The people of Crystal Hill were a resilient lot. No one quite recalled exactly how the village had come to be there. It was almost as though one day it had just appeared. But it you read the plaque when you came into town, you would see the following:
* * *
CRYSTAL HILL VILLIAGE WAS FOUNDED IN 1963 BY GEORGE CRYSTAL AND FAMILY. THEY BUILT THE FIRST HOUSE AT THIS LOCATION AND SOON OTHERS JOINED THEM AT THE NEW ESTABLISHMENT.
* * *
Seeing as it had only been twelve years ago, one would think that more people in the village would remember George Crystal. Perhaps he was even alive still. But if you asked anyone about it, they simply shrugged and their eyes would take on a distant look. It was as though they were trying to remember if they knew, but couldn’t quite find the memories.
So eventually, people stopped asking. People just accepted that Crystal Hill existed where it was and that somehow it had come to be there. It didn’t make any sense, but many things in life didn’t.
Sarah Baker had always thought there was something odd about Crystal Hill. She hadn’t wanted to move there in 1970 with her parents, but they had insisted. They’d claimed that something was waiting for them in the village and they needed to see it through.
She still wasn’t certain what that meant, but her parents had always been strange people. She wasn’t sure what to blame it on exactly, but they were firm believers in spiritualism and witchcraft. They looked to the stars for aliens and they wore protective crystals.
She figured that Crystal Hill was an appropriate place for them. It seemed just about as weird as they were. But it was no place for Sarah. She didn’t belong there. And the minute she could, she was getting the hell out.
There had been something in the air recently. Not actually in the air, but there had been a stir around the town. Something was going to happen. Sarah could sense it. The village was gearing up for something big and no one was talking about it.
That was the most disturbing part. It was as though everyone knew what was coming. Everyone knew what needed to be done. But no one said anything.
When had these decisions been made? When had the plans and discussions taken place? Was everyone here a mind reader?
Sarah glanced about herself nervously as she walked down the main street, well… the only street.
She hoped they weren’t mind readers. She hadn’t had many pleasant thoughts about Crystal Hill since she’d landed there with her parents. She doubted that they thought she was a model member of the village.
Perhaps she had a target on her back.
She glanced around again. The streets were mostly deserted at this time of day. Everyone was still either at work or at home preparing dinner. The town was predictable like that. On any given day, she always knew where everyone would be. It was nice, because it gave her the freedom to move about unmonitored, but it was also disturbing.
Was no one spontaneous? Was there not a minute of the day that went unplanned?
It was hard to say. Her parents had even fallen into the clockwork routine. Her father drove into the city for work and her mother stayed at home. Dinner was at five o’clock, every night, without exception. If you were late, you didn’t eat.
Sarah knew this, because she was often late.
She didn’t like being home. She didn’t like the robots that her parents had become. They’d always been weird and eccentric, but they had never been robotic. Now it was as though someone else was pulling the strings. It was worth considering that they had put something in the water around here.
Sarah had begun to notice it over the years and it was one of the major reasons why she wanted to get out. The cult feeling about the place was just too strong. Things were too happy, too functional. Nothing bad ever happened. Kids never misbehaved.
It wasn’t natural. A place like this wasn’t normal.
She was almost at the edge of the woods when she heard the footsteps behind her.
Her heart began to race but she ignored her instinct to run. She knew everyone in the village. Running away would be suspicious. There was no reason that it wasn’t just another person out for an afternoon stroll, like she was. There was no reason for this not to end civilly.
Except for the fact that no one went for afternoon strolls in Crystal Hill. No one around these parts didn’t have a job to do right now, unless their job was to find her.
Sarah turned to face the person who was stalking her. She wasn’t about to be taken from behind, to be surprised, to be ambushed. She would make the person look her in the eyes before they had to deal with her. She would make them face her humanity.
Her eyes widened slightly at the site of the village elder, Meggie Walford. She was the last person Sarah had expected to see. She was the last person she had expected to come after her.
“Afternoon, Elder Walford,” Sarah greeted, keeping her voice level. The urge to run away was growing inside of her but she did everything she could to squash it down.
“Hello Sarah, it’s time to come with me now.” She held out a hand, the wrinkled skin pulled tight around her arthritic bones.
“And where are we going?” Sarah hesitated before reaching for her hand. She wasn’t certain why she took it, but she felt like she had to.
“Everything will be answered in time.” She offered a crooked-toothed smile as she tugged Sarah back towards the village. “Now is the time for compliance.”
Sarah found herself nodding and she wasn’t sure why. She also wasn’t sure why she was following Elder Waldorf back into the village.
Her mind struggled against her actions but she found that her thoughts were clouded and sluggish. She seemed to have no control over what she was doing. She didn’t understand the choices she was making.
“Now go on in there like a good girl,” Elder Waldorf instructed, pulling the door to the barn open and ushering her inside. “We’ll be back for you soon enough.”
Sarah heard the door close behind her. And in the dim light of the barn she saw several familiar faces. The room was filled with villagers, of various ages, but they all had one thing in common. None of them had been born there.
She counted twenty-five, including herself, and they looked grim-faced as they sat around the room.
“Do you know why we’re here?” She looked to a girl her age and received a shrug.
Sarah’s eyes narrowed in confusion, but the more she tried to ponder her situation, the more she found that she didn’t care. She was simply there. That was the end of it. There was no need to wonder why. This was just where she was. This was where she needed to be.
She joined the others on the floor of the barn and leaned against the wall. All would be explained in time, she was sure. And she would wait for that time to come.
It was three days before the bodies were found. They were dressed in black cloaks and lying inside of a pentagram painted in pig’s blood. One would have assumed they’d simply fallen asleep if it hadn’t been for the foaming around their mouths and the signs of poisoning.
It was national news within a week, and for the first time since its founding Crystal Hill was a name that everyone knew. And everyone wondered why it had happened? What had prompted twenty-five individuals from the same town to kill themselves in some strange ritual?
The press and the police never got that answer, and eventually Crystal Hill became a story for the history books. Just another weird, small town in which something shocking had happened. But some people remembered. And some people still searched for answers.
Chapter 2
A Missing Boy
* * *
Crystal Hill Village
Bebington, Merseyside
June 19, 2016
* * *
Aaron Swinton wanted a break. Not a break from his job, not a vacation, he wanted to catch a break. He’d been a junior investigator for over a year now and he needed a real case to cut his teeth on. He needed a challenge. But no one was throwing anything his way and it was driving him
crazy.
How was he supposed to advance at his job if they didn’t give him a chance? He knew that he needed to pay his dues and all of that, but couldn’t someone throw him a bone. He needed a chance. He needed something.
He got up from his desk and headed to the break room to refill his tea. It was really all he was good for right now. Drinking tea and twiddling his thumbs.
He was passing the Sargent’s office when he heard the deep voice call out his name.
“Swinton, get in here a second.”
Aaron clenched his teeth. He didn’t want to have a sit down with the Sergeant. That never ended well. But he couldn’t very well ignore the man who outranked him.
“Yes, sir? What can I do for you today?” He stepped into the doorway but didn’t enter the room completely.
“Well sit down, Swinton. And close the door. Sometimes I wonder if you’ve got a lick of sense in that head of yours.” The Sergeant shook his head and sighed in exasperation.
Once Swinton was seated, he folded his hands and regarded the junior investigator closely. He hadn’t particularly wanted to hire the lad, he’d done it as a favour for a friend. And so far, he wasn’t a complete waste of space. But time would tell.
“I’ve got a case for you, Swinton,” he said, leaning back in his chair and enjoying how his back cracked in just the right place. “You’ll be heading up to Crystal Hill first thing tomorrow morning.”
“Crystal Hill, sir?” Aaron raised a brow. He’d never heard of the place.
“It’s a little village just on the skirts of Bebington. Apparently, the locals are a special kind of something. But, someone reports a kid missing and we’ve got to investigate,” he sighed again. He didn’t particularly like dealing with eccentric people, and by the sounds of it, the people in Crystal Hill were that personified. But then again, he wasn’t the one who would be dealing with them, Swinton was.
“Here’s the case.” The Sargent handed a rather thin folder over. “I expect you to head out once you’ve reviewed it and gathered whatever else you can.”
Aaron didn’t even open the folder. He couldn’t bring himself to. He’d been given a case. And not just any case, a missing child! This was great.
“Yes, sir,” he replied as he got up from his chair. He paused, remembering that he hadn’t yet been dismissed from the office.
“Go on now. You’re wasting daylight.”
Aaron hurried out of the office and back to his desk, all thoughts of tea completely gone from his mind.
He opened the file slowly. He needed to make sure that his hands weren’t shaking at the mere thought of finally getting handed a real case. But as the file fell open on his desk, only a single sheet of paper materialised.
“What the hell?”
He lifted the sheet of paper to ensure that there was nothing hiding beneath it. Indeed, it was the only thing in the file. One sheet of paper: the original police report.
His eyes scanned the ink and pen. There wasn’t a great deal of information available on that single sheet of paper. He could feel his heart sinking already.
Luke Allen was 10-years-old and had gone missing two days ago. There seemed to be little more to go on but that. There was a brief description of the boy – blond hair, blue eyes, wearing trainers and a red ball cap when he disappeared. But beyond that the file was vague.
His mother, Grace Allen, had spoken to police the day she had reported him missing, but since then there had been no leads on the case. There seemed to have been almost no activity on the case.
Aaron scratched his head. This was not the common reaction to a missing child. The parents were usually staked out at the precinct waiting for updates. They were usually hounding the investigating officer for deals. There were tears and alerts. There was never silence.
Something was very off about this case. Aaron could already sense it and he’d learned early on to trust his gut. Something about Crystal Hill was beyond right, he imagined.
People didn’t just let their children disappear and then move on with their lives. They didn’t simply go to work the next day and wait for due process to happen. That wasn’t rational.
He needed to find out more about Crystal Hill. He needed to find out more about Grace Allen. And he needed to find Luke Allen.
He glanced up from the file. It was already getting late. He knew that there wouldn’t be a great deal that he would accomplish that evening. The best he could hope for was to pack his bag, have one good meal, a good night’s sleep, and then head to Crystal Hill in the morning.
He was already beginning to feel the unease about this case creep in beneath the excitement.
Why wasn’t this a more relevant case? Why wasn’t this top priority?
Missing children were always moved to the top of the board, yet this was the first he was hearing about it. And it had already been two days. The first seventy-two hours were crucial in any missing person’s case, children especially.
Something was very wrong about this, and everything in him was telling him to hand the case over to someone else. He could make his name elsewhere. But for the first time in his life, he ignored his instincts.
Chapter 3
An Outsider
* * *
It took him longer than he expected to get to Crystal Hill. Not because it was far away from Bootle, but because it was off the map. Only one road leading in and one road leading out, and that happened to be the same road.
He must have driven by it a dozen times before he finally stopped to ask someone. The fellow at the petrol station wasn’t too eager to give him directions, but when money exchanged hands he gladly offered some insight.
Aaron wasn’t certain what it was about this place. He was already getting a bad feeling about it and it seemed that the locals in Bebington didn’t much care for it either.
From the digging he’d done the previous evening, he’d uncovered only a few articles about the village in its entire history. And they all revolved around one event, a mass suicide that had occurred in the 70s. Beyond that, no one talked about Crystal Hill.
And it seemed that the event had garnered no further interest in the village after the investigation had been closed. It had returned to its sleepy state and the world had lost interest in it. Even presently, the missing child had rallied no public talk about what was going on within the closed gates of the community.
He drove down the dirt road which was barely broad enough for his own car, and wondered if there was ever any opposing traffic. Did people leave Crystal Hill? Did people work outside of the village? Or was it just a self-sustaining, close-knit group that no longer bothered with the outside world?
He had a strong feeling it was the latter. Crystal Hill did not seem to be the type of place that people left very often, unless it was completely necessary. Just as it didn’t seem the kind of place that attracted visitors with its charming appeal.
Already he didn’t like the idea of being there.
The village appeared out of nowhere. One moment he was driving down a laneway thickly lined with trees and the next there was a small village.
He wasn’t sure what he had expected. Probably more of a shantytown than the semi-modern structures that lined the single road, if he was being completely honest with himself. It looked well maintained. It looked lived in. And yet, not a single person was in sight. Not a single car was in sight.
He paused at the entrance to the village. No way no one owned a vehicle here. It simply wasn’t practical. This was the 21st century after all.
He glanced around him, paying close attention to the horizon and looking for any hint of life, any bit of guidance. He saw a flash of sunlight off of chrome to his far left and realized that the cars were tucked in behind the main stretch of buildings. He pulled his vehicle towards them and parked in a vacant slot.
He cut the engine and sat there for a moment. The village was eerily quiet.
That was probably the most disturbing thing. It was early in th
e workday. People should be out and about. People should be working, running errands, taking children to school. And yet it looked as though no one lived in the village at all.
He shrugged on his jacket, grabbed his bag, and climbed out of the car. Part of him wanted to turn tail and leave. Screw the case and the missing child. He could just join a different police force. He could just choose a different profession. Maybe he would just take up woodworking.
But he knew that he couldn’t do that. He couldn’t just give up on the case. A young boy’s life was at risk. He couldn’t just turn his back on that, regardless of how creepy the town seemed. It didn’t matter how uneasy he felt. He had a bigger purpose.
Aaron rounded the first building and stepped into the street. He took one step forward, past the line of houses and it was as though he had stepped over some form of invisible barrier.
The doors to the houses opened and the people flooded out of them. No one looked at him, they didn’t acknowledge his presence, but they walked with purpose.
He paused to watch it happen. While the fluidity of it was beautiful to observe, it was also slightly disturbing how they all moved about without noticing him at all. Everyone was ignorant to the fact that an outsider was in their midst, everyone except for one woman who walked towards him with a singular purpose.
“Welcome to Crystal Hill,” she greeted as she closed the distance between them, her face stretching into what he was sure she believed to be a warm smile. It was the furthest expression from one that he’d seen in his life, though. Her face contorted into a strange shape, pulling in odd directions, and her teeth were jagged and unwelcoming.
He fought not to grimace automatically. He swallowed the bile that rose in his throat as a response to her appearance, and attempted a smile of his own. “So, this is Crystal Hill?”
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