What follows has been edited for content and relevance to the ongoing investigation
into events in Sugar Creek, Ohio on the night of September 26-27, 2015.
into events in Sugar Creek, Ohio on the night of September 26-27, 2015.
January 6, 2014
All right, godd___it, enough putting this off.
In case you're wondering, Dr. V______, there have been no recent nightmares. My sleep's been blissfully undisturbed for weeks now. No, I've left night terrors behind for the moment and shifted over to obsessive thoughts, specifically on the book with the oddly-foreboding title and disturbingly-painted cover lying on my desk with a library return date of January 10.
So I've given in to the curiosity. Today is the Festival of the Epiphany, celebrating the revelation of Christ to the Three Wise Guys. Hopefully some of that revelation will rub off on me today. I have J.L. Preston's book open in front of me, and I plan to take notes as I read. This is all going to be "IRL," as the kids like to say.
I've paged past the story of "The Lost Founder" and I'm reading some of the titles following it: "The Vanished Lovers." "The Absent Fisherman." "The Butchered Plough-Horse." Most of the stories are only a page or two long, and they've all got a vaguely penny dreadful quality to them: stories of people who one day up and disappeared from their lives. Salacious and unsavory theories of foul play are suggested, but no certainty is given. I'm just skimming them right now, but my head is spinning over this. I'm having a hard time reconciling these stories as fact, urban legend or otherwise. It's hard to imagine this many people having gone missing from Sugar Creek without some notice.
One chilling detail that keeps appearing: virtually all of them were last seen in the vicinity of the creek itself.
The last section in the book is the longest, with the simple but unsettling title "The Children." Weirdly, there's very little story in this part, other than a blurb of a few lines here and there. The rest is page after page crammed with names followed by a listing of age and a year, presumably the dates of disappearance. This along with the title is somehow worse than the rest of the book put together, the thought that all of these young lives cou
(The entry ends abruptly in mid-word. The next entry begins on the following page.)
January 29, 2014
I want to make it clear, Dr. V______, that I am only writing this because you are insisting I do so. I've already humiliated myself enough to you, to the police, the local news vultures. I was wrong, okay? I was mistaken. I made a huge god___n stir and I messed up and I want to forget about this.
But never mind that. Let's keep you happy.
So...the book. Which I still have, which is currently racking up library late fees, which is still on the floor of my office where I dropped it, open to the dedication page. Let's start there.
The very last entry in the very last section, "The Children," was longer than any other entry in the section or the rest of the book, and was dated 1985, one year before the book's publication. Instead of a name, this entry had its own title: "The Stolen Angel." It described a little girl in such intricate and personal detail that I realized, mid-way through, that it could only be the author's own daughter. She was a sweet, strawberry-blonde three-year-old who loved hot dogs and hated cauliflower, who was shy around strangers and scared of big dogs until she got to know them, who had a meltdown when she got too big for her baby swing in the back yard and cried when it rained because she thought the sky was sad. The writer had poured this child's life onto the page, so much so that I felt myself tearing up a bit when I arrived at her inevitable fate.
She was on her own front porch that August day, playing with the brand-new custom doll she had received for her birthday...until suddenly she wasn't. When her parents couldn't find her in the immediate area, or down by the nearby creek where she was expressly forbidden to play, a week-long manhunt was launched. County and state officers were called in to comb the entire area around her home, even the dense woods enclosing the head of the creek, to no avail. The trail, if there ever was one, was dead cold.
At this point the hairs on the back of my neck were standing straight up, and I felt an almost sickening wave of deja vu wash over me. Everything in the entry was maddeningly familiar for a reason I couldn't pinpoint. I finished the last page with no clue as to the little girl's identity. I flipped back through the book to see if there was anything I'd missed.
I landed on the dedication page, where there was a picture.
All right, godd___it, enough putting this off.
In case you're wondering, Dr. V______, there have been no recent nightmares. My sleep's been blissfully undisturbed for weeks now. No, I've left night terrors behind for the moment and shifted over to obsessive thoughts, specifically on the book with the oddly-foreboding title and disturbingly-painted cover lying on my desk with a library return date of January 10.
So I've given in to the curiosity. Today is the Festival of the Epiphany, celebrating the revelation of Christ to the Three Wise Guys. Hopefully some of that revelation will rub off on me today. I have J.L. Preston's book open in front of me, and I plan to take notes as I read. This is all going to be "IRL," as the kids like to say.
I've paged past the story of "The Lost Founder" and I'm reading some of the titles following it: "The Vanished Lovers." "The Absent Fisherman." "The Butchered Plough-Horse." Most of the stories are only a page or two long, and they've all got a vaguely penny dreadful quality to them: stories of people who one day up and disappeared from their lives. Salacious and unsavory theories of foul play are suggested, but no certainty is given. I'm just skimming them right now, but my head is spinning over this. I'm having a hard time reconciling these stories as fact, urban legend or otherwise. It's hard to imagine this many people having gone missing from Sugar Creek without some notice.
One chilling detail that keeps appearing: virtually all of them were last seen in the vicinity of the creek itself.
The last section in the book is the longest, with the simple but unsettling title "The Children." Weirdly, there's very little story in this part, other than a blurb of a few lines here and there. The rest is page after page crammed with names followed by a listing of age and a year, presumably the dates of disappearance. This along with the title is somehow worse than the rest of the book put together, the thought that all of these young lives cou
(The entry ends abruptly in mid-word. The next entry begins on the following page.)
January 29, 2014
I want to make it clear, Dr. V______, that I am only writing this because you are insisting I do so. I've already humiliated myself enough to you, to the police, the local news vultures. I was wrong, okay? I was mistaken. I made a huge god___n stir and I messed up and I want to forget about this.
But never mind that. Let's keep you happy.
So...the book. Which I still have, which is currently racking up library late fees, which is still on the floor of my office where I dropped it, open to the dedication page. Let's start there.
The very last entry in the very last section, "The Children," was longer than any other entry in the section or the rest of the book, and was dated 1985, one year before the book's publication. Instead of a name, this entry had its own title: "The Stolen Angel." It described a little girl in such intricate and personal detail that I realized, mid-way through, that it could only be the author's own daughter. She was a sweet, strawberry-blonde three-year-old who loved hot dogs and hated cauliflower, who was shy around strangers and scared of big dogs until she got to know them, who had a meltdown when she got too big for her baby swing in the back yard and cried when it rained because she thought the sky was sad. The writer had poured this child's life onto the page, so much so that I felt myself tearing up a bit when I arrived at her inevitable fate.
She was on her own front porch that August day, playing with the brand-new custom doll she had received for her birthday...until suddenly she wasn't. When her parents couldn't find her in the immediate area, or down by the nearby creek where she was expressly forbidden to play, a week-long manhunt was launched. County and state officers were called in to comb the entire area around her home, even the dense woods enclosing the head of the creek, to no avail. The trail, if there ever was one, was dead cold.
At this point the hairs on the back of my neck were standing straight up, and I felt an almost sickening wave of deja vu wash over me. Everything in the entry was maddeningly familiar for a reason I couldn't pinpoint. I finished the last page with no clue as to the little girl's identity. I flipped back through the book to see if there was anything I'd missed.
I landed on the dedication page, where there was a picture.
"For Angie. We will never give up on you."
Rachel says she heard me cry out, but all I remember is the book hitting the floor and me throwing open the door of the closet and seizing the nearly-forgotten paper bag from the top shelf. I ripped through the paper and plastic to get to the gruesome object inside and knew instantly it was the same doll.
That wasn't the only revelation I had. There were two more that came in rapid succession. The first was that I'd seen that photo before. I raced out of the office, nearly bowling Rachel over, and asked to see her laptop. (I know "asked" probably isn't the word she used with you. More like "bellowed frantically while shaking her," which I will own.) She opened it up and keyed her login for the newsletter website, which I also "bellowed" for her to do. As a contributor, she had access to the online archives, which fortunately included the time period I was looking for. I scrolled to the link to 8/8/1985 and opened it to confirm my fears.
I'm reluctant to tell you the second revelation, but I imagine you already suspect what it is. The photo in the article and dedication is the last photo taken of the missing girl, Angie Weaver. She was the Sugar Creek equivalent of Baby Jessica at the time, and the added tragedy was that this photo was taken on the front porch with her new, custom-made Cabbage Patch doll just minutes before she vanished.
Remember before when I said we were able to get this place for cheap? This is why. She vanished from my porch. My home.
And I had just found the first real trace of her in twenty-eight years.
This is why I called 911. And the local news. I should have chosen my words more carefully. I shouldn't have panicked.
I should have thought before they came stampeding out to my home, and I stood on my porch and held the disembodied doll head up before the crowd and declared that Angie had finally been found. I wasn't prepared for the reaction I got, but then I never am, am I? Twenty, thirty people standing in the snow outside my house, all wishing their glares could cut me dead. Chief Talbot asked me questions, where I had found this, how long I had had it, if there was anything else I had to show him. He had to work harder to stay calm with each answer I gave him. The whole time, the news vans were pulling away, until only the chief and one of his deputies were left. He clearly saw how dumbfounded I was, and (calmly, so very calmly) explained that "trash from the creek" did not constitute a break in a thirty-year-old cold case. I must have looked truly pathetic then, because he offered to take the head into evidence, almost as a favor.
So I have graduated from has-been to laughingstock. I was featured on the local news, but as some sick practical joker who tried to become famous off the back of a missing child. My students, who barely respected me to begin with, haven't even bothered to show up for class recently. Everywhere I go, I collect side-eye like it's my job, even from my wife. I've spent the last three weeks desperately trying to will it out of my memory.
And you want me to dredge this all back up...why? You say it's going to help me, that it will be cathartic to vomit it all out and help me discover the root of this "episode" as you call it, but let's not kid ourselves, shall we? You're one of them, a f_____g rubbernecker, a gawker, leering at the freakshow.
Now that I've done what you asked, will you and the rest of humanity f_____g shut up about it???
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