I remember the experience clearly; beyond just memories, it seems like it stayed with me on a psychological level. The haunting details have been engraved deep into my subconscious, and I wish for nothing more than a release from their torment. I’m an educated guy, and I know how it sounds, but it’s important you know I’m not insane; aside from run-of-the-mill 20-something teacher burnout with a side of anxiety, I don’t have the slightest history of mental illness. I write this now not only as an account of my experience here in West Virginia but also as a warning to anyone who finds themselves unfortunate enough to pass by those woods. I write this also as my final word to my wife, my friends, and my family because I cannot go on living with the constant evocation of terror when the sun fades away. The thought of walking through my day-to-day life with even an inkling of the possibility that someone or something followed me out of that place fills me with dread; it’s hard to stomach food and nearly impossible to find enough sanity to drift into sleep for even a moment. I sit now in a vacant room. I’m in a decrepit old motel off of Highway 219, and I can hear things and see things lurking just beyond the parking lot through the hours of the night. The worst part now is that I’m completely unable to decipher whether or not what I’m seeing is reality or a manifestation of my recently developed trepidation. I’m sick now, and my mother has tried to contact me so often that sometimes my phone dies at night when I ignore the constant waterfall of phone calls. She must think I’m dead because I haven’t returned one of her calls in quite some time now.
I’m a teacher by trade. I’m not your run-of-the-mill teacher either; I’m a private instructor. Usually the state or some charity hires me to take on the monumental task of spending a semester teaching vastly undereducated kids. Most of the kids I teach can’t even read, and they’re often poor and disconnected from society; my most common contracts are in far-off towns or hamlets in the middle of whatever the area considers “the boondocks.” I’ve had contracts in the middle of Louisiana’s swamps, in mountain communities in Tennessee, and I’ve even been flown outside of the country to remote tribes just to teach kids how to read and write. Not to lay down a humble brag or anything, but the contracts usually paid really good money compared to your run-of-the-mill teacher’s salary, as they were usually funded by someone with a blank check and a mission to put themselves in the limelight for being a philanthropist willing to save the world from the plague of illiteracy. I’ve always had somewhat of a passion for my job; I got to design my own lesson plans and actually teach these kids something instead of reciting the monotone scripture pasted into an 80-dollar book. My point being, I don’t think I’ve ever directly turned down a contract, and the one that landed me in my current situation wasn’t any different.
I was sitting at my desk, rifling through the mountains worth of gigs that so often flooded my inbox, scrutinizing the payout on each and every job addressed to me. I would often do this until my eyes grew dry and heavy in an attempt to find the perfect job to take for a semester, but on this rare occasion, just about a fourth of the way into the sea of digital letters, one specific sender jumped out at me. “The Fairhaven Community Church”: I had up until this point never received an arrangement from a church, but what left me even more perplexed was not only its direct nature but the exorbitant compensation and contract length. The subject line read, “Private Tutor Needed for 5 Years at 100 Thousand Dollars a Year.” I was floored by this statement and immediately wiped my watering eyes for clarity; the offer was too good to be true, and my skeptical nature caused me to audibly scoff when I read it again. I opted to dig further into the inquiry, and I was immediately greeted with a well-written, however poorly formatted, email detailing the needs of the small church community. I had to read the email three times over in order to decode the strange syntax. I came to the conclusion that the church was frequently taking on less fortunate families from around the state and wanted to not only help them and teach the word of God but also wanted to teach the families to read and write at a higher level to allow them to continue their studies. The church had a 5-year plan to rapidly educate a vast amount of families that would come in and out of the church through out the time in which the teacher was present.
The job posting brought forth quite a few red flags, but the thing that gave me an uneasy feeling was the list of rules posted at the bottom of the email.
“The educator must use official church material to teach the present families.”
“The educator is not to leave the premises of the Fairhaven Community.”
“The educator must not under any circumstance enter any restricted areas of the Fairhaven Community.”
“The educator must not correspond with any media or anyone who may spread word of the project before, during, or after their time in Fairhaven.”
While I admired their apprehension of the press, unlike most of my other clients who would demand interview after interview so that they would be viewed by the public as a hero crusading against the evil of ignorance, I could also see why the congregation wouldn’t want some stranger from the city to poke around their sanctum. I’m not closed-minded by any means, but the thought of not even being able to leave the property seemed strange to me. Granted, in the past, when I made my trip to the Congo, I was told not to leave the protected area I was in, but that wasn’t so much a rule as it was a guideline for my own safety. The biggest turn-off concerning the listing was the fact that I could only use “official church material.” As I mentioned before, I enjoy being able to structure the lessons how I please and teach in the way I feel best suits my students’ interests and learning profiles, but I couldn’t help but be further swayed to take the job by the thought of being paid 500 thousand dollars for 5 years of work in a place that would handle my cost of living during the whole excursion.
I’m writing all this as a poor attempt at justifying my own poor decisions. Even going back over what I’ve written, I can feel my stomach turn as I read the blatantly obvious signs of danger.
Anyway, I’m struggling to keep my eyes open, and I think I see someone outside, so I’ve got to take a break from typing, but I promise I’ll be back to finish my story before I take myself over the moon, so to speak.