The Bag

When I was a kid, I was told this story by the other kids that has stuck with me. It’s not unusual for kids to tell each other stories. Or out of the ordinary for them to be scary, even horrific. In fact, those kids told me a few different tales. Only some have stayed with me, for different reasons. One specifically has always seemed… interesting or curious I suppose, for lack of a better way to put it. Neither word does it the justice I want it to.

      There’s an edge to that story, a certain aura that it has, that sets it apart.

      Here’s an example. A yarn they told me about a dripping faucet. It’s possible this is one of those spooky things everyone has heard before. Maybe you’ve heard it. Maybe they stole it from somewhere.

      Regardless it isn’t long, and it isn’t particularly affecting, but it goes like this:

A woman lived alone in her flat. One night, she heard a sound.

      Drip, drip, drip.

      The noise woke her. She followed it to her kitchen sink. Instinctively, she tightened the faucet handle. The sound stopped, so she went back to bed.

      Drip, drip, drip.

      She was woken again. This time the dripping led her to the bathroom sink. Just like the kitchen, she instinctively tightened the faucet handle. The sound stopped. She returned to bed, and back to sleep.

      Drip, drip, drip.

      The third time her sleep was disturbed, she found that the sound was still coming from the bathroom. So she tried the faucet handle again only to find it still tight. The sound was actually coming from the shower. The woman stepped into the shower and tightened the handle. The sound stopped. Though this time, a new sound had taken its place.

      Pat, pat, pat.

      The woman froze. Something was dripping onto her. She touched her shoulder, her fingers came away with a viscous substance, wet and thick. She looked up at the shower’s curtain rod.

      A dark bundled shape was on the rod.

      Slowly, she stepped out of the shower, and turned the bathroom light on.

      She screamed.

      Wrapped around the shower rod was a dog. Blood slowly drip, drip, dripped down into the shower.

      She didn’t even have a dog.

Despite being so young, I didn’t think it was such a scary narrative. I thought it was maybe sad, because of the dog. Other than that, it didn’t have a great effect on me. It still stuck with me, though I don’t know why. It might be because it was so thought-out, while everything else they told me was more like vague unrefined ideas.

      The tale that really stuck with me was actually one of those unrefined ideas. Strangely, there’s even an anecdote attached to it. One that happened to those kids. And in turn, one that happened to me. I think that transformed it from an idea, into a story.

      This latter fact may answer a question that might come up. “Why, after so many years, have I decided to chronical this experience?”

      Because something shook me. That would be the easiest explanation, I think. But…

      Well, I get ahead of myself.

      This account, in essence that’s what it is, is straightforwardly simple. Less a horror epic and more, children sharing what could be local folklore. Though if it is local folklore, I haven’t heard it since. I wonder if folklore is just stories children tell each other that catch on to a wider audience.

      In that case, what those kids told me back in the day would be failed folklore.

      It was recess. I went to spend time with my friends, as I always did during this break. Part of the school’s perimeter was lined with thick banyan trees. This area looked quite off putting with vines, trunks, and leaves creating a matted otherworldly gateway where fairies and fauns would probably try to lure children to their doom.

      Funnily enough, we weren’t meant to play in those trees. Animals, rubbish, and other debris meant we were supposed to keep a healthy distance from the banyan trees. On this day however, I found my friends leaving that magical gateway with a haggard look.

      They came over to me. We said our “hellos” and “what did you do on the weekend” talk, before I of course asked the question I was dying to know.

      ‘What were you guys doing over there?’

      The main kid, the leader who was also my closest friend at the time, just looked at me. Something danced in his eyes. To this day I don’t know if it was mischievousness, or dread. As though his natural inclination to play pranks was at odds with whatever had happened.

      ‘You don’t want to know,’ he told me. ‘Or else, it’ll get you too.’

      I raised my eyebrows. My curiosity had been piqued. I asked, ‘What’re you on about?’

      Still that mysterious look in his eyes. Was he devising a joke or debating the ethics of sharing what they had seen in the banyan trees?

      After a while, he said that uniquely childlike phrase that we have all heard one time or another, ‘O.K., but you have to promise not to tell anyone, all right?’

      I nodded vigorously. Those words, so hallowed among children, meant so much. It meant you’re about to learn something you shouldn’t. That you’re about to be trusted with something wonderful, about to be introduced to a whole new part of the world you didn’t notice.

      ‘There’s a bag over there,’ he said. ‘Like a rubbish bag. A big black rubbish bag. And it has a face on it. And…’ he leaned in close to whisper, ‘it’s leaking blood.’

      I frowned. ‘Oh,’ I said.

      A rubbish bag with a face on it, leaking blood? Well, that wasn’t quite as inventive as that last story I had been told. It’s rather, mundane.

      A rubbish bag? With a face? All right, and it’s leaking blood? Well O.K., I suppose that’s interesting. Though maybe there’s just a steak in there? Someone threw out their rubbish which included an uneaten packet of mincemeat.

      Sensing, and probably seeing the disappointment I exuded, my friend hastily explained in more detail.

      ‘It’s one of those urban legends,’ he said. ‘About a black rubbish bag, with a face on it. They say if you see it, it’ll eat you. That’s why there’s blood leaking from it. Because it’s eaten someone. And we found it.’

      ‘But it didn’t eat you guys,’ I said.

      He shifted nervously. ‘Yeah, well, it doesn’t eat you right away.’ He added quickly, ‘Especially ‘cause, you know, it’s already eaten!’

      ‘Oh,’ I said. That made sense. But it also didn’t. A rubbish bag that ate people? That sounded rather preposterous, not to mention the apparent face. Did someone draw the face or did the rubbish bag just naturally have one? It would set it apart from other rubbish bags, that’s for certain. Still, a rubbish bag? Something so mundane couldn’t be scary.

      ‘Well,’ I said. ‘That sounds intense.’

      ‘It is,’ my friend said. ‘So, don’t go over there.’ He pointed back to the banyan trees. ‘It’s too late for us. But you haven’t seen it. So, you’ll be O.K. So long as you don’t go back there, all right?’

      ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘I won’t go back there.’ I looked around. ‘Do you want to go play?’

      And that was that. An odd occurrence, nothing more. A failed piece of folklore. Or just a failed prank.

      That was the first of three incidents involving the black rubbish bag with a face that leaked blood.

      Coincidentally, a few days later we had a special class in the library about urban legends and folklore. We heard many tales that fit the subject, as well as their origins and meanings. When that was done, the teacher opened the floor to us.

      They asked, ‘Does anyone have anything they want to share?’

      I nudged my friend. He looked at me, mildly confused.

      I said, ‘You should tell them. About the bag, in the trees.’

      He looked at me with… horror? Deeper confusion? I couldn’t say. At least apprehension.

      ‘No,’ he said.

      ‘Why not?’ I asked. ‘They want to hear about it!’

      ‘No. I don’t want to. I shouldn’t tell people. I shouldn’t have told you!’

      I was shocked. I couldn’t tell if it was just shyness, that usual hesitation children have when public speaking is involved. He wouldn’t have to do that, I thought. Just say it from here. I was keenly interested in hearing if anyone, the teachers especially, had heard about it.

      Still, he wouldn’t budge. I thought about telling them myself, but what would I say?

      There’s a rubbish bag with a face, which leaks blood. See it, and it’ll eat you. The end.

      Wholly uninteresting. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t want to tell them, I thought. Because it’s so boring, nothing like the other stories, especially not the ones we’ve heard today.

      And yet, I was desperate for him to tell it. I was desperate to hear about it again. Not from him, but from others. Desperate to get confirmation that it was, or wasn’t, a thing. That it was just a prank. That I was being played a fool, as is common amongst children.

      Yet he just wouldn’t do it. He didn’t want to. I couldn’t understand why.

      The third and final incident happened the following week. It was the end of the school day and the beginning of the weekend. My mother had picked me up to go home. I said goodbye to my friends as they waited for their own parents.

      As the car pulled away, it circled the perimeter of the school. It passed the banyan tree line. Just before we went by it, just before the view of the school disappeared, I saw them. I saw my closest friend, and three others, head into the banyan trees. I found it so strange.

      Why would they go back in there again? Those trees were dangerous.

      After the weekend, I returned to school ready to spend time with my friends.

      Except, one of my friends was gone.

      He had been last seen by my other friends, playing in the banyan trees. Their account went like this; together, they played in the trees, their parents arrived one by one to take them home, until only he was left.

      When his parents arrived, he was gone.

      He remained that way.

      The teachers didn’t like that they had been playing there, but their focus was on trying to track down the missing boy, not chastise my friends. After the assemblies, the interviews by the teachers and the authorities, we were let out to an incredibly supervised recess. We weren’t allowed to be out of the teacher’s sight under any circumstances. It would continue like this for months.

      On that day though, I went to my friend. I asked him, ‘What happened?’

      All he said was, ‘We did what we had to.’

      He wouldn’t talk to me after that. Kept his distance. Didn’t want to play or speak at all. Eventually, he disappeared, too. Though not in the same way. He started to refuse to go to school. He couldn’t cope with our friend’s disappearance. In the end, his parents decided it was best for them to move to somewhere that didn’t have the baggage that school did.

      So, I lost two friends.

      The mystery of that rubbish bag monster became a far away point in my child’s mind. A lot more important things had happened. What was some urban legend supposed to mean compared to that?

      Now, as an adult, those stories, that incident, come up in my mind every now and then. When I’m woken in the night by a drip, drip, dripping, I wonder, what am I about to find?

      There have been days where I’ve thought, did those kids really see anything in those trees? Maybe they found someone’s rubbish, with an uneaten steak in it, maybe even with a face on it, and decided it was a bloody monster. Did they even find anything at all, or was it just a childish prank they made up, to cover up that they were playing somewhere they shouldn’t have? They couldn’t have seen anything real, after all.

      What I don’t wonder is, “whatever happened to that boy.” I don’t know why. I should wonder that, shouldn’t I? Wonder if they ever found him. Wonder what could have happened to him.

      For a long time I wouldn’t think about what happened to him, but instead, why I never thought about what happened to him. Is it because I… Because I thought I knew what had happened? Or because as a kid I had decided I knew what had happened, and subconsciously that explanation had stuck?

      ‘It’s too late for us,’ my friend had said.

      ‘We did what we had to,’ he had said.

      There was a reunion at that school recently. My three former friends were there. We reminisced, we talked about where we were now. Talked regrets, talked glory. Talked and talked.

      A thought came into my head, made me grin. The others looked at me curiously, and asked what I was grinning about.

      I said, ‘Well, I just remembered something. That story you told me, what was it about?’

      ‘The lady in her flat,’ my former closest friend said with his own grin.

      ‘No, no,’ I said. ‘The other one. It was a…’ I snapped my fingers. ‘A rubbish bag. With a face on it! It ate people, or something? It was in the banyan trees. Though I never saw it.’ I laughed and added, ‘Do you guys remember?’

      They stared at me in deathly silence. Their eyes seemed to well with tears that refused to break. A cloud thicker than smog hung over us.

      ‘No,’ my former closest friend said. ‘I don’t remember that at all. Someone else must have told you that.’

      ‘Oh,’ I said.

      The trio quickly excused themselves. Said they had something to do, somewhere to be, and left me behind. I was left alone wondering, once again, about that bag. That damned rubbish bag. What was so special about a damned rubbish bag?

      The night ended. I got into my car, and pulled around the perimeter of the school, towards the banyan trees. Déjà vu erupted in my mind’s eye of that day so many years ago. Just before the school disappeared from view, I saw them, the trio, walking into the banyan trees.

      I drove back around quickly and parked. This was it. Finally, I’d know for certain after years of wondering. I hurried across the street, across the grass field, and into those banyan trees.

      There, I found… I found nothing.

      No grown men. No monstrous rubbish bag. Just a mess of vines, trunks, and leaves.

      But there was a sound.

      Drip, drip, drip.

      I took a step forward.

      Pat, pat, pat.

      I froze. For a long moment, I froze.

      When that moment passed, did I look up? Did I venture deeper into the banyan trees? Did I call out?

      No. I turned. I left. I got into my car, and I drove off.

      I didn’t even so much as look at my jacket when I got home. I tore it off. I broke open my draw, took out a large black rubbish bag and stuffed the jacket into it. I threw the bag down by the door. In all the commotion a hole was torn in the bag. I stared at that hole for a long time, waiting, waiting…

      After a while, I managed to muster up the courage to throw the thing out.

      I keep telling myself it’s O.K. That I didn’t see anything.

      That’s why, after all these years, I am writing this. This is my attempt to expel it all. The stories. The images.

      I tried to look them up, after all that. My three former friends. For the life of me, I can’t find them anywhere. They seem to have just… disappeared. But I saw them. Grown men. How…

      Why am I so obsessed about a story involving a God damned rubbish bag? No, not a story. An idea. A mundane object.

      The worst part is, that I’ve lied.

      In writing this, I realise that the only way forward is the truth. And yet, still, I lied.

      What did I lie about?

      I did look up.

      I did.

      God, I wish it had only been a dead dog.