Eerie Encounters : A Pedophilic Psycho in Maine

 About the Protagonist

 John, a 51-year-old man is the protagonist of this story. He was born in Tempe, Arizona in 1971 to Jade and Peter. Because of the nature of his parents’ work, John never stayed in a place for more than two years until his late teens. Despite constantly moving out to different places, John was a bright kid at school and a perfect son to his parents.

 Despite being lived a contemptible life, John says he still cannot get over a creepy encounter he had when he was 12 years old. He says he still cannot contemplate if the things he went through were hallucinations or reality and “I still thank God for keeping me safe those days”, he says in his old grumpy voice.

Story

 The year was 1984 and John and his parents moved into a small town in Maine. Like most other kids of his age, he was admitted to the local public school where being the kid he was, he gelled with other students on the very first day. Among all the other places he had lived in, Maine became his favourite. Not just his peers but also, his neighbours were extremely warm and polite. To sum it up, after being a literal nomad since the day he understood the world, John felt he was finally in the right place.

 “I still remember my neighbours sternly warning me not to look at an abandoned mansion present on the way to school”, says John. This mansion had a notorious reputation for being the place where numerous kids went missing, he says. But being the new kid in town, John never gave much attention to these warnings and curiously gazed at the decayed structure every time he crossed it. There were rumours about a pedophilic psychopath using that abandoned mansion as his home. People said that he abducted kids, especially boys, into the mansion and tortured them to death.

 One day, news about a missing female kid greeted the town and after investigations, it was confirmed that the kid was last seen in front of the mansion. The case was so mysterious that, even the scent dogs the investigators used were not able to give any leads. 1984 being in an era where CCTV cameras were not even a thing, made life hard for the investigators. The town was so perplexed that people stopped sending their kids out of their homes for over a week after this incident and this caused the schools to function without pupils.

 As the fear of abduction slowly faded, the kids started returning to school and John was no exception. On his way back home after his first day of returning to school, he heard loud cries from the Mansion when he crossed it. “The sound was so grotesque that, the 12-year-old me almost passes out”, he says. The cries seemed to be that of a girl shouting on the top of her voice. He ran to his home as fast as he could and locked himself inside his room where he eventually slept.

 The next day, John’s family was woken by a bad stench and it seemed to be coming from the house door. When they opened the door, they saw the lifeless body of the girl who went missing. Although terrified, they called the police who confiscated the corpse and sent it for autopsy. The body was severed into multiple places, had multiple inner organs missing, had the skin on her face peeled away and had missing eyes, tongue and teeth. Also, the severed head did not have any hair. The autopsy revealed that the reason for the kid’s death was excessive loss of blood.

 Although investigations proved that the family had nothing to do with the murder, the neighbours were no longer the same with the family and they were treated badly. John lost all his friends and ended up travelling to school all alone. Luckily, his parents were transferred to a branch in Salem and the family moved out of Maine less than a month after this incident. However, the last week was a nightmare for John.

 On the very first day of the last week, when John was returning home after school, he spotted a man in his 70s standing near the abandoned mansion. This was strange for him as he never saw anyone near the mansion. The Man was covered in a worn-out suit and torn pair of shoes. He slowly walked towards John and asked, “You heard her didn’t you” with a cheapish smile. John was bewildered by what he heard and told, “I am not sure about what you are talking sir”. The old man’s smile slowly turned into a frown and the eyebrows on his loose face turned inwards. He told, “I love torturing kids, especially the ones who lie” and tried to cover John’s face. Because of John’s good fortune, the man slipped and John somehow escaped the place safely.

 He was devastated when his parents refused to believe him and hope for his stay in the town to end soon. That night, he went to bed without knowing how dreadful it was going to get. He was woken up in the middle of the night by nature’s call and when he returned to his room. When he entered his room, he was greeted by the old man he saw earlier that day. The man grinned at him with his stained teeth and slowly approached him. He constantly kept saying, “Be a good boy” as he approached. John was so scared that his voice never came out of his throat and he pushed a glass vase nearby in an attempt to wake up his parents.

 His attempts succeeded and his parents rushed into his room. As their footsteps approached, the man mysteriously disappeared. The man started stalking John and followed him to every place he went. The creepy part is that he appeared only to John and others just saw his footprints. He followed John everywhere until the day he left Maine. A few years later, the Mansion was demolished and during the demolition, skulls of children were found inside it. Some of the skulls were almost 50 years old. So now you tell me, wasn’t John lucky enough to not leave his skull inside that dreaded mansion? Was he hallucinating or was the psycho a real man?