What is a legend, if not a whimsical lie? Some half-truth meant to explain something we can't quite comprehend. I always thought that every myth, every legend, even every lie had a kernel of truth to it. But was I wrong? Have I simply been perpetuating a comforting falsehood?

I've been called a liar. The internet declared me as such, all because I tried to add truth to what I had assumed to be a slanderous lie. But was my story any more true? Did the songs of my youth tell the true story of Boneless Jim? Or did my peers, my parents and my community simply perpetuate a fantasy to make us feel safe?

Before he was this hateful stalking thing, Jim was my legend. My local monster. I wanted to believe the old stories could return. But now I've seen the truth. Jim is gone, and my town is haunted by the Boneless. Reality is far worse than fiction.

*****

As it goes, James (Jim) McCarthy was born with a rare degenerative condition that made his bones brittle. In some versions of the story, they were slowly deteriorating. When my parents told it, the story had little explanation of what ailed Jim. The versions my generation told their children described it as an auto-immune disorder. The doctors said Jim wouldn't survive infancy, but, in a twist of cruel fate, he did. Jim grew, constantly fracturing and breaking his bones. Every trip to the hospital met with gasps and proclamations of his impending death. But each time, he would heal up wrong and grow, until he was five years old and a parody of other children. He was massively deformed and became more and more crooked as time went on.

Jim's parents, well-to-do elites from the rival town of Elizabeth's Haven, saw him as an object of shame and grew to hate him. They were the pride of Birch Island, wealthy and privileged. But they'd never be the perfect family. Not as long as they had Jim.

One day, they led Jim out deep into the woods and told him they were going to play Hide and Seek. His mother kneeled down and whispered in Jim's ear. "Close your eyes and count to one hundred."

Slowly, Jim counted to one hundred, a difficult task for a boy of five. When he opened his eyes, he began looking. Minutes turned to hours, hours to days, but he never found them.

Jim's parents, certain that exposure would kill him, told officials he had died of his disease and reportedly buried him in the family mausoleum. If you visit, there is, in fact, a plaque for James McCarthy, aged five. However, the crypt has never been opened to discover how much of the tale is true. If their child had a strange degenerative disorder that claimed his life. Or if his small casket is indeed empty, and Jim was left in the woods to die.

It seems more likely this story is born of town rivalry or class conflict. Combined with class tensions, it turned a rich family with a sick child into a target of scorn and rumour. This would make the story of the McCarthys like that of the Leeds and their devil. But this isn't where the legend ends. Much like the Jersey Devil, sightings of Jim continue to this day.

As the legend goes, Jim wandered through the woods for years. Further deteriorating, he grew up feral and misshapen in those woods. The story doesn't go into how he survived; it only says that by the time he found our town, Fort Champlain, his bones had fully dissolved. He was now enormous, bloated, and deformed like some abyssal sea creature, surviving off the fringes of society.

This version of the character was scary but not violent. Parents used Jim to teach their kids to protect their property. "Close your windows before you go to sleep, or Boneless Jim will slip through the crack and steal your sweets." "Don't play near the storm drain, or Boneless Jim will take your ball, and you'll never see it again." He was harmless. However, kids can be more cruel than the worst adults, and used Jim as an outlet for juvenile fears of the 'outsider'. Bullies would say you were spineless like Boneless Jim. Say you were so ugly only Boneless Jim could love you. Tell you to climb down into the sewer and live with Boneless Jim and the rats. Older kids would band together to "go hunting" for him, baseball bats in hand. They would come back with tales of chasing him back into the storm drains, his strange flexible body the topic of much horror and debate in the school yard.

I never saw Boneless Jim, but some of my friends said they did. They added further to the mythos. Sometimes, he had reflective eyes like a cat. Other times, he dragged his body around like a slug and his limbs trashed about like worms. Supposedly, there were rituals to summon him from the sewer. Place a bowl of candy ten feet from the drain, at midnight of course, and then say his name 5 times. You would see his long arms snake out of the drain and pull the candy in, or so it was said. I tried it once, but he did not appear. I grew up assuming he was just a story. The only thing that carried into adulthood was that stupid schoolyard song.

Beware, beware of Boneless Jim,

Abandoned by his next of kin.

His eyes are black, skin pale as sin.

Beware his wide and toothless grin!