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In the middle of the night, the night after the sleepover with my friends, my mom woke my brothers and me.
I peeled my eyes open and asked, “What’s going on?”
“We’re going to go on a little trip. Just for a couple of nights. At a hotel.”
“Right now?” I asked.
“Yes. I need you guys to get dressed and help me pack whatever you need to take, and don’t forget your swimsuit. The hotel has a pool.” She attempted to elicit excitement from us, but I saw the tears in her eyes, and the anxiety.
“What’s going on?” Scott sat up, eyes still closed and curly hair pushed in an awkward bunch on his head.
I didn’t understand. Something was wrong. I realized I hadn’t paid much attention to my mom that summer. I was busy in my own life and adventures. I knew she and Dad fought a lot, and I was sure what I’d put her through was stressful. But something had happened to make all of that worse.
I’d believed my mom when she said we were going to be at a hotel for just a couple of nights, but we never did return home. We went to stay at our grandparents’ for a while, about thirty minutes north of Riverton. I asked my mom a lot of questions. She gave a lot of vague answers and always promised we were only staying with Grandma and Grandpa temporarily.
Scott and I slept on the couches in the basement, and one night, I heard my mom crying and went to check on her. I stopped midway when I heard my grandma consoling her. My mom told her Dad had an affair, and she just couldn’t stay with him anymore, not after everything else.
I crept back to the basement and crawled under the covers on the couch, but I couldn’t fall back to sleep. I was too angry with my dad over whatever it was he’d done to cause my mom so much pain.
Each morning, I would wake up, eat cereal, and watch Bob Barker on The Price is Right, followed by Wheel of Fortune. Summer was almost over, and we spent most of what remained indoors. My mom had brought our bikes, but I didn’t feel like riding. We had some of our toys, but I didn’t feel like playing.
“Why don’t you call Gary or Jax?” Scott asked. He’d kept in touch with his friend Daryl and even arranged times to see him.
“No,” I said, even though I didn’t have a reason not to. My mom urged me to stay in touch with my friends, but I didn’t.
Funny thing is, to this day I still don’t have an answer. I have speculations. I may have felt too embarrassed to call them, to tell them we’d moved because my parents split. I’d harbored a hope that we would move back home before school started, then I could fit back in like nothing had ever happened.
The truth is I don’t know what I was afraid of. I do know, however, that in the first ten years of my life, my family moved six times, and each year, I had to fit into a new neighborhood and make new friends. Keeping in touch with old friends was useless. Keeping in touch with the past was more painful than admitting it was useless because even then, I’d known, deep down, that it would never be the same.
I’d done it with every friendship I’d left behind until Riverton. We would arrange a sleepover or get together maybe twice or three times a year, but we never really called each other over the phone because boys don’t do that. Before long, we drifted apart, farther and farther year after year, until eventually, they disappeared from my life for good. Why prolong the inevitable when I could make a clean break and avoid the stretch of pain?
My friends in Riverton were harder to leave behind because we’d lived there the longest. Three years had given me time to start planting my roots, and I’d deluded myself into thinking there would be no more moving. And then we’d experienced something not many people ever would in their lives—an eternal bond created by traumatic events.
I thought of Dawn. Only she could understand what I was going through. It gave me some solace to know I wasn’t alone in that sense; she was experiencing the same thing at the same time. To my friends, I must have seemed like I didn’t care, just disappearing without telling them where I went, without leaving a forwarding address or new phone number.
I’m forty-two now, and I still think of those friends today. I think of Dawn, who helped me realize the importance of friendship before love can truly exist. I met Haley many years later. She became my best friend, then we fell in love and were married.
I think of the lives taken that summer, of the lives changed forever by those incidents, and the town that will never be the same. I felt a responsibility for the knowledge I had of those creatures and the possibility of their return.
I also grieved for the loss of Sheriff Packard in my life. He’d been a father figure I looked up to during a period of time when my own father was absent. Packard helped fill that void for a time. I hoped he knew that. There were times when I saw someone in a crowd who looked a lot like Gary, who might have even been Gary, but I didn’t have the nerve to ask.
Was it better to let things lie? I’d thought so then, but I wasn’t so sure anymore. As an adult, I lived in forward motion, trying to stay ahead of the past that kept chasing me. Sometimes, it’s managed to catch me, pulling me back with its icy claws, making me remember, and filling me with grief and regrets. That was why I finally wrote my tale—to spill my guts and leave my regrets behind for good.
Driving through Riverton decades after leaving, I found Gary’s house hadn’t changed. The house I used to live in was still there, but its yellow paint had been covered with a dark brown, which was faded. The yellowish grass was tall and full of weeds. Rusted auto parts filled the backyard. The tiny willow tree my dad had planted in the front yard had grown giant, overwhelming the yard with too many thick limbs that needed to be pruned.
Jax’s, Rosco’s, and Dawn’s houses seemed the same but older, and Rosco’s front yard had been completely transformed into xeriscape. A neighborhood had replaced the field behind my old house, and beyond the newly built church stood Dead Man’s Hill. The hill was less intimidating, as if it had somehow shrunk. Buildings and homes had sprung up around it as the twenty-first century shut it out, like it had so many things, leaving me with only memories of what it had once been.
Homes had been built along Beck Street—developers had no doubt solved the problem of the swampy land that had caused the Crooked House to sink. I drove past those homes until I reached a dead end. Cement barricades prevented my vehicle from going farther, and two large maples planted behind them blocked my view of what I’d come to see.
I drove to the other end of the street and found a small space between two homes in a cul-de-sac. A dirt path, carved out by vehicles long ago, led behind the homes. It was overgrown with weeds and brush, but I drove my truck down the bumpy path and around the last home.
The Crooked House sat alone in the shrunken field at the far west end, more weathered and worn than before. Its bottom half was hidden by overgrown bushes and weeds, and I could barely see the top.
I parked my truck twenty feet away and walked to the house, pushing aside branches and weeds. I stepped onto the slanted and cracked porch. The front door was open just a crack. Was it open before? I couldn’t be sure. Did the house open its mouth to let me in?
I stretched out my hand to push the door inward and stopped. A strong energy hit me, filling my body with immense heat. The invisible force was either pulling me in or pushing me away; I couldn’t tell which.
Being pulled into their world through the pool had given me the gift of second sight, which allowed me to see things and communicate with the dead. But in turn, it gave me the gift of seeing them in their world, their dead, and their intentions. I didn’t see them all the time, but it had become more frequent recently, with more clarity and intensity.
A recurring dream had been haunting me for the past week, and it wouldn’t let go of me. A woman with long black hair, black pupils, and a grin full of sharp teeth was searching for me. Had we gotten them all? I thought of Joanna Anderson. During the summer of eighty-two, she’d disappeared and returned as someone—something—else, and she’d run away from her family. They never saw her again. She was still out there, and something told me she threatened our world.
I didn’t know where to look for her. She was a grain of sand in the desert. To find her, I had to visit the pool. My hope was the pool would connect my telepathic energy to hers and lead me to her, and the closer to the pool I got, the impressions were stronger. My senses were about to explode, and I knew I was on the right path. My fear and anxiety threatened to overwhelm me, but I’d come too far. I had to go forward. I pushed the door and stepped inside.