The Castle Ward's Three

I haven’t seen this tree house in thirty years, yet it's only been weeks since I have thought of it. After thirty years I finally got down to weeks from having daily thoughts of it.  A month ago my kid brother called me to tell me about some changes happening in our home town. Out of all of them the one that I cared to hear about was the Ward’s house. Some big shot developer came in and bought a bunch of properties to level and build a strip mall on. My brother didn’t ask me to come-in fact he doesn’t even know I’m in town. Knowing the one place that I have thought about consistently for thirty years, since it’s been burned forever in my mind is finally being laid to rest. I don’t know if I came to pay my respects or take a sigh of relief. Either way it's a place that has taken far too much from more than just me. It's only right that I see that it's disposed of once and for all. Just like a brave superhero would, just like the superhero I imagined I was when I played in that very tree house back in 1967 with my two best friends. With that thought and the sound of machinery my mind drifts off, taking me back to that time.

It was  the summer of 67’, I was twelve years old. Have you ever heard that quote from the one Stephen King book that says “ I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve-Jesus did you?”. Well that’s true for me, I never had another friend like I had back then. Maybe it was the age? Or maybe it's because that summer forever changed us. Chaining us together with a tree house.

See,  back then we didn’t spend our days and nights in a trance staring at a phone or video game screen like kids nowadays. During those times, especially at that point, before our cares shifted to girls and swiping Marlboro Reds from my old man once he was nice and cozy in the bottom of a bottle, we spent our days running outside and letting our imaginations go wild. 

We could go from a 1930’s gangster holding up a bank to sailing the seven seas with Blackbeard in the matter of an hour. So when Tommy Ward’s pop told him we were going to help him build a treehouse that summer, we about died from excitement. For two solid weeks me, Tommy, and Billy Johnson deemed ourselves construction foreman. We busted our little asses building that thing. Tommy’s old man was real hands on with his kids. He enjoyed teaching them how to work and have pride in their accomplishments. Not like my old man, he never taught me a lick and sure as hell never had any pride in a damn thing he accomplished, the main one being fatherhood. 

That tree house might not have been much to look at, but to us it was a work of art. It had two windows and a hatch for the ladder to climb up. We couldn’t ask for more, we were in a twelve year old's heaven. We named our fortress ‘The Castle Ward’s Three’- pretty clever name if I say so. Tommy's dad even let us build a secret compartment to hide our most valued treasures. It was a small square of wood under the floor that we boxed out and attached one of Tommy’s mom’s left over handles from her new kitchen cabinets, the perfect place for baseball cards and matchbox cars. It was in that little treasure trove that we felt the coldness creep in. Have you ever noticed that evil brings on intense feelings of cold? If not, I hope you never do- because it was in that icy blackness that we lost our best friend.

We stayed in that treehouse for hours every day. On the weekend of the fourth of July we didn’t want our fun to end once night fell so we talked our parents into letting us camp out there, well it was more that Tommy and Billy talked their parents into it, I just ran it passed the bottle on my dad’s face. Had things gone normal that day he would have never even noticed I was gone all night as well as all day. It was hotter than the gates of hell that summer so we packed light. Sleeping bags, marshmallows, candles to roast them on, flashlights, our toy pistols for protection, and Tommy brought a few empty cans with a long string, a pad of paper and pencils. 

 Some of Tommy’s older sisters friends had told him about a scary game they played at a party called the shoebox telephone, so Tommy was dying for me and Billy to try playing it with him. The rules were simple you attach your string to the cans to make a telephone, write a question down on the paper, place one can into the shoebox and close the lid, you ask the question speaking into the other end of the telephone, once you go to sleep your supposed to be woken up to a loud phone ringing which you listen to your end of the can phone to receive your answer that you can also write down on the paper. Pretty simple all together. Now to Billy and me we thought it was kind of silly but Tommy was really excited to play, I thought it was most likely so he could tell the older kids he was brave enough to play and they would accept him as cool, but I never told him I had thought that. 

We made our phones, lit some candles to add to the spookiness and got our paper out. Billy cracked some jokes about asking the ghosts if they are hanging around naked all the time and a few more inappropriate ones but after a few minutes we got serious and I made our first “call”. I wrote down 'Do I have any relatives that want to tell me anything?', picked up the phone and asked the question. I felt kind of stupid but hell my real family wasn’t the best maybe I had a dead family that could make up for it? Billy actually did ask about the ghosts being naked , Tommy didn’t find that too funny he was super serious about it all and really wanted it to work. Once it was Tommy’s turn on the phone he asked questions like who was there, how did they die, and was there anyway he could help them out….back then me and Billy laughed about it but now I can’t help but wonder if Tommy was opening up a doorway with those words. They seemed innocent enough but maybe it was just that- the innocence of the unknown that made Tommy a light in the darkness.

We played a little longer but the excitement soon wore off and we were onto making shadow puppets with our flashlights and talking about what actress we would grow up to marry. Soon enough we were tired and ready to pass out but not before making the threats of putting whoever falls asleep first hand into a cup of water so they would be branded the sleepover bed wetter for the rest of their life. I can’t say who did end up falling asleep first or how long we actually were asleep but I do know that I woke up to Billy hitting my arm and shaking me rudely awake. I sat up ready to froggy the hell out of his arm until I saw the look on his face. Billy was staring off with a look I can only describe as panic for someone like him.

That look stopped my mouth from opening to complain, that look stopped everything, even time. When he finally blinked, that's when I heard the whispering. It took everything in me to meet what he was seeing. There was still some candlelight coming from the two or three candles that were left burning, just small specks of flame, but even with that little amount of light it was enough for me to see a horror that has stayed with me for a lifetime.

Tommy was sitting up with his side facing Billy and me, he had our end of the can phone up to his ear, the whispering was almost deafening. If I hadn’t been looking right at Tommy I wouldn't have believed it. The whispers were coming from the phone. It was loud and sounded as if twenty voices were all talking at once at a very fast pace. I couldn’t hear what it was those voices were saying and truthfully I am thankful for that. We sat like that for what could have been hours, I can’t tell you how long it actually lasted. It wasn’t until Tommy slumped forward and the phone fell from his hand that the spell was broken and we could move again.

Billy and I scrambled to Tommy shaking him but his head just rolled on his shoulders. I grabbed the can phone off his lap and threw it to the side. Billy started shouting Tommy’s name but he didn’t respond. We tried everything we could think of to get Tommy to just open his eyes. Nothing helped. I raced down the ladder and into Tommy’s house yelling for his parents to help. Tommy’s dad jumped up and shot out the back door. He was already in the treehouse before I made it back. I could hear Tommy’s dad telling him to wake up, I will never forget the way his voice sounded as he went from panic to pleading with Tommy to just look at him. 

Billy and I went to my house while Tommy’s parents loaded him into the car to take him to the hospital. I wondered how they would explain to the doctors what we told them had happened. Of course they didn’t believe us that we heard someone or something speaking to Tommy on that homemade phone. I had never seen Tommy’s father react in anger to anything before that, he actually had to stop himself from back handing Billy. Looking back I realize it was just the desperation of a father who couldn’t process what was going on with his son and the two people who were with him could give no answers to figuring out how to help.

Tommy came home from the hospital three days later. He had opened his eyes after a day but never spoke during that time. Billy and I went to see Tommy at home after a week. When his mother answered the door she looked as if she had aged twenty years in a week's time. If she hadn’t had hope that Tommy seeing us  would help him, she would have turned us away. We walked in silence up the stairs, the mood was like an innocent man being led to the gallows. The first thing I noticed getting closer to Tommy’s room was how much the temperature dropped. It was 1967 and there was no air conditioning in his house but it felt like there was.

Tommy was sitting in bed awake, but he didn’t exactly  look like Tommy. There was no spark of life in his eyes, they were dull and colorless. His skin was a shade or two more pale than before and he looked so frail like he lost twenty pounds. We tried talking to him, asking if he wanted to go swimming in the quarry, or play ball down at the sandlot. He never responded to us, he never even blinked. After ten minutes his mother said we should get going and that he needed his rest. As we walked to the door I turned to look at Tommy but my eyes went past him and to the window. Seeing the treehouse behind Tommy just looming over him sent a fear of loss in me. I knew part of Tommy was inside that tree house and didn’t know if we would ever find him.

That was the last time I saw Tommy Ward. He never snapped out of the state he was in. I heard his parents tried multiple doctors and medical staff was in and out for months. Pretty soon no one even saw his parents anymore. They became almost reclusive. He never returned to school that fall but even though things stopped for them, time around the Ward house moved on. I moved away after graduation and it was a few years after that when my brother called to tell me that Tommy Ward had died. He had hung himself in his room. They said he was found facing the window. I had immediately thought of how his window looked right out to the old tree house. Maybe it was a coincidence? Maybe his body just turned? But maybe not. Something stole Tommy that night in that tree house and never loosened its grip. It forever held Tommy in whatever hell it was that those phones opened a doorway to.

Standing here watching what was once the most exciting place three twelve year old boys could ask for being torn to the ground any person passing by would think that a lifetime of  happy memories are being demolished. For me though I feel a sense of relief, a sense of freedom. I hope it's Tommy’s freedom I am feeling. With the tree house now nothing more than a pile of splintered wood and broken windows I begin to leave. I walk about twenty feet and turn around to take one last look. In that moment I heard a voice I haven’t heard in thirty years but one I would never forget say “Bye Johnny”. I smile and say “Bye Tommy”.