Chasing the Boogeyman Page 4

  As it went with most small towns, Edgewood had plenty of odd stories and full-blown legends making the rounds. Some years ago, when I was in elementary school, a young girl, distraught over an unwanted pregnancy, supposedly killed herself by standing on the railroad tracks behind the high school and allowing a speeding train to run her down. Since then, many witnesses claim to have seen or heard the girl’s ghost roaming around in the nearby woods. A close and dependable friend of ours, Bob Eiring, swears to this day that he saw a group of white-robed scientists conducting an experiment on an honest-to-God alien when he snuck into an off-limits area on Edgewood Arsenal and peeked into a warehouse window. He claimed the creature had a head the size of a bicycle tire and light-blue powdery skin. We didn’t believe him at first, but he spent a couple weeks at the library sifting through old newspaper files and came back with a stack of black-and-white photocopied articles from the 1960s and ’70s reporting similar rumors about top-secret extraterrestrial studies being conducted at the Arsenal. So his veracity couldn’t be easily challenged. Not with all that evidence.

  No one seemed to know when the Rubberband Man first made an appearance in Edgewood—I asked my sisters, and they’d originally heard about him back when they were teenagers—but all the kids I knew were scared to death of him. It was unclear if the Rubberband Man was actually human or some sort of supernatural creature or perhaps even a mutated mistake that had escaped from a laboratory at Edgewood Arsenal. If you listened to the whispers—and it goes without saying that we sure as hell did—the Rubberband Man was almost seven feet tall and painfully thin. His arms were like twigs and hung stiffly at his side. His hair was midnight dark and short and bristly. His eyes were black slits and his mouth was a grim, straight line. No one had ever seen his teeth. No one, that is, who’d ever lived to tell about it. The Rubberband Man was always dressed in dark clothes and liked to prowl secluded playgrounds and open fields at dusk, looking for children to steal away and devour. Once, when I was seven, I’d been playing hide-and-seek with friends at the church playground down the street from my house. There was a pair of brightly painted concrete tunnels, each about twelve feet long, positioned not far from the swings. When we were really little, we used to pretend that they were submarines. That evening, I hid inside one of the tunnels. After a while, when no one came to find me, I peeked outside and will swear on a stack of Bibles that I spotted a freakishly tall, lanky figure emerging from the woods across the way. After fifteen or twenty yards, the figure abruptly changed direction and started trudging toward the playground. Suddenly very afraid, I ducked back inside the tunnel and scooted toward the middle, remaining perfectly still. A few minutes later, I smelled a terrible, sour stench, like a basket of rotted fruit left out in the sun too long. I held my breath, trying not to gag, and remained motionless as a pair of spider-thin legs dressed in tattered black pants shuffled past the mouth of the tunnel. I waited what felt like an hour until I could no longer hear the footsteps, and then counted to fifty inside my head just to be sure before making a frantic break for the road. I found my friends fooling around in front of Bob Eiring’s house and told them what’d happened. A short time later, we all returned to the playground with Brian Anderson’s father at our side. There was no sign of the strange figure anywhere. But I’m not crazy. I know what I saw. And smelled.

  And then, of course, there was the Phantom Fondler. I was away at college when it all started, but I’d been able to keep up with the story, thanks to weekly issues of the Aegis that my mom saved for me. In fact, it was a reporter from the Aegis who first came up with the “Phantom Fondler” moniker. Since August 1986, someone had entered the homes of at least two-dozen Edgewood women and touched their feet, legs, stomach, and hair while they were sleeping. In each case, when the woman awakened, the man fled from the house and disappeared into the night. Thus far, local police had been unable to capture or identify the assailant.

  These stories—and many others I could tell you—offer a mere glimpse into the darker nature of my hometown. Despite my somewhat biased viewpoint, my vision of Edgewood was not entirely colored by the haze of nostalgia or the golden-tinted memories of Norman Rockwellian Americana bliss. As in most small towns, there was crime and violence, treachery and secrets, tragedy and disappointment. There was a wrong side of the tracks to live on, and places where you didn’t want to find yourself alone after dark. When I first got to college, I was shocked to find that most of the guys in my dormitory had never been in a fistfight before; I’d been in a dozen or more by the time I graduated high school. Speaking of which, the principal had been arrested for embezzlement during my sophomore year and actually sentenced to real prison time. A couple of years earlier, a middle school teacher had been arrested for a string of armed bank robberies in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Delaware, crimes committed during his days off.

  Unlike the majority of Harford County, and due to our proximity to Edgewood Arsenal, we were a diverse community, thanks to the large number of military families that moved in and out with increasing frequency. A large population of African Americans and Hispanics called Edgewood home and attended schools there, and even in these modern, supposedly enlightened times, their very presence was enough to intimidate certain people. When I was old enough to drive, more than a handful of the out-of-town girls I dated weren’t allowed to attend parties or sporting events in Edgewood. “No offense” was the usual excuse their parents told me. I smiled politely and took the girls there anyway. My senior year, when the Edgewood High School lacrosse team won its first state championship in school history, students from the nearby and much-more-affluent Fallston taunted us from the bleachers, chanting, “It’s all riiight, it’s okaaay, you’ll all work for us one dayyy!” That kind of elitist attitude only served to strengthen the Edgewood bond—it was us against the world, and we liked it that way. We were more than just a community—we were a family. No, we didn’t drive fancy cars and live in huge houses with manicured yards. Our parents didn’t belong to country clubs or business organizations; they were members of the American Legion and the PTA. And for me and my friends, that was perfectly okay; a source of blue-collar pride, and the way it was supposed to be.

  * * *

  There are two special memories of Edgewood that remain forever imprinted on my soul. The first occurred when I was only five, not long after we moved here. It was a chilly night in December and several inches of freshly fallen snow blanketed the ground. After dinner, my father and I shrugged on our heavy winter coats, ski caps, gloves, and boots, and headed outside. Most of the driveways and sidewalks had been shoveled clean. Christmas lights glowed in the windows and along the rooftops of a handful of houses lining Hanson Road. There was little traffic, and a peaceful hush hung in the air. Hand in hand, neither of us saying much, my father and I walked up Tupelo, past Cherry Court and Juniper Drive, until we reached the corner at the top of the big hill on Bayberry. My father turned to his left and stared down the hill. Watching him, I did the same—and was stunned by what I saw. Every house, as far as I could see, on both sides of the street, was lit up by multicolored Christmas lights, many of them blinking cheerily. Front yards of glistening snow shone with a kaleidoscope of brilliant colors—red and green, blue and yellow, silver and gold. A cluster of carolers sang “Silent Night” in the front yard of one of the houses, and a big plastic Santa surrounded by flying reindeer swayed in a gentle breeze atop the roof of another nearby house.

  I live here, I remember thinking. This place is my home… and it’s magic, and I never want to leave. My father, sensing my breathless wonder, squeezed my hand. I did the same right back, and after standing there for a while longer, we wandered down the street together, taking in the sights.

  Coincidentally, the second special memory I’ve tucked safely away also occurred on a snowy winter evening. I was fifteen, and my friends and I had spent a long, chilly afternoon sledding on the series of hills surrounding Cedar Drive Elementary School just down the street from ou
r houses. A water tower stood at the summit of the largest hill, and its long, spindly legs always filled my head with menacing images of rampaging aliens from one of my all-time favorite movies, The War of the Worlds. I’d had frequent nightmares about that tower when I was little, but I was older and braver now, and all alone on the hill, my friends having gone home a short time earlier for dinner. A handful of other neighborhood kids had stayed behind with me, but at some point in the past twenty minutes or so, they too had vanished and I’d been too busy having fun to notice. Hungry, tired, and half-frozen, I took one final trip down the hill and started for home.

  As I reached the peak of one of the smaller hills at the base of the tower, it began to snow again, and through the trees I caught sight of my house in the distance, some three blocks away. Blinking red Christmas bulbs glowed along the gutters of the roof. The tall, bushy trees on each side of the driveway were draped with pinpricks of twinkling green. Rectangles of pale light shone in the bay window and pair of smaller basement windows. I stopped walking, catching my breath, transfixed. I imagined my mother preparing dinner in the kitchen, humming to a Christmas song on the radio, my father downstairs on the sofa, watching the news and playing a game of solitaire. I stood there motionless in the falling snow and glanced around—there were no cars moving on Hanson Road, not a single person in sight, the world all around me completely silent except for the rhythmic ticks of icy snowflakes landing on my waterlogged coat. It was a lonely feeling—a somehow melancholy feeling. I looked up at my house again—and for the first time in my young life, it hit me.

  Standing there in that frozen moment of space and time, I realized how vast the world around me really was and that one day soon I’d be leaving this place I’d always called home, to venture out on my own. My friends would also be scattered to the four winds, and some I would never see or talk to again. Our parents and brothers and sisters would grow old and eventually we’d have to say goodbye to them, too. Nothing would ever be the same.

  My breath caught in my throat, and suddenly my eyes misted and my legs wavered. All at once, I was five years old again, only this time my father wasn’t standing next to me, reaching over to take hold of my hand. I remember telling myself in that moment that everything was going to be okay, that I was going to grow up and be happy and one day become a writer, and the words I put down on paper were going to help people make sense of this world.

  I’ve no idea how much longer I stood there in the midst of the snowstorm. All I remember is that at some point, and without realizing what I was doing, I started walking again, my sled tucked underneath my arm, and eventually I made it home in time for dinner.

  Although I’ve often thought about that moment over the years, I’ve never spoken or written about it until now.

  (A great deal of the historical insight included in the first section of this chapter can be found within the pages of two fine books: Edgewood, Maryland: Then and Now by Jeffrey Zalbreith; and Images of America: Edgewood by Joseph F. Murray, Arthur K. Stuempfle, and Amy L. Stuempfle. I highly recommend both volumes.)

  Edgewood Meadows sign at the junction of Bayberry Drive and Edgewood Road (Photo courtesy of the author)

  Weapons testing at Edgewood Arsenal (Photo courtesy of The Baltimore Sun)

  The old Edgewood railroad station (Photo courtesy of The Aegis)

  The Meyers House (Photo courtesy of Alex Baliko)

  Cedar Drive military housing (Photo courtesy of the author)

  The Edgewood Library (Photo courtesy of The Aegis)

  The author’s home on Hanson Road (Photo courtesy of the author)

  two The First Girl

  “After all, didn’t killers often return to the scene of the crime, observing the damage they’d caused?”

  1

  The first time I remember seeing Natasha Gallagher was at Sunday morning mass with her family. I was twelve years old at the time, so that would’ve made Natasha six. It was just my parents and me at church that day—all of my older siblings were out of the house by then—and we’d purposely sat in the back row because my father had tickets to the Baltimore Colts game and was determined to make a quick escape as soon as ten o’clock service ended.

  The Gallaghers arrived a few minutes late. I heard the heavy doors creak open behind me and glanced over my shoulder. Young Josh stood in between his parents, looking every bit as thrilled to be there as I’m sure I did, and little Natasha stood off to the side, holding hands with her mother. She was wearing a polka-dot dress and her long blond hair was pulled back in pigtails. The family took a few tentative steps down the center aisle and paused, craning their necks, looking for a place to sit. My father immediately motioned them over, shooing Mom and me toward the middle of the pew. The Gallaghers, one after the other, scooted in next to us. Once everyone had settled in, I casually leaned forward and took a closer look. Josh gazed over with sleepy eyes and gave me a cool-as-ice nod that James Dean and Elvis would’ve been proud of. Sitting on his left, Natasha broke into a big, gap-toothed grin and wiggled her fingers at me in an exaggerated wave. I immediately sat back and stared straight ahead, my face and ears growing warm. Girls, of all ages, seemed to have that effect on me. I hated it.

  The next time I saw her, it was summertime, and she was skipping down the sidewalk in front of my house, swinging her arms high above her head, singing the Scooby-Doo theme song in a high-pitched, nasally voice. She passed within fifteen feet of me that day without ever knowing I was there.

  An old oak tree—gone several years now—grew in the center of my front yard, conveniently obscuring the porch from passing traffic, its thick network of leafy branches overhanging the sidewalk. I’d taken to climbing that tree and perching myself ten or fifteen feet above the ground, usually with a Stephen King paperback to keep me company. I liked the feeling of being invisible to the world, of watching the steady flow of cars and occasional pedestrians passing below, knowing they had no idea I was there, practically close enough to reach out and touch them. I sat there, hidden and silent, imagining what their lives were like and where they were going and if they were happy or sad, thinking good thoughts or bad ones.

  I knew the words to the song she was singing by heart—ScoobyDoo was my favorite Saturday morning cartoon growing up—and considered joining in, but I didn’t want to scare her, so I kept quiet and let her go on her way. She reached the end of the sidewalk at the corner of Tupelo, stopped walking (and singing), looked both ways, and then crossed the street. Once she was safely on the other side, she started skipping and singing again, continuing down Hanson at an even jauntier pace. I glanced at my book, turned to a new chapter, and when I looked up again, she was gone.

  Later that same summer, Natasha and two of her friends stopped by my lemonade stand. All three had wet hair and towels draped around their necks, so I figured they’d just come from swimming. One of her friends announced she didn’t have any money, so Natasha pulled out a small change purse and paid for all three of them. Unlike the time I’d seen her in church, she seemed almost shy, barely making eye contact or speaking a word. Until she climbed back on her bike, looked over her shoulder at me, and said, “See you later, Richie Rich.” Surprised that she knew my name, I stood there and watched as they pedaled away.

  It was 1982 and I was a senior in high school the last time I saw her. It was the week before Christmas break, and Jimmy Cavanaugh and I were sitting on the top row of bleachers inside the gymnasium. Down on the floor, wrestlers from Edgewood and Bel Air were going through their warm-ups. Van Halen blared from the loudspeakers. Fifteen minutes before the match was scheduled to start, the home team’s student section was already packed and on their feet. Next to me, Jimmy was busy being Jimmy, stretching a piece of gum out of his mouth and twirling it around the tip of his finger, daring me to dare him to toss it into the bird’s nest of curly hair on the sophomore in front of us.

  I saw Mr. Gallagher first, shedding his heavy winter jacket as he walked into the gym. His wife a
nd daughter were right behind him, all of them rosy-cheeked and still shivering from the frigid walk across the parking lot. Natasha slipped off her pink ski cap, and long shiny waves of blond hair cascaded down her shoulders. She’d grown taller since I’d seen her last and was well on her way to becoming a little heartbreaker. It was a good thing her brother Josh was around to keep the middle school boys in line.

  Mr. Gallagher waved to someone in the crowd, and all three of them started walking single file toward the bleachers on the opposite side of the gym. Halfway there, Natasha abruptly changed direction, veering closer to the padded, red-and-white Edgewood Rams wrestling mat centered on the floor.

  I saw Josh then, lying on his back at the far left corner of the mat, legs tucked underneath him, back and arms stretched into what should’ve been an impossible position. Natasha stopped in front of him and said something. He looked up in surprise. Instead of being irritated by his younger sister’s interruption, as I’d expected, Josh quickly got to his feet, a big smile brightening his face, and wrapped his arms around her. When they finished hugging, they high-fived, and Natasha hurried away after her parents.