 Back when I was 12, I joined my first online community, Gaia Online. We were all just kids talking about anime and collecting sprites. Whenever one is hidden behind a colorful avatar and edgy user names, it's easy to make new friends and to talk to people you'd never meet otherwise. I live in Europe and made tons of friends from all over the world back in those days – Australians, Canadians, Koreans, all kinds of people. As months turned to years, and Gaia Online grew further and further away, only one of those friends remained – Jacob. He lived up in Manitoba in the outskirts of Winnipeg. Despite a huge time difference, we usually met up online for an hour or two every day. We played MMOs together, started a guild. Time difference actually played to our advantage as we could take turns moderating most hours of the day. Over the years, I moved on to study journalism and stopped having time for gaming. Jacob went on to get a dental degree. That hour a day became an hour a week, then a month, and when I turned 25, I realized we hadn't talked for a year. I liked his Facebook post, but that was about it – a face I used to know. Last year, we reconnected. I stayed up until midnight and caught him just after dinner. We talked about the guild, which is still run by people we took in, and where life had taken us. As we talked, I asked him about why he wanted to be a dentist. It wasn't something I even thought about asking. It just seemed like something you ought to ask. Apparently, I'd never asked him about it before. Most people didn't. Most people just assumed it was because of his dad who had been a dentist. Jacob told me that he himself, like others, assumed it was some misguided family business thing. He hadn't really considered any other reason. It had seemed like a stable job, and his dad always seemed happy with it. Still, Jacob seemed a bit off after talking about it, like he hadn't considered why he pursued this career. I don't get it personally. Teeth are weird. We talked again a week later. We were discussing the possibility of me taking a trip up there some time to meet the family, maybe go fishing, maybe bring a laptop for some old school gaming. Something like that. We got back to talking about his job, and he mentioned thinking about what I'd asked him. He'd been thinking about it a lot, apparently. I got this weird memory. He said, back when I was a kid, we lived out by homeward. My aunt worked long weekends from Friday night to Monday morning, so my dad would go buy her house on Saturday to feed her cats. I noticed Jacob wasn't really telling me specifically at this point. It was more like he was telling himself, and I just happened to be in the same space, like he needed to get it out. It was weird. He had this tone of voice that I'd never heard before, droning, almost gibbering. I listened as he continued. My dad got hurt real bad one summer. He was in a car accident, broke both his arms. His left arm went septic, and he was out for months. During this time, he needed someone to feed my aunt's cats. He was really serious about it. Too serious. I was just eight years old. My two sisters were older, 10 and 12, but for some reason, he never asked them to go. Instead, he was adamant about me being the one to do it, and then I should be quiet about it. We don't want to snoop around your aunt's house. That's impolite, he told me. The first Saturday when I went to feed the cats, my dad stopped me in the driveway. He told me to bring a metal bucket and a small rock hammer. You're not feeding the cats. He said, check the walls for teeth. Be thorough. That's all he said. Check the walls for teeth. Be thorough. I didn't even question it. I had no idea what it meant, but the way he said it was like having a gun to my head. I'd never been to my aunt's place, and I can't actually picture her face. Maybe I'd never actually met her. To this day, I can't remember ever seeing her. At this point, Jacob was getting frantic and stopped occasionally to take deep breaths. There were bursts of short laughter. I didn't know what to say, and I never got a chance to add anything to the conversation. He continued. The house was in the middle of this big, flat, empty space. It stood out like a wart and its stank of oils and wet wood. Not a speck of paint left, just naked planks and concrete. Even the house key seemed out of place. One of those big iron chunks that stained my fingers with rust. The inside was even worse. Bare walls with curled wallpaper. Everything felt wet. Floorboards, the whole place seemed abandoned. No furniture, except for a linen covered sofa that had been cracked in half and a bookshelf that had been tipped over in the middle of the hallway. I went room to room with my rock, hammer, and bucket. And in one of the back rooms, I saw them for the first time. Teeth. A row of six teeth, as big as my thumb. They stuck out of the wall clear as day. They were warm to the touch. Using the rock hammer, I knocked them out one by one. They left holes in the wall. Something moved in them. Roots maybe? They clanged into my bucket one by one. That was my whole summer. Every Saturday I went back to the house. I checked for teeth. Sometimes I found them in the ceiling or the floor. Sometimes they were as small as a tic-tac. Sometimes as big as a thumb. They were sneaky, always popping up in new places. There were dozens behind the sofa once, which I'd forgotten to move the first few weeks. By the end of the summer, I'd filled several buckets with oversized, disfigured teeth. Dad and I never talked about it. He just said that it wants a male to do it. At the end of the summer, I handed back the hammer and bucket and my dad went back to feeding the cats on the regular. Over the years, I must have just stopped thinking about it. Jacob told me that his dad died a few years ago and that no one had been to that old house since. I didn't know what to say. At this point, he was just rambling. I'd never heard him like that. It was as if he was remembering it all for the first time. That summer was like a dream, Jacob said. So bizarre that. In a way, it was the realest thing I'd ever been through at the same time. It was as if it never happened. You know what I mean? He quickly excused himself, yelling something about walking his dog. We didn't speak after that, but we kept in touch by messages. I tried to check on him, see if he was okay, but our conversations grew more superficial. Nostalgia can only last so long when reality comes knocking. First thing I heard from him was two months ago when he told me he had to go back to that old house. He had to know if that summer was even real. The last text message I got from him was, I'm going in to feed the cats. I haven't heard from him since. The number has been disconnected. I did try to contact his wife, Arlene, but at first she was unwilling to talk to me. I'd been a bad influence on Jacob and partly blamed me for bringing this entire situation to their door. However, she got back in touch with me about three weeks ago. Apparently every lead she chased down had turned out nothing. And she figured she might as well listen to what I had to say. I told her all about Jacob's ramblings about his childhood memories. But it wasn't until I mentioned his aunt's house outside of Holmwood that she perked up. Apparently, she'd heard about this place. We've been out there once, Arlene said, not his aunt's place, but his childhood home. From the description I gave her, she was able to narrow down a search area for the house that Jacob had referred to. Despite my warnings, Arlene insisted on going there to look for Jacob. She left their daughter with her sister for the weekend and promised to keep in touch. I promised to be available over the phone all weekend if she needed to talk and Arlene was more than willing to keep me updated. After all, who else would believe this story if not the guy who told it? She eventually found the house with surprisingly little hassle. Once you knew what to look for, it was easy to spot. To others, it was just some rundown building you drove past on the way westward. Arlene described it like this. She said it was an old one-story house, cheap wooden panels over solid concrete, not a single blade of grass grows nearby. Every window is covered in iron bars and sheet metal screwed on tight from the inside. Front door looks new, the lock is still oiled. Back door has been closed up with brick and mortar. She even checked the chimney, which had been filled with rocks. The entire house was closed off, that is, except for the crawl space. Arlene works part-time as an estate agent, so she knows a few tricks that others don't. Many access hatches aren't actually locked, instead they're hidden or camouflaged or simply forgotten. Arlene knew where to look and found a way under the house. She didn't stay long. The entire place stank so heavily of ammonia that she almost choked. She came back the next day. Using a hammer, she started breaking into one of those back windows. She couldn't bend the iron bars, but the wood itself was partly rotten, so it gave way without too much hassle. Once she started working the frame, she noticed the same thick ammonia smell coming from the wood itself. I can't stress this enough, she told me. It was nauseating. An hour later, the cops came. It wasn't the best idea to try to break into a widely visible house in the middle of the day. She was accused of trespassing on private property and interrogated. As Arlene explained that she was looking for her husband there, there was an immediate attitude shift. The officers asked Arlene to describe Jacob, and it became apparent that they knew who she was talking about. John Doe, they said, Yeah, that's him. Arlene was taken to the holding cells. She recognized Jacob immediately, though he looked like he'd been through hell. He was wearing the same black jacket he'd worn back when he first left, as well as the same jeans and shirt. The vest shoes were missing and his hair was frizzled and dry. There was a hint of ammonia on his breath. He didn't even look up when I hugged him, said Arlene. He just sat there. Jacob had been through some sort of trauma. The officers had found him sleepwalking down the main road, leaving droplets of blood from his shoeless foot. They tried to talk to him or find some sort of identification, but there was nothing. They did manage to bandage his foot, but weren't sure what to do with him. They weren't even sure he'd slept since they found him a few days prior. Kind of like the lights were on, but they're dim. Arlene explained to me, Nobody's home. After Arlene identified Jacob, he was immediately taken to a nearby clinic. He was carried outside as the officers couldn't get him to move voluntarily. Once at the clinic, Jacob was cleaned up and put through a series of tests, blood, saliva, urine, and a series of x-rays, mostly of his foot, but also to look for head trauma. His foot was sprained, but apart from that he was perfectly fine, physically. Arlene did notice something on his x-ray, though. His wisdom teeth were still there. She said, They shouldn't be. He had them removed one year into our engagement. All this happened about three weeks ago. There was also talk of getting him a therapist, as his reaction was that of someone going through violent shock. Arlene told me she'd made an appointment with a dentist to check out his wisdom teeth, as she'd never heard of them growing back. She explained how odd it was to have Jacob back home. He didn't react to seeing his daughter at all, and his behavior was completely unnatural. He'd sit completely still an entire night, only to suddenly burst into action. He'd run into the bathroom, only to stare at his mirror image. Then he'd lumber back to the couch, or bed, and stare at the ceiling. As he moans, explained Arlene, and not just quietly, but almost screaming, like he's trying to force a certain sound out of his lungs. It was all too much for their daughter to handle, so she was sent to stay with her grandparents until her dad got better. The specialist couldn't find anything. There was no danger or trauma to the head, and both hearing and sight was intact. Jacob still reacted to sound and light. He just didn't seem to care. A therapist didn't do him any better. There was just no way to get him to talk. You could get him to focus on your finger, if he held it in front of him, but he quickly lost interest. explained Arlene, dim lights, nobody's home. Finally, there was the dentist. They got there early in the morning and were the first patients of the day. All he knew was that Arlene had questions about Jacob's wisdom teeth and wanted a proper examination. As soon as he opened Jacob's mouth, he flinched. Hyperdontia, said Arlene. That's what they call it. Jacob had severe hyperdontia. In layman's terms, too many teeth, almost an entire second row of teeth, canines, mini molars, molars, pretty much every kind of tooth, but incisors. This was just a few days after the x-ray taken at the clinic. There was no way someone could grow a set of teeth in a matter of days. Teeth don't just come and go as they please. A week passed and nothing seemed to improve. Two rows of teeth had become four. Some teeth were shrinking, some growing. Jacob couldn't properly close his mouth and his jaw was slightly misaligned. His breathing grew heavy. Arlene did her best to find a specialist, but there were too many questions about Jacob's condition. No one accepted that such a thing as spontaneous hyperdontia could even exist. He started to stink, Arlene said. Ammonia. She tried to wash him, but it was hard to get him into the shower. The best she could do was get him into a bath. Arlene had to stop washing his head as Jacob would just inhale water without a second thought. The instinct to hold his breath was simply gone. His breath started to sound like a gargle. Just a few nights before Arlene last called me, Jacob had one of his fits where he burst into action and ran into the bathroom. This time it was different. He made those awful retching noises like a cat coughing up a furball. The entire sink was filled with scattered teeth, more than two dozen. There was blood everywhere. Arlene dialed 112 and tried to stop the bleeding by stuffing his mouth with a rag, but Jacob didn't react. His breathing got better instantly, though. His jaw was realigned. Every single extra tooth had just popped out on its own. After a short trip to the ER and staying the night, Jacob was discharged. He was healing surprisingly well. Arlene had been up all night, so when they got back home, she fell asleep on the couch. At this point, she was completely spent, weeks of pent-up anxiety taking its toll. She woke up 11 hours later, Jacob was sitting next to her on the couch, smiling. He actually said, good morning. What a word for weeks and suddenly good morning and eye contact. The lights were just back on all of a sudden and things seemed to have gone back to normal overnight. Jacob was feeling much better, but agreed that he should probably not go back to work for a while. He'd been in some sort of strange state and he couldn't explain it. He was back to his old self, although still a bit sore. Sure, his mouth was healing up and possibly quick, but his oral hygiene had been lacking for quite some time. His gums were still discolored. Things started to return to normal. This was just a few days ago, Arlene explained. I was ready to put this all behind me. I wasn't even going to call you, but there was one thing I couldn't ignore. What happened to the teeth he spat out? I didn't clean them up. Even with his daughter returning home and life going back to normal, Arlene swears that there is something odd about Jacob. Sometimes he gets up in the middle of the night and she can hear him opening and closing doors. He puts on wool socks to make less noise. At one point, she could hear him moving furniture around. Two nights ago, Arlene pretended to sleep as she watched him sneak into the kitchen. He'd crawl under the sink and gently hammer something quietly. Instead of confronting him, Arlene checked under the sink the following day. I know this sounds crazy, just crazy, Arlene said. There were teeth underneath the sink, dozens of them gently put in place with a small rock hammer. Arlene has no idea what to do, and I don't know what to tell her. She thought this nightmare was over, but things are getting worse. She recently found a tooth in the garbage disposal, and they have multiplied underneath the sink. Her daughter stubbed her toe on a canine while getting ready for school the other day. The teeth are back in the walls, and Jacob is putting them there. He's putting teeth back in the damn walls.