My son tried to kill me

This all started maybe a month ago. I live in Ireland out in the countryside with my wife and my son. We've been here about three years now but before all this happened we were planning to move back to the city because as my son got older there wasn't really anything for him to do here. He had a few friends but there aren't really that many people here his age (13).

Anyway, I guess it started when he asked if he could stay at a friends house. This friend is almost 15 but we know his parents and we thought he was a good kid. He has an older brother as well who's 17. I dropped him off and talked with his dad for a bit. They were staying in an old barn out behind the house. It hadn't been used in years so I was a bit worried about how safe it was but his dad assured me that he kept it good repair for the kids to use. I said my goodbyes, hugged my son and drove off.

I picked him up the next day but he was acting strange. I asked him if he was okay but he just said "fine" and that was it. I tried asking how his night was but he stuck to one word answers. This is really strange because he would normally be very talkative. I was a wee bit worried so I called his friend's dad and it turned out that the friend was acting the same. Both of us were worried about our kids. I asked the dad if he had checked on them during the night and he said that he'd wanted to give the kids space so he'd just sent his older son out as he went to bed. We decided that we'd just keep an eye on them and they were probably just tired.

When I got off the phone I went into the living room. My son was there, just staring at a blank tv screen. When I turned it on to watch something he didn't move, he just kept staring into space. Definitely just tired, I thought. I touched his arm and he just fell over so I carried him up to bed and tucked him in.

He slept for the rest of the day so woke him up for dinner. He seemed to be back to his regular self so I stopped worrying about him.

That night I heard my son's window opening and a thump as something hit the roof of my car. I ran to my son's room and looked out the open window, thinking someone had snatched him, but thankfully no, he had just sneaked out and was running across the field. I was angry with him, but there was no way I would be able to catch him. By the time I got the car started he would be in the forest and there was no way that I would be able to catch him on foot with my knees. All I was able to do was wait until he came home and give him the scolding of his life.

So I did, but that night he was out the window again. I nailed the window down, he broke the glass. There wasn't much I was able to do the next few nights except board it up and wait for new windows but he removed the planks with his bare hands. The planks always had blood on them and his fingertips were cut up pretty bad. This went on for about a week before I noticed that he was getting paler and thinner day by day. Before, he'd had a bit of puppy fat but this was gone now and his cheeks were beginning to become sunken. Similar things were happening to his friend. Neither me, my wife or the friends parents knew what to do.

Then one morning we got a call from the police. The friend's parents were dead and both their children were missing. They'd only found the bodies because of an anonymous caller. My son kept sneaking out even when we begged him not to, it just wasn't safe.

A week after the friend's parents had been killed I woke up to see my son staring down at me with his hands around my neck, his sunken face twisted with hatred. I barely recognized him. I looked over and saw that his friend was strangling my wife as well. I didn't want to do it, but I had no choice. I grabbed my lamp and hit his head with it. He staggered back, cursing in pain before I hit him again. He hit the wardrobe and fell.

Now I turned to his friend. My wife had managed to stab him with a pair of nail scissors and he was running out the door. I instructed my wife to tie our son up before running after the kid. He'd climbed out my son's window and kept running. I knew that my knees might not take it but that little shit had killed my friends and tried to kill my wife so I went after him, out the window and across the field after him.

I lost him when we got to the forest and was ready to turn back. There was no point in going on if I didn't know where to look and I was scared that he might have doubled back to try and kill my wife again. Then the moon came out from behind a cloud and I saw blood along the path in front of me. It was from where my wife had stabbed him, I was still on his trail. I kept going, ignoring my sore knees, and picked up a branch from the path. I soon realized where I was going, the old barn.

I got there and I could see candles burning inside. The older brother was standing in the middle of the floor with two clay dolls and my kid's friend kneeling before him. I crept around the barn, spying on them, trying to figure out what they were doing. As I watched, the older brother pulled out a knife and stabbed one of the dolls in the chest. His younger brother clutched at his chest and fell over.

My heart was like ice. I had just seen him kill his own brother in cold blood and even now he was getting ready to stab the other doll. He was going to kill my son. I burst in through the thin, metal wall and swung the branch at him. He dropped the doll, turned tail and ran. He was unbelievably fast and when I tried to give chase one of my knees almost gave out. I wouldn't catch him tonight.

So now my son is tied up in our basement. We don't know who we can turn to and we know that he's a murderer and that he's dangerous but it wasn't his fault. We can't let him go to jail when he was being controlled by someone else. He's still dangerous and I know that if we ever let him out he would try to kill both of us. My wife is researching ways to undo whatever spell was put on him while I'm trying to track down the 17 year old. So far all that my investigation's thrown up is that he wasn't our friends' son. He brainwashed us all to think that he was and then used us as pieces in his sick game.