Creepy Thread

Ray bent over his sketches, deep in concentration. The renovated room in his New Mexico trailer, estimated at $100,000, made him smile. He leaned back and surveyed the room, his own personal Toy Box. It would do. He bent over his papers again and continued to sketch in the darkening room.

#

My three-year old self curled into a tight fetal ball, cheek pressed down on the cold red tile, clutching a toy bear. If I just held still enough…. My white hair, feathery and soft as a new duckling’s down, tufted out gently in all directions. I tried to look away from Dad, sitting on a kitchen chair turned backwards. One arm dangled limply over the back of the chair, thick with black curlicues of hair. His other hand cradled his face as he stared at the rust-red floor. Tears slithered down his cheeks, making irregular splashes on the tiles. I stared at the splashes. Mama opened the door and walked out, down the driveway, into a small car. She drove away. Splashes hit the floor. I held still.

#

I claimed to not believe the rumor of the 30-foot catfish, but every time I slipped my swimsuit-clad, 12-year old body into Elephant Butte Lake, I thought of the catfish. The lake was formed by the damming of the Rio Grande about four miles from Truth or Consequences. It had been a canyon before it was a lake, so drop-offs and cliffs under the water were plentiful. I didn’t care about cliffs, though. I cared about the giant catfish waiting for me just beyond the cliffs.

No one seemed quite sure how the rumor of the giant catfish got started. Some folks said it happened when scuba divers were sent to inspect the dam for cracks and weaknesses. The experienced divers came sputtering out of the water, nearly drowning, shrieking hysterically of a 30-foot catfish living in the lake. Others said it was the Navy who discovered the fish. The Navy used to train men at our dam, but one day the military men, panicking, splurted from the water and refused to go back in. There was a 30-foot catfish down there, they said, and they didn’t want anything to do with it.

The lake was murky, dirty. Standing waist-deep and looking down past my floating pool toys, I couldn’t see my feet, toes curling into the warm, slick mud.



#

My older sister Karen kept a diary hidden in plain sight, nestled among the books in her bookcase. One day our stepmom, who we called Mom, snuck into Karen’s room and stole her diary. She came storming out of her and Dad’s room a short time later, face splotched in red and purple hues that clashed horribly with her dyed auburn hair. Karen had written in the diary how she snuck out to go to a high school dance. We weren’t allowed to go to dances.

“You are embarrassing us all, acting like such a tramp!” Mom yelled. “How do you think your father and I feel, knowing that our daughter is whoring herself around for all our colleagues to see?” She stood in Karen’s room, fists clenched so hard her long nails must have been digging into her palms. She and Dad were both teachers at the local schools.

“How is going to a dance whoring?” Karen snapped, flipping her dark chocolate colored hair over her shoulder. “And it’s not like you want kids anyways. You want little robots who will do your every bidding and never disagree with you!”

We weren’t allowed to pick out our own clothes, watch movies rated above PG, wear makeup, cut our hair, or polish our nails, and we certainly weren’t allowed to go to dances.

I cowered in my room, locking myself and my dog inside while Mom and Karen screamed at each other on the other side of my door, and looked out my window at neighbor Ray sauntering down our quiet street.



#

The damming of the Rio Grande flooded a small Old Western town at the base of the dam. When a drought dropped the water level by a dozen feet or so, I could see the slick, ocher halls of the town’s hospital. It was hard not to imagine the patients and nurses there, drowned and pale, gliding up and down those murky halls. I knew the town had been evacuated before the flood, but I could still see the pearlescent faces of the drowned citizens. Perhaps their wet black hair clung to their shoulders like lace-moss. Perhaps they had round opal faces, swollen and gushing water endlessly from every orifice, tendrils of hair sticking to their cheeks, smelling of rotted fish with dead-dull fish scale eyes. Perhaps the giant catfish had grown so large by feeding on the corpses of the drowned town.



#

More toys. Ray could never have enough toys. Toys were his friends. Whips, chains, straps, saws, blades, pulleys, clamps, leg spreaders, all perfectly placed exactly where they belonged in his Toy Box. Now he had a new one, a 12-volt motorized breast stretcher. He placed it carefully in its designated spot, alongside the sketches he had drawn.



#

Mom and Dad decided one day I would be better off brunette. My hair had gradually darkened to dirty blond from its original towheaded white, but it was nowhere near dark enough to blend in with the locals of Truth or Consequences.

“We don’t want you to become a target of the gang activity.” Mom told me, backing me into the bathroom and brandishing a box of store-bought brown hair dye. The gang activity was on a rise, but I kept to myself and none of them had bothered me.

“Besides, now you’ll look more like your father.” She worked the stinking brown goop through my hair. “Sit here for forty-five minutes, then wash it.”

She left me alone sitting on the lip of the tub, aghast. Look like my father? I knew my parents had divorced when I was three years old because my biological mother had cheated on my Dad. Mama’s hair had been curly dark brown, and her eyes were brown. Dad’s hair was also dark brown, and his eyes were brown. My brother Ben, sister Karen, and my grandfather all had dark brown hair and dark eyes. My grandma’s hair was red. Of my aunts and uncles, three had red hair and two had dark brown hair. I was blond with blue eyes. I wondered if the man my mom had slept with had also been blond with blue eyes.



#

We went on Uncle Dan’s boat out to the middle of the lake and parked it there. There weren’t enough fishing poles to go round, so I drank a soda and looked at the scenery instead. Kneeling at the back of the tiny boat where there were no ledges between me and the water, I gazed into it. I wanted to see something in there, anything. I could never see through the lake water. It looked like cold hot chocolate.

I thought I could see swirls of twirling bubbles like half-melted marshmallows just stirred whirling just under the surface. The swirls were faint, though, so faint it was like seeing them through a filmy dream shroud. I leaned closer to the water to get a better look, balancing on my toes as I crouched on the edge.

Ben, fishing at the front of the boat, got a bite on his line. He jerked suddenly in surprise, rocking the boat slightly. I toppled out of the boat, flopping ungracefully head first into the water. Visions of limbs shredded by the boat’s propeller scampered through my mind, even though the engine was off. I darted swiftly away from the boat, smoothly. I was a good swimmer.

I bobbed up and tread water a few feet from the boat. No one on board was concerned, after all, I’d been swimming since I was a toddler.

“Sorry!” Ben called, distractedly flashing me a grin as he struggled with his catch.

“No worries. It’s refreshing. You should all jump in!” I did a crisp, quick somersault in the water, pushing thoughts of giant catfish out of my mind.

I was going to wait in the water until Ben reeled his fish in, but something nudged me in the stomach. A quick, probing shove, like something had accidentally swum into me. I envisioned a catfish, his head as big as my torso, whiskers crawling like grotesque spider legs through the water and wrapping around me, spider-whiskers like long sickly-thin witch fingers clutching my waist, holding me tightly, dragging me under.

Acting in pure silent reaction, I flipped my body up so I was laying flat on the water instead of bobbing vertically. I propelled myself back to the boat quickly as I could and hauled myself onto the back end. Knowing I would be teased mercilessly if I showed fear, I smiled brightly and picked up my soda, taking a calm sip. Ben’s fish flopped breathlessly on deck, squirming desperately.

#

Cynthia, a young prostitute, came screaming naked out of Ray’s trailer. She had escaped by hitting Ray’s girlfriend, Cindy Hendy, with a lamp. Hendy was supposed to watch Cynthia until Ray could come back. He would be angry to lose his latest woman. He wasn’t finished with her yet. He still had toys to play with on her. He hadn’t sketched her yet. She was still alive.

Cynthia, as all the women before her, had been used as a sex slave by Ray and Hendy. She had been tortured and electrocuted, having horror after horror inflicted on her. She ran barefoot and bleeding down the dirt road in Elephant Butte, miles from her home. Bursting into a home with an open door, Cynthia begged the startled woman inside to call the police for her. Ray’s Toy Box days were over.

Serial killer ‘The Toy Box Killer’ David Parker Ray in the tiny village of Elephant Butte, adjacent to Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, drew national attention. Experts said he could have killed over 60 people since his beginnings as a killer sometime in the 1950’s. News crews flew overhead to take aerial footage of his trailer. My family home, just a couple blocks from Ray’s place, was caught in the footage as well.

For years, I had skipped right past Ray’s Toy Box, walking my dog, riding my bike, going on car rides with Dad. The lake with its giant catfish stood on one side of my home. Ray’s place sat on the other side. All those times I had gone past the Toy Box, had there been a woman inside being raped, tortured, abused? Murdered?

I didn’t sleep a full night through for weeks.

Don't look in it's eyes D: