Once upon a time...

It was Corrine who first told us the story of some kind of something, hanging around the weeping willow in her backyard. My brother and I could see the tree from our bedroom window; the tree was taller than our house.

“In the darkness of the new moon,” she said, “it danced around the perimeter of the tree as if it was human. It danced like some Indian dancing around the campfire doing a war dance.” She told us the story as she babysat us the next evening. To prove her story we grabbed flashlights and went over to examine the mysterious circle of pulled leaves and branches around the big massive tree. It was as if something had purposely walked around and stripped the leaves from the tree until there were no more low hanging branches to strip.

Corrine without stories scared us. She was scary. She had this weird nose that kind of twisted to one side. According to her, she had been in a car accident when she was younger. Her father had to stop suddenly for some mysterious tan colored beast crossing the street.

“Now that I think about it, the thing that danced and stripped the leaves from the willow tree did look a lot like the thing my dad chased the night of the accident. That beast had red eyes and walked upright like a man, but ran along through the yards as my dad chased it like a big cat, sort of like a cougar or a panther or maybe large dog.”

As we sat around making s'mores in the dim light of flashlights, she continued her story. “The night of the accident, the beast disappeared in to the storm drain. The police thought my dad was drunk or crazy and mom says that he fell under the spell of the beast and drank himself to death. You know, they found his body on the corner with his arm stuck down in the storm drain. His clenched fists were filled with rotting leaves and tan fur.”

At this point her flashlight went dark and she screamed, scaring the piss out of all of us. She laughed and then we laughed. Later that night my younger brother and I took turns at the window, spying on her weeping willow to make sure that the thing was not around. We never saw it, but as they say that don't mean a whole hell of a lot.

After that, storm drains make me queasy. I just expected to see something down there, staring back at me. So I didn’t look. I reasoned that if I don't see it, it can't get me.

The rest of the summer went without any further sightings of the beast. Sid from down the street claimed that he had put out leftovers from dinner every night and every morning the plate was licked so clean that his mom didn't have to wash it. Corrine told Sid that was probably okay, but whatever it was probably didn't like human food. She recommended a piece of rare red bloody beef and definitely no vegetables or fruits.


It was the night of the last big blow out game of hide and seek. About twelve of us from the neighborhood had begun the game as soon as the sun went down. I'm not explaining the rules, no matter where you grew up the rules are all pretty much the same. The game grew as the evening went on and soon there were lot's of us hiding and having the time of our lives. We were kids on our last hurrah before the start of school. It was one last time to let ourselves go before we went back to school, bus rides, recess and bad cafeteria food. It was a clear late summer night, no moon, new moon they call it. So dark you could see stars just about everywhere. A perfect night to hide, a perfect night not to be seen.

There were plenty of witnesses. Of course we were all kids and that kind of was held against us. The fact remained that Sid was missing. He didn't go home and never went on to seventh grade. Just disappeared that night. His mom blamed her ex-husband for kidnapping him. There was the story of the Santa impersonator in the red van driving around and picking kids up with offers of free candy, pop and gifts. And he didn't run away because he was mad at his mom and dad for getting a divorce. All just a bunch of stories adults came up with to justify his disappearance.

I don't go near storm drains, none of us do since that night. That night we watched as Sid was pulled in to the drain screaming, clawing his nails in to the pavement. Some of us tried to hold on to his arms, but we were kids and kids are, well kids. He cried as his body was pulled in to the deep dark underground of the sewer. And just like that, he was gone.

In the dark that night you couldn't see the scratch marks his nails left in the pavement. In the dark of that night you couldn't see down in to the storm drain in to the sewer. You had to be paying attention to see the red glow of the staring eyes.

Some nights the sky is so dark that you could see a million, a billion stars if you bothered to look up. All of us, we don't look up at the sky we keep our eyes on the ground, on the shadows.