The following anecdote must be told from two perspectives, starting with mine, then my mother’s, and once again my own. This is a story about what we see, and what we don’t, and therefore it is also a story about that which we know, and that which we don't.
My grandparents used to own a cabin in New Hampshire, which we visited every summer. It wasn’t the fanciest home, and yet it was my favorite: endlessly cozy and warm, surrounded by tall pine trees and a very special kind of silence. There wasn’t anything like 3 weeks in it to clear up the mind.
Only Mom didn’t quite love our stays at the cabin. After barely a week there she would feel ready for our next, more tourist centric destination, such as Miami or New York. She’s always been more of a city person.
On one occasion, she trusted me with what really troubled her about being immersed in nature: the sudden openness of our private lives.
“I’m exposed to all sorts of pests and creatures,” she explained. “And perhaps living in the city has made me paranoid, but I’ve never been comfortable sleeping at a house that anyone could enter like they owned the place.”
She was right about that. Besides the main door, which had a lock that was more decor that an actual tool, the rest of the property’s entrances were nothing more than sliding glass doors, reinforced only by bug screens. Trust is a tenet of a small town’s communal spirit, alien to worries such as crime or intruders. Distrust just isn’t welcome there.
I even recall my grandparent’s reaction to their back porch hosting a family of black bears: grandma kept making breakfast, and grandpa chuckled without looking away from the paper.
But Mom’s comment stayed with me. Suddenly I stopped feeling sheltered by the trees’ great heights, and began seeing myself as prey to its other inhabitants. Which must be the reason why I got so scared the night I entered my room to fetch my gameboy.
A huge, pale man was peeking in from my window.
I ran to find Gustavo, my older brother and the other only person who’d yet to go to bed. He kneeled as soon as he walked into the room we shared, in an attempt to laugh without waking up the rest of the family.
The sight of that still and spectral face didn’t come from the forest on the other side of the wall, but from inside the house.
It was the reflection of a t-shirt sitting atop a stack of folded laundry, placed on a bench adjacent to the window. The black garment had the print of a life-size image of Michael Myers, the masked killer from Halloween, one of Gustavo’s favorite movies.
I also had to laugh. This silly scare had been enough to shake off whatever growing reservations I had about the forest’s inhabitants. I continued having a good time, and we omitted telling our parents about the incident with the window’s reflection.
Though now I know we probably should have.
Here’s where I must switch to my mother’s perspective.
Not long after, we had a long day. First at a beach by the lake, and later on to our favourite pizza place. After applying aloe vera to me and Gustavo’s sunburnt backs, Mom showered, treated her own blazing skin, and got ready for some late night reading. Dad was in the other room, watching a program about the Vietnam war.
She slowly leaned back, trying to lessen the sting inflicted by the Sun, and sighed as she closed her eyes. She reminded herself that only one week remained till we travelled to our next destination, Chicago. while also admitting that she appreciated the evening’s quietude.
Then, while looking for the bookmark inside her novel, she saw something from the rear of her eye. It stood a couple feet away from her, at the window facing the foot of her bed.
She kept her eyes anchored to what now seemed like a jumble of words and sentences on the page. She could tell that a pale shape stood in front of the view that, in the mornings, revealed bushes and bluebirds. Pressed against the glass, interrupting the darkness outside.
She clenched a fistful of blanket as she prepared herself to look up, like the sick person who bites into a strap of leather before undergoing surgery without anesthetics. She had to make sure that, whatever it was, it didn’t witness the loss of her mind, or her composure.
Yet she felt like a fool the instant she finally faced the window: looking in from it was Gustavo, trying to spook our mother by brandishing a childish grin. He’d slipped out of our room through one of those sliding glass doors.
“Jesus Gustavo, do you mean to give me a heart attack?” asked Mom, while struggling to contain the need to laugh with her boy about her own cowardice.
But then she saw him… swiftly approaching my brother. Mom still describes him the same way:
“He was huge. A fat redhead, with very, very pale skin, and completely naked. What I remember the most are his eyes: black, with bright yellow pupils.”
She let out a scream. Dad stormed into the room, wielding the chimney’s fire poker. He ran towards the window as soon as he saw the intruder, ripped it open and jumped outside while swinging the iron instrument towards the man seizing Gustavo.
He chased the prier with all of his might, but it was too late. He’d escaped towards the darkness with an unreachable speed, taking with him the oldest son.
“His giggle still sickens me,” Dad says to this day. “It was the laugh of a little child, and he dragged Gus like he would his own rag doll.”
For days, weeks and months the police left no stone unturned in their search for any clues that could lead to the whereabouts of both Gustavo and his captor. But after a long investigation they turned out empty handed, and we had to settle with the loss of a family member.
This is where the recount returns to my perspective.
I was almost there, at the exact moment of Gustavo’s abduction.
We got the idea of scaring Mom after our incident with the shirt’s reflection. A bad joke, no doubt, but nonetheless totally innocent. Or so we thought.
It all was going according to plan: we waited for her to think we were asleep in order to sneak out to the backyard, where we slowly made our way, as we negotiated with the crunch of twigs and leaves, to our parent’s bedroom window. I’m not sure why we assumed Mom would find the whole thing hilarious.
Gustavo took a quick glance inside through the glass, before whispering, with infantile mischief, the last words I ever heard coming out of his mouth.
“At the count of three, get up and make a scary face.”
And so we did. I rolled my eyes backwards and couldn’t see a thing, but as soon as I heard Mom gasp I bolted back to our room, chuckling with delight at our successful little prank.
“Jesus Gustavo, do you mean to give me a heart attack?” I heard our mother say, and felt pleased that only Gustavo would get in trouble.
Without knowing that, mere seconds after my escape, my brother would be taken away by someone, or something, and that I’d never see him again.
We still don’t know what stole him. If some sort of perverted hermit, or a sinister being that the forest had kept hidden, and that only Mom was able to sense as it stalked us.
I know it sounds strange, but I wish I had been there, when this thing snatched my brother.
Perhaps we could have fought it together, or maybe I could have seen it approaching us from behind. At the very least, I would now share with my parents one final glimpse of him. A clear image of how he vanished from our lives.
That way I wouldn’t have to bear on my own the weight of knowing Gustavo simply disappeared, while missing a memory to aid me in, once and for all, accepting that he’s gone.
