When I was a middle school, I didn't have a lot of friends.The friends I did, half were all a little odd but then, again, so was I .
We spent a lot of time together and enjoyed a lot of the same things. There was Greg, Mark, Jay and myself. We were inseparable back then, it seemed like The Four of Us would last forever.
Looking back, though it was pretty clear that Jay and I were beginning to distance ourselves from Mark and Greg, but that's neither here nor there.
One summer, Greg invited the 3 of us on a week-long trip to Maines. Greg's family had a summer home up in Maine, one of the little Islands in Casco Bay.
To be completely honest, his family was rarely secretive about the place and none of us knew it existed until he invited us there.
His family was strange in general, but that's a story for another time and the drive was long and uncomfortable.
I had a runny nose and was sneezing the entire time, which I could tell was really pissing off Gregs dad, he was one of those over-the-top germophobes, and I got really uncomfortable anytime he'd look at me.
Mark and I were also bickering about something stupid, but the 2 of us tended to get into trouble. That a lot we had to drive the car onto a Ferry, in order to make it to the island that part was actually really fun.
The house was small, but pretty, I remember feeling detached from reality in that house, I can't really explain.
First, like a whole other world on that island I still feel like it would be easy for a person to get lost in that house at that makes any sense.The island had a really dreamy feel, everyone knew each other and random people on the street recognise and say hello, to Greg when they saw him.
We spent most of our time biking around and activity that never got boring and I will skip the boring stuff.
I don't remember all of it anyway.
The second day of the trip; I couldn't find my Barcelona snapback cap anywhere.
I was really upset. Since I was a huge soccer fan and it was one of the only pieces of merch I had.
Greg said he thought I left it on the beach, but I was almost certain I had brought it back.
I remember crying to Greg's dad who basically told me to get over it and not let something small ruin the trip.So that's what I did.
The next day after a long day of biking around, I realised one of my pens was missing. I had a pen collection at that time, which I brought everywhere. I like I said, weird kid, I couldn't remember whether or not I had taken that specific pen out of my case, but Jay said he remembered seeing me holding it on my bike.
I was devastated to me losing a pen was the equivalent of losing a limb that's how serious I was about them, I refuse to cry again in front of Greg's dad, so I claimed I wasn't feeling well and opted to spend the rest of the evening in bed.
I ended up falling asleep really early because of that, so I guess I shouldn't have been surprised when I've woke up at 3 AM and couldn't fall back asleep. I was rolling around, trying to fall back asleep when I picked up on something I froze for a few seconds to confirm what I was hearing someone was whispering almost inaudible, I had to focus really hard to even hear It was I dreaming.
There was no shot I tried as best as possible to make out what they were saying, but couldn't understand a single word, it sounded like it was coming from Mark's room, the top bunk across the room from me.
I couldn't be certain, I waited a few minutes, but the whispering continued for some reason, I was scared to say anything or reveal that I was awake eventually, I blocked the whispering out of my mind and fell asleep.
The next morning, I tried to forget about what happened last night. I debated asking my friends, which of them had been doing it, but decided against it, we were playing some dumb game in the yard.
When mark said he had to use the bathroom, he was gone awhile, but that was typical for mark. He took a lot of time to do everything.
Eventually I shot a glance back at the house and had to do a double take in one of the 2nd floor windows was mark staring blankly out at us.
I figured he was in the bathroom, but that's when it hit me Greg's house didn't have a second floor bathroom, I turned to see if either Greg or Jay noticed. But neither of them were looking when I turned to look back at the house... Mark was gone.
Greg's dad was planning on taking us to dinner that night but I didn't want to go. I pretended to be sick again and told him I wanted to nap instead, he said that was fine and told me he had bring me back something.
As I was lying in bed I realised, there was no way I was going to fall asleep. I started thinking things over in my head. I just couldn't get over how weird it was; that Mark was watching all of us from the house and that whispering incidence.
I'm not sure what compelled me to do it, but I got out of my bed and started snooping around Mark's bunk.
My jaw basically hit the floor when I found my Barcelona cap in his duffel bag, I dug around some more and found a bunch of my personal belongings that I didn't even know, were missing.
There was a nail clipper. My mom had packed for me in there, along with my extra toothbrush and most disturbingly, a pair of my underwear, I didn't know what to think?
I was about to cry when I noticed something else in the back of his notebook. Sometimes even to this day, I still regret picking up that notebook. My middle school brain was not prepared for what was in there.
It was completely filled with drawings, pencil drawings, some sketched so aggressively that there were holes in some of the pages, there were drawings of monsters creatures. And things out of nightmares, there were really disturbing acts of violence drawn in their people. Getting run over by cars, stabbed multilated to tortured, it was sick worse than sick, It was demonic, there was picture of God demonic in there.
There were drawings of me in there. The image that was never and will never leave my brain is a drawing of me on a cross with my legs missing the last few pages were basically all of me. And one of the pages was just my name scribbled, a 100 times it makes me sick thinking about everything I saw in there.
And there is stuff I haven't even mentioned the last page was the worst. My name was at the top of the page in big letters and below it were 4 words I will never forget, I will do it tomorrow.
When everyone got back home, I got Greg's dad alone and told him about what was going on in a low voice. While my friends started a movie in the living room.
He didn't believe me until I showed him Mark's notebook, which I could tell he found equally terrified.
He didn't know what to do. He told me to put everything back the way I found it I couldn't tell him no. So as I was putting the notebook back. I made a split second decision and tore one of the pages out meanwhile, Greg dad then ran out to the living room and told everyone there was a family emergency and that we had to end the trip early as we were frantically packing our things.
I could feel Mark's eyes burning or hole in my back, I was scared to look at him, we pulled out of the driveway, caught the first Ferry of the island and drove the whole way back without stopping.
First Greg's start dropped Mark first, then James and Greg lived on the same street, so he left break out of the car and with James as we were driving to my house, Greg's dad told me that he had talked to Mark parents and that it will be the best that I not mentioned anything to my parents.
Gregs and Marks family were really close, so I guess that made sense.
When I got home though, I couldn't last 10 minutes, I broke down crying to my parents and told them everything, they were furious and called the police in the same minute, my parents were also outraged that Greg's dad would try to sweep something so serious under the rug.
Things get a little fuzzy after that, I remember crying again while telling the police what happened, when they asked for the proof I was able to show them the page I ripped out of mark's notebook apparently that was enough, the police obtained a warrant and actually found the notebook.
My items were all return except my pen, which police were never able to find, my parents didn't tell me much about the things went but I never saw Mark again, his family moved and he never showed up to school again.
I never hung out with Greg again either. But the reason I'm writing this now is because last week I received an anonymous letter in the mail, it said, "I remember everything" and wrapped inside the envelope was the pen Mark stolen from me.
All those year ago, I have no idea how he find my address or why it's taken so long to reach out.