03x08 - The Bad Man

[bunniefuu]

I'm gonna miss you.

During the week, I was home with the kids by myself.

It was only woods for as far as you could see.

It's not there now, but it's out there.

[g*nsh*t]

Surely you heard the rumors of what happened at that house.

She called it a rumor.

Stay away from him.

He's the bad man.

I felt she was there to protect me.

I should have believed him.

Whatever was there...

[Dog barking]

Whatever was hurting my family was getting stronger.

I'm just thinking if that happened to one of my kids.

[Screams]

Who could have done this to my child?

What could have done this to my child?

[Screaming]

Slanesville just kind of happened.

I just wanted to get out of the city.

I didn't want the city influence on my kids.

Thank you very much.

Slanesville was real country. It was... it was hick.

Good old boys.

But hard to fit in if you were from out of town.

It's just a town that you're gonna pass if you're going somewhere.

Brian got me a dog.

We named her Coco.

The children love her, and she loved the kids.

Don't give Coco too many treats.

One's enough.

She is gonna become a fat dog.

But even though she was my mom's dog, I loved her a lot.

She was very protective over the whole family.

It was very important to both Brian and I, that the kids grow up in a safe environment.

The house was perfect.

It was a fair-sized ranch back in the middle of nowhere.

There was nothing else around you.

Yeah, Coco!

Every direction you looked in, there was woods.

Hey, love.

How's it going out here?

It's going well. Have this up in no time.

Seemed like it was gonna be a real nice place to live.

Could let my kids play and go wander.

Don't have to worry about somebody snatching 'em.

Seemed good to me.

The end zone for a touchdown!

All right.

This is the bathroom, Shaun's room, and the living room.

This is so nice.

Shortly after we moved in to the house, my brother came to visit with his family.

And then this beautiful piece of work is Brian's doing.

Apparently, we need a new door frame.

Belinda and I actually went to junior high school together.

So I've known her for a long time.

And then this here is the...

The house in Slanesville was...

I thought it was awesome because I was coming from the city.

Toys in the yard, toys on the floor.

Kid-friendly.

Didn't have any inkling that it was any different than any other house.

Make a wish.

We decided to have a birthday party.

We were celebrating my cousin's birthday.

My niece, Jordan, was sitting on the floor, playing with some toys.

All of a sudden, I noticed that one of the balloons, the string pulled straight.

As if somebody was holding it.

It was floating in midair like as if someone was holding the string.

It just moved across the damn room.

My cousin, Jordan, whose birthday it was, I noticed the balloon going towards her.

My sister and I just looked at each other.

She looked at me and said, did you see that balloon follow her?

Yeah.

Jordan did not touch that balloon.

That balloon made its way to her.

When the balloon stopped in front of her.

She looked up as if she saw someone there.

Like a child.

You know, like she was playing with another child.

Once she reached for it, and...

It just floated up to the ceiling.

The way the balloon rested in front of Jordan.

And her reaction...

It wasn't normal.

Back in '91, I used to... or I still am a big hunter...

I eat what I k*ll, and that was a big part of our diet.

Heck, I could hunt in the back yard.

I was a daddy's girl.

There was this one day.

My dad asks, like, hey, do you want to go squirrel hunting?

So I get her all dressed up. We get the .22 out.

All right, let's try right here.

We went up over the hill at the back of the house where there was just woods.

Everywhere was woods.

You know, there's nothing.

No movement, no sounds.

The woods are, like, dead.

[Tree branch snaps]

And then all of a sudden, I hear something.

I look over, and... squirrel!

Yay, it's a squirrel.

So you're gonna run around the back of that tree...

It's on the wrong side of the tree, so I try to tell her to go to the other side of the tree to run it back over to this side.

And as I'm chasing it, I go up this little mound...

And I'm like, what is this?

Blaire! Blaire!

In front of me was this van.

It was as if it had crashed, which doesn't make any sense because...

There's no roads around.

All b*rned and b*at up.

You know? I could tell that the van had been there for a long time.

I came up to the back.

There was a mattress in the back of the van.

I had, like, this sinking feeling in my stomach...

Like this wasn't right.

Let's go.

You know, he looks at it real quick, and he grabs me, and he says, let's go.

And just by his body language, I could tell he was like, you know...

This isn't good, you know? I don't want you seeing this.

It was ominous. Well, why is there a charred van behind my house?

By trade, I was a carpenter.

I had recently just started this new job.

I was working at Goddard Flight Center down in Greenbelt, Maryland, AKA, NASA.

Office renovation.

I actually did the Hubble Space Telescope room, which was kind of cool.

Uh, but the drive was immense.

Be a good boy, all right? You can do that for me?

It's what most people did because, you know, there's no work in West Virginia, and a lot of us travel up and down the road.

I'm gonna miss you.

I miss you.

Brian would stay with his mother during the week and come home on the weekends.

Bye.

Bye.

During the week, I was home by myself with no way to get anywhere.

But we'd always lived in remote areas.

And I wasn't afraid to be by myself, because that's the way things were.

I had been begging my mom to go camping because my dad was in the city like normal.

And so she finally agreed that I could go camping, but I had to go in the yard and outside her bedroom window so she could still keep an eye on me.

I wasn't real keen on the idea at first.

But she didn't have school the next day, and she convinced me that she was going to be okay because she was going to have Coco with her.

I tucked her in before I went to bed, and she just seemed like she was perfectly content.

[ Over TV ] Yellowstone, widely held to be the first National Park in the world is known for its wildlife and many geothermal...

[Loud creaking]

Hey, Shaunie. You should be asleep.

Shaun is pretty easy to put to bed.

He's a pretty tough little boy, you know? He's daddy's little man.

He never seemed to be afraid of anything.

But that particular evening, he refused to go to bed.

Come on, buddy. It's time to go to bed.

He didn't want the lights off.

He would ask me to leave the door open. Then he wanted it open farther.

Close your eyes.

He really did not want to go to bed.

I watched a little TV in my room before I turned it off.

And I checked out the window, and she was out there.

She had her little lantern on.

Coco woke me up.

[Dog growling]

She was just being uneasy.

[Dog growling]

She was focused on something.

[Dog growling]

It really creeped me out.

[Clunk]

[Dog growling]

I tried to ask him why he didn't want to go to bed, and he said there was a monster outside of his window.

Let's go see.

I, you know, just thought that maybe he was seeing an animal.

We had a lot of deer around there.

So I took him over to his window, and I showed him that there was nothing out there.

It's not there now, but it's out there.

And I asked him what kind of monster.

The red-eyed monster.

The red-eyed monster.

I got just the thing.

[Grunts]

I gave him the magic spray bottle...

A water bottle that I kept to spritz my hair.

Spray this, and whatever you're afraid of will go away.

[Chuckles]

Good job.

You know, he laid down, he put the water bottle next to him.

And he snuggled up and went to sleep.

And all of a sudden, I hear something.

[Dog growling]

I was thinking my mom had come outside.

I looked out and was looking around.

And I had this really unsettling feeling.

[Birds twittering]

[ Over TV ] And while the countdown is on, judges crowning a winner later today because Marcy Gonzales is just back from the event.

Supercharged, right?

Hey, Blaire bear.

The next morning, when she came in, it was pretty early.

She was kind of quiet.

Do you want some cereal?

Okay.

That wasn't normal for her, because she was a very chatty child.

How was camping?

Okay.

Think I was just trying to figure out what had gone on that night.

I didn't know what to make of it. Maybe I'd, you know, dreamt it.

Do you want to go again tonight?

She said she didn't want to do that again.

I said, no, thank you.

I asked her why, and she said she didn't like being out there by herself.

I thought that she was probably afraid of the dark.

It was pretty isolated out there.

I was pretty surprised that she wanted to do it on her own to start with.

I never told my mom because...

How do you explain something like that?

I just tried to forget about it.

One night, I was sitting on my floor, playing with my Barbies.

[Humming]

[Crunching footsteps]

[Door closes]

I looked up. I was like...

Oh, my goodness. There was this little girl sitting in front of me.

[Clock ticking]

My bedroom door was shut, so how did she get in my room?

I did not feel threatened by her.

I just tried to ignore her, and maybe she would go away but, she just sat there, watching me play.

You okay, Sweetie?

Yeah.

Okay.

[Giggles]

I'm thinking maybe she has an imaginary friend.

I just thought that she was just a child being a child.

She would appear about the same time every evening.

This wasn't an imaginary friend.

This was real.

[TV audio plays in background]

It was a Monday.

I was pretty exhausted by the end of the day.

So I was settling in to bed...

And had gone to sleep.

And I started to have a dream.

In the dream, I felt something pinch my toe.

There was a boy standing at the foot of my bed, pinching me on the toe with a clothespin.

I said, "what's your name?"

And he said, "I'm Andrew".

I'm just letting you know I'm here.

[Alarm buzzing]

I woke up the next day thinking it was all just a dream.

Blaire, Shaun.

It's time to get up.

I went to throw the blanket onto the bed.

I look down at the floor...

And there was a clothespin lying there on the floor at the foot of the bed.

All the clothespins were packed away because we had a dryer at this house.

I was trying to think of any reason why that clothespin could be at the foot of my bed.

And I couldn't think of a logical answer.

I remembered the dream...

And I wondered at that moment if it was really a dream, or if it had actually happened.

One Sunday afternoon, my sister offered to watch the kids for me for a bit so that I could have some time to myself.

I decided to take a little stroll through the woods.

I came across something, that looked odd...

There were some rocks, but there was a fence.

Those rocks were not rocks.

They were headstones.

The size of the headstones indicated to me that the two large headstones belonged to adults.

And the small headstones were for children.

They were really old-looking.

There weren't any names on them.

You know, I thought about the boy in my dream.

I thought about the little girl that my daughter claimed to be seeing.

It made me wonder if these gravestones...

Had some connection to my house.

If there was a family here before us.

[Wind howling]

That evening, I got this eerie feeling like I was being watched.

I did feel pretty exposed.

There was only woods for as far as you could see, and that feeling didn't go away.

I went to bed, and as always, Coco would follow me in and sleep on the bed with me.

And that gave me some comfort because Brian wasn't there.

I remember being woken up by something.

I notice that the curtain's open, and it's dark.

I stand up to go shut the curtains.

Bam, there's this face.

And I jump in bed, pull the covers over my head.

I'm just sitting there thinking, oh, my goodness, oh, my goodness, oh, my goodness.

I'm afraid that he's gonna come.

[Dog barking]

Shh.

What's wrong, girl? Shh.

I got up, and I looked out the window to see if anyone was out there.

Coco, I don't see anything.

She seemed like she was barking at nothing, so I got back into bed.

[Dog chuffing]

[Dog whining]

And I'm just sitting there, and all of a sudden I feel this movement...

[Creaking]

And my heart starts racing, and I'm like, what is this?

I'm expecting it to be the face.

I start to feel the covers moving, and my heart starts racing.

It was the little girl again.

And this time, she spoke to me, which she had never done before.

Stay away from him.

He's the bad man.

I felt like she was there to just help me and to be there to protect me.

[Floorboards creaking]

[Door creaking]

[Dog growling]

It felt as if something was touching my hair.

Shaun, please go back to bed.

I felt it again.

As if someone was breathing on me.

[Dog barking]

I turned the light on, but there was nothing there.

I couldn't be afraid, you know? I was there with the kids by myself.

And if I was afraid, then they would be afraid.

All right, kiddies, time to say goodbye to Coco.

All: Bye, Coco.

Bye, Coco.

My mom had let me borrow her car so that I could run some errands in town.

[Dog whimpering]

While I was in town, um...

I came across a strange story.

Oh, it's quite possible there's a family graveyard back there.

There really was a connection between that cemetery and what was going on in my house.

Yeah, it was sad.

She said another house had stood either where my house was or very close to it.

And that there was a fire in the house...

And that a family had d*ed...

In that fire about 100 years before this.

It feels like this is not my imagination anymore.

There was a real history here.

Now it's really starting to feel real.

Where's Coco?

I'm not sure.

How could have she gotten out? The gate is closed.

I don't know.

Coco!

Coco!

We checked the fence. We checked everything we could think of.

Coco!

Coco!

There was no way for her to get out of that yard.

Come here, girl!

We were calling for her, yelling into the woods, hoping that she was somewhere close by that she would just come back.

Coco!

She was just nowhere to be seen.

Coco!

Coco!

And my mom...

Had this feeling that she had been taken.

I was really upset.

She was part of the family, and I...

Felt like a piece of our family was missing.

She wasn't there to make us feel safe anymore.

She wasn't there, watching over the children while they slept at night.

She wasn't there to warn me if somebody was coming into the house.

When Brian got home, I was very glad to have him there.

Hey.

Hey.

It's looking pretty good.

I didn't really talk to him about, the stuff that was going on in the house while he was gone.

I didn't want him to think I was crazy, you know?

Who wants to leave a crazy woman alone with their children?

It made me feel so much better when he was home.

I want to get some sleep, but you can watch some TV if you want.

Thank you.

Good night.

Good night.

I always go to bed before everybody else because, I'm the one who gets up and leaves at 2:30 in the morning.

It was a Sunday evening.

Nothing out of the ordinary.

The house was quiet.

I had gotten all the children to bed, and I settled in pretty early that evening.

It was probably about 8:30, 9:00.

[Whispering]

I started to have a dream about the little boy.

Only this time, I felt like the little boy was trying to tell me something.

[Distorted voices]

[Screams]

[Floorboards creaking]

Then it felt as if someone was standing beside me.

[Screams]

[Screams]

I heard a...

Bloodcurdling screech like I've never heard before in my life.

[Screaming]

The sound that no mother ever wants to hear from her child.

Brian.

I know she's freaking out. I know something's happened to Shaun.

Brian.

Brian!

I run down the hall.

What's he doing in the middle of the floor?

I don't know.

Laying in the middle of the floor...

With his arm twisted up.

I could just see immediately that his arm was broken.

[Screaming]

He said that the bad man did it.

Maybe he moved on to him because he didn't have protection like the little girl was protecting me.

Oh, my.

I'm just thinking if that happened to one of my kids.

Sorry.

That was a hard time.

We gather everybody up.

Belinda calls her mother, which is on the way to the hospital.

Brian drove as fast as he could.

I'm just cradling Shaun in my arms, trying to tell him that everything would be okay.

Nurse!

They're gonna want to know how this happened.

And the truth didn't seem...

Like they would believe it.

I think his arm's broken.

It's all right.

Ow!

The kind of break it is raises suspicion.

Because it's just not a normal break.

Right here for you, buddy.

I think they thought child abuse at first, but, you know, they could obviously see that we were just both devastated.

There was... I mean, because...

There's no way in hell...

I could ever hurt the baby.

[Siren wailing]

After three days, Shaun was released from the hospital.

My mom had let me borrow her car to bring him home, and I was dreading going back to that house.

It felt violent.

It felt evil.

Who could have done this to my child?

What could have done this to my child?

I kept going over it and over it in my head.

Thinking about all the times that Shaun was afraid to go to bed.

I should have listened to what he was telling me.

Because whatever he was seeing outside of his window must have finally gotten in.

We had to get out of that house, and it didn't matter what it took.

Whatever was there, whatever was hurting my family, was getting stronger.

[Engine knocking]

Oh, no, no, no, no.

The car just shut off.

[Engine sputtering]

Be back in one second.

I didn't know what was wrong with it.

All right, baby, we got to walk.

I got Shaun out of the car, and we started walking down the road.

It was really dark out there.

Suddenly I heard the sound of a car approaching me from behind.

The car slowed down as it passed by.

Then it rolled the window down.

Hi.

Hi. Are you okay?

Yeah, our car broke down the road.

Oh, gosh. Can I give you a ride?

Yes, please.

Come on in. It's so cold.

Honey, you got to go in the back.

I was pretty relieved to see someone, and she had such a friendly face.

Thank you so much for picking us up.

Oh, my pleasure.

We started driving, and I told her where I lived at.

Yeah, just a few miles up.

We're in a cabin off the road in the woods.

She said, oh, so you must have heard the story about that house.

You mean the one about the fire and the children who d*ed?

She said, no, no.

That wasn't what I meant.

Surely you heard the rumors of what happened there.

I'm sorry. I probably shouldn't say anything.

No, please go on.

She called it a rumor.

Rumor has it that there was a man that was accused of being a child molester.

He went missing in the woods behind your house.

Some of the local men lured him into the woods under a pretext of going on a hunting trip.

After they got far enough into the woods...

They ambushed him.

And m*rder*d him.

[g*nsh*t]

And his body was never found.

[Flames roaring]

I was so stunned by what she had said that I don't remember the rest of the ride back to the house.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Take care, okay?

I knew then...

That it was him.

It was this man who had hurt other children while he was alive.

And he was now hurting my children when he was dead.

[Voices whispering]

And we began to hear a noise, a scratching noise on the outside of the house.

Sounded like something was trying to get in.

[Scrabbling at walls]

I knew that I had to get my family away from this house.

I needed to get them away fast...

And far.

I didn't want anyone else to get hurt.

Hey, there. Give me your hand. Let's go. Let's go.

[Breathing heavily]

[Shrieks]

[Yelps]

Come on. Let's go. Blaire's in the car.

Okay, let's go.

Okay, Sweetie?

We literally up and left.

She's had enough.

We're moving.

I was fine with that.

I never went back.

I think when we first moved in there, the innocent playful things that were happening...

Um, were the children.

I feel that they were trying to protect my family from...

The man that hurt Shaun.

Stay away from him. He's the bad man.

The stronger the v*olence got...

The more powerful he became.

To the point where the children were unable to protect us from him anymore.

And, he was finally able to get in.

Thinking back on everything...

It just makes me wonder what really happened before we moved into that house.