The Toothman

"They pulled him from the lake, and they say his skin was as blue as the ice on the lake. They checked his pulse and found him stone-cold dead. They loaded him into a wagon and took him into town, the body bouncing like a stone as they rode. Whenever it was that the bumping stopped, none of them knew, but when they arrived in town, they found the back of the wagon empty."

He had our full attention as the tale found its crescendo.

"They had lost the body somewhere, and when they told the sheriff he made them go back the way they had come and look for it. No matter how much they looked or how far they went, they couldn't find the frozen body, and wouldn't until morning."

The sound of a chip crunching against John's teeth sounded very loud in the space, but we all pushed it out of our minds as we listened.

"The sound of screams would wake the town as Judge Weller awoke to find the frozen body of his latest victim beside him in his bed, and when the police arrived he gladly confessed to his crimes."

Gabriel gasped when the final blow fell, but we shushed him as we listened.

"He thought of nothing else for the length of his stay in the county jail, likely thought of nothing else right up until the rope ended his life but the stiff, frozen body of Taylor Williams that had found its warmth into his bed."

We all sat back, sighing contentedly as we clapped softly.

"That's a good one, Craige," I said, nodding appreciatively as the others congratulated him.

It was Halloween, and as it was Craige's turn to host the Halloween sleepover he had been allowed to tell the first story, one of many I was sure would be shared that night.

Craige, Gabriel, John, and I had been friends since Kindergarten. Our town isn't very large, maybe twenty-five thousand people tops, and when we realized we only lived a few streets away from each other, it was a done deal that we would be friends for life. We spent our days riding bikes or playing video games or just enjoying each other's company, and we didn't see an end to those days anytime soon.

As we got older, however, Craige and I developed what you might call a bit of a rivalry. Whether it was video games, Pokemon cards, bike races, or whatever we did, the two of us had to be the best in our friend group. We would do anything for each other, but it was accepted that our competitions often put us at odds. I was often the one to come out on top in these contests, and as such Craige had begun to take them kind of seriously. Any opportunity to be the winner was a chance he took, so when he looked at me to follow his story with something better, I was ready and waiting

“Well, this is one my dad told me about and it gave me the chills. They say there's a guy who walks around Carter May Park after dark. He wears a hooded sweatshirt, and no one has seen his face and lived to describe it. He told me that everyone called the guy Mr. Toothman and he was a local legend of sorts. Lots of people had seen him, but no one had ever gotten close enough to talk to him or see his face.”

Craige pretended to yawn, but the others were enthralled. Gabriel was laying on his stomach, his eyes getting big as he balanced on his hand, and John was nodding his head as he sat with his mouth a little open. I could see the Jolleyrancher he had been about to cradle in his cheek as it threatened to slip out, but he seemed not to realize he was about to lose some of his hard-won candy to the carpet.

“Well, my dad and his friends decided that they wanted to be the first to see what this elusive Mr. Toothman looked like, so they went to the park after dark and camped out near a spot he was said to stop at. Someone at school had told him that Mr. Toothman would stop and feed the bird just after sunset by the little fountain, and as they hid in a bush and waited for sunset, they all told stories of what he might look like.”

“I bet he looks like a bat with long pointy teeth and drool coming out of his mouth,” said Dad’s friend Randy.

Craige tried to roll his eyes, but he was clearly as interested as the rest of my friends. None of them had heard this story before. None of them had any idea of a legendary creature that stalked the park. They had never heard of it, because I had never told it, and it was something I had been saving for tonight.

“I bet he looks like an alligator and his face barely fits beneath the hood,” said Teddy.

“Dad didn’t speculate with them, he just kept watching the bench. It got darker and darker, the bugs tuning up as the cricket's and night birds began their song. He was supposed to show up right after dusk. They had been told so, and they believed it, but he still wasn’t here and the mosquitos were beginning to bite.”

A dog barked outside but none of them took notice.

They were all too enthralled by the story to give it a thought.

“I bet he looks like a monster from under the bed,” Teddy said suddenly, “And when he gets you, he drags you into the dark and swallows you whole.”

“I bet,” said a cold, deep voice, “that he gobbles up naughty children who are out past their bedtimes,”

“They turned and there he was. His hood was down, but Dad said he couldn’t see his face in the gloom. All three went tearing off as fast as they could, The Toothman right behind them. They ran for home as fast as they were able, his running steps right behind them. Dad said he was making a weird sucking noise like he was trying to stop from drooling at the sight of such tasty flesh. They ran and ran, but when they got to Teddy’s house, which was closer, they discovered that he wasn’t with them.”

Gabriel gasped, but it was pretty expected.

“They told his parents that the Toothman had gotten him, but they never really believed them. The police were called, and when the boys told them that the Toothman had gotten Teddy, they didn’t believe them either. The park was searched but nothing was ever found. Teddy remains missing to this day, and you can still see the Toothman walking in the park sometimes. They say he still sits on the bench feeding the night birds, waiting for his next victim to come wandering by.”

As I finished, the others clapped softly, telling me that it really had been a great story.

All but Craige, of course.

“Yeah, it was okay. Kind of unbelievable, despite your best efforts though.”

“Oh it’s real,” I shot back as I grabbed some candy from my nearby bag, “my dad said he was there. His friend Teddy was never seen again and his other friend Randy moved away a few months later. His parents were afraid he might go missing too and they sold their house and got out of town.”

Craige made a disbelieving noise, “Oh, come on. Like anyone would buy that. You made it all up, just admit it.”

I glowered at him, my candy still half unrolled, “Are you calling my dad a liar? Because he wouldn’t lie to me about something like that.”

“Alright then,” Craige said, grinning “Prove it.”

I looked at him skeptically, “How?”

“Let's all go to Carter May Park right now. It’s right down the road from here, like a ten-minute walk. It’s already nine o’clock so this Toothman should be there. We can see him and get home before my mom wakes up and comes to check on us.”

I started to decline, but why shouldn’t we go. Never mind that we were four twelve-year-old who were talking about going out well after dark. Never mind that we were children who were talking about going to find a creature that snatched children. It was Halloween, and tonight anything was possible. Why couldn’t we go to the park and catch a glimpse of a real-life monster?

Tonight was the night for seeing monsters, wasn’t it?

“Alright, Craige, let's go have a look then.”

He started to look a little skeptical, but then I crossed my arms and delivered the final blow.

“Come on, you aren’t chicken, are you?”

That sealed it, and about five minutes later we were slipping out of his garage and making our way down the sidewalk.

The streets were empty, the kids inside asleep or counting their candies, and we had the world to ourselves it seemed. The odd car rolled by to break that illusion now and then, but our only company on the walk was the scuttle of trash or the flap of a bat in the slight wind. It was quiet, the night just beginning to stretch its fingers across the town, and as the moon hung high and pregnant over top of us, it seemed that anything really could be possible.

The park was lit by intermittent light polls, and the islands of light were welcome reprieves in the murky blackness. We could see the hay sculptures that the town had erected in the park, remnants of its Halloween event earlier that week, and they seemed monstrous in the quiet night. The playground was still covered in the thick fake spider webs that the town had put there, and it all seemed very spooky to four kids out past curfew.

We heard the fountain before we came upon it. It was sitting in an intersection of three light poles, and they cast an eerie light across the ever-lapping surface of the water. Coins gleamed within the belly of that fountain, we had all glimpsed them greedily from time to time. As we got closer, we stopped at the sight of someone sitting on the edge of the fountain. He was hunched over, his chin against the back of his hand, and we crouched down as we tried to hide from him.

My heart beat a little faster as my eyes bore into him.

Was this the Toothman my father had told us about?

“No way,” Gabriel breathed, slouching behind a shrub as we stared at the man on the edge of the fountain, “I guess you weren’t making it up.”

“I told you my dad wasn’t a liar,” I said.

We stood there watching for a few moments, the fountain the only noise to be heard, before Craige said, “Well, go see what he looks like then.”

I blinked, “What?”

“Go see what he looks like. If he’s a monster, then we’ll be the first ones to see his face.”

John and Gabriell nodded, liking the sound of this.

“Yeah,” John chimed in, “Otherwise how do we know it’s not just a homeless guy or something.”

“You ever seen a homeless guy around here?” I shot back, but Craige wouldn’t be discouraged

“Go over there and get a look or I refuse to believe it's him.”

I tried to reason with them, but in the end, they wouldn’t be swayed.

So, I started out from the shrub we had crouched behind, as slowly and quietly as I could.

There was really no way to sneak up on him. The walkway is a straight shot to the fountain, and the figure was sitting on the rim of said fountain. He was going to see me, no matter how I approached, so I just figured I’d move straight toward him. If it was the Toothman, I would have plenty of chances to see him and run. If it wasn’t then they would let me know and I could feel silly about creeping up on someone in the middle of the night.

The closer I got, however, the more my hackles went up. The guy wasn’t moving, wasn’t even breathing, and the closer I got the more the tension rose. I began to expect him to spring up and grab me, to leap up and run at me, and as twenty feet became ten feet, I could hear my teeth chattering. He just sat there, just leaned against his hand, and I wondered if he was trying to lure me in. I could see his hoodie now, the dark fabric covering his face, and I just knew that beneath it there would be rows of teeth or a slobbering mouth or bug eyes or…

“Hello? Are you okay?” I asked, reaching out to touch his arm.

I expected to be grabbed.

I expected to be devoured.

I did not expect him to fall backward into the fountain with a loud splash.

As straw rose around his still unmoving form, I began to understand.

As my friends ran up, asking what had happened, I realized that it had been a scarecrow the whole time. In fact, I could see a second one sitting on the other side of the fountain. My friends laughed as they saw it too, and we all felt silly about being scared of a dumb old scarecrow. Craige was laughing, the tension gone, and I remember thinking how nice it was to see him just enjoying being my friend again. No rivalry, no challenge, just playing like we used to.

When I saw something over his shoulder, however, I felt some of the mirth run out of me.

Sitting on the bench across from the fountain, about ten feet from our little group, was another figure sitting on a park bench. There was a bag in its hand, popcorn or seeds, and it appeared to be feeding the birds. It wasn’t moving, it didn’t even appear to be breathing, and it too was dressed in a black hoodie and ratty jeans. The shadowy hood was facing toward us, and the depths were dark enough that I couldn’t make out anything within.

Craige seemed to grasp that I was looking past him, and when he turned around I heard him chuckle.

“Man, these things are everywhere. They probably won't mind if we push them over, right? They're just hay and they’re probably just going to throw them out.”

I wanted to stop him as he walked towards it, but John and Gabriell were already going to shove the other scarecrow in as it sat on the other side of the fountain. They thought I had done it on purpose, thought I had realized it wasn’t real as I came up, and they wanted some Halloween mischief too. The tension was gone, it was all fun and games again, and I was the only one to see Craige as he approached the bench.

“They look so real,” I heard him half whisper, “I could almost believe it was,”

The thing reached up and grabbed him just as the other scarecrow went into the fountain, and his screams of panic were lost amidst the splash.

The hand holding the bag let it drop to the ground, and as Craige tried to pull away, I saw it rise slowly towards the hood. My other friends hadn’t noticed yet, they were still too busy with the scarecrow they had pushed into the fountain, and as much as I wanted to move my feet were frozen to the sidewalk. Craige was begging for help, screaming for his mother, and as the hood came down I joined my scream of terror to his.

They had named him aptly. His head was bald and pink, like the blobfish we had made fun of in science class the year before. His nose was thick and squashy and his eyes were like little pits in his oddly shaped face. His mouth took up the majority of that face, and it was horrible enough to make up for the rest. His teeth were like sewing needles, a double row of sharp, steely gray fangs, and when he opened his jaws, it looked like he could swallow Craige whole.

Craige stopped screaming when that mouth fell over his face, and that was when John and Gabriell figured out that something else was going on.

We ran like frightened rabbits, our minds commanding us to get as far from danger as we could, and I’m ashamed to say that we left Craige there.

There was nothing we could do for him anyway.

Craige’s Mom answered the door after about five minutes of pounding and screaming.

She came fully awake when we started trying to tell her what had happened.

The cops came in a hurry when she called them, and we took them to the spot where he had been attacked.

There was no sign of Craige or the man, but there was enough blood to prove that something had happened there. It stained the pavement and bench and the city would spend days afterward trying to get it off. We were all taken to the station so we could give our statement, and when I told them that my Dad had told me the story about the Toothman, they brought him in too.

Dad was still in his pajamas, pale and scared and unsure of what was going on, and he hugged me when he saw me. He and my mom had been in the lobby of the police station for a while, and they had told them very little about what had happened. They were worried that I had been hurt or even killed, and seeing me sent relief washing through him.

That relief was smothered when I told him that we had seen the Toothman.

“What?”

“The Toothman,” I reiterated, “The one from your story. The one who took Teddy, remember.”

Dad looked confused, “That's impossible, kiddo.”

“No,” I said, “We saw him. He had a black hoody that covered his face and he was on the bench beside the fountain. Craige thought he was a scarecrow and he went to go push him over and that's when it got him. It’s the Toothman! You told me about him. You said,”

“It was a story, buddy.” he said, looking at the police as if begging them to believe him, “I made it up. I never had a friend go missing. I just made up a scary story to tell you. There's no such thing as the Toothman.”

The police let us go not long after, but I think about that Halloween a lot, especially around this time of year.

Turns out that Craige had been right all along. My dad had been a liar. My dad had made up a story, a story I told my friends, and if I hadn’t told it then we never would have been in that park that night. No one knows who or what took Craige, but, like the Randy from his story, his family moved away not long after.

Other people have reported seeing a man in a black hoody in the park at night, but the police have never been able to substantiate it. The park mostly stays empty now, and the people who use it are the kind who don’t like to be disturbed. It’s not a park you take your kids to anymore, and the town built a shiny new park not long after the incident.

So if you see a man walking at night in a black hooded sweatshirt, steer clear of him.

You never know when you might find yourself staring into the toothy maw of The Toothman.