A couple months ago my daughter went missing. It’s a pretty bland story,your basic lost in the woods. My other girls said she had went to eat the honeysuckles at the back of the school and when I went to check on her she wasn’t there. Me and my husband searched for hours in those woods,shouting her name and panicking. We cried a lot during those weeks,as any grieving parents would.
We thought she was dead,I’m not gonna sugarcoat that. We didn’t have a tiny bit of hope,no expecting her to show up,no search parties. We gave up. We started cleaning out her room and giving ideas of what we should do with it. Of course this story wouldn’t exist if we hadn’t found her. So I’ll just break the ice and tell you we did eventually find her.
A teacher saw her emerge from the woods covered in scrapes and bruises and dirt. Looking rather numb,how she described it. No fear in her eyes,or happiness. She just walked out as if she had never been gone.
People started questioning her of course,asking her where she’d been,how she had survived a week out in the woods,all the sorts. She kept saying she simply didn’t remember anything. Which backed most of them off. We couldn’t care less what had happened or how she was still alive,we had our daughter back and that’s all that mattered. Some might call this the eye of the storm.
The first sign might’ve been when she couldn’t remember family members she had been with countless times. Whenever I mentioned them to her she would look up into nothing and blink,as if trying to remember who they were. She’d return back to whatever she was doing without saying a word and stay like that. I was concerned,I was thinking she had a brain injury of sorts.
I had many conversations with my husband over this,my face would be in a tight scowl and I’d be watching all the children from the window playing tag,I’d bring up my concerns and he’d say something like “Maybe,” or “Perhaps,” with a monochrome tone.
I eventually began thinking of taking her to a psychologist,I’d think about it and search through the web finding ratings of hospitals and doctors. Bringing up these options to my husband,who wouldn’t even glance at me and say “That sounds great honey,”
I was getting fed up with these concerns,I wanted to prove that our child needed help. So I brought in our daughter and asked her the simplest question to know “What’s Daddy’s name?” and as expected,she didn’t know. I tried using this as proof and he brushed me off yet again.
I think it was that same week the next events happened. I was cooking and signing things in the kitchen while my daughter hobbled around the kitchen awaiting a walk. She was standing on the porch at one point looking outside into our backyard woods.
Then the phone rang. I yelled for my husband to pick it up,but he probably wasn’t awake at the time. So I answered it instead. I can’t exactly describe it so I’ll just replicate the conversation as best as I can,
“Hello is this Hannah *****?”
“Yes,this is she,who are you?”
“I’m someone from the search committee for your daughter, I know you have since found your daughter right?”
“Yes? Why?”
“Well,I don’t wanna make you scared or anything but is your daughter in the house currently?”
I glanced towards my daughter,who was standing at the top of the porch stairs,noticing it had started raining.
“Yes?”
“I don’t know how to say this,but we don’t think that’s your daughter. We haven’t prepared for this situation but we’ll call back when we have,we’ll come in a few hours to pick her up but-“
“Excuse me? Is this a joke?”
“No ma’am,I’m 100% sure of this. I can’t exactly prove anything to you visually in a short amount of time,but what I can tell you is your daughter’s body is right in front of me,”
I felt sick. I hung up the phone,surely this was a joke. Someone was bullshitting me and it was all a joke. I scowled and turned to my daughter on the porch.
“Who was that mama?” She asked so innocently,so calmly. I would’ve been able to rest easier if she hadn’t done that. I walked out onto the porch and closed the door behind me. Her boots were covered in rain water. The porch was slick. I started asking questions. Started asking her obvious questions. Questions from before she disappeared.
She couldn’t answer them properly,she stuttered over her words and made obvious guesses. Over time I grew more impatient,yelling at her the actual answers until she had tears and snot running down her face.
She started apologizing,wiping away her tears. She leaned toward me,opening her arms for a hug,but something just snapped in my mind. A realization? Maybe,but I just can’t describe the feeling.
I moved my arms up and slightly pushed her away. Not hard or soft,but enough to put distance between us. The push was hard enough to make her shoes slide on the porch,and she fell backward into the rain.
It wasn’t apparent at first,because I couldn’t hear it over the screams,the agonizing,pain filled screams that left my daughter’s mouth. I could hear slight sizzling. Like the popping of hot oil. She stood up and ran towards the woods.
The thicket of trees was enough to stop her from getting hit by it,but the sizzling continued. What I thought was my daughter turned back to me. I felt sick instantly.
Big blacks eyes with slightly gray skin and patches of scabs and boils covering her stared back. It was monstrous,a distorted interpretation of an alien like creature mixed with my daughter. She turned around walked into the woods wiping away tears and rubbing burns. All while I stared in horror.
I told my husband everything,I told anyone who asked everything. No one believed me. But I know what I saw. I did get to see my daughter’s actual body. When I did I didn’t feel sorrow or despair,I could only describe what I felt as comfort.
Comfort that my actual daughter was resting easy,or as easy as it can get from her state. She was slightly decomposed,with tears of flesh and noteable weathering aging her body.
I still see the creature,sometimes. It’s always the same thing. I’ll be standing in the kitchen,washing the dishes or making dinner,and it’ll be raining. I’ll glance up out the window,and I’ll see it. Staring from the woods. Hiding from the rain,and I’ll feel numb. A numbness that spreads through my head. Until I reach the thought. Didn’t my husband go missing once too?