Penpal

Penpal is a 2012 suspense novel by American author Dathan Auerbach that evolved from a series of “creepypasta” posts on Reddit. Auerbach led a successful crowdfunding campaign to self-publish the posts as his debut novel. He cites childhood memories and nightmares as the impetus for the story that became Penpal’s second chapter, “Footsteps.” Its popularity led him to develop the other chapters over several consecutive weeks. After the novel’s publication, Ryan Daley of the horror pop culture website Bloody Disgusting listed Penpal as one of the top horror novels of 2012.

Penpal unfolds as a series of remembered experiences, all recounted by one unnamed narrator who is trying to make sense of his childhood. Consulting his protective mother, the narrator learns that his early life’s mysteries all connect to his relationship with an enigmatic pen pal. This culminates in a shocking revelation about the narrator’s oldest friend, Josh, who seemingly ran away from home as a teen. The novel explores themes relating to childhood innocence, parents’ protective instincts, and the personal pain of learning certain truths.

This guide refers to the 2012 paperback first edition.

Content Warning: The novel and this guide depict cursing, graphic violence, implied animal cruelty and death, implied child abuse, and child death.

Plot Summary

Penpal unfolds as a nonlinear sequence of recollections from an unnamed narrator’s childhood. The narrator explains that this structure is necessary to fully convey the impact of the epiphany these recollections inspired in him. This summary presents the events in the same sequence they appear in the novel.

The narrator and his mother move into a developing neighborhood when the narrator is a child in first grade. Surrounding the neighborhood is a vast forest, which the narrator regularly explores. One night, the narrator wakes up in these woods, unsure how he got there. The woods seem impossible to navigate at night, but he eventually finds his way home, to the relief of his mother, who thought he ran away. She produces a note she thinks he wrote, but the narrator identifies that it spells his name differently, proving that someone else wrote it.

The novel flashes back to one year earlier, when the narrator is in kindergarten. He participates in a class activity to begin correspondence with a pen pal. The students are to tie their introductory note to a balloon, releasing it outside of school. Several weeks later, the narrator receives a response, but it’s a single blurry photograph that has neither a note to explain it nor a return address. Over the next few weeks, the narrator continues to receive photos from his pen pal but disregards them since they’re all poorly composed. Later, the narrator shares his collection of pen pal photos with his best friend, Josh, and starts to realize that he’s in the photos. The following night, the narrator receives another photo, which captures the narrator and Josh playing in the woods the previous day.

After finishing first grade, the narrator and his mother move to the other side of town. Josh and the narrator are eager to maintain their friendship, so their parents pool their resources to buy them walkie-talkies to stay in touch. In addition, Josh and the narrator take turns staying over at each other’s houses, though the narrator lives under strict rules to never venture into the woods when he’s staying with Josh.

When the narrator is in fifth grade, his pet cat, Boxes, disappears. The narrator theorizes that Boxes may have returned to their old house. One night, while staying at Josh’s, the two go to the old house to search for Boxes. The two boys split up. Josh investigates the interior of the house, while the narrator checks the crawlspace underneath the building. The narrator discovers signs that someone has been living under the house. After Josh reports being discovered by the house’s new inhabitant, Josh and the narrator escape. Josh indicates that the stranger took his photo before he could leave. He loses his walkie-talkie in the house, which the stranger uses to communicate that he abducted Boxes.

The novel flashes back to when the narrator is in kindergarten. He and Josh decide to map out the tributary that stretches from the lake near the narrator’s house to a creek near Josh’s. Their project faces several challenges, including a dense impasse in the woods that prevents them from going any further. Discovering the narrator in his pen pal’s photos prevents them from making significant progress on foot, so they build a raft to take down the tributary. During one excursion, they get lost in the woods and become aware that an unseen figure is stalking them. The narrator loses his map. Later, his clothes also go missing. On his way home, the narrator encounters a neighbor, Mrs. Maggie, who has Alzheimer’s disease. She claims that her husband, who supposedly died, has returned home. Later, the novel implies that Mrs. Maggie was murdered.

The novel flashes forward several years. As a 14-year-old high school freshman, the narrator entertains the possibility of rekindling his now-faded friendship with Josh after bumping into Josh’s attractive sister, Veronica. On his way to a movie date with Veronica, the narrator is stalked by a car whose driver isn’t clearly visible to him. Although the date goes well, the narrator is unnerved to see the car in the parking lot. Later, a car slams into Veronica while the narrator steps away, nearly killing her.

At the hospital, Veronica reveals to the narrator that Josh ran away two years earlier, leaving a note to explain his disappearance. Veronica and the narrator maintain a relationship through text, eventually declaring their love for one another. When Veronica asks to meet the narrator for another movie date, he’s thrilled. However, she never shows up, and the narrator soon learns that Veronica died after his last visit to the hospital. Her phone was missing ever since the night the car hit her. Hundreds of pictures were sent from Veronica’s phone to the narrator’s, but his phone couldn’t receive the pictures, so he wasn’t aware that someone else had her phone.

As an adult, the narrator recalls that his friendship with Josh became strained after their search for Boxes. The last time he saw Josh was at his 12th birthday party, during which Josh explained that he no longer wanted to spend time with the narrator because the narrator “left.” Although Josh refused a replacement walkie-talkie so that he and the narrator could stay in touch, he promised to give the narrator a birthday gift.

The narrator tries to piece together the gaps in his memory by consulting his mother. Learning the truth from her causes a strain in their relationship since it becomes clear that the narrator’s mother was hiding the truth to protect him and preserve her own emotional stability.

The narrator’s mother reveals that after Veronica’s death, Josh and Veronica’s father was hired to level a lot in the woods. He discovered a pit in the earth, which was a crypt containing the corpses of Josh and his abductor. Josh’s father called the narrator’s mother to help him remove Josh’s body from that of the other man, whom neither of them recognized from their network in the local town community. Once she arrived, the narrator’s mother found evidence tying Josh’s abductor to the narrator’s pen pal: Pinned to Josh’s shirt were a photo of the narrator and a drawing of the pen pal with the narrator. When the narrator’s mother reveals that they also found a map in Josh’s pocket, the narrator realizes that Josh’s birthday gift was a complete version of the map they set out to create.

Trying to understand why Josh was killed, the narrator realizes that the night he woke up in the woods, his pen pal attempted to abduct him. When he escaped, the pen pal settled on Josh, who closely resembled the narrator. The narrator realizes that his mother never told Josh’s parents about the traumatic events of the narrator’s childhood. Filled with guilt, the narrator endures the burden that knowing the truth about what happened will never lead to justice. He regrets befriending Josh because it led to his and Veronica’s deaths. He ends the novel memorializing their friendship.