It wasn’t clear if this was the same condition that Mary Leitao, a lab technician in Pennsylvania, came across in 2001, but she chose to use the same word as Dr. Browne to describe the odd, unidentifiable fibers growing from her two-year-old son’s back when he complained of bugs crawling on him.

It certainly seemed to be the same condition.

Condition—was that even the right word for it?

Disease? Disorder?

The doctors weren’t even sure how to classify it.

Was it bacterial? Viral? Fungal? Parasitic? Genetic?

Psychologists said it was dermatological, some sort of infection.

Dermatologists said it was psychosomatic, all in the patient’s head.

Over the last decade, the CDC, four separate research universities, and the FBI lab had all studied the fibers, and no one had been able to identify them or understand exactly how they formed.

In the end, the CDC just indirectly acknowledged that they had no clue what they were dealing with, and rather than label it Morgellons, they’d started calling it “unexplained dermopathy.” According to them, it was a cluster of symptoms, including sores, that resembled those from spider bites or chronic excoriations, delusional infestation, fatigue, depression, memory loss, muscle twitches, mental deterioration, and cognitive impairment.

At least Timothy hadn’t suffered from those last two—no mental deterioration or cognitive impairment.

He hadn’t lost the ability to concentrate.

To concentrate.

Yes.

He could concentrate.

And no one believes you when you tell them what’s happening with you.

But he could do it. He could concentrate.

Foreign material (they called it “birefringent” as a way to sound more scientific, always trying to sound more scientific) was found in the sores. Most often it resembled cellulose similar to cotton fibers, but it wasn’t cotton. In other cases, it contained DNA from other animals. It might be that there’s some genetic reason that in certain people, their skin becomes a host for the parasites often found on plants or animals.

Timothy had seen the movie Bug with Ashley Judd and the very creepy character Peter Evans, played by Michael Shannon. It wasn’t clear if the movie was meant to accurately portray Morgellons, but whether or not the writers had this specific condition in mind, they’d nailed some of the aspects of the disease: the bugs, the isolation you feel, the frenzy to stop it from happening, the extreme measures you’ll take in order to quiet the symptoms and not let them take over your life.

The fibers are not from an external source. Somehow they materialize inside the body—perhaps from some sort of residue left over from an infection. There might be a neurotoxin or microorganism that accounts for the memory loss and muscle control problems. That seemed to be the current thinking, but no one really knew.