Chapter 1 #2
At first, a sob answered her. Missy began to second-guess her decision to let Richie and the others off the hook. She could easily picture them offering up a jar of moonshine to get someone else to scare her.
“I’m stuck. Chuck and his friends said they wanted to show me something, and then they pushed me into some type of netting. I can’t get my ankle loose. They left me here.”
Missy groaned, all the pieces clicking into place.
Chuck Nords was a year younger than her, and he had made a sport of tormenting others since elementary school. The same Chuck who had put a frog in her backpack in sixth grade and locked a freshman in the supply closet last month.
“Keep talking,” Missy said with resignation.
She really should go back to the festival, find Richie and the others.
That would be the smart choice, but she also commiserated with the boy.
There was nothing worse than being helpless.
The kid would only be embarrassed if other boys had to rescue him. “I'll find you.”
“I—I think I'm by some fallen tree. And this netting is thick." The boy's voice cracked a little. She would have been scared, too. She lowered the beam on her phone to make sure she wouldn’t trip over a branch or rock. “They said the Threshing Man would find me.”
“That’s just an old myth,” Missy exclaimed as her phone chimed with an incoming text.
It was probably Richie or Veronica, wondering where she'd gone. She kept the beam steady as she continued forward, holding her hand up to move a low-hanging branch. “It’s just a way to scare us into staying out of the fields. Besides, these are woods. There’s no reason for Threshing Man to be walking around out here. ”
Missy tried her best to come across as confident. She was relatively certain that a few of those missing persons were abducted from the Cox property, but she wasn’t about to disclose that to the boy.
She continued forward, doing her best to push aside her own fear. The shadows retreated in front of the beam only to close in again behind her, like water flowing around a stone.
“Can you call out to me again?”
The festival sounds grew fainter with each step. Missy glanced over her shoulder, noticing the colorful lights receding through gaps between tree trunks.
“Hello? Can you hear me?” Missy called out again, wondering if she had veered too far left or right. “Can you hear me?”
Missy became uneasy when the boy didn’t reply right away. She slowed her pace, eventually coming to a complete stop. The sounds of the festival had become so muffled, it was as if she had cotton shoved in her ears.
There was also an unsettling quietness that had Missy wondering if she wasn’t being foolish. She glanced up through the twisted ancient trees whose branches formed a canopy so dense that she couldn’t see the stars. She was no longer comfortable searching for the boy herself.
Missy brought her phone close, tapping the screen so she could access the display. She was just about to press Richie’s name when the boy called out again.
“Are you close? I can’t…I can’t get loose.”
Missy breathed a sigh of relief. She must have deviated somehow and gone too far north. Or west. She wasn’t quite sure which, and she had never been good with directions.
“Keep talking!” Missy shouted, her voice practically bouncing between tree trunks. She turned off her display so it wouldn’t interfere with the flashlight. “I'm trying to follow your voice.”
“I think I see a light.” The boy's response had come from farther ahead, fainter than before. “Is that you?”
“No one else is stupid enough to be out here,” Missy muttered to herself as she pushed aside more low-hanging branches. She was so going to lay into Chuck when she got back to the festival. “Can you still see my phone?”
“Yes.”
Missy stopped walking when the boy’s voice was no longer coming from up ahead. He was now somewhere to the right of her, but that couldn’t be right. She hadn’t drifted at all since she had last heard his voice.
A growing unease began to settle over her that had nothing to do with the moonshine. The boy’s voice should be getting closer, not more distant. She instinctively shut off the light on her phone, allowing the darkness to swallow her.
The hair on the back of her neck rose. She reminded herself that the Threshing Man wasn't real. And if that were true, then someone was playing a trick on her.
The longer she remained silent, the more the quiet pressed against her eardrums like a physical presence.
A twig snapped to her right, causing her to spin in that direction.
She suddenly hated not being able to view her surroundings, so she tapped the display of her phone and reactivated her flashlight.
No one was there.
She slowly turned in a circle, sweeping her light across the trees, the underbrush, and the carpet of leaves.
Nothing moved.
“This isn't funny anymore,” Missy shouted, anger briefly overriding fear. Raising her voice gave her a sense of control, too. “I’m going back to the festival.”
Her words hung in the air, met only by the faint rustling of leaves overhead. She turned in another full circle, focusing her light on each shadowed space between trees and each potential hiding place.
When she was confident that no one was nearby, she retraced her steps as fast as she could.
It was hard to keep her phone steady, but she did her best while avoiding jutting rocks and sharp sticks.
While common sense told her that the Threshing Man wasn’t real, that didn’t mean someone didn’t have cruel intentions.
The right side of her denim jacket snagged on a tree, abruptly bringing her to a full stop. Her shirt had also gotten caught in the mix, and she frantically tugged on both fabrics, not caring that she heard something rip.
Once she was free, she raised her phone and had already taken two steps forward when she screamed at the sight of a tall figure. The black silhouette stood where moments before there had been nothing but darkness.
Tall, solid, undeniably human.
Relief flooded through her for the briefest moment as recognition flickered in her mind. She recognized that stance. Her lips parted to speak a name, but a glint of light had her lowering her gaze.
“I-I don’t know what you want,” Missy stuttered, unable to get her thoughts in order. Why was he holding a knife? Why would he want to hurt her? She had always been so kind to him. “But I promise not to tell anyone about this. You won’t get into any trouble, I promise.”
Missy took a step backward, and the dried leaves crunched beneath her boot. The knife shifted in his grip, its glare off the blade angling toward her.
“Did you hear me?”
He didn't respond. Instead, he took a deliberate step forward, unhurried.
Her breath came in quick, shallow gasps that didn't seem to deliver enough oxygen to her lungs.
Her mind raced through possibilities, explanations, and excuses, but she dismissed each one as quickly as they formed.
The truth was as sharp and undeniable as the knife in his hand.
He wanted to hurt her.
The phone in her hand dipped, its beam momentarily illuminating his face from below. What she glimpsed there—or rather, what she didn't detect—turned her fear into terror.
There was nothing in his eyes.
No anger, no curiosity, no hesitation.
Just emptiness, as though the man she had known her entire life had never existed. She stared transfixed as his lips curved in the faintest smile, as if attempting to offer her comfort.
For some reason, his odd reaction terrified her even more.
Missy acted on impulse, hurling her cell phone at him with all the force she could muster. She didn’t wait for it to make contact. Instead, she spun around and ran as fast as she could, hoping to cut back in the darkness toward the festival.
Toward safety.
The soles of her boots pounded too hard against the forest floor, but she couldn’t bring herself to slow down and make less noise. She needed to put as much distance between them as possible. Her breathing grew labored and almost painful as she pushed herself to run faster.
Branches whipped at her face, prompting her to raise her arms for protection. Doing so threw her off balance, causing her to stumble forward. She wasn’t able to protect herself as she slammed face-first into the ground.
For a brief moment, she could only lie there, stunned.
While she could still make out the cheerful sounds of the festival, she willed herself to listen for any sign that he was close by.
The forceful thud of her heartbeat in her ears made such an attempt worthless.
Knowing full well she couldn’t waste any time, she dug her fingernails into the soil and leaves, attempting to regain her footing.
Out of nowhere, a hand closed around her ankle.
In that moment, as she was being dragged backward across the forest floor, she understood with perfect clarity what she had become.
Not a songwriter.
Not a singer.
She wouldn’t even be known anymore as Amelia Claymont's wayward granddaughter.
She was now one of the missing.