Chasing the Boogeyman

by Richard Chizmar

I believe that most small towns wear two faces: a public one comprised of verifiable facts involving historical timelines, demographics, matters of economy and geography; and a hidden, considerably more private face formed by a fragile spiderweb of stories, memories, rumors, and secrets passed down from generation to generation, whispered by those who know the town best.

So said her obituary.

Mrs. Gallagher slowly approached the window. It was slid almost all the way open, the sheer curtains rustling in the muggy morning breeze—but that’s not what caught her eye. The screen was missing.

What hadn’t occurred during the struggle was this: at some point, her left ear had been sliced off by a sharp blade of unknown design.

it was widely understood that Mr. Gallagher placed the bulk of the blame for Natasha’s death on his own shoulders. After all, he was the one who hadn’t allowed her to turn on the air-conditioning in the house.

I didn’t know what Craig was up to; none of us did.

Before long, I even found myself wondering if perhaps my father had taken the long way home from work a time or two.

The scoop was this: On the morning Natasha Gallagher’s body was discovered, several bystanders and police noticed something odd in front of the Gallaghers’ house. Someone had used blue chalk to draw a hopscotch grid on the sidewalk. Instead of the usual sequential numbering of one to ten, the person had drawn the number three inside each of the blocks.

I stopped reading and looked at Carly. “Whoa. Any other victims? Did they catch the person who did it?” “That’s the really interesting part,” she said. “I looked everywhere and I couldn’t find anything else. Not even a single follow-up article.”

“Keep looking.” I kept watching and just when I was convinced that Jimmy was up to his old tricks, there it was—something small and pale and round moving parallel to the driveway maybe thirty-five yards ahead of us. “You see it?” he asked, his voice suddenly steady. “What the hell is that?” Whatever it was, it was coming closer. Floating above the ground. Backlit by the patio lights of the houses behind it. A moment later, we heard approaching footsteps rustling in the tall grass bordering the driveway.

I watched the news and scanned the newspaper for days afterward. I’d told Carly what had happened, and she put her ear to the ground to see if there were any whispers. I drove by the Meyers House at least three or four times a day. Nothing.

The first fat drops of rain began to fall soon after. Scattered at first; swollen and heavy and hungry for earth; splatting on our faces, seeping into our hair; staining the roofs and hoods of the cars and the concrete driveway at our feet; all the while, beating a deep staccato rhythm, erasing the everyday sounds of the world from around us.

That evening, the nightmares started. Bad ones. She’d barely slept all week, and the stress and exhaustion were taking their toll. She apologized, but I told her there was no need and that I understood. What I didn’t tell her was that I was experiencing similar feelings of paranoia and having nightmares of my own.

“It felt gross,” she told me later, “to be on the other end of all those microphones and flashing cameras. I hated that they were waiting for me like vultures outside my house and the office.” It didn’t take long before she stopped talking to the media altogether.

Searching for not only what might’ve been missed the first time around, but also what might’ve been viewed in a different light. Change the light in the room, she’s fond of saying, and you never know what you might see.