Penpal (novel)

Penpal

Author	Dathan Auerbach
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre	Fiction, horror
Published	2012
Publisher	1000Vultures
Media type	Print, e-book
Pages	252 pages
ISBN	098554550X

Penpal is a 2012 self-published horror/thriller novel and the debut novel of the American author Dathan Auerbach. The work was first published in paperback on July 11, 2012 through 1000Vultures and is based on a series of popular creepypasta stories that Auerbach posted to Reddit.^[1] The book follows an unnamed protagonist that finds himself the focus of an obsessed stalker who tracks him throughout his childhood.

Film rights to Penpal were optioned by producer Rich Middlemas in 2012.^[2]

Plot

Penpal is told via a series of non-linear recollections by an anonymous narrator trying to make sense of mysterious events that happened to him during his childhood, the truth of which was kept from him by his mother all his life;

As a young boy entering kindergarten, the narrator befriends another student named Josh, and the two become very close. The narrator mentions that the school he attended was a school that had children "grow" using groups, such as Group Sky, Group Sea, Group Community, etc. One day, their class conducts a penpal experiment, in which the children tie a letter to a balloon and send it off. Most of the children receive a letter back, but the narrator does not until the very end of the year, when polaroids are mailed to him. He also reveals that Josh had the most photos in the entire class. By the time he gets his photos, though, he goes home with 50. Eventually he realizes all of the photos feature him and he shows his mother who, at the same moment, opens a letter containing a photo of her son and Josh playing in the woods behind the house. She becomes upset and calls the police. Some time later, the narrator awakes in the middle of the woods late in the night. He can't understand how he got there since his feet are clean and unharmed. He makes his way home to find that his mom and the police had found a note on his bed, supposedly written by him, saying that he wanted to run away. However, the narrator points out that he didn't write it, as his name was misspelled. Alarmed, his mother forces them to swiftly move to a new neighborhood, straining the relationship between the narrator and Josh. Despite this, the narrator's mom and Josh's dad allow the boys to continue seeing each other, although his mother becomes very stern and manic about them never, ever leaving the house after dark.

The narrator and Josh decide to explore the forested area across the lake behind the narrator's house and map out the area. During this adventure, they meet an old woman with Alzheimers named Mrs. Maggie, who owns a house near the lake and mistakes the boys for her two sons who moved away. She often tries to invite them into her house, though they refuse each time. After building a makeshift raft out of old construction equipment, the boys sail across the lake to the unexplored area and begin mapping it out. Some time later, they begin to realize they are being watched by an unseen figure in the woods, and in panic, destroy the map and the raft. They swim back to the shore and desperately try to make it home before the narrator's mother realize they've broken the rules and ventured into the woods alone. The narrator runs into Mrs. Maggie and asks to go into her house to dry off. He's surprised when she turns him down, telling him her late husband is home. A few days later, the narrator learns that Mrs. Maggie had been brutally murdered and dismembered by someone who moved into her house. Her house is deemed a hazard zone and is labeled for demolition.

A couple years later, the narrator's cat named Boxes disappears, prompting him and Josh to sneak out to his old house to see if Boxes had run there. Knowing Boxes enjoyed hiding in the crawlspace beneath the house, the narrator ventures there only to find a pile of animal carcasses next to an old brown blanket and bowls of cat food. Thinking his mother left them there for Boxes, he continues to search for his cat while talking to Josh over his walkie-talkie. Josh, meanwhile, has gone looking around the house and finds a room filled with the narrators clothes and covered with Polaroids of the narrator. Someone enters the house and begins to chase Josh, who escapes with the narrator, but not before the person takes a picture of Josh and he drops his walkie-talkie. After getting home, the narrator hears faint meowing coming from his walkie-talkie, realizing the person in the house abducted Boxes.

Josh and the narrator begin seeing each other less and less as the years go by. Eventually, the narrator's 12th birthday comes and he invites Josh to his party, who accepts. During the party, Josh seems troubled, which results in him leaving early. When the narrator asks what's wrong, Josh says he hasn't been sleeping well and thinks he's sleepwalking. Before leaving, he apologizes for not bringing the narrator a gift, and tells him he has an idea for a gift for his next birthday. The narrator notes that this was the last time he ever saw Josh.

Some years later, the narrator is now a teenager and has made some new friends. They go to an old movie theater, where the narrator runs into Veronica, Josh's older sister who the narrator had a crush on. They begin talking and become close, although she is reluctant to answer any questions regarding Josh. He invites her to go to the next Saturday night movie with him and she answers vaguely. A week later, the narrator is walking back to the theater when he notices a car with a cracked rear window is following him. He meets Veronica at the theater and they watch the movie while he thinks about ways to kiss her. They end up staying late, walking around the parking lot. Eventually, her car is the only car left in the lot. The narrator turns the corner of the building to pee and leaves Veronica by her car. Suddenly, he hears the screeching of tires and a crash. The narrator runs back to the lot and sees a suspicious-looking car with a cracked window driving away. He realizes Veronica has been run over and is severely injured. She gets admitted into a hospital, where she reveals to the narrator that Josh had run away from home years ago.

In the following weeks, the narrator receives text messages from a seemingly better Veronica, saying she loves him and wants to see him again. Eventually, the narrator asks her out on a date the following weekend, at the movie theater. He goes to the theater, only to realize she isn't going to show up and lets a large man take the seat he saved for her. He goes home, upset about not seeing her. When he tells his mother why he's upset, she begins to cry and reveals to him that Veronica had died in the hospital later the same night she was admitted, and told him she had assumed he already knew that. Realizing someone else is in possession of Veronica's phone, the horrified narrator and his mother alert Josh's and Veronica's parents to contact their phone service provider to deactivate the phone. Before shutting the service off, the providers note that the person with the phone was sending picture messages to the narrator, although he could not see them because his phone does not support picture mail. After this, the events in the narrator's life seem to turn normal.

Meanwhile, Josh and Veronica's mother completely loses her sanity due to the loss of her children, and her husband decides to start working simpler construction jobs in town in order to stay near his wife. One day, a man approaches Josh's dad and offers him $100 to fill in some holes that children had dug up in his yard, which Josh's dad accepts. Some time later, Josh's dad is tasked by his employer to return to the area where the man had him fill in holes before, and level out the land in preparation for a future building project. During the task, he finds an area that refuses to remain level, and after excavating with a shovel, unearths a large box.

The narrator's mother is contacted by a screaming Josh's dad to come to the area. When she arrives, she finds him traumatized on the ground next to the hole. She looks into the hole as the horrifying truth unfolds before her; laying inside the box is the dead body of Josh, along with the body of a large man who appears to be holding him tightly. Upon removing the man's body, the narrator's mom is horrified to find him smiling blissfully, despite a large wound visible on his neck, but also is taken back at how after all these years, the man who stalked her son was simply a man and not the maniacal murder she had expected. Josh's dad realizes it's the same man who paid him to fill in the holes. Their horror only increases when they realize that both the man and Josh were alive when Josh's dad unknowingly buried them.

The underlying plot of the story is then understood: When Josh and the narrator were in kindergarten, a stalker picked up the narrator's balloon and became obsessed with the young boy. He began living beneath the narrator's house. One night he crept into the house, subdued the narrator with ether, and carried him out to the woods, eventually leaving him there. This explains why, although the narrator woke up in a field of thorns, he hadn't a scratch on him. The narrator's mother decided to move them to a new house and, on the day of the move, ventured under the house to look for Boxes. When she saw evidence of someone living there, she moved the narrator and herself out in such a rush that they left many of their things behind. Despite the move, she continued to urge her son and Josh never to venture out of the house alone while never explaining why she was so scared. The man then took up residence in the narrator's now empty old house, surrounding himself with the narrator's things. Throughout the years, the man stalked the narrator and Josh, killing anyone who got close to them. He kidnapped Josh while Josh was continuing to map out the area he and the narrator explored as kids (which was supposed to be the birthday present idea he had). The man left a falsified note in Josh's house, stating that Josh had run away, and held him captive for two years. The man dyed Josh's hair to be the color of the narrator's, made him wear the narrator's childhood clothes, which he had stolen from the narrator's previous house, and pinned a picture of the young narrator to his shirt. He then sedated Josh using ether and asked Josh's dad to unknowingly bury him alive with Josh, dressed as the narrator, in order to be with him forever. Josh managed to bite the man's neck, causing him to bleed out. Josh eventually died in the crypt, either of asphyxiation, dehydration, or starvation.

In the present time, the adult narrator thanks his mother for finally disclosing this information to him, and hugs her before departing in his car. The narrator confesses he'll never know why the man kidnapped Josh instead of him, but guesses the man simply didn't have the courage to go through with it. The narrator even wonders if Josh was in the car with the man the day he ran Veronica over with his car. As he drives away, he gives a sorrowful monologue, detailing how deeply he misses Josh, even more so now knowing that he is gone forever, and how he almost wishes that he and Josh would've never became friends, if it meant Josh would still be alive. He expresses his guilt, as Josh's family knew nothing of his involvement in any of this. He ends the story astonished at how, as an adult, he now realizes that all the events were interconnected, but feels a sense of dissatisfaction, knowing that this case had been closed for everyone but him for nearly a decade, and that there would be no way to avenge the death of his friend. Despite this, he says he loves Josh to this very day, and cherishes all of the memories he had of them when they were young.

Background

The story line for Penpal is based on a series of stories that Auerbach posted to the subreddit "No Sleep" under the username 1000Vultures.^[3][4] Auerbach posted the first story, "Footsteps", to r/nosleep in March 2010, where it received a large positive response.^[5] He had initially meant for "Footsteps" to be a standalone story, but Auerbach chose to continue writing more stories following the same protagonist due to reader demand.^[5] Each story was narrated by the same protagonist and each one opened with the same format, where the protagonist responded to a question posted by one of the readers.^[2] During this time Auerbach also responded to user posts while in character as the protagonist.^[2] Auerbach continued to post more stories and eventually chose to expand the Reddit stories into a full length novel.^[1]

To finance the book's publication Auerbach chose to raise funds via a Kickstarter campaign, which raised $15,946.^[4] He then published the book under his own imprint, 1000Vultures, after his Reddit username.^[1][4]

Reception

SF Signal rated Penpal at four stars and wrote "Auerbach took something with childish innocence and twisted into a haunting tale of obsession. I look forward watching Auerbach improve with future works that are bound to give me nightmares."^[6]

References

External links

• The 50 Scariest Books of All Time at FlavorWire

Original Reddit stories

1. Footsteps
2. Balloons
3. Boxes
4. Maps
5. Screens
6. Friends