“How about now?” I piped up from the backseat of the car to my father, who didn’t take his eyes off the woodland road ahead of him. “Actually, I think we’re pretty close now, buddy. Another five minutes or so.”
I was ten years old when I moved to the town of Westbell in northern Canada. Having never left Alaska once in my life beforehand, I was beyond excited when my dad decided we would move due to him getting a job over there.
Despite being quite a large town, Westbell was quite literally in the middle of nowhere, being situated many, many miles into a region of Canada’s many boreal forests. There were only a handful of roads leading into the town and I don’t think there were any other noteworthy towns or settlements within at least a fifteen-mile radius.
We had been driving that day in June for what felt like an eternity and, looking back on things, I have to commend my dad for not losing his temper once at my frequent pestering. I guess it was a combination of my extreme excitement and his hope that we would have a better life in Westbell than we had back in the rural outskirts of Fairbanks. I wouldn’t say we’d been poor-my dad had still been making a sustainable income then-but things like holidays abroad and fancy clothes were well out of the question.
He was certainly expecting to make a fair bit more money in his new job in Westbell and I was gung-ho about the idea of a new home and a chance to make some close friends, something I’d never really had thus far. I had always been a reserved child and I was happy that way too, but as I got older and came out of my shell, I regretted not having tried harder to make bonds with other children when I was younger. For all my childhood my best friend was my dad and while I certainly had other kids that I could talk to and spend time with, I didn’t have anyone truly close to me. I was determined that it would be different in Westbell.
I remember the smell of freshly mowed lawns and a feeling of absolute jubilation as we pulled into the drive through of our new house. It was in a cul-de-sac neighbourhood around the centre of the town and was full of friendly looking people and children running around and screaming in the heat of a rare hot day in northern Canada.
The day after we moved in, after my dad and I were satisfied that we’d unpacked everything, there was a knock on our door. I went to open it and was greeted with a smiley, blonde kid and a man that I later learned was his father, a man named Sully.
“You must be Charlie,” the boy said, extending his hand. “I’m Ricky.” I shook his hand as our fathers headed over to our kitchen to talk and Ricky beckoned me to come outside with him.
He explained that his dad told him there was a boy moving into the cul-de-sac his age and he wanted to go and meet him so they could maybe be friends. We spent the rest of the afternoon together in the neighbourhood, with Ricky introducing me to all the other neighbourhood kids our age. I got the feeling that he was very popular among all the kids.
It was also from Ricky that I first got the lay of the land. Westbell was surrounded almost entirely on its perimeter by a thick boreal forest. Beyond that, wilderness. The one thing I had already noticed was the hill. Everyone called it that, but it could nearly have been a mountain. Despite being quite a distance into the woods, it seemed to almost tower over the town, no matter where you were looking at it from. I had spotted its peak almost half an hour before we reached the town the day before.
As the sun was beginning to set, Ricky introduced me to the kid who lived in the house furthest from my new one in the cul-de-sac, a boy named Chester Lewington. He was tall, at least a foot more so than pretty much all the other kids. He wasn’t lanky either, he had a broad body and as I would find out was exceedingly strong for his age.
Me and Chester ended up becoming close friends, and I spent the remainder of my summer playing basketball and exploring my new home with him. He was always a hilarious person to be around - he just had that natural ability to craft a great joke out of any situation he was in. Spending time with Chester gave you the same refreshing feeling as the cold side of a pillow. Chester told me a lot about Westbell’s history as well, how it had been shithole in every sense of the phrase until the late 1800s, when the filthy rich Warner family, who were bankers, bought a large amount of land in the town and started upturning its economy.
“You’ve seen it yourself dude, even now they hold so much power in the town. I mean, Tony Warner’s basically the unofficial mayor of Westbell.” He wasn’t far off the mark; Tony Warner was like a celebrity in the town. He was super involved with charities and fundraisers in Westbell and was often the face of the local newspapers.
He’d came to meet my dad once, about 2 weeks after we’d moved in. It was strange – the guy had an undeniable aura of superiority about him, but at the same time always seemed completely down to earth. I remember vividly him recommending my dad the best and most affordable places to eat in Westbell, giving him a timetable for the bus and showing him ads for all the town’s churches.
It was during the last week before school began once more that Chester decided to tell me a well-known urban legend of Westbell. As I look back throughout my life, I think this might be what started the path towards my current situation.
We had been hanging out in Chester’s basement late at night and playing on his GameCube when he put down the controller and turned to look at me.
“Hey man, did I ever tell you about the Warner hill house?”
“Never.” I replied, immediately intrigued.
“Well, you’re gonna want to hear this then. It’s a pretty well-known story here-well, I guess you’d call it an urban legend.”
Chester proceeded to tell me about a man named Herbert Warner, who was part of the generation of the family responsible for revitalising Westbell in the late 1800s. “If you think people here these days love Tony Warner, Herbert was practically the second coming of Christ to the folks around in his time. Him and his family lived in a house in the woods, at the foot of the hill.”
As Chester explained, despite all his wealth and power, there was no treasure he possessed that was of more value to him than his son, Morgan.
“Morgan died tragically in an accident. They were at a market in a different town and a group of livestock got away from some farmer and started freaking out. Poor Morgan Warner was caught in the crossfire when a goat speared his heart, killing him instantly.
“To make all of this worse, at the time Herbert’s wife was expecting another child. And only a few months after his son’s untimely death, his wife joined him, dying in childbirth.”
I felt a pang of sadness hearing Chester say those words. That was how my own mother had died, giving birth to me. I felt an urge to cry. I often felt confused by this. How could I miss someone I’d never really known?
“You good, man? You’re shuddering.” said Chester in a more concerned tone than the exaggerated one he’d been using for dramatic effect.
“Hmm? Oh, yeah, sorry. It’s nothing,” I replied apologetically. “Carry on.”
“Alrighty, where was I…,” he mused to himself. “Ah, right. So, with his two most beloved people in the world gone one after the other, Herbert was thrust into a deep, dark sadness. He ended up mad, and convinced himself that his infant son was Morgan.
“When his kid turned 13, the age the real Morgan was when he died, Herbert’s mind began to fully crack, and he locked not-Morgan in the cellar.”
I grimaced at the thought of the guy all alone in that dark cellar, to which Chester whispered, “It gets much worse.”
I swallowed the saliva that had been building in my mouth in fear and invited Chester to continue.
“It’s said that when Herbert eventually went fully mad, he killed not-Morgan – by cutting out his heart.”
“What the fuck…” I managed to get out.
“I know,” sighed Chester. “I guess that he remembered at some level that the real Morgan had died from a punctured heart, and he convinced himself that he was somehow saving him by cutting it out?”
“Yeah, maybe.” I agreed absentmindedly, feeling queasy at the thought of Herbert pulling out his own son’s still beating heart.
“Of course, Herbert was taken to the nuthouse and died shortly after but he had four siblings to keep the family tree going and at the time, they managed to mostly cover up the story, so their reputation really didn’t take as big of a hit as you’d expect.
“As the legend goes, whatever’s left of not-Morgan’s spirit stalks the area of forest around the hill to this day, killing lost or curious people in search of a new heart. So, nobody around here takes the risk of going near that hill, and neither should you.” Chester finished.
All of this was absolutely terrifying to me, as a kid who wholeheartedly believed in the existence of ghosts. The tale always stuck with me, and it made me look at that hill in a different, somewhat sinister manner.
Before long, it was time for me to start my first year of school at St. Isaac’s School of Westbell, the only middle school in the town.
When all the children of the year were separated into two classes, I was placed in the same one as both Chester and Ricky, the only two people I’d really call my friends (although calling yourself Ricky’s friend was like bragging to people that you had a working pair of legs), which made me feel pretty confident in my new environment.
On my way to the second last class of my first day, English, I had to stop for a piss, so I got separated from Chester. This led to me getting lost on my way and by the time I found the right classroom the lesson had already started.
“And why are you so late?” Ms. Palmer began laying into me.
“Sorry Miss, I got a bit lost,” I mumbled out. “This is my first day, so—”
“Oh, you must be Mr. Trench”, she cut me off, her features softening. “I understand. There’s a free seat at the back you can take.”
I made my way over to my seat and sat down. After a while, Ms. Palmer left the room to take care of something, and the class broke out into conversation.
“So, I guess you’ve just moved in.” said the boy I’d been sitting next to. His voice was a little bit quiet compared to the racket the rest of the class were making through their animated chatter.
“Uh, yeah, I did. I’m Charlie, by the way.”
“Mark. Mark Missouri.” He responded.
Mark’s head was a mess of hair that was a dirty black colour. He was wearing a pair of jeans and a t-shirt for a band I’d never heard of. The converse shoes he had on were quite badly beaten up. “Where in the town do you live now?” he asked.
“Oh, in the cul-de-sac.”
“Really? Me too. My house is the one between the Walsh and Thompson’s.”
Seeing as Ricky had never mentioned Mark, I guessed that they weren’t very acquainted with one another. Mark didn’t seem like the type to hang around popular kids anyway – as a matter of fact I don’t recall him really talking to anyone other than me that day.
In spite of that, Mark and I hit things off pretty well. I told him what life was like back in Alaska and all the things I’d gotten up to since moving. He mentioned to me that his uncle was the main detective for the local police force, Inspector Gregory Timber. His uncle, as I’d come to realise further down the line, was a lot closer to Mark than either of his parents. Mark had a lot of interesting stories for me about cases he’d investigated.
When class ended, I walked to history with him rather than Chester. I was in the middle of telling him about the time myself and Chester went catching minnows in a large stream in the woods when his expression changed.
“Be careful exploring the forests here,” he warned me, his eyes darkening. “It’s all well and good playing there but steer clear of that fucking hill, man. It’s haunted. There’s a ghost of a dead kid that wanders that part of the woods and if you cross paths with him—”
“—he’ll kill you,” I interrupt. And take your heart. I know.”
“Aww, did Chester tell you?” Mark seemed disappointed. “I always loved telling that story, but more or less everyone’s heard it in Westbell so it’s pretty rare I get to hit someone knew with it.”
Regardless, we kept talking about the legend and a few other kids joined in on our conversation, each adding their own titbit of information or terrifying personal spin on the tale. By the time the history teacher, Mr. McAffrey, entered the room, almost the whole class was discussing not-Morgan.
Mr McAffrey, as I’d soon find out, was probably the most popular teacher in the school. He felt more like an older brother or a cool uncle than a teacher, never talking down to any of the students. In fact, he asked us to call him by his first name, Simon – he believed that this would make students have a cosier relationship with the teacher and be more motivated to let him teach them.
McAffrey cracked his knuckles loudly as he sat down at his desk and adjusted his glasses, before asking the class what all the talking was about.
“We were talking about the hill house story!” exclaimed a girl named Natalie Walsh, who I knew was Mark’s next-door neighbour.
“Ah, good ole not-Morgan…” said McAffrey, in a monotonous voice.
And for the rest of the last class of the day, Mr. McAffrey elaborated to us upon the details of the legend, correcting us on a few details and drumming up an almost tangible interest in the story amongst us kids. In particular, Ricky seemed highly intrigued, claiming that he might “launch his own investigation” upon the urban legend.
As I said earlier on, although my story started when I moved into Westbell, this urban legend is what really set the events of it in motion.
That weekend, Ricky’s birthday party took place. It was truly a great party, with our entire class from school as well as all the other neighbourhood kids being there. Sully Norton had hired a bouncy castle, as well as an ice-cream van. I can say with absolute honesty that it is one of the happiest memories I’ve ever made. We enjoyed the bouncy castle, opened gifts, sprayed each other with water guns, ate cake, watched Chester pull down Kevin Cash’s pants in front of everyone, said our goodbyes and went home.
But that was the last time I ever saw Ricky.
He vanished a few days after his eleventh birthday. It was the first missing person’s case the town had seen in over 40 years. Almost the entire cul-de-sac went out on searches with the police. These were almost entirely fruitless.
However, I knew what must have happened – Ricky had been went to the hill, and probably been killed by not-Morgan. So, while there were searches across the town’s perimeter and the roads beyond, me and Mark ventured into the woods as the sun set.
We took a route I had been through on more than one occasion. It was a part of the forests behind one of the churches where the trees were more loosely packed and there was a more obvious. path ahead.
As we went deeper into the woods it got darker until it was almost pitch black, as a result of both the sun setting and the distance that we had put between ourselves and the light from town. I thought not-Morgan had come for us every time a twig snapped.
Soon, with the help of Mark’s flashlight we could finally see one side of the hill far ahead of us. The incline was extremely sharp, like a cliff face. There wasn’t a hope anyone could climb this hill. There was no sign of the house on the side of the hill we were on.
Mark led the way with his flashlight up to the face of the hill’s impossibly steep rise, and when he pointed it downwards, just for a second, my heart skipped a beat. On the ground, neatly folded, were a full outfit of clothes about the size of ours.
Me and Mark exchanged a horrified look between each other, and that was when I spotted out of the corner of my eye, being weighed down by a large rock, was a piece of yellowy, musty paper. Mark removed retrieved it and shone the flashlight upon it to reveal its message.
“Happy Birthday!!!”
We were both breathing very fast and Mark’s face had turned the colour of chalk.
“Come on,” he whispered. “Come on, we need to get out of here, now.”
We started off in a run, but soon a mixture of both exhaustion and intense fear and paranoia consumed us, and we continued our way out very slowly.
And then, there came the sound nearby, unmistakeable, of a cough.
My blood ran cold.
We stood absolutely still and held our breath. We could hear very light footsteps coming from a similar direction to the cough. They were getting gradually more audible.
I remember thinking that I was about to die, that not-Morgan had come for us. However, the footsteps eventually started becoming quieter as whatever was making them changed direction – towards the hill. We began to edge our way out of the woods, my heart rate steadying, and then started creeping out, until we could see the light from the houses in Westbell seeping through the treeline, and at that point all the terror in my body exploded with a brief burst of salty tears. We sprinted out of the forest at a speed that I’m not sure if I ever matched.
It was almost midnight by now and the search party had only just finished for the night, so we walked back to the cul-de-sac with a large group being led by Natalie Walsh’s dad. Mark took the clothes and note so he could give it to his uncle for the investigation.
I went straight back into my house, in a rush to get to bed after the night’s events. My dad made me a cup of hot chocolate and spoke to me carefully while I nursed it, telling me that I have to hold out hope that my friend is still out there and the police will be able to do their job.
But as I looked out the window in my room before closing the curtains, out at the forests and at the hill in the distance, and heard the sounds of the cough and footsteps play back in my mind, I wondered if he was right.