Young Cadaver's Foxtrot

I truthfully don’t know how to start this all off. I don’t even want to sit down and write this all, for people to read and scrutinize every past action of mine. However, today marks the five year anniversary of what happened. I don’t know if I can handle letting this simmer any longer, and I need somewhere - anywhere - to get this off my chest.

You’re probably wondering what I’m on about, so I’ll ask you a question before I actually explain. How much do you care about your family? To answer first: I didn’t care enough. I was a pretty shitty brother, and the rest of my family continues to pay the price for my carelessness.

Let me set the scene for you. It was mid-summer: for most a time to have fun and make plans with their friends, a time to go on a holiday a few states away; maybe abroad if you had the money for it. That’s what most teenagers would’ve been doing, but that didn’t include me. I was geeky, awkward, and most of all: I was bitter. I was never the extroverted type, and immediately retreated if I felt my presence was an intrusion upon others (which was all the time). Poisoned by unsupervised internet access at a young age and image board culture, I had all serotonin drained out of me and was convinced I was a lost cause at the ripe age of fifteen.

The easiest way to cope was to convert that sense of hopelessness and teen angst into anger, which would be directed towards anybody unfortunate enough to be near me. Thinking about it, I feel bad for my parents. Most of all, I feel bad for my little brother, Noah. I have thankfully grown out of it, but he’d never get to know that.

My parents decided to move away from our old home back in the city into some suburb a few states away.

Noah was upset, since he - unlike me - had friends back in our old hometown whom he’d miss. He was always the emotional one. He was the kid who always threw tantrums and would have to be dragged places kicking and screaming, but with a change this big him being upset was understandable. It was a lot for an eleven year old, and it should’ve been a lot for me too. I was too caught up in my own head to be concerned about the move, though.

Noah cried, wailed and screamed often within this time. My parents tried throwing him one last party with his friends, but from what mom told me it didn’t make anything better. On the contrary, it rubbed in that we were leaving, and Noah stormed away in the heat of the moment, causing the party to be cancelled early. Having to fulfill my duty as the responsible older brother, I grumpily was forced to quit online multiplayer game and leave the Discord call I now was being flamed in for quitting mid-game.

It really wasn’t that deep; it was a stupid game, but it soured my mood, and on my way out I was certain mom was able to hear the vile profanities and insults I was muttering to myself.

Continuing my silent tirade while descending the stairs and making my way through the hallway, I found myself standing by the open door frame. Noah clearly heard me descend, as his head turned over quite quickly to look up at me. He was seated on the second step of our crummy little front porch, making his head turn up quite sharply in order to be able to look at me properly.

My presence didn’t really seem to make him feel much better, as he just huffed, turning his head away from me to stare out ahead of him again. He sensed I didn’t actually want to be here, and I picked up on him knowing quite quickly.

I tried comforting him, but it resulted in me having to admit that I didn’t know what the fuck I was actually saying. In a sad attempt to bond with him I offered for us to play spleef together. He huffed again, then called me ‘cringe’ for merely uttering the game’s name and insisted I get lost. Get lost is what I did.

After that day, Noah’s tantrums turned to seclusion. This too wasn’t uncommon, though in hindsight, I don’t think that ever was treated with the appropriate amount of concern. None of his behavior ever was. “He’s just a kid,” my parents used to rationalize, but I cannot recall any well-adjusted eleven year old behaving the way Noah would.

The day we moved barely felt real. It was weird to walk out of the door and into the car, then to drive away, knowing you’d never be coming back there again. Despite not actually having much to lose by moving away, I remember feeling a very specific kind of melancholy. It only half-registered to me that this was a part of my life that I would be leaving behind and potentially never come back to again. Sure, I had no friends, no hobbies, but it was still my home for fifteen years of my life.

The drive itself was a quiet one. In the beginning, mom and dad tried engaging in small talk with us, wanting to lift the mood, but with Noah feeling dejected over this and me never having been much of a talker, the conversation quickly died down, leaving all of us to our own devices. I for one found myself staring out the car window like I was in a music video for a sad song.

It felt both eternal and like we arrived at our destination in the blink of an eye.

Driving into the street our home was located in, I couldn’t help but note how clean everything was. Back in our old place, you’d at the very least find a bunch of cigarette butts litter the sidewalk and gather around the storm drain, but never really barge through the metal slits and fall into the sewage. Here, however? Nothing. You could probably lick the ground and you wouldn’t have to wash your mouth out afterwards. The houses were nice and the porches were big. Each house had a front garden with neatly mowed grass, with not a single weed to be spotted in those small fields of green.

The moment we entered the driveway I knew I was going to hate it here. I took a deep breath, quickly looking over at Noah - who seemed to equally dislike the vibe of this place - and I opened the car door, stepping onto the pristine asphalt marking the drive-in parking. I then looked over at my parents, whose eyes were glued on what from now on was going to be our new house.

The house was big - big like every other house here - and the front garden was vast. Again; vast like each house’s front garden. It was nice, but ‘nice’ was all I could really say about it. It was so picturesque and suburban I couldn’t help but want to leave. I would’ve walked all the way back to my old home if I had to. I would go anywhere but here.

“Don’t you wanna look around?” Dad asked, raising an eyebrow and nodding towards the front door. I didn’t. However, I knew the question was rhetorical, and Noah and I glanced at each other before shrugging and making our way inside. “Divs on the biggest room,” he muttered, walking towards the stairs at a fast enough pace to surpass me when he made it past the front door. I didn’t have it in me to chase him up, instead opting to just take my time climbing the stairs.

It was a quiet trip up the stairs. When I caught up to him he was stood at the window, staring out towards something. “What’s up?” I asked, furrowing my brows and joining my brother at the window before looking through the pane alongside him.

Now, let me explain something to you: the bedroom we entered provided us with a view of the back garden and the forest behind it, barred off with a wooden fence.

This on its own was normal enough, but what was puzzling to the both of us was what we thought we saw between the trees. You wouldn’t notice if you offered just a passing glance. Stare a bit longer out the window, though, and you could pick up on the vague motion obscured by greenery.

What I could only assume to be people, teenagers at oldest, were all dancing along what probably was a trail in the forest. I couldn’t tell, though, because I couldn’t actually see the path as everything was obscured. The dance itself looked pretty simple. They were all paired up and rhythmically shuffled forwards, slowly spinning in the process. After uncounted, consistently-changing intervals of time, they’d let go and all do a single twirl, scrambling about and pairing up with someone new within their vicinity while continuing to shuffle forwards.

“Think this is a community thing?” I asked. Noah shrugged.

“Dunno,” he responded. “I just looked out the window and they were there.”

“Wanna check that out?” I offered, and he blankly stared at me. “Later, maybe,” he flatly spoke. “I’m tired.”

“Noah, Luke! Don’t you want to come look at the garden?” I heard mom call out from the stairs, cutting off the opportunity for speculation surrounding the dancing kids. “Coming,” Noah called out, slowly and reluctantly leaving the room join my parents.

“Yeah, I’m coming!” I too answered, but my voice quickly dropped, my eyes glued to the forest and the dancing kids. In hindsight, maybe I should have just joined them. Maybe then I would have been more at ease staying here in the stupid, over sanitized tenth circle of hell that was this neighborhood.

It happened during the twirl. One of the kids (I couldn’t tell how old they were) stumbled while turning. They stumbled and fell, and when hitting the ground I couldn’t see them getting up again. The kids accompanying them, for whatever reason, didn’t even stop to acknowledge that one of their dance mates tripped. No observable signs of concern surrounding the kid who fell. They simply paired up and kept dancing, the limp child merely another bump to step over to them.

It’s difficult to describe what it was that I felt at that moment. I’m pretty sure I was staring like a wide-eyed idiot, and I think I was too confused to let what I saw fully sink in. I don’t know if I was afraid or disturbed. I don’t even know if I really did see a kid fall or whether the greenery formed a funny image.

What I do vividly remember was the feeling of a lump forming in my throat. It became harder to breathe and my hands turned cold. I wanted to move. I wanted to go, I wanted to see nothing more of this, but my eyes were glued to the scene. Every muscle in my body was screaming at me to leave this room at once, but I couldn’t stop staring at this bizarre, barely-visible sight.

“Luke, honey, are you coming with us?”

My head snapped over to look at mom, who now was standing at the door. I cleared my throat before speaking. “Y.. Yeah. Yeah, I’m coming,” I stammered. Then I realized I had no idea what I just said yes to. “Coming to what?” I asked for further clarification. Mom’s shoulders slumped. “We’re going to visit Miss Brady. She lives across our home.”

My mind was still lagging behind and it took me longer than it should to register what was said. When her statement finally did click, I made a pathetic “...Ah.” sound.

Mom took this as a general lack of enthusiasm, and sighed. “I know this is all a lot,” she started. I didn’t want to listen to another hour-long lecture on how this was the best for us as a family again, so I answered with an “I know”, and the tenseness on mom’s face suggested she was ready to keep talking. In the end she took a deep breath. “Just give this a chance. Please.”

I hesitated for a moment before I finally answered. “I am.”

I glanced back towards the window before we left, peering through the leaves obscuring what commotion was going on in the woods. The line was gone, but a lone figure could be discerned lying on the forest floor.

That lone figure would haunt me for weeks to come.

Miss Brady was fine. She was cordial and seemed to always be smiling, and she had a casserole ready - as all suburban neighbors do - while we sat and talked at the table. Really, it was more mom and Miss Brady chatting about the place, talking about what the school’s like, how ‘lovely’ the neighborhood seemed to be… I wasn’t paying attention to any of it. My mind was still on the dancing kids, the kid who tripped… Then she brought up the forest.

I asked about whether the community ever held any activities there, and she very happily begun talking about the picnics, collective walks, you name it.

“Do any, uh… Dancing events- parades, get held in the woods?” I then asked.

The question confused Miss Brady. I knew the answer before she as much as thought of uttering it.

“No, dear, not as far as I’m aware. Is that your thing? Dancing?”

“Yeah, actually.”

Dancing was not at all my thing, and mom knew that very well considering she quizzically glanced at me the moment I said this. In the end, I cut to the chase and asked for directions to the forest, claiming to want to explore the neighborhood and what it has to offer.

“The end of the road, dear. You’ll notice you can turn two ways, but to get to the forest you turn right. You’ll be lead right in,” was what she instructed, a light smile tugging on the corners of her lips.

I didn’t need a tour of this neighborhood. What I needed were answers to what the fuck I just saw. I only had to do as much as look over at mom to receive an answer. “Of course you can go.” was the verdict. To my dismay, she wanted me to bring Noah with me, but it then turned out that Noah wanted to hang around with Miss Brady’s kid. Silently pleased that I didn’t need to drag Noah along, I got up, promptly leaving after promising mom I’d be home by dinnertime.

I decided that that day, I’d scout the forest, find my way around here and maybe return at a later date to thoroughly explore. Unfortunately, this did not go according to plan.

For whatever reason, I was in a rush to get there. I needed to confirm that what I saw was real and not some hallucination, get myself some answers. At the same time I really didn’t want to find whatever it was I saw. My mind was beginning to come up with all sorts of worst case scenarios. What if they got badly hurt? What if they need a hospital? What if they’re…

I thought getting to the point where Noah and I saw them was simple. After all, we could directly see it from our home, meaning I just had to walk along the edge of the forest and follow along the homes until I reached the back of my own new house.

Unfortunately, the keyword here is ‘thought’. As it turns out, all houses looking the same made estimating how far I’d have to walk more difficult than expected. Additionally, what I didn’t account for was paths splitting up.

The deeper I walked in, the darker the forest felt like it was becoming, and the more I felt like I was being urged, beckoned to come closer. The pull I experienced was almost magnetic, and this pull was bringing me away from the path I followed and into the shrubbery. The further I strayed, the more my heart started pounding, dread for what was to come growing, but I couldn’t turn back. Not now.

What already should have been a warning sign was how rancid the woods begun to smell. That disgusting pungent, yet sickeningly sweet stench of rotting flesh. Maybe if you had the misfortune of forgetting to throw away expired meat you’d know. There was no sign of any animal carcasses being present, but the entire area smelled like this, and I couldn’t for the life of me explain why. The area I found myself in, for a lack of better words, smelled like death. It was unbearably strong, and I had to hold back the urge to vomit already.

Then I saw them.

They simply laid there, surrounded by trees and bushes, and the closer I got, the stronger the smell became. I wanted to throw up more than ever, and looking back, I’m shocked I didn’t vomit at least once while walking. I realized it was a little girl. Reddish-brown shoulder-length hair, light green matching t-shirt and pajama shorts. She looked no older than seven years old.

“Hello?” I called out to the girl, but she was unresponsive, and I could feel a pit begin to form in my stomach. I already knew, but there was a part of me that didn’t want this to be true. “Are you okay?” I asked, still approaching her still form, my pulse rapid and tangible within my own throat. “Hello…?”

My sentence trailed off when I finally got a proper look at her.

I do still get upset whenever I think about it. I think about her swollen red eyes and the discoloration of her face. I think about the frozen look of terror on this poor child’s face. I visualize the bluish veins beneath her skin and have to hold back the urge to both tear up and throw up. I remember the way a lump formed in my throat when my fears were confirmed. I wanted to scream, but it was like my voice gave way and all I could do was struggle to wheeze. Struggle to breathe.

I couldn’t breathe.

Heaving, I backed away, nearly tripping and falling in the process. Finally, I retched, the taste of bile passing through my mouth almost being a relief compared to the pungency radiating off the little girl’s body. I remember my hand trembling while reaching for my phone and I was barely able to hold my phone due to how badly my hands were shaking. The fact that I could call 911 was a miraculous endeavor.

“911, what’s your emergency?”

It was a hot summer day, but I don’t think I’ve ever felt colder than I did at that moment. I tried opening my mouth. I couldn’t get myself to speak. I desperately was mouthing the needed words, but my voice initially refused to vocalize them.

“Bo.. Body- There’s- There’s a body!” I struggled to exclaim amidst my hyperventilating fit.

The full conversation was a blur. One moment I was calling 911, and the next thing I remember was being questioned by a police officer right outside the forest, right at the beginning of the path I took. Mom seemed to be much more panicked about this than I was, running up to me as soon as I was within her sight.

“Luke!” she hollered, still frantically making her way towards me.

“Luke, honey! What happened?!” I remember her asking. I just stared. I didn’t want to talk about it, or talk at all for the matter. I couldn’t even get myself to look at mom, my eyes still glued to the floor. I could hear the officer bring mom aside, most likely to explain what had happened.

My memory still is a blur, but I remember that not long after, I was home again. Mom tried getting me to eat, but I didn’t want to. Seeing what I saw was enough to kill my appetite for a while. Noah later told me he saw the dancing kids again. I think about how I wordlessly stared at him, then headed towards my room to be on my own.

For the next few weeks I mainly stayed in my room. I can’t even remember what I did; I sure as hell didn’t sleep. Anytime I drifted off, she would appear. She still does. I cannot stand seeing her. Maybe if I was lucky I’d have the energy to go down for breakfast, then disappear in my room again. Despite how unbearable the sight of the little girl was, though, I found myself obsessed with digging up all available information about her. It was definitely unhealthy, and my parents very much were concerned. I could hear them talking about getting me a counselor whenever they thought I wasn’t listening.

Noah would try to talk to me, and I would refuse. He’d tell me about the dancing kids and how he wanted to join them and I told him to shut up. That no, he wouldn’t want to be dancing with them. He said leaving with them wouldn’t be so bad, and I told him not to be stupid and to stop thinking about them. That they can’t be doing anything good. After all, they left a little girl for dead in those woods.

According to the police, she was from a completely different state, and went missing a few months prior, along with a few other kids from her hometown. She must have been dead for months already, going off of the decomposed state she was in. No signs of a violent death either, apparently, the cause of death being a heart attack. It didn’t make sense, though. How could a months-old corpse have been dancing in the woods earlier that day? How could the kids I saw just disappear from the forest like that too when I was certain they were big in numbers?

I was sulking when Noah knocked on the door again.

“Hey, Luke?”

I sighed, getting up to open my bedroom door, just enough for my face to peak through. “What?”

“Do you ever want to leave?” “Leave?” “Yeah. Leave.” I fully opened the door now, puzzled by his cryptic words. “You know I don’t want to be here just as much as you,” I spoke with a shrug, figuring he still wasn’t adjusting to the new neighborhood.

“I can’t take this anymore,” I remember him saying, and I remember how he sounded desperate. I stared blankly for a few seconds, then rolled my eyes.

“Go away,” I muttered, closing the door quite unceremoniously, going back to listening to music and idling on my bed. The next few days after that were a blur. I sulked in my room, the rest of my family did whatever. Nobody could ever have predicted that this would be our last ‘normal’ day together. I was playing an online match and had left my bedroom door open, and I could tell Noah was standing by my door frame from the shadow cast by the hallway light.

“You going to sleep?” I asked him, not once looking away from the computer, to which Noah said “I guess.”

“G’night, then,” I told him.

“Bye bye, Luke.” was his response, and I was puzzled enough to frown and look over at the door frame where he stood, but he already was gone. Not thinking twice about it, I simply continued investing my attention in the match. My parents eventually came upstairs, telling me goodnight as well and asking me not to stay up too late. Needless to say, I stayed up late. It was 2:16 AM, to be specific.

Thirsty after being seated for hours on end, I got up to go to the kitchen. I was going to go back to my room and call it a night, maybe actually attempt to sleep and hope I wouldn’t get plagued by imagery of the body I found weeks ago.

It was when I was making my way towards the stairs and glanced towards my family’s row of shoes that I noticed there was a pair of shoes missing. I didn’t even think anything of it first; like one of those things that seemed normal until it fully sunk in and left you thinking: Hold on a moment.

I felt my heart drop to my stomach, because even if I didn’t want it to be true, I had a sinking feeling I knew where Noah was going. I didn’t even think to wake up my parents, instead immediately bolting through the front door, which surely should have woken them up.

I must have looked like a maniac, running as fast as my poor physical condition would allow me to, bare-footed and wearing nothing more but a loose shirt and shorts while dashing through the pouring rain. My legs were aching by the time I had reached the end of the street already, and I needed to take a breath but couldn’t afford to.

It was when I reached the forest that I once again smelled it, this time already hanging in the air from the forest entrance. That terrible stench which invaded my nostrils overpowered the scent of pine and moss. I thought about the little girl’s decaying, mortified expression, and for a brief moment I froze, my legs ready to give way as I was unable to take another step forward.

I then replaced the girl’s face with that of Noah, terror now fueling my every step rather than halting it. I started making a run for it again, bypassing police tape. If there was an on-site officer, they either weren’t doing their job or I didn’t notice them.

There was something in me that instinctively made me run down the same route I walked weeks ago, like I knew the kids went down here again. It was that magnetic pull, voiceless pleas for me to come, come join them. As if I already knew Noah followed them into here, as if they wanted me too. The unbearable stench confirmed this instinct.

My desperation only grew and so did that unbearable stench, making breathing more laborious than ever and thus feeding into a feedback loop of perpetual exhaustion.

When I saw them I still wasn’t sure whether they really were there.

I finally began seeing the row of children in the distance, arrhythmically stepping and twirling despite a notable lack of music. I called out Noah’s name, beginning to grow slightly hopeful in the prospect that it may not be too late. Amongst the line of dancing figures, I could see a head turn towards me from the distance, and although I couldn’t make out his face clearly (I wasn’t wearing my glasses) I could guess he was shocked. Quickly after I heard a scream which undeniably came from Noah.

I should have passed out from exhaustion. I was running like a maniac, my hair and clothes glued to my skin by the rain, coming down in heavy drops after being channeled together by the leaves that caught them. I was heaving, but the urgency of retrieving Noah far outweighed my own needs.

I was so close.

The children danced at a pace far faster than I anticipated, easily matching the speed at which I ran. It wasn’t natural. The irregular rhythms and complexities of their steps were unlike any form of dance I was familiar with, and in no way something a child should have been able to pull off. It was foreign. Illogical and unnatural, but I witnessed this alien set of steps myself as I steadily approached. My biggest regret was being so transfixed with this foreign foxtrot that I neglected my own footing. I fell. I slipped on the muddy trail and my head must have hit a rock.

When I woke up I was in the hospital, my parents anxiously sitting by my side. The first thing I did was cry out for Noah.

“He has been missing since this morning, Luke, he’s-”

Mom’s words were quickly interrupted, because I started crying like a baby the moment mom said it. “He’s- He’s gone,” I choked out between my sobs. “Don’t say that!” She cried out. “Noah’s gone,” was the only thing I found myself able to say, uncontrollably crying still.

Lo and behold, there was an on-site officer, and they apparently found me lying unconscious not far away from the main path. In a fit of cruel irony, I tripped and fell in the same spot the little girl I found did. I was ‘completely out of it’ according to the cop who found me, and he told me he was afraid of the possibility that I was dead too. “To find one dead kid in a place like this is bad enough,” I remember him saying. I didn’t say a word to him back.

I answered all their questions with the flat truth. I don’t care if they didn’t believe me, and I could tell they were unsure of what to do with the information I had given. They’re not going to find him is what I know.

Weeks went by, then months passed. Mom got increasingly hopeless, and even dad was beginning to show signs of mental wear from the ordeal. I had to start going to therapy, but I have never talked to my therapist about that night. Funny how I can post this for thousands to read instead.

After a while mom couldn’t even get herself out of bed anymore, and she had to be institutionalized. Dad and I make sure to visit as often as we can. Dad has been trying his best to get past it, and seems to be handling it the best out of all of us, but it’s typical of him to brush things under the carpet. He thinks he has to be strong for mom and I, even if I can tell he is hurting as well.

As for myself, I don’t know. I exist, I guess. You could say I get by. Every day has been a bit of a blur. I wake up, get ready, clock in at my menial job, clock out, go home, have dinner and sleep again. Sometimes I think about how I saw flashes of Noah right before I faltered. If I close my eyes for too long I will see how his head lulled while he twirled. I’ll see close flashes of his twisted ankle - which I assume was why he screamed - and how despite passing out from the pain, his body continued to dance. I begin to overthink and start thinking: what if? What if I didn’t trip? What if I woke up my parents that night and told them Noah is missing? What if I simply listened to Noah? Would things have changed? Would this still have happened?

I'm alive, I guess. I just wish he was too.