Unveiling Secrets: Trust, Betrayal, and Small-Town Mysteries

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey friends, So I'm featured in the third story of
the newest episode of the Noosely podcast. They do awesome
audio horror productions, and I'll be featured in many more
episodes to come down the line, so be sure to
go check out my story and subscribe to their podcast,
all linked down below. Enjoy the stories. From a very

(00:33):
early age, I remember being acutely aware that my dad
had a lot of money, even when we were still
living in a small two up, two down terraced house
in Garston and I had just started school. I remember
feeling this deep source of pride that my dad had
the best car in the street. It was the late
seventies back then, and the area of Liverpool we lived
in was a rough one. There was a lot of crime,

(00:56):
a lot of unemployment in Both my parents grew up
in conditions so squally that I had to see them
to believe them. But I think that's what made my
dad into the man he was growing up. His parents
didn't have two pennies to rub together, so by the
time he was a young man, that's all he thought
about money, money, money. I heard that he was a

(01:16):
clever lad growing up. He did well in school, and
earned great results in his exams, But when it came
time to pick a trade and learn a skill, Dad
announced that he wanted to go to university instead. To him,
getting a business or accountancy degree was the golden ticket
to a lifetime of potential good earnings. But after traveling
down to London for his School of Economics interview, he

(01:38):
came back with a completely different plan. In the late seventies,
when Dad started his business, Russia was known as the
USSR and it operated behind what was called the Iron Curtain,
and basically this meant that there were strict export controls
and massive bureaucratic hurdles on both sides if he wanted
to trade with them. The process was even more tired

(02:00):
if you wanted to import old Russian antiques. But since
London was and still is home to a very large
and very wealthy community of Russian expats, you could make
millions selling them artifacts from a homeland they'd never return to,
and so that's what my dad started doing. Apparently he
got the idea from some old geezer in a London pub,

(02:21):
one who'd listened to his story and decided to give
him a tip, and at first glance, importing just about
anything of value from the old Soviet Union was impossible.
But if you had a man on the inside, someone
in Russia who could grease the wheels of commerce, as
they say, then suddenly piles of paperwork in months of
waiting became a handshake and some cash and an envelope.

(02:44):
And it was this man on the inside, the old
geezer was offering to my dad. A few weeks later,
Dad's on a boat headed from Murmansk, a big Russian
port city near the border with Norway, and it's there
that he meets his contact, and it's there that he
started his business in earnest with a purchase of his
first ever antique religious icon. It sold for a whopping

(03:07):
three thousand pounds, which is about twelve thousand and today's money.
And then factor in that he bought the icon from
his contact for just a few hundred quid, and he
started to understand why he made so much money. We
moved out of Garston and out to a big, fancy
house in Hailwood when I was still in primary school.
That was another source of pride for me and my

(03:27):
little brother, and it wasn't too far from our school
or friends so there were no complaints from either of us,
But the same could not be said in nineteen eighty nine,
when I was fourteen years old and Dad announced that
we were moving again, because that time we weren't moving
to a nice, big house down the road. He was
moving us up to a tiny rural hamlet named Waterside

(03:49):
on the east coast of Scotland, or basically the middle
of effing nowhere. When he first told me, I thought
he was taking the piss. His business was in Liverpool,
our schools were in Liverpool, and all of our friends
were in Liverpool. Everything we knew and loved was there
at home, So what the bloody hell would he want
to move up to rural Scotland for. I remember him

(04:12):
sitting us down at the kitchen table, my mom, myself,
and my little brother and explaining that he'd finally earned
enough money to do what he'd always wanted to do,
move up to Aberdeenshire, the land of his father's, and
live a quiet, simple life as a gentleman farmer. And
what followed was like a variation of the Five Stages
of grief. After initially refusing to believe it, we were

(04:37):
furious and asked Dad things like how could you do
this to us? I had my first boyfriend, my little
brother had his beloved Scout troop, and my mom thought
living up in the arcend of nowhere sounded boring beyond belief.
We'd put down roots and we didn't want to be uprooted.
So then came the bargaining phase, as we asked if
we could stay in Liverpool while he moved up to Scotland,

(05:00):
and he said no, of course, that he was selling
the house to finance the purchase of the other and
that prompted us to enter the depression phase and then
finally acceptance. Just over a week later, Dad loaded everything
into a moving truck and then we got into the
car with Mum and drove behind him all the way
to Aberdeenshire. Looking back on it, the scenery once we

(05:21):
crossed over into Scotland was incredible, but considering the mood
that we were in, we couldn't appreciate it. Waterside was
gorgeous too, a collection of large houses nestled on the
bank of a river, but it didn't feel like home
and it wouldn't for some time. A mile down the
road from Waterside was a little seaside town called Newburgh.

(05:41):
It's a beautiful little place, but back then it felt
like we'd step back in time by about fifty years.
Aside from the church, the greengrocers and the little coffee shop,
it was just houses, ponds and fields. There were no playgrounds,
no arcades, and worst of all, no cinema. Dad took
us to the grocer's and coffee shop that first day,

(06:02):
then tried to bribe us with cake as he gave
us a little pep talk. And the way he saw it,
I'd only have to live there for four years, in
a nice, quiet place like that, with none of the
distractions of the big city, and I could focus on
getting the best exam results possible. That way, when I
got into my first choice of UNI, I could drink,
smoke and go clubbing as much as I liked, and

(06:23):
he wouldn't be there to stop me. And I'll admit
the prospect gave me a bit of hope. I could
keep in touch with my mates on the phone, visit
them whenever we drove back to Liverpool to see my
gran and then in four years I could ace my
way into Liverpool UNI and be back home where I belonged.
My little brother adjusted quite quickly too, especially once he

(06:44):
found out Newberrah had a Scout troop of its own.
And then over the next month or so, we all
slowly adjusted to our new lives up there in the
Scottish countryside. I started school not long after moving, and
despite my abject terror that I'd be some Freakish English loner,
I made friends with a couple of Scottish girls quite quickly.

(07:04):
We'd go walking on the beaches together, which was another
thing about Newburah and Waterside that really won me over.
Then we'd walk back into town to grab coffee together
at the place with the really good cake. And then
one day, as I was enjoying my tea and cake,
my friend Nikola leaned over with her eyes on the
table and whispered that man is looking at you. And

(07:26):
I felt my heart rate pick up a bit when
she said it, and then she added, behind you. It
keeps looking over her at us, but mostly at you.
She leaned back, then casually continued with whatever she was
saying prior, but I couldn't match her calmness. I turned
in my seat, pretending to look at the menu board
behind the counter, and there he was. My peripheral vision

(07:48):
I half caught him looking when I turned too, Nikola
was right. I turned back, then quietly asked Nikola if
she recognized him, and she said no. She knew every
one in Newberoh knew a new face when she saw one.
There was a stranger in town, and he'd taken an
interest in me. As you can imagine, I was not flattered.

(08:08):
I was fourteen, and this guy looked to be in
his twenties or thirties, way too old for a girl
my age. So the first thing that came to my
mind was perve. But then if he didn't live in town,
and he didn't live up in Waterside, then he was
a perv that I wouldn't have to worry about. Once
I'd finished my cake and the thought calt me down
for a bit, though it was still not very pleasant

(08:30):
having to eat knowing his eyes were stuck to me.
And once we'd finished, we'd thanked the owner and walked
out of the coffee shop, only to realize that the
man was following us. Nicholas swore that it was her
sixth cents kicking in, but as we were walking down
the lane, she looked over her shoulder, then turned back
and said he's following us. My instinct was, honestly to run,

(08:54):
not to confront the guy, but Nikola turned around and
started asking him, bold as brass, are you following superv?
He was tall, with dark hair and a dark jacket,
and he had sunglasses on, even though it was pretty
overcast that day. For a second, a part of me
thought that he was going to reply with I'm just
walking to my car, love, or something like that, in

(09:15):
which case we'd made a total scene over nothing. But
instead the man just kept on silently walking towards us.
Nichola and I got very nervous as he got close,
but then he just sort of passed us. He didn't
look at us, he didn't talk to us. He just
walked right past us and carried on down that lane.

(09:36):
Nichola and I were just stood there for a second, like, huh,
what was all that about. We had zero clue why
he hadn't just reacted to a fourteen year old girl
calling him a perv. But what we were certain of
is that we weren't about to walk the same way
as him, even if our houses were in that same direction. Instead,
Nichola and I walked back into town and sat in

(09:57):
the coffee shop for about half an hour before attempting
our walk comb for a second time. We walked together
for a while, talking about this and that, until we
parted ways and I was then faced with crossing the
bridge over the river alone. But right as I was
about to cross the river, I spotted someone in the
car park just off the left of the bridge. It

(10:17):
was the man from the coffee shop, the one with
the sunglasses, and it looked an awful lot like he
was watching me. When I got home, I told my
mum about him and how creepy it felt knowing that
I was getting stared at. She said the man was
just a touris by the sounds of things, as they
often drive up the East Coast, stopping here and there
on the way. She also said that unfortunately, unwanted gazes

(10:39):
were something everyone had to deal with from time to time.
Men stare at women when they're being lecherous, she said,
and they also stare at each other when they're trying
to start trouble down the pub on a Saturday night.
In both cases, the solution were the same, avoid the
stair at all cost and leave if you feel unsafe
in any way. Mum laughed when I told her about

(11:00):
Niccola calling the guy at pervert and said that she
liked the sound of her. And then I took a
lot of reassurance in the fact that I was never
going to see that guy again. But then just a
few days later, I did see him again, and he
basically did the exact same thing. I had walked into
town on my own, then went into a minor panic
when I saw him standing in a shop doorway wearing

(11:22):
those same sunglasses and that same black jacket. I prayed
that he wouldn't follow me again, but he did, and
I did the same thing of doubling back and trying
to lose him or wait him out. I really really
didn't want him following me out of town, and Nikola
was away visiting her granny that weekend, so I couldn't
call her for back up. Instead, I ended up calling

(11:43):
a mini cab to drive me all the way home,
and then, luckily, by the time it arrived outside the
coffee shop, the man in the sunglasses seemed to have
gotten bored and had stopped following me around. I was
a bit relieved and a bit annoyed, because if I
had known that he was going to get bored. I'd
have saved a few quid and not rang a cab.
But I had a little chat with the driver on

(12:04):
the journey and then hopped out. Once we crossed the
bridge and I was near my house, I just collected
my change and I was climbing into the back seat
when I saw a car behind us. It stopped less
than fifty meters back, close but not too close, and
I could have sworn that I had seen it somewhere before.
Well I had, And as the cab took off, the

(12:24):
car followed it. It was the same car that I'd
seen park near the bridge not a few days before,
and in the driver's seat was the man in the sunglasses.
And for as long as I live, I'll never forget
how sick I felt walking up the pathway to my house.
It wasn't so much that the guy had managed to
follow me home, although that indeed was bad. It was
the fact that as he drove past me after I

(12:45):
climbed out of the cab, he had this big, smarmy
grin spread across his face. It was like this sick
sort of victory smile that I win and now I
know where you live. Look after walking through the door,
I went straight to my mum and told her what
had happened. I remember how her face dropped when I

(13:06):
mentioned the car, because, like me, she realized how serious
the situation had become. This wasn't just some pervy older
man following a schoolgirl around the village. This guy was
tracking me, following me, stalking me. Most of the time,
my dad was either out playing golfer drinking down at
the village pub, but on that day he was home,

(13:27):
so when he heard me crying to my mom, it
came running. He asked what was the matter, and when
I told him, I assumed he'd just be angry. I
thought he'd be straight onto the phone with the police,
furiously demanding they'd do something before he does it himself.
But he didn't do that. In fact, he didn't seem
even remotely irritated. Instead, and for the first time in

(13:48):
my whole life, I saw what my dad looked like
when he was scared. I first noticed it when he
was asking me to describe what a fellow who followed
me look like. He asked about the car, if he
talked us, and what his voice sounded like. All sorts
of questions like that, but aside from his physical description,
I knew nothing about him. Once I had finished saying

(14:09):
everything I had to say, I thought Dad would die
nine ninety nine, but he didn't. He just sat there
with this wide eyed, frightened look on his face, like
he was trying to figure out what to do. I
remember saying something like, Dad, aren't you going to phone
the police? Then my Mum joined in, asking what was
going on and why he was acting like that. I

(14:30):
suppose Mom knew him long enough to be able to
read what was on his face, because she started asking
him to talk to her and tell her what was
going on in this accusatory tone of voice. Dad stayed
quiet for a bit, head in his hands by it then,
and the more scared he got, the more scared eye got.
Mom started raising her voice and shouting at him. Then
he shouted back at her to stay quiet, and then

(14:51):
told me to go up to my room and make
sure my brothers stayed upstairs too. Keeping him up there
was no problem. Dad had bought him a computer the
TV for his room, so he was glued to it,
playing Mario or whatever, and blissfully ignorant what was going
on downstairs. Me on the other hand, I couldn't stay put,
and just a minute or so later, I slipped out

(15:12):
of my room and stood at the top of the
stairs and tried to listen in on what Mum and
Dad were saying. They had the door closed downstairs, so
I couldn't hear exactly what was being said, but I
knew it was bad. They were trying not to raise
their voices, but they were barely managing it, and although
I heard them argue like that before, it was nothing
like what I heard that day. Dad sounded terrified, so

(15:34):
much so that I barely recognized his voice. Mum, on
the other hands, sounded absolutely furious because she finally burst
into tears, ugly sobs too, like she'd completely lost control.
Dad cried as well, and they cried together for a
minute before their voices went low again and I lost
them completely. When I heard the door open downstairs, I

(15:56):
snuck back into my bedroom. I didn't want Um and
Dad thinking that I'd been listening in on their conversation
even though I had. I stayed in my room for
a bit wondering what was so terrible that they cried
over it, And then after a while I heard footsteps
coming from the stairs, and Mum walked into my bedroom.
She told me to pack my suit case because we
were leaving that night. She also warned me not to

(16:17):
forget anything, because we wouldn't ever be going back to
that house in Waterside, not ever. Mum then went into
my brother's room and told me the exact same thing.
Maybe an hour later, we were on the road, our
suit cases and bags piled in the boot with some
strap to the top of Dad's range rover. We were
driving down a narrow country lane lined on each side

(16:39):
by dry stone walls, and I was sitting in the
back seat with my little brother. Mum and Dad were
up front, not talking to each other, and there was
this really tense atmosphere in the car. The tears had
barely dried on Mum and Dad's faces, and my brother
was furious that we were moving again, and I simply
sat there, just sort of shell shocked. A few hours before,

(17:01):
I'd popped into town to buy some stationery. Then there
I was relocating for the second time in months, and
somehow it was all my fault. I remember how quiet
it was at first as we drove through the night,
but then suddenly I heard the sound of a loud
engine repping behind us. I turned and saw a car

(17:21):
speeding towards us up the lane with its head lights glaring.
I remember shouting Dad to turn his attention towards it,
but his eyes were already in the rear view. He
gripped the steering wheel, put his foot down in the accelerator,
and then the car lurched forward as he did. He
was trying to outrun it, but the other car was
too fast, and the next thing I remember, it was

(17:42):
ramming into our back bumper so hard it made the
car shake. My little brother started screaming and Mum shouted something,
but all I remember is leaning over in the back
seat and hugging my little brother. I just didn't know
what else to do. A second or two later, the
dark car behind us was speeding up alongside us US
and a fella I didn't recognize was leaning out the

(18:02):
passenger window shouting something like stop the car. I'm warning you,
stop the car. My Dad didn't even look at him.
He just kept his eyes on the road, still trying
to outrun them. But whatever four by four they were
driving was much faster than Dad's. The stranger in the
passenger's seat leaned back into the other car, and the
suddenly he swerved beside us, trying to push us off

(18:25):
the lane. Dad sped up, but the road twisted and
our tires screeched as he struggled to keep us on
the tarmac. Once we rounded the curve, the car bashed
into us again, harder this time. Our car shook and
Dad kept it in control, but the other car stayed close,
its engine roaring as it kept trying to push us
off the road. I didn't think we stood a chance,

(18:47):
and that at any second we were about to be
pushed into a ditch or a tree and the car
would flip, roll and burn with all of us inside
of it. Every single second felt like our last, and
all I could do was hug my brother as he screamed.
I remember closing my eyes as I lied through my
teeth and told them we'd be fine, We'd be fine.
Then when I opened them again, I saw a rooftop

(19:10):
through our car's window. A rooftop meant a building, and
a building like that one meant we were near a village.
Dad put his foot down, weaving through the lanes bends,
and then as we got closer and closer to the village,
the dark car hesitated, then started to fall back. Lights
from houses appeared, and I saw a few people walking
near the road. The car behind us slowed, its headlights

(19:32):
dimming in the distance, and then it turned off onto
a side path and vanished. We didn't stop. Dad just
slowed down a bit as we reached the village's market street,
and then we passed through and kept on going, driving
all the way down the East coast until we got
to Edinburgh. We checked into a hotel, with Mum and
Dad in one room and me and my brother and

(19:53):
another next to theirs, and then Mumm and Dad continued
to argue until we fell asleep. I was only fourteen,
so I was still too young for Mom and Dad
to fully explain what was going on. But I knew
that there was something they weren't telling me, and I
knew it was something big. And I didn't find out
what that thing was until many years later, when Dad
ran off with another woman to Bulgaria of all places,

(20:17):
and Mum spilled the beans. Dad hadn't been importing antiques
from Russia, or rather, not any real antiques anyways. They
were all fakes, all mock ups commissioned by Russian heroin traffickers,
and they were all stuffed with plastic wrap packages of
the substance. That was how Dad made his money, actually
made his money. I mean, he wasn't an antiques dealer

(20:40):
selling specialist pieces to wealthy Russian expats. He was a
heroin trafficker flooding the streets of Britain with dangerous dirt
cheap drugs. It was all going really well for a while.
He was making millions, but poured loads of it back
into the community around him, which is why he was
such a popular fellow we were growing up. He did

(21:02):
that out of necessity, though not the kindness of his heart,
because he knew that flashing cash without greasing palms would
have some old busy bodies snitching on him. In no time,
we moved out of Garston, spent a few years in
that nice big house in Hailwood, and all the while
Dad still raking in millions. He's not working alone though,

(21:22):
he's working with a network of distributors all over the country,
and he's making everyone a lot of money in the process.
But then one day, after his pile of money had
gotten big enough or he couldn't stomach the risk anymore,
he decided he wanted to retire. He talked to his parents,
laid out his reasons, and even offered to train up
a replacement. But they weren't too excited with the idea

(21:44):
of him just walking away. He was making everyone too
much money for that, so instead they gave him a
counter offer. Carry on shipping in smack from Soviet Russia
and keep everyone's pockets filled, or he and his family
would be filling up holes on some icelated piece of
farm land somewhere. Dad pretended he got the message and

(22:04):
carried on business as usual for a while, and then
one day he just disappeared. The reason he didn't tell
any of us about the move to Scotland was because
he couldn't risk anyone finding out he was leaving. Then,
when he disappeared, every one of his former partners up
and down the country sent people out looking for him,

(22:24):
professionals too, which was how one found us so fast.
Momma had no idea how Dad really made his money,
so when he finally told her, she immediately asked for
a divorce. And the way she saw it, his line
of work had put us in danger since the day
he started, and she couldn't reconcile the fact that he'd
forced her and the kids to live in that kind

(22:45):
of ignorance. We then started the process of moving abroad
and Dad came with us for a little while, but
like I said, he ended up doing a second vanishing act.
Last we heard, he was living in Sophia with a
woman half his age, making the most of the exchange
rate on what little money he had left. And I
don't hate him, not like my brother does. I just

(23:07):
see him as a deeply flawed human being who thought
that he was smart enough to game the system. He
taught me a lot in life, but that lesson is
the primary one. The people who think they're smart enough
to do so are actually the ones too stupid or
arrogant to realize they can't because you can never game
the system. The system only ever games you. My name

(23:38):
is Kathy. I'm from New England and I have a
story from my childhood which you and your viewers might
be interested in. Back when I was just twelve years old,
so almost fifty years ago now, my God, my family
and I moved from Providence, Rhode Island, to a little
town called East Corinth, up in Maine. My dad had
been running his construction company since before I was born,

(24:01):
and then after it took off, he started to make
some real cash and he bought us a beautiful three
story home on Main Street. He said he did it
so me and my little brother could be raised some
place with small town values quote unquote. But to us
it was like stepping into another world. We went from
big city Providence to a one stoplight town where the

(24:22):
biggest attraction was the Corinth Historical Society. And needless to say,
my brother and I were not happy at first, and
Mom wasn't too pleased about it either, But after just
the first few days in Corinth, we started to take
a real shine to the place, so to speak. The
food at the local diner was fantastic. There were basketball

(24:42):
courts near our house, and the peace and quiet you
got at night out there was amazing. Everyone in town
was really welcoming too. The local pastor came over the
day we moved in. Our new neighbors left gift baskets,
and when the weekend came, two girls from the house
across the street knocked on our door as if I
wanted to come hang out. Their names were Jenny and

(25:03):
Joy age fourteen and twelve, and they walked me over
to the basketball courts to show me where kids hung
out on weekends. There was the softball field, the two
basketball courts, in the tennis court, and then a big
wall of trees with some woods behind them. Jenny and
Joy said everyone's parents were cool with them hanging out
there because everyone could keep an eye on them from
the street, but we were never to walk beyond the woods,

(25:27):
and that reason had a name, Trent Baxter. According to
Jenny and Joy, the Baxters lived in the Manor Road
apartments on the other side of the woods, and fifteen
year old Trent was the biggest bully in all of
the county. His dad was in jail, I guess, and
his mom was a drunk and young Trent had been

(25:48):
so badly behaving in school that he'd been removed from
the school system altogether around age twelve. He used to
get into fights with other kids, throw chairs at his teachers,
and one time they said he even dropped on the
class hamster by trying to flush it down the toilet. Luckily,
Trent knew better than to go wandering around our street
or near the basketball courts, because every time he did,

(26:10):
the town councilman would see him from his office and
threaten to call the town sheriff. As a result, Trent
mostly moped around the woods near the Manor Road apartments,
setting rabbit traps and starting fires. And I appreciated the
heads up, but since Trent didn't hang out at the
courts and he didn't go to school, I didn't think
that he'd be any sort of problem for me. But

(26:32):
I could not have been more wrong. It was during
our first meeting that Jenny and Joy gave me their
general warning about the Baxters. Then that Friday, they walked
across the street and asked if I wanted to come
hang out with them and some other kids down at
the basketball courts, And it was here that I got
my second and more specific warning about Trent. Down at

(26:52):
the courts, a kid named Stevie told me that when
Trent found out a new family had moved into town,
he was furious. Stevie also lived at the Manor Road apartments,
but unlike Trent, he wasn't a predatory myskery and who broke, burned,
or stole everything that wasn't nailed down. He'd come hang
out on a Friday and a Saturday night, often with

(27:13):
tales of Trent's trials and tribulations over at the apartments.
According to Stevie, Trent would target an older widower who
lived on the ground floor, banging real loud on his
door because he knew the guy had a heart condition.
He'd also target his neighbors cats and dogs, and there
was a rumor that he fed on a peanut butter
and jelly sandwich with ground up glass as the secret ingredient.

(27:36):
But that Friday night, into my absolute horror, I learned
Trent's newest target was my family. And like I said,
Stevie mentioned Trent being furious when he heard we'd moved
into town and had overheard him saying that he was
going to burn our house down. Jenny and Joy, along
with these other kids, assured me that Trent said stuff
like that all the time, directed at just about every one,

(27:59):
but only did he go through with any of his threats.
I'd like to be able to say that reassured me.
But if Trent really was just all bark and no bite,
how had he managed to earn such a bad reputation
That evening after I returned home from hanging out at
the basketball courts, I told my mom what I had
heard about this Trent Baxter threatening to burn down our house.

(28:21):
She had also heard stories about the Baxters from some
of the neighbors that had stopped by our place, some
pretty frightening things too, but she knew that the people
in East Corinth were mostly good sawt of the earth
folks who wouldn't allow the Baxters to terrorize anyone, let
alone the newest arrivals. And that was a lot more
reassuring than anything the kids the basketball courts said. I

(28:42):
still really appreciated them being so welcoming, but nothing sounds
truer as when it's coming from Mom. Right, I figured
the whole Trent Baxter's situation might be a storm and
a tea cup, so to speak. But again I was wrong.
One night, about a week after moving into our our
new home, I woke up in the middle of the
night to a very loud crash coming from downstairs. My

(29:06):
dad grabbed his gun from the closet, ran downstairs to
see what was happening, and then walked into the family
room to find some one had thrown a brick through
the window, and attached to the brick was a note
saying move and that's all it said. Dad reported the
incident to the county sheriff the next day, who sent
out a deputy who had grown up just north of town.

(29:29):
Deputy Daniels said that he was familiar with the Baxter's
and would try to ascertain Trent's whereabouts from the previous night,
but he also said it probably wouldn't be easy. As
I already mentioned, it was known around town that Trent's
dad was in jail and wasn't coming home any time soon.
According to the deputy, Trent's ma'am was in so much
a sedentary drunk as she was a wanderer, she disappeared

(29:52):
for days at a time, and if you did manage
to catch her, there was no guarantee she'd remember the
exchange the next time you talked. Apparently, Trent often ran
off and slept in the woods whenever he was in trouble,
and his mom was more concerned with chasing bottles and
boyfriends than she ever was with her own son. Finding
him would be much easier said than done, and even

(30:14):
if he did find him, Deputy Daniels wouldn't be able
to do anything without concrete proof that it was Trent
who'd thrown that brick. The only good news the deputy
had was that it was unlikely Trent would try the
same thing twice. He was a spontaneous kid of spitefulness,
not a focused one, and as long as we stuck
it out a little, he'd eventually get bored of us

(30:34):
and just sort of move on, he said. I remember
watching them fit in a new window with my dad
talking about how it was just growing pains. There's always
bad people any place you go, he'd say, but here
there's just one or two, not thousands like back in Providence.
And Mom agreed. She said all Trent Baxter needed was

(30:55):
a short, sharp shock to make it clear that we
were not to be messed with, and then he just
leave us alone. Dad stayed up late a few nights,
sitting in the dark in the family room, looking out
of our newly fitted windows into the street outside. He
didn't keep his gun with him. He just wanted to
catch Trent in the act and scare him a little.

(31:15):
But Daniels appeared to be right, and Trent never showed
at school. Joy told me that she and Jenny had
heard about Trent breaking our windows, and that they were
very sorry that he chosen to target us. It was
definitely scary. Having such friendly, supportive people around it did
make things easier to bear, though. Joy said the same

(31:36):
thing the deputy did, and that if Trent ever did
get a whiff that he was the prime suspect, he
probably disappeared for a few days and we'd be able
to carry on in peace. And she was right in
a way, because the next few days and nights went
on without incident, and as I said, we got the
window replaced. Dad stopped sitting up late in our dark
family room, and for about a week at least, it

(31:57):
seemed like Trent had moved on, But then the birds
showed up. One morning, after realizing that we were all
out of milk, Dad decided to walk down to the
general store to buy a carton or two, but he
took just one step out of the front door and froze.
He had a Cadillac Fleetwood broom, a real beauty, but

(32:19):
all over the hood and roof were a bunch of
dead and disembowed birds. It looked like someone had gutted
them on the spot because the insides were splay out
next to them, having pulled through slits which had been
cut into their bodies. Whoever had done it had taken
the heads off too, and at first they were nowhere
to be found. Dad takes one good look at the

(32:39):
cadaver covered car, turns back around, and then walks inside
the house to call the county sheriff. He then spends
the next hour or so disposing of the headless birds
and hosing down his Cadillac until it was spotless again.
And once he'd finished, and because he'd wasted a bunch
of his morning cleaning off his car and talking to
the copse, Dad figured that he'd drive down to the

(33:00):
general store in order to claw back a few minutes
of his day. Dad said that he climbed into the
driver's seat, then slid his key into the ignition, but
when he turned it there was nothing but a muffled
sputter from the car's engine. He said he kind of
just frowned and checked the choke and then tried again,
but then instead of starting like it normally would, there

(33:21):
was a strange, high pitched wine from the rear, like
air was escaping a balloon. He started the panic a
little as a series of dull thumbs sounded from underneath,
and then suddenly there was this huge boom as something
exploded out of the car's tailpipe. Dad said he jumped
up and then ran around to the rear of the car,

(33:42):
only to see blood dripping from the exhaust and then
splattered on the ground behind it were all the little
heads of the dead bird that had been lying on
his car. That afternoon, Deputy Dandals was back in our
kitchen talking with my mom and dad over a few
cups of coffee, and he wrecked commended that Dad park
his car in the garage from then on, and that

(34:03):
when he caught up with Trent Baxter, he'd be arrested
on suspicion of animal cruelty. A brick is a brick,
We're hurting animals like that was exactly the kind of
behavior people would come to expect from Trent the troll,
as some kids called him. He was probably laying low,
said Deputy Daniels, especially after the bird incident. It was
also very likely Trent was angry that we'd dared to

(34:25):
call the sheriff and wanted to give us one less
f u before he backed off for good. At least
that's what Mom and Dad had chose to believe it
had proved to be nothing but wishful thinking. About two
weeks went by and we'd once again assumed that we
were in the clear, when one morning someone started banging
on our door at a round eight. Dad went downstairs

(34:47):
in his slippers to see who it was, only to
find the mailman looking white as a sheet and pointing
at something that sat on our doorstep. It was a
plastic can of gas along with a box of men,
and the can actually had some gas in the two.
It was Trent. He was leaving us a message, and
one that clearly said leave because next time I might

(35:11):
go through with it. The appearance of that can marked
the third time that Deputy Daniels came over to our house.
By that time Mom and Dad weren't quite so patient
and understanding as before. I distinctly remember my dad telling
him to do his damned job, and that if the
deputy couldn't find a juvenile delinquent like Trent Baxter, then

(35:33):
he was in the wrong line of work. And to
his credit, Deputy Daniels took Dad's comments on the chin.
He said he understood his frustration, but that it was
something that most other folks have felt at some point too.
Trent and his family were this dark cloud that hung
over the town, and much like all the other dark
clouds which pass over the state of Maine, and boy

(35:54):
are there many, he learned to live with them. On
the bright side, Trent had never earned anything down before,
at least nothing as big as a house. But as
you can probably guess, that didn't reassure my dad one bit.
The deputies and our neighbors could be as supportive as
they liked, and it was all much appreciated, but they
couldn't keep an eye out for us all the time,

(36:16):
and the nights seemed to belong to Trent. By the
time of the gas in the box of matches showed
up on our doorstep and my dad was yelling in
Deputy Daniel's face, I was starting to get really, really
upset by the whole thing. After about a month of
being there. I actually liked living in East Corinth. I
liked my new friends. I liked the idea of starting

(36:37):
high school there too. So the idea that some fire
obsessed bird murdering psycho was about to ruin all of
that for us. Let's just say it started to weigh
on me, especially the day when I found out Trent
wanted to target me specifically. It was a Friday at
lunchtime and I was getting myself some food in the
school cafeteria when Stevie from over the road sat next

(37:01):
to me in joy and right away I could tell
that he had something to say, and when he did,
I felt my appetite leaving as this feeling of dread
crept over me. Stevie said that he had been riding
his bike out near the apartments when Trent Baxter came
out of the bushes yelling for him to stop. Stevie
knew he could out pedal him if he needed to,
so he stopped and asked him what his problem was.

(37:24):
Trent asked Stevie if he's friends with a new kid
I e me, and then when Stevie said yes, Trent
told him that the new kid was, in a quote,
dead meat. Since we hadn't got the message about leaving town,
Trent was going to have to up the Annie, and
upping that ante meant targeting me. I was terrified, and

(37:45):
the only thing that stopped me from descending into a
full on panic were Joy and Stevie's reassurances. They promised
me that if I came to hang out with them
that evening after school, they'd do anything and everything to
protect me from Trent. Bullies like that were only ever
successful if they could isolate someone when there wasn't that
strength in numbers. So if I stuck with them, Trent

(38:06):
wouldn't be able to touch me and I'd be fine.
What I felt in that cafeteria was one of the
most bittersweet moments of my whole life. I don't think
that I've ever been so scared of someone before, but
I'd also never experienced such kindness and acceptance before either.
I was so grateful that I was holding back tears
by the time I gave Joy a hug and thanked

(38:26):
her for all that she and her sister had done
for me in terms of making me feel welcome, introducing
me to my new friend group, and most importantly, protecting
me from the town's residence Psycho. When I got home
from school that afternoon, I told my mom everything Stevie
and Joy had said in the cafeteria. She said that
I was really lucky to have such nice new friends,

(38:48):
but if I saw Trent at any point during that evening,
I was to run home immediately so that her and
Dak could call the sheriff. She had no doubt that
my nice new friends could keep their eyes out for him.
She even figured they'd try and defend me if need be.
But the bottom line was that at the first sign
of trouble I should just walk or even run away,

(39:08):
and that way I could avoid any trouble before it
even started. I remember suggesting that if a deputy or
town councilman saw Trent doing something violent, then they could
actually do something about him instead of just beating around
the bush all the time and letting him run riot.
I mean, sure, I might end up with a few
bruises and a black eye, but if that's what we

(39:29):
needed to get Trent out of the picture, then maybe
it was a price worth pain. And Mom gave me
a very concrete no to that suggestion and explain that
violence in the movies is a hell of a lot
different to violence in real life. Only in the movies
did people walk away from fights with nothing but a
split lip and a good story. In real life, one
punch was all it took to put one person in

(39:50):
the ground and the other in jail for the rest
of their lives. Mom wanted to see this Baxter kid
punished just like everyone else in town did, just not
at the expense of her only daughter. And late that afternoon,
around five thirty, Jenny and Joy stopped by our house
and then we walked down to the basketball courts to
hang out again. All of the usual kids were there,

(40:12):
either shooting some hoops or riding their bikes around the courts,
and although I was kind of tense at first, I
soon started to relax as we fell into the usual
rhythm of things. Maybe an hour into hanging out, I
was really enjoying myself, and I'd also totally forgotten about
the whole Trent thing. When Stevie comes riding his bike
across the fields away from the woods, shouting Trent's coming,

(40:34):
Trent's coming, everyone kind of flew into a panic for
a second because this one older kid, Ryan started yelling
about how he was sick of running and how we
should fight back for once instead of just going to
get the adults. I didn't like the sound of that,
not after what my mom had said about avoiding violence,
but most of the other kids, instead of just leaving,

(40:56):
latched onto what Ryan said, and were basically saying stuff like, yeah,
let's get him. I couldn't believe what I was seeing.
It was like something out of a movie. And beside me,
Jenny and Joy were both saying, come on, come on,
let's go, make sure he leaves you alone. It was odd,
but I thought about the smashed window, the birds, and
that can of gas, and I got angry. I loved

(41:20):
my new home and I wasn't about to let some
scumbag ruin it for me. Ryan and the other kids
started storming across the field, yelling about how they were
going to kick Trent Baxter's ass. It was the bravest
thing I'd ever seen, and as I watched, I stood
up and then told Jenny and Joy, all right, let's go,
and they were smiling and clapping, and then after following

(41:42):
me over to the field, we ran to catch up
with the kids ahead of us. When we got to
the tree line, we kind of fanned out a little
and then started looking all over for this Trent character.
We walked deeper and deeper into the woods, and the
setting sun in the sky was ahead of us, but
since we were together, we weren't very scared. I remember
stopping at one point and looking around. If Trent Baxter

(42:06):
had been in those woods, He's sure as heck wasn't
there any more. And I turned to Jenny, Joy's older sister,
and then said something like, look, look, he's gone. But
the way she was looking at me was wrong, very wrong.
I know I'd only known her a few weeks, but
I'd never seen her make a face like that before.

(42:27):
Yet it wasn't just her that was staring at me
with very cold eyes, it was everyone. I turned around
on the spot and realized that they all started walking
towards me, and then right behind me, I heard Jenny say,
that's were You're wrong. Trent Baxter's right here, and I

(42:48):
turned just in time for Jenny to shove me backwards
into the dirts as she yelled here and I fell
on my butt, but the pain of her turning on
me dwarf Denny I felt from the impact. I asked
her what she was doing, but she didn't answer, and
then I heard someone yell something terrible about me from
my right before someone kicked me in the side of

(43:09):
the head. I immediately went down, clutching my head, and
that's when everyone jumped in and started kicking me. Trent
Baxter's right here, someone repeated, and the others laughed, but
they never stopped kicking me. All I could do was
just lie there, shielding my head from those blows while
I felt their sneakers and shoes smashing into my arms

(43:31):
and my ribs and my back and my butt. I
soaked it all up until someone tried stamping on my head,
and that's when I realized I had to move. I
felt like if I didn't, they'd kill me. I managed
to make it to my knees before someone shoved me
down again. Then the stamping and kicking and punching continued
for a minute until I kind of just threw myself

(43:54):
forward and made it to my feet again. That time,
I was able to run. They tried kicking my legs
from under me, but it didn't work, and I was
able to get a real sprint going. The kids ran
after me, and I remember looking over my shoulder seeing them,
and then feeling the surge of adrenaline take hold of me,
and I ran, and I ran, and I ran until

(44:17):
I was all the way back to my street before
I realized that I wasn't being followed any more. I
remember looking back over my shoulder again and thinking, where
the hell are Jenny and Joy? They lived just over
the street from me, so wherever they'd run to, they
hadn't been home. But then as I got closer to
my house, I could see people gathered outside, and when

(44:39):
I saw who it was, my heart sank. It was
my mom, one of the ladies who lived across the
street from us, along with Jenny and Joy. I was
still in so much shock that when my mom ran
over to escort me into the house, I didn't say anything.
I wanted to get the blood off of me, get
the dirt out of my mouth, and I didn't want
to look at Jenny or Joy for a single second

(45:00):
longer than I had to. Then, as Mom sat me
down and got out the band aids and in a
septic wipes, she kept saying to me, Trent Baxter's going
to pay for this, sweetie. You just wait and see.
The only folks they're going to be moving out of
this town are him and his mom when they're carted
off to jail. I didn't know how to tell her
right away. I didn't even cry at first. I just

(45:23):
sat there quietly, letting her wipe the blood from my
face and hands, almost like the calm before the storm.
I was in shock. And a few hours later, after
I'd cried my eyes out finally and gotten a long,
hot bath, I walked into the TV room and just
told her straight up, Mommy, wasn't Trent Baxter who beat

(45:43):
me up. It was the kids who hang out at
the basketball courts. It was all of them. And she
was stunned. And if you hadn't already guessed, Jenny and
Joy had ran ahead of me to tell every one
it was Trent Baxter who'd ambushed me after I had
wandered into the woods. So to have me telling her

(46:04):
something different, and then in fact there might not even
be a Trent Baxter to begin with, it all came
as an obvious shock to her. She was in denial
at first, talked about how our neighbors had mentioned the
Baxters on more than one occasion. It wasn't out of
the question that a bunch of kids were all just
in on some cruel joke, but the whole town. It

(46:28):
wasn't until Dad called the county sheriff and asked to
speak with him directly, that he too, realized something was
going on. The sheriff had someone run some files, only
to discover that there hadn't been a Baxter family living
in East Corinth since nineteen thirty four. Dad then gave
him an earful about Deputy Daniels and how one of
his peace officers had lied to his face about having

(46:50):
met Trent Baxter and his mother. But when accused, Deputy
Daniels played dumb and said that he was just trying
to reassure the newcomers that he could keep them safe.
The sheriff apologized for his deputy, saying that he was
just young, dumb and eager to impress. But Dad didn't
buy it, and he too began to realize the same
thing I had. There were no Baxters living in those apartments.

(47:15):
The townsfolk had invented them. It took a few days
of subtle investigation before Dad moved us back to Providence.
He said he wanted to be sure before he got
us packing our bags. But when he was sure, when
he'd driven now to that road to ask around and
was certain that the Baxters were some fabrication, we got

(47:35):
the hell out of town and never looked back. Dad
said he tried talking to the sheriff about it, and
that he tried explaining how the people of East Corinth
invented the Baxters as a way of terrorizing each other
and terrifying outsiders, but the more he talked, the more
the sheriff seemed to act like he was crazy. The
sheriff said that he'd spoken to the townspeople, to the mayor,

(47:58):
and to the town councilman, and not a single person
had mentioned anything about any Baxter family. It was a
damn shame what was happening to that new family, they said,
But as much as they wanted to help, there was
nothing they could do. Once Dad realized the extent to
which the townsfolk were willing to hoodwink us, he decided
to quit while he was ahead and just simply get

(48:20):
us to safety as soon as possible, and we moved
back to Providence, checked into a hotel, and then stayed
in an apartment for a while before Dad could find
us a more permanent place to live. And we rarely
speak of East Corinth, but it was always there. I guess.
No one wanted to remind each other or remind ourselves
that the move had ever happened, but it had, and

(48:43):
there was no getting away from it, and ever so
often I thought about that area and why people acted
the way they did. I guess the idea of the
Baxter family was something they used to blame all their
problems on it first, and then maybe over time the
Baxters became something they'd used to solve their problems, namely
the problem of newcomers and how to keep them out

(49:04):
of their town for good. Hey, friends, thanks for listening.
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(49:26):
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(49:47):
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