The Boy Who Wasn't

I walked out my back door and there he was, the boy with the dark brown hair and the Nerf gun. Looked like he’d stepped right out of the ‘80s. It shocked me more than I care to admit. Not because I didn’t know him, or because he was trespassing on my property. Not because of the mischievous twinkle in his eye as he ducked behind the abandoned hot tub in my back yard. Not even because everything about the kid screamed a hot summer day in 1986. No, it was something else . . . something less . . . tangible. It was the feeling – no, the certainty, the absolute conviction that the boy wasn’t really there.

I don’t know what it was about him. He looked perfectly real. His grin was genuine, his movements were fluid. And yet, I felt disquieted. I didn’t speak to him and he didn’t speak to me. Perhaps more importantly, he didn’t make a sound. None whatsoever. Not even a whisper as his Nikes hit the concrete. And maybe that was part of what clued me in; I’m not sure. It all happened so fast that it’s hard to say exactly what happened. All I know for certain is that I had not the slightest inclination to walk around that hot tub and look for the boy. Because I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he would not be there.

Rather than do that, rather than verify that which I already knew to be true, rather than take my tenuous grasp on sanity and turn it on its head, I spun around and calmly went back inside the house. I didn’t mention the boy to anyone, not even to my family, because for one thing, I questioned my own sanity and for another, I wanted to see if anyone else would see him. I knew that if I told them about him, they might be influenced and could then easily imagine a boy like that, subconsciously reconstructing him from the seeds I’d planted. I couldn’t let that happen.

So instead, I kept the secret to myself for years, until one night, when my husband woke me up from a dead sleep and said, “Did you see that?”, alarm painting his voice red.

I said, “See what?”

“That boy!” he cried, pointing toward our doorway, and almost jumping out of bed in his panic.

I knew immediately what it was. Yet I still didn’t want to influence his interpretation of what he’d seen. I needed to be sure. I asked, keeping my voice steady, “What boy?”

My husband, agitated, replied, “I don’t know! I thought it was Marcus at first. Looked about the same. Thin, pale, probably 9 or 10 years old. He was standing in our room and then . . . and then he walked right through the wall!”

I lay quiet, taking it in. It was the boy. There was no doubt in my mind. Who else could it be? “I know the boy,” I finally said. “I’ve seen him before.”

“What?” my husband shrieked, throwing his hands up. “Who is he?”

Sighing with resignation and relief, I filled him in on what had happened so many years before. I described the boy as I had seen him, and he agreed that it must be the same boy. His description of the boy looking like my oldest son, Marcus, really cinched the deal. And although I’d never believed in ghosts before, I was forced to admit that a ghost, the boy must be. And so began my search.

At first, it seemed futile. The original house we lived in had been built in the late 1800s, just a couple of rooms and an outhouse. A young couple built it and remained in it for the rest of their lives, raising their family there and adding onto it in the 40s and 50s. None of that mattered, though, because this boy was clearly not born until the 80s. The Nikes spoke for themselves.

After the old folks passed away, a young minister and his family moved into the house, remodeling it sometime in the 80s and adding a reasonably sized kitchen and a new bathroom as they did. It was the right time period, so I did a little more research into the man and his family. Maybe one of his kids had died, I thought, or a visiting child had suffered a tragic accident there. This idea was quickly quashed when I learned that he had two daughters, but no sons, and there was no record of any accident occurring at that house, either then or at any other time.

Somewhat discouraged, I soldiered on. Perhaps the child was simply behind the times on fashion. The minister moved away in 2004, selling the home to a young woman with a daughter, the same young woman who had lost the house due to foreclosure before my family purchased it seven years later. I was at a loss. There seemed to be no further path to pursue. Until I came across an article about old milk cartons, and how they used to have missing people displayed on them. The writer had taken pictures for examples, and I was scanning through them at a leisurely pace when I saw him. The boy.

The milk carton read:

“HAVE YOU SEEN ME?

David Martin, 11 years old, was delivering newspapers when he disappeared on July 9th, 1986. He was described as approximately 5 foot, 1 inch tall, weighing about 95 pounds, with brown eyes and dark brown hair. If you have any information, please call The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.”

1986. The exact year that had leapt into my mind when I saw the boy standing there, poised to shoot with that Nerf gun. That couldn’t be coincidence.

The minister’s family had remodeled in the 80s. 1986? Perhaps. The rest of the house had a pier-and-beam structure, but the bathroom and kitchen, the very ones put in during that remodel, had a concrete base. Maybe that wasn’t a coincidence either.

I told my husband, and we debated what we should do. Should we contact the police? No, that wouldn’t make any sense. What would we tell them? We saw a ghost, and now we think there’s a missing kid from the 80s buried under our house? All that would do was make everyone think we were nuts, and to what end? It’s not like they would actually come investigate with that kind of “evidence.” So we debated. We tossed and turned and lost a lot of sleep. I surfed the internet, trying to find some advice without getting on any national watch lists. Finally, I realized the answer. It was time to do some remodeling.

“New pipes,” I said that evening to my husband.

His brow furrowed as he looked up from his phone. “What?” he said.

I laughed at his confusion. “Our pipes are under the concrete, and we probably need to replace them by now anyway. We can tear up the concrete to replace the pipes, and the workers will just happen to discover the body. It’s brilliant!”

He frowned dubiously. “That’ll be pretty expensive. And I think they’ll just cut out the areas around where the pipes are and fill them back in with concrete, right? They probably won’t even find the body, if there is one.”

“Hm,” I said, with a thoughtful frown of my own, “well, let’s just have someone replace the whole thing with pier and beam then.”

“That’s not as easy as you think,” he said, shaking his head.

At that point, I’d had enough. I didn’t care how much it cost or what our excuse was. The boy needed to be put to rest, and whatever we needed to do was what we needed to do. “Let’s just do it!” I insisted, throwing my hands up with frustration. “I’ll pick up some extra hours or do some Door Dash or something!”

My husband still looked dubious, but softened when he saw my level of distress. “Okay,” he relented. “I’ll make some calls and see if I can cash in some favors.”

And now, six months later, here we are. A man with a jackhammer has been in our bathroom for most of the morning, and my husband has been anywhere else but home. Part of his absence is because of the noise, but the rest is because of the little boy who’s been sitting at our kitchen table all morning, smiling at me while the syrup from a plate of Eggos drips slowly down his fork. I can’t wait to see what happens next.