Chapter 4: The Boy in the Bag

Mr. Wallace’s Story.

(1)

My name is Thomas Wallace, age sixty-five. I taught at the local college for most of my life, now retired.

This case goes back nearly twenty-five years. It’s been buried a long time.

It wasn’t a complicated or bizarre mystery—the facts were clear, evidence solid. The killer was caught and the case closed.

It was a murder.

The victim was Henry Young—a freshman, just fifteen, the summer of 2000.

Henry went missing one evening. His family searched everywhere, frantic, but found nothing.

A week later, they found him—halfway up a nearby hill, in a ravine by a creek.

I didn’t see the scene myself, but a colleague who lived nearby did. She went to see the commotion and later described it to me. It was gruesome.

It was late summer—not too hot, not yet cool.

The boy was wrapped in a canvas duffel bag. When they opened it, the body was already decomposing.

Even yards away, the smell hit you—a sick blend of rotten meat, creek water, and something chemical that clung to the back of your throat.

My friend tried to describe it: “I’ve never smelled anything so foul—like pork left out for days, but sourer. It’s not something you ever want to smell again.”

Details like that stick with you, haunting your dreams like humidity in a Midwest August.

When the police unzipped the bag, they found a boy—sixteen or seventeen, battered and brutalized, the elements making things worse. It was cruel and terrifying.

When the coroner bagged him, his arms hung limp, swaying in the breeze. But his eyes—those eyes seemed to lock on every person there, accusing, as if he’d become a vengeful ghost by nightfall.

Henry’s family collapsed in grief, had to be carried away by police.

Only after forensics finished and the body was taken away did a few officers stay behind. Then some curious townsfolk crept closer, finding only flattened weeds and stained ground—old blood and bodily fluids leaving brownish patches.

When the sirens faded and the tape fluttered, the hillside seemed to hold its breath. Nobody slept that night, especially not the Young family—their porch light burned till sunrise.

When I heard this, I couldn’t shake the image. The look in that boy’s eyes terrified me. I’d always been a rule-follower, a good kid. I’d never seen anything so awful.

For days, I barely slept. Even the hum of the fridge made me jump. I checked the locks twice, listening for creaks, haunted by a kid I’d never met.