The Silver King

King In The Woods 1

I currently work as a cop in a pretty small town. It's surrounded by woods and parks. The forests are not part of any national park system, but I feel as if it's as big as one. I have to be vague about the area because I don't think my boss would appreciate me talking about this case. It's still pretty big news considering nothing ever happens in this area. When a child goes missing in the woods it should be big news. When two goes missing it's more than news. I never told anyone the truth about what happened in those woods when I took a day looking for those children. I'm certain that if my boss heard any of this, he would strip me of my badge and sent me off to a head doctor. But I have to tell this in hopes I get any information about who I came across that day.

I had an early midlife crisis and changed careers. I come from a long line of police officers and had planned that to be my future, but because of some complicated and boring reasons I choose to do something else. Then, later on in life I regretted my choices and did what I needed to do to become a cop. Even though I looked on the older side, I didn't actually have a lot of experience in law enforcement. The place that hired me didn't need someone who did. Just a person that looked the part. Nothing happened in this small town. Just some easy to break up bar brawls. Hell, they couldn't even be called brawls. I feel as if they only hired me so I could go through their ancient filing system and update it because my boss refused to do it. While I was organizing the mountain of old paper work and cases I found out this town had a pretty regular pattern of hikers going missing on the trails. But after looking at the national average, I guessed our town wasn't anything special. Nothing sinister going on. People just get lost.

I had only been working at my new job for six months when the uproar started. A child had gone missing on one of the easier and short hiking trail with his family. His father had turned his head to talk to his wife and when he looked back, his little boy was gone. They had thought he had just ducked behind a tree to scare them, but after looking through the entire area they grew panicked. The mother stayed where they last saw him and the father ran to get help by the ranger's station. They quickly organized a search for the boy. The mother stayed in that spot for nearly ten hours waiting and watching, not knowing what else to do.

I'm not a hiker myself but I joined the volunteers and searched for the boy. Any spare moment I had I was doing whatever I could to help. I ended up with hundreds of bugs bites and torn ankles from my new boots but I never complained. A child was out in the woods and we couldn't find any trace of him.

Then a girl was lost. She was a classmate of the boy and wanted to help. Some volunteers humored her and let her run water to people searching. But she could only go a few feet into the woods. If she saw someone coming near the trail end, she would run up to give them a cold-water bottle. She was in sight the entire time. Again, someone turned their head as she took a step onto the trail and when they turned back, she was gone. The people who she had been walking towards hadn't turned their heads. They were completely bewildered, and questioned what they had seen. She simply was gone in a blink of an eye. No one had a logical reason for it. So, they didn't dwell on how they children disappeared only that they now had two missing.

Helicopters came and scent dogs joined the search. But after a week the search was trying to recover a body. Two children under the age of ten in the woods for that long wasn't likely to last.

I had been doing whatever I could in those days but felt useless. My boss noticed how badly this case was on my health and forced me to take one day off. After all, I wasn't a hiker or an expert in cases like these. I had done everything I could and if I kept hiking, I would burn myself out. He felt like there was more than enough people looking I could rest for a day then got back at it full force.

I did not listen to him. I did go to bed early the night before so I could be up at the crack of dawn to go back on the trails. I wasn't a part of the volunteer teams and my boss told them I shouldn't be out there. They gave me some looks but let me go hiking as long as I promised to stay on the short trails and not go into the woods. Which I agreed. I could get lost and that wouldn't help anyone. I knew I wouldn't find any traces of the children on a trail that had been looked over at least a hundred times before, but I still couldn't just stay at home.

That's how I spent my free day. Hiking trails and getting more blisters on my ankles. I had a backpack of some supplies. Even though I had hiked for the entire day I wasn't very hungry. I think the stress was getting to me. I still had some water and granola bars in my pack near the end of the day. I was in the middle of a somewhat longer trail I had gotten permission to search on when the sun had started to set. I decided to start heading back but knew it would be dark by the time I arrived at the end of the trail and to the ranger's station in the front of the woods. I knew I wasn't going to find anything but I still felt disappointed ending the day empty handed.

The orange light of the sun had faded into a grey light. A strange grey light that made bright colors pop. I had forgotten how strange that time of day looked. My orange shirt nearly looked neon in the grey light. Because of the odd light I saw a bright white on the trail easier than I might have at a different time of the day.

The trail had a slope to it. I had just reached the top ready to go down when I saw the white on the trail. I squinted to see a person standing wearing a long white and baggy sweater. The day had been hot and not at all sweater weather. The person was short and my heart started to race. But this person didn't look short enough to be seven. But it was still very strange to see a pre-teen just standing in the middle of the trail. I went down the slope and towards them hoping I looked friendly and they didn't book it into the woods.

"Hey, are you alright?" I asked when I was a few steps away from them.