Charlie was born a seemingly normal child.

He was born Charles Evelyn Peterson on August 6th, 1945, slightly overweight but in overall fine health. The lucky parents were Daniel and Rachael Peterson. Daniel was a salesman with poor eyesight and a receding hairline at twenty-six years old, and Rachael was a housewife with an all-consuming fear of germs.

When Charlie was born, nothing strange occurred at the hospital, in the wee warm hours of the morning. Later that day, news reached the American people that an obscure Japanese city had been destroyed with the world's first atomic bomb to be used in combat. Daniel and Rachael failed to understand the eerie synchronicity of their son's birth being accompanied by thousands of children in Japan dying simultaneously.

They would fail to understand a lot of things.

[hr]

The year was 1949, and Daniel came home one evening from a somewhat successful sales trip. He came into the kitchen, tired, and asked Rachael, "Seen Charlie anywhere?"

"He's in the backyard," she said absentmindedly.

Daniel slid the back door open and gazed at Charlie, now four years old, as the boy was busy squatting by a row of rocks in the garden.

"Charlie?" said Daniel. "It's almost time for dinner."

The boy seemed intent on doing something, but his back was turned.

Daniel stepped into the backyard and looked down at his oblivious son. "Charlie," he said again. "Aren't you going to at least greet your father?"

The boy ignored him; he kept his hands on his knees, his eyes scanning the rocks.

"Son...?" Daniel felt annoyance creep into his voice.

Yet Charlie ignored him, as if Daniel was just another whisper of wind. The boy stared at a spider as it crawled out from under one of the rocks and made its way upward, until suddenly it stopped.

[i]Or was stopped.[/i]

Daniel's eyes shifted between his son and the spider in puzzlement.

One by one the spider's legs were lifted off the rock by some invisible force, and Charlie's eyes pierced each of those legs, tearing them off one at a time as he raised the spider's body into the air without so much as lifting a finger. The spider made no sound as its limbs were torn off, and neither did Charlie.

Daniel wanted to do something, but he kept silently watching his son torture the animal.

Through all of it, Charlie appeared more bored than anything.

[hr]

The year was 1953.

Charlie's condition, as one might call it, was never shown to a psychiatrist or doctor of any kind. Daniel and Rachael didn't know what to make of it; they were bewildered by their son's psychic power, but at the same time there was only so much they felt they could do about it.

Despite being a quiet child, and despite getting picked on at school regularly, Charlie didn't do so much either. True, he sometimes took to mutilating small animals—mainly bugs and rodents he found around the property—but aside from that he kept to himself. He had a few friends with whom he played on weekends and after school, and sometimes he would show them tricks he could do with his power.

Daniel didn't know if Charlie could torture a human like he would a mouse, and he didn't want to know either.

He never beat his son with a belt, or even spanked him when he might have deserved it.

Charlie was a good boy anyhow; he didn't need to be punished.

[hr]

The year was 1962.

Daniel was no longer the head of the household. The money he made was decent, but Charlie had a part-time job now, and so was contributing to the household almost as much. The boy, now a young man, was lanky and aloof; he seemed frail, but he could dominate his father in a second if he needed to.

[i]He could crush him like a bug...[/i]

But Charlie was still a good boy; he did and went as he pleased.

And so Daniel did nothing to stop him.

Instead he read the evening newspaper, catching up on the grizzly details of the latest crime reports. Apparently there had been three murders committed in a nearby town in the past month, all in a similar manner. The victims—two elderly men and a nine-year-old girl—had all been mangled and disemboweled, yet there was no trace of a weapon at any of the crime scenes.

To Daniel it must have seemed like a real mystery.