My name is Mark, and I’m a detective. Not like, on the force or anything, a private eye, like in the movies. It’s kind of the family business. My grandfather was one, and my dad and I grew up in that world, and it was only natural that I go into it too.
It’s not as exciting a job as you would think if you go by Hollywood. It’s mostly sitting in your car for ten hours at a time, waiting to take pictures of cheating spouses to show the spouse who is paying you to prove that they’re being cheated on. It’s kind of a bummer sometimes. People get married, they get cheated on, they get divorced. So often, kids are caught up in the middle of it all.
Now and then something crazy comes your way though. Or something exciting. I want to tell you guys about one of the crazy ones. The craziest. it happened a few years ago and sometimes I still can’t convince myself it was real. I’m not religious, and I don’t believe in the supernatural. At least, I didn’t until Benson Street. Now, I’m not so sure.
A woman got a hold of me in August of 2020. She had lost contact with her sister. She came into my office and spun a pretty crazy story. Her sister lived in a small town in Michigan called Franklin’s Green. My client was named Shelly. She was sixty-two and her sister was a little younger. They were close and spoke almost every day. But for the last month, her sister hadn’t answered her calls. And then Shelly did a little digging and came across a couple of news stories that were a little hard to believe. They said that everyone who lived on Benson Street had gone missing. There were eight houses on the dead-end street, and every person who lived in them had seemingly vanished into thin air.
I mean, I read the stories myself. After Shelly left, I did my digging, and she was right. It was crazy, and I was a little surprised the story hadn’t gotten more attention. I called Shelly back that night and told her I would take her case. I didn’t usually travel that far for a job, but the next morning I packed a few things up and left my office in Cincinnati.
Hours later I arrived in Franklin’s Green. There was a little crappy motel and I checked in and then headed right for Benson Street. It was smack dab in the middle of a little sleepy neighborhood, lower middle class, mostly ranch-style homes. The entrance to Benson Street was completely roped off with yellow police tape stretched between a telephone pole and a stop sign. I parked nearby and decided to canvas the surrounding streets. I knocked on doors, stopped, and chatted with an old man out watering his garden, and stuff like that. No one had much for me. Everyone on Benson Street had simply been there one day and gone the next. No one knew why. The people I spoke with were happy to share their theories with me. The street was full of drug addicts who had all gotten high and wandered off. There was a gas leak that killed everyone in their sleep and the gas company removed the bodies to avoid suspicion. Nothing I was told seemed very likely.
By the time I had spoken with a number of people, the sun had gone down. I debated going back to the motel and starting the next morning, but I thought I would at least check out Shelly’s sister’s house. I grabbed my flashlight from my duffel bag in my trunk and ducked under the yellow tape.Shelly’s sister was named Mary, and she had been married to a guy named Tom for nearly forty years. They had two children who were grown and lived out of state. Shelly had told me they were worried about their mother and father as well and hadn’t been able to reach them. Nor had Mary and Tom reached out to them.
Mary’s house was third on the left, and I did a slow circle around it, shining my flashlight in the dark. I’m not sure what clues I was looking for, but there were none to find. One thing that took me by surprise a bit was just how big the houses on Benson Street were compared to the rest of the neighborhood.
I made my way back around to the front of the house and went up onto the porch. I tried the doorknob and was surprised to find the house unlocked. I was sure the cops had been through all of the houses on the street, but as I stepped inside I saw no evidence of this. I worked through the ground floor slowly, resisting the urge to turn lights on as I went. I didn’t want to draw any attention to myself, and one of these houses with lights burning in every window would be very noticeable to anyone who drove by Benson Street.
The home was eerie. It really was as if Mary and her husband had simply vanished. There was a half-empty can of Coke on the kitchen island, and dishes that needed to be washed in the sink. A cloud of flies buzzed here and there, eating the food residue that had been waiting to be cleaned away.A door in the kitchen opened up to a set of stairs leading down. I decided to save the basement for last and went upstairs instead. I worked slowly, just as I had on the ground floor. There were four bedrooms. The master bedroom was the married couple obviously, and another of the bedrooms was a guest room. The third bedroom had been converted into a home office. The laptop on the desk there was dead. I found the charger and plugged it in then went into the fourth bedroom, which had a treadmill and an exercise bike.
I had saved the master bedroom for last, and worked my way through the dresser there, finding nothing but clothes. The closet was another story. There was a shoebox up on the shelf, hidden underneath folded bedsheets and a hand-stitched quilt. I pulled the box down and opened it, surprised to find a knife.
The knife was ornate, the blade curved, and the hilt made of bone, and wrapped in leather. Etchings had been carved into the bone and I unwrapped the leather to better see. I can only describe the etchings as strange runes. Almost like an alphabet, they were very letter-like but damned if I knew what they meant.
I took pictures of the knife and then replaced it in the box and hid it once again. All that was left was the basement, and I was surprised to realize I had been putting it off, even dreading going down there.
I had no other choice though, and headed down into the kitchen with heavy steps, and then down once more. I swept my light across the open basement. It was unfinished, the walls cement, as well as the floor. Small frosted windows sat near the beams of the floor above. The basement had just been used for storage. I found cardboard boxes filled with Christmas decorations and a small wooden chest filled with important papers like birth certificates and old pay stubs.
Above me, a creak. I froze and turned off my light. A thud, another creak. Someone was walking on the ground floor. I wrestled with what to do, and I could feel my heart thumping wildly in my chest. Did I call out? Admit that I was trespassing? Did I go upstairs and try to sneak out? Did I stay and hope they didn’t come down?
I crept slowly to the foot of the wooden stairs that I had come down. I had left the basement door open and cursed myself for my stupidity. I listened to the footsteps above me. Sweat stung my eyes and I wiped it away. The footsteps came into the kitchen, and I moved away from the bottom of the stairs. I looked for a place to hide, and wedged myself in behind a stack of plastic totes along the wall just as I heard footsteps on the stairs. I held my breath. I peeked out, but it was so dark down here I couldn’t see much more than a dark shape. It paused at the foot of the stairs, and then turned and went back up. I waited for what felt like an eternity but was probably only ten minutes. I didn’t hear any movement upstairs.
I left my hiding spot and went to the foot of the stairs. I took them slowly, exited into the kitchen, and then shut the door as quietly as I could. I paused there for a long time, listening. If anyone else was still in the house, they weren’t moving. I hurried to the front door and pulled it open. I stepped out onto the porch and pulled the door shut behind me. I rushed off of the porch and into the middle of the street. I turned and looked at the house, and felt sheer terror as my eyes swept up to one of the windows that looked out into the street from the master bedroom. Someone was standing there, staring right at me. The same dark shadow I had seen in the basement. I turned and ran down the street to my car. I rushed to the motel and went inside my room. The locked door wasn’t enough. I pushed the heavy circular table that served as an eating area in the small room in front of the door too and found myself exhausted. I fell into a restless sleep. I dreamed of a dark shape and of that curved blade.
I have a meeting coming up, so I’m going to have to stop there. Things got crazy in the days that followed, and I’ll come back tomorrow and fill you guys in on the rest. Honestly, I’m kind of glad for the little break, reliving this all has me looking over my shoulder.