“Bugboy! Bugboy!” the cry started with William and his gang of cronies, surrounding me at the edge of the playground, though a few stragglers picked it up, joining in until he stopped.
Damn it. I was glad my teachers couldn’t hear my thoughts, knowing such language would get me in trouble as I kept my eyes on the ground in front of me.
Just ignore them. They’ll go away. I could all but hear my mother’s advice from the last time William and I had had an issue, I hadn’t bothered to tell her that it was all I ever did to no avail. I felt every bit like prey in web when I was at that school, always waiting for the spider to stalk towards me and ruin my day.
I tried to ignore the group of boys around me, who despite numbering no more than the usual five, felt like quite the crowd, doing my best not to acknowledge the rising thud of my heart.
I focused on the tickling along my fingers, eyes locked on one of the thin little centipedes I’d found scuttling about the dirt of the playground, that had gathered the bravery to climb atop my palm and had been running rings across my hand.
“Is that your best friend, Andrew?” I recognized the voice as Kalen’s, Williams right hand man.
“What’s his name? You aren’t gonna introduce us?”
“Nah,” William quickly chimed, “I think that’s his only friend. Or maybe…it’s his girlfriend. That your girlfriend, Bugboy? Only makes sense.”
Some of the kids around us laughed at that, all of his friends acting as though they’d never heard anything funnier. I tried to quell the distant tremor I felt rising in me, praying my face wasn’t nearly as red as I felt.
His words stung not only for the clear insult, but because there was some partial truth to it.
Not the girlfriend thing of course, but I had certainly been short on friends since starting middle school, with an exception or two. Even at home, with the exception of Ally, the girl who lived in the house across the street, my only real friend was my grandmother, with whom I’d been close since I was a toddler. No, I wasn’t popular, and given my interest in creepy-crawlies and general head-in-the-clouds attitude that seemed to be a blaring red warning light screaming “weirdo” to other kids, I found most of my recesses spent alone with the bugs.
It was odd perhaps, but from the moment I’d arrived at school and the struggles with bullies had begun, I’d found a sort of…kinship with the little things, scurrying around beneath all of our feet so easily overlooked and ignored. Misunderstood. And as odd as it may seem, a part of my young mind couldn’t shake the idea they’d developed a similar interest in me.
Then, there was the name of course. Bugboy. It was childish even for a child and irritated me to no avail.
I took a slow and silent breath, doing my best to push back the rising heat of anger, worrying for a moment as I heard a faint buzzing from the side of my head, before a bee buzzed by, making lazy rings around my head before flying off.
It was the fifth I’d seen that afternoon, and for a moment I’d considered following it, before remembering my current situation.
I knew I didn’t want to give them anything, a reaction, especially a negative one only ever seemed to encourage their torment, oftentimes taking it from verbal jabs to more physical action.
“C’mon Bugboy, give her a kiss.” William smacked his lips gathering more raucous, forced laughter from his gang.
For as mild-mannered as I usually was, I’d always struggled a bit with my temper, and in that moment, I could feel it fighting to get the best of me.
Bugboy. The name was grating for reasons I couldn’t even understand, digging under my skin like a nail.
“Is it true your grandma’s a witch? My grandad says your grandma’s an evil witch from like Africa, or something. Is that why you’re such a freak?”
I grit my teeth, irritation burning like coals in my chest.
My grandmother was Haitian, and she was no witch, she just practiced Vodun, a religion that venerates the Old Gods of West Africa, the Orisha. It was a religion, and one that she’d credited for her ability to survive growing up in rural Illinois as a young black girl, for all its challenges.
“There are those who will always deem it witchcraft when the gods of others actually answer their calls.” I can recall her telling me once in my youth, when I’d come to her crying about the things, I’d heard kids say.
“If they call me a witch, then a witch I’ll be and live happier for it.”
Grandma believed in forces beyond our understanding, certainly, but how was it any different than anyone else who believed in a God? Though even at my age I understood there was no point in trying to explain any of that to the ignorant.
Wraybrook is a small, superstitious town, the sort so forgettable even Google doesn’t see fit to remember its existence, and anything besides good ol’ fashion conservative Christianity was to be gawked at.
“A freak like Bugboy,” another voice, Kevin’s, chimed in.
“He’s just like him. He’s creepy. He has no friends. I bet he lures his victims into the woods too, with his creepy little bug friends.”
“What the fuck are you idiots even talking about? I snapped, speaking before I could even realize it as I glared up at the other boys.
I could feel a heat rising in me, tempered only by a fear just as present as I realized what I’d done. I’d fed into it, there would be no use in ignoring them now, my reaction would be all the fuel they needed to persist with tormenting me until the final bell.
A collective “Ooohhh” rippled through his group, as William only squinted down at me.
I prepared to jump to my feet, fully expecting a fist to fly at any moment, but none came. Instead, William smirked. It was an ugly expression from him, and one I didn’t like, as though he knew something I didn’t.
“I don’t think Bugboy even knows why that’s his name, guys. We all got told by an older kid, and he has no friends. I don’t think anyone ever told him the story, unless maybe the centipedes can talk.”
I narrowed my eyes, almost biting my tongue to the point that I could taste blood as I spat,
“What story?”
He smiled a shit-eating grin, throwing his head back in a silent laugh before appraising me with a pitying look.
“I guess I’ll tell you. It’s the only nice thing I’ll ever do for you, Bugboy. Now listen close,”
For the next five minutes I listened, at first with utmost suspicion and a chip on my shoulder as William spoke, but as the story continued, despite myself I could feel a cold, familiar pit of fear in the depths of my gut, that childish sort of terror one feels when hearing a particularly visceral horror story, or seeing the movie that will be responsible for the next years’ worth of nightmares.
I learned that despite how it sounds it was more than just the workings of the cruel mind of a childhood bully, not that one at least.
No, Bugboy was the name of something of an…urban legend in the town I grew up. He was a story passed down from parents to some of the upperclassmen, the myth naturally trickling down to the younger kids - usually in an attempt to scare the piss out of them, and one my lack of any real social life had left my utterly ignorant to.
As it had apparently been told on the playground for years, passed down through students and townsfolk who’d called Wraybrook home for generations, the original Bugboy was a born Billy Harbaugh.
He was kid who’d had gone to our school many years ago, the time frame shifting depending on who you asked. Sometimes it’s the 80s, other times the 1880s, but it’s usually the same.
As the story William told went, the kid was known around town as something of a bad seed who tried to lure several of his classmates into the woods near the school, with the promise of showing them a beehive he’d stumbled upon practically overflowing with honey.
“See, Bugboy, the thing is, Billy was a sicko. Twisted, a bad egg, my dad said. He was leading them towards something, but it wasn’t no beehive. It was a hornet’s nest.”
He smiled as he spoke, seeing something in my expression that encouraged him.
As he continued, I felt a swelling knot of unease, cold and heavy in my gut. As he continued he told of a struggle between the boy and his intended victims ensues, and in the struggle, the hive is knocked loose, landing directly atop his head.
I had almost laughed at that to myself when I first heard, despite the morbidness of it all, such a cartoonish image painted by the scene.
But what followed had held me in silence. Apparently, the sheer amount of venom had been too much for young Billy, who dropped dead on the spot, body swelling like a blimp beneath a buzzing cloud of pain.
The kids all fled home, covered in stings but alive and reluctantly told their story, however when the forest was searched, no body was found.
If that was the end it would be tragic, but of course such stories don’t die in small towns, and for years following stories and rumors of folks sighting him, crossing some farmers field in the dead of night, or spotted by some hiker disappearing into the canopy ahead, and all of them the same.
They all tell of a shambling little corpse amidst a cloud of insects, large, twitching pincirs in place of a mouth, and eyes as bulbous and black like an insect’s, his approach warned by the growing buzz of hornets, who doesn’t take kindly to company.
It occurred to me that the name of what was essentially our own local boogeyman having been attached to me by the same jackals I found myself surrounded by had all but been a social death sentence for me in school. Who would ever want to be friends with the kid nicknamed after a murderer, even if it was just a story.
Knowing the story behind it, I could understand the years of strange looks and whispers that seemed to follow me, for as long as I’d been the target of William’s torment.
“Ya get it now?” William asked, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
He stepped in closer, whispering with an audible sneer.
“Bugboy.”
“My name is Andrew…” I practically hissed the words through gritted teeth before I acted.
It’s odd, the expression “I saw red” seems so ridiculous when you hear it, but in that moment I understood. Months of abuse seemed to reach a boiling point I hadn’t released I was nearing, and before I could process what I was doing, my hand had curled into a tight fist, and was swiftly making contact with the other boy’s jaw.
His head swung back, and he fell back, landing on his bottom with an audible thud. For a moment, the world seemed to freeze, every eye in the area on us.
“Holy fuck. Bugboy…punched you man…” Kevin breathed, eyes wide, and voice coated in utter disbelief.
I thought to run, but knew they would only give chase. Besides, two of the boys stood between me and the school, and I doubted they’d be letting me by without a fight now.
“You freak, you stupid fucking freak, I’m gonna kill you -” William shot up, lurching forward, outstretched hands quickly wrapping around my neck as he rushed me.
“William and Andrew are fighting!” A girl’s voice, from somewhere around us, immediately stirred the sounds of movement from all around as kids from all sides of the playground as kids began to circle the two of us.
I push against his face, feeling his thumbs curling deep into the skin of my neck, breathing growing far more difficult. With my free hand, I collided a fist against his face, until a small trickle of blood had begun streaming from his nose.
“William! Andrew! Stop that NOW!” Ms. Donovan’s command came as a shrill cry the likes of which I’d never heard from a teacher before, immediately silencing the circle of spectators that had formed around us as she pushed herself through them, towards the two of us.
She gripped William by his arm, yanking him off of me with such force he almost stumbled, her face an equal mask of shock, horror, and anger.
“What has gotten into you two? William this is your second incident in two weeks and Andrew…” she shook her head, “I expect better.”
I felt my face flush with embarrassment and fury. How was I being held responsible for this at all when he’d been tormenting me for months - no, years at that point? For as long as I’d known William, I’d been the target of his hate, for reasons I was too young, and niave, to understand.
I wanted to argue, but held my tongue, feeling all of the eyes on me.
“Both of you inside. In fact, everyone inside, recess is over. You two, I’m calling your parents and you’re speaking to the principal. Enough is enough.”
Groans and muttered complaints rang out from around us as the kids slowly began trudging back towards the school.
Ms. Donovan ushered me to her side, opposite William, and I reluctantly obliged, kicking the dirt as I approached. The three of us walked in line to the door, William shooting me dirty looks all the while.
“Hey,” a whisper from just beside me, I glanced over to see Kevin.
“You know we’re gonna get you back for this, right?”
“Mr. O’Toole, GO! Inside.”
It was just quiet enough that Ms. Donovan wouldn’t be able to make it out, and Kevin obliged, with a cheesy grin and an exaggerated,
“Yes ma’am.”
As the heat of sudden fury began to dissipate, I felt a cold dread in its place as I wondered just what I’d gotten myself into.
“Ow,” Ms. Donovan muttered, swatting at something on her neck.
As we stepped into the school I winced at the lazy buzz of a bee, humming past my ear.
…
The ride home was a tense one. My mother spent most of it laying into me, complaining about the interruption the call had presented at work, about the two-day suspension I’d been handed, and the fact that her ‘little boy’ was fighting.
I wanted to argue, but elected to stay silent, laying my head on the window as I watched the world pass by.
As soon as we arrived home, my mother sent me to my room, of which I had no complaints.
“And you stay up there until dinner, I don’t want to hear a peep out of you!” Her voice called from behind, as I trudged up the stairs.
I slammed the door behind me, the frustration of the day finally bursting forth in a fit of tears, my face growing warm as the tears began to flow.
It felt in my young mind, as though everyone in my life seeked to purposely misunderstand or prod at me. Emotion swelled like waves against a levee, and after some minutes of silent sobbing, exhaustion from the entire day seemed to fall upon me all at once.
Minutes passed before I heard the knock at my door, gentle but firm, four in a quick rhythm. I recognized it instantly, sitting up and wiping my face with the back of my sleeve.
“Come in.”
After a moment, the doorknob shifted, the door opening gradually as my grandmother popped her head in. She shot me a tight-lipped grin, face softening in a sympathetic sort of half smiles I’d seen plenty of before.
“You okay, baby?” she asked, stepping inside and shutting the door behind her softly before making her way to the bed, the squealing wheels of her oxygen tank announcing her approach. She took her place beside me, the bed groaning softly under her weight.
She raised a hand, which I noted had become rather thin and sort of gnarled in her old age, a thought which reminded me that the one person I felt understood by was aging and made me frown as she ran her it through my hair as she had done to calm me down for as long as I could remember.
“I heard your mama on the phone with your pops, rough day at school?” She looked down upon me with those eyes that, in my youth, seemed like a cool gray pond filled with age and a near infinite wisdom, as well as a sort of kindness that had always made me melt.
I nodded.
“Those nasty boys again?”
Another nod. I grit my teeth, the events of earlier replaying momentarily in my mind, for a moment returning to the playground William trying his damndest to strangle me while his crowd of enablers hooted and hollered.
She nodded, her eyes narrowing for a moment as they scanned my face inquisitively, as though that was all it took for her to somehow gather the full story. I bit my lower lip, as warm tears stung at the corner of my eyes, already at that age where crying in front of people made me feel like a baby.
As she pulled me into a tight hug, I lost it, sobbing into her shoulder.
“There, there, sweetie, you wanna tell me what happened?” she cooed, patting my hair as all the emotion I’d been trying to keep pent up rushed forth.
After a moment of sniffling, and gathering myself again, I began to explain it all to her. I told her everything, from the first time William had ever bothered me, to the way it seemed no one ever saw it when he was doing something wrong. It wasn’t until I arrived at the detail about the nickname that my grandmother stopped me.
Her face shifted, a momentary shadow cast across her features, something flashing beneath those eyes of hers that seemed so ancient to a younger me…unease, perhaps? With a bit of recognition maybe. Whatever it was, it wasn’t a look I’d seen from her before.
“Bugboy, you said?” she asked, repeating the nickname with something akin to disbelief.
I felt my face flush as I gave a curt nod. She scoffed, her fingers clenching into her thigh for a single moment, a frustration I hadn’t even noticed seeming to boil over.
“Stupid children, waving that name around like an insult still. The hell does he know?” her lip curled as a sudden flash of anger burned across her features for a split second.
She shook her head with a sigh, letting some of the tension fall away, in its place there seemed a wary sort of sadness.
The wind outside seemed to press eagerly against the frosty windowpane, making it creak in such a way that had always raised uneasy goosebumps on my back as a child, and that moment was no different.
For a moment, her face was awash with an unreadable but palpable emotion, eyes aimed downward but her gaze seemed locked on something I couldn’t see, old memories forgotten, likely presenting themselves before her suddenly.
After a moment she nodded to herself, running a hand through her hair with a sigh before fixing me with a strange look.
“So you’ve heard the story, then?”
I’m certain my face expressed the confusion I felt at that moment. It felt…odd that she would be asking about that now, even in my young mind it seemed irrelevant to the greater situation at hand. But it seemed the mere mention of that name had triggered something in her.
“Yeah,” I muttered, “William told me.”
She scoffed again, her expression darkening.
“And just what did William tell you?”
With a sigh, I recounted the tale he’d spun on the playground, the horror story of the awful boy who’d tried to harm his fellow classmates, hurting only himself in the process. I told her how he’s rumored to still roam those very woods, stalking them and the fields beyond, waiting for more victims.
For a moment, she was still, a stern, cold sort of look on her face that chilled me to the bone, her eyes lost in thought.
“Well that boy wouldn’t know the truth if it slapped him across the cheeks, and his father was a nightmare of child seems it runs in the family.” her gaze moved to the window, to the cool spring fay beyond, the scent of my mothers flower garden wafting through an open window.
“Damn shame isn’t it, the things folks will remember and how they choose to remember them,” She shut the door quietly, before returning to her place beside me.
After a moment she sighed, and when she spoke, I could feel the questions blossom like flowers after the first rains in spring.
“Hardly a word of that is true.”
The confusion and surprise I felt at that was visible on my face, brows knitting in a look of disbelief.
“But - that’s what everyone says,” I offered with all the stubborn confidence of a child, as though the mere fact was enough to confirm what I’d been told.
“And if they do?” she scoffed, “Everyone wasn’t there. Everyone don’t know what was really happening all those years ago. I do.”
My mouth fell open, eyes widening as my body seemed to buzz with a sort of nervous excitement as I began to realize just what my grandmother was indicating. I voiced the questions, though the answer had become clear.
“You were there, weren’t you? You knew him, you knew the Bugboy?”
Her expression twisted as though she’d smelled something sour.
“Now, that’ll be enough of that name, sir.” she spoke, an edge audible in her voice.
She stood for a moment, grunting with the effort as I approached, holding an arm for balance. As she made her way towards the door, I was sure I’d said something to make her leave.
There was a watery look in her eyes for a moment. It was an expression, distant and wrought with emotion that seemed to have been stored away like wine for so many years, an aged and distant ache visible.
As she cast a glance at the world beyond my window, I could tell that her attention wasn’t on the tree running its branches along the side of the house, but a distant memory.
“It’s cruel, and it’s a shame it’s survived so long. Yes, I knew the young man as he truly was. We were classmates, not too far off from the age you are now, and at the very same school.”
I was awestruck. I supposed it made sense, Grandma had grown up in Cold Lake, she’d spent her whole life here, of course she’d have gone to my school. It had just never crossed my mind until that point.
There’s something about a child that always struggles to comprehend that the elders in your life were at one point where you are now, and my mind reeled picturing my grandmother at my age, racing around the school playground with the Bugboy.
“Oh, I suppose you think I was born with these wrinkles, huh?” she laughed, my expression clearly betraying my thoughts.
“No, I was your age once. Of course, some things were a bit different then. The school was a third the size it is today, the town too for that matter, but underneath it all,” she nodded thoughtfully, her eyes flashing with something I couldn’t quite identify.
“It’s still the same place. The nature of this little town and the people in it - it don’t seem to change all that much. Just ghost stories and cruelty hidden just beneath smiling faces waiting to tear into ya over the dinner table and in gossip circles.”
She fumbled for a moment in her breast pocket, before producing a carton of cigarettes.
“I need a smoke, come take a walk with me,” she said, sliding a cigarette from the pack, “I’ll tell you what really happened.”
“But I - I’m grounded. And I thought mom said you can’t have those anymore?”
“Bah, I won’t tell if you don’t.” she replied with a wink.
I felt a familiar twinge of excitement at that, the feeling I always got when grandma had settled in to tell one of her stories.
With that I practically dragged her the rest of the way, lifting her oxygen tank over shoulder and pounding down the stairs and out the front door before my mother could become any the wiser.
Before long, we were strolling down the gravel road that lined our street, her tank wheeling behind us, Grandma’s cigarette perched on her lips, a thin trail of smoke twisting up towards the sky as she gazed forward with that look.
After a few moments with only the sound of gravel crunching underfoot, and the crickets, insects and other small critters from the woodland our neighborhood was built through, she began her story.
“I suppose It’d be about…sixty, sixty-one years ago now when it all happened,” she began, exhaling a cloud of smoke as she spoke.
“That day that you’ve all gone and turned into some horror show, villain story. It was a gorgeous day, Illinois spring at its best - much like this one. I’ll never forget thinking that morning with how lovely the weather was, surely a day like that could only be wonderful.”
She chuckled ruefully, taking another long drag of the cigarette, coughing for several moments as we continued forth.
I listened, absent-mindedly pelting a singular rock down the road as we walked, though my mind felt locked on her every word.
“His name was Bailey. That’s the first of many inaccuracies with the drivel you heard. Not Billy, Bailey.”
The sun was getting low, painting the sky a dark-blue twilight, yet somehow, the shadows that seemed to run over her features seemed unrelated, the mere mention of the name dredging up old emotion.
“We’d been friends. Or, close as he’d allow anyone to be. You see, Bailey wasn’t mean…or nasty, nothing like those awful stories. No, the poor boy was just shy, and a bit odd maybe. Awful fascinated with bugs and all manner of unusual things instead of playing with the others, can’t blame him given how horrible he was treated.”
She sighed, and for a moment, I could see distant memories in her eyes, her face wrinkling as though she’d smelled something unpleasant.
“In those days, the world wasn’t too kind to those of us who were different.”
I knew what she’d meant. I’d heard the stories of my grandmother’s life before me or my parents, growing up the daughter of working-class Haitian immigrants in a town that was 99% white, and not at all welcoming of outsiders.
I felt my stomach turn a little bit as she spoke, unrelated to the familiar reek of smoke. For all I’d rankled at the comparison to the one they all called Bugboy, it disturbed me greatly how much I found myself relating unintentionally. It irked me, that perhaps on some level William was right.
I gazed out to the left, across the vast field of corn that had always seemed to stretch on forever in my young mind, though it was only in recent years I’d grown tall enough to see the forest beyond, extending around our town like a natural cage from the world beyond. To the right of us was the forest, inside of which was the path I knew we were headed towards.
As I my eyes traveled the tree line, wandering with my mind, something amongst the brush and hanging leaves, caught my eye.
It was brief, and in my distraction, I’d passed over it, to find nothing when next I looked, but the thought was still there, lingering in my mind like an afterimage.
A figure, and movement, both in passing as something disappeared behind within the distant forest that, at times like this, when the sun had set and there was only darkness beyond, felt as though it were the edge of the world.
Before I could linger on what I might have seen, I realized my grandmother was speaking again.
“I would…try to include him in stuff,” she said.
“Invite him to play with my friends and I on the playground, to kick around a ball or whatever it was we were doing. But he never seemed all that interested, always declining me polite as can be, while he took stock of whichever creepy crawlies he’d collected over that time.”
Her face wavered for a moment, finally settling on a sad smile as she stared ahead, arms folded with her cigarette hanging lazily between two fingers.
“But you see, kids have been the same since the beginning of time, and bullies are nothing new. And god, did that poor kid have plenty of em. Nasty, nasty kids, the things they would do…”
She shook her head, eyes hardening for a moment with a look of anger, made all the more icy and severe with the years.
“There were three in particular, the Conrad Brothers, Jim and Ralph, and their little crony Evan. They made his life hell.”
We turned off of the road, my grandmother electing for the path which opened to the right of us just ahead, an unofficial route I was sure she was 90% responsible for over the years, which cut a semi-scenic route through the fields and into the forest beyond.
The trees rustled under an errant breeze, murmuring their secrets amongst the canopy, as we left the road behind us. The distant hum of forest life, crickets and cicadas and the other things all droned together.
In the twilight night, the sun now far enough below the horizon to induce a purple-sort of hue across the horizon, but not enough to allow the moon to glow in its stead, and with my mind on darker things, it felt strangely ominous.
Somewhere ahead, there was a rustle amidst the darkness and greenery. It was loud, loud enough to snap my gaze forward and set my heart to pounding as I scanned amongst the leaves and brush hopelessly.
My grandmother seemed undisturbed, taking another long drag of her cigarette for a moment.
I wondered if she hadn’t heard what I’d heard, that scuttle of movement from somewhere in the brush ahead of us. If she had, she gave no indication it mattered, and in my young mind the confidence of the present adult was all I needed to try and tell myself it was okay.
Still, I found myself pressing closer to her as we ventured deeper through the path, and into the forest. A strange unease beginning to gnaw at the edge of my awareness.
I’ll continue this in another part. It seems I’m pushing up against the character limit, and I think the break will do me good. Even now, as I write this, I find a cocktail of old emotions stirred in me, distant memories I’d let the years throw dust on.