It was two o’clock in the morning when three police cars finally stormed up the muddy driveway of the Keen family’s home. The blue and red lights danced along the deep woods of Maine. The air of the spring night was seeping into the vehicles, and forcing a slight chill into the spines of the officers within. Down the road, an old couple remained on their porch, still awake. About an hour ago, they heard faint screaming bouncing among the trees. Luckily, the woods between these two properties were not vast enough to suppress the terror that echoed out of the Keen’s house.
The police lights revealed the destroyed state of the front door. Just from a simple glance, one could tell the destructor of this door was not human. The wood was ripped to shreds, splintering off in a thousand directions with shards littered across the ground. The officers huddled around what remained of the doorway, with rifles drawn, expecting to meet a fully grown bear defending its latest kill. Instead, what they found was only the aftermath. The younger officers stepped away to let the more experienced ones through, or to vomit in the woods from the sight and stench.
The carnage was unbelievable to these small town police. Two adult bodies, hardly identifiable, covered head to toe in animalistic violence. The forensic team instantly determined that no human weapon could’ve left these marks, it was the clear work of tooth and claw. They did a full sweep of the place, and no other rooms were damaged. The animal broke down the door, killed two adults in the front room, had its meal and left. The investigation seemed nearly complete, until an officer opened a small closet. There, silent and still, was a little boy. He looked up at the officer with an expressionless stare. He was not crying and he was not shaking. No matter the efforts of the police, the boy would not speak. It took them several minutes of searching the house to identify the boy as Oliver Keen, the only son of the couple killed in the living room.
They were ordered to bring Oliver back to the police station. The child would not eat or drink anything, and speaking was still out of the question. He would not even react. His eyes reflected a grim emptiness that made the officers shudder. They knew he must have experienced true fear, and his six year old mind simply could not handle the horrifying stimulation. One older officer suggested they leave the boy alone for a while, and just as the men began to leave the room, Oliver spoke. “What was…that monster?” The discomfort in the room was tangible. Even the officers with children of their own were completely unsure how to respond.
About three hours later, the therapist arrived. As an expert on trauma in children and teenagers, he was specifically called for this situation. Oliver was waiting in a conference room in the back of the police station. The moment the therapist entered the room, Oliver jumped with shock.
“I’m sorry to startle you, Oliver.”
“Are you a doctor?”
“I am, but-” the therapist abruptly paused when he made true eye contact with the boy. He had seen them before. Eyes that have been tormented in both dreams and reality. “Please don’t think of me as the doctor. You can call me James.” he said with a smile. “Oliver, I’d like to talk about what you saw that night…I know what you told the police.” Oliver’s face suddenly shifted from sorrow to spite. “You won’t believe me either.” he growled. Gradually, James convinced him to tell his story again:
Oliver woke to his father shouting in the other room, and his mother lifting him out of bed. She quickly opened a small closet beneath the stairs and placed him inside, still wrapped in his blankets and half asleep. She told him not to move and slammed the door. This was the last time he saw her face.
The sounds he heard from outside in the following minutes were etched into his mind permanently. The struggle of his parents, and even more chilling, the roar of their killer. He remained in that closet still, with death only a door away. Minutes passed and silence began to fill the air. Oliver slowly reached for the doorknob and slightly cracked the door. Standing at his front door, was a scrawny creature like a man with long ears and big yellow eyes. Globs of a black substance were dripping from its torso and limbs. Oliver slammed the door shut and curled into the corner of the closet, waiting with a racing heart.
Oliver remained in the closet for two hours before the police arrived. His young mind was spinning, trying to comprehend what he had just seen. In these two hours, something broke within that little boy. He cried and shook out all of his sorrow and fear. The beast had left a mental shock so deep that the boy seemed barely even afraid of it. He was simply in awe of its horrible existence.
James looked down sadly, reflecting on the terror this child witnessed. In his experience, it is common for children dealing with tragedy to create a “monster” as a scapegoat for the uncontrollable situation they are facing. “Can you tell me anything else about this monster?” James asked, knowing well not to feed the boy’s imagination too much. Oliver’s head rose faster than ever before. Someone was finally listening to him.
“It looked like it was wet.”
“Wet?”
“Yes, it was dripping in this black stuff.”
James’s face dropped for a moment and he sat back in his chair with a bewildered expression. James began to furiously scribble in his notebook. Oliver became nervous, wondering what he said to make the doctor so frantic. In some kind of nervous craze, James quickly started arranging his things and putting on his jacket. Suddenly, he turned to Oliver and said,
“Oliver…we all want to believe you, but you must continue telling yourself: it was a bear. Please, for your own good. You’ll never find that monster, it’s not out there. I’m sorry, Oliver.” James left the room in a crazed rush and shut the door behind him. The officers present that day reported that the regularly personal and friendly therapist wildly sprinted out of the building without another word, leaving the child unattended and upset.
The unexpected shift in the therapist’s attitude left Oliver sobbing and thrashing about the room. Not in sadness, but complete rage. He had hoped for a moment that someone would believe in his monster. His developing brain was fixated on the blank and deadly stare of that creature. He would never forget it, and he would never let anyone make him forget it.
THOMAS MAZZAFERRO 