Columbia Parts 1 and 2 and more coming

Part 1: Dreams

I don’t dream often, but even when I do, I don’t ponder on my dreams. To me, they’re the brain's way of coping with the reality we live in, giving us condensed and digestible images or films to understand the stress we deal with daily. However, there are other times that after having a dream, something happens in the real world that, well to put it plainly, correlates directly with the dream had while in the world of slumber. Those are the dreams I pay attention to. They’re deeper than deja vu, more like a premonition of things to come. I’d be lying if I said this happened to me often, I’m not claiming to be some kind of psychic. But regarding the dream I just had, I remember seemingly important parts as clear as glass. But, just like any dream, there are segments that I can’t recall. It’s what I imagine someone who has just woken up from surgery feels. They’re aware they had surgery but don’t know the details.

The beginning of the dream is clear to me. I was standing, staring blankly at the end of an aisle of a store. It took me a moment to figure out where I was, but after looking down the narrow aisle and seeing that it was lined with toys, I realized I was in a toy store. My blank expression broke into a glee filled smile as I excitedly waltzed down the aisle. From what I gather from this first part of the dream, I’m no older than 7 or 8. My happy expression only intensified when I saw that I was in the train section. I remember loving Thomas The Tank Engine at around this age so I wasted no time exploring the aisle. I probably watched Thomas And The Magic Railroad to a level of exhaustion, and I used to wear a little train conductor outfit everywhere I went, even to bed sometimes. The feeling I had looking through the trains in the aisle is what I suspect an alcoholic feels entering a Liquor Store and browsing the bottles. After what felt like an eternity of getting lost amongst the wooden train engines, track sets and toy tunnels, I finally found something that made all the other toys on the aisle, in my kid mind, feel irrelevant. A rare Special Edition Golden Thomas. 

My focus was broken by a voice from the end of the aisle. “That’s pretty cool.” It caught me off guard and I jumped a little. I looked to my right and I saw a little girl, about my age. She was wearing a navy blue dress with a matching hairband holding back her curly dirty blonde hair and her eyes were soft and friendly. “Oh! Hi!” I said nearly in a shout, showcasing that she had scared me. She stifled a giggle at my outburst. I tried to recover and play it cool. “Oh, hi. I didn’t see you there.” I said in a pathetic attempt at coolheadedness. I knew it didn’t work when she giggled again. “My name is Wendy. The train. It's cool.” She said as she laughed. “What?” I said cluelessly. “Oh! Yeah, I’ve wanted it forever. I’ve only seen it in commercials. Even his face is gold. It’s cool because normal Thomas has a gray face.” I said, feeling a little nerdy. “Oh, My name is Chris.” I added quickly. She walked over and stood next to me, turning to face the wall of trains that I was looking at. Now that she was closer to me I could see just how pale her skin was, like she hadn’t seen the sun in years. 

“She’s my favorite.“ Wendy said, pointing to a train above the Golden Thomas. It was Lady, the new character from the Magic Railroad. “Yeah, yeah she’s pretty cool.” I said, thinking to myself that the Golden Thomas was way cooler. She replied with a strange response, or at least odd for a six year old, she said, “They just got these this morning when freight came in on the truck. (She sighed deeply) Just in time for the Holiday shopping season. The funny thing is I bet half the associates aren’t even aware they’re in yet. Worse yet I don’t even think they know it’s black friday tomorrow. Nobody, and I mean nobody, pays attention around here.”. I looked at her as though she had spoken to me in Latin. “Huh?” I said confused. I had never heard a kid my age speak like an adult before. But instead of trying to play it off, she just turned to me and said, “I know a really cool place we can go, where we can watch The Magic Railroad.” 

“Really?! Where?” I said excitedly. She giggled and took me by the hand. “Come on, I'll show you.” We both ran out of the aisle and out of the toy store. 

It was then that I realized that we were in a mall and the toy store was just one of many stores. We ran and skipped together down the huge main hallway of the mall with stores with their lights off on either side of us, like they were closed. Somehow it didn’t shock me that we were the only ones there. Like I knew that the mall was closed and I just didn’t care. We ran until we came to the end of the hall where there was a Regal Movie Theater. It was open and the lights were on unlike the other stores but their glow didn’t seem to illuminate that shadowy corner of the mall. The red blue and yellow neon lights surrounding the entrance to the theater reflected off of the mall’s tile flooring that I was walking on however. Sure enough there was a poster advertising the Thomas movie upon entering the theater. I looked around a little, everything seemed so familiar. The dim lighting, the weird carpet with a squiggly pattern all over it, the concession area and the smell of popcorn. I ran over to the candy wrack and just looked over all the different snacks they had. Wendy was standing in my periphery seemingly looking at the snacks too. I spotted a pack of twizzlers and went to grab for it. Sammy suddenly whipped around quickly to face me, almost like she was on a swivel. Her speed shocked me and I was about to laugh it off when I looked up and saw her face. Her brown eyes were now milky, sunken and cold, their warmth having left them. The little remaining color in her face was now gone, leaving it nearly gray and her skin almost seemed like cracked porcelain. Her mouth was gaping open like some rabid animal. Without moving her open mouth, a sound came out of it, like a speaker. In fact now that I think about it, it did sound like an old recording with the background static and grainy audio. She said, “Stealing is bad! Don’t do it, or else! Or else—!” Then it ended like it had been cut off.

I think she could see the fear in my expression because the color in her face returned and her eyes became normal again. She apologized, looking down at her feet, as though she was embarrassed, covering her face with her hands. “I’m sorry.” she said softly, sounding as if she were about to cry. It took a couple seconds but my fear subsided and after a moment of awkward silence, I said timidly, “It-it’s okay.” For some reason I felt bad for her. She didn’t look back up at me and I could tell she was crying now. I didn’t really know what to do but I wanted her to know it was okay. So I went to put my hand on her shoulder. Suddenly, before I could touch her, her whole body twitched dramatically once. I could see her skin was deathly white again and even with her hair obscuring her face, between the gaps in her blonde locks, one milky gray eye pierced my soul. I just stood in utter petrification as she whispered, “You can never leave Neverland.” I was terrified, I didn’t know what to do so I began to slowly back away. Once I had stepped away I was able to see something standing far behind Wendy down the hallway leading to the individual theaters. It was a shadow not Wendy’s shadow, it was someone else’s. Suddenly, Wendy glided out of view silently and without moving a muscle. It was as though she had frozen into a statue and the floor beneath her had become ice. She glided away from me quickly and without losing momentum.  She dissolved into the dark corridor with that tall shadow. The last thing I saw of Wendy was her glaring eye before it too disappeared. I was in shock, my kid brain was trying to grasp what was happening but failing. But now I could see the shadow in its fullness. It was the silhouette of a tall skinny woman with thin stringy hair and wearing a tattered nightgown or maybe a dress. I could make out no other details except her eyes. They were open wide and wild, almost glowing white from reflecting the neon lights. She was staring at me, silently watching. At that I sprinted out of the theater. I was too scared to make a sound. I wanted to shout for my mother but I couldn’t bring myself to yell. What if that girl, or whatever she was, heard me? She’d find me again, glide towards me and then… oh God where was my mom?  

This is where my memory fails me a little. I don’t know what happened but somehow, after running around for a while, I arrived back in the toy store and at the train aisle. The girl, or anyone else for that matter, was nowhere to be found, I was alone. I stood still catching my breath for a moment when the allure of the Golden Thomas captured me again. I cautiously entered the aisle but once I could see the golden train on the shelf, all apprehension left me. “That girl was crazy.” I thought to myself. “I wasn’t going to steal anything. Why would I steal when I could just ask my mom.” I was a little worried that I couldn't find my mom but I was sure she was around there somewhere. I walked over and I reached out to grab the train. Immediately when my fingers grasped the toy’s box everything around me changed. It was as if I were in a movie and I had just been placed in a new scene. I was leaving the toy store again and entering back into the larger structure of the mall. I was holding someone’s hand and they were pulling me forward, but not enough for it to hurt. 

Assuming it to be my mom, I first looked to see if I had the Golden Thomas but there was nothing in my hands. I looked up to ask if my mom had it only to realize that whoever had my hand was not my mother. I only saw a figure dressed in white and black. At first I didn’t know how to react until I saw that this thing wasn’t taking me to a different store. It was, instead, leading me toward a rusted white door with the paint chipping off. I panicked and began to scream. “Mom, help! No! Mom, I don’t know who this is! Help!” But as I cried and struggled the figure only gripped me harder and walked faster. At that moment a sound came from the loudspeakers in the mall, “Or else! Or else—”. It was that girl, Sammy. It repeated like that two times, being cut off at the end. But the third time it finished.“Or else! Or else Captain Hook will get you, Peter. Run Peter !” I was being pulled so hard toward the rusted door now that I thought my arm would dislocate. But no matter how hard I fought back, the black and white figure dragged me closer. My heart felt like it would pound out of my chest and I continued to scream. “Stop! Please, Mom! Somebody help!” From beyond the rusted door I could hear a muffled sound. It became clearer as I was being dragged closer. Carnival music, it was out of tune carnival music, or at least something resembling that. The door swung open and the doorway led only to pitch darkness. From within the darkness I heard the music clearly, it was a haunting rendition of A Pirates Life For Me accompanied by what was either the sound of kids screaming in glee or screaming in terror, it was impossible to distinguish. All effort to escape was hopeless. The stranger, Captain Hook, pulled me in the darkness. The sound of the ghostly music and the children was instantly replaced by the sound of a phone ringing, it was my phone. It jolted me awake and I was freed from the grasp of the nightmare.

I immediately turned over to face my nightstand where my phone was. I grabbed it and was blinded by its brightness. My brain was still fuzzy from sleep so this felt like a flashbang. Through my tired squinted eyes I saw that it was an unknown number and I typically let those go to voicemail. Still as an adult I don’t like talking to strangers. Upset that this person had just interrupted my sleep, as horrifying as my nightmare was, I slammed my thumb down dramatically on the red icon. I placed it back on my nightstand and rolled over. I wasn’t tired anymore, that dream and then my phone was like an instant shot of espresso topped off with adrenaline. I laid there for a little just thinking and mulling over my thoughts, mulling over the dream. Through my blinds I could see that it was morning time so after I had a little more time in bed I decided to get up and start my day. No use in waiting for my alarm. After letting my dog out and getting ready for work I checked my phone and saw that I had indeed been left a voicemail. I told myself that I would listen to it after I got off from work. I put my phone in my pocket, said bye to my pup and left the house. 

All day at work I felt off, like there was a growing anxiety within me, in my core. I work at a warehouse and my job is to basically stack pallets of product, wrap the pallet in plastic and get it ready to ship out on a truck. It’s a job that requires some attentiveness. But all day I was spacing out having day dreams almost like I was in an anxious haze, yet I couldn't pinpoint the source of the anxiety. At lunch I sat in the cafeteria on site just staring at my raman. I was hungry but I was too caught up in my own head to want to eat. “You okay there Chris?” My head shot up to see my manager John sitting across the table from me. “You okay man? You don’t look too good.”

“Yeah, uh… yeah. I’m fine, I-I just didn’t sleep very well yest- last night, I mean. But I’m fine.” I said, nearly stuttering. I could tell that John knew something was up that I wasn’t telling him by the way he looked at me. “Look, I’m over staffed today, just not enough freight coming in.” John said. “You look like you could use a day, plus it’s Friday. Why don’t you take the rest of the day off.” I was hesitant to accept, I felt guilty leaving. But John didn’t really phrase it as a question, so I obliged. 

When I arrived home I was greeted by my dog, a pitbull labrador mut, Dianna. While I usually reciprocate her greeting, I was in such a daze that I didn’t acknowledge her at all. She immediately could tell something was off about me. She even started acting shady towards me, keeping her distance and side eyeing me. I was exhausted and so I just went upstairs to bed. It was strange, as I went up my stairs, I couldn’t help but notice that the darker areas of my house were noticeably more dull. I collapsed onto my bed with my shoes still on and almost instantly fell into a dreamless sleep. I woke up the next day at 6 AM. I had slept for over 12 hours. After that my weekend went fine. Nothing really noteworthy happened to be honest. I mostly just sat around and I at some point wrote down my nightmare in my journal while I watched Friends. On Monday, three days after the incident at work, I was actually leaving work and sitting in my car about to drive out of the parking lot when I remembered the voicemail. I pulled it up on my phone and listened. “Hi, Chris. This is Detective Connor Davidson with the Richland Police Department. Do you remember me? I know it’s been… has it been 3 years already? Damn. Anyway, would you mind calling me back when you get this? I have an update. Thanks.”I was in a little shock. I hadn’t heard Connor’s voice in a long time. Not since I had lived in Richland Washington 3 years prior. Not since all those horrible things happened.

Sitting in my car my mind was reeling after hearing Connor’s voice. I was  fixated on the phrase, “I have an update.” Over and over again it repeated in my mind and a lump formed in my throat as I pressed the Return Call icon on my phone. The phone rang twice and then Connor answered. “Detective Davidson.” He said. For a second I didn’t say anything, unsure how to even introduce myself because my brain was so occupied. “Hello?” Connor broke the awkward silence. I finally spat something out.

“H-hi Connor, it's Chris. Jackson. You called me a couple days ago. With an update?”

Connor’s voice immediately became friendly and full of recognition.

“Oh, hey man. How’s it going? It’s been a long time.”

“I’m okay.” I said. Connor’s cordialness broke me out of my weird mindset. “It has been a long time. Last we talked it was Officer Davidson I believe. You must like the pay raise.”

“Oh yeah, it's great. I can actually afford my car payment and groceries.”

We both chuckled. 

“How do you like being a Detective?” I asked.

“It’s pretty great, to be honest. I basically get paid to write reports and eat donuts at the station.” He said, obviously joking. 

“I bet in a town like Richland, there’s not a whole lot of action.” I said with a laugh. 

There was silence on his end of the phone after I said that. It seemed I had reminded him of the reason he reached out to me in the first place.

“Have you been keeping up on the news here?” I no longer lived in Richland so I hadn’t.

“No? What happened?” I asked, but I had a feeling I knew what the news was, praying that I was wrong. Praying that it wasn’t happening again.

“We got him.” He said. “We caught James Reese.” I was once again in shock. I was speechless. I was wrong. My fear indeed did revolve around James, but that he had resurged and was killing again, not that he had been caught. 

Connor continued as I had nothing to say. “Late last Thursday, a police station in Baker City received an anonymous tip that he was hiding in an abandoned house. They pursued it and, well it turned out to be true. They took him into custody Friday morning.”

“Baker City? Like you mean Oregon?” I asked.

“Of all places.” Connor replied. “The state agreed to extradite him here, to Benton County, for prosecution.

I still didn't know what to say. I just blurted out the first thing that came to my mind.

“Why?” I said.

“Why?” Connor repeated as to say “what do you mean ‘why?’”

“Why are you telling me this, Connor? I don’t want to know this.”

Connor sighed sympathetically, almost regretfully.

“This case is moving fast. He’s going to appear in court sooner than later. And unfortunately you’re a key witness to what happened, Chris. It’s more likely than not that you're going to be called on to testify when he is brought before the judge. And seeing that I’ve been made lead investigator on the case, I thought I would give you a heads up before an attorney did it first.”

Now I understood. “Thanks.” I said dryly. We talked for a little longer, catching up and making pleasantries. After we hung up, I just sat in the silence of my car, contemplating and dreading the fact that I was going to have to dig up memories I had worked hard to bury. The skeletons in my closet had been stirred up.

Part 2: Free Ticket Friday

I grew up in a small but growing urban town called Richland in the southern region of Washington State, known as the Columbia Basin. Richland sits south of the Columbia River, with its bank running parallel to the town. Richland is actually one of three small cities that are cradled up to the coast. On the north side of the Columbia River is Pasco, which mostly consists of agriculture and farmland with some suburban areas sprinkled in. Then, south of the Columbia, are Kennewick and Richland. The two small cities are separated by a line only visible on a map. Together, all three towns create an area known as the Tri-Cities. When one thinks of Washington State, the first thing that usually comes to mind is a whole ton of evergreen trees.

And for the most part, they’d be right. However, the Tri-Cities breaks that reputation. It is built on a low desert full of sagebrush, treeless hills, and tall dry grass. This is exactly why Oppenheimer and his team chose an area just north of Richland called Hanford to stage the plutonium production for the Manhattan Project. And that’s basically as far as the hometown pride goes.

I’ve actually heard the whole Columbia Basin area referred to as Washington’s asshole. Perhaps that’s also why some people like to call it the Tri-Shitties. I digress. Basically, there isn’t a whole lot to do in that sleepy town. But the main hubs for activity are as follows: The ‘Uptown’ strip mall, best known for the Spudnut Shop where they sell some of the best donuts on the planet; a baseball stadium known as The Dust Devil Stadium, home of— you guessed it— the Tri-City Dust Devils; the Columbia River, where everyone spends their summers either swimming, watching boat races, or running on the trails along the riverside; and lastly, the Columbia Center Mall, which sits almost directly in the middle of all three cities. To be honest, it’s a boring town full of quiet people. That’s probably why I was able to get away with so much as a kid.

I wouldn’t say I was a troublemaker as a child, but I wasn’t what anyone would describe as “quiet.” Neither were my brother, Jessy, and my cousin Isaiah. Isaiah and I were less cousins and more brothers. We were born the same year, although six months apart. We went to school together, church together, lived in the same neighborhood, and spent almost as much time together as Jessy and I did. But we were pretty rambunctious, and when Isaiah and I were together, no one could keep us still, and manners were out the window. Growing up Greek Orthodox, my pious parents and my aunt and uncle had a hell of a time keeping our rowdy nature at bay during church.

For example, one time when Isaiah and I were around five, he snuck his hamster, Hammy, to church. His parents had just gotten it for him for his birthday that past weekend, and he didn’t want to leave without it. But while we were in line to receive communion, Hammy wriggled out of Isaiah's shirt pocket and got loose in the church. There was pandemonium in the chapel; the old ladies and the girls were screaming, and the boys were trying to catch the rodent. Father Andrew was finally able to let Hammy out by opening the doors of the chapel. We thought it was so funny, and Isaiah and I were giggling through the entire ordeal until our parents got ahold of us. Not only did our parents make us apologize to the entire congregation and to Father Andrew, but Isaiah never saw Hammy again.

The summer of 2000 was probably the first time my parents gave me any real freedom. I turned eight in June, and for my birthday, my mom, instead of money in my birthday card, gave me three year-round bus passes for the transit. She told me that one of them was for me and the other two were for Isaiah and Jessy. Basically, I was given full access to transportation around the Tri-Cities. The only restrictions were that I had to tell my mom where I was going and when I would be back, and I had to take Jessy and Isaiah with me, especially Jessy because he was thirteen. In the 90s and early 2000s, the Tri-Cities was considered to be one of the safest places in Washington State, so this wasn’t reckless parenting. And my mom was also well aware that we were going to stick to places like parks, the public pool, the library, and the mall.

I remember that we would get into our swimsuits and hop on the bus heading into the heart of Richland. There was a park right next to the riverside called Howard Amon Park, and it was right down the street from the ‘Uptown.’ When we got off the bus, we’d first pick a spot, a home base as it were, usually a picnic table. We’d throw our backpacks in a pile, strip our shirts off, exposing our ‘white as sour cream’ complexion, and run like the lifeguards from Baywatch into the cold Columbia water. But in the summer heat, it was so refreshing. I remember playing King of the Hill with Isaiah and Jessy, trying to wrestle each other off the dock and making each other do the Truffle Shuffle before jumping into the water. We would walk in the shallower areas looking for small fish and lost change. Once, I even thought I found a skull along the shore, but it was only a large rock that looked like a skull.

Isaiah was really into the summer reading programs the libraries hosted, and so occasionally we would stop at the library. I, however, mostly went for the comic books. Of course, the public pool was a favorite of ours. Although the real reason we went was because the ice cream truck would make a drive by the pool nearly every hour. So between the parks along the river, the library, and the pool, we had our summer regular haunts.

But that all changed when I saw on the TV in our living room that the Columbia Center Mall was hosting Free Ticket Friday at the Regal Cinema. And with the release of Thomas And The Magic Railroad, I HAD to go to the mall. I remember my eight-year-old self feeling like he would combust if I didn’t go. But my dreams were soon crushed when no one would go with me. Jessy didn’t want to sit through a movie he described as “gay as f—k,” and Isaiah obviously couldn’t go if Jessy didn’t. My dad was always at work, so my only hope was my mom.

When I went to my mom, I felt a little like a salesman. She was cleaning dishes at the sink, and I was eating a PB&J she had made me at the counter, and I remember feeling like this was the most important thing to me. “Hey mom,” I said, with some sandwich still in my mouth. She looked over at me, soap still on her hands.

“Have you heard of Free Ticket Friday?” She shook her head. “No, I haven't. What is it?” I had her hooked, so I made my pitch. “It’s this really cool thing at the mall where if you buy one movie ticket, you get one for free. And I was wondering if we could go see the new Thomas movie? Is that okay if we do that?” I said all in one breath.

She looked at me with faux contemplation. “Mhh. Just you and me?” she asked. I nodded. She made a coy face, “Like a mom-son date?” I cringed. “If you wanna call it that, I guess.” My mom snickered. “I’m kidding, kiddo. If you keep your room clean all this week, then I think that's a great idea, hon. We can go this weekend.” I got up from the counter and ran to hug my mom. “Thanks, mom!” I said. She laughed and splashed water on me.

Friday couldn’t have come soon enough, and all week I was thinking about the Thomas movie. When it finally came, I almost pushed my mom out of the house and into the car. It wasn’t a long car ride; we lived within walking distance of the mall, but my childlike impatience made the drive feel like an eternity. When we pulled up to the theater side of the mall, I saw the poster for the Magic Railroad displayed on the outside of the theater, and at that moment, nothing else in the world mattered.

But, even as a child, something about the mall complex felt industrial, almost oppressively so. There was a faint hum of machinery that was ever-present but never really seen. To describe the mall without going into monotonous detail, it’s a single-story and very spread-out building. It’s formed into a shape that resembles a strange letter ‘K.’ And the Regal Cinema was at the top of the ‘K,’ on the north side of the mall.

When we walked into the entrance of the mall that led to the theater, I could see an advertisement poster saying, “Don’t Miss Out On FREE TICKET FRIDAY! It’s BOGO On ALL TICKETS! Happening EVERY FRIDAY! And going ALL! SUMMER! LONG! Only At The Regal Cinema in Columbia Center!” The poster itself seemed a bit off, the colors slightly faded and the edges curling, as if it had been there for much longer than just a summer. Maybe it was just reused from last year.

“Two tickets for Thomas and The Magic Railroad, please,” my mom said once we got to the ticket booth. The attendant typed something on his register. “It’s for Free Ticket Friday,” I blurted out. My mom chuckled, “He knows, sweetheart.” I don’t remember much about the attendant; I think there was a glare or something on the glass at the ticket booth, so I couldn’t get a good look at his face.

He wore a white polo shirt and a black bow tie with black pants, and his name tag, instead of a name, just said “Usher.” Just like the rest of the employees. What differentiated the man selling us tickets was that he had a small pin on his shirt right below the name tag. It was Tinkerbell. I remember it so clearly because after my mom had the tickets and we were about to go inside, I said to him, “I like your Tinkerbell pin.” The man didn’t say anything back to me, though. He just looked at me. Even through the light-polluted glass, I could feel him staring at me as my mom and I went in.

My mom surprised me by getting not only a tub of popcorn for us to share but she let me pick out any candy I wanted from the candy rack, which was considered to be a delicacy by my 8-year-old self. I chose the pack of Twizzlers. The movie was, as I had expected, amazing. While we were walking out of the theater, we passed by the ticket booth and I glanced over to see if the man that sold us our tickets was still there. And he was. He was standing perfectly upright with his arms stiffened and at his sides. He was still looking at me through the glare of the glass, and I felt uncomfortable.

To this day, I don’t know why I did what I did next. I can’t remember what my younger self was thinking, but I waved at him. Maybe it was to break the awkwardness of the situation, or maybe I wasn’t thinking anything at all. It’s not even necessarily that I waved at him, but that he waved back. He lifted his right hand and waved slowly, like how a princess waves. I know that might sound ridiculous, but in hindsight, it was very unsettling.

“You alright, kiddo?” my mom said. I was nearly tripping over myself while my attention was drawn toward the stranger behind the booth, and she had noticed. I snapped out of whatever had me, “Huh? Oh yeah, I’m fine,” I said, not very convincingly. Her parenting sixth sense must have been going haywire because she also looked behind her. After a moment, she turned back around, and we both started walking a little faster out of there.

I think my mom was looking for a way to cheer herself up from that creep looking at us, so she surprised me again when she took me to the Toys “R” Us that shared the parking lot of the mall. I was basically clamoring to get to the train aisle, and once there, my mom let me pick out any train I wanted. After combing through the aisle with the precision of a prison cavity search, I narrowed it down to two. I was torn between the new character from the movie, Lady, and a Thomas train that was completely gold. I decided that the golden Thomas was better than Lady, and I almost left skipping out of the store with my mom.

The next day, I got up particularly early, especially for it being summer. I found my mom making coffee in the kitchen, and for some reason, that morning I really wanted to play in the dirt lot in our backyard. I asked her if she could call my aunt and schedule a playdate with Isaiah so we could play in the dirt. We lived in a new neighborhood, one of the many pop-up homes that had rapidly sprung up because of the rise in people moving to our town—the construction business was booming.

There was a long stretch of dirt behind the line of homes on our block. It was going to be a greenbelt of grass that served as a divider between our neighborhood and the next, but it was unfinished. If you followed the greenbelt to the west, you would eventually end up near the mall. If you followed it east, you would reach a small forest reserve officially named the Amon Basin Preserve, but we called it something else.

Isaiah, some of the other kids on our block, and I would often play in the dirt, digging holes, playing with our construction toys, and in our case, bringing out our Legos so we could play on what we called “realistic terrain.” The best part was, we thought it was so cool. That’s exactly what we did that day. We each brought out our own Star Wars Legos and found a patch of terrain that looked particularly epic for our Lego battle. It was Clones vs. Droids, and I was on the Clone side.

I was digging out a part of the earth that I thought would make a suitable cave for cover when my hand touched something hard in the dirt. This wasn’t out of the ordinary—it was basically an active construction site. I grabbed hold of whatever it was and pulled it out.

“Whoa, what the heck is that, dude?!” Isaiah shouted, shocked by what I held in my hand. I was just as astounded at what I had found. The best I could figure at the time was that it was a weird piece of art that someone had lost. But whatever it was, it was certainly made of bone. It seemed like small animal bones. There were three, what looked like, chicken thigh bones formed into a triangle with twine holding each point together. Two twigs, also tied to the bones, were laid across each other, forming an X over the triangle with a coin attached to the center of the X. Some other twigs and leaves were tied to the artifact, but what intrigued me the most was the coin.

My gaze seemed to be halted not by the coin itself, but by what was inscribed on it. There was a curious symbol on it that I had never seen before, and I was transfixed by it. Since then, I’ve had nightmares revolving around that sigil. “What is that thing?” Isaiah said right behind me, breaking me from the grasp of my own intrigue. He went to grab it, “Well, what is it? Let me see!” he said.

“Too slow!” I said as I yanked it away just as he was about to grasp it. “Hey, no fair, let me see,” he protested.

“Yes, fair,” I said smugly. “It’s in my backyard, so it’s mine, and you can’t see it.” In that moment, I was decidedly being a little shit. I stuffed the totem in my back pocket and insisted we forget about it and keep playing. But I didn’t forget about it at all—it was in the back of my mind the whole time. I wondered who made it, where it came from, and what it meant, all the way up until I landed my head on my pillow that night. Thoughtlessly, I hid it under my bed so Jessy wouldn’t see it and ask me any questions. I don’t know why I was so protective of that piece of junk.

That night, after going to bed with my new Thomas toy, I was stirred awake by a thudding sound. It was rhythmic, ‘thud, thud, thud,’ then it would stop. Again, ‘thud, thud, thud,’ then stop. It repeated like this until I finally woke up. My brother and I shared a room, so assuming it was him, I said his name before my eyes were even fully open.

“Jessy!” I said in a whispered shout.

“What?” he replied. I could tell by his voice that I had just woken him up.

“What are you doing? What’s that sound?” I heard him readjust in his bed to look at me.

“What do you mean, what am I doing? What the hell are you doing?” he said, not whispering anymore.

“What?” I said. I opened my eyes and realized I wasn’t lying in my bed as I had thought. I was actually standing upright in front of our closed bedroom door with my head resting against it. I stood there, confused.

“Chris,” my brother said, “what are you doing?” I didn’t have an answer because I didn’t know.

“I-I don’t know,” I said.

“Stop being weird and go back to bed,” Jessy said as he rolled over. I got back into bed, but I lay awake for a long time.

I began to sleepwalk almost every night from then on. My brother would catch me standing at the door and softly thudding my head against it. After the third night, Jessy told our parents. I honestly think he was scared, and I don’t blame him. My dad didn’t think much of it because, in the beginning, it wasn’t so concerning. But I remember my mom seeming worried, and to be honest, that unsettled me. My nighttime activity only became stranger when I began to speak while I sleepwalked. At first, I was only mumbling, saying unintelligible things.

But one night, about a week after I began to sleepwalk, my mom woke up to what she thought was soft knocking on the front door. Usually, my mom would have my father check on things like nighttime visitors, but he was working an overnight shift that night. So, she got out of bed, put her robe on, and went to check for herself. What she saw shocked and somewhat horrified her. I was standing at the front door, my hand on the knob and softly hitting my head against the door in the same rhythmic fashion as before. But this time, after each repetition of three thuds, I would say quietly, “I have to go now.”

She walked over to me cautiously and caught her breath when she saw my face. My eyes were open wide and wild, with my pupils extremely dilated, leaving only a thin ring of blue around them. She took me by the hand, waking me up and breaking me out of the trance I was seemingly in. I was very confused and clueless, but my mom later admitted to me when I was older that this experience truly disturbed her. This specific behavior repeated multiple times, with either my mom, dad, or Jessy finding me by the door. One of the times Jessy found me, he actually decided to engage with me verbally and ask where I had to go. His account is chilling, to say the least.

He woke up at around 3 in the morning to the now familiar sound of thudding on the front door. He left our room and found me standing, facing the door in the dark. ‘Thud, thud, thud.’ “I have to go now,” I said. By this point, Jessy was used to just waking me up and leading me back to bed.

“Chris,” he said, trying to wake me up, but it didn’t work. ‘Thud, thud, thud.’ “I have to go now,” I repeated.

“Chris,” he said louder. According to Jessy, I then slowly turned to look at him, my eyes dilated and watering as though I had been crying.

“I have to go now, Jessy,” I said in a dreamy voice.

“Where do you have to go?” he asked apprehensively.

“I have to go to Neverland, Jessy. Off to Neverland.” Sufficiently freaked out by that point, Jessy shook me awake.

Jessy said later that I must’ve been having a nightmare because I inhaled dramatically. When I saw that it was Jessy standing next to me, I began to really cry, adding to the idea that I was indeed having a nightmare, although I can’t remember what it was. I collapsed into my brother’s arms, and he hugged me tightly. I was beginning to scare myself. The next day, my parents scheduled an appointment with a sleep specialist, hoping to receive answers about my unconscious behavior that was growing more concerning nearly every night.