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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/riprosey on 2024-12-07 19:45:22+00:00.

Part 1

It’s been twenty years since that night. The next few weeks were Hell for everyone involved.

While nobody ever outright said it, I knew they secretly blamed me for what happened to Anthony. Why wouldn’t they? I was the last one to ever see him alive.

The story went nationwide. A manhunt was launched, and in the following weeks I swear every square inch of those woods were searched. Every neighbor on our street was questioned, questioned again, and then questioned a third time. Eventually, they ran out of people to question and trees to look at, and the search slowly died down. We just accepted that Anthony was gone.

The following school year wasn’t any easier. I was already an outcast, but usually Anthony was there to stand up for me. Now, I had nobody. Even Tommy, someone who, besides Anthony, I had considered one of my best friends, would no longer talk to me. It’s not like I tried, though.

We would pass each other in the halls, but we never looked at each other. If we had the same class, we would sit on opposite sides of the classroom. When it came to group projects, we would discuss the bare minimum. The only time he’d said anything unrelated to an assignment was the day before Christmas break that year.

We were sitting across from each other, both of us individually working on the assignment we were supposed to do together, when he spoke.

“You didn’t tell anyone, did you? About the deer?”

I didn’t even respond verbally. I just shook my head.  

I finished the school year alone. There was a small ceremony, and my parents even attempted to have a party to celebrate, but nobody came.

Middle school was worse.

Tommy and I ended up going to different schools, but enough kids from my previous school attended my current one for word to get around. Eventually rumors started to spread.

The first one I heard is that I had killed Anthony out of jealousy. What would I have been so jealous of that it drove me to murder my best friend and only sibling? I’m not sure. Nobody ever bothered thinking that far into it. After that spread, they got more and more convoluted. Someone suggested that my family were actually cannibals; that we killed and ate Anthony in a ritualistic sacrifice, and that him going missing was just a cover up for what really happened.

I don’t remember all of the rumors, but that was the one that really stuck.

Soon, we started getting letters in the mail, threatening us and calling us names. At first, we just ignored them. After all, it was just a bunch of kids, right? Then, the vandalism started.

They got my dad’s car first, slashing his tires and spray painting “Child killers” on the side. A few days later, while we were all out of the house, someone smashed in our living room window. We called the cops, but they said there was nothing they could do since nobody saw who did it. We boarded up the window and kept chugging along.

The vandalism didn’t stop, and eventually the rumors that were contained in the red brick walls of my middle school made their way out. Kids told their parents, and those parents talked to other parents. Eventually, the family of cannibals living on Cherry Lane was the talk of the town. One morning, we showed up for church and were denied entry.

“But we didn’t do anything wrong!” My dad pleaded with pastor Mark.

“I believe you, George. But not everyone does. I’m sorry.” And then he closed the door in our faces.

Mom cried the whole way home.

No longer could we go anywhere without being under the scrutinous eye of the public. The grocery store, the library, the movie theater, even at my dad’s work he got side eyes constantly from customers. After a while, it became too much to bear.

I transferred schools over the summer between my sixth and seventh grade years. But the damage was already done.

A kid at the new school introduced me to alcohol. A kid named Collin. I got into the routine of hanging out under a bridge after school with the other delinquents and getting so drunk that I couldn’t see straight.

I blacked out for the first time when I was 13.

It wasn’t long before my parents caught on, and my drinking only drove a bigger wedge into our already strained relationship. We would fight constantly about where I was, what I was doing, and especially my drinking. These fights would always result in slammed doors or holes in walls. Once, my father even struck me. It was the first and only time he ever laid hands on any of us.

I wish I could say that I hit him back; that I laid my old man out flat, spat on him and showed him who’s boss, but I didn’t. Instead, I cried. I sobbed into his chest and apologized for everything. They held me and told me that it was okay. Even at that moment, I knew they were lying. I knew they still blamed me for everything that had happened since that night in July. The fights didn’t stop there, neither did the drinking. If anything, it ramped up.

I was arrested when I was 15. It wasn’t even for anything cool, either.  I didn’t try and hijack a car or fight a cop. I jaywalked thinking that nobody was around. A cop flashed his lights, and I ran; I don’t even know why. Had I not taken off, the worst that would have happened was a citation or a stern talking to.

That night, after I got back home, my parents and I had the biggest fight ever; the one where they outright accused me of doing something to Anthony and how everything that has happened since is directly my fault. I yelled, called them names and told them how much I hated them, and then I left. The worst part is I don’t think they cared that I was gone. I walked aimlessly around town for a few hours, and when I realized that my parents weren’t out looking for me, I found a park bench and went to bed.

When I came home the next day, it was as if I hadn’t even left. My parents paid no attention to me, and it remained virtually the same for the rest of my school career. We existed in the same space, but I wasn’t their son, and they weren’t my parents.

One night, my dad was sitting in the kitchen when I came home from school. I was a sophomore at the time.

“We’re moving,” he said. "Your mother and I.” I just stared at him blankly. “You can come if you want, or you can stay here. We aren’t selling the house, but we can’t keep living here.”

And with that, he got up and walked out of the room.

When the end of the week rolled around, my parents were gone, and I lived alone.

By then I was up to about a fifth a day. My parents had a big collection of varying alcohols they kept locked up. For whatever reason they left it behind. They took the key, but they didn’t ever think I'd break the lock.

I stopped going to school, I would wake up, get drunk and just sit on the couch all day. A few times I toyed with the idea of walking out the back door, into the woods and finding a nice tree to climb up and die in. I usually would pass out before I ever made the trek. I think the farthest that I ever got was the backdoor. Something about those woods, even all these years later, I couldn’t bring myself to even consider stepping foot in them again.

One day, Collin came over to check on me.

The door must not have been locked, because when I woke up he was just standing over me.

“Dude…” he gestured vaguely around him.

“Sorry, if I knew you were coming over I would have cleaned up the place.” I tried to make it sound like a joke, but I don’t think he found any humor in it.

We talked for hours, I told him about my drinking, how my parents moved out and left me here. Getting arrested, all of it. In his defense, he had no idea what I was going through. He didn’t know I drank outside of the parties we went to on rare occasions. After our talk, he offered for me to come stay with him and his parents. He told me that if I said no, he was going to call CPS. I didn’t know if he was bluffing but there was no way foster care is better than this. So I went with him.

His parents, for what it's worth, took me in without a second thought.

They had heard all the rumors, seen the graffiti and the sideways glances that people around town always gave us, but they didn’t buy into it. They didn’t see how a child could have done what I was accused of doing. They also didn’t see how my parents could hold it against me like they did. I didn’t know either.

We had a long talk that night; I filled them in on everything that went down with my parents, my drinking problems and what not. They heard me out and cast no judgement, and for that I will be forever grateful.

I promised them I would stop drinking, and just to be safe they set me up with a counselor at their church. I didn’t believe in God, but something was better than nothing. My grades improved drastically and by the time I graduated high school, my grades were decent enough for me to get into the same school as Collin with a partial scholarship. What I couldn’t afford, Collin’s parents helped pay for on the condition that I pay it back after graduation.

I’ll stop dragging on, but my college experience was pretty mundane. I lived with Collin the whole time, and it was nice to finally be somewhere where nobody knew me or my story. Every now and then we’d mention to someone where we were from and they’d respond with something along the lines of, “Oh...

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