Chapter 1 - The Nightmare in Plaster
A 10-year-old boy screamed for four straight nights begging his father to cut off his arm and nobody believed him. His dad, Richard, thought he was losing his mind from grief after losing his mother to cancer, so he did the unthinkable and tied his own son's wrist to the headboard just to stop him from smashing the cast against the wall. His new wife Vanessa stood in the doorway in her silk robe, arms crossed, calmly telling Richard their son was manipulating them, that grief had made him dangerous, that he needed psychiatric care. She had doctors lined up, diagnoses ready, and an answer for everything. The only person who refused to believe it was Mrs. Rosa, the family nanny who had raised Ethan since he was a baby and had seen too much of life to be fooled by a pretty voice. While everyone else slept, Rosa found something in Ethan's sheets that made her stomach drop. A dead red ant. Then another. Then she leaned close to the cast and smelled it, that sweet rotten odor that meant something had been wrong for days while a little boy screamed and no one listened. She laid out scissors, gauze, and a cast cutter on the bedside table and told Richard they had to open it now. Vanessa flew into the room and told them absolutely not, and that was the moment Richard noticed something that changed everything. She wasn't afraid for Ethan. She was afraid of what they were about to find. They opened it anyway. The cast cracked apart and out crawled dozens of live red ants that had been feeding on his son's skin for days while he begged for help and was tied to a bed instead. Richard's son looked up at him through tears and said five words that will haunt him forever. "You tied me down, Dad." And when Richard turned around to look at his wife, she didn't look horrified. She looked furious that they had opened it too soon.
