#pure speculation in the hypothesis bit...but *no doubt* in my mind that Jeffty is Five was an inspiration for Henry's backstory

[henrysglock]

Henry is 7 — Unloved Boys, Killer Parents, and Non-Linear Time.

I'm not sure how many of us out there are up to date on our "media that features Captain Midnight" lore, but tonight I want to talk about Jeffty is Five, a short story by Harlan Ellison, as it relates to Henry Creel circa 1952.

Jeffty Kinzer and his best friend, Donny, were five. They were huge comic book fans, especially of Captain Midnight. But then Jeffty was five, and Donny was seven. After that, Jeffty was five and Donny was fourteen. You see where I'm going with this, no? Jeffty is perpetually five years old.

Because of his peculiarity, his parents resent him.

Jeffty's mother, Leona, specifically, dislikes him most...to the point she wishes he'd died as a baby.

Jeffty, for his part, is a good kid, despite the barely-hidden dislike he's shown. He has a secret hideout under the porch of his house, where he draws, reads comics, and listens to radio shows.

There's something strange about Jeffty, though (aside from the not-aging, and specifically linked to his not-aging). He can bring new pieces of the past into the future. Discontinued radio shows have new episodes, discontinued comics have new issues, and new merch is made for shows that no longer exist.

Specifically, Ellison writes about Jeffty bringing a brand-new Captain Midnight Secret Decoder Code-O-Graph into the future:

Donny talks about how living these new-past experiences via Jeffty thins the membrane between worlds, between Past and Present.

There's a problem, though. Exposing Jeffty to the Present eats away at him. In an attempt to hurry Jeffty away from the Present, Donny sends him off by himself to get tickets for the movie they're meant to see. Along the way, Jeffty gets roughed up by some older teens. Instead of taking him to a hospital, Donny takes him home to his parents.

Spotting the chance to take back a normal life and live in the present...Leona kills Jeffty in the family bathtub, playing present-day rock music over the radio.

Now, something I was struggling to answer in my big Time Loop Post was the question of "What happened in 1952, when Henry was 7?"

Jeffty, Joseph and Joseph, Henry and Henry: Changelings

Jeffty's now-grown friend, Donny, misses the way things were in the '50s, when he and Jeffty were little. He'd like things to go back to the way they were...

...and he gets that through Jeffty's time-bending powers.

Jeffty has a hideaway spot in his family home where he hides away from his resentful, fearful mother to draw, read comics, and listen to the radio:

Jeffty, whose mother wishes he'd died as a baby because he's precluding her from having a "normal" life...

And who killed him in a bathtub.

Another detail to add—Patty asks Henry if he isn't a little old to be as obsessed as he is with Captain Midnight, as if being a fan is something for little kids.

I'd like, then, to put this is all in concert with:

The Creel-Carmichael parallels per Changeling (1980), wherein Joseph, a disabled boy who's resented by his father, Richard, is locked away in his attic. Richard drowns Joseph in a bathtub at age 6, and replaces him with a "normal" boy. This "normal" boy is mostly convinced he's the real Joseph Carmichael until the end of the movie.

2. Em's Doppleganger TFS Henry theory (which suggests that at some point Henry was replaged with a dopple-gorgon who almost believes he's the real Henry Creel). 3. Em's post about Before I Wake (wherein a little boy drowns in a bathtub and is replaced by a new boy with strange abilities). 4. (A post I have yet to make, regarding) Parallels between ST and the show Servant, wherein a new mother accidentally kills her newborn son, Jericho, by forgetting him in a locked car during a heatwave. She's given a hyperrealistic baby-doll as a replacement in order to cope, which their nanny Leanne magically transforms into a real baby boy. ST5's code name is Jericho, and other parallel to the series include (but are not limited to): psychic powers, spiders, stalker cults, murderous yet somehow well-meaning nannies, and giant cracks opening up in the earth (psionically).

Thus, my hypothesis: I wonder if we aren't dealing with a matryoshka-doll-meets-Fringe type situation, wherein Henry died/was killed at age 7, was replaced by or swapped for another boy (like Peter Bishop...staring directly at Peter Owens/Peter Ballard) via the 1979/1952 incident, and then was swapped again with a doppleganger via the 1956 gate.