“Who were the Johnsons?”
“Mary and Elliott Johnson. They lived in a quiet area, close to the woods, outside of the city. When the social worker drove up the street, I thought that I must be dreaming. I remember pressing my face against the window, eyes wide in awe. The houses were big, really big, each on a generous plot. What struck me the most were the trees; having grown up in the city, I had never seen so many trees before.
“Mrs. Walker, the social worker, impressed on me the importance of being good and getting along with the family. ‘Try, Kian, please. Try to keep quiet when the nightmares come,’ she would tell me. She couldn’t have known that the biggest nightmare of all resided in that white colonial-style house with the four pillars.”
Kian explains that it was the grandest house he had ever seen, tucked away at the end of a cul-de-sac. Standing on the driveway, you couldn’t see the houses on either side due to all the trees and bushes. The four-car garage sat to the right of the house, a strange-looking black car with lots of windows at the back parked in front of it. A path from the garage led around to the back of the house, and he could just make out another building in the distance, a large chimney-type structure looming above it ominously.
“Funeral home?” I ask, and he nods. The car fills with suspense and I shiver against it.
“I didn’t know it yet, obviously, as I stood at yet another door, waiting for strangers to take me in. Mary and Elliot answered the door and gushed over me, telling me how happy they were to have me there. They were first-time foster parents and wanted to give back to the community, they had told me. Their son, Isaac, was so excited to have a brother, and if all went well, maybe they could adopt me, and I’d be their real son.
“It was the talk of adoption that pulled me in. It was getting harder and harder to place me in homes the older I got. And after having so many families toss me out, to now find one that might actually want me, filled me with hope. At first, everything was great. It was a beautiful house with hardwood floors and corniced ceilings. Chandeliers draped from most ceilings, and they had staff to do the cleaning and cooking.
“I had been amazed and awed by everything in that house. Best of all was Isaac, who was four years older than me. I had always wanted a brother, and for the first time, I thought I had finally found a home. The Johnsons didn’t even seem to mind my nightmares, and after a week had passed, I’d been enrolled in the local school. That’s when I started hearing things.”
“What did you hear?”
“Whispers at first, then mocks and taunts. Normal kid stuff. ‘You live in a haunted house’ and ‘your parents are witches’—that sort of thing. I shrugged it off, not knowing what they were talking about. I knew Mary and Elliot worked from home; they had informed me they worked in the building behind the house. At the time, I hadn’t thought much about it, but after hearing one of the kids say the house was full of dead bodies, I decided to investigate.”
“Didn’t you ever watch horror movies as a kid, Kian?” Jase asks teasingly, and I can tell he’s trying to break the rising tension. “Investigating shit like that gets people killed.”
Kian flips him off and returns to the story. He tells us how he had snuck out to the back, hiding behind trees and bushes, pretending to be the next 007. How he had tested two doors before finding a third that was unlocked and let himself inside, only to find coffins everywhere.
“After having not seen any since my parents’ funeral, I was practically shitting myself as I wandered through the room. But I told myself to grow a pair and kept going, through one room and another. I wound up in a tiled room with two surgical tables. I was beginning to understand where I was, but not having had any experience with funeral homes, I had no idea what would be on the tables, stretched out under sheets.”
“You looked, didn’t you?”
He huffs a laugh. “Of course I did. I wasn’t prepared to see two dead naked bodies, the Y stitches from their autopsies staring me in the face. I fell back to the floor, convinced they were zombies or some sort of Frankenstein project. I had run out of there like demons were chasing me and wound up crashing a funeral, right as the coffins were going into the cremator.”
“Fuck,” I whisper, horrified for little Kian.
“Yeah. After screaming my head off, I tore out of there, Mary and Elliot trying to stop me. When I got outside, I could smell something burning, and looking up, saw what I thought was a chimney spouting out smoke. It brought back memories of the fire, and I had a severe panic attack. When Mary and Elliot found me, I was hiding in the bushes, shaking, caught in a flashback. I had wet myself and was calling for my parents.”
Kian tells us that Isaac was watching from an upstairs window and had seen everything. After that day, Mary and Elliot had grown distant, slowly withdrawing any affection, while at the same time, Isaac began to bully him. It started small; some things were so inconsequential that Kian questioned if he was crazy. It built from there until he became Isaac’s toy.
“He would chase me through the house while holding a knife, threatening to cut my dick off. He would lock me in the basement for days without food. ‘Oh, there you are, son!’Elliot would exclaim. ‘You boys and your games!’
“But his favorite thing to do was to mess with me in the funeral home. He’d shut me in with the corpses or lock me in the mortuary cabinets. He’d bang on the door, shouting and laughing as I would scream to be let out. Or he’d lock me in one of the coffins, leaving me there for hours on end.
“Mary and Elliot turned a blind eye to everything. Their son was perfect and could do no wrong. They pretended not to hear my screams and would simply step out of my way when Isaac chased me through the house.”
“Did you report it to your social worker?” I question, my anger rising. I have to physically pry my fists open, little crescent marks left in my skin.
“Yes, but it didn’t help. Mrs. Walker would always call them first and let them know she was coming. Mary would gush about how wonderful it was having me there, how settled I was, how well I was doing in school. She would talk about me and Isaac being the best of friends, so when I tried telling her what was happening, she didn’t believe me. Mrs. Walker could only see upstanding members of the community, with a house most people could only dream of living in.
“I had given up after that. When Isaac told me to run, I would just stand there dumbly and stare at him with deadened eyes. I didn’t care what he did anymore, it didn’t matter. Isaac wasn’t happy to lose his plaything, so he upped the ante and my nightmare turned into hell.
“It all changed one day when Mrs. Walker did something she’d never done before—showed up without calling first. And through the glass-paneled door, she witnessed me naked, bound with rope to the banister of the staircase. While howling with laughter, Isaac pissed on me, then started cutting into my flesh with a knife. I had met her eyes through the pane, then looked away, thinking she would just walk away like everyone else. Instead, she called the police and Isaac was arrested.”
“I hope he’s fucking rotting in prison,” I spit, and Kian laughs humorlessly.
“No. Mary and Elliot were fine, upstanding citizens, with more money than most and a shark for a lawyer. Isaac was remanded to a five-star psychiatric facility, where he stayed for a year. I was shuttled off to another group home, where I ended up staying until I aged out of the system. By the time I was eighteen, I had so much rage inside me I was scared I would explode. I was a fucking disaster.
“And above all, I wanted revenge. So I plotted and planned, and spent hours searching the internet for information. It took me a year of planning. I worked shitty jobs washing dishes and shoveling snow, anything I could get my hands on. I slept in shelters or doorways, anything to save money. And when I was nineteen, I went back to the white colonial house with four pillars.”
I reach forward and squeeze his shoulder. Kian pats my hand, then finishes his story.
“I waited until nightfall, then even longer. I waited until the lights went out, for them to be asleep. It was lucky for me they lived on that big plot and had all those bushes and trees for cover, so the neighbors couldn’t see me. I planted bombs all around the house, then got my ass out of there.
