It had been 4 days since the car wreck killed his parents and younger sister, and 14 year old Mitchell Stewart was surprised when his crazy old drunk uncle showed up at the funeral. Surprised, yes, but too dazed and hurt to care. There were three caskets in the front of the church. "Wish there were four," thought Mitchell.
Only this man wasn't very old, and he didn't look crazy. Brian Stewart was nothing like the picture his parents painted. Possibly 35, his Uncle was a shorter, more athletic version of his father. Troubled as a child, and barely surviving academically to graduate high school, Brian had run off and joined the Army. Jacob, Mitchell's father and Brian's older brother, was a respected History Professor. Mitchell's mother Amy was a stay at home mom. The whole family pretended that Brian no longer existed.
But there he was at the funeral, in dark jeans and a white polo shirt with a grey sport coat. Everyone filed out of the church into the line of waiting cars. Uncle Brian didn't even try to approach Mitchell. A man from the funeral home drove to Mitchell and the social worker assigned to his case to the graveyard. She was a stout woman, a little gruff, but she was nice. Mitchell's mother had given him enough of a conscious for him to realize that the social worker was being nicer than he deserved. "I've got to stop acting like a jerk," he thought. Mitchell tried to remember everything he could about Uncle Brian. Why was he here now?
Before her Parkinson's progressed past the point of clear speech, Mitchell's grandmother had shared a few stories about Uncle Brian. When Brian was 12, Jacob had just graduated from the University of New York. The family planned a trip to Philadelphia. Jacob would be interviewing at several graduate programs, and they would all be visiting historical landmarks. Jacob thought it would be good for Brian to get out of the house. Their father had just died of leukemia. Brian took it harder than anyone.
The trip made national headlines. Brian was walking outside their hotel when shots rang out. It took police several hours to realize that there had been a kidnapping in addition a drug related drive by shooting. Three months later, a task force made up of DEA and FBI agents raided a warehouse in South Florida. Brian was found locked in a shipping crate.
Years of counseling and therapy never made him change his story. His abductors were not drug dealers or perverts or organ traffickers. They were demons, charged with transporting and hiding important artifacts for a creature known only as "Yellow Eyes."
"So you were held by demons?" the therapist said. "It sounds like you're saying you were possessed. You know that if you had to do bad things while you were a prisoner it wasn't your fault."
"Of course I was possessed, but I didn't do anything bad," Brian insisted. "They were testing a….machine….but they were missing pieces and could never quite get it right."
"Do you still think that you're possessed?"
"No."
"Why not?" asked the therapist.
"They had to leave. They're just research and development demons….or really, more like archeologists, since they're into old stuff. They were gone days before the cops showed up."
The only person who had believed Brian was a de-frocked priest turned tabloid writer. He called the family at all hours trying to get Brian's whole story. He circulated rumors to a group of conspiracy theorists, some of whom took an interest in Brian. The family was furious.
Brian learned eventually to tell people that he didn't remember anything that happened, but maybe the guys who took him were drug dealers. If pressed about it, he would get angry and start ranting about demons.
"Why do you keep asking if you'll never believe me?" Brian screamed.
At first his family was patient, but Brian was clearly unstable. He slept with weapons. He studied old languages and occult practices. He would pour salt on the floor and make chalk symbols on the walls. When Jacob washed the symbols off the walls, Brian redid them in paint and permanent marker.
Jacob tried reasoning with Brian when he was in high school. "Grow up, man. You have to put this behind you at some point."
Brian didn't. Two years later he was gone. He sent a postcard from basic training, and later another one from somewhere in Germany. Then he showed up one year for Christmas. Jacob never mentioned it, but he said that Brian could never come back. Mitchell had been a toddler. His mother hinted that Brian had been drunk and raving about dangers in the dark.
A few years ago, when Grandma had gone into the nursing home, Mitchell had found some of those old articles about Uncle Brian. Maybe he was crazy.
But the man who stood in front of Mitchell wasn't drunk. He was sad.