It was four days before Halloween. I had my costume picked out. I was going to be Sherlock Holmes that year. I was in sixth grade. Not because I wanted to be, but because everyone else wanted me to be. Being an eight year old in sixth grade points out that you might be a bit of a freak. Or at least that was my thought at the time.
I lived only six blocks from the elementary school I attended. I walked to and from school every day. I carried a lunch box and a backpack. Over the summer, I had read a book called “The Jungle” by Upton Sinclair and had decided to become a vegetarian. Actually, the thought of eating meat conjured up images from the book that made my stomach churn.
That was why I was in the sixth grade. I had read, digested and understood books like “The Jungle” long before I had finished the third grade. It had been discovered when I read Stephen King’s “The Stand” during my third grade year. My teacher had grilled me over it and found that I had understood it. Lots of special tests were done and instead of enrolling in 4th grade, I enrolled in 6th and I was exempt from English classes.
I was wearing a heavy jacket. Missouri weather is unpredictable all the time, but especially so in Spring and Fall. There is no telling what the day might bring. It has happened many times before, that you wake up to 70 degree weather one Tuesday in October and by the time afternoon comes, it is 50 and still dropping. The next day, there might be snow or it might be 70 degrees again.
They found my jacket, my lunchbox and my backpack on the sidewalk, a mere half-block from my house. The spot my abductor had dropped them when he snatched me up.
Thinking back, I wonder if my mind wasn’t already a little fractured. How does an eight year old survive? I’ve never had an answer, just the knowledge that I did.
My abductor was a man in his forties. He was pudgy with sallow skin and sunken eyes. They seemed to have constant rings around them, making him look a bit like Wednesday on the Addams’ Family.
He had pristine teeth. He didn’t smell bad. He looked like anybody else. He also lived on my street. I knew him as Mr. Callow.
Dinner that night consisted of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I ate it. It wasn’t drugged or anything, there was actually nothing interesting or useful about it, just something to eat.
The following morning, I heard police come into Mr. Callow’s house. He answered all their questions and left with them. He was going to join the search.
I have never understood why I didn’t cry out when the police were there. I’m sure they would have heard me. Fear perhaps? Perhaps it was something else. Some survival instinct that kept my mouth shut. Whatever it was, I didn’t cry out for help while the police questioned him.
I searched my cell while he was gone. I came up with nothing. There were no windows, no furniture. The entire room might have been 4 foot by 6 foot. There was a door, but it seemed to have come from Wonderland. It was just big enough to toss me inside the room. I heard a slide lock every time it opened.
That day was boring. I had nothing to do but sit on a mattress on the floor. There were no books, nothing to entertain me except my imagination and blank walls. I was bored as could be by the time Mr. Callow returned.
Mr. Callow made noises in another room. By the sounds of it, I guessed dinner. Metal was clinking against metal, the sound grated on my nerves, it irritated me to no end.
That night for dinner, he brought me a slice of cherry pie. It made me sick. Not because he had tampered with it, but because my stomach doesn’t handle sweets without solid food. I threw up sometime during the night.
The following morning, Mr. Callow cleaned up the mess. He fed me cereal and a glass of milk. My stomach settled. He left. I got no lunch.
I don’t know what time he returned. The migraine beating a rapid tempo in my brain proved that I had missed lunch. His incessant banging in the kitchen did more than just irritate me this time. It enraged me. I was so angry by the time he brought me dinner that I snapped.
The events that happened in those ten minutes or so happened very fast. Faster than one would think. I remember all of it.
He brought me a plastic spoon to eat corn and meatloaf. I have never liked meatloaf. I’ve had migraines since I could walk. There are certain foods that make migraines worse, pork and ground hamburger are among them, making meatloaf one of the things not on my “approved food list”.
One doctor told me it was the migraine that made me snap. The lack of food and the excruciating pain were too much. I went into a rage because I was in so much pain, like a wounded animal.
Another doctor told me that it was probably the sight of the meatloaf. He was sure that reading “The Jungle” at such a young age had damaged my psyche. If it did, I recovered; I am not a vegetarian now.
Either way, I snapped and went into a rage. I grabbed the plastic spoon from the tray and shoved it into his eye, handle first. I pushed until the spoon head snapped off in my hand. He howled and grabbed at me. But it was too little too late for him. I grabbed his head and slammed it into the floor.
He didn’t move after that. I climbed out the small door. It entered into a closet. I shut the doors of the closet; actually, I shut every door behind me as I made my escape.
I slammed his front door as I entered into the street. The sight of the darkened street, front windows and porch lights burning, broke whatever trance had kept me quiet. I stood on his porch and screamed for help.
Help came. The neighbor, Mrs. Henry and her son, who was a few years older than me, were the first to come out of their houses. I didn’t stop screaming though until sirens could be heard in the distance and my parents could be seen running down the street.
I went to therapy for a couple of years. I was labeled “damaged” and sent to another therapist. They didn’t do any better and by the time I was 13, it had been labeled as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder along with an anxiety disorder. This was, of course, incorrect. They didn’t have a better diagnosis; they were only working with part of the picture.
Chapter 2