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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/banjofitzgerald on 2024-10-24 23:50:26+00:00.
My neighborhood isn't your cliche movie neighborhood. The lawns aren't perfect, kids don't leave bikes lying around on the sidewalks, and neighbors don't smile and wave as you drive by. We all kind of mind our own business, for the most part. To be honest, I don't think I've ever had a conversation with any one of my neighbors. But to my defense, my neighborhood isn't built like a traditional neighborhood.
I live in Castro Valley. Emphasis on the "valley." The entire town is built on hills. The block I live on resembles more of a roller coaster than a street. I wish I could say you get used to living like this, but you don't. My house is smack in the middle of a hill; and after a decade of living here, I've discovered that I'm a "house half uphill" kind of guy.
My ten-year-old son, Cooper, loves it here. There's a single-screen movie theater down the street, next door to that is a comic book shop, across the street is an ice cream parlor, and a few blocks over is Golfland. I'm convinced that Castro Valley was designed by a child.
Cooper had overheard my wife and I talking about how unfriendly our neighborhood felt and he had an idea of how we could do our part in fixing it. When he visits my mother-in-law, they like to go on walks. I guess a neighbor of hers has one of those Little Free Library things in their front yard. The mailbox looking thing that the owner fills with books, and anyone walking by is encouraged to trade one of their own books for one in the library. Cooper said we could fill it with all of our favorite books, so our neighbors could get to know us a little better.
He had spring break coming up, and I had vacation days lying around, so I planned on taking the week off to spend with him. I figured building the library was a great opportunity for a father-son project.
The sun was setting, and admittedly, it may have taken a little longer than anticipated to build, but there it was nonetheless. We took a step back and admired the little library that was now standing firmly in our yard. I handed him a paintbrush and told him that all the library was missing was a name. He gave it some thought, then started with the brush. When he moved away, I could see that he painted "Greenridge Road Library" in big green letters. Fittingly named after the street we live on.
The next day, I peeled myself off of my mattress and dragged my feet into the kitchen. Cooper was sitting on the couch, fully dressed, shoes tied, hair brushed, ready to go. I have weird attachments to all of Cooper's stuff. He's our only child, so every little thing of his is tethered to precious memories. I couldn't just let him put his books, which my wife and I read to him over the years, outside for strangers to take. So, I told him we would go to the bookstore to get new books to use.
Before we left, Cooper ran over to check our Greenridge Road Library. I hurried to catch up to him when I saw him jumping up and down with excitement. He screamed "Dad! Dad! Look!" And to my surprise, there was already a book sitting inside of the little library, patiently waiting for us to adopt it.
It was a Penguin Random House children's book titled: "How to Swim and Dive." It was a cute, little, vintage, book about learning how to swim. And even though it was covered in a clear, but yellowing, protective jacket; the book was extremely weathered. It looked decades old. The style of the cover art and pictures throughout the pages made me think it may be midcentury era. The once bright colored spine was cracking and had a slight tear through the "V" in the book name, giving it the new title: "How to Swim and Die." That got a guilty chuckle out of me.
The book jacket proudly wore a sticker for the Hayward Public Library. Hayward is Castro Valley's sister city, so it wasn't too surprising that a book from there ended up minutes away in our front yard. What was surprising was the fully intact checkout card still in the sleeve on the inside. The only name and date on the card were: Roger Davis on April 3rd, 1964.
Out of curiosity, I Googled the name Roger Davis. Facebook and LinkedIn profiles popped up, all of smiling young men that were half of the age my Roger Davis would be today. I tried to narrow the search down by adding "California," but no luck. I'm old enough to remember life before the internet, So I went to scavenge for The Yellow Pages book that I thought we still had somewhere.
If I had given it any real thought, I would have remembered that we got rid of our last one about five spring cleanings ago. I figured this would be the perfect time to introduce my son to the public library system. I told Cooper that we could go to the Hayward Library; since that was where the book was originally from. And we could maybe even see if they could look up any information on Roger Davis.
Although he was incredibly eager to get inside and work the case, Cooper still held the library door open for the fragile moving old man walking behind us. The librarian glared at me over the top of her thick lenses, with an "Are you serious?" look on her face. She sighed and lectured me on why she couldn't share the private information of their members, even if they had it. Which they didn’t. Those records were long gone. Also long gone: the Yellow Pages, apparently. I don’t know why I assumed the library would have them, but they didn’t. So, I ordered one on my phone to be delivered to my house and we left. On the way out, Cooper whispered to me that he'd be a nicer librarian for The Greenridge Road Library.
The following day was a hotter than usual spring day. My wife and I decided that a family day at the community pool sounded good. We didn't have a pool in our backyard, and no one else we knew did, either. And as a result, Cooper wasn't the best swimmer. But lucky for him, we just so happened to have come into the custody of a how-to swim book.We got to the pool and I had the highly important job of securing pool chairs for my family. It took me a little while to collect enough chairs. It would have taken longer, if not for the elderly gentleman who graciously volunteered his chair to me. His attempt at hiding from the sun under a bucket hat and sunglasses was failing, so he was leaving anyway. He was amused that I was carrying around such a vintage book. On his way out, he gave the faintest smile and said that he had the same book when he was younger.
I started thumbing through the pages to see if there were any good pointers that I could relay to Cooper, and I must not have looked hard enough the first time we found the book because I now noticed handwritten numbers on the bottom corner of every page. Two numbers on each page and they didn't correspond to the page number at all. The first page had "37." The next one had "66," the third page had "46," and so on; fifteen numbers in total. There was no obvious reason or pattern to the order, but they were neatly written and obviously intentional.
I'm not too proud to admit that my wife is smarter than I am, but I still felt like a complete idiot when it only took her a millisecond to glance at the pages and say "Oh, neat! It's coordinates." Of course. Why wasn't that my first guess? Cooper asked what coordinates were and when I explained them to him, he got really excited at the thought of it being buried treasure. That excitement soured to disappointment when I shot down his proposal to go chase the coordinates that exact minute. I told him we could go the following day, and then hit the biggest cannonball he's ever seen as a distraction.
Cooper shook me until I fully woke up. He wouldn't stop until I had Google Maps open. He watched with anticipation as I typed in each number of the coordinates. The pin dropped into a cluster of trees, a little ways off of the Ward Creek walking trail in the Hayward hills. To his delight, it was only a ten-minute drive away.
Cooper was so excited walking that trail. He's not an introvert, but he rarely talks to strangers. That day, he was waving and saying hi to everyone we crossed paths with. The family walking their dog got a hey from Cooper. He said "Have a nice day" to the pale-haired, old man, that was catching his breath on a bench. One jogger even got a high-five from Cooper.
I couldn't help but feel like an irresponsible parent when we reached the point of the walkway that we had to diverge off of to get to the coordinates. It didn't seem like the safest trek for a ten-year-old to make, but I couldn't stomach telling him that he couldn't see this through. As we approached the coordinates, I could make out glimpses of unnatural colors in the distance. At first, I thought it was a group of people, and slid Cooper behind me as we walked up.
Standing directly on top of the coordinates, we were dead center to a group of trees. On each tree, was a t-shirt nailed to it; creating a surrounding audience. The shirts were small, like they'd fit Cooper. Six in total. Vintage, ringer style shirts with red trim and matching red font that read "Hayward Plunge." On the inside tags, I could make out handwritten names: John, Henry, Susie, Wayne, Donna, and Jackie.
I had no idea what Hayward Plunge meant or who these names belonged to, but that didn't really matter, I was full on panicking. My fight or flight was in high gear. This wasn't the innocent treasure hunt we thought it would be. This was wrong, very wrong. I was wrong to bring my son here....
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