Vista (Chapter One)
Chapter 1
Across the Sea of Asphalt
[The following information is being documented with the express intention that if, for any reason, my life comes to a sudden or unexpected end, I might have left behind something of value to the pursuits of my adult years. My name is John Cooley, and if you find these pages, please do not write this off as the ramblings of someone out of their depth. Franklin, Massachusetts, is one piece of a greater puzzle to the disappearances of countless children in the region from the 1990s into the 2000s. Take these pages and the boxes in the trunk of the car, and do what you must to make sure the truth is known]
My childhood home was a large colonial property in a rural offshoot neighborhood of Franklin, Massachusetts. The house was situated on approximately an acre of land, which was mostly occupied by the structure itself and a large fenced-in backyard. The street wrapped around the exterior edges of the property, and along the backyard ran a thick tree line.
In the spring and summer months, I would work with my mother and my older sister to turn the largest tree at the mouth of the treeline into a treehouse. If you could imagine, I wasn't necessarily of much help to this cause. I was a five-year-old boy with starry eyes and a toothy smile, though I was far from a master carpenter. My mother and sister were not much better than I was in this endeavor, as this treehouse would amount to nothing more than a floor with two half-walls, and a ladder made of two-by-four planks drilled into the trunk of the tree in an uneven ascending pattern.
At a time in my life when creativity ruled the way I perceived the world, my treehouse acted as my workshop. I could make it into anything my imagination could contain. From the observation point of a well-concealed sniper's hide, to the balcony from which a mighty ruler disseminated his laws to his loyal subjects. I was bound only by the limits of what my mind could conjure within this modest bark-bound castle.
As the vibrant greens and blues of summer began to simmer and reduce to the earthly reds, yellows, and oranges of autumn, I was persistent in my attempts to brave the chill of the season to play in my tree-house.
It was in the summer's dying breath, as the festive fingers of October's bony hand grasped at the town, that I took my first dive into the tumultuous world of friendship without ever looking back.
Watching from the window of my room, I could see across the street a young boy and a girl playing in the yard. I can still visualize the silhouettes of that family vividly today, as I had done so many times before. It was by fate's divine rule that I would one day befriend the boy with the piercing blue eyes.
The following day, I asked my mom if I could go outside and play in the yard. My current obsession at this point in my life was the Spongebob Squarepants Movie. Not just the film itself, but especially the director's cut with Steven Hillenburg's commentary. My mother fawns over this memory, since she weaves the tales as if it were the last innocent thing I did in my entire life.
I would walk out of our garage door from the kitchen and travel across the walkway in front of the house. Upon reaching the front door, I would rap on it four times and wait. Once the door opened, I began the theatrics of reciting Steven's introductory monologue, word for word in his initial monologue. I had watched so much I had nearly burnt the very imagery out of the DVD and directly into my brain.
"I'm Stephen Hillenburg, the director of The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie..." I'd say, as professional a demeanor as a little kid could muster.
My mother always began to laugh at me as the act continued, and I would apparently stop and grimace at her until she finally collected her bearings and was willing to hear me continue the monologue. From there, she says, I would start all the way over again from the beginning. This continued until I was able to finish, because she seemingly never grew tired of how much I wanted to do it.
It was much to her dismay then, when the next time I went outside to play, I never actually came to the front door. I had no intention of continuing my imitation antics; I had larger plans in mind for this day.
For the very first time in my life, I did something I was never supposed to do, and I stepped off our lawn and into the road. My eyes were locked on the house across the street.
Each step was slow and heavy; I can still feel the tightness growing in my chest to this day as a fully grown adult. This was the true beginning of my sentience, because it's the earliest memory I can draw on without someone else's retelling from their perspective. I was so young and eager to make my very first friend. A real, honest to god friend, and all I had to do was get to the front door of that house.
Step by step, my feet tapped against the coarse red bricks that adorned the walkway of this foreign embassy. I ascended the steppes to the landing that stood between me and the boy next door, and there it finally was. Off-white and glossy, like the film that builds on milk when you dunk too many Oreos in it, the monolithic structure nestled in the threshold of uncharted territory.
I stood silently staring at this obstacle, unsure of how to tackle it. I had relied on the guarantee of my mother's presence every time I had knocked on a door before this. All I had to do was treat their door like my door.
I stumbled forward and tapped my knuckles against the body of the door, with a series of small, frail knocks, and awaited my destiny... and destiny came in the form of a tall, slender woman.
"Hell-"
Her question was cut off sharply as she appraised the sight before her, seeming almost startled by the presence of a small child at her door.
Well… she didn't seem startled, I believe now that it did startle her to see an unattended toddler standing at her front door.
"Well, who do we have here? Where did you come from, dear?" She'd squatted down to be roughly eye level with me, her warm smile drawn widely across her kind face.
It was quickly apparent I didn't know what to do at this moment, because I was so used to being Stephen Hillenberg, I was me, playing no character but myself, and before this, I had never even been allowed to talk to an adult without my mom present.
I must have looked petrified, my body locked in stasis as I ran over the limited number of things I knew to get me out of the spot I'd put myself into. SpongeBob, swimming without floaties, The Old Man... no, absolutely not useful here. My mom's name! That's the one.
"My mom's name's Mary!" I blurted out, my heavy lisp from the gap between my front teeth made my S pronunciations sharp like broken glass shards. The generally mortified nature of my voice must have alarmed the women, as I vividly remember her recoiling at my shout with eyebrows lifted in concern.
"Mary? Okay, sweetheart, where is your mom now?" She'd stand up, drawing her cardigan tight across her body. She craned her neck back into the house, and I wasn't totally sure what she was doing, but I can only assume, now looking back, that she was telling her husband to call the police due to the estranged child at their front door.
I turned around and pointed to the house across the street, proudly puffing out my chest as I felt I was having an actual conversation with an adult, totally on my own. This was way better than I thought I would do without my mom around, and it was painted on my face that I felt like I'd won.
I had, in fact, done nothing short of traumatizing the neighbors for all of five minutes, as they assumed I had been wandering, trying to find my mother, only to learn I lived roughly 40 yards across the road. It was apparent that this revelation was a great relief as the woman began to hysterically laugh, a hand placed against her forehead as she crouched down again to be on the same level as me.
"You must be John, that makes so much sense, you look just like your Mom. Does she know that you're over here all on your own?" She threw out a quizzical and rather accusatory tone my way, and I was locked at the intersection of astonishment that she knew my name and that I was most definitely about to get in trouble. My response tactic to being in trouble wasn't exceptionally effective. I told the truth.
I gave a solemn shake of my head, admitting defeat on my grand escapade across the sea of asphalt to this new land. I hadn't asked before journeying, and it was painfully obvious.
"I had a feeling. Your mom never struck me as the type of person to let her son wander away from the house without asking."
My mom was not that type of person; she was almost always within eyeshot of me, as a matter of fact. It was strange she had let me out of sight for so long that I'd been able to walk across the street, though that never dawned on me until I got older. I held my head low as I braced myself for the ensuing talking-to I'd receive when I got home. However, it wouldn't take that long for me to be face-to-face with the consequences.
As if on queue, a sharp, accusatory yell sliced the air and slammed into the back of my head. My body stood still and straight, and my head shot up from its downward-facing dejection.
"JOHNATHAN!" My mother's booming voice shook the very marrow within my bones.
It was filled with a certain emotion that felt unfamiliar to me. I had heard her yell in an angry tone or even a happy tone. This one was different, though. Her voice had a generally shaky quality to it, not the low rattle of rage that was boiling over the proverbial edge of the pot, but as if being unable to contain a swell of strong emotions.
It must have struck a chord of shock right into the neighbor as well, due to the way she started with a small jump and turned her attention across the street to the front door of my home.
Within the doorway, my mother's silhouette stood. There was a palpable density to the air that even I, as a small child, could comprehend. I couldn't tell the degree to which I would be in trouble for my adventure; however, I could certainly tell I did not want to slowly face my own inevitable execution when I crossed the road back to my house.
I turned to face the neighbor. Maybe it was a way for me to seek help or avoid punishment, but I was also still hoping that the boy I had come here to meet was somewhere in that house, so I could at least leave having made a new friend.
"Looks like mom isn't too happy, John. Let's walk you home, okay?"
She held out her hand to me. I didn't take it, though. I didn't know what to do. I was so terrified by the sheer gravity of facing my mom alone when I got home, I was glued to the bricks beneath me.
From around the door frame, a man stepped around the corner and put a hand on his wife's shoulder, looking down at me. It took a second for me to overlook how tall he was to notice the two faces in the doorway behind them. My eyes quickly became transfixed on the younger of the two. It was the boy, that very same boy with the piercing blue eyes.
"Hey buddy, looks like your mom really needs you home." The tall man laughed and gestured to my mother, who had now progressed a few feet out to the bottom of the front steps of our front door. Impatience plastered across her form with crossed arms.
My eyes remained locked on the boys, who had similarly taken to blankly staring at me. In the strange way that two boys with no social skills communicated, we just kinda generally regarded each other's existences. I did take the offered hand, though, even if I wasn't looking at the kind woman.
The arduous walk was an eternity of looking back over my shoulder and returning my vision to the disapproving stares of my mother. The moment we crossed into conversation range, my mother made the universal signal with her eyes to go to my room and sit silently until dinner was ready. I knew better than to protest.
All things considered, my mission was probably worth the cost of my individual freedoms for the coming weeks, as I was subjected to a grounding in my room until Halloween for my transgression against the border policy she set up for me.
Once that solitude had concluded, there were very strict rules around my ability to go outside and what would happen if I broke those rules.
It was always explained to me that if I chose to leave the boundaries of houses I was allowed to travel to, I’d lose something for a week, or I’d have to do a menial task since “every action has a consequence”.
While a part of my youthful rebellion would want to defy her and go as far as I could into the woods to prove a point, I knew better and had resigned myself to playing alone in my little tree fort until the winter took away all rational hopes of ascending into my play tower.
On the morning of Halloween, with my freshly granted freedom, I ran out to the treehouse for a rousing game of lone survivor with my trusty branch sniper I had collected from deeper into the underbrush of the tree line.
Locked deep into the narrative bliss of being the most badass sniper to ever grace the United States Military, I became aware of a presence out of view. I had been compromised, it seemed, and I might be locked within the crosshairs of another sniper... the thought radiated in my head for a little bit of time before I really started to realize I hadn't developed that thought in my head because it was part of the game, I really felt like I was being watched from just out of eyeshot.
I looked around me in all directions for whoever was staring me down. I must have looked like I was losing my mind because I had twirled around five or six times until my stomach dropped and my head started to get fuzzy. All things considered, making myself dizzy in a treehouse with half the walls missing wasn't a genius idea, but I felt incredibly uneasy at that genuine feeling of being appraised by something I couldn't look at.
"Hey."
I jumped a little and slouched against the broad, sturdy tree trunk behind me. My ever-reliable wooden sniper companion had flown from my grasp and out of the sanctity of my treehouse. I dropped to my knees and slowly shuffled to the edge of the wood flooring beneath me to peer across the edge.
Down below my treehouse, hunched over my now-displaced weapon, was that boy. I remember the confusion on my face as he just sat there inspecting the broken branch that had become my multi-tool prop for storytelling. It hadn't quite dawned on me before that when I felt like I was being watched, he probably was just underneath me, where I couldn’t see him.
"Careful, it's loaded."
He jumped back from the branch and stared up at me. He seemed to have generally forgotten he was trying to get my attention and was too fascinated by the exceptionally smooth branch that I had picked all the little bark chunks off of.
"Have you ever shot a sniper before?"
"Ya, a couple of times." He chirped, picking it up and mock-aiming it in my direction. I dived back to stay out of the line of fire.
"Careful! I told you it's loaded, you could've shot me." I chided him from behind the invulnerable flooring that stood between us.
He walked over to the plank ladder drilled into the tree, extending the sniper up to me. "Do you need help? You looked like you were losing."
I scoffed in rebuttal to that. I was handling the ebb and flow of war quite well for a six-year-old, as a matter of fact.
"Ya, I was trying not to get caught by the enemy, but I think they had found my hiding spot before you showed up."
It was at this core point in my life that I had managed to blindly walk into my first lasting friendship. It would be a couple of days of meeting up at my treehouse before we even exchanged names. It's funny to think the objective of playing a game was so vastly more important than common pleasantries like introductions at such a young age, but we couldn't have cared less.
Duke Shaughnessy was my best friend from the moment we started playing together, and as a result of our friendship, it seemed as though both our parents had come out of their shells to spend more time together. Well, looking back now, it was more like the Mr. and Mrs. Shaughnessy were behind many of the joint get-togethers between our families, as well as involved in hosting most of my and Duke's indoor playdates.
While a younger me never saw more out of the one-sided nature of our parents' friendship, I can’t help but be a little hung up on the fact that this behavior from my mother was not atypical; frankly, it was the standard.
For a kid who had so many friends growing up, who was always involved in birthdays and block parties, how is it possible that I, to this day, feel like I was such an outsider?
Perhaps I never realized how much that household isolated me from the true nature of the world.