Ten Missing Children

by Antony J Woodward

  “Tell her I love her…”

  “I will, but she needs to know the truth. She needs to know what happened, so she can have closure.”

  “You mean like a funeral?”

  “Yeah, exactly. She needs to say good-bye,”

  “I don’t want to say good-bye…”

  “You don’t have to if you don’t want to, you can stay if you want. You could stick around and watch over her. Or you can go to the ‘better place’…”

  “The better place? You mean Heaven? I killed a kid, I don‘t deserve to go…”

  “How do you know that? You didn’t kill anybody… You‘ve done some wrong things but it isn’t your fault. You didn’t know it would hurt the boy did you…”

  “You think I really could go to the better place?” His little tone of apprehensive hope was heartbreaking. He was just a kid, a kid dealing with very adult consequences…

  “I don’t think the world is so black and white kid, and I don‘t think you‘re a bad person…”

  The child disappeared again.

  “What has he said?”

  Terry swallowed. Sometimes the truth was godawful to repeat to the living.

  “I’m asking him to show me where he’s buried…”

  Her face began crumpling in.

  “Okay. I’ll show you where he buried me. But will you tell my mum something…”

  “What kid?”

  “Tell her she was the best mum in the world and I’m sorry I hurt her so much. Tell her I’m sorry I was a bad boy. Tell her that I’m sorry I kept letting her down,”

  Terry relayed the message to Christine who’d begun a slow crumple inwards, silent tears streaming out of her eyes. She began to howl in sorrow, sobbing harder than she had before.

  “Tell my son, that I always so proud of him. I love him very much…”

  “You told him yourself,” Terry whispered. He squeezed her hand gently.

  “Can you tell my Dad too?”

  “I don’t think that’s gonna be possible kid, but I‘ll try…” Terry answered him.

  “Thank you Mister…”

  “Thank you, you’re being very brave!”

  CHAPTER EIGHT:

  “What movie are we going to watch?” Terry posed as Christine pottered into the kitchen. She was still drying her hair, the towel waving around her ears.

  She was dressed in her cutest pyjamas; a pink and white fluffy set.

  “I dunno, maybe Barbie?”

  “How about something a little more… Disney?” Terry offered. God, he couldn’t abide a movie night if it was going to be a Barbie extravaganza.

  “Jungle Book?”

  “Perfect. Put your towel in the washing machine and then go get it,”

  “Okay!” She saluted, then rushed off.

  Typically she’d completely forgotten the first instruction.

  Terry finished making the two hot chocolates, even taking the effort to put in the tiny marshmallows. He wondered whether Bridget might be a little jealous when she learnt that she’d missed out on them. He wondered what she was doing now. He had no idea what two ten year old girls did on a sleepover weekend. Did they eat chocolate and talk about boys?

  Knowing Bridget they probably just sat in and played Minecraft.

  Christine came thundering downstairs with a movie which wasn’t Jungle Book. The towel was also nowhere to be seen.

  “Where’s the towel and thought we watching Jungle Book?”

  “Oh yeah…” she replied in a quiet little voice.

  “What have you brought down?”

  “Finding Nemo,”

  “That’ll do, right. Go get your towel and put it in the washing machine,”

  “Okie-dokie!” She saluted again and charged off.

  Terry noticed the DVD had also gone up the stairs with her. He half-expected her to return with a completely different movie, probably Jungle Book.

  He took a seat on the sofa.

  He felt strange. It had been an emotional afternoon, as it was bound to be. Guided by Matty Junior, Terry had dug up his decomposing body. It had been laborious work digging a hole in the back garden. It was the kind of labour that Terry wasn’t all that accustomed to. Was that a reflection on his masculinity or his sexuality or was it just happenstance?

  Poor Mathew Junior’s body had been partially decomposed, having been in the ground for just over two weeks. It was a ghastly find and he anticipated Christine would be scarred forever because of it. She’d not lasted long, as soon as Terry unearthed the rotten face of her dead child she broke down hard. He had to hold her upright and guide her into the house, then he could make the call to the police.

  Hell, Terry wasn’t sure he would ever forget the milky sunken face himself.

  It would be a nice change of pace to sit and have a movie night in with Christine.

  He needed the distraction, he needed something to sever the train of thoughts and memories in his mind.

  He knew from an update from Matt that the police force had excavated the body and proceeded to find stashes of drugs around the garden. Christine was having a complete mental breakdown and there was talks of a mental health intervention.

  Mathew Senior hadn’t resurfaced. The police were looking out for his vehicle, but so far they hadn’t tracked him down.

  It was an exciting revelation but it had zero impact on the case of missing children. If anything it just made case number seven a red herring. They had solved a crime but not the crime they wanted. Terry wasn’t quite ready to embrace the fact was he was back to square one. No clues, no leads. Not a goddamned thing.

  He kept the thoughts at bay and began to wonder when Matt would be home. He was caught up in the chase, it might take him all night.

  It took a minute before he realised that Christine hadn’t yet come back down.

  “Goddammit,” he sighed as he hoisted himself off the sofa.

  His body ached, the strain of the dig was bound to make him stiff for a few days.

  He padded to the bottom of the stairs.

  “CHRISTINE?” He hollered.

  “Yeah?” Came a little voice. She knew she’d done something wrong but she couldn’t think what it was.

  “I thought you was bringing the towel down? And the movie?” He prompted.

  “I’m coming…”

  Terry could faintly hear the sound of dolls being shoved back in a toy box. The kid had zero attention span. It made him smile.

  He hovered at the door for a minute. Should he deadlock it? What if Matt returned in the early hours of the morning? Terry hesitated, then decided to deadbolt it anyway. He would remember to text Matt when his phone had finished charging, tell him that the deadbolt was engaged. He would need to ring on his way home so Terry could get up and unbolt it.

  As he padded back to the sofa he made a mental reminder to remember. It was a sign of age that he needed a reminder for the reminder. This was thirty, who knew what sixty would feel like.

  There was a sound of dramatic thumping on the stairs.

  “Towel?”

  “Yep.”

  “DVD?”

  “Oh…”

  And so the little girl once more spun on the spot and headed back up the stairs. At this rate Terry would be better off getting it himself.

  “Throw the towel down,” Terry hoisted himself off the sofa once more. His knees audibly creaked. The towel landed with a soft thump at the bottom of the stairs.

  He took it to the washing machine.

  “What we watching?” Jim appeared at his inside.

  “I want to say Finding Nemo, but who knows what she’ll bring down…”

  Terry put the washing liquid in the drawer.

  “Where’s Bridget?”

  “Sleepover…” Terry gave him a look that told Jim he was surprised he didn’t know that already.

  “Oh. How come her friend never stays over anymore?”

  “She’s been ill, but I’m sure she will Jim…”

 
“Well, I do miss 10 year old’s conversations about boys…” He sighed. If those words had fallen out of anybody else’s lips Terry would have been disturbed. They sounded almost paedophilic.

  “No, I just wondered why Sharon, is it Sharon? Why she hasn’t been over… I know the conversations are pretty awful, but it does put a bit of spark in this house…”

  “It’s Shannon, and are you saying the rest of us are dull?”

  “No, I’m just saying it’s nice. That extra body, the extra laugh. The extra body at the dining table… Don’t you want to have a kid?”

  “I don’t know if you noticed but me and Matt, we lack certain bits to have a child together…”

  “You could adopt. Hell, I read there’s all sorts of fancy three-parent genetic-mumbo-jumbo-stuff happening these days…”

  “They cost a lot of money Jim, a hell of a lot… Say, what’s up with you?” Jim was in a strange mood. It wasn’t like him.

  Jim shrugged, he came to rest against the kitchen counter. He looked wistfully out of the window into the garden. Something was obviously eating the ghost.

  “What?”

  “I just… I looked at the board in the garage. It’s so sad. All those kids…”

  Terry and Matt had constructed a pretty haphazard board in the garage, it was a pale imitation of the map Terry had stared at in the police station at the beginning of the week. They’d erected it as they brain-stormed how to get inside the Smith’s residence.

  They’d tried to figure out how Mr Smith connected to the eight children, coming up with nothing. Obviously, because he wasn’t connected.

  No, Mathew Smith had covered his son’s untimely death by pinning it on the abductions.

  “We’re working on it…” Terry answered him. He’d never seen Jim so morose before, there was a sombre edge to him that was so greatly uncharacteristic that he was almost a different person.

  “READY!” Christine announced. She brandished a copy of Jungle Book in one hand and her blanket in her other.

  Terry smiled at her, then when he turned to Jim, he was gone.

  He expected that was the last he’d see of him.

  He was wrong. He found Jim sat on the sofa.

  It seemed there would be a ghostly +1 for the move night.

  Terry suspected that Jim just really needed to be part of the family, even if he knew Terry was the only who was aware of his presence.

  ------------------------------------------

  The alarm clock was screaming, a violently shrill tone that pierced his ear drums. He felt groggy, disorientated and dazed. His mouth felt like the Sahara Desert, his tongue had stuck to the roof of his mouth. With one hand, without opening his eye, he reached out to turn the blasted clock off. His arms felt sluggish, like they were barely connected to his body.

  He was laid on his front, his face buried in a pillow. He missed the clock, it took another two attempts before he finally hit the button. It’s shriek was cut abruptly short.

  He groaned. His head felt cloudy, mushy almost. He cracked an eye open, his vision was intensely blurry. It seemed awfully bright for seven am, his white bedding was practically blinding him.

  With his still numb hand he smoothed his hair from his face. He attempted a rollover but his legs felt numb, his left especially. In fact, it felt completely dead.

  He lifted himself up slowly, his vision slowly sharpening. His leg really felt dead, like it didn’t even exist. Still half asleep he reached down. It was a perfect storm of clues that came together at once that caused him to rapidly ascend out of the throes of sleep.

  His definitely numb leg was still there, but he felt a foreign object. He plucked it from his leg, his eyes sharpening to read the alarm clock displaying the time as 10:01am.

  Panic began to tingle up his nerves. He brought the mysterious object to his face.

  It was a dart. A long black dart with a pink feather at the end. Not too dissimilar to the kind a vet would tranquilise a wild animal with.

  He recognised it and the bottom of his world fell out.

  “Chr-” he roared but his voice cracked and disappeared.

  He heaved himself off the bed, his legs failed to work and he crashed roughly to the floor.

  He tried to shout again but no voice came. He crawled on his stomach, desperately digging his elbows into the carpet as he propelled himself forwards. He snaked out of his bedroom and headed for Christine’s room.

  The bedroom door was wide open. She never kept it open.

  “Christine?!” He roared, his voice suddenly tearing out of his throat.

  No response.

  He dragged himself into her room, she wasn’t there. Her duvet was turned back and she was nowhere to be seen.

  “CHRISTINE!?!” He roared violently.

  Like a demon snake, he dragged himself to Bridget’s room. It was empty.

  He stopped at the top of the stairs. Unsure how he was going to manage to traverse them with two dead legs.

  “Oh no…” he sobbed as he spied the deadbolt hanging. It had been cut, a half hung either side. He couldn’t stop the tears, nor the violent sob that tore a hole in his gut.

  The world fell away from, he felt suspended in a limbo.

  “Oh no…”

  He knew exactly what had happened.

  CHAPTER NINE:

  Terry was sat on an exercise bike in the garage staring at the smiling faces of missing children. He had a shot of Whiskey in one hand and the bottle in the other. He felt a little numb and that was the intention. His entire life had been turned upside down. His home was filled, with what felt like, the entire Manchester Police Department. He’d been interviewed, he’d been questioned, he’d been studied and he’d been pitied. He’d talked to a hundred people but not spoke to the one that mattered most.

  They’d not said a word since the desperate phone call at ten o’clock this morning. Matt was somewhere in the house, Terry knew that much.

  He poured himself another shot of whiskey, then proceeded to down it. He wiped a tear away with the back of one hand.

  His legs had returned to life. He’d been darted with a pretty concentrated dose of Methoxetamine, according to the nurse who’d treated him, loss of sensations in his legs was probably a side effect. It was the same drug that the perpetrator used in the other seven abductions. It would be assumed that a drug like Methoxetamine, which was used primarily to tranquilize Rhinos, would be an easy drug to track down. But no, it was a dead end. Every single ml of it was accounted for in the zoos and veterinary practices.

  Terry had been given the all clear, though he was warned the drowsiness might last the rest of the day. He was advised not to drive, or drink.

  It was Raven, Matt’s frequent partner, that collected him from the hospital. Not his husband.

  Raven had been respectful of Terry’s silence in the car. She understood that space was the thing he needed most.

  Raven had gently deposited Terry at the dining table before she searched the house for Matt. Surrounded on all sides by noise and bustle, it hadn’t taken long for Terry to escape.

  He took another shot. It still burnt in his throat. He hated whiskey, absolutely loathed the taste, yet it was the only alcohol in the house. He and Matt weren’t big drinkers of anything but wine, it had been a gift from Cheryl.

  “Terry?” It was Denise, she hovered at the doorway behind him.

  It probably looked odd, Terry sat on an exercise back with his back to her. She hesitated before she slipped inside.

  “Terry darling?” She reached for him, gently touching his arm. She spotted the destroyed look in her son-in-law’s face and the bottle of whiskey in one hand.

  “Terry darling,” she tried to rouse him.

  He slowly turned his head. His eyes were red, raw and wet. The tears slowly poured out, making shiny rivers on his cheeks as they snaked to the ground.

  “Terry darling, I’m going to go get Bridget.”

  Of course, Bridget was at school. Terry
had been so lost in everything that it had completely slipped his mind. She was completely oblivious to all of this. She’d been dropped off at school by Shannon’s mother this morning, he’d not seen her since Saturday afternoon.

  “I should-” he suddenly tried to rouse himself, his parental responsibilities coming to the surface.

  “No, you’re in no state to drive. I’ll go get her… I just wanted you to know,”

  She leant forward and kissed him on the forehead. She then disappeared back towards the house. Was Denise going to tell Bridget? He had no idea how on earth he would broach the subject with her himself.

  He wiped another tear from his eye.

  “It’s not your fault…”

  “It feels like it fucking is…” Terry hissed. He didn’t bother to communicate mentally, he’d lost any concerns what others might think.

  “You were darted…”

  “Did you see it Jim?” Terry demanded.

  Jim slowly stepped into Terry’s peripheral vision.

  “I saw him yes…”

  “What did he look like?”

  “He was wearing a mask. A balaclava. He was dressed in black… I didn’t see anything useful…”

  “Why didn’t you wake me?”

  “I tried to, he moved really fast! He broke in and headed straight up the stairs. He checked Bridget’s room first, but he wasn’t looking for her…”

  “He was looking for me…”

  “And Matt, he came with two darts. He darted you, then he went about the house looking for Matt…”

  “He went looking for him?”

  “He expected him to be home…”

  “And then what?”

  “He went to Bridget’s room first, he seemed surprised she wasn’t there. Then he went to-”

  “-Stop, I can’t listen to this,” Terry’s stomach so laden with alcohol turned violently.

  “…Then he took her…” Jim turned sharply and stared at the board. He discreetly wiped tears from his eyes. It had been the most horrifying thing he’d ever seen in his life. He’d watched a mysterious stranger break into the little girl’s room, watched as this man pressed a chloroform soaked rag to her face. Then, powerless to stop it, he watched her being carried out of the house… He had never seen anything so heartbreaking in all his life.