I had nearly completed my daily run. The trail through the woods below our property had been cool on this early autumn evening, a hint of a breeze rustling through leaves that were just beginning to surrender their green. My exposed shoulders and legs had been chilly at first, but my skin was covered with a fine layer of sweat as I completed my five miles and left the trail for the macadam along Brookshire Road. I paused briefly to look both ways for any oncoming traffic and, seeing none, jogged onto the asphalt. The remaining quarter mile to the house was at a slight incline, and my legs, already tired, began to burn.
I waved to a neighbor as I jogged by; he nodded a greeting in return. The lights were on in most of the houses I passed, and I imagined that dinner was being either prepared or served in some of them, given the time of day. This reminded me that I hadn’t given any thought yet as to what I had planned to make for my own family, nor had I remembered to discuss it with Ted before I had left for my run. I often feigned surprise whenever my 18-year-old boys would inevitably tell me they were hungry as 6:00 approached, playfully responding, “Didn’t I just feed you yesterday?” There might a meatloaf in the freezer that I could thaw. Or perhaps Teddy would surprise me by making dinner for myself and the twins, and I would open the door to the pleasant aroma of baked chicken or spaghetti. It wasn’t likely, but stranger things had happened.
Ahead of me, a rusted brown pickup truck was parked crookedly on the berm, the nose of it cutting a slice in the road, and I casually cursed at the inconvenience of having to jog around it. Overhead, a bird squawked at me, as if scolding me for running in the middle of the road. I looked up to see what kind of bird was making such a racket, and saw nothing but leaves and branches.
Veering right, I stepped quickly over the edge of our lawn and onto the sidewalk that leads to the front door. The mailbox lid was open, revealing nothing inside. I flipped it shut. Looking to the house, I saw that there were no lights coming from any of the windows, which was odd. When I had left for my run, the boys had been in their rooms, supposedly working on homework, while Ted had been in his office, editing. But now, no light came from any of the windows at all, and my mind immediately went back to the idea of dinner. Maybe my boys had run out to pick up a pizza. But no, if pizza was the order of the evening, delivery was always Ted’s go-to. Plus they never remembered to turn off lights before leaving the house.
The driveway was empty, but that meant nothing. Ted and I both parked our cars in the garage.
As I made my way down the sidewalk, my jog having devolved into a stroll, my mind then came up with another explanation for the darkened house, and my heart, still pounding from my five mile run, sank.
Two words: Scared Mary.
“Scared Mary” is the name of a YouTube video, a video that went viral a little more than two years ago. The whole thing started because of one of those here-today-gone-tomorrow internet trends, the kind that inspires people with too much time on their hands to eat Tide Pods or dump buckets of ice on their heads. This particular trend, which not coincidentally rose to prominence around Halloween of that year, was really simple and not the least bit original: men scaring their wives or girlfriends, catching their mortified reactions on video, and uploading the clip to YouTube or TikTok for all the world to see and laugh at.
Teddy had found the whole idea ridiculously delightful, laughing gleefully at each new clip he discovered, often playing the choicest ones for me and the boys. I had to admit some of them were quite funny. But at the same time I felt a fleeting sympathy for each of these briefly terrified women, then relief for them when they eventually laughed at their own reaction.
It should not have surprised me at all when Ted conspired to create a video of his own. Not that he put much thought to it. He simply stepped into the bathroom one evening following my run, yanked back the shower curtain where I was rinsing off my sweat, and, phone at the ready and digitizing every moment, yelled, “Boo!”
I turned toward him and screamed. I had never screamed like that before in my life, nor knew myself capable of making such a sound, both loud and guttural, as if it originated in my toes and gained momentum as it erupted its way to my mouth. The sound filled the room and reverberated off the tiles. My hands, covered in soap, came up to either side of my face and shook violently, flinging tiny suds like spit. My eyes bulged wide. The sides of my mouth pulled down in a mortified frown as if tugged by invisible fish hooks. My entire face was a mask of terror, framed by my long black hair, which was plastered by hot water against my head.
Ted at first was so incredibly startled by my reaction that he jumped backwards, but then was so overcome by laughter that he sat down on the bathroom floor, his back against the wall. Tears streamed down his cheeks, which had begun to turn red.
My heart pounding, I snatched a towel from the rack and covered myself before stepping out of the tub. I wanted to yell at him, shout at him for scaring me so badly, but knew it was no good saying anything until he had quieted down and was actually able to hear me speak. As I waited, my fear gave way to anger, and as Ted continued to laugh uncontrollably on the floor, my anger began to melt away as well, and soon I was surprised to find myself smiling and, eventually, laughing right along with him. Laughing out of relief, and laughing simply because Ted’s own howling was so contagious.
I sat down on the floor beside him. Wiping tears, he held up the phone and played back the video he had just taken. I was relieved to see he had only captured me from the shoulders up. At least my modesty was still intact, if not my dignity. And when I heard my own scream again and saw the circus mask of terror that I had managed to contort my face into, both Ted and I dissolved into a second fit of laughter that left our sides in stitches and our cheeks tear-stained.
Later that evening, after playing the video for our boys, who watched it at least a dozen times and laughed uproariously every single time, Ted asked me if he could put the video on YouTube.
“You don’t know anything about putting videos on YouTube,” I said.
“I’ll figure it out,” he insisted. “Can I do it?” He was like a child asking his mom to buy him a shiny new toy at the store when he has no allowance saved up and Christmas is still months away. His absolute glee swayed me, and I reluctantly said yes.
And I have regretted it ever since.
As I stepped toward our front door, the security lights sensed me and came on. I squinted as my eyes adjusted to their glare, and then I saw that the window beside the door was shattered inward, the glass spilling into the kitchen on the other side.
My shoulders slumped with disappointment. “Ted,” I whispered, shaking my head and scolding him under my breath even though I knew he couldn’t hear me. I guessed that the door was unlocked, and sure enough the knob turned easily in my hand. I stepped inside, flipping on the kitchen lights. Glass crunched quietly under my sneakers. The room was empty. And there was no aroma of supper. But my disappointment at the lack of dinner was slight compared to the idea of having to replace what had been a perfectly good kitchen window.
“Ted?” I called out. “Just come out, please. I’m in no mood.”
Silence responded.
Ted had titled the bathroom video clip “Scared Mary.” He read enough to figure out that he needed to create a YouTube channel of his own before he could upload the clip and, in a moment of zero inspiration, he likewise named his new YouTube channel “Scared Mary.” And so “Scared Mary” the video was uploaded to “Scared Mary” the YouTube channel, and in short order, Ted began texting and e-mailing the URL of the clip to his coworkers, his brothers, his golfing buddies… pretty much everyone he had ever gone to school with, worked with, or hung from the same family tree.
Within the week, the video went viral. Who knows why these things happen. Ted’s video was one of literally hundreds of clips of husbands scaring their unsuspecting wives, but for reasons neither of us could ever explain, Ted’s video took root and grew like a virtual weed. Hundreds of views became thousands, thousands became hundreds of thousands, and hundreds of thousands became a million and more. Friends of mine texted to say they had seen the clip, not because Ted had sent it to them, but because a friend or family member had shared it with them. A woman in the grocery store recognized me, stopping me to say her husband had nearly had a heart attack from laughter after watching the clip. My mom, who had likewise come to view the video from an indirect source, called to ask me if I was okay. Soon parody videos began to appear like an acne outbreak, one of them auto-tuning my scream to a techno beat, the resulting song a catchy earworm that itself garnered thousands of views and was later available to download from iTunes or stream on Spotify.
Ted became obsessed. Before long, the video had so many views, and his YouTube had so many subscribers, that he was qualified to monetize any future content he uploaded. I could see the light twinkling in his eyes as he planned how best to build upon an opportunity that had presented itself to him seemingly out of nowhere. But doing so would mean creating new content.
Over the next few weeks, Ted scared me. A lot. He hid behind doors. In the shower. Under the bed. Outside of windows. In the basement. He once hid in the woods along the trail that I ran, jumping out behind a tree as I jogged by. He captured every single reaction on video. A handful of the clips were unusable or not satisfactory, but in many of them, my terrified scream and mortified grimace were exactly the content Ted had wanted. These new clips were uploaded, and while none of them went viral like the original “Scared Mary” video had done, Ted’s subscriber base grew and he racked up millions of total views. And as he was now able to monetize the videos, he began to generate a small side income, a minuscule comfort to me as I found myself increasingly unsettled and on edge inside my own home.
The wheels in Ted’s head were always turning. He knew that in time, his viewers would grow tired of his simple jump scare videos starring himself and his hapless wife. His content needed to evolve and become more elaborate if he wanted to keep his subscribers interested. So he began utilizing props and costumes. Soon, I was screaming as mechanized spiders fell from cabinets, jumping when ghostly moans emanated loudly from dark closets, and recoiling at the sight of severed heads resting atop silver platters on the top shelf of the fridge.
From there, Ted began buying even more elaborate props: giant mechanical clowns that lunged and cackled when I inadvertently stepped on a button on the floor, ghostly little girls whose faces glowed in the dark, their heads spinning as they laughed, and zombies that would spring out from under the bed as I walked by. Ted and I eventually had to sit down together and create an actual budget for the Scared Mary channel, allocating funds for additional props, costumes, lights, and sound effects. We initially cleared out a corner of the wine cellar to store all of these items, and when the Scared Mary inventory outgrew that space, Ted erected a storage shed in the back yard to house it all.
I kept waiting for this phase to pass, just like the internet trend that had inspired it in the first place, but for whatever reason, Ted’s channel continued to grow in popularity. He enlisted the help of our boys, Jamie and Jesse, who delighted in helping their father set up each new scare. The three of them had an easy and hilarious screen chemistry that no doubt attracted viewers. Jamie, the more creative of the twins, came up with a logo for the channel – a stylized illustration of my mortified face, mid-scream – and Ted began to sell Scared Mary t-shirts, hoodies, and mugs. As the channel grew, so did the revenue, and one of the biggest surprises was when I began to receive royalty checks for the “Scared Mary” song that featured my auto-tuned scream. The catchy tune had been downloaded so many times that it had briefly become a top 10 dance track on iTunes and its producer – some nameless, faceless music studio geek out of California – had proactively listed me as a performer and co-producer on the song, which entitled me to royalties, a move he had probably made in an effort to keep me or Ted from suing.
Eventually, the revenue from the channel eclipsed Ted’s salary at work, and we had the conversation I had suspected for months was coming: Ted wanted to quit his 9-to-5 and focus solely on being a YouTuber. Methodical as always, he had mapped out a six month, one year, and five year plan for the channel that included additional merchandising avenues, licensing opportunities, and ideas for further content. He presented his plans to me as if we were in a board room and I was his CEO. Already Ted had been contacted by a toy company that wanted to make a Scared Mary doll (“Pull the string – she screams!”), and on the kitchen table was an ever-growing stack of screenplays and treatments for a possible Scared Mary movie. A new one arrived seemingly every week. Ted read a few of them, all of which were garbage, but I knew that ultimately Ted wanted to write one himself.
Of course I consented to Ted’s career change. The money spoke for itself, but even more compelling was the absolute delight he derived from this new endeavor. Instead of spending countless unrewarding hours imprisoned in a cubicle, he was curating a channel that brought laughter to himself and his growing subscriber base. Instead of dreading Mondays, he worked tirelessly on “Scared Mary” while also admitting it felt like he wasn’t working at all. There was a vibrancy behind Ted’s lightning blue eyes that I had only witnessed twice before: on our wedding day and on the day our sons were born.
But as I sat across the table from Ted, holding his hand as he concluded his proposal, nodding my blessing that he could give his two-week notice, I suddenly burst into tears. It caught us both by surprise.
Ted’s face fell. “What is it?” he asked, and I saw fear wash over him: fear that I might change my answer.
“Ted, I’m… I’m just so tired. My nerves are shot. I can’t…” My voice hitched. “I can’t go on being afraid to live in my own house. Every waking moment I’m on edge. Every time I turn a corner, or open a door, or flip on a light switch, I don’t know what might jump out at me. My nerves are shot.”
Ted, still holding my hand, sat back in his chair. Realization dawned on his face. He had been so wrapped up in the channel, so invigorated by its success that he had not realized his good fortune had come at a price. It was a price that I had been paying for months but had kept quietly to myself because I didn’t want to crush his enthusiasm.
“Oh Mare,” he said, squeezing my hand. “You always end up laughing along with me in the end. I never even thought… I’m so sorry.”
And so Ted promised to change direction. He began producing videos that did not include me. Sometimes he would frighten the boys. He also set up scares along public walkways and recorded the reactions of startled strangers. Sometimes these pranks nearly resulted in fist fights, but usually the scared-then-relieved passersby were more than happy to appear in a video on the Scared Mary channel. He started doing horror movie reviews along with the boys. And he attended pop culture and horror conventions, setting up a table with Scared Mary merchandise where he sold caps and buttons and even DVD compilations of his video clips.
Eventually he asked me to go along with him. “I know it’s not your scene,” he said, “but nine out of ten people who come to the booth ask where you are. You are the star of the channel, after all.”
I was reluctant to go and told him as much.
“Most of the people there are really cool,” he said. “And how many times in your life have you had a crowd of people asking for your autograph?”
And so I went with him. Twice. And both times were a terrible mistake. People would approach the booth, some of them in pedestrian clothes, some of them wearing the most horrific costumes and make-up imaginable. They would ask for an autograph on a small poster or t-shirt, and while I was in the midst of signing, they would scream or yell or lunge at me, capturing my reaction on their cell phone, which had been recording me clandestinely. Sometimes I was so startled that the autograph would be ruined, but that seemed to delight them all the more. There seemed to be a competition to see who could walk away with the most illegible autograph of all. The clips would hit the internet with the hashtag, “IScaredMary”. By the end of both conventions, I was completely strung out.
Ted stopped asking me to come with him. But since I stopped coming to the fans, the fans started coming to me. I received a handful of glitter bombs in the mail, innocent-looking packages that exploded with confetti when opened, equipped with video cameras that caught my startled reaction. #IScaredMary. More than once, fans of the channel hid in our bushes or behind our trees, jumping out when I exited the house. #IScaredMary. I told Ted that I was beginning to fear what extremes one of these anonymous fans might go to in order to record a great “Scared Mary” video of their own. We eventually had to unlist our phone numbers and home address.
That should have been the end of my affiliation with everything Scared Mary. And were it not for that stupid name, I probably could have turned my back on it forever and left it completely in Ted’s hands. But because of that name, that name that Ted had picked in a moment of sheer unoriginality, I was forever linked with Ted’s unexpectedly lucrative side-project-cum-career. So while he agreed to divert the bulk of his output to other creeps and scares and things that go bump in the night, he explained to me that every once in awhile he would need to create a new, authentic “Scared Mary” video. “Give the people what they want,” he said. “It’s right there in the name.”
We tried faking a few, staging the scares so that I knew what was coming. But the results were no good. I don’t think I’m a terrible actress, but there was simply no pulling off the kind of reaction that spontaneously happened when I was genuinely frightened. And so, very reluctantly, I had agreed: Ted could scare me once every three months, meaning that the channel could have a total of four new and genuine “Scared Mary” videos per year.
He was delighted.
But of course, Ted couldn’t just rest on his laurels. Each new video had to outdo the last. He didn’t like repeating himself creatively.
All of this history came flooding back to me as I stood in my dark kitchen, nothing but the sound of grinding glass under my feet as I shifted my weight.
“Ted!” I yelled out again, tossing my keys on the kitchen table. “Not tonight. I am not in the mood. So wherever you and the boys are hiding, come out. I’m tired and I’m hungry and…”
As if on cue, the door to the walk-in pantry opened, slowly. It creaked on its hinges. I turned my head in the direction of the sound, my heart both sinking and somehow feeling completely numb at the same time. But the kitchen was dark and so was the pantry, so as the door opened, I couldn’t see anything beyond it.
I could hear raspy breathing and a sinister giggle. There was a clicking sound as the string was pulled on the pantry’s lone light bulb. And there, standing amongst the shelves of canned goods and boxed pasta, was Ted. He was wearing a nondescript blue jumpsuit. He was wearing a white mask, one of those featureless portraits that are calm and benign but also unsettling. His hair looked oily and disheveled, and the light from the bulb above reflected off the long knife he held down at one side. I estimated the price of his entire ensemble to be somewhere around $75 unless he had managed to get it on sale a Spirit Halloween some year prior. He giggled again, the noise a stark contrast to the mask’s unsmiling face.
I walked to the nearest wall and turned on a kitchen light before putting put my hands on my hips and regarded him straight-on. Now bathed in more light, I noticed that his jumpsuit was covered in fresh blood, the mask spattered with it, the knife dripping it on the otherwise clean linoleum.
Ted stared back at me, unmoving.
“You need a haircut,” I said.
He said nothing. His breathing was loud and raspy.
Frustrated, I picked up my keys from the table. The ring held pepper spray. I pointed it at him. “You know, I would give you a face full of this right now but I don’t feel like helping you wash it out afterwards,” I said.
He didn’t react.
“Whatever,” I said, tossing the keys back down on the table. “I told you I’m not in the mood. I’m getting some wine. You and the boys decide what you want for dinner.”
I walked past the pantry door. Ted watched me go, turning his head slowly in the direction of my path, the mask an expressionless slate.
I opened the cellar door and flipped the switch at the top of the stairs. Nothing happened. “Nice. Once again you thought of everything.” Undeterred, I fished my cell phone from my pocket, activated the flashlight, and proceeded with caution down the dark steps.
What I saw down there at first admittedly gave me a bit of start, but I willed myself not to scream. It was Jamie, hanging by his neck from one of the beams overhead. His face was swollen and had a sickly purplish hue. The sight was unsettling, admittedly, especially when illuminated by my cell phone light. No mother wants to see her teenage son like that, not even in my current land of make-believe, but it wasn’t the worst condition I’d ever found him in. I’d definitely seen him more dead and bloody before.
I stared at him. He stared back at me, swinging slightly, unblinking. His shadow swung on a far wall. I didn’t bother trying to locate the fishing wire that was actually holding him up there.
“Impressive make-up job,” I said, pushing him aside slightly as I made my way past him to the wine racks. “You and Jesse are getting really good at that.”
I scanned the bottles with my cell phone light. “I don’t feel like cooking, so you and your father and brother need to decide what you’re going to pick up. Sooner rather than later, thank you. I’m starved.”
Jamie was a silent pendulum.
Bottle in hand, I turned away from him and back toward the stairs.
Ted waited for me at the top, a dark silhouette against the bright lights of the kitchen, knife by his side.
I didn’t hesitate. I pounded up the steps.
“Move,” I said when I was about halfway up.
He didn’t budge.
At the top, I planted one elbow in his stomach, gently but firmly, and pushed him aside. My arm sank deeply into the flesh of his belly. He stepped back.
“Do a sit-up every once in awhile,” I said as I walked past him, immediately feeling childish and remorseful for the comment. Ted ran as often as I did; he didn’t deserve the snark. But I wasn’t about to apologize, either.
I located a corkscrew in a drawer and popped the cork from the bottle more effortlessly than I ever had before. Ted watched me silently. He barely shifted. He fidgeted with the knife, picking at one pant leg with the sharp tip.
“Cut, that’s wrap,” I said as I plucked a wine glass from the cabinet. I filled it near to the rim and took a tiny sip. I sucked in a breath. “Do we need some kind of safe word or something?” I asked. “Something that signals that the jig is up and we’re done playing Scared Mary?”
He didn’t move. Or speak.
I plopped the bottle loudly on the counter. “Whatever. I give up.” Wine glass in hand, I brushed past Ted and through the living room door.
I flipped on a light switch. This one worked.
I didn’t react to what I saw. Instead, I walked across the room and plopped down on the sofa, wine glass still pinched between the fingers of my right hand. I crossed my legs and shook my head defiantly. My suspended foot bounced with frustrated energy.
Ted, having turned, watched me from the doorway. The mask made him look dull.
Jesse was at my feet, face down on the carpet in front of the sofa. I’d had to step over him to sit down. He was totally still. He might have looked like he was napping there, except that his face was facing directly down, uncomfortably so, nose buried in the fibers, and all around him was a large, red, wet stain.
“Hold your breath, Jesse,” I said, taking another sip. “Don’t let me catch you breathing.” I chuckled, but it wasn’t funny. “I cannot imagine what the carpet cleaning bill is going to be.”
Ted continued guarding the doorway.
“Look,” I said, putting the wine glass down on a side table with enough force to threaten breaking the stem. “When I’m done, I’m done, Ted. How many times do I have to say it?” Irritation rose in my voice, and I felt a thrumming in my chest. I had never felt so angry with him before.
He didn’t move or respond.
“Go!” I yelled, planting both feet on the floor but forcing myself to remain seated. “Either go get dinner, or go start cleaning up the mess you made, I don’t care which. Just go!”
To my surprise, he did. After a long pause, his shoulders slumped a little. Slowly, he turned from the doorway, back into the kitchen and out of sight. Momentarily, I heard the front door open and close again with a quiet click.
I took a deep breath. The house was completely silent. I sat back on the sofa and exhaled, crossing my legs once again. Picking up the wine glass once more, I drank deeply.
Distantly, I heard a vehicle door open and close. Then an engine started, rattling and throaty. It roared and then faded into the distance.
I shook my head. Looking around the room, I wondered where Ted might have hidden the cameras for this particular episode of “Scared Mary.” I couldn’t find them. But that didn’t mean they weren’t there.
I sipped. The house was now unsettlingly quiet. There was no sound from the basement. No sound from upstairs. I wondered what I might have found if I had gone up there.
With one foot, I nudged Jesse’s leg. It rolled away from me and back again. “Get up, sweetheart. It’s over now. Get up.”
Another sip. Another nudge.
“Get up.”