The Wet Bed

Tommy screamed to his mother, "Jody wet the bed again." "Jody, his mother said, "I don't know what I'm going to do with you." She then told him she was going to start rubbing his nose in it. He didn’t think she would, but thought it sounded horrible.

Jody sheepishly walked away because he was embarrassed but didn't know what to do about it. He had only recently started wetting the bed after he turned five years old. Until that point, he hadn't had any problem. Tommy, his older brother, made sure he ratted him out everyday because they shared a bed. 

Jody tried to figure out his problem with his young mind. He knew that he wasn't drinking a lot before bed because his mother cut him off around five o'clock. The only thing he could come up with was experiencing bad dreams. He kept having a recurring nightmare about a man in a black silhouette that had his left hand severed off. Jody had started covering all his body parts up, especially his arms and legs for fear the black shadow who carried an ax with his good hand would cut something off while he was sleeping. Jody’s head was the only thing exposed because he couldn’t breath with it under the covers. . He already had a nightmare he hacked off his ankle and wasn’t going to take any chances.

Tommy teased Jody mercilessly. He called him a pee-pee baby and threatened to tell all his friends. Luckily for Jody, his brother did harbor a small amount of loyalty to him. He was the only one allowed to pick on him, and oh how he did. Tommy was four years older and managed to stay in trouble. He would feign interest in Jody to get him into trouble also. Jody didn’t mind the punishments because he idolized his older brother even when he got them spanked or grounded.

Tommy's biggest prank, although there were several left Jody terrified. He took him to the abandoned house that was located on the back of their families property. They were constantly warned to stay away from the house by their parents to no avail. The house had experienced a fire several years previously and was not safe. Tommy persuaded Jody to enter after teasing relentlessly and then abandoned him in the creepy old house. Jody was in the terrifying house for approximately twenty minutes before he figured the way out. 

Jody's birthday came as he celebrated turning six. As mysteriously as his wetting the bed started, it ended with that birthday. He never experienced a lack of bladder control again. After a few more years living at that address his parents sold the house, and moved closer to town.

Many years went by, Jody long forgot about the black silhouette and the problem with wetting the bed. One night when he was meeting a few friends at the local bar, he ran into a guy whose family had purchased the house, Matt Bales. Jody had gone all through school with Matt and were separated by two years. The two men had mutual friends and ended up hanging out at the same table all evening. After several beers, Matt started telling ghost stories. 

Jody wasn't paying much attention until he heard Matt describe a black silhouette with a missing hand. Jody turned around and looked intensely at Matt and asked if he had an ax in the other. Matt practically fell off his chair and said he did. The two men compared stories and realized they both were plagued with incontinence at five years old. Matt told Jody that when he turned six years old that it mysteriously disappeared. 

Both men were intrigued and wondered what was going on in that house. Jody asked Matt if he knew who purchased the home after them. Matt told him that there was a Catholic Church located on the property and that he heard the priest had exorcised it before the building was even started. Matt said the priest almost lost his position due to the congregation thinking he was insane.

Jody told Matt he would love to talk to the priest and find out why he had performed the exorcism. Matt agreed and told Jody that he would also be interested in visiting him.

The next day Jody and Matt decided to meet at the Catholic Church Sanctuary. Although both men had buried the past, their similar stories had them questioning the legitimacy. After waiting for fifteen minutes for the priest to finish a confessional, he returned to the sanctuary, and addressed the men.

Jody and Matt asked the priest point-blank why he felt the need to exorcise the church property. Father Jeremiah turned pale as if he had seen a ghost and brushed the gentlemen off by exclaiming he had other church members waiting and had to leave. 

The men begged the old priest to hear them out. They told him that they had both been terrified of an apparition on this particular property when they were children and were trying to get to the bottom of it. Father Jeremiah showed a little more compassion for the gentlemen and explained to them that he had experienced the black silhouette with one hand also as a boy. 

All three men looked at each other with disbelief when Father Jeremiah continued to speak. He told Jody and Matt that he knew who the black figure silhouette was. With Jody and Matt astonished, he apprised them that when he was a five-year-old boy that his older brother caught a man stealing that rented the old house out back. He and his parents were from Iran, and it was a common practice in their country to cut off a man's hand for theft. As soon as his father had seen what his eldest son had done, he berated him and informed him he was no longer in the old country. "My father," Father Jeremiah said, finished killing the man and hid his body in the cellar and then buried him beneath the house. 

Jody said he understood why the man haunted the house since he was murdered there. He did not understand, however, why he only haunted five-year-old boys, and caused them to have nightmares and ultimately wet the bed. 

Father Jeremiah hung his head as he told the men that the man that his father had killed hadn't stolen from his brother. He had, and when he witnessed the man's hand being severed, he wet his pants.