A Mystery At Ravenscroft

Ken Taylor, Where Are You?

Parker

September 19th, 2021

I wake up to the sound of my alarm blaring through my phone, along with vigorous vibrations. I turn over in my bed and start trying to feel under my pillows and sheets for my phone. With my eyes still halfway closed, I finally find it and shut it off. It's currently 10:00 AM, and I'm still extremely tired from moving our stuff in yesterday. I plop my phone down on the nightstand beside my bed and roll over to stare at the ceiling.

"I still cannot get over what I read in that diary last night," I say to myself. "Okay, so let's say for a second that this is real. I need to go back and read some more of the journal to know for sure."

I force myself out of bed to go find where I put the diary. After about five minutes of not being able to find it, I remembered that I shoved it behind the dresser again when my mom came in. I don't even know if I'm going to tell her about it. I mean, this doesn't seem like anything to get my mother involved in, and lord knows she's already going through so much. I pull it out from behind the dresser and take the diary with me back into the bed. I flip to the page that I left off last night. This entry is dated August 14th. It reads,

Dear Diary,

I am so close to figuring out what's going on with Viridian. I knew something big was happening here, and I was right. The people who get eliminated, I'm pretty sure they actually get eliminated. Where do the people go after they're eliminated? They are never seen again, anywhere. Something is not right, I can just feel it. Wow, I can't believe I'm writing this right now. But writing it down makes it real, no matter how scary. I want to tell Viv, but I don't want to drag her into this until I'm 100% sure. The higher-ups at Viridian are up to something, and I'll be the one to expose them.

I immediately grab my phone and search up Viridian, but all I get is this gorgeous green color. I'm positive that's not what I'm looking for. I then search "Viridian and Nighbury Falls," trying to see if I get a match there. Surprisingly, I don't find anything at all. I have hit a dead-end, and I don't even know where to try and find answers. I turn off my phone and plop down onto my pillow, staring at the ceiling.

"This is too much," I say, thinking to myself. "What am I supposed to do with this information? At this point, I have to assume that this is real. That what I'm reading is completely real. What if..."

I sit upright, having a thought surge through my brain so fast I have to act on it immediately before I forget. I open my laptop and search, "Ken Taylor Nighbury Falls." I only get a few links to come up, and I look through those. Google seemed to have crossed out Nighbury Falls in the search, but left Ken Taylor. I click on the first link and find a girl named Taylor Ken in Washington, DC. "Okay, definitely not who I think I'm looking for," I mutter to myself. I click the arrow to go back to the search list and click on the second link. After I read the headline, I freeze. My face is stuck, staring at the utterly familiar phrase at the top of the headline, "Have You Seen Me?" I scramble out of bed and race to the corner of the room where I threw my jeans last night. I look in the back pocket, fumbling to get the paper out. I unfold the paper, my hands shaking at the thoughts racing through my mind. I open it up, and there it is—the poster that says, "Have You Seen Me?" This was the poster I found, along with several other ones, about a missing girl. And her name was Ken Taylor. I never got to keep reading the poster because of the rude clerk. "Why did they have so many of those posters? And if they had them to hang them up, why didn't I see any? It wasn't making sense. So you're telling me that the girl who has been missing for weeks, I have her diary right in my hands? That the truth to her disappearance might be here, right in front of me? This is all too much; I can't handle this right now. But I know that I have to because if I don't, I will never forgive myself. On the off chance that this is real, I'd rather do something about it and be wrong than do nothing when I could've done something—anything.

I flip to the last page of the diary that I left off earlier. I flip to the next page, and nothing. My heart skips a beat, and I flip to the next page. I just keep flipping and flipping and flipping and.. nothing. There were no more entries after August 14th. This is not a good sign, at all. Why did the entries just end so abruptly? I check back on the missing person's photo on my laptop, and I physically feel my heart stop. Ken Taylor disappeared on the very last day she wrote in this diary. She was last seen alive on August 14th. A chill runs down my spine, making me feel like I'm not alone in my room anymore. This is not a coincidence, not a chance. What are the odds that the very last time she wrote in her diary was the last time anyone saw her alive? Should I go to the police with this diary? According to this article, they haven't had many leads at all in her case—maybe this is what they need? It mentions something about Veridian, whatever that might be. Maybe they can figure it out? I honestly don't know what to do, but before I make any rash decisions, I need to eat. The only thing scaring me more right now is the ability for me to go ages without eating something; that is the real monster.