The Boy Who Came From Nowhere

Grandpa had been dead for a week, and the footsteps had stopped completely. Didn't scare us anymore, not as much as the noises, although Mom still had a tough time with it, more with the memories, though. She was conflicted, understandably so, considering that she was the only one that chose to move us to come spend his final days together. I don't know how she knew. Maybe a daughter's intuition, if that's a thing. My sister and I had gotten off school, and she was upset because she had to skip summer camp in order to come with us to his house, a large thing that we called the farm, but we knew very well that it wasn't anymore. Grandpa had no animals or land to tend to too old. I assume I remember trying to convince my sister that this was better than camp. This was a whole summer of camping, and we could tell stories, laid into the night, start campfires, and learn songs. I shouldn't have suggested that I regretted it the very first day when she asked me for a story. When I told her the first one, she asked me questions about it, wanting to make up her own. It wasn't scary enough, She said she wanted a really, really scary one. Mom was doing her best to get us settled, so I helped out where I could. We had brought out two blankets and two sets of sheets, along with our clothes and the rest of the things we would need. We would have to scavenge around the huge, worn down house. Grandpa was sick, but he could still move around and go to the bathroom on his own. We were supposed to be there just to keep them company and hopefully convince them to come live with us closer to town. We all knew that it was going to be impossible, but we tried because we didn't know we were going to be among a dead man who would still walk for another thirty days. My name is Edwin, and here's a scary story. It was hard to talk about the problems around Grandpa. It felt like he had pushed himself out of the world on his own, his way to defend himself. Throughout his life, he was known as a hard working man, leading a local group of farmers to strike deals with some of the larger areas, bringing along business and even tourism to the areas of the locals. The ones I started offering things that were hard to enjoy unless you were teaching them, like baking or harvesting fruit. They made tourist attractions out of them. Halloween, for example, started to become a day to look forward to with the hay rides and the local legends. There was one of the girl who fell on the well and they shut it down. The headless horse. That's it, not a horseman, but like a headless horse, a four legged creature that roamed in the woods at night searching for a head to replace his. But there were other dark ones around the area. The stories never made it to the status of legends because they were real. The Troy children that disappeared under mysterious circumstances, the Gonzales widow who was found atop the trees for the birds to find. I think all those legends started circulating in part because of my grandpa. He loved reading and talking to the historians. That would have been one myself, he told me, had it not been for your grandmother being so afraid of those things. Mom used to tell me that Grandma was like that. Around the house you would find countless bibles of different salesmen, in churches. She visited paintings of Jesus and a mix of little statues that belonged to Catholic churches instead of whatever denomination of Christians she was supposed to be. The word God was not allowed without it being in prayer or with respect, a reason why Mom picked up the word gosh as a habit. I had never thought of historians as scare seekers until Grandpa taught me. He would pull me aside by grabbing my shoulder tightly, getting close to my face with that smell of stale coffee, one that I didn't know had come from his shirt rather than his mouth, and he would say, let me tell you how the world works. I knew it was story time. Then it must have been twelve when I learned about what humans were capable of. The stories he would tell about those towns were only in what point zero zero zero one percent of the many we would ever get to explore. And yet there were so many tales of a thing that led to hate, that led to fury, that led to death or mystery. He usually started with jealousy or revenge. In a strange way, I thought of life being worthless. After those conversations, events were the birth of a child, and the many birthdays they had became only a mystery countdown before they would go. The joy of new parents, the laugh of the child changing as they outgrew their clothes, all coming down face to face with a gun or a knife, a whole universe ending right then and there. But still I wanted to know more more about everything, like there wasn't enough time. About as many certificates and letters of accomplishment that he had in his office, the key to the city more like a collection of villages, though, the cigars and bottles giving to him by the local businesses at one point, all of them now dusty and covered with a type of shame that he didn't deserve. After the rumor started, we had an idea about it, especially now that I was older and could understand more of our family's problems. Why was it only Mom the one who came to visit him? What had he done wrong? I don't think anyone else would be able to understand it? And Grandpa had lost all the energy to try and give us the answers, but he still gave us questions. A scarier one, huh, he said, coming up from behind My sister startling her before standing up to help him sit by his chair. Instead of a campfire, we had a lantern with a tiny flame in the glass out by the porch. We had turned off the lights for ambience, although it also worked for the bugs. How was my sister's age when I first learned about this? And I think Grandpa remembered it too. I don't think there's an appropriate age to learn how the world works without any immediate objection from us. He leaned forward, stretched out his legs with the boots stomping the wooden floor right by the lantern, nearly fading it out completely, and he started telling us a story that I didn't know, the one we had all been wondering about the root of all the problems in our family, and of why he ended up retreating to his house waiting for his groceries rather than making eye contact with anyone else in town. There was a boy who came from nowhere. He started back then your Grandma and I had just moved in here. It was a standing structure, but nothing livable. I got some of the guys around Elwood to come and help me, but those bums just wanted the beer. We had set aside for Fridays. I found them once sneaking a few but didn't say anything. But your grandma hated it everything, really, she hated beer, loud music, the books or stacks of newspapers that would bring in word around town was that there was a boy who was walking into different properties at night. Of course, no one had cameras or none of that, so we relied on guard dogs and the nosy neighbors to bring us the news. Eventually, we all started to know him around here as Lucas. I'm not sure where the name came from, but that's what we called him. The weird thing about him wasn't that he sleepwalked. I think it was the easiest thing for us to process it was that no one knew where he had come from. He just showed up. No one knew where he lived, who stayed with him, nothing like that. My sister and I looked at each other with side eyes as Grandpa continued this was a type of story. I knew him by and no one would see him during the day, you know, it was only at night, and he would talk gibberish sometimes. According to some of the neighbors, the kids would call him a ghost. Others would say that he was some type of werewolf that lived out in the woods, but I never bought any of it. Everything everyone said about him pointed to the same thing. That he would walk around with intention, not aimlessly, around properties. He would stand by the windows, not looking toward them, but away. Like if you were standing by the window right there, you see that one, imagine facing out toward that tree. We both snapped our heads towards the window and then back at Grandpa. Now all along you might be thinking that I'm talking of some teenager or something, So get a hold of this. This boy must have been no older than eight years old. Now that changes things, doesn't it. I of course wanted to see where this boy had come from, so I started asking around. People used to know me around here. So I got a hold of a young man. His name was Miller, forget his first name, but he had kept his family's library going the thing that turned into a museum by the entrance to this road right here. That one's his. And it wasn't just a tourist thing, no, no, no, that thing was a real library with original pictures, letters that got photocopied into books, and lots of other stories in the minds of that family, the one who had lived here ever since this place was nothing but a series of rest houses for horsemen, the ones that were crossing over passed the mountains over there. Anyway, Miller told me that he suspected the boy belong to the George House, a place higher up in the hill, maybe about halfway, that he had been born out of wedlock. Now that that was a sin or anything for the rest of us. God, I was about to say, Gosh, God knows how much of that goes around here. The truth was, he wasn't the product of any marriage or lack of it. He was a product of a single family. Now that's a sin for just about anybody. Mom peeked her head through the doorway. When you're all finished here, we have dinner ready, soup and sandwiches, like you asked, Maggie. You're gonna want to hear this, Grandpa groaned, tapping on the chair next to him. It was strange for us to see Mom being the child of someone else, but she followed orders, wiping her hands on the already crumpled up paper towel and sitting down leaning back. Grandpa then continued with the most terrifying story any of us had ever heard. I was warned by your grandmother not to mess with the Millers, the historians of this part of the town. Grandpa continued. They were disliked by many, mainly because they had something everyone lacked around these areas, truth, cold, hard, solid truth, and they didn't care about it either. They were well prepped out there. You don't outlive an entire town not knowing how to defend yourself around here, and they had close ties to the county records. They were the first to make obituaries for everyone, and they had the most concise list of deaths and curious cases by far. There was no record of this boy, and Lucas was always putting quotation marks in the records with his estimated date of birth. The Millers never went out to ask anything by the George House, where they suspected that Lucas had come from. Again, we don't get to outlive us by being dumb either. I could tell Mom was picking up the story right away. Either she had been listening the entire time, or she had already known about this part, because she was now leaning forward her ear facing Grandpa while she looked at the lantern that kept pretending to die in front of us. Now you don't know about this, Maggie, but that boy you all talked about was real. And all those times I left early for the fair or to chase after our cows and the neighbor's properties, I'd always wonder if i'd see him. Until one morning I caught up with him on the truck. He didn't run or nothing. He stood still looking at me, and I think he was smiling, but his face was strange, you know how it is sometimes, so I couldn't tell. I asked him where he came from and if he needed a ride, maybe up to the George house. But when he heard that word, I swear he lost it. He started screaming, wailing like I had shot him in the leg. He collapsed on the dirt right there on the path, so loud I think he woke up the houses up by the foothills. I stood there, saying sorry and asking him what the matter was. But all I saw next was how he stood up and started running full speed toward the hill. And now I'm saying faster than a horse. When he hit that mud rode up ahead, he hit it with such a force that he tumbled over, but he never hit the ground. I swear to you all right here in front of me, that I saw him float all the way up the road. I was standing there and disbelieve, going what did I just witness? Do I do? I head straight for the Miller's house. I don't remember how I got there in one piece, with the truck bouncing so much because of the rain from the night before, but I remember walking up to his door and knocking on it hard enough to wake him up, soft enough, A said, not startled anybody, Miller, Miller, I yelled, I just saw Lucas out there by the road. Miller, you awake, hold on, hold on, I heard from the inside. The light from the kitchen was flickering on. I watched silhouette walking up to the front door. What's this you're saying, man, he asked me as a front door opened, his face growing with concern. I told him everything. I described the boy as I had seen him, his right eye lower than the left, and his mouth off to the side. Had it not been for his round face or the scream he let out, I could have sworn this was some old man wandering the dirt roads. Early in the morning, I described the way he left, though that part was harder for me to believe. It wasn't so familiar, Just as eyes expected, he said, his hand on his chin while the other was extending out towards my truck, gesturing us to go in there. He locked his door and we went out for a drive to where I had seen him. As I tried to repeat my story with even more detail, the way he floated up the hill, as if being dragged by an invisible rope, faster than I had ever seen any human move in my life. I shut off the truck and lowered down my window. The sun was warming up the dirt enough for the mist to begin forming around us. We sat there in silence, when suddenly a loud gunshot was heard in the distance, with those echoes of a scream. We were used to gunshots, for sure, but not that early. Something about it didn't sound right. It's now or never, Miller said, his voice, suddenly changing from that softer voice that he would only speak of facts and stuff he read on books to that of a hunter. And so we drove halfway up the hill to the George house to find it empty. It wasn't abandoned like an old dilapidated house by any means, but looked like it hadn't been taken care of in a couple of months. Right at the front, by the door was the body of that boy, part of his head smeared on the steps that led up to it. Upon realizing this, Miller barely managed to open the door fast enough to vomit. Mom at this instant, looked over at my sister to see her reaction. Her mouth was open wide and she was completely still. But in front of Grandpa, there was no asking him to tame it down. Mom had tried many times. Grandpa told me his stories never worked. Sometimes it even made it worse. We waited for Grandpa to continue, and he stumbled on his words a bit. I could tell he had lost his train of thought. You found the boy, I said, right right, he continued. I found the boy and got out of the car, and I noticed that the blood was dry. The smell was horrible out there, and Miller as my witness, we can say that that boy had been dead for much longer than a few days. The gunshot the boy I saw, and might have all been in our heads, not real not sure how it happened, but it was, as you might say, impossible. Mom took a deep breath and looked at us, putting her hands on her knees to stand up, as if she was expecting more to the story that she knew she wasn't going to get. Grandpa reached out his hand to get help to stand up as we all got up and walked into the dining room area in silence and sat around four sandwiches on the table while Mom brought along a pot of soup from the stove. A few days passed and Grandpa told us a few other stories, none as creepy as a boy who came from nowhere, but still unsettling to say the least. We had more time to talk with Mom about everything, and my sister was the one to ask about why Grandpa was always alone. Mom told us that Grandma had left him because of the reputation he gained around town after hanging out with Miller and his family. In fact, he even got accused of killing that poor boy. Of course, no one had any proof or motive, but hearsay was more powerful back then. Grandma's pride was strong too, and he shared it with her own children. Mom was too young to be influenced, though Grandpa really wanted to figure out who that boy had been from the George House, and now there was no one left to ask. Grandpa had said that Miller suspected that the George House was empty because he wouldn't see their trucks going back and forth anymore, but never cared enough to go out and find out on his own. Neither of them were able to explain the gunshot unless he had come from somewhere else, and their finding had been just pure chance, not like there had been a ghost gunshot. But what about Grandpa saw, my sister asked stubbornly. I don't know, Mom said, sternly, ending the conversation with that. When Grandpa died, his death certificate was signed and we had a request to notify the House of Records about the burial information. We just needed to let them know. Sometimes, especially from small towns without cemeteries like that, people request the places where they want to be buried, and Grandpa was sure to have one. We figured the only person who might know would be Miller, Grandpa's longtime friend. It took a couple of visits until we finally met him. All this time We had been cleaning up the house and getting everything in order, with the paperwork and the filings, the ones for the transfer of inheritance and such. Mom was going to receive everything to her name, but she wasn't sure if she wanted to stay because of the strange sounds that came at night, footsteps, small ones that would come up to the windows and then vanish. Grandpa had been used to them in life, and he wouldn't be afraid of them. It won't be long, my little friend, he would whisper. We all heard them now without Grandpa this time, and we all thought of his story when it happened. Miller took out his book and found coordinates next to a name on his book. He put his hand on his chin and the other pointed to the car, signaling us to go with him somewhere. He took a stray to Grandpa's property, be parked by the large oak tree and the logs by the old barn. Behind everything, a small patch of wild flowers had sprouted next to a flat rock. He walked up to it. Miller kept checking his books. On the ground. Next to the flowers was a headstone Lucas, the boy who came from Nowhere nineteen sixty six to August second, nineteen seventy four. Grandpa was a kind man, a man that the world let down when he chose the truth. And yet he never forgot about that young boy that had no voice, the one who couldn't smile like the rest of us. His little friend that would visit on those cold and dark nights and stand by the window, the one who had no patch of dirt set aside, the one who was turned away with no friends or family. He understood each other, and that unlikely friendship. Grandpa quietly gave him a place to belong. The stories for Scary Story Podcasts are written and produced by me Edwin Coarrujaz. If you want to get in touch, you can find me on TikTok, Instagram and Facebook as Edwin Cove. That's e d w I nco V. I also have a bunch of other shows on my website scary FM. If you like this podcast, you'll also really like Horror Story, where I share true paranormal mysteries and hauntings. You can look it up like that Horror Story has big yellow letters on the cover. Anyway, Thank you very much for listening. You're following the show. I will tell you another story next week. Keep it scary, everyone, see soon.