my bad memory

Have you ever had a weird childhood memory? A memory that is so bizarre that you pass it off as a work of your childhood imagination? I remembered... and it may had cost me my life. Here is what I remembered: I was around three or four years old. I was playing with my toy trains when one of my toys veered off the tracks and hit the wall. I remember walking over to grab my train when the vent grille next to it opened up and a ... a long hand connected to an arm grabbed my train and pulled it into the vent, with the grille shutting a few seconds after that. I don’t remember much after that, except that I was very confused.

Thinking back,  I rembered that the arm had all of these scars over the wrists. I brushed this off with the reasoning that it was a figment of my imagination.I remember that later that day, my mom was cooking dinner in the kitchen while I played with my toys in that same living room. I remember hearing a scraping noise, and seeming the vent open. There was no hand or any sign that someone open except for the fact that the grille to it was simply...gone. As a toddler, I was curiously inclined to check it out. I remember walking toward the vent and how it seemed like it was a black hole, seeming to suck the light out of the air. I remember feeling drawn to it. I remember putting my face by the hole and...shit. I don’t know the best way to describe this. I was sucked in.

Now, the vent I’m talking about isn’t big, about the width and height of a dictionary. And while I was a small kid, I wasn’t small enough to fit. Despite all of this, I remembered being sucked in. I remember finding myself in this cavern, this enormous cavern filled with...junk. Broken toys, rusted bikes, broken photographs all piled up everywhere. I remember that it seemed to go on forever. I remember single light bulbs would hang down from the ceiling, which seemed to stretch so far that I couldn’t see the top.Yes, I know this is crazy. But I’m just writing what I remembered, whether it was the truth or not. I can recall that there was this old time music playing from god knows where. I can still remember the tune. Depressing, yet happy at the same time. Like a lost memory. 

The one thing that stood out to me was a train at the top of one of the many piles. I remember...god help me... I remember climbing that junk pile with difficulty, as fast as my little body would let me.I should’ve been scared out of my mind, but I felt the need to get my train. I HAD to get the train. It was MINE. I couldn’t ask you to understand my thought process, but remember, I was only a toddler. I remember finally climbing to the top, and grabbing the toy, when I saw it. A hand reaching out of the blackness that made the top of the cavern. It reached. And reached. The arm stretched out farther then it should’ve been able to. 3 feet...4 feet... 5 feet... it kept going until it eventually settled on the train I was holding. It was over forty feet long...It gently, almost motherly, took the toy away from me and the hand shot back into the darkness. Then ,seconds later, it reappeared.

The hand pointed to the vent and I could faintly hear my mother calling me in for dinner. I remember heading toward the vent... then nothing else. That was all I remember. Crazy, right? I would think so. But this is the third time the vent in my apartment building has popped open and this time, I can see a hand with scarred arms,manicured nails, beckoning at me...