I can’t tell anyone my story. As certain as my pen is touching this paper I know it is true, but it is so fantastic I wouldn’t believe it if I heard it.

My parents did drugs; a lot of drugs. That secret was as much a part of my childhood as Kool-aid and cartoons. That’s just the way it was.

I was five and my brother was brand new and premature. Tucked back from the main drag, my mom felt comfortable letting me play alone outside her best friend Bev’s house on Planet Street.

Cradling my brother, my mom closed the front door with her bottom leaving me and Bev’s two kids to our own devices. Two other neighborhood kids were stranded outside and we all teamed up for some tag. We wouldn’t cross the street on our own so we ducked into yards, dodging dogs and seeking the cover of shrubs and sheds.

It was spring in Indiana and the timid warmth had not yet given way to oppressive heat. Out five little noses ran as we strained untrained muscles to catch those bigger and faster.

As we hit the corner of Planet Street the wind turned. The older kids were down the block while Stevie from down the block and I watched the leaves and fresh grass clippings spin and twirl in a tiny twister on the corner. We pointed and giggled as they danced. Stevie hopped in the center and spun in time.

Then the air began to hum and vibrate as if high voltage lines were being juiced to the max over our heads. The sound grew as the sidewalk began to shake. Neither of us giggled as we stared at each other, bug-eyed and unsure. Stevie backed from the trimming tornado until he crunched my toes.

Within seconds the temperature exploded leaving sweat on our pale skin. It was as if our oxygen was being sucked away and replaced by baked ozone. We stood still, entranced while the concrete cracked beneath our feet.

Out struggled a small white skull; no body, no feet, just skull. That was it for me – trance broken. I turned to run, bumping Stevie who followed behind. We ran as fast as our little legs would carry but we could hardly breathe the dense air.

As I pulled ahead of Stevie I looked over my shoulder to see the skull pounding along behind him, growing in size with eyes screaming red. With every hop along it grew and gained on Stevie.

The bigger kids were slack-jawed with shock. They shrieked for us to run faster. Gee, why hadn’t we thought of that? My heart pounded a Morse code of terror and my lungs burned as I raced toward the comfort of my mother’s arms. I was nearly back to Bev’s squat grey rental on Planet Street when I glanced over my shoulder for the last time. The skull was the size of a small car and it was on Stevie. The skull’s jaw snapped shut, teeth clattering, every time it took a jump. Terror twisted Stevie’s face as the skull advanced and swallowed him whole.

The four of us left shot up the walkway and pounded on the door screaming for our mothers. Fear had gotten the best of one of the kids whose mother was at his own house a few doors down. Glassy-eyed they whipped the door open expecting a pedophile posse from the sounds of our screams. Once they surveyed the neighborhood they only ordered us to calm down.

We continued to shout and point behind us unable to understand how they were so calm. I turned to look just as the skull bounced one last time, shrunk, spun and wriggled back into the crevice from which it had come, leaving only a hair-line fracture to scar the sidewalk. Stevie was nowhere.

The adults hadn’t seen. To this day I wonder if they would have been able to see it, even if it was still rampaging up the sidewalk, snacking on straggling children. How could we tell them?

We screamed incomprehensible gibberish that trailed off when we saw the skull was gone.

Stevie never came home that night, or any night for that matter. After all these years I am haunted by what I saw that day. I want to be free of it. I finally confided in my husband, relating the events of that day. He is sure I just touched a hit of acid left behind at a party at my parent’s house.

That explanation makes as much sense as any other. But I’m not convinced.