(Racconto scritto da Matilda Cattaneo, Micol Rigamonti, Naima Tchedre durante il laboratorio extracurriculare “The Secret Garden”)
Already starting from 1951 various children began to mysteriously disappear near London, The police had no leads to follow. Only one thing united them: a difficult situation with their father. Usually the fathers of these boys were alcoholics.
I heard the presenter on the radio. I was scared, very scared. I went to ‘my room,’ room to say, since it’s just a simple closet. I was about to open the door when I heard my father yelling at my mother. I entered the room quickly and escaped through the window, ran a few metres and sat down to cry in front of a tree, why does my father always have to yell?!
I stayed there for a while until I heard a rustle and then a scary figure appeared in front of me. I didn’t have time to observe it before it dragged me away with it and we ended up in a sort of separate world. It was all black but I could distinguish shapes that seemed like trees, deformed trees. I was terrified when I saw the creature next to me. I barely held back a scream, it was horrible, it had white skin without eyes or a nose, it only had a mouth that reached to its cheeks, the body was that of an adult man but very thin. It had four long arms, with fingers twice as long as normal and sharp nails.
I stood there staring at it, it returned the gaze and asked me my name and story in a deep voice. Fearfully, I replied, H-hi, my name is Melanie and I’m 8 years old, my dad always beats my mum and yells at me, but what do you want? Who are you? Why did you kidnap me? He looked at me, I guess since he didn’t have eyes, and replied: I am Matt, I was a child when I became like this, my story is like yours, my father used to beat me and drink since my mother died, you see these trees? They are all children that I kidnapped and imprisoned to make those ungrateful fathers suffer.
Without thinking, I ran to him and hugged him, he had suffered so much, poor thing, he was astonished and soon after I noticed that slowly I was returning to see the city and the point where I was before being kidnapped. I noticed that the creature’s body was also changing, the skin was becoming darker, the creature was shrinking, hair began to grow, eyes appeared, until I found myself in front of a child about 7 years old with honey-coloured hair and sweet hazel eyes. I looked around and noticed that the trees were still there and there was no trace of children, poor things. I pushed away that thought when I noticed that Matt had taken my hand and was smiling at me happily.