Talk:Penpal/@comment-25107879-20140626121554/@comment-25148747-20140707064625

Here's some explanation that will help tie the story together if you are confused.

In "friends" when the dad goes to pull the man off Joshs' body, it says that a bottle of ether rolled rolling against the wood (coffin?). Ether is an anesthetic - you know, that thing doctors give you to knock you out right before surgery? That ties back to author randomly waking up in the woods in "Footsteps". The footsteps the author writes about hearing were the footsteps of the man. The man went in the boys room while he was sleeping, used some ether to make sure the boy wouldn't wake up, then he took the boy and brought him to the woods. When the boy woke up, he had no recollection of being taken by the man, and that's why when he was talking to his mom after making it home, he apologized and said he didn't know what happened.

The importance of the ether and the boy waking up in the woods is because in "Friends" when the author recalls the last time he saw Josh (at his 12th bday party), Josh says that he doesn't feel well because he thinks he's been sleepwalking... This could mean the man has been drugging Josh and taking him to strange places. Josh would wake up in these strange places and think he was just sleepwalking. Now at this point in time the boys were both 12 years old.

Fast forward to "Screens", the author says that he was 15 at this time and that he hasn't seen or talked to Josh in a couple years. When the author was talking to veronica in the hospital, he learns that Josh had ran away and he asks Veronica if Josh had left a note or something to which she replied "on his pillow" If you recall from the first story, "Footsteps", when the author finds his way home from the woods, he is grabbed from behind by his mom who then says she grabbed him like that because she was afraid he would run away again. The author is like "what do you mean?" and that's when the mom shows him the letter "he" left on the pillow. It says how he's unhappy and is running away, but he didn't write that letter, his name isn't even spelled right. The man forged the letter and left it on the boys' bed the night he kidnapped him and brought him to the forest, so the boys mother would think he ran away instead of thinking he was kidnapped.

When the dad found Joshs' body, his hair was dyed brown (the author mentions how his hair is brown and Joshs' was naturally blonde) and how Josh was wearing clothes that were too small. Remember when the author was saying how him and his mom were moving, and instead of moving into the new house in like a week, the mother was able to get them to move into the new house that day, and in a rush, left some boxes behind? Well when Josh and the other boy return to the old house to look for Boxes the cat, Josh went into the house and the author mentioned how there would be some boxes of clothes in his room. When Josh got into the authors old room, Josh told him via walkie talkie that there weren't any boxes full of clothes, because all the clothes were hung up in the closet. The boy nor his mother had been in the house since so that means the man had taken the clothes from the boxes and hung them up.

The man probably used the ether to knock Josh out long enough to dye his hair and dress him in the other boys clothes. When the effects of the drug wore off, the man and Josh were probably already in the wood box. That's when Josh killed the man by biting his throat, but wasn't able to escape because the man was on top of him and since he was a big man, Josh was pinned down. That's when Joshs' father came to fill the wholes in the woods, burying them together. At least that's how I understand Josh died.