I took the first envelope, and set it on the floor,

and set the blurry desert Polaroid on top. I led the second envelope right next to it and placed the oddly angled Polaroid of the building's top corner on top, and did this with each picture until they formed a grid that was about five by ten. I was always taught to be careful with things I was collecting, even if I wasn't sure if they were valuable. I noticed that the pictures gradually became more decipherable. There was a tree with a bird on it, a speed limit sign, power line,

a group of people walking into some building. And then I saw something that becks me so powerfully that I can now, as I write this, distinctly remember feeling dizzy and capable of only a single repeating thought. Why am I in this picture? In this photograph of the group of people entering the building,

I saw myself holding hands with my mother in the very back of the crowd of people. We were at the very edge of the photo, but it was undeniably us. And as my eyes swam over the sea of polarites, I became increasingly anxious. It was a really odd feeling. It wasn't fear. It was the feeling you get when you're in trouble. I'm not sure why I was flooded with that feeling, but there I sat, floundering in the distinct sense that I had done something wrong.

And this feeling only intensified as I looked on at the rest of the photos after the one that had so powerfully struck me. I was in every photo. None of them were close shots. None of them were only of me, but I was in every single one of them, off to the side, in the back, bottom of the frame. Some of them only had the tiniest part of my face captured at the very edge of the photo, but nevertheless, I was there. I was always there. I didn't know what to do. Your mind works in funny ways as a kid, there was a large part of me that was afraid of getting in trouble, simply for still being up. Since I already had the looming feeling of having done something wrong, I decided that I would wait until tomorrow.

The next day, my mom was off work and spent most of the morning cleaning up around the house. I watched cartoons, I imagined, and waited until I thought it was a good time to show her the Polaroids. When she went out to get the mail, I grabbed a couple of the pictures and put them on the table in front of me as I sat waiting for her to come back in. When she returned, she was already opening the mail and threw some junk mail into the trash can, and I said, Mom, can you come here for a second?

I have these pictures. Just give me a minute, honey. I need to mark these on the calendar. After a minute or two, she came and stood behind me and asked me what I needed. I could hear her shuffling with the mail behind me, but I just looked at the Polaroids and told her about them. As I explained more and pointed to the pictures,

her frequent uh-haz and okays decreased, and she was suddenly completely quiet and only making a little noise with the mail. The next noise I heard from her sounded as if she was trying to catch her breath in a room that had no air left in it. At last her struggling gasps were conquered and she simply dropped the remaining mail on the table

and ran into the kitchen to get the phone. Mom, I'm sorry, I didn't know about these. Don't be mad at me. With the phone pressed to her ear, she was walking and running back and forth and shouting into it. I nervously fiddle with the mail sitting next to my Polaroids. The top envelope had something sticking out of it that I thoughtlessly and anxiously pulled on until it came out.

It was another Polaroid. Confused, I thought that somehow one of my Polaroids had slipped into the stack where she threw the mail down, but when I turned it over and looked at it, I realized that I had not seen this one before. To my dismay, it was me. But this one was a much closer shot. I was surrounded by trees and was smiling.

But it wasn't just me, I noticed. Josh was there too. This was us from yesterday. I started yelling for my mom who was still screaming into the phone. I repeatedly yelled for her until she finally responded with, What? And I could only think to ask, who are you calling? I'm talking with the police, honey.

But why? I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to do anything. She answered me with a response that I never understood until I was forced to revisit these events from the earliest years of my life. She grabbed the envelope off the table and the picture of Josh and I spun and slid landing next to the other Polaroids in front of me.

She held the envelope up to my eyes, but I could only look at her and watch as all the color began draining out of her face. With tears welling up in her eyes, she said that she had to call the police because there was no postmark. The story is entitled, Boxes. The events of the following story

weren't locked away in the recesses of my mind. I've always remembered them. It wasn't until I remembered balloons and spoke with my mother about the following events that I realized how intertwined this story was with everything else, but I originally hadn't planned on sharing this anyway. My desire to withhold this memory

was due mostly to the fact that I don't think I showed good judgment in it. I also wanted consent from another person to tell it, so as not to misrepresent what transpired. I didn't expect there to be a lot of interest in my other stories, so I never thought I'd really get pressed for more details, and I would have been happy to keep this to myself for the rest of my life. I would feel disingenuous withholding this story from those who wanted more information now that I've spoken with my mother, and another connecting line has been drawn. What follows is as accurate a recollection as I could manage.

I spent the summer before my first year of elementary school learning how to climb trees. There was one particular pine tree right outside my house that seemed almost designed for me. It had branches that were so low, I could easily grab them without a boost, and for the first couple of days after I first learned how to pull myself up, I would just sit on the lowest branch dangling my feet. The tree was outside our back fence and was easily visible from the kitchen window, which was just above the sink. Before too long, my mother and I developed a room.

routine where I would go play on the tree when she washed the dishes because she could easily see me when she did other things. As the summer passed, my abilities grew and before too long I was climbing fairly high. As the tree got taller, its branches not only got thinner, but more widely spaced, and so I eventually reached a point where I couldn't actually climb any higher, and so the game had to change. I began to concentrate on speed, and in the end, I could reach my highest branch in 25 seconds. I got too confident. And one afternoon, I tried to step from a branch before I had firmly grasped the next one. I fell about 20 feet and broke my arm really badly in two places.

My mom was running toward me yelling, and I remember her sounding like she was underwater. I don't remember what she said, but I do remember being surprised by just how white my bone was. I was going to start kindergarten with a cast and wouldn't even have any friends to sign it. My mom must have felt terrible because the day before I started school, she brought home a kitten. He was just a baby and was striped with tan and white. As soon as she put him down, he crawled into an empty case of soda that was sitting on the floor. I named him Boxes. Boxes was only an outside cat when he escaped.

My mom had him declawed so he wouldn't destroy the furniture, so as a result we did our best to keep him inside. He'd get out every now and then, and we'd find him somewhere in the backyard, chasing some kind of bug or lizard, though he could hardly ever catch one, because he had no front claws. He was pretty evasive, but we'd always catch him and carry him back inside. He'd scrammed a look back over my shoulder. I told my mom that it was because he was planning his strategy for next time. Once inside, we'd give him some tuna fish, and he came to learn what the sound of the can opener might signal.

He'd come running whenever he heard it. This conditioning came in handy later, because toward the end of our time in that house, boxes would get out much more often, and would run under the house into the crawl space where neither of us wanted to follow because it was cramped and probably crawling with bugs and rodents. Ingeniously, my mom thought to hook the can opener to an extension cord out back and run it right outside the hole that boxes had gone through. Eventually, he would emerge with his loud muse, looking excited by the sound and then horrified at how we could run such a cruel ruse on him. A can opener with no tuna made no sense to boxes. The last time he escaped to under

the house was actually our last day in it. My mom had put the house on the market and we had begun packing our things. We didn't have much and we stretched the packing out a while, though I had already packed up all of my clothes at my mom's request. My mom could tell I was really sad about moving and wanted the transition to be smooth for me, and I guess she thought that having the clothes in the box would reinforce the idea that we were moving,

but things wouldn't change that much. When boxes got out as we were loading some more things into the moving van, my mom cursed because she had already packed the can opener and wasn't sure where it was. I pretended to go look for it so I wouldn't have to go under the house, and my mom, probably completely aware of my little scam, moved one of the panels and crawled in. She came out with boxes pretty quickly and seemed pretty unnerved, which made me feel even better about getting out of it.

My mom made some phone calls, and while I packed a little more, and then she came into my room and told me that she had spoken to the realtor, and we were going to start moving into the other house that day. She said it was like excellent news, but I had thought that. we had more time in the house. She originally said that we weren't moving until the end of the next week and it was only Tuesday. What's more, we weren't even completely finished packing yet, but my mom said sometimes it was just easier to replace things than pack them and haul them all over the city. I didn't even get to grab the rest

of my box clothes. I asked if I could call Josh to say bye but she said that we could just call him from our new house. We left in the moving van. I managed to stay in touch with Josh for years, which is surprising since we no longer went to the same school. Our parents weren't close friends, but they knew that we were, and so they would accommodate our desire to see one another by driving us back and forth for sleepovers, sometimes every weekend. For Christmas one year, our parents even pulled their money and got us some really nice walkie-talkies that were advertised to work from a range that extended past the distance between our houses. They also had batteries that could last for days if the walkie-talkie was on but not

used. They would only occasionally work well enough that we could talk across the city, but when we stayed over, we'd use them around the house, talking in mock radio speak that we'd taken from movies, and they worked great for that. Thanks to our parents, we were still friends when we were 10. One weekend, I was staying over at Josh's, and my mom called to say goodnight. She was still pretty watchful, even when she couldn't actually watch me, but I had gotten so used to it that I didn't even notice, even if Josh did. She sounded upset. Boxes was missing.

This must have been a Saturday night because I had spent the night at Josh's the previous night and was going to go home the next day because we had school on Monday. Boxes had been missing since Friday afternoon. I gathered that she had not seen him since returning home after dropping me off. She must have decided to tell me he was missing

because if he didn't come home before I did, then I would be devastated at not only his absence but how she could have kept it from me. She told me not to worry. He'll come back. He always does. But boxes didn't come back. Three weekends later, I stayed at Josh's again.

I was still upset about boxes, but my mom told me that there had been many times when pets had disappeared from home for weeks, or even months, only to return on their own. She said that they always knew where home was and would always try to get back. I was explaining this to Josh when a thought hit me so hard

that I interrupted my own sentence to say it out loud. What if Boxes thought of the wrong home? Josh was confused. What? He lives with you. He knows where home is. But he grew up somewhere else, Josh. He was raised in my old house a couple of neighborhoods away.

Maybe he still thinks of that place is home like I do. Oh, I get it. Well, that'd be great. We'll tell my dad tomorrow and he'll take us over there so we can look. No, he won't, man. My mom said that we couldn't ever go back to that place because the new owners wouldn't want to be bothered. She said that she told your mom and dad the same thing.

Josh persisted. Okay, then, we'll just go out exploring tomorrow, make our way back to your old house. No. If we get spotted, your dad will find out, and then so will my mom. We have to go there ourselves. We have to go there tonight.

It didn't take much convincing to get Josh on board since he was usually the one to come up with these ideas like this, but we had never snuck out of his house before. It actually turned out to be incredibly easy. The window in his room opened to the backyard, and he had a latched wooden fence that wasn't locked. After those two minor hurdles, we slipped off into the night,

flashlight, and walkie-talkies in hand. There were two ways to get from Josh's house to my old house. We could walk on the street and make all the turns, or go through the woods, which would have taken about half the time. It would have taken about two hours to walk there taking the street. But I suggested that we go that way anyway. I told him it was because I didn't want to get lost.

Josh refused and said that if we were seen, they might recognize him and tell his dad. He threatened to go home if we didn't just take the shortcut. I accepted it because I didn't want to go by myself. Josh didn't know about the last time I walked through those woods at night. The woods were much less creepy with a friend and a flashlight, and we were making pretty good time. I wasn't entirely sure where we were, but Josh seemed confident enough,

and that bolstered my morale. We passed through a particularly thick patch of tangled trees when the strap of my walkie-talkie got caught on a branch. Josh had the flashlight, and so I was struggling to get the walkie free when I heard Josh say, Hey man, want to go for a swim? I looked over to where he was shining the flashlight,

though I closed my eyes as I did, because I now knew where we were. He was pointing at the pool float. This was where I had woken up in these woods all those years ago. I felt a lump in my throat and the sting of fresh tears in my eyes as I continued to struggle with the walkie. Frustrated, I yanked on it hard enough to break it free and turned and walked to Josh, who had partially laid down on the pool float in a mock sunbathing pose. As I walked toward him, I stumbled and nearly fell into a fairly large hole that was sitting in the middle of the small clearing.

But I regained my balance and stopped right at its edge. It was deep. I was surprised by the size of the hole, but more surprised by the fact that I didn't remember it. I realized it must not have been there that night because it was the same spot where I had awoken. I put it out of my mind and turned to Josh. Quit messing around, man.

You saw I was stuck over there, and you were just laying here joking around in this float. I punctuated the sentence with a kick to an exposed part of the float. A screeching rose from it. Josh's smile inverted. He suddenly looked terrified and was struggling to get off the float, but he couldn't in a quick manner due to the awkward way he'd been laying on it. Each time he would fall back on the float, the screeching would intensify.

I wanted to help Josh, but I couldn't move myself any closer. My legs would not cooperate. I hated these woods. I picked up the flashlight that he'd thrown in his thrashing and shined it on the float, not knowing what to expect. Finally, Josh got off the float and rushed next to me looking at where I was shining the light. Suddenly, there it was. It was a rat.

I started laughing nervously, and we both watched the rat run into the woods, taking the screeches with it. Josh lightly punched me in the arm, the smile slowly returning to his face, and we continued walking. We quickened our pace and made it out of the woods faster than we thought we would, and found ourselves back in my old neighborhood. The last time I had rounded the bend ahead, I had seen my house fully illuminated and all the memories of what transpired came flooding back. I felt a skipping in my heart as we were finally turning the corner and about to face the full view of my house, remembering last time how incandescent it was, but this time all the lights

were off. From a distance I could see my old climbing tree, and as my mind traced the steps of casualty backward I realized that I wouldn't go back here this night if that tree hadn't grown, and I was briefly in awe of how all events were like that. As we got closer, I could see that the lawn looked terrible. I couldn't even guess when it had last been mowed. One of the shutters had partially broken loose and was rocking back and forth in the breeze, and overall the house just looked dirty.

I was sad to see my old home in such a state of disrepair. Why would my mom care if we bothered the new owners if they cared so little about where they lived? And then I realized there were no new owners. The house was abandoned, though it looked simply forsaken. Why would my mom lie to me about our house having new people in it? But I thought that this was actually a good thing. It would be easier to look around for boxes if we didn't have to worry about being spotted by the new family. This would make it much quicker.

Josh interrupted my thoughts as we walk through the gate and up to the house itself. Your old house sucks, dude, Josh yelled as quietly as he could. Shut up, Josh. Even like this, it's still nicer than your house. Hey, man. Okay, okay. I think boxes is probably under the house. One of us has to go under and look, but the other should stay next to the opening in case he comes running out. Are you serious?

There's no way I'm going under there. It's your cat, man. You do it. Look, I'll game you for it. Unless you're too scared, I said holding my fist over my upturned palm. Fine, but we go on shoot, not on three. It's rock, paper, scissors, shoot, not one, two, three. I know how to play the game, Josh. You're the one who always messes up, and it's two out of three.

I lost. I wiggled loose the panel that my mom would always move when she had to crawl under here for boxes. She only had to do it a couple times since the can opener trick usually worked, but when she had to do it, she hated it, especially that last time. and as I looked into the darkness of the crawl space, I had a greater appreciation for why. Before we moved, she said that it was actually better that boxes ran under here, despite how hard it could be to get him out. It was less dangerous than him jumping over the fence and running around the neighborhood. All that was true, but I was still dreading doing this.

I grabbed the flashlight and the walkie and began to crawl in. A powerful smell overtook me. It smelled like death. I turned on my walkie. I sat down the walkie and moved the flashlight around as I crawled forward. Looking through the hole from the outside, you could see all the way back with the right lighting, but you had to be inside to see around the support blocks that held up the house. I'd say that there was about 40% of the area that you couldn't see unless you were actually in the crawl space,

but even inside I discovered that I could only see directly where the flashlight was pointing. I realized that this would make scouting around the place much more different. much more difficult. As I moved the flashlight forward, the smell intensified. The fear was growing inside me that boxes had come here and something had happened to him. I shined the flashlight around but couldn't see much of anything. I wrapped my fingers around a support block to support myself and as I did, I felt something that made my hand recoil. Fur. My heart sank and I prepared myself emotionally for what I was about to see. I crawled slowly so I could prolong what I knew was coming, and I inched my eyes and the flashlight passed the block to see what was on the other side.

I staggered back in horror. Jesus Christ, escaped my trembling mouth. It was a hideous and twisted creature, badly decomposed. Its skin had rotted away on its face, so the teeth appeared to be enormous, and the smell was unbearable. I reached for the walkie. I shone. I shone, I'd shine the light on it again and looked at it with less fear in my vision. I chuckled. I looked and saw that he was telling the truth. Some of his points were good, and I doubted he'd be able to get in anyway. I realized that it would be pitch black in there.

The power would have been turned off since no one was paying the bill. With any luck, he'd be able to see from the street lights that might cast some light inside. Otherwise, I'm not sure what he'd do. Before too long, I heard footsteps right over my head and felt old dirt raining down on me. asshole. I could hear him laughing without the walkie and started laughing too. I heard the footsteps fade away a little. He was on his way to my room. I started thinking that maybe my mom had come back and got in the clothes and just given them away because I'd outgrown a lot of them, but I remembered leaving the boxes there. I didn't even have time to close the last one up before we left.

While I was waiting for Josh to tell me what he found, I kicked out my leg, which had started falling asleep because of the position I was in and it hit something. I looked back and saw something really strange. It was a blanket, and all around it there were bowls. Crawled a little closer to it. The blanket smelled moldy, and most of the balls were empty, but one had something that I recognized still in it. Cat food.

It was a different kind than we gave to boxes, but I suddenly understood. My mom had set up a little place for boxes to encourage him to come here instead of running around the neighborhood. That made a lot of sense, and it seemed even more likely that boxes would have come back to this place. That's so cool, Mom, I thought. I found your clothes. I felt a chill. This was impossible.

I had packed all my clothes. Even though we weren't supposed to move for another two weeks when we left, I remember packing them and thinking that it was stupid for me to have to get clothes out of the box and put them back in. I had packed them, but someone was. and had hung them back up. Why, though? Josh needed to get out of there. Stop messing around and just come back outside. I'll tell you left them.

Silence. I checked my walkie to see if I had switched it off somehow. It was fine. I could hear footsteps, but couldn't tell exactly where Josh was going. I waited for Josh to finish his sentence, thinking that his finger had just slipped off the button. He didn't continue.

He seemed to be stomping around the house now. I was just about to radio him when he came back. His voice was hushed and broken. I could hear he was on the verge of tears. I wanted to respond, but how loud was his walkie turned up? What if the other person heard it? I said nothing and just waited and listened. What I heard were footsteps.

Heavy, dragging footsteps. And then a loud thud. Josh! He'd been found. I was sure of it. This person had found him and was hurting him. I broke out into tears. He was my only friend next to boxes,

and then I realized, what if Josh told him I was under here? What could I possibly do? As I struggled to compose myself, I thankfully heard Josh's voice through the Waukee. I was paralyzed. I wanted to run home. I wanted to save Josh.

I wanted to go for help I wanted so many things but I just lay there frozen As I lay unable to move My eyes focused on the corner of the house That was right under my room I moved my flashlight My breath hitched at what I saw

Animals Dozens of them All of them dead They lay in piles all around the perimeter Of the crawl space Could boxes be among these corpses Was this what the cat food was for?

Seeing this broke my shock as I knew I had to get out of there and I scrambled to the board. I pushed on it, but it wouldn't budge. I couldn't move it because it was wedged in there and I couldn't get my fingers around it since the edges were outside. I was trapped.

God damn you, Josh! I whispered to myself. I could feel thunderous footsteps above me. The house was shaking. I heard Josh scream and it was matched by another scream that wasn't full of fear. As I continued pushing, I felt the board move, and I knew it wasn't me who was moving it.

I could hear footsteps above me, and in front of me, and shouting and screaming, filling the brief silence between the footsteps. I moved back and held my walkie, ready to try and defend myself, and the board was thrown to the side, and an arm shot in and grabbed for me. Let's go, man, now.

It was Josh. Thank God. I scrambled out of the opening holding the flashlight and the walkie. When we got to the fence, we both jumped it, but Josh's walkie fell. He reached for it, and I told him to forget it. We had to move. Behind us, I could hear yelling, though they weren't words, only sounds. And we, perhaps foolishly, ran for the woods to get back to Josh's quicker and be somewhat

harder to follow. The whole way through the woods, Josh kept yelling, My picture! He took my picture! But I knew the man already had Josh's picture. From all those years ago at the ditch. I suppose Josh still thought those mechanical sounds were from a robot. He made it back to Josh's house and back into his room before his parents woke up. I asked him about the big bag and if it really moved, and he said he couldn't be sure.

He kept apologizing about dropping the walkie at the house, but obviously that wasn't a big deal. We didn't go to sleep and we sat peering out the window, waiting for him. I went home later that day as it was about 3 a.m. already. I told my mom the basics of this story a couple days ago. She broke down and was furious about the danger I'd put myself in. I asked her why she made all those things up about bothering the new owners to stop me from going. Why did she think the new house was so dangerous?

She became irate and hysterical, but she answered my question. She grabbed my hand and squeezed it harder than I thought her capable of and locked her eyes onto mine, whispering as if she was afraid of being overheard. Because I never put any fucking blankets or bowls under the house for boxes. You weren't the only one to find them. I felt dizzy. I understood so much now. I understood why she had looked so uneasy after she brought boxes out from under the house on our last day there.

She found more than spiders or a rat's nest that day. I understood why we left almost two weeks early. I understood why she tried to stop me from going back. She knew. She knew he made his home under ours, and she kept it from me. I left without saying another word and didn't finish the story for her, but I want to finish it here, for you. I got home from Josh's that day and threw myself on the floor, and it scattered everywhere.

I didn't care. I just wanted to sleep. I woke up around 9 p.m. to the sound of boxes meowing. My heart leapt. He'd finally come home. I was a little sick about the fact that if I had just waited a day, none of the previous night's events would have happened, and I'd have boxes anyway.

But that didn't matter. He was back. I got off my bed and called for him, looking around to catch a glint of light off of his eyes. The crying continued, and I followed it. It was coming from under the bed. I laughed a little, thinking I had just crawled under a house looking for him, and how this was so much better.

His meows were being muffled by a shirt, so I flung it aside and smiled, yelling, Welcome home, boxes. His cries were coming from my walkie-talkie. Boxes never came home. Part one of the series. In the coming weeks, part two will conclude with the final three. heart-stopping stories of pain.