The Puppet
I was eleven years old when something started using my body like a puppet. I remember none of it. But everyone else did. And the dreams never really stopped.
Let me be clear about something: everything Im about to tell you actually happened to me. This is not a story I heard from someone else, not a tale passed down at family reunions. I lived it. You can believe it or dismiss it as fictionthats your choice. But I will not apologize for what I experienced.
If I were a character in one of those supernatural novels people read by flashlight under their covers, I would be the one born under the wrong sign. Not quite a ghost, not quite alive. Something in between. My grandmother had a name for it, though she only whispered it when no one else was listening: a hollow child. Someone whose soul doesnt quite grip tight to their body. Someone the other side finds... convenient.
I was eleven years old in the summer of 1997. Eleventh grade. Old enough to know better, young enough that the world still had monsters hiding in its shadowsor so I thought at the time. We lived in my uncle Franks house on the edge of Millbrook, a small farming town in southern Ohio. My parents were in California for a work assignment that lasted two years. I stayed with my grandmother most of that time, and with Uncle Frank and his family when she traveled to see my aunts.
Uncle Frank was a livestock farmer. Not the gentle kind who names his cows and plays country music for them. The real kind. The kind who worked in silence and expected results. Every kid in Millbrook feared him. When I misbehaved, a look from Frank was enough to send me straight. His wife Aunt Dottie did her best to keep the house running, but with four kids of their own and me on top of it, she was always tired.
My older cousin Derek was Uncle Franks oldest. Nineteen years old, built like a linebacker, with a temper that could flare up without warning. He spent that summer at his mothers family farm in Kentucky, visiting relatives. He left on a Sunday.
By Wednesday, I was gone too.
They found me on Thursday morning, standing in the cornfield behind the barn. I had no memory of walking there. Aunt Dottie said she called my name seven times before I turned around. When I did, she said I looked at her like she was a stranger. My eyes, she told me later, were wrong. Not a different color, just... empty. Like someone had scooped out whatever was behind them and left only a shell.
That was the beginning.
The days that followed were described to me later by my aunt and my older sister, who was fourteen and understood more than she should have. I moved through the house like something was pulling my strings. I ate without tastingfood went in my mouth mechanically, no expression, no words. One night Aunt Dottie made catfish for dinner. I sat at the table and ate until there was nothing left on my plate, and then I just... kept eating. Reaching for the last piece even though my plate was empty, my hand moving on its own. My sister had to pull me back. I looked at her and said, very calmly: I dont think theres any more.
That was not a childs voice. I know that now. My sister knew it then.
On the fifth night, Aunt Dottie asked me to bring her a bowl from the kitchen. She wanted to put away leftovers. I walked to the kitchen, opened the cabinet, looked inside, and then walked back out without the bowl. My aunt asked where it was. I stopped at the bottom of the stairs and said, very simply: Its not there anymore. Then I walked upstairs to my room. Uncle Frank grabbed my arm as I passed him. I didnt even flinch. I looked at his hand on my wrist like I was observing something happening to someone else, and then I continued upstairs. He said he tried to hold me, but something about the way I moved made him let go. He didnt have words for it then. He does now. He says it was like trying to hold water.
Every night at midnight, I woke up. Not gradually. Not like someone rising out of sleep. One moment I was under, the next I was sitting up in bed, eyes open, completely awake. And I would remember the dream.
It was always the same.
I was walking home from school with two girls from my classJessica and Melissa. We had taken a shortcut through the old Miller property, which had been abandoned since old man Miller died the year before. But that day, there were cars in the driveway. And people. A lot of people, dressed in black. We walked through the front yard without understanding why, and thats when I saw it: a body. Laid out in the living room. White sheets stained with something I didnt recognize. And everyone was standing around it, watching us, not saying anything. Then they started walking toward us. And I would wake up.
Jessica and Melissa were real people. My classmates. But when school started again that fall, I never told them about the dream. I couldnt. The thought of speaking their names made me feel sick in a way I cant explain.
My grandmother came back on a Sunday. She took one look at me and went pale. She told Aunt Dottie to keep me away from the church and away from Uncle Frank for the next three days. She went to see someone in towna woman who dealt in things the rest of us pretended didnt exist. I never knew what happened during that conversation, but when she came back, she brought a small cloth bag with herbs inside and hung it around my neck. She told me to never take it off, no matter what.
That night, I slept without waking at midnight. The dreams stopped. And slowly, over the following weeks, I came back to myself. My aunt said it was like watching fog lift. One day I was a shell, the next day I was just an eleven-year-old kid who missed his parents and was afraid of the dark.
Im thirty-seven now. I live in Phoenix with my wife and two daughters. I dont talk about what happened that summer. But sometimes at night, Ill wake up for no reason, and Ill lie there in the dark, and Ill think about that dream. About the people in black, standing around the body, watching. About the way they started walking toward us, slow and deliberate, like they had all the time in the world.
My grandmother died in 2008. I kept the cloth bag. Its in a drawer in my bedroom, wrapped in a plastic bag so the herbs dont spill. My wife doesnt know its there. Neither do my daughters. Some things, you protect people from by keeping them in the dark.
And every time I hear about someone in the news who acts strangely, who seems to be there but not quite thereinhabited by something they cant explainI think about that summer. I think about what it felt like to be a puppet.
Because I know what its like to have your strings pulled by something you cant see. And I know how it ends. Sometimes you wake up. Sometimes someone pulls you back. But sometimes, I think, something else happens entirely. Something that leaves you standing in a cornfield at dawn, wondering how you got there, with no memory of the night before.
I was lucky. My grandmother came back. The thing inside me left. But not everyone is so fortunate. And the people it happens to usually dont get to tell the story.
So if youve read this far, consider yourself warned. If you ever feel yourself slippingif you ever wake up and cant remember who you are for a few seconds too long, or if you feel like youre watching your own hands do things you didnt chooseget help. Get away. Find someone who knows how to pull you back.
Because the thing about puppets is: once the string is cut, they dont move on their own anymore. And the ones who use them are not always gentle about letting go.
If I were a character in one of those supernatural novels people read by flashlight under their covers, I would be the one born under the wrong sign. Not quite a ghost, not quite alive. Something in between. My grandmother had a name for it, though she only whispered it when no one else was listening: a hollow child. Someone whose soul doesnt quite grip tight to their body. Someone the other side finds... convenient.
I was eleven years old in the summer of 1997. Eleventh grade. Old enough to know better, young enough that the world still had monsters hiding in its shadowsor so I thought at the time. We lived in my uncle Franks house on the edge of Millbrook, a small farming town in southern Ohio. My parents were in California for a work assignment that lasted two years. I stayed with my grandmother most of that time, and with Uncle Frank and his family when she traveled to see my aunts.
Uncle Frank was a livestock farmer. Not the gentle kind who names his cows and plays country music for them. The real kind. The kind who worked in silence and expected results. Every kid in Millbrook feared him. When I misbehaved, a look from Frank was enough to send me straight. His wife Aunt Dottie did her best to keep the house running, but with four kids of their own and me on top of it, she was always tired.
My older cousin Derek was Uncle Franks oldest. Nineteen years old, built like a linebacker, with a temper that could flare up without warning. He spent that summer at his mothers family farm in Kentucky, visiting relatives. He left on a Sunday.
By Wednesday, I was gone too.
They found me on Thursday morning, standing in the cornfield behind the barn. I had no memory of walking there. Aunt Dottie said she called my name seven times before I turned around. When I did, she said I looked at her like she was a stranger. My eyes, she told me later, were wrong. Not a different color, just... empty. Like someone had scooped out whatever was behind them and left only a shell.
That was the beginning.
The days that followed were described to me later by my aunt and my older sister, who was fourteen and understood more than she should have. I moved through the house like something was pulling my strings. I ate without tastingfood went in my mouth mechanically, no expression, no words. One night Aunt Dottie made catfish for dinner. I sat at the table and ate until there was nothing left on my plate, and then I just... kept eating. Reaching for the last piece even though my plate was empty, my hand moving on its own. My sister had to pull me back. I looked at her and said, very calmly: I dont think theres any more.
That was not a childs voice. I know that now. My sister knew it then.
On the fifth night, Aunt Dottie asked me to bring her a bowl from the kitchen. She wanted to put away leftovers. I walked to the kitchen, opened the cabinet, looked inside, and then walked back out without the bowl. My aunt asked where it was. I stopped at the bottom of the stairs and said, very simply: Its not there anymore. Then I walked upstairs to my room. Uncle Frank grabbed my arm as I passed him. I didnt even flinch. I looked at his hand on my wrist like I was observing something happening to someone else, and then I continued upstairs. He said he tried to hold me, but something about the way I moved made him let go. He didnt have words for it then. He does now. He says it was like trying to hold water.
Every night at midnight, I woke up. Not gradually. Not like someone rising out of sleep. One moment I was under, the next I was sitting up in bed, eyes open, completely awake. And I would remember the dream.
It was always the same.
I was walking home from school with two girls from my classJessica and Melissa. We had taken a shortcut through the old Miller property, which had been abandoned since old man Miller died the year before. But that day, there were cars in the driveway. And people. A lot of people, dressed in black. We walked through the front yard without understanding why, and thats when I saw it: a body. Laid out in the living room. White sheets stained with something I didnt recognize. And everyone was standing around it, watching us, not saying anything. Then they started walking toward us. And I would wake up.
Jessica and Melissa were real people. My classmates. But when school started again that fall, I never told them about the dream. I couldnt. The thought of speaking their names made me feel sick in a way I cant explain.
My grandmother came back on a Sunday. She took one look at me and went pale. She told Aunt Dottie to keep me away from the church and away from Uncle Frank for the next three days. She went to see someone in towna woman who dealt in things the rest of us pretended didnt exist. I never knew what happened during that conversation, but when she came back, she brought a small cloth bag with herbs inside and hung it around my neck. She told me to never take it off, no matter what.
That night, I slept without waking at midnight. The dreams stopped. And slowly, over the following weeks, I came back to myself. My aunt said it was like watching fog lift. One day I was a shell, the next day I was just an eleven-year-old kid who missed his parents and was afraid of the dark.
Im thirty-seven now. I live in Phoenix with my wife and two daughters. I dont talk about what happened that summer. But sometimes at night, Ill wake up for no reason, and Ill lie there in the dark, and Ill think about that dream. About the people in black, standing around the body, watching. About the way they started walking toward us, slow and deliberate, like they had all the time in the world.
My grandmother died in 2008. I kept the cloth bag. Its in a drawer in my bedroom, wrapped in a plastic bag so the herbs dont spill. My wife doesnt know its there. Neither do my daughters. Some things, you protect people from by keeping them in the dark.
And every time I hear about someone in the news who acts strangely, who seems to be there but not quite thereinhabited by something they cant explainI think about that summer. I think about what it felt like to be a puppet.
Because I know what its like to have your strings pulled by something you cant see. And I know how it ends. Sometimes you wake up. Sometimes someone pulls you back. But sometimes, I think, something else happens entirely. Something that leaves you standing in a cornfield at dawn, wondering how you got there, with no memory of the night before.
I was lucky. My grandmother came back. The thing inside me left. But not everyone is so fortunate. And the people it happens to usually dont get to tell the story.
So if youve read this far, consider yourself warned. If you ever feel yourself slippingif you ever wake up and cant remember who you are for a few seconds too long, or if you feel like youre watching your own hands do things you didnt chooseget help. Get away. Find someone who knows how to pull you back.
Because the thing about puppets is: once the string is cut, they dont move on their own anymore. And the ones who use them are not always gentle about letting go.