An old backyard sandbox with raccoon tracks in the sand under a dim Toronto sky.

Cover Your Sandbox. Block the Raccoon Latrine.

The Sandbox

It started as an ordinary August afternoon in East Toronto in an unforgotten corner of an overgrown yard behind an old duplex at the edge of the ravine. Mason kicked his unlaced sneaker against the side of the sandbox, sending a puff of fine sand into the warm air.

“Go ahead, Jimmy,” he said, grinning.

Jay was the one who’d found the place. The sandbox was old, wooden and cracked but still half-full, the kind of discovery that begged to be claimed by three thirteen-year-olds desperate for summer adventure.

“Bet this thing hasn’t seen daylight since we were born,” Jay said.

“Yeah, but it’s ours now,” Mason replied, tossing down his knapsack. “Let’s build something epic.”

They dug, piled, shaped. None of them noticed the faint brown smears along the sandbox’s edge.

By the time the streetlights flickered on, the boys had turned the sandbox into a miniature fortress.

“Tomorrow,” Mason said, “we finish the moat.”

That night, raccoons emerged from the alley. Their eyes flashed like dull coins in the dark. One climbed into the box, scratched at the sand, and left behind a few coiled droppings before vanishing into the trees along the ravine.

Two days later, Jimmy rubbed his eyes during lunch.

“You good?” Mason asked.

“Yeah,” Jimmy mumbled. “Just itchy. Allergies or something.”

But by that evening, Jimmy’s mother was calling Mason’s house, her voice trembling. “He’s running a fever. His eyes are… swollen.”

Jay shrugged it off when Mason told him. “Probably pink eye. My cousin had it. It looked gross but went away.”

Still, Mason couldn’t shake a creeping unease.

Roundworm

School was starting soon, but Jimmy didn’t show up for the last week of summer. His parents said he was in the hospital for “tests.”

When Mason and Jay finally visited, they froze at the sight of him. Jimmy lay pale against the white sheets, his head turned toward the window though his eyes didn’t seem to see it.

“They said it’s something with a parasite,” Jimmy’s mother whispered. “From animals.” Her voice cracked. “From raccoons.”

Mason felt the floor tilt under him. He remembered the sandbox, the strange dark stains, the night they’d forgotten to cover it.

Doctors said the name as though it was a curse: Baylisascaris procyonis, raccoon roundworm.

“It’s rare,” one doctor said, as if that made it better.

“The eggs can survive in soil for years. Children are most at risk if they touch contaminated sand and then,” the doctor paused before mimicking with his own hand, “rub their eyes or put their hands in their mouths.”

Mason couldn’t meet anyone’s eyes. He remembered teasing Jimmy for eating chips right after they’d been digging. “No big deal,” Jimmy had said back then.

Now Jimmy couldn’t walk. He couldn’t see.

Jay tried to keep things light. “They’ll fix him,” he told Mason one afternoon as they sat on the curb near Danforth Road. “Doctors can fix anything.”

But Mason had overheard the nurses. The infection had moved into Jimmy’s brain. The worms were microscopic, threading through tissue, destroying it.

That night, Mason dreamed of raccoons clawing at his bedroom window, their eyes glowing like lanterns through his curtains.

The city’s health department showed up two days later. Workers in gloves and masks sealed off the yard with yellow tape. They shoveled out the sandbox and burned the wood frame.

Mason stood on the sidewalk watching. He felt like he was erasing a crime scene.

A reporter came by, notebook in hand. “You knew the boy who got sick?” she asked.

Mason didn’t answer. He just stared at the black trash bags being loaded into a truck, at the sand that had once been a castle and a kingdom.

Weeks passed. School began. Jay started hanging out with other friends. But Mason couldn’t move on.

He visited Jimmy again in October. The room smelled of disinfectant and something metallic.

Jimmy’s head turned slightly when Mason spoke, but his eyes… They were milky, unfocused. They no longer moved.

“Hey, man,” Mason whispered. “Remember the moat?”

Jimmy smiled faintly. “I remember… the sound.”

Mason swallowed hard. “They’re saying you might get better.”

Jimmy didn’t answer. A monitor beeped somewhere behind him.

When Mason left, he saw a poster in the hospital hallway: Cover Your Sandbox — Protect Your Kids from Raccoon Roundworm.

The photo showed a child’s hand pressing into clean sand. Mason looked down at his own, still scarred with faint scratches.

By Halloween, the neighborhood kids told stories about “the cursed sandbox.” They said if you played there after dark, you’d go blind before the first frost.

Jay laughed when he heard it. “We started a legend,” he said. “Cool, huh?”

Mason didn’t laugh. “It’s not cool. It’s real.”

He hadn’t told Jay about the nightmares; how he woke to the sound of whispering, like grains of sand trickling through his skull. How sometimes, when he rubbed his eyes, he swore he could feel something crawling just behind them.

The night of the first frost, Mason couldn’t sleep. He kept thinking about Jimmy in that hospital bed, about how their last adventure had destroyed him.

He pulled on his jacket and walked to the lot. The sandbox was gone, just a patch of dirt fenced off with warning signs. But under the moonlight, he saw tracks; tiny hand-shaped prints leading toward the trees.

The raccoons were back.

Mason felt a chill climb his spine. He knew he should leave, but something drew him forward.

He crouched and touched the soil. It was cold, damp; and still faintly gritty.

When he pulled his hand back, a smear of dark brown clung to his fingers.

He stumbled home, heart racing. He scrubbed his hands until the skin burned. Still, he couldn’t stop feeling it; something unseen, waiting.

Winter came. Jimmy’s family moved away. Jay stopped talking about it. But Mason couldn’t escape the sense that he was being followed.

He started failing classes. Teachers said he looked tired. His mom thought he needed glasses because he kept squinting at the board.

Then came the headaches. Followed by sharp flashes behind his eyes, like static. One afternoon, while walking home past the old train tracks, his vision blurred so suddenly he stumbled into the snowbank.

For a moment, he saw them again: the raccoons, dozens of them, watching from the shadows near the ravine.

When he blinked, they were gone.

By spring, Mason was back in the hospital; the same ward where Jimmy had been.

Doctors ran tests. They said they were just being cautious, that maybe it was “stress-related.” But Mason heard the murmurs in the hall: “It fits the pattern… maybe exposure months ago…”

He closed his eyes and saw sand castles melting into black water.

When Jay came to visit, he stood awkwardly by the bed. “They said you’re gonna be okay,” Jay lied.

Mason smiled weakly. “Yeah. Just need some rest.”

After Jay left, Mason stared out the window. Down below, in the hospital garden, a raccoon rummaged through a trash can.

Its mask-like eyes turned up toward him.

Mason pressed his hand against the glass.

In the reflection, for just a heartbeat, he thought he saw something wriggling behind his pupils… like a shadow trying to find its way out.

The Outbreak

That summer, the city finally began a campaign: “Cover Your Sandbox. Block the Raccoon Latrine.” Flyers went up in schools and around parks. People talked about “the outbreak,” though there had only been two confirmed cases.

Jay left town with his family. Jimmy remained in care, learning to walk again though he’d never see.

And Mason... Well, Mason’s story didn’t make the news. The doctors said the tests were inconclusive, maybe even psychosomatic, some mentioned. But at night, when the neighbourhood quieted and the raccoons crept from the alleys and rooftops, Mason would wake to the sound of scratching in the walls and whisper, “I’m sorry.”

Because he still remembered that first afternoon, their laughter, the sun on the sand, the illusion of safety.

Yet, he still remembered thinking: It’s just a sandbox.