My husband and I always wanted our son to be adventurous. We wanted to watch him grow up asking questions about everything, seeking out answers, and looking for adventure. It seems like whenever parents have a deep desire for how they want their children to be, their children instinctively know and go the complete opposite direction.
As Sam grew up, he became very introverted and would actively ask when it was time for bed. He loved to sleep, and our doctor gave a lot of explanations. All the illnesses had been checked and crossed out before he said “I think he just likes to get away from reality. He likes his dreams more than he enjoys life.” This was at the age of eight.
This actually depressed us as parents. What could be so wrong, so uninteresting about his life that he would come home and just sleep?
The doctor recommended that we plan family activities that were geared towards him as a way to engage him in life. “Give him something to be excited about after school.”
So, for our very first trip, we decided we would go on a hike. The mountains were about an hour away, and we considered this a mild introduction to our new family habit. When we told Sam where we were going, he was ecstatic. We knew then that hiking had been the right activity.
On Saturday, we threw together some backpacks, lunch, water, and even a magnifying glass so Sam could inspect everything closely. He was so excited the entire way there. We were all thrilled.
When we parked at the trailhead, Sam leapt out of the car and almost ran up the trail without us. I had to call him back so we could keep an eye on him.
The hike was short, maybe half a mile, but Sam tried to run it like a marathon. We kept calling for him to come back and check out this bird, or this butterfly, or the log that looked like a grandpa’s face. He would come and look to humor us, but then run ahead.
Eventually, we gave up trying to point things out and let him just run through the woods. We were pleased that he had taken so well to the trip. For once, Charlie and I felt like we knew what we were doing as parents. Anyone who’s a parent knows how that feels.
We got to the end of the trail and ate our lunch. We were at a ledge along the mountain that was more like a hill. The sun was high overhead and we could see over the trees for miles. Sam quickly downed his lunch and we let him run off into the trees.
“Not too far,” I warned him. He obeyed, and we could always see him. From the rock where we sat, I watched Sam while Charlie went to the bathroom. I watched Sam pick up sticks, swing them at bushes and tree trunks until the stick broke, then pick up another one. He picked one up that was too short to be swung, but he smiled wide at it and ran around with it in front of him, using both hands.
Finally, he ran over to me and said “Mom! Feel this stick! It feels so cool!”
“Oh yeah?” I grinned, taking the stick from him. It was in the shape of a Y, and when I grabbed one of the sides of the Y, it was perfectly smooth. It looked like someone had taken a knife and whittled a bigger branch down into this smooth, sling-shot shaped stick. The two sides of the Y were curved, almost like bicycle handlebars.
“That’s very smooth!” I said to encourage him. He looked at me funny, then ran back into the woods to keep playing.
We packed up lunch, stuffed everything back in the backpacks, and announced that we were ready to hike back. Sam came back without a fuss, and we began walking down the trail.
Instead of running ahead, Sam lagged behind, still clutching the Y stick. He held it in front of him with both hands as before, and was swinging it around slowly, as if it were a magnifying glass and he were searching for something.
“Come on, Sam,” Charlie encouraged gently when he stood in one place for too long. We both had to stop because he had fallen so far behind. He was pointing his stick into the trees, arms outstretched. He kept looking from the stick to the trees, as if trying to line something up.
We both waited patiently for a few seconds, but the heat was getting to us and we were ready for an air-conditioned car.
“Sam, honey, let’s go,” I called.
“Okay,” he called back, but didn’t move.
Charlie sighed and walked back to him. He put his hands on both of Sam’s shoulders and guided him down the trail. The whole time, Sam kept both hands firmly on the stick and tried his best to point it back towards the trees where he’d been looking. He didn’t point it towards where he had been standing, I noticed later, but at a spot past the trail and into the trees. Always at one position.
Charlie finally got him to where I was, and we kept walking. Sam eventually stopped pointing his stick, and instead kept it down in front of him, both hands still being used to hold either side of the Y.
We drove home, pleased that Sam was taking home a souvenir. Our day trip had worked. He was getting involved with life. We were one step closer to our adventurous son.
Over the next couple of days, lots of things started happening. They all seemed disjointed and not connected in the moment. Later, memory would connect them for me.
Sam went back to his sleeping routine. He would come home from school, go into his room, and play for a bit by himself while dinner was being made. I got him to work on homework, then served dinner when Charlie got home. After that, he went straight to bed by his own choice.
This wasn’t abnormal for him, so I wasn’t any more concerned than usual.
A few nights after we got home, I noticed that Sam’s bedroom light was on even though he’d gone to bed hours ago. His door was closed, so I went to go and turn off his light for him. I figured he might have left it on when he fell asleep or something.
The second I opened the door, Sam leapt off the floor and jumped into bed, like he knew he was in trouble. It was only 7 in the evening, I wasn’t about to yell at him for not going to bed when he said he was.
His rapid jump into bed had me worried though.
“Sam? What’s up?”
“Nothing,” he said in that kiddush tone that screams I didn’t do anything!
I looked around the room and saw what I always saw: his toys were out and lined up in some game he must’ve been playing. Nothing was out of place or irregular.
“You jumped up as soon as I came in, anything wrong?”
“No.”
“Okay,” I said slowly, unsure of what else to say.
He looked at me with untold terror in his eyes.
“Are you sure nothing is wrong?” I pressed. “I can hang out with you for a bit, if you want.”
He stared right through me, his eyes wide. It took him a few seconds to reply.
“No, mother, I’m going to bed now. C-can you turn out the light?”
I blinked. He’s never called me “mother” in his life. I should have pushed myself in and sat on his bed and talked until he admitted what was wrong. But I didn’t. Charlie called my name, and it distracted me. I wished him a good night, turned off the light, and shut the door.
Talking later on with Charlie about it, Charlie thought that maybe he had somehow discovered masturbation, even at his young age. “When you rub around on the floor the right way, it just happens,” Charlie told me. Apparently, that was how he had discovered it.
So, I chalked the situation up to that.
Sam also kept carrying that Y stick around everywhere. He always kept it within reach. During dinner, he kept it on the table. When I told him that sticks don’t belong on the dining room table, he kept it on his chair next to him. He took it to bed and kept it next to his head. He even took it to school.
I tried fighting him on it once, but he claimed he was taking it to show and tell. I was about to insist that he leave it home, but he looked like he might cry if I came down firm. So, I let him on the condition that if his teacher mentioned it to me that I’d make him leave it home. He agreed.
One day, Charlie was taking out the garbage and the bag caught on the door jam. The contents of the bag spilled all over the floor, and he quietly cursed and went to get another bag. That was when he found about 20 of Sam’s toys in the trash. They varied from stuffed animals to action figures.
Confused, Charlie asked me if I had thrown them away, or was punishing Sam for something. I told him no, and was equally puzzled.
Sam, for some unknown reason, had been throwing his own toys away.
Together, after dinner, we sat down with Sam at the table to ask about the toys. We saw it as a cry for help.
“They were selected,” he said in response. “They weren’t doing a good enough job, so they were fired. Their time was up.”
Charlie told Sam that we don’t throw toys away because they cost money and we don’t waste things. Sam nodded, but I saw his hands clutch the sides of the Y stick tightly under the table. He was stressing. Something was going on.
We ended the conversation on a light note, and Sam understood why we were upset. He promised not to throw away any more toys, then ran off to bed.
I just remember thinking how strange the sentence was “their time was up.” That was an adult’s line: not something you hear from kids.
Sam’s school sent an email to all the parents, about two weeks after our hiking trip. The principal pleaded with parents to not let their children come to school if their child was sick, as there was a very serious flu going around the school. He even admitted that five teachers and thirty students had been sick over the last week alone.
I showed it to Charlie, but he didn’t find it as weird as I did.
“Hand sanitizer breeds super bugs,” he shrugged. “Just tell Sam to wash his hands more often.”
The final straw for me came a few nights later. It was a Wednesday night when I woke up for no reason. Charlie was snoring next to me, but in a lull between snores, I heard a whisper. Fear seized my throat, and I lifted my head off the pillow slowly to peer at the bedroom door. Someone moved in the dark, stumbling along. Someone small and short. Sam.
Irritated, I got up and walked to the door. I saw Sam skip away, as if he were crossing a field of spiders and was desperate not to get any on his shoes.
“Sam,” I whispered, walking out after him. I turned the corner into the family room, but he wasn’t there. I heard bare feet race across the kitchen floor, and that made me angry. The little shit was hiding from me.
I walked through the family room, and noticed that the clock on the wall was way louder than usual. Or maybe I was hypersensitive because I was exhausted. When I entered the kitchen, Sam was facing me. He stood next to the fridge, and the small LED’s on it lit up his expression. He was terrified, and his little Y stick was pointed right at me.
“Sam,” I hissed in annoyance. “It’s late. Go back to bed.”
“I… need water,” he said, still looking at me with wide eyes. It was an obvious lie, but one not abnormal for kids caught up past their bedtime.
“Okay, then get some water,” I sighed.
“Can you get it?” He asked, still clutching the stick and pointing it my way.
He must’ve seen my “mom” look, because he reemphasized. “Please.”
I walked forward, and that’s when I noticed that he pointed the stick around me. He was pointing at something behind me. I whirled around really fast and stared into the… empty darkness of the family room.
The clock was still noticeably loud. It sounded like a person saying the actual words.
Tick tock.
Tick tock.
I looked around the room for a full thirty seconds. Nothing moved.
“What are you doing up, Sam?” I asked, turning back to face him. He looked at me with real, true terror in his eyes. The stick was shaking in his hand.
“Sam,” I hissed, snapping a little bit.
“It’s not time yet,” he stuttered, barely glancing at me. His gaze was transfixed beyond me. “I’m not ready yet.”
For half a second, I wondered if he was pretending to sleep walk. Then I wondered if he actually was sleep walking. Then my tiredness washed over me and I got irritable again.
“It’s time for bed,” I insisted, walking towards him. Still, he kept his eyes behind me, and the stick pointed into the family room.
“Okay, okay,” he said, defeated as I approached. He took slow, unwilling steps towards the family room. I stood behind him, watching to make sure he went to bed. I saw his head look back and forth, scanning the room as he entered. He was looking for something. He looked back at me with uncertainty.
Suddenly, he screamed.
“MOM! WATCH OUT!”
I instinctively whirled around, hands up and ready to attack whatever was there.
Nothing. Nothing but darkness and the far kitchen wall.
I ground my teeth and glared down at him. He was still shaking, pointing his stick into the empty kitchen. I was beyond annoyed now. This stick had been out of control for weeks.
“I think you need a break from this,” I said, snatching the stick from his hand.
“No! NO!” He screeched. Sam practically leapt at me, but I jumped out of the way. This was the only way, I assured myself. This stick wasn’t healthy after all.
“Don’t! DON’T!” He cried and yelled, following me through the family room and into the hall. All the attention that he’d pointed into the kitchen was now directed at me.
He tried to jump and grab at the stick, but I held it above my head. I felt like a teenage older sibling, teasing my younger brother. But this was necessary.
I regretted waking Charlie up, but I pushed my way into my room, tossed the stick onto the floor, and turned back to get Sam out.
“Give it to me, give it to me, GIVE IT TO ME!” He demanded without taking a breath. I pushed him out and shut the bedroom door. I flipped the lock on the handle and sighed.
“Wuz goin on?” Charlie mumbled.
“I took the stick away. He was playing with it all night,” I sighed, coming back to bed. Sam was pounding on the door. I convinced Charlie that we should ignore him, let him tire himself out, and tomorrow we would lecture him. He verbally agreed, though I could sense that he didn’t agree inside.
It took an hour, but Sam gave up, and we went to sleep.
The next morning, my throat felt like I had swallowed sandpaper. The flu. Of course. My stomach rumbled and rousted me out of bed. I found myself starting to run to the master bathroom after my stomach turned nauseous. I puked up spaghetti from dinner the night before.
Stumbling out of the bathroom, I had to move aside for Charlie, who couldn’t make it to the toilet and threw up into the sink.
“Not you too,” I sighed sympathetically.
“I haven’t been this sick since I was a kid,” he moaned, rinsing his mouth out.
I rubbed my eyes, still tired from Sam’s ordeal last night, and got in the shower with the lights off, hoping it would help my light sensitivity.
Charlie decided to call in sick and rest for the day. I got ready for the day so I wouldn’t lounge around in my pajamas all day, feeling even more sick. When I was completely ready, I unlocked the bedroom door and stepped out. Sam was nowhere in sight, which meant he had gone back to bed. Good.
“Sam, I hope you’re getting ready for school,” I said loudly. No reply. I went to his room, and found the door shut as usual. I twisted the handle and pushed, but the door was stuck.
“The hell…” I muttered quietly. Using my shoulder, I shoved hard against the door. I heard a clatter, then the door opened. As I entered, I saw three things right away.
One, a chair had been placed under the door handle, preventing it from opening easily. Two, the window was wide open, with the screen missing. And three, Sam wasn’t in his room.
We called the police immediately after searching the house from top to bottom. If we hadn’t called them, I have no idea where we would have started. Should we have driven around, looking for him? Called his friend’s houses to see if they knew where he was?
The police were helpful, and I spent a miserable half-day sitting by the phone, puking my guts out and worrying about Sam. The police were out driving around, searching for Sam with his picture taped to their dashboards.
Charlie was dead asleep when I wandered into the bedroom, debating lying down. But I couldn’t sleep while Sam was missing. The sickness would let me, of course, but the guilt of falling asleep while this was going on was too much.
I saw the stick, which had landed partially under the bed when I threw it last night.
All this because of a stick?
Maybe the doctor was wrong. Maybe he did have something wrong with him, but it was mental. Psychological. Maybe instead of a doctor, we should take him to a psychologist.
In an attempt to stay awake, I decided to search the house for the fifteenth time. This time, I carried the stick with me.
“Sam,” I said, loud enough to be heard while I walked through the family room, kitchen, and to the stairs. Maybe he was hiding in the storage room downstairs. Maybe behind a few boxes.
“Sam!” I said again. “I have your stick! I’m sorry I took it! Please come out, mommy is really worried! You aren’t in trouble!”
I descended the stairs, and halfway down, I thought I heard him reply. It was faint, far away. The words were impossible to make out.
“Sam!” I cried desperately, spinning around on the stairs to try and figure out if he was upstairs or downstairs.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a leg dart around the corner at the bottom of the stairs, towards the storage room.
My hunch was correct.
I sped down the stairs and turned the corner. The door was closed. I tried to twist the handle, but he had locked it.
“Sam, honey, open the door please,” I pleaded while reaching for the key at the top of the door frame. When he didn’t unlock the door, I stuck the key in and twisted. The door popped open to reveal our pitch black storage room.
The room was in the middle of the house and had no windows. It contained our water heater and the control system for the heat and AC. The room was so large, though, that Charlie had built shelves for us to keep our seasonal decorations, our camping supplies, and extra food and water.
“Sam,” I said more quietly, feeling uneasy. Something about the room was getting to me.
“How does the clock tick, mother?” Sam said from somewhere in the room.
I froze. The word mother made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
Something’s not right. Something’s not right.
“S-Sam, c-come on out now,” I stuttered. Light spilled in from the doorway, but it didn’t illuminate enough of the room for me to search. I slowly stepped toward the center of the room where a string hung down from a single bulb in the ceiling.
With one hand, I kept ahold of the stick. With the other, I reached out to search for the string. I couldn’t see it, but I knew it was there somewhere.
Suddenly, the door slammed shut, and at that exact instant, my hand brushed against hair. Long, greasy hair at my shoulder height. Sam wasn’t that tall. The hair was tangled, and long.
I yelped and jumped back, startled by the door and the hair simultaneously.
Sam giggled.
“Do you know how the clock ticks?”
It came from my left, along the wall. The hair had been to my right.
What else was in here with us?
I was paralyzed. I couldn’t see a damn thing. My phone was upstairs, so I couldn’t use that as a flashlight. The ceiling light was somewhere in front of me, and the door was somewhere behind me.
Every time I started to reach out, I remembered touching the greasy hair, and recoiled.
“CHARLIE!” I called upward, hoping he could hear me. Hoping he was awake.
“Tick tock, tick tock,” Sam said again. My brain instantly remembered the sound the clock had made the night before. It was the same voice. Faintly a voice, and faintly background noise at the same time.
“Sam,” my voice hoarsely whispered. I had to throw up again. I swallowed bile and felt one more time for the string. It brushed my hand, and I jumped back before realizing that I was feeling string, not greasy hair.
Resolutely, I launched my hand out and grabbed at the string. It swung into my hand, and I yanked on it, hard.
The single bulb buzzed to life, and something moved to my right. I screamed at the top of my lungs when I saw white and black. It’s taken me a long time to place the shape, but now I’m certain. A deer’s skull partially covered by stringy hair darted away from the light, circling behind me.
In absolute terror, I squeezed my eyes shut and didn’t dare open them. In the battle for fight or flight, I turned into the ostrich: burying my head and hoping it didn’t see me.
I started sobbing, and wanted to run for the door, but I was too scared to open my eyes.
“Mommy?” Sam called from my left.
I didn’t respond, I was sobbing too hard.
“Mommy, help, I’m stuck.”
Very, very slowly, I moved one finger and looked to the side. Sam was huddled up on the top shelf. I couldn’t see his face, but I saw jeans and his favorite shirt.
“C-come down and let’s go,” I whispered.
“I can’t, it’s going to get me,” Sam whimpered.
I tried hard not to sob again.
“Come and get me, please,” he begged.
I fought through the terror and stepped toward the shelf, still covering my face and using a small gap in my fingers to navigate. When I reached the shelf, I closed my eyes and held my arms up.
“Climb into my arms, Sam. I’ll get you down and we’ll go get your dad,” my voice broke at the end.
“I’m stuck. My shirt is caught,” he cried.
“Okay, okay,” I said, trying to be brave for him. “Guide my hand to where it is and I’ll get you loose.”
He paused. “It’s… at the back of the shelf. You can’t reach.”
I bit my lip to stop its trembling. With both eyes still closed, I placed my hands on the top shelf, and my foot on the bottom shelf. The stick was placed on the shelf so I could use both my hands. I hoisted myself up so I could reach, and balanced precariously.
“Where is it, honey?” I asked, refusing to open my eyes.
“Reach here,” he said, and I could feel him rotate so I could reach over him.
I did, and my hand ran straight into a mess of tangled, greasy hair. My eyes opened in shock. It stared back at me for only a millisecond. In that millisecond, it spoke. Not with words. But in my head.
Do you know how the clock ticks? It is fed by death.
The shelf under my feet collapsed, and as I fell, my hands pulled the shelf until it toppled over, coming down on top of me.
I woke up in the hospital, much to Charlie and Sam’s relief. It was a tumult of information and questions. They asked why I was down there, and instead of sounding insane, I said that I’d been searching for Sam again just in case.
Sam had been found walking on the road in the general direction of the hiking spot. He wasn’t very far, thankfully, and was unharmed. When Charlie practically yelled, asking why the hell he had left in the middle of the night alone, Sam said he needed to find another stick to stop the monsters.
The police were, of course, recommending that he talk to a psychologist. They’d overheard the conversation.
Charlie didn’t wake up until the police were at our door with Sam in hand. That was about an hour after the shelf had collapsed on me. Sam and Charlie had gone looking for me in the house, and found me under the collapsed shelving. The police had been right there, thankfully, and I was rushed off to the hospital.
Some of my ribs were broken and so was my left leg. The shelf that had collapsed on me had held our camping tent, the fake Christmas tree, and a few other half-empty boxes. I was lucky that it wasn’t the food storage shelving.
The door was locked when they got to it, and the key wasn’t in the lock, so they had to break it down. The second Sam saw the scene, he apparently stood over me in a protective stance, looking all around. Charlie left to get the police before they left upstairs.
A couple of days after I got released from the hospital, and after Charlie had recovered from a flu that knocked him off his feet, I got to talk to Sam.
I asked him outright what had been going on. It took a few minutes of him denying that anything was wrong.
“I saw the… monster,” I admitted, which a parent really shouldn’t do to their child.
“You did?” He asked incredulously. I nodded.
“You and dad never saw them before. When did you see them?”
“Them?” I asked nervously.
Sam told me what had been happening for the last few weeks.
He had stumbled upon the stick by literally tripping over it. It had “spoken to him” and he took it to play with it. Whenever he had the stick, he could “see the monsters.”
“They were scary, but they stayed away when I pointed the stick at them,” he said.
A few of them had followed us home, walking alongside us on the trail. They came into the house at night and snuck around. They came into Sam’s room, our room, everywhere.
“They told me that someone had to die. They told me that you had to die.”
So, he offered the monsters toy sacrifices to satiate their hunger. But, they were unsatisfied.
“Whenever I didn’t have the stick, I could feel them try to grab me. But they stayed away whenever I had the stick. They kept telling me that your time was up.”
“Whose time?”
“Yours, mommy.”
They sat with him at night and changed “tick tock” at him. They tried to convince him to put the stick down. They offered him candy that the “big, blurry man” pulled out of thin air. At school, they followed him and said they would hurt people until he put away the stick. Five teachers and thirty students got the flu while they threatened that.
He held on to the stick as often as he could and patrolled the house at night to keep them out of my room.
That was until I took the stick.
Apparently, he had grabbed the stick from a skeleton in the woods. It looked like an animal’s skeleton. He had seen another one just like it when he got the first one, so he was going to go back and get the second one so the monsters would “stop smiling.”
One had followed him on the streets, he said.
But now, they were all gone. And after looking through the mess of the collapsed shelving, so was the stick.
Sam told his psychologist about our conversation. His psychologist told me very angrily that I should not have admitted anything like that because it fed into his delusions. He was being looked at for possible schizophrenia. I’m thinking I should be tested too.
How else do I explain everything that happened?
One detail stands out that I can’t explain. I had unlocked the door to the storage room and left the key in the handle.
So why was the key found dangling from the light bulb string?