The Red Kid

I was driving home from the inpatient facility in Tulsa, one night back in 2016, when I decided I needed a break; some little diversion from the troublesome and untenable routine my life had fallen into. My oldest daughter, Madelyn, had always had difficulties, but since she turned sixteen, things seemed to have gotten worse. She heard voices, she said, and though we took precautions around the house, she was finding new ways to hurt herself. Late night trips to check into Parker Heights Mental Healthcare facility for a few days had practically become a weekly arrangement.

It was an hour and a half drive between the hospital and home, but Parker Heights was the nearest place that took our insurance. Most of the drive was along highway 51, a good highway for night driving. It’s well maintained, for Oklahoma roads, and doesn’t have a lot of traffic or bright lights. One thing it does have, though, is a handful of quaint and unusual roadside attractions, and I was coming up on one I’d passed a dozen times or more. I’d been curious about it, but never turned off to see it, before.

Oddities Road was about a mile of private road that ran north off highway 51. A retired truck driver, whose name I never did learn, had purchased the property and started buying odd sights that he’d seen on his travels; things like a taxidermied bigfoot and the custom shoe collection of a pair of conjoined twins with three feet. He originally put them on his property because he liked them, but eventually he had so many that people started detouring off the highway just to have a look. So, after he retired, he lined them up along the road with display stands and placards, and he began a second career running the place.

I knew Oddities Road was accessible at night, but I wasn’t sure how much I’d be able to see. Still, curiosity and exhaustion led me off the highway and up the road.

I didn’t stop anywhere, but I took my time cruising by each strange sight. The moon was shining bright that night, but the trees were old, tall, and thick along the road, blotting out most of the light. It was the beginning of autumn, which, in Oklahoma, just means you can turn the air conditioner off at night. The leaves don’t start falling until almost winter.

A handful of the oddities had their own lights, but most were only visible in my headlights, so that they were just shadowy forms along the road as I passed. The bigfoot was lit up, and I was all but certain it was just a bear’s skin pulled over the skeleton of a gorilla and stuffed.

Revenue for Oddities Road was generated from the gift shop at the end of the road, as well as the many booths along the road that were rented out to food vendors and merchants. In the night, they were dark, empty, and some were shuttered and locked, giving them the appearance of abandoned buildings. Barely visible footpaths wound off the road and disappeared into the black. The place felt like a ghost town where the ghosts, grotesque and uncommonly bold, had lined up along Main Street to hurry travelers along.

I drove to the end of the road, circled around through the gift store lot, and back toward the highway. About a hundred yards from the highway, I stopped on the road and put my van in park. I hadn’t been able to read much about the sights, and I wanted to learn a little more. I unplugged my smartphone and Googled discussions about Oklahoma’s Oddities Road.

People seemed, largely, to agree with me about the bigfoot. There was a stone gargoyle that, according to the internet, had stood atop a city hall building for a hundred years, then fallen off one day, after a terrible wind storm, and landed on the great grandson of the architect who’d designed the place, killing him instantly. One of the most interesting discussions was one that had sprung up around an exhibit people were calling the Red Kid.

Red Kid was a statue that stood approximately four feet tall and resembled a person in a red spandex body suit that covered it from head to toe. It had normal sized arms and legs, for a kid, but its head was disproportionately large, giving it the appearance of a badly made, bobble-headed toy. I immediately knew what statue they were talking about. I’d seen the weird, little thing near the gift shop, at the end of the road.

As far as anyone could tell, the Red Kid didn’t have an official name. There was no placard or sign of any kind to explain what Red Kid was or where it had come from. Adding to the mystery, few people seemed to agree exactly where, along Oddities Road, they had seen the statue, and many people insisted there was no such exhibit. Deep into the discussion, one astute contributor had noticed a trend in time stamps and visit times of others in the discussion. Those who insisted Red Kid didn’t exist had visited during the daytime. It had only been seen at night, after the shops and booths had all closed. From this, user _IlluminHotty1984_ had deduced that Red Kid was, perhaps, not an exhibit, at all.

She speculated the statue may actually be a mannequin the owner had outfitted with security equipment, like a camera and alarm system. It was an odd security system that would blend in with its odd surroundings. This also explained, she felt, why it was seen in different places, at different times. The owner probably moved the Red Kid around, in response to requests from the vendors who rented space on his property.

It was an interesting theory. I decided to find out, for myself.

I wasn’t exactly certain how I was going to examine the Red Kid without possibly setting off an alarm or damaging it, but I was driven by curiosity, as I steered my mini-van into a three point turn. I angled across the road, then reversed back into the empty oncoming lane to head back to the gift shop. What I saw in my headlights froze me stiff. Standing beside the road, right behind where I had been parked, was the Red Kid. In that moment, somehow I knew it was not just some kitschy security system. Somehow, for some reason, it had followed me from the gift shop.

I was never the kind of person to scare easy. I camp out alone, sometimes, and never worry about what’s in the woods with me. The dark isn’t a problem, nor are any of the other usual things, like snakes or spiders, but something about that Red Kid chilled me to the bone. Its head tilted slightly to one side, as if it were waiting to see what I would do. Or maybe it didn’t, and my rattled imagination was playing tricks on me. Either way, I didn’t dare take my eyes off the thing for fear that if I did, it would be outside my driver’s side window in the next moment.

Leaving my van in reverse, I started backing away, toward the highway. That full hundred yards, I drove backward, stealing the quickest of glances over my shoulder to keep myself on the road. I didn’t take a full breath until I backed onto the empty highway and pointed my van back in the direction of home.

I’ve never been back to Oddities Road, and the hair stands up on my arms whenever I pass by, like it’s electrified. Nobody in my life, not my wife, kids, or close friends, have heard my story, even though the experience haunts me, to this day. I feel like talking about it would only give it life and power, like if I told anybody, I might look out my bedroom window one night and find the Red Kid on my lawn, staring at me with its big, blank face. But I’m telling the story now. You can’t keep these things inside forever, and I pray I never see that horrid little thing again.