Archive of the Odd

Welcome to our newest web feature, Found Fiction Friday! With authors’ permission, we’ll be posting stories from our issues online. Formatting is still unique to the books, but the story is free for all to read.

Todays’ story is by Maureen O’Leary. Maureen O’Leary lives in California. Her work appears in Bourbon Penn, Nightmare Magazine, Tahoma Literary Review, and other places. She is a graduate of Ashland MFA. Queen of the Underground first appeared in Issue 1.

Warnings: Kidnapping, cults, child abuse, references to drugs

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Teen Vogue
Identity
They Told Me I Wasn’t Human
by Lana Joy

I don’t remember much about my childhood. I have the memory of the inside of a dirty camper. A thin wool blanket. A filthy bowl. I didn’t have a name. My name Lana Joy was given to me by Alejandra Sanchez, the woman who saved me.

My mother and I lived with a cult called The Underground Travelers, homeless people with kids who lived under the freeway. They convinced her I wasn’t human, and that her real child was switched at birth for me. Eventually my mother left and I was kept locked in the camper.

I don’t remember the day Alejandra Sanchez found me nearly dead in the camper. I was ten years old and weighed fifty pounds. The doctors said that I was barely alive. Alejandra was studying the Underground Travelers as a part of her PhD in Sociology, and she risked her life to sneak into the camp one night and rescue me. The Underground Travelers believed that kidnapping and scapegoating one child could keep their own kids safe from magical creatures such as fairies. They were totally deluded.

When I look back I feel great that I am a senior in high school and accepted to lots of great colleges. I’ve experienced trauma and sometimes it sneaks up on me when I least expect it. I still hate ugly places, and I cannot stand being dirty. I crave nature and beautiful flowers. I love sweet smelling soaps and shampoos. I am really into my own style. I want to show the world that I am a person and worthy of being loved.

Thesis Memo
Lana Joy
Socio 633

Underground Travelers and the Exiled Child

Homeless encampments in the Hillsdale metropolitan area are comprised of transients banding together for safety or the pooling of resources. The group self-named The Underground Travelers are unique firstly in that they are self-sufficient and insular. Secondly, these communities are comprised entirely of families with children.
The group resides approximately five square miles from the Hillsdale Mall. Local law enforcement regularly raids the encampments as they coagulate under freeway overpasses. For the past two decades, the U.T.’s have proven impervious to offers of aid. They reform after being scattered by police. With the exception of the single child scapegoatism I seek to study, they have no history of crime other than vagrancy. There is evidence that the scapegoated child is kidnapped from outside the community as a talisman against supernatural forces or mythical creatures.

Hillsdale Post Dispatch
Staff Writer

Missing Hillsdale Children

The FBI has opened investigations into the growing number of cases of missing children in the metropolitan area of Hillsdale, California. Law enforcement suggests local parents exercise extreme caution as ninety-seven minor children between the ages of four and sixteen have vanished in the past five years from the Hillsdale mall. Officials have no leads but suggest that parents monitor their children’s internet use and warn them against getting into cars with adults they do not know.

Transcript of Zoom Meeting Between Lana Joy and Dr. Alejandra Sanchez

AS: You’re muted, sweetheart.
LJ: Oh, sorry. Can you hear me?
AS: Yes, how are you? You look tired.
LJ: I’m sorry. I tried to—
AS: No, it’s okay. Tell me how it’s going.
LJ: Very well, actually. They’re—ah—letting me get close. One of the younger women is friendly. I call her E. in my notes.
AS: Does E. have a child?
LJ: She’s my age. No kids, no partner. She’s kind of a roaming nanny.
AS: Interesting. Do you remember her?
LJ: I don’t, but the—ah—trauma—there are memory gaps.
AS: And any sign of a scapegoat, of abuse?
LJ: No. I’m not saying I’m disappointed but that’s actually the reason for me calling this meeting. My thesis seems to be falling apart here and—
AS: It’s only been six weeks.
LJ: I know. But these aren’t the same people I grew up with. They talk a lot about peace and love and seem more interested in how to get the best weed than anything else. They call themselves the Underground but frankly I think they’re—
AS: Posers.
LJ: Exactly.
AS: So more of a modern day utopia.
LJ: Under an overpass in piles of garbage and broken chain link, but yeah. I smell like diesel fumes all the time.
AS: Yeah, I recall that being hard to take, Any idea why the Hillsdale underpass? They could go anywhere if they aren’t bound by original Underground cultural protocols.
LJ: There’s talk of a trip to the desert next month to spend the winter.
AS: So again—
LJ: Not true Underground. The kids all seem pretty happy, actually.
(Silence)
AS: Well, you’re there by Hillsdale Mall, right? Go to Sephora and see what you can do about the circles under your eyes. Let them look after you for a few hours.
LJ: Sounds nice, to be honest.
AS: Let’s meet tomorrow. And remember that this is a positive finding. You’ve learned that there won’t be anymore—that is—
LJ: Kids who went through I did. No, you’re right. Maybe I could shift my study to anarchist social utopian—
AS: But for now, Sephora, okay? I’ll text with a time for the next call.
LJ: See you then.

Post on NextDoor Hillsdale Website
Rosemary Asbury
Aliens in Hillsdale Mall

I am a skeptic and believe in facts only but theres (sic) something going on at Hillsdale Mall. Hillsdale Mall is unsafe for kids. There are people there who I don’t know are even people I mean there is such a thing as too perfect if you know what I mean. Ladies with strange eyes and I am not prejudiced either but men who don’t look right. These people are watching other people’s kids I can tell. You know how you can just tell?

Carey Gildroy East Hillsdale
Lol

Margaret Taylor Hillsdale Park
This is racist garbage. I have lost all faith in humanity at this point.

Lilly Fine East Hillsdale
There are ladies there whose eyes are full of blue fire.

Carey Gildroy East Hillsdale
Ur high.

Shredded letter found in Lana Joy’s room at the Ramada Inn, Hillsdale, California, reconstructed.

You know that feeling when you have been away from home too long? You’re sweaty and exhausted and you finally get home and it’s such a relief. It was like that in the Sephora today. I sat in the salon chair and felt held like how Alejandra held me when I was a kid. I’m thinking of Alejandra and wish I could remember her rescuing me from the trailer. That moment must have been so sweet. The woman at the salon raked her nails through my hair, and took me to a back room to a tub full of hot water and roses. I let this stranger undress me and I felt so good. Did I lick honey from her fingers? Did she kiss my lips? She oiled my arms and legs and made my hair shining and soft and I’m back in this hotel room with its beige wallpaper that hurts my ears with how ugly it is but I can still smell the rose steam of that back room, and there were children there, but is that possible? It wasn’t just a room. There was grass under our feet and the children were dancing in a circle to guitar music that was from another world. There must have been drugs in the tea they gave me. But I look in the mirror now and see a light in my eyes and long and terrible teeth that would eat something living just to taste the fresh blood, or else be satisfied with the silky slip of rose petals between my lips, lying in the sun, listening to the most beautiful heartbreaking music. . . . .

Email exchange between Dr. Alejandra Sanchez and Lana Joy:

To: Dr. Alejandra Sanchez, PhD
From: Lana Joy
Subject: thanks
I’ll give the Underground Traveler study one more week before returning home. This study is a bust and to be honest, I am not sorry. This could be a way for me to close the door on my past.

To: Lana Joy
From: Dr. Alejandra Sanchez, Ph.D
Subject: Re: thanks
Lana, I am not sorry either to hear that the barbarism of the Traveling Underground is over. The tone of your email is light, and you sound hopeful. Perhaps the life you have saved here is your own? I will be delighted to help you form a new project.

To: Dr. Alejandra Sanchez, PhD
From: Lana Joy
Subject: Re: Re: thanks
The vibe is different in the camp. The children are tucked away and people aren’t meeting me in the eye. E. has become less a friendly guide and more a guard. The interesting thing is they don’t want me to leave. They are not trying to force me to stay, but they told me that they don’t want me to go. Going to see this to the end.

Retrieved text messages between Lana Joy and Dr. Alejandra Sanchez:
7:45 p.m.
LJ: Just a heads up. Staying one more night with UT camp. Something’s up. I’ll let you know.
AS: Lana?

11:23 p.m.
LJ: every one of these families has a missing kid. They think the mall has them. Insanity. They’re discussing a trade now. But trading what?
A.S.: Get out of there.
LJ: I’m part of this now.
AS: You are not part of this. You are an impartial academic.
LJ: that was never true

1:13 a.m.
LJ: The exchange. A kid. Burned out trailer. Kid inside. Knocking. E.’s job is to feed her. She’s alive. They don’t know I’m here
AS: Go back to the Ramada and call me from there in the next ten minutes or I’m calling the police.
LJ: This is the story.

Retrieved from Lana Joy’s Laptop: Google search history
Changelings
Did fairies steal children in old stories?
Faeries (Do you mean fairies?)
Faery sightings in modern times
Hillsdale missing children
Faeries in Hillsdale
Drugs that make you see faeries
How do I know if I am going crazy?
How do I know if I am a faery?

Faery
From Wikipedia, the free encycolopedia
Changelings

Faery (fae, fay) changelings are mythological creatures from Celtic folklore. According to myth, faeries sometimes kidnap human babies and leave a feral faery child in its place. These magical creatures have human appearance and are often obsessed with beauty, perfumes, nature, and children…

Faeries have long been known to steal human children and leave changelings in their place. Certain human societies resorted to stealing faery children, usually females, to hold hostage to prevent further kidnappings of human children by faeries. In documented cases, parents accused of abuse have claimed their child to be in possession of inhuman, demonic and/or supernatural characteristics.

Weird Hillsdale Subreddit Post

Manicsheep271
I took this video on an iphone 7 from about twenty meters away on the night of October 18 for more proof that something’s fucked up in Hillsdale. Check out 2:24.
(A grainy video lit by streetlamp. A camper van appear in frame and there is a weak knocking from inside. A female figure in a hooded sweatshirt runs from behind the trailer holding a hammer. She pries the door open and disappears inside the camper. At 2:20 the woman reappears carrying a child covered in a dirty blanket, one white arm dangles from underneath. At 2:24 the child and the woman look at the camera with shining reflective eyes. The young woman runs with the child to a parked Prius. Gets in. Drives away. At 2:27 human figures appear with hammers, axes, and other tools, descend on the trailer and tear it apart. By 2:33 it is doused in gasoline and set aflame.)
top comments
[-] nottodayNA957
whoever denies aliens is in on it at this point.
[-] lucis_aterna
Alien. This is high-level government undercover operation. Careful what you post.
[-] Walnood
fake news
[-] jadwigga
So fake, man. Try harder.
[-] dazefunny
Not from outer space. Think inner space. Think Earth. Past earth. Old earth. Preter-earth. The Hillsdale Mall is a portal to the underground.
[-] fionamsk
faeries

Hillsdale Police Department
Incident Report

Hillsdale Mall – A mall security guard said thirty men and women shattered the glass doors of the eastern entrance using construction tools. The suspects rushed in, ignoring the guard’s warnings to cease. The guard followed the suspects to Sephora where the suspects utilized crowbars to attempt to open the store’s metal gate. The guard heard a woman shout “Give us back our children.” The guard smelled gasoline. He noted that several of the suspects held incendiary devices and cans of fuel. He retreated to an outdoor location to wait for police. When police and firefighters arrived the mall’s fire sprinkler system had activated and many in the crowd ran out before they could be detained. Police arrested nine suspects at the scene.

Unsigned postcard addressed to Dr. Alejandra Sanchez

WELCOME TO HILLSDALE over a photograph of the mall
I have her. She’s safe.
I know what I am. Are you one too?