My son has autism… but that’s not what’s killing him.

My name is Mark Taylor. I’m a former detective with the Boston Police Department. I was forced into early retirement after my son, Nat, went missing. The police found him dead less than 24 hours later, but that was over four years ago. His death was ruled an accident by drowning… but my wife, Sarah, and I know the truth. Nat was murdered. What follows is the full confession I’ve written in the note of my phone:<br><br>——<br><br>I knelt over my son’s lifeless body and wept as if I thought that my tears might somehow bring him back. Even though I knew it was futile, I didn’t stop. I cried for my boy, for my wife, and for myself. I cried because I had given up. I cried for my failures, and I cried because, in that moment, I knew that the evil that had consumed my family was finally going to win. <br><br>But it hadn’t killed me. And in the end, that was all it took. <br><br>When the police arrived, I was whisked away to the local station for questioning. It didn’t take long for them to realize that I wasn’t their guy. The story I had to tell was too outlandish to be concocted — even for a grieving father. At the end of my interview, I gave them my phone. I showed them everything: the notes, texts, recordings. Everything. They didn’t find my son’s killer that night, but they did find me a good lawyer.<br><br>The next morning, I was released pending a full investigation. It would be months before charges were officially dropped, but by then, it didn’t matter. Sarah and I had sloppily divided our assets and gone our separate ways. She went to live with her sister on the other side of the country, and I remained in the house where our son had died. Even after the police had taken their evidence, I just couldn’t leave. And I knew that Sarah couldn’t stay. In her mind, the house had become inextricably linked to our misery… to the demon that had taken our boy.<br><br>She was right. I refused to see it at the time, but she was right all along. This wasn’t our home anymore. The demon had won it from us. Even at the end, it had won. Because when I finally opened the door to find my son’s lifeless body at the threshold… when I fell into the soaking wet carpet, collapsing in grief… I saw it. Right there on the wall opposite the door. Written in wet red paint, a message from the monster that had destroyed my family:<br><br>“He has been amazing, and I will miss him. Take care of the new child."<br><br>The words rang in my head. *The new child.* At first, I thought that it was just part of the demon’s twisted games, but it wasn’t. I know that now. Less than a month after Nat’s death, the charity I had helped found (and named after my son) received its first application for sponsorship. It was for a little boy with autism. He had no family, and the state was on the verge of terminating his care due to a lack of funding. State care facilities are notoriously underfunded and understaffed, so the decision to end the child's care would have been a death sentence. <br><br>I knew that if I ever wanted to move on with my life, I had to do it. And so I took the application and ran with it. The boy’s name was Alexander, and he was already seven, which is unusually old to be placed in a family home. But I didn’t care. After everything he had been through, just having someone to share his life seemed like the least that the world owed him. <br><br>As I sat among the paperwork spread across my dining room table, I couldn’t help but feel that this was all meant to be. This was my chance to honor my son's memory. I called up my contacts at social services who confirmed that the boy was clever for someone with severe autism, but that he was mostly unable to communicate verbally. It was then that an idea struck me:<br><br>“Autism may have taken my son’s voice,” I said, “but now it will give this boy a voice too.”<br><br>And with that, the Nathaniel Taylor Memorial Voice Sponsorship was born. It was an initiative where, in conjunction with the undertakings of my original charity, new families would not only receive funding to help look after their autistic children, but they would also receive training on how to encourage and develop communication skills. This was something I had never really been afforded the chance to do for Nat, and I was determined that no other child with autism would go through this life with a voice locked inside that they couldn’t express. My new charity would see to it, even if it was the last thing I did.<br><br>With the sponsorship money that I had set aside for Alexander, I was able to begin immediately… and so I did. Right away, I sent him to the best speech therapists in the state, and even flew in some of the world’s leading experts in communication disorders. At first, the results were limited. But that all changed one morning a few months later. <br><br>I remember waking up to the sound of my house alarm blaring. I don't know how long it had been going off for, but I was groggy and disoriented as I stumbled out of my room. “What the fuck?” I mumbled, trying to make my way to the stairs. I was still half asleep, and the cacophonous beeping wasn’t helping. As I finally reached the bottom of the stairs, I was met with a sight that I will never forget:<br><br>There in the open front door stood Alexander, trembling and covered in blood. When I saw him there, I nearly shit myself. At first, I thought that he was hurt… that the blood was his own. I gasped, and my hands instinctively rose like I was about to pratfall over some invisible banana peel. But then my brain caught up, and I saw that it wasn’t Alexander’s blood. It was splattered across his clothes, but the only actual injuries that he had sustained were deep cuts and lacerations on his hands. <br><br>That was when I remembered that the alarm had gone off due to one of the doors or windows being breached. I examined Alexander more closely and immediately wished I hadn’t. Thick fragments of shattered glass were protruding from his palms like giant splinters. The skin around the shards was red, raw, and bleeding badly. <br><br>I must have been in shock because it took a young woman — who had followed Alexander to the door — grabbing my arm to snap me out of my confusion. <br><br>“Shit,” she yelled, “you need to get him to the hospital.” I nodded, still trying to process what had happened as we bundled Alexander into my car. We sped down the road, and during the short silence between the sound of the alarm and the sound of the car’s engine, I heard something that would change my life forever:<br><br>“Thank you, Dad.”<br><br>I looked over to see Alexander smiling at me, his injured hands still oozing blood. I just grinned back at him. “Anytime, son.”<br><br>In that moment, something within me shifted, and I felt an overwhelming urge to shield this child from anything that might do him harm. It was then that I realized that not only was Alexander like a new son to me, but he was also the only lead I had in finding the demon that murdered my boy. Together, we were going to find the monster, and we were going to make him pay.<br><br>Over the next few weeks, I pieced together what must have happened on that morning. Alexander had been sleeping in his room when he heard a noise coming from outside. Curiosity got the better of him, and he threw his bedroom window open to investigate. That’s where the blood had come from, and where he had sustained his injuries. I found a piece of his t-shirt caught in a shard of broken glass as evidence. <br><br>The noise he had heard was the front door opening. Whoever — or whatever — it was must have been waiting in the shadows for Alexander to exit the house. After he did, they attacked, pushing the glass back into his face and sending him tumbling into the garden. This was the noise that had woken me. At this point, the intruder had opened the front door just far enough to have triggered the alarm before making a run for it. The rest happened just as I had seen it.<br><br>I didn’t tell the police any of this, though. When they came to my door to take my statement, I fed them a lie that I had rehearsed in my head: that Alexander had been sleepwalking when he opened the window, and must have fallen out in the process. They didn’t believe me, but they didn’t push it either. I think that they assumed that I was just trying to protect the boy from getting in trouble, and they were probably right. But that wasn’t my reason.<br><br>My reason was that if the police started looking into the incident too deeply, they would inevitably discover my true intentions for taking Alexander in. Despite what they might have thought, my desire to shield the boy from scrutiny wasn’t one of paternal love. It was one of paternal *duty*. My duty to my biological son, Nat. You see, the evil that had taken him was still out there, and I was sure that it was trying to claim another. <br><br>But why? And what did it have to do with Alexander? There were so many questions that I had no idea how to answer. But I was determined to learn as much as I could about my new son while he was still in my care. Knowing that he had very little capacity for verbal communication, I would often just talk