When Catherine was born, my life began. Coming in at an even 8 pounds with a little curl of blonde on her forehead, my sweet, sweet angel had ignited something in me the moment my eyes caught sight of her. She was perfect, beautiful and pure. I swore as I held her in my arms someone, or something, from above told me that this was my moment to turn my life around. I had a drug addiction, mainly cocaine but I wasn’t shy from an assortment of other substances, yet that day I promised both her and myself that I would never touch a single drug again. And I had kept that promise. Catherine’s mother, however, couldn’t say the same. She couldn’t wait to get back out to the closest crack den she could find and shoot up. After a tough fight with CPS, proving to some hard ass judge that this girl was everything I needed in my life, I won sole custody of her. I was elated. Our life wouldn’t be perfect, but I would make it everything I could for her.
When Catherine passed away, I swore I would never recover. Holding her hand in mine as I felt her fade from this place to the next had to be the hardest thing I have ever had to do, let alone do it by myself. It’s one thing to lose someone you love unexpectedly, but it’s another thing entirely to lose your only child without warning. Hell, even if I knew what was about to happen, it would not have taken any of the edge off.
She was sleeping at her friend Sabrina’s house. It was late, like 11:30 at night. I was asleep when my cell started going off. I always had it on and turned it to max volume when she was out for the night because she had a bad case of night terrors and often didn’t last the whole night at her friends house. I was so thankful she had a good group of friends though, none of them poked fun at her or bullied her for it, they were all more than understanding of my baby girl’s problems.
When I answered the phone, I was already prepared for the conversation I would have with her.
“Hey sweety, did it happen again?”
The answer wasn’t what I expected, nor did it come from Catherine.
“Hey, Mike? It’s Rayann, Sabrina’s mom. You need to get here, now.”
I tried to ask Rayann what had happened, why she sounded so panicked over whatever it was, but she hung up on me before I could even finish a breath.
I got in my car and I drove through the heavy rain, passing by dim street lamp after dim street lamp until I made it to the house. I nearly destroyed my breaks from how hard I slammed on them when I noticed the two cop cars and ambulance, all their lights colouring the abyss of the night on the street. I hopped out of the car and ran up to the door where two of the officers were standing. One turned to me, their hand held out to stop my approach.
“My daughter’s in there, what’s going on?” I stammered through the heavy downpour.
At this, the second officer also turned to me.
“Sir, are you the father of Catherine Sutton?”
This all seemed so weird, like a feverish dream.
“Yes, why? What’s wrong with my daughter?”
The next two hours are a barely lucid play by play of events where my body and soul had become too detached from each other. I sat there, on Rayann’s couch, her on one side of me holding Sabrina, and in my hands I held her favourite teddy bear, a simple brown bear I had bought her as an infant from some convenience store when picking up diapers. She had taken it everywhere with her. It was so worn down and torn and coming undone at the seams; I saw my reflection in that bear.
The police asked the standard questions. What Catherine looked like, how old was she, general weight and height.
Had she ever run off before.
I can’t remember answering a single question, but I remember them writing in their notepad so I must have given them something of a response enough times before they asked me to come with them to the police station as they put together a search team to look around the general area.
As we rode underneath the streetlights, I clenched that bear in my hands so tight, and though the abyss out of my window began to creep into the back of my mind, I held firmly to the knowledge that very soon I would find my baby girl, she would be safe and we would get through whatever happened. Together.
I hadn’t once let any of that darkness creep to the forefront of my mind.
The police put their team together and we looked through every alley, back road and gutter we could think of and found nothing. The plan was when the sun began to rise we would meet at the woods just outside of town and comb them. She had to be somewhere.
Finally, we met at the clearing just before the trees. It was me and eight other officers, four of whom hadn’t been at Rayann’s.
I can’t explain it, but there was something about when I entered the forest that just told me I was about to see my Catherine again. And after twenty minutes of looking around, I was right.
Yet I wish even to this day that I was wrong.
I don’t know how or when, but at some point I had lost the trail of the police and had found myself on my own in silence, albeit the rain pouring hard on the foliage around me, with nothing to guide me forward except for the slow rising sun. The bush had gotten thicker and heavier, more thorns scraped at my legs and arms as I pushed on until I had finally come to another clearing. I was not alone anymore.
In front of me were three things, all of which I took in at once and yet somehow could not piece together, even now as I think back on it.
There was a broken tree stump, splintered and jagged in the very centre of this clearing, the rest of the tree was only feet from it; it looked as if some force had snapped the tree from its base. Standing behind the stump was a figure that, thanks to the small amount of sunlight, I could tell was inhumanly tall. It was very boney, naked and lankey. It’s neck alone seemed to be two feet long. Its fingers, things that looked like broken needles, were holding on to the thing in front of it, the thing impaled by the tree base. It was completely hairless yet it looked so inhumanly human. When you were young, did your parents ever read you the story about the crooked man who lived in the crooked house? If so, that’s what this thing looked like to me, but on a much more grotesque level. The thing it was devouring, I looked down on it finally and my mind tried so hard to lie to me about what I was looking at, but nothing could stop me from accepting what I had seen.
My Catherine.
The thing had her nearly torn to pieces and yet she was looking right at me, her mouth shaking as she tried to say something, anything to me. As I noticed her, the thing had noticed me. It looked up from her towards me, it’s face a grotesque smile from ear to ear. It’s eyes were white with bloody veins streaking through. It stood up so fast, that it seemed to just appear standing out of nowhere. Without warning or notion or even reason, it turned and began to run through the trees, its hands held up to the sky like a child running from a playful pursuer.
I didn’t know what to do, what to think. What had I just witnessed? What insanity was that?
I threw those thoughts aside and I ran to Catherine, falling to my knees before I cradled her head and stroked the hair from her face.
She looked up at me with pure shock and terror in her eyes and I held back my tears as I told her it’s okay. I told her to go to sleep. I told her I loved her. I told her I loved her so fucking much. I said I was sorry, I couldn’t protect her like I had promised her I would. I kissed her forehead again and again and afuckinggain praying to God above that I would wake up and it would be sunny and I would drive to pick her up and this fucking nightmare would fade into my memory.
That moment wouldn’t come. I don’t know when she faded, I just know she was gone by the time the police had found us. I didn’t tell them what I saw, how could I and why should I? They wouldn’t believe me that some eight foot tall gangly man of a monster fucking ate her. So I let them come up with their own assumptions.
They said the kidnapper must have killed her and dropped her off in the woods, and some animal must have gotten to her.
They would never find her killer, at least for their sake I hope they never do.
I see it all the time now. Everytime I drive by those woods on the outskirts, I see it poking its elongated face out of the treeline and just smiling at me. And it knows that I see it.
And that makes it happy.