High Strangeness

Part I: Ten Years Since The Children Left

"And the Piper advanced and the children followed,

And when all were in to the very last,

The door in the mountain-side shut fast."

-Robert Browning   

Chapter One

She didn't want this story, but beggars can't be choosers. At least I'm being paid, exposure pieces don't really pay the bills, you know? She told herself. She slept in motels, all with the same bland interior paints and the same bland sheets. How much thought goes into creating a space so devoid of personality?

Every morning Jamie had the same pastries and the same coffee. Then the work began. They say grief takes different forms, but so far, Jamie only saw the same unfocused stare, the same sobs. Nearly everyone left their children's rooms as they were. She spoke to them via Skype and email to set up the interviews. Of the nine families that agreed to be interviewed, nothing seemed very different.

The facts certainly never changed.

Ten years ago, on April 4th, 726 children disappeared in the United States. Investigators say this happened at about one in the morning. They left without noise or screams or any signs of struggle. Although, in one house, an eight-year-old put his brother in the back of a closet, telling him not to come out no matter what. In one girl's room, there was a butcher knife under her pillow. The parents say their goodnight hugs were extra long. Some wanted more stories than normal.

None of them cried and none of them said anything.

Then 726 of them went missing.

Being the tenth anniversary, her website was doing a story. Everyone was doing a story. The site she wrote for primarily focused on music, running nostalgia pieces for older readers, and hyping new bands for everyone else. She wrote the irritating list pieces of course, top five this and seven best that, anything for clicks or shares. Everyone else is closing up shop, their domains expiring, and their writers furiously sending sample pieces to anyone who might hire.

But she hung on. They needed reads. They needed ad revenue. Clicks are clicks after all. She thought about tying this to Norman Peers, who lost his youngest in the disappearances and currently fronts The Stakes.

Over the years, no child has been found. None have been sighted. No evidence has turned up. The police watched the border, and feds scoured the dark web. They found disgusting things, they solved other cases and found other children, but the 726 remain lost.

There were a few things they had in common. In fact, they couldn't find any kind of meaningful connection between any of the kids otherwise. Some came from poor families, while others were members of wealthy, well-connected families, some urban and some rural. They were a variety of races and religions, a variable cross-section of humanity. The investigators could find no messages, no evidence anyone reached out to them online. In fact, the only suspicious correspondence was a handwritten note found in one missing child's room: Are you ready?

The note was written in block letters, no prints could be lifted, and the paper was just generic printer paper purchased locally.

* * *

The mother agreed to meet Jamie at ten in the morning, but no one answered the door. She took notes on the weather, the neighborhood, the cars in the driveway. She knocked again. She swore a curtain moved.