Bite The Bullet

Into the Dark

"Four college students disappeared late last week near the small town of Grove Creak in south Missouri. Sources say the kids were to spend their spring break at one of their families' cabins. Police and search teams are still scouring the 100 acre area, but there has been no sign of them. While searching the cabin they were meant to stay in until last Friday morning, police found the students belongings untouched, but it is said that there were possible signs of a struggle in and around the cabin. However, the local police department is still hopeful of the safe return of all four students." Jayne reads the newspaper article aloud to Alix while she riffles through her large black duffle bag retrieving her laptop cord and connecting it from her laptop to the nearest outlet she can find in their small two bed motel room.

"Yeah, right! They've been missing for over a week, and there were "signs of a struggle", those cops don't believe they just got lost in the woods. It's obvious something else happened." Alix chimes in.

"You're probably right, but before we do anything else we need to look for any other signs that this could be one of our cases; anything suspicious like electrical storms, other missing person cases, mysterious deaths- ." Jayne directs before being cut off.

"I know the drill, and I'm way ahead of you. I'm looking at the area's history looking for similar cases of people going missing like this, and I have already found two. In one case three people went missing in the same area of the woods, almost exactly five years ago. Another six years before that, a family of four went missing on a camping trip. Oh and here's another four years before that one, a married couple and their dog." Alix relays the information from her computer screen to Jayne. Jayne leans forward in her chair, placing her elbows on her knees as she thinks for a moment.

"It seems like there's a case roughly every five years or so, depending on how large the group of people that go missing happens to be. Were any of them ever found?"  Jayne asks. Alix scrolls down and reads further.

"Uh, yep. The dog. He was found wandering the streets closest to the tree line of the woods. I guess whoever or whatever is taking these people has a soft spot for cute doggies." Alix responds sarcastically. Jayne rolls her eyes and rises to walk over to her bed and open her own dusty duffel bag.

"Or, they only want humans for whatever they are doing." Jayne comments ignoring her best friend's usual sarcasm, "Maybe it's witches doing human sacrifices, or some creature eating them that only gets hungry every five years." She takes a leather jacket out of the duffle bag along with a fake badge. "Come on, let's get over to the scene, we can try to talk to the cops, get more information that they left out of the papers, see if there was any other cases like this that they know about."

They pull up to the site of the cabin where the kids went missing, the well sized cabin looks to be old but in relatively good condition. Its log walls are topped with a dark green roof and has matching green windows and front door. However some of its roof shingles appear to be falling off and some of the paint is peeling. Another green door is placed off to the side of the cabin likely leading the cabins root cellar. The land it sits on is surrounded by dense forest. The whole drive up the narrow dirt road through the woods to the cabin, the girls noticed the entire lack of county sheriff's in the area. Even when they arrived at the cabin there were very few police, much less than there should be when looking for four recently missing kids.

Alix and Jayne both climb out of their car looking around; the police couldn't be done with this whole area if they are truly still looking for clues on the missing kids. They approach a stern looking man with a thick beard that by the way the few remaining cops act around him and the way he is barking orders, seems to be in charge.

"Excuse me," Jayne strides over to the men, head held high and shoulders back, "Where are all of your officers? We were told there was a whole search team in these woods, but we never saw a single person on our ride in here."