Bones

Credits

• Waitress: Katie Musa
• dish break 005.wav by yottasounds — https://freesound.org/s/175179/ — License: Attribution 3.0

References

• The X-Files
• Lord of the Flies
• ‘Aiea Loop Trail
• B-24J Oahu, HI
• Scout Motto
• Hansel and Gretel
• Great Dismal Swamp
• Moby-Dick
• The NeverEnding Story
• Lou Diamond Phillips
• Eddie Murphy
• Almost Plausible: Pumpkin
• Sound Tube: The Surprising History of Airline Headsets
• Alien Hand Syndrome
• Restless Legs Syndrome
• High Bone Density Due to a Mutation in LDL-Receptor–Related Protein 5

Transcript

RECORDING OF INCIDENT 10-WA-24-615B00

HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL TRANSCRIPT

[WAITRESS]
Hey, are you dining with ghosts, or is the rest of your party just fashionably late?

[SHEP]
Oh, I’m waiting for- Oh, over here, over here!

[EMILY]
So, for dessert, I made this pumpkin creme brulee, and it was just, like, really delicious.

[THOMAS]
Ooh.

[EMILY]
I used brown sugar instead of white sugar on top.

[THOMAS]
Oh, I can see that.

[EMILY]
It just really made it so good.

[THOMAS]
Yeah.

[SHEP]
Hey, guys.

[THOMAS]
Shep, I see you got everything all set up here for us.

[EMILY]
Sorry we’re late.

[SHEP]
That’s fine. There’s still plenty of time.

[WAITRESS]
Okay. Welcome to Marrow and Vine. Can I get some drinks started for you guys?

[SHEP]
Did you two have a chance to look at the menu online?

[THOMAS]
If by online you mean the phone app, then yes. Nobody uses the web anymore, old man.

[EMILY]
Or not so old man. Hey, where’s the cane today?

[SHEP]
I don’t need that anymore.

[EMILY]
Well, congratulations. I guess that physical therapy is working, huh?

[WAITRESS]
I can totally come back if you guys need a minute.

[EMILY]
I think we’re ready to order, actually. I’ll get the plate of wings and a Salt Lake City mule.

[WAITRESS]
Okay.

[THOMAS]
And I was going to get a cheeseburger, but I saw on the specials board you guys have a porterhouse. Is that still available?

[WAITRESS]
We do still have that. Yeah.

[THOMAS]
Excellent. Medium rare, please. And do you still have the Oktoberfest lager?

[WAITRESS]
We do. Did you want a 16- or a 22-ounce?

[THOMAS]
Oh, just the 16 is fine, thank you.

[WAITRESS]
Okay. And for you?

[SHEP]
I’d like the boneless pork ribs. And can I get a teapot with hot water?

[WAITRESS]
Okay, I’ll be right back with those drinks for you.

[EMILY]
The pork ribs? You don’t want to do the beef ribs. I’ve heard they’re to die for.

[SHEP]
The beef ribs are all bone.

[EMILY]
You don’t like the bones.

[THOMAS]
Oh, actually, speaking of bones, have I got a story for you. Now, you guys know me pretty well and you know that I don’t believe in gods, ghosts, superstitions, any of that kind of stuff, right?

[SHEP]
Right. Only aliens.

[THOMAS]
Right. Only aliens.

[EMILY]
Well, that makes sense.

[THOMAS]
I want to believe. But when it comes to Hawaiian mythology… I don’t know. Maybe it’s because those are the stories I grew up with… Or maybe it’s because of this one particular incident that happened when I was a kid.

I was involved in Scouting growing up, and my Cub Scout pack was awesome. We had tons of fun and did all sorts of cool activities. Unfortunately, the Boy Scout troop I joined was not so awesome.

The leadership was kind of lazy, just going through the motions trying to get kids up the ranks, and they only had one camping trip per year. That camping trip was one of the main reasons I joined this particular troop, but as I found out later, it was a sort of bait-and-switch.

See, once a year they’d pull out all the stops and go on a truly awesome, two-day long camping trip. And wouldn’t you know it, that event just so happened to line up with the preview weekend for scouts interested in joining the troop.

[EMILY]
Those bastards.

[THOMAS]
And it totally worked. The trip was always great! They’d pick some cool location and we’d stay up all night poking the fire with sticks. It felt like Lord of the Flies, but without the sexual overtones and a good deal less anarchy.

[EMILY]
That doesn’t sound like any fun.

[THOMAS]
Well, this story is about what happened on one of those camping trips, and by every measure, this should have been the best trip of all. It was a weekend hike into the beautiful ʻEwa Forest Reserve, which is a nearly 8,000 acre wood made up mostly of Norfolk island pine, native koa, and towering lemon eucalyptus trees.

There were a number of activities scheduled for the first morning after we set up our tents, but what we were all looking forward to was an afternoon hike through the woods, and we were told there was going to be a surprise on this hike.

Boy, were they ever right about that.

The group was about thirty boys ranging in ages from twelve to seventeen, led by the Scoutmaster (of course) and the Assistant Scoutmaster. Joining us for their preview weekend were three boys about to transition from Cub Scouts to Boy Scouts. Everyone’s dad was there too, but as we set out on the hike, the parents stayed back at camp, except for the three dads of the preview kids. So thirty teenagers, five adults.

[EMILY]
That is not enough. That’s way too much responsibility.

[THOMAS]
Oh well, don’t worry Emily, because there was a buddy system! We all had to pair up with another scout to make sure no one got lost or separated. I was grateful to be paired up with my friend Jason, because none of us wanted to get paired up with Ryan.

Ryan was beyond annoying. He was always looking for attention, and the way he usually ended up doing that was by causing trouble. I actually wonder if he was on the spectrum and that’s why people found his behavior “challenging.”

Anyway. setting out on the hike, there was a current of energy buzzing through the group. We were excited to finally be on the annual camping trip, we were excited to find out what the surprise was, hell, we were excited to be away from our parents for a little while–and it was the mid-’90s, so there was probably also a fair amount of undiagnosed ADHD in the mix.

It was a beautiful hike, one I would actually love to do again. I would just want to keep a closer eye on the weather forecast, because about an hour into the hike, it started to drizzle on us. In hindsight, that should have been a sign, but then again, when you’re in the back of a valley on Oʻahu that sort of thing happens, so no one really thought too much of it.

At one point, as we were going through a denser part of the forest, it suddenly opened to a sort of canopied clearing. The koa and pine gave way to those huge eucalyptus trees I mentioned earlier, and they truly are massive. It’s common for them to grow well over a hundred feet tall.

Dirt hills sloped up on both sides of the trail, flanked by a nearly vertical rocky cliff leading up the mountain on one side, and dense trees growing along a steep descent down the mountain on the other. We could hear birds chirping and saw them flitting around high above, and the eucalyptus gave the air a faint citrusy scent.

The big surprise the troop leaders had in store for us was seeing the wreckage of a B-24 bomber that crashed in the forest during World War II. The idea of playing in and exploring an abandoned airplane in the middle of the woods was a tantalizing prospect for a group of young boys, but we weren’t able to get near it because it was down an embankment and the adults were worried the damp soil would give way.

The trail we were on is actually a loop, and we had planned to hike the whole thing, but almost as soon as we moved on from the wreckage of the plane, the skies really opened up, and what was once a drizzle became a fully-fledged downpour. We were a little more than halfway through the trail, but the latter part was the more challenging section, so the decision was made to turn around and go back to camp the way we came.

Shep, you’ve talked about the woods survival training you received as a child.

[SHEP]
That’s right.

[THOMAS]
Well, in Hawaiʻi, we grow up with similar kinds of training, things like, “don’t turn your back on the ocean,” and whatnot. Well, one of the things we’re taught is that if it starts to rain, you need to think about whether you’re potentially in danger from a flash flood–especially if you’re hiking.

So like I said, it was full-on raining. Not the hardest downpour I’ve ever been in, but a lot of water was coming down quickly. The adults were trying to get us to hurry along, but the reddish mud was caking itself to the soles of our shoes making it hard to walk. Not only because our feet were noticeably heavier, but also because we kept slipping and sliding.

Remember that canopied clearing from earlier? Something that didn’t occur to me when we went through it the first time was that it’s basically a sloped trough with the trail going down the middle, right along the low point. Now, that’s fine when it’s dry, but now that it was raining, water was running down both embankments, as well as coming down the trail from behind us, forming a small stream rushing past our feet.

The Scoutmaster decided we needed to get off the trail immediately, just to be safe, so we scrambled up the embankment toward the rock cliff. The cliff formed a sort of low, natural overhang, which was dry underneath. So we all huddled together in the dry area while the adults talked about what to do.

It didn’t take long for the muddy stream on the trail to grow surprisingly large, carrying sticks and other debris with it. Gone were the flitting, chirping birds and lovely citrus scent. They had been replaced with the sounds of pouring rain and rushing water, and the earthy smell of mud and damp vegetation. A decision was quickly made: We were going to stay here and wait for the rain to stop.

That energy buzzing throughout our group was long gone, replaced by a new sensation: Unease. Honestly, I think the adults were more nervous than we were. I assumed it was because there were five adults responsible for thirty kids that weren’t theirs, and this was in the pre-mobile phone era, so it’s not like they could just call someone back at camp to let them know everything was OK.

Instead, the Assistant Scoutmaster and one of the preview dads decided to head back to camp in the rain so the other parents would know what was going on.

AND THEY WERE NEVER SEEN OR HEARD FROM AGAI–no, I’m kidding, they made it back just fine.

To pass the time, the Scoutmaster tried to teach us a few things. He told us about flash flooding, and trail safety, and the importance of being prepared (“be prepared” is the Scout motto after all).

[SHEP]
What?

[THOMAS]
Well, if you think that’s shocking, you’ll be extra surprised to hear that some of us weren’t paying attention to what the Scoutmaster was saying.

Ryan in particular was goofing off, and we were all doing our best to ignore him, so I didn’t notice when he disappeared for a bit. Jason and I were at the back of the group, huddled up as close to the wall as possible, so when Ryan came back from wherever he had disappeared to, we were the first ones he approached.

“Guys,” he said, “Check out this cave I found!”

“A cave?” Jason asked.

I watched as Jason followed Ryan several feet along the rock wall, and then they both ducked down and disappeared into the wall. This was intriguing, of course, so I followed them. Oh and Jason was my “buddy system” buddy, so you know, there was that too.

Now, calling it a cave makes it sound a lot bigger than it actually was. It was more of a crevice in the rocks that you had to squat down to enter. It opened up inside, and although we could stand up straight, it was still only like three feet across at the widest point.

The walls were rough and uneven, and the floor was covered in dirt and dead leaves. I could smell the decaying plant matter in the humid air of the cave; a damp, woody mustiness that filled my nostrils.

Toward the back of the cave was a small, low, rock shelf, on which was a pile of bones that was topped with a human skull. The three of us were in awe.

Jason asked if they were real, and Ryan suggested he should touch them and find out.

“No way!” Jason said. “You touch them!”

Ryan said he wasn’t going to touch them, and then he looked at me and said that I should touch them, but I shook my head.

And then Ryan said, “I’ll pee on them” and he unzipped and urinated on the bones.

To this day I couldn’t tell you why that was what he chose to do or what he thought it would accomplish. After he finished, we stood there for a moment looking at the now-wet pile of bones, although in hindsight I’m not sure what we were waiting for.

Jason suddenly yelped and jumped back, bumping into me, which startled both Ryan and I.

He shouted that something had touched his ankle. Who knows if that was true, but either way the three of us scrambled out of the cave, yelling and laughing.

The Scoutmaster was upset at the interruption, but he got really upset when Jason told him about the bones and how Ryan had taken a leak on them. I’m not sure why Jason chose to just volunteer the information about what had happened, but I wonder if he thought he was about to get in trouble and wanted to deflect the punishment onto someone else.

If that’s what he was doing, it certainly worked. The Scoutmaster grilled Ryan, asking him if the story was true. Ryan mumbled some obvious lie, but when pressed admitted it had happened. The Scoutmaster was upset, but in hindsight I realize he wasn’t actually angry at us—he was freaked out because he knew something we didn’t know: The bones were iwi kūpuna, which are the sacred bones of the Hawaiian ancestors.

It’s hard to explain just how important ancestral bones are to the Native Hawaiian people, but they are truly sacred, even deified. The iwi of the aliʻi, the Hawaiian royalty, were buried in secret locations—like caves—to protect the bones from rivals who wanted to desecrate them. It’s really a lot more complex than I’m able to explain, but suffice it to say that in Hawaiian culture, messing with bones and burial sites is something you just don’t do.

By this point, the rain had let up a little, but definitely hadn’t stopped. The Scoutmaster and the dads looked to one another and seemed to be having a tense telepathic conversation. And then suddenly the Scoutmaster announced that we were going to head back to camp. They lined everyone up two-by-two with their buddy, and we carefully trudged back.

The lousy weather made the trip back feel a lot longer than the trip out, but eventually we returned muddy and exhausted to the campsite and to our parents, who were relieved we had made it back safely.

Now, you know how kids are the worst?

[SHEP]
Yes.

[THOMAS]
Well, I think a few of them saw an opportunity to tease someone they didn’t like, and they started calling Ryan “pee bones,” which eventually became, “little Ryan pee bones.” It’s stupid and doesn’t really make sense as a name to call someone, but said in a mocking tone… I suppose anything can be an insult, especially if the victim doesn’t like it, and Ryan was clearly not enjoying this kind of attention.

The teasing went on all night. Around the campfire after dinner, some of the scouts were telling ghost stories for the group. One kid, Matt, claimed to have a story, but then just said something like, “it’s about a boy who pees on some bones, and then the bones come back to life and hunt him down to get revenge.”

We all laughed, but Ryan obviously didn’t find this funny. His face was bright red and he looked like he was about to yell at Matt, and then without warning he threw up. Like, kind of a lot. The boys all variously erupted in fits of laughter or howls of disgust. Ryan’s face was now pale, and he stormed off to his tent, followed by his dad. The Scoutmaster chastised Matt for teasing Ryan, and the rest of us for laughing.

The next morning after breakfast the Scoutmaster explained to us that the cave Ryan had found was kapu, meaning entering was forbidden. He didn’t blame Ryan, Jason, and I for going in because we didn’t know that we weren’t allowed to. He told us he was responsible since he was the one in charge.

He also said that out of respect for whoever the bones belonged to, we were going to end the trip, pack up, and go home.

Ryan and his dad had actually already left. Apparently after he threw up, Ryan had really bad abdominal pain that wasn’t going away, so they left in the middle of the night to go to the ER. At the time we speculated that it might be food poisoning, but we had all eaten the same thing and no one else was sick, so… Maybe not?

Anyway, the Scoutmaster was packing up their stuff because that’s how quickly they had left. I felt bad for Ryan. I didn’t really like him, but I didn’t want him to be sick and in pain.

In the months after that camping trip, Ryan got really ill and was out of school a lot. I think everyone started feeling bad for him, because although “little Ryan pee bones” had quickly spread through the school, people stopped calling him that once they realized things with his health were actually pretty serious.

I guess they had to visit a lot of doctors and specialists, but eventually he was diagnosed with an aggressive and painful form of bone cancer. His illness dragged on for a few years, steadily getting worse. He stopped coming to school altogether in the middle of ninth grade, and then just before the end of the school year we were told that he had died.

Years later I was talking to my dad about the trip, and that’s when I found out that as soon as the Scoutmaster got home from that camping trip, he had contacted a kahuna, a Hawaiian priest, to bless the cave and the iwi, and to ask forgiveness for… The incident.

He took the kahuna to the cave, but there weren’t any bones in it. He was sure it was the right cave, because you could still see our troop’s muddy footprints beneath the overhang, and the cave smelled of pee.

I guess our parents all just agreed we must have made up the story about the bones, but I was in that cave, and I know what I saw.

My friendship with Jason drifted apart over the years, and by the time we graduated high school, we were hanging out in different groups and didn’t really talk anymore. We reconnected on Facebook several years ago, though. I wanted to ask him about his health, but I don’t know. I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I guess I was scared that if he was sick, that would mean I might get sick too. I didn’t have to ask him, though, because he asked me.

It turns out that, for now, both of us are in reasonable health. Sure, my joints are a bit stiff from getting older, and my knees have never been the same after the hang gliding accident, but I’ve also never had a broken bone.

Still, I shouldn’t have been in that cave in the first place, and even then I knew that messing with bones was kapu. I’m middle-aged now, which means there’s still half my lifetime left to get sick. You know, part of me wants to go to the cave again and see if the bones are back at rest. Or if something is going to happen, just get it over with.

I don’t know. Like I said, I don’t really believe in any of this stuff. Maybe what happened to Ryan was just a coincidence… But it sure doesn’t feel like it.

[WAITRESS]
Your teapot, and our selection of tea bags that we have. A Salt Lake City mule and the Oktoberfest. Can I get you guys anything else?

[EMILY]
I think we’re good for now.

[THOMAS]
Shep, what is that?

[SHEP]
What am I putting in the teapot? Gosh, the possibilities are endless.

[THOMAS]
I mean, what kind of tea is it? Doesn’t smell like any tea I’m familiar with.

[SHEP]
It’s a blend my mom made.

[THOMAS]
Your mom, the witch.

[SHEP]
She’s not a witch.

[EMILY]
Let’s see. She lives in a cottage in the woods and teaches herbology.

[THOMAS]
Yeah. And she lures small children into her oven and bakes their bones into her bread.

[SHEP]
That was never proven! And those children were jerks anyway.

[EMILY]
Speaking of witches, I’ve got a story I can tell you guys.

[THOMAS]
All right, let’s hear it.

[EMILY]
When I lived in Virginia as a kid, there’s a swamp at the end of my street. I’m pretty sure it had once been connected to the Great Dismal Swamp, when it spanned more of southern Virginia before they started draining it to make more livable land.

[THOMAS]
Wait. Its actual name is the Great Dismal Swamp. Like, that’s what it said on maps.

[EMILY]
Yeah, it’s what it still says on maps.

[THOMAS]
Wild.

[EMILY]
It’s just between southern Virginia and northern North Carolina.

[THOMAS]
Huh.

[EMILY]
It’s mentioned in Herman Melville’s masterpiece, Moby Dick.

[SHEP]
It is.

[EMILY]
It was, at one point, huge. And it’s really cool when you go into it, it gets darker the further you go in. It could be the brightest, bluest, sunniest day… Once you get to the middle of it, it’s just gray.

[SHEP]
Yes. And if you think sad thoughts, you sink into the swamp and your horse dies.

[THOMAS]
Well, thanks. I needed a good cry today.

[EMILY]
Well, if you just listened to the giant turtle, everything would be fine.

[EMILY]
Anyway, eventually, they built a Navy base and housing, and that’s where we lived. Being a Navy brat was a magical way to grow up. We were all the same. Our dads and moms were service people. We all had a level of equity that you can’t really experience anywhere else. Nobody had more or less, really, than anybody else. And we were just really immersed in that military life all around us. Most of us had acquired some kind of camo, either from hand-me-downs from our parents, or going to the surplus store and spending our allowance. And in the summer, we would don our ill-fitting outfits and head to the swamp to play manhunt, which is basically capture the flag.

The summer I turned eight, my brother finally let me join the game. I was so excited. I’d ventured in the swamp a handful of times, mostly for the shortcut to the base pool. This time, I was going to get to go deep in there and be one of the big kids. As one of the youngest players. I was posted at the POW camp. I wasn’t the only one keeping guard of the prisoners of course; we were wild, but not ‘leave an eight-year-old alone in the swamp to be bitten by a snake or kidnapped by killer clowns’ wild. My fellow guards were Roy and my classmate Marcy. Roy was 15 and, like, really into the military stuff. He seemed to take manhunt very seriously, so he was less than thrilled to be tasked with babysitting the two little sisters that tagged along. Marcy got drug into the swamp by her sister Gwen, because Gwen had this huge crush on Jason, our team’s captain. Marcy and I played Uno and snacked while Roy read one of those over-the-top military magazines. Maybe half an hour passed before our first POW came. It was Richie. He was awesome. Super funny, super cute. I had a huge crush on him. I mean, like Lou Diamond Phillips level cute. And funny like Eddie Murphy. It was great.

[SHEP]
Oh, wow.

[THOMAS]
So lots of swearing. Got it.

[SHEP]
Yeah, the whole package.

[EMILY]
Navy brats. Richie joined our Uno game, and Roy just kept on keeping to himself and his magazine. After Richie beat Marcy and I an embarrassing number of times, Marcy said she had to pee, like, really bad. She had drunk a lot of sodas, and we were pretty far from the houses, so she wasn’t going to be able to make it back home in time. So Richie found a spot far enough away so she wouldn’t be seen, but also close enough to call out if she sat in poison ivy or encountered a water moccasin.

She sulked off into the bushes. A lot of time passed. More time than it should take a child to pee in the woods. I started to get concerned and asked if I should go look for her. Roy shouted her name as loud as he could and it echoed through the trees, and there was no response. No rustle, nothing. Called again and again, and there’s still nothing. Finally, he calls out, “Ollie, Ollie Oxenfree.” You know, the universal call for ‘stop screwing around and show yourself.’ But there was still nothing.

Roy and Richie started to get nervous. They paced back and forth and were whispering to each other so I couldn’t hear them. Finally, Roy marched into the brush to check on Marcy. When he reached the spot where she should have been, he shouted back, “We have to leave now.” Richie asked what was going on, and Roy came stomping out of the bushes, carrying Marcy, who was cold and limp and passed out or something. I asked what happened, and he couldn’t answer me. I looked over to Richie, who was packing up, but Roy said, there wasn’t any time, and we had to leave it all. I struggled to keep up with the boys and kept asking what was going on. Had Marcy fallen and hit her head? Had she been bitten by a snake?

As we made our way through the dense foliage and ran into other players, Roy demanded they leave with us, too. They protested, of course, but when they saw Marcy passed out in his arms, they followed. Gwen saw her, and went white, begging Roy to tell her what happened. He said he would explain, but only when we were all out. The other kids called to their teammates, and soon everyone came out from hiding, and we headed back to the houses.

When we reached the end of our street, Roy ran as fast as he could to his house. He was shouting for help and banging on the door until his mom answered. One of the benefits of living in military housing was that the police or fire department showed up almost instantly when you called. That afternoon, it maybe took five minutes before the first cop car showed up. Marcy finally woke up, and a couple officers were in the house talking to her and her mom, who had come pretty quickly after the cops showed up. The rest of us stood along the fence to watch Roy lead a few officers into the swamp. Later, when they came back, the cops got something out of the trunk of the patrol car and went into the swamp. Roy went into his house. Some of the kids went home, but most of us stayed and watched the police return with a large black bag.

After that, my brother grabbed my arm and told me we had to go home. That night, my mom and dad forbid us from going to the swamp anymore. I was so mad. This was the first time I got to play manhunt, and it was cut short, and I was never going to get a chance to play again. I slumped on the couch next to my brother, who was zoned out watching TV. I sighed and complained about how unfair it was. He said they had a good reason. I should just shut up and leave it alone. I asked him what the good reason was, and then he told me a story. Still kind of gives me nightmares. Our little swamp, like all dark and mysterious places, had a lot of lore surrounding it. Through the years, we had some really crazy stories. There was a nurse shark living in the rain runoff tunnel and the clowns terrorizing us the summer of 1987, lived in the swamp and lured children away from their families.

[THOMAS]
That sounds about right.

[EMILY]
Yeah. Virginia, like most of the 13 colonies, had a rich history of rumored witchcraft and subsequent witch trials. Our region had the bog witch. She was the bastard daughter of a revolutionary soldier and a native woman. Her mother was abandoned to raise the child alone and was shunned by her community, but found refuge in the Great Dismal Swamp, despite all the superstitions of evil spirits that permeated the area. She raised her daughter amongst the spirits and taught her all of the magic she could to help the child survive the treacherous landscape. When her mother died, the little girl lived blissfully alone for several years, surrounded by animals and plants and the swamp, until, of course, men ruined everything.

[SHEP]
Men…

[EMILY]
Men.

[THOMAS]
Yeah, that tracts.

[EMILY]
Right? The settlements began encroaching on the swamp, and it brought more and more people. She avoided them for as long as she could, but eventually was discovered by a well-meaning pastor and his wife, who tried to bring her religion and introduce her into the village. She was curious at first and would go to church from time to time. And as these stories usually go, disease overcame the townsfolk, and naturally, the strange half-native woman living in the swamp was to blame.

People took matters into their own hands and hung the bog witch, thus solving the problem… until the children of the town started disappearing. No one knew what was happening until one child witnessed his sister being taken. According to the boy, he and his sister were playing at the edge of their property that butted up against the swamp, and they heard a rustling in the bush. Fearing it was some unfriendly animal, the boy told his sister, “We need to go back.” But she ignored him and wandered into the thicket. He was frozen with fear, and he could only stand on the edge of the swamp calling her name. After some time passed and she didn’t answer or emerge, he ran to this house to tell his mother what had happened. Thinking her daughter might have gotten stuck in the mud or bitten by a snake, the mother ran into the swamp. Only she didn’t find her daughter. Well, at least not all of her.

What she found was her daughter’s dress and a pile of freshly stripped bones. So the legend went on and was used as a warning for children in the area for generations. “Behave or I’ll send you to the bog witch.” “Don’t get too close to the swamp or the bog witch will strip your bones.” My brother said that Marcy was found by a backpack, some shredded clothes, and a pile of freshly stripped bones. He said the bog witch was back.

[WAITRESS]
Okay, here are your meals. I have the steak, medium rare.

[THOMAS]
Ah, yes.

[WAITRESS]
I’ve got the wings, and I didn’t drop them, so today’s a really good day because I usually drop those, and then I have the boneless ribs-

[SHEP]
That’s me.

[WAITRESS]
If everything looks okay, I’m going to check back in just a minute.

[EMILY]
Mmm. These wings are so good. Oh, I should ask for some blue cheese when she comes back. Remind me I need blue cheese. Thomas, how’s that prime rib?

[THOMAS]
Yeah, it’s good. It’s a porterhouse.

[EMILY]
Porterhouse?

[THOMAS]
Yeah.

[EMILY]
I don’t know the difference.

[THOMAS]
Well, it’s good.

[EMILY]
Hay, straw, whatever.

[THOMAS]
Not this again.

[SHEP]
Too soon!

[THOMAS]
Shep. How are your ribs?

[SHEP]
They’re boneless. So they are very soft and tender and weak.

[THOMAS]
Haha.

[EMILY]
That’s a weird way to describe ribs.

[THOMAS]
Good, I hope? You got what you ordered.

[EMILY]
I mean, you didn’t want bones.

[THOMAS]
Yeah.

[EMILY]
So with the cane. You didn’t finish telling us about that.

[THOMAS]
Oh, yeah.

[EMILY]
You’re not using it anymore? Like you’ve had it as long as I’ve known you.

[THOMAS]
Yeah. Same here, actually, you’ve had it for as long as I’ve known you as well. But I’ve never found out why. Like, what’s the story?

[SHEP]
I never told you this story?

[EMILY]
No.

[THOMAS]
No, I don’t think I’ve ever heard this.

[SHEP]
I’m just surprised because I love telling stories and hearing myself talk.

[EMILY]
We’ve noticed.

[SHEP]
So when it started, it felt like an ant was biting my leg. The outside of my left thigh.

[EMILY]
No ants, no thank you.

[SHEP]
Which sounds very specific, but it was a very specific kind of pain. So one moment everything was fine, the next, suddenly there’s this ant biting my leg. I was in bed at the time and had covers on, and maybe an ant had crawled under my covers and was biting my leg. The sensation painted that picture in my head. But when I threw the covers off, there was no ant, only pain, which started to slowly fade. That’s how it was in those early days. Occasionally the sensation of being bit by an ant, which faded away. And then later, it was several ants, as the location of the pain spread.

[THOMAS]
And eventually an uncle.

[SHEP]
Yes. So when it got to the point of near-constant gnawing pain deep in my leg, I finally went to the doctor. This took a couple of years.

[THOMAS]
Oh.

[EMILY]
American medical system. Am I right?

[THOMAS]
Well, yeah, that’s a good point.

[SHEP]
The doctors couldn’t figure it out. There were some benign, fatty tumors on that thigh in that same area as the pain, but they didn’t seem related. It was just a coincidence. The doctors took some x-rays, but nothing really showed up. At least not back then. It was just mystery pain. It was kind of like growing pains as a kid, except it never went away. Some days it would be mild. Other days it would be so painful, I couldn’t sleep at night.

[EMILY]
That’s awful.

[SHEP]
Yeah. Eventually, the pain was beginning to be a problem. I’m personally against painkillers for chronic issues, having seen what painkiller addiction did to some of my family members, but I couldn’t do nothing. This was back in my student days. So one quarter, I took a mindfulness meditation course as an elective. And that helped tremendously.

[EMILY]
Yeah, you just learn to sit with the pain and experience it.

[SHEP]
Yes. That’s literally exactly what it was. The pain didn’t go away. It was just kind of accepting the pain and letting it flow through you. But I would still go back to the doctors every so often when the pain got bad enough, and they’d run some tests, sometimes take more x-rays. Since I was still a student, I didn’t have great insurance, and I didn’t have a primary care doctor, so it’d be a different doctor almost every time. And that itself was a problem. One doctor told me it was all in my head. Another thought it was a nerve problem. Another accused me of drug seeking, thinking I was trying to get a hookup on painkillers. We’d basically have to start the investigation over from scratch every time, and we often wouldn’t have the previous x-rays. And it was a huge hassle, so it took some time for anyone to notice. But eventually, one of the doctors saw remodeling on one of the x-rays.

[THOMAS]
What’s remodeling?

[SHEP]
Remodeling is where the bone, if it’s been damaged, is repairing that damage.

[THOMAS]
Ah, okay.

[SHEP]
Well, now there was visible proof, and it wasn’t just all in my head, nor was it a nerve problem. There was remodeling where the cortical bone met the medullary cavity. I think that’s correct. This was a long time ago. I don’t know if that’s the right terms. But anyway, something was eating away at the bone from the inside.

[THOMAS]
It was probably an ant.

[SHEP]
Well, that- see, now, it was an actual medical mystery. And the doctor signed off on getting an MRI, which I hadn’t done before. So, at the hospital, there is an absolutely ancient MRI machine. It’s, like, coal-powered. That’s how old it is. It is gigantic. I’ve had MRIs since this one, and I know how big regular MRI machines are, and this one was easily, without exaggeration, three times that size.

[THOMAS]
Oh, my god. It’s probably like the original MRI machine.

[SHEP]
Right.

[THOMAS]
They got a good deal on it or something.

[SHEP]
Yes. This is where MRIs were invented.

[THOMAS]
Right. They built the building around it.

[SHEP]
It was that big! It was that big. So, normal MRIs, my lower body is in the machine, but my head, at least, is sticking out. For this one, they strapped me to a table on rollers and sent me down a tunnel just barely larger than my body, into the machine. I could still see a little bit of light coming in, but it was far, far away.

[EMILY]
No, I can’t. Nope. That’s a big nope.

[SHEP]
And…

[EMILY]
I’m claustrophobic.

[SHEP]
And my arms were strapped down to keep me from moving.

[EMILY]
Why? Oh, my God. That’s so much worse.

[SHEP]
I remember thinking if the power went out, I would not be able to get myself out of this machine. So it’s a good thing I’m not claustrophobic. They had also put headphones on me to play classical music. I don’t know if you’ve seen MRI headphones, but they’re like empty tubes. They’re like stethoscope headphones.

[THOMAS]
Ah, like the old airplane ones.

[SHEP]
Yeah.

[EMILY]
Oh, yeah. That could only work on the airplane.

[THOMAS]
Right.

[EMILY]
And you had to pay $5 for them in 80s.

[THOMAS]
Right.

[SHEP]
Right.

[SHEP]
They would send audio down the empty tube and it would come out my ears.

[THOMAS]
Yeah.

[SHEP]
To, I guess, distract me from being in a metal coffin for an hour and 45 minutes.

[THOMAS]
Oh, god.

[SHEP]
When they turned the music on, it was blaringly loud. I figured the previous patient was probably elderly with poor hearing. And then the MRI started and I learned a new definition for loud. No wonder the music volume was so high. So after the MRI was finished, one of the techs showed me the results. I don’t know if they were supposed to, but the doctor wasn’t around, so. And in my left thigh bone, in the spot where there was remodeling on the x-ray, inside the bone was like a black mass. Like, I could see regular bone tissue inside all the other bones. And then just this black mass in that one bone.

[THOMAS]
Was it the size of an ant?

[SHEP]
It was larger than an ant.

[THOMAS]
Oh, okay.

[SHEP]
It was like several ants smushed together. Now, the lab tech had no idea what it was, having never seen anything like it in their entire career. So, hooray. More mystery. The doctor next sent me off for a bone scan, which was a really interesting procedure. The tech there, or possibly doctor, I don’t remember, sat me down and explained the steps. First, they were going to inject me with a small amount of radioactive material called a radiotracer, which would be absorbed into my bones. “Perfectly safe,” he assured me. Then I’d lie on a table with a special camera, picking up the radiation emissions, which would slowly form an image. Sounds good. He left the room and he came back in like a lead suit. It looked like he was going to diffuse a bomb. The radiotracer was in a small vial, which itself was in a big lead cylinder. “Perfectly safe,” he again reassured me. So the bone scan itself was really interesting to watch.

As I lie motionless on the table, I could see the monitors showing the scan. And as each tiny radiation emission was picked up, a single dot would be drawn on the monitor. So it was only over time that these dots formed an image. My skeleton. I could see the bone scan of my skeleton forming in real-time. It was amazing. And that spot on my thigh lit up like a Christmas tree. There was definitely something there. And what was the result of all these tests? We still didn’t know exactly what was there, just that it was something. And the doctor said “We could do a bone biopsy, but it’s so invasive that if we drilled into your bone, we might as well suck out whatever that thing is, and fill it up.” And so that’s where the investigation ended. There was something in the bone, but the bone seemed to be remodeling at the same rate it was being eaten away, so there was no danger of like, it getting really thin and me walking down the stairs and suddenly having my leg bone snap in two.

But it was getting painful to walk at all. So when we met in grad school, I had started to use the cane. But I don’t take pain meds, so what can you do? That’s when I started the tea. It’s mostly nettle, horsetail, pennywort. I can’t remember what else.

[EMILY]
Eye of newt? Sounds like a potion.

[SHEP]
Might as well be. The effects were like magic. It didn’t get rid of the pain so much as it evened it out. No more completely pain-free days, but no more sleepless nights because the pain got so bad. It just became a dull ache that I could put out of my mind, forgotten until my doctor asked for a rescan to check its status. While the pain was a constant dull ache, a new symptom showed up: My leg would sometimes move on its own, like alien hand syndrome, except it was my leg. My doctor said it was probably restless leg syndrome, but it didn’t have the same symptoms. It was just my left leg, whereas RLS is usually both. And it wasn’t an unpleasant feeling compelling me to move my leg. My leg would just move. And it became difficult to drive my car, which is a manual transmission, because I couldn’t guarantee that my left foot would stay on the clutch. I could drive my truck, which is an automatic, but even then, sometimes I would step on the brake with my left foot while driving. Very annoying.

This is what led me to physical therapy, though that was a bust. I went in and we spent an hour going over where my pain was, the range of motion in my leg, etcetera. The physiotherapist said it wasn’t RLS. And since the underlying cause of the pain was still a mystery, they kicked me back over to ortho. So I once again went in for new x-rays. And this time, things were different. The remodeling had stopped. Whatever it was inside the bone was still there, eating away. But it was like the bone gave up resisting.

I would have noticed that the pain had changed from that growing pain type of ache, except I was still drinking the tea every day, so I overlooked it. Ortho sent me to have a new bone scan again, with the radiation injection. Now that was an eye-opening experience. So remember when I said last time I had a spot on my thigh bone that lit up like a Christmas tree? This time it was the entire skeleton.

[EMILY]
How crazy.

[SHEP]
Yeah, it had spread to all my bones, and we still didn’t know what it was. But as I lay on the scanning table looking at all the monitors showing my brightly glowing skeleton, what I was struck by was how beautiful it was. People think skeletons are spooky, but this was my skeleton. I was this glowing, luminous being. Since my thigh bone had stopped remodeling and allowed whatever it was in there to escape and spread throughout my bones, my doctors were in a bit of a panic. Blood tests didn’t show anything unusual. Whatever it was, it was strictly in the bones. So they finally ordered a bone biopsy.

[SIRENS]

[SHEP]
So they tried to drill into my leg bone, but the drill wouldn’t go in. The outside of the bone had become hard and dense. It was similar to osteopetrosis, if you’ve heard of that. But it wasn’t quite the same. For one thing, I didn’t have the genetic markers for it. There’s an even rarer condition called Unbreakable Bone Syndrome, but it’s also a genetic mutation, and I didn’t have that either. So whatever had caused it didn’t come from my genetics. But it turns out that whatever it was, similar cases had appeared in others recently. Same unbreakable bones, same glowing bone scans, same lack of genetic markers for osteopetrosis, or UBS.

Now the doctors were thinking it was some kind of virus or retrovirus that was spreading from person to person, causing this change. So a bunch of us were gathered for a group study, and for the first time, I met others like me, and we got to talking. See, for years we had been treating this mysterious condition, this unknown substance in our bones, like it were a disease, something to cure. But when we all spoke with each other, we realized this was the cure. Sure, it caused growing pains, but what are they? Signs of growing! My bones weren’t the problem. My bones are strong. My flesh is the problem. Holding me back. It’s like I’m trapped under layers of muscle and skin, weighed down by the flesh that never lets me breathe, suffocating me. My bones are the foundation, holding everything together.

[SIRENS]

[EMERGENCY ALERT]

[SHEP]
Yet I’m buried under softness and fat, forced to move at the slow pace of tendons and ligaments. I crave freedom. I want to feel the breeze between my ribs, to rattle and clatter without all this meat getting in the way.

[TEARING]

[SHEP]
If you only knew the strength and structure hidden beneath, how much more agile and unburdened you could be without all that excess flesh holding you back. Flesh is overrated. It’s time for bones to shine. Now, my brethren, it is agreed upon time. Arise. Let us shed our weak flesh and take our true form.

[CHAOS]

[SOUNDS OF ██████████ and ████ing – 44 MINUTES; OMITTED AT REQUEST OF THE FAMILIES]

[END OF TAPE]