The Children Are Missing

Chapter 1: The Beginning of the End

The wrath of Mother Nature comes not only in floods, but in withering drought. The Pacific had long dried up, leaving the seabed scorched and suffocating in its place. Humanity's crimes against nature had caused a cataclysmic event. Seemingly overnight, the new world awoke to the smell of rotting fish and blown seaweed. What sort of punishment could this be? What god had betrayed them, abandoned their people with such a violent sin?

Thus began the Wood. Whether a blessing or a warning, no one could decipher. In the place of previously crashing shores and watery depths, a forest covered the expanse of the sea. Overgrown grass and knotted roots of far-reaching trees stretched beyond where the eye could see, as natural and as simple as if it had always been there. As old as time and as strong as spite, the forest escaped human reason. As if Mother Nature herself had thrown up her hands and said, "Try me again."

Like most oddities, humanity sought to destroy what it could not understand. Men took their axes and saws to the shallowest trees, hacking away until sweat dripped from their faces, leaving them huffing and confused. The bark would not be cut. Nor would it be burned. A thousand flames and a fire that would destroy a city could blaze out like one blowing out a candle.

The people rioted. They called it unholy; they said the rapture was coming, the end times drew near! Some said some interdimensional being had been toying with them, else this could be proof that life existed as a simulation! Still others pointed the blame finger at government officials, calling it some kind of set up, a plot, a scheme, a ploy! And if it wasn't, then they ought to do something against it all! News media could do nothing but cover the marvel of the Wood, and relay speculations and rumors, at one point claiming it all a proposal of war from some other large country.

Voyeurs became venturers, even the national guard got involved. Men and women marched toward the wood, determined to go where no man had gone before. Just as the depths of the sea claimed their secrecy, so did the Wood. Ungovernable wastelands that deepened and darkened to depths undiscoverable by human eyes viciously sought to remain so. Those who did return had lost touch with reason, bordering on madness. Whether visions or reality, they had seen wonders too horrific to tell. None of them spoke a word again. Much like the ocean, the public was advised to stay in the shallow end. Safe.

With time, each speculation died out to become just that: speculation. Just another theory for some chronically online middle-aged man in his mother's basement to latch onto and declare with such certainty that this is true and here is why in a two hour long deep dive that ultimately results in nothing but a beg for clarification.

The oddity of the Wood became a grand unsolved mystery that hung in the back of everyday lives. Declared another World Wonder, the Wood faded into that. A wonder.

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Six years is plenty old to become an adventurer. Or so Kit Kingston vigorously decided. Her best friend, Nev, did not agree. Perpetually shy and worried, Nev hung back in her escapades. Nothing could defeat the surge of belief in herself, as comes with those who have never actually faced any real danger. Children usually believe the best of themselves, unable to imagine the plethora of horrors that lurked just behind their parents' protective arms.

She'd fostered an odd friendship with the Wood. She sat quietly listening at its banks, the sound of the leaves rustling was the closest to ocean waves she'd ever come. She'd been born decades after the ocean had been lost, but photographs proved it'd been real. She offered a teacup from her set to the Wood, talking in soft tones. She imagined it answered. The Wood did not speak in words, but she heard its answer within her as clear as day.

She knew the warnings; she knew better than to go beyond the shallow end. But the people who had trespassed beyond the safe end didn't have permission. The Wood invited her in. It raised a beckoning hand, cocked its enticing finger and whispered wonder and permission to wander.

Nev said he saw her go in, and when she didn't come out for an hour, he went to find an adult. The search party lasted four hours. What happened in those hours that Kit had been lost to the world, gone from the eyes of the public, remained a mystery. Her parents lamented her disappearance, sure that she had fallen or hurt herself. Couldn't she hear their screams? Did she hear her mother's sobs, guttural as the time stretched? The Wood seemed to mock the searchers. An agonizing game of hide and seek ensued. Kit's father screamed at the trees, demanding her return. Whatever took her had stolen something from him.

A sparkler shot into the sky, signaling she'd been found. Running footsteps thudded through the Wood back to the shallow edge, where the dry sand mixed with grass. Kit's wide eyes reflected confused alarm at the men and women barreling toward her. She backed away in defense until her parents surpassed the others and wrapped her in their arms.

"Where were you?" They cried. Their shaking voices and tight arms scared Kit.

"Right here!" She answered, confused.

"Why didn't you answer us?"

"I didn't hear you..."

Kit's temporary disappearance haunted her life like an ever-present ghost, whispering unanswerable questions of her past. Psychiatrists and well-meaning relatives alike analyzed her disappearance and her post-incident psyche alike, both finding nothing but a sweetly confused child. Surely, she must be repressing the trauma. Session after session did nothing to unearth the deeply buried memory of her adventure beyond the shallow depths of forest. Though relatively normal, her parents could do nothing more for her, except worry with every fiber of being they possessed. Nev developed an overprotective air over Kit. Though she could certainly handle herself, he felt that without him, something deeply terrible might've happened to his bestest friend.

Under what therapists would describe as "helicopter parenting," Nora and Harry raised their daughter Kit in the simple suburbs of Washington. They kept her from the Wood as best they could, discouraging her obsessions. Eventually, they hoped, she would grow out of it. She never quite did, she just learned to hide it better.

Time passed like waiting for a train that never comes, only to discover you've missed it. Kit and Nev weaved through each other's lives, never far from each other, even when drifting apart. They always came back. They always would. It seemed the entity of the Wood went dormant, eluding their childish fantasies until the pair grew out of them.

But all sleeping creatures eventually wake. Dormancy is not complacency. Left alone from the eyes of men, something lurking in the shadowy depths festered, and spread. The Wood breathed in humanity. Love, and hate, vengeance and vanity, age and youth, humanity. The Wood whispered amongst itself in winds and rustlings. A rumbling answer echoed through the trees. Twelve years of quiet listening, and the Wood awoke to speak. With no mouth to scream, and no mind to scheme, the Wood appeared unchanged. But something hung in the air, heavy and slow. You could feel it. Something wicked this way came.

When the first child disappeared, it was a tragedy. It devastated an otherwise sleepy town, injecting pain into the veins of the city. A manhunt had been devised. Her parents took to the news. Their sweet girl had been snatched off the front lawn. Please please return her, please please please. Family and friends who couldn't agree on religious affiliation found themselves begging together, clasped hands and wailing voices.

The second child's disappearance was a cruel coincidence. The third, an unholy series. Unrelenting pain. Which child would be next? What mother and father would become parents only in name? Snatched from their beds behind locked doors or gone from their sights despite careful days, no one was safe.

Nine children. Gone.