Child Game Hunts - terror sketch

I told you, I can't do horror. I'm so sorry about that.

Apr 09, 2025

I have said before that I can’t do ‘horror’ stories.

The reason is because I have experienced true horror in my own real life. My childhood, that is. I have hinted at this in the ‘my psych profile’ series, which I must write some more about, and on which this little ‘story’ is based.

These are genuine memories, that is.

The most important line is simply this one – the vast majority of people have no idea what real horror actually is, because they don’t know the difference between ‘fear’ and ‘terror’. And they should be thankful for that, quite frankly.

I have experienced terror and I experienced it as a child. This is the real cause of my dissociative condition.

It’s also why all these ‘horror stories’ simply don’t scare me in the slightest. Because I know they are not real.

The only truly scary stories are the ones which are real. And the ones which go beyond mere ‘fear’ and embrace genuine ‘terror’.

The following little ‘story’, if I can even call it that, is based on my own ‘terror’ which I genuinely experienced as a child. I’ve embellished a little of it, for sure, but not as much as you will want to think.

There really was a boy called Drew at the Institution I was sent to and he really did disappear one day. Or rather, ‘they announced’ his disappearance one day.

I have no idea what happened to him.

So, every little thing that happens in this story is true, according to my memory. I have simply mixed a few things together.

If I was to really turn this into some ‘proper story’, then of course I would have to add a whole load of stuff, so please consider this to be the ‘raw version’ sort of thing. Skeleton – yeah, that’s a good word. This story is more ‘suggestive’ than ‘showing or telling’. In such a sense, I shall leave your own imagination to fill in the knowledge gaps.

But like I said, ‘horror’ stories simply do not scare me. Because they are not real.

This one is real.

End of intro.

Child Game Hunts

Seven year olds do not make up stories like that.

In the basement, there was a room, or a chamber, perhaps we could better call it a chamber, in which a boy was found hanging from a hook.

Today, in the twentieth century, those hooks are used for our duffel coats.

Or so we are told.

We seven year olds make up stories all the time. According to the defence barrister.

Like the child game hunts.

They never happened.

Of course it wasn’t them hunting us.

No, of course not.

It was just a game.

There was a boy, I vaguely remember, Drew I think his name was. Surname? Something Jewish, I think. Shimmerman, or Sherman, or something like that.

I remember the moment distinctly. And that is telling, now I am forty years older. The fact that I hardly remember anything else. But I remember this.

Geography class. Or what they called geography class. School announcement.

Drew has escaped.

Drew has run away.

They told us he was mad. Crazy. And that’s why he ran away.

As if anyone would want to run away from this place, in their right mind…

I don’t know what happened to Drew, but I am going to imagine it.

I am going to base it on my own experiences. Because I can tell you this for nothing.

Seven year olds do not make up stories like this.

I watch them, my parents. At least, they say they are my parents.

Through the thin glass pane I watch them from this sharp angle.

Waiting, in the waiting room.

And I can see it in their eyes. They know.

They allowed it to happen.

Through this single sharp window I hear him. Or at least, I think I can hear him.

My friend Drew.

Except I don’t know if it’s really him. Because I don’t remember his voice. Or his face.

Memories come so hard these days.

That’s how the defence barrister wins, you know.

Because seven year olds, they say. Always make up stories like this.

They gave me – us – special treatment.

Why? Because we’re clever, that’s why. Because we are Alphas.

And so, they didn’t let me go back to my parents on the first weekend.

They’re not really my parents, you know. Not really. Parents wouldn’t be involved in such horror.

Of course they wouldn’t.

I am so sorry.

I should have told you what happened, shouldn’t I? I mean, I should have given you some description of what it looked like.

Where the forest was.

In relation to the Elizabethan stately home where my parents sent me when I was seven years old and oh – I know – if I want to see what’s outside this sharp glass window pane I have to say seven years old of course we make up stories.

All the time we make them up. Of course we tell stories about how we were hunted by them in the forest and there was this breach in the wall that surrounded the grounds and on the other side there was this cornfield and that’s where we hid but we knew we couldn’t stay there forever we would have to go back into that forest sometime and let us back into their hands and then they would hurt us again and then…

But we would wait until it wasn’t light anymore.

Yes. We’ll wait.

We know they are not there anymore.

With their crossbows, and their guns, and their dogs.

And their rapist intentions.

With their dogs.

Child game hunts.

Yeah, now I am forty years older I think I know what happened to my friend.

And I feel grateful, you know, I do. Because I never got to see what happened to him.

What they did, when they caught him.

I only see the dogs, their wide, bright and blue wolfish eyes staring back at me and not giving away the game.

Crouching here in the brambles, scarring and scared and scarring in the twilight and wishing they would just leave me alone and let me to die.

They turn away, in the end.

If you don’t move.

And you don’t sway.

If you stay as you are, little girl. Just stay as you are.

Don’t make a sound in the child game hunt, my honey.

Oh no.

Don’t dare make a sound.

I have a fleeting memory. Do you want to hear it?

That psychologist woman, she says yes. Now I am older I understand she knew all about the child game hunts. She was only there to cover it all up. To make sure none of us really remembered. Or if we did, that it just sounded, I don’t know, like something a seven year old made up.

Because it’s just fun, really, isn’t it?

Just a game. Isn’t it?

It’s not as if there I was, suddenly switching my gaze to my right and there he was, the teacher who fucked me looking the other way and I only have a fleeting moment to choose between the fight or the flight or the freeze or the fawn.

That’s where my memory ends, my friends.

I chose the fawn, I know that.

But you, I am sure, have no understanding of the difference between fear and terror.

You only know fear. You really, really, don’t know terror.

When I was seven I couldn’t sleep.

There was this storm.

And everyone was petrified.

I was the only one I remember who woke up and wondered.

Outside the dormitory there was this elegant balcony. Red carpet and beautiful balustrades. High and perfect ceilings up ahead as if to the sky.

To the right, there, just there beside me, is Headmaster’s office.

That’s where he used to hurt me.

The balcony snakes around to the left over there.

But here, just by my left side, there is a winding staircase, with this beautiful plush red carpet. It twists around to the right down there and at the bottom where it meets the black-white checkerboard lobby there is a girl in a white translucent dress at the bottom of the stairs and she never saw me. She never looked up to watch me in the witching hour watching her back.

She was just there, you know.

Dead. But dreaming.

Sometimes, at night, when I was only seven years old, I used to take myself out of that room where he used to hurt me and I would wander.

To the right, there, beyond Headmaster’s room, at the end of that corridor, that’s where he lives.

We’ll not go that way.

And so we’ll follow the balcony around to the left up there. Bypass the stairs. Forwards perhaps ten metres or so and then turn left again and another twenty metres and we are – well, we think we are safe – but not that we have a choice.

Up, or down.

It’s a spiral metal staircase.

It is a few hours past the witching hour.

They are all asleep, those monsters.

I am so sure they are asleep. They must be.

I know.

They must be.

One of them came to me earlier. Kneeled beside my bedside and snaked his wrists inside my hips and no, of course you don’t need to worry. It didn’t hurt.

Not really.

That isn’t what really hurt.

I had special treatment, you know.

I am an Alpha.

I think, now I come to think of it, that this tree there, the one with the catkins, that’s a Hazel, isn’t it?

Or is it an old oak, the one so old that saw the Civil War?

I don’t know.

But there he is.

And I will level my crossbow.

I will.

I will hunt as they want me to hunt and I will.

Me or him. They say. Me or him.

One of us dies. One of us raped and then tortured and I don’t know.

It’s all just a game. They said.

I will hunt as they want me to hunt and I will.

Of course I will.

Seven year olds just don’t make up stories like this.

You know they don’t, my love.

Don’t you?

Upstairs, at the top, where other hurts happened, there is a corridor to the right – no, I am wrong – the left, with rooms either side.

No, the rooms are on the right side.

It’s all dark. There must be something there. Like when they had that storm and I was the only one left up here and I am sure I saw something.

But they don’t listen to me.

Downstairs.

Back downstairs.

We should go beyond the ground floor and into the basement.

You know we should, don’t you?

Seven year olds shouldn’t make up stories like that.

Oh no.

They really shouldn’t.

You must never go down there.

That’s what they say.

But they are wrong.

The basement is a corridor, all dead stone, through the entire length of this Elizabethan mansion.

There, up ahead on the left, is the chamber in which the boy was found hanging from a hook.

My duffel coat is in there.

I watch from here.

It must be, I don’t know, two in the morning. All the lights aren’t working.

I watch the door. Half open.

Further up, on the right, is the room in which there was a scream. I think it was directly opposite the room where they left him bloody hanging. Was it opposite? I’m so sorry. I just can’t remember.

I want to, but I can’t. I’m so sorry.

I only have three seconds of a memory in that room.

Surrounded by monsters and then the lights go suddenly out.

And there is a scream.

And another. And it doesn’t stop it just breathes a scream again and again and then I realise that screaming is me and then I forget and it’s the end of memory.

It was me, all the time.

The screaming was me.

You really don’t know, do you? The difference between fear, and terror?

You never fragmented your psyche like I did.

You never bared witness and you never bared your teeth and you never bared your soul in the witching hour and you never. You never.

And then you never had your witness burnt.

I am in the corridor, beyond the witching hour, looking down there. Dead stone. All of this is dead stone.

It must’ve been the first thing they built, all those centuries ago when the Tudors used to torture my ancestors. My women.

My real mother, perhaps.

My mother in this world, she is not mine.

She is one of them.

She hurt me.

She is not dressed in white and waiting to love me at the foot of the stairs when I leave this place at night.

I wish. But no.

At the other end of the corridor there is hope.

It moves into a new room and at the far end, if you can make it that far there is a spiral stairwell going upwards.

No, turn around. Turn around and go home.

Wake up.

Seven year olds don’t make up stories like this.

My real parents want me to leave this place. They love me. They watch me through the sharpest glass and they mouth the words but I cannot hear them.

They let me go when I was only a year old. I knew love, once, when I was with them but now I know love no more.

They left me in the claws of hurtful demons.

I would like to think they never knew.

But I don’t know. All I know is it’s safe, here, behind these new soft walls.

When they sharp their sharps into my arms and it feels safe again and I laugh just for a few, maybe three seconds, and then sleep.

Always three seconds, it is, as I drift away again.

Always three seconds.

My memories.

Three seconds.

Like the memory I mentioned – you know – when I was in the forest, and they were hunting me, and I flashed my gaze to my right and there he was, the monster, the monster who fucked me and he couldn’t see me because he was looking the other way and so I ran, and I ran, and I didn’t care about the brambles and the sharps and the stabbing and the hurts and I just ran but I have no idea, no memory, nothing of what happened next.

But the next time, yeah. The next time I do remember.

We’re playing a game. But it’s not a game. Not really.

We were at the edge of the forest. It rings this Elizabethan mansion you know. Maybe three mile radius or something like that. That’s how much they give us to evade their capture. Their capture and their rape and their hurt.

There was a breach in the wall. Left and right it’s something like ten feet tall and the gardener, you would’ve thought, would’ve done his work well by slicing off the trees that would offer us a branch and an overhanging and a crawling way out.

Or maybe he felt some kind of strange compassion for us. In his own witching hours when the monsters weren’t watching.

But no, not here. We are frantic. I don’t remember his name.

Drew?

I only remember that when I was back home again, no, I was not home.

Not home, back in the dormitory again.

It was only me.

Beyond the wall there was a road. Barely used. Look left, look right, like the doors to the chambers in the basement, left half-open and I wish we didn’t know there was someone in there.

Hanging from a hook and you should know by now never go down there in the witching hour because seven year olds just don’t make up stories like she does anymore.

Look behind. Like every time you were outside in the witching hour and you knew what would happen if they caught you.

Nothing there.

They will not catch us if we cross that road and snake into the cornfields and we hide.

And so we hide. We run through the breach in the wall and across the dead road like desperate into the Underworld and on the other side in the cornfield we crouch and we hold each other for the life against death and we swear we will always love each other and if any one of those monsters appears in that breach in that wall then we’ll just run. We’ll just run and run and run and…

And that’s the end.

The end of memory.

We watched.

I don’t know for how long.

But I do know, for sure. Seven year olds don’t make up stories like that.

On the left, there. See? Halfway down the basement dead stone corridor.

Gently push the old tough oak door open for me, please.

Push it and turn your bright eyes that way, inside. To the left, there.

See? In the middle, of that far wall, in the red shadow.

On that hook, there?

Through this glass sharply.

Seven year olds just don’t make up stories like that.