Ten Missing Children

by Antony J Woodward

  “I need you to be a big girl for me, you need to be brave…”

  “He’ll hurt me…”

  “He won’t hurt you. He can’t hurt you anymore. I promise…”

  “You promise…?”

  “Cross my heart, hope to die…”

  “Stick a needle in your eye?”

  “Yeah…”

  She peeked over her shoulder. She looked genuinely frightened.

  “Can you remember where this bad man took you?”

  “No.”

  “Can you remember what it looked like?”

  “It was dark.”

  “Did it smell?”

  “It smelt icky. Like when Nana takes us to the shop to buy pork chops.”

  Terry felt that description would probably need a little deciphering.

  “Did you hear anything?”

  “I heard a pig. It was coming from outside…”

  “Was you in a house?”

  “A big house, but we was downstairs…”

  “We? Was there other people there?”

  “There was, but sometimes somebody would go.”

  “And where would they go?”

  “I dunno. The lady took them up the stairs…”

  “Did they ever come back?”

  She shook her head.

  “What did the lady look like?”

  “She looked old. She was a little pretty. She wasn’t mean like the man…”

  “What did the mean man do?”

  “He hit us…”

  “He hit you? Where?”

  “Here,” she touched her cheek.

  “Did he hurt you anywhere else?”

  She shook her head.

  “Did the man touch you anywhere? Did he make you do horrible things?”

  She shook her head.

  “And did the nice lady look after you?”

  “Ah huh, she gave us sweets. And doughnuts.”

  “Did she?”

  “Yeah, she was nice. I didn’t like the drink though…”

  “What drink was that?”

  “I dunno, it tasted funny. It made me feel funny…”

  “How did it make you feel funny?”

  “I felt all… wavy…” she struggled for an appropriate word in her five-year old vocabulary.

  “Why did the lady give you the funny drink?”

  “I dunno, she gave everybody the drink before they went upstairs…”

  “Did she give you the drink before you went upstairs?”

  “Yeah. It made me a little sleepy…”

  “And what happened upstairs?”

  “That nasty man put something here,” she pointed to her left temple, “and I fell asleep… When I woke up everything was foggy…”

  “Is it still foggy?”

  “Outside. Not in here…”

  “How did you come home in the fog?”

  “I followed your light…” She made it sound like Terry should’ve known that.

  Terry took a breath. It was time to start at the beginning, he had learnt a significant amount but he hadn’t learnt anything he could use. Yet.

  “Did you hear any other animals? Any cows? Or sheep? Or chickens?”

  “No… Just a pig… It sounded lonely…”

  “Were there other children in the house with you?”

  “Yeah,” she answered annoyed. She felt she’d already established that fact.

  “If I showed you pictures of them, would you know them?”

  “I think so, are they lost too?”

  “Yeah, and their mummies and daddies are worried sick. So me and Daddy need to find this bad man so we can take them home…”

  “Have their mummies and daddies been crying too?”

  “They’ve cried lots and lots. That’s why its important that you try to remember everything about that house. Me and Daddy need to know everything so we can try and catch this man…”

  She nodded. The little five year old girl, who had the attention span of a gnat, suddenly took on a different look. She looked reflective for a second and then it became determination.

  “Can you remember anything about the house? Did you see out of any windows? Did you see anything, like a lighthouse? Or a funny tree? Or a big hill?”

  “There was no windows, we didn’t get to see outside. The bad man said bad things would happen to us if we tried to escape…”

  “Did anybody try to escape…?”

  “Yes,”

  “Do you know what happened to them?”

  “They didn’t come back…”

  “Did you know their name…?”

  She shook her head.

  “I’m going to go downstairs and get some pictures, I want you to tell me if any of these little boys and girls were in the house with you…”

  “But I’m tired…” She cried.

  Suddenly Terry realised just what he was dealing with. He was dealing with a five-year old, a five-year old who had just endured a hugely traumatic experience and had no idea that she was dead. She didn’t understood spirits didn’t need to sleep because she didn’t know she was one. For Christine it was probably hard to realise that the strange world she found herself in was limbo. She had the most fertile imagination Terry had ever encountered, perhaps she had just embraced the strange place she now resided. Maybe the fact it wasn’t like the real world didn’t matter to a little girl who was still in love with magic.

  Terry was going to press her, to push her but he relented.

  His responsibility to his daughter outweighed the investigation.

  “Ok darling, get yourself some sleep. I’ll come and get you in the morning…”

  He slowly turned.

  Matt was stood in the doorway. He was leant against the doorframe, his frame stiff and his face white. He had overheard Terry’s half of the conversation and he understood what he had just witnessed. It was the most horrifying and surreal moment in his entire life.

  His gaze drifted from the little empty bed, where he knew his dead daughter was sleeping, to his husband who was surprised at his appearance. His little girl was in the room but he couldn’t see her. He couldn’t ever reach out to her, she was lost to him.

  But not lost to Terry, and for the first time in Matt’s life he felt a little jealous of him.

  It had always been a strange quirk of Terry’s character, an unusual and often exhilarating secret, but now Matt found himself wanting it too. If only to look upon his daughter for the final time.

  Terry slowly dragged himself to his feet, uncertain how to approach Matt. Where did he begin? He was struggling to keep a handle on himself in the light of the night’s events, how did he handle Matt too?

  Sensing that words would be impossible, he just came close to his husband and took his hand. He squeezed it and pulled him into an embrace. Matt followed, too shell-shocked to reject it. When he closed his eyes, he felt himself begin to cry.

  There was no use saying it aloud. They knew what it meant.

  Their daughter was dead.

  CHAPTER TWELVE:

  The photos had given Terry a fantastic idea. As he’d shown the children’s photos to Christine one by one, with her identifying each one, it struck him the pair of them could create their own photo of the ‘bad man’. Terry’s drawing skills were good, he was a tattooist after all, but the crude drawing in his hand wasn’t quite the facial composite. It had taken him all morning, with plenty of “did his eyes look like this? Or this?” and consumed two sketchbooks. But it was done, a crude outline sketch of the man who had taken the children. He’d been tempted to try and tackle the woman, the female accomplice, but the fact it had taken four hours for this drawing alone dissuaded him from trying.

  He had been alone with Christine all morning, Matt had been called away. There had been a new abduction. This made it child number 10.

  The news had been jarring for the both of them. Their world had stopped, Christine’s return to the home had halted their entire world. Suddenly to
be confronted with the news that a new abduction had taken place was enough of a shock to rouse them. The world continued on, regardless of their emotions. It was a sobering, and slightly wounding, moment of clarity.

  As Terry sat and watched Christine prance around her bedroom, dancing like little children often found themselves, he realised that it wasn’t over. There was life beyond her death and it made her death feel just a little trivial. Or inconsequential.

  His attention drifted to the drawing in his hand. He felt he should hate this face, but he didn’t. He felt nothing but a slight numbness.

  His entire world had been upended in less than a week, it wasn’t surprising his emotions were in complete disarray.

  “Who’s that?” Terry was roused from his internal analysing. He looked to see Christine was standing pointing. He followed the direction of her finger. Jim lingered in the hallway.

  He looked uncertain, apprehensive and sort of shy. The jovial prankster Terry had always known was nowhere to be seen. This was a whole new side of Jim.

  “That’s your Grandpa,” Terry introduced.

  “My grandpa?”

  “Your Daddy’s daddy,”

  “Oh,” she eyed the stranger warily. Part of her yearned to run to him, to introduce herself, but the larger part of her was cautious. A pretty understandable reaction to a stranger.

  “Hello miss,” Jim sheepishly approached. He came close but kept a respectful distance. Terry, sat between them, felt like a mediator suddenly.

  “Jim, this is your granddaughter Christine,” his introduction was for Christine’s sake. The child didn’t know that her dead granddad had been haunting her for several years and was quite familiar with her.

  “But he’s dead…” came her little voice soaked in confusion.

  “And…” Terry trailed off. He still hadn’t managed to figure out the way to broach that subject with Chris. How did you explain to a five-year old that she was indeed dead?

  It’s not like they covered that type of situation in the parenting 101 books…

  “Want to see a magic trick?” Jim jumped into the conversation.

  Chris shrugged, she was curious but stubbornly resistive.

  “Watch,” and Jim stepped forward. His feet phased straight through Terry’s legs and disappeared.

  “COOL!” Chris gasped.

  She jumped forward and copied her grandfather. For Terry it was the most absurd moment of his life. He looked down at two pairs of legs that disappeared into his knees. Then he looked up at his father-in-law and his step-daughter. They were giggling, already as thick as thieves. It made Terry smile, he’d been struggling to come up with a plan for Christine. Could he leave her home alone? Suddenly he didn’t need to. She would be in the best hands.

  “What else can we do?”

  “Oh, I can show you some things little girl!”

  “Well if you don’t mind guys, maybe you could jump out of my knees and let me up…” Sure he could have just climbed up, his physical body wasn’t affected by their spirit forms, but it might freak Christine out if he phased through her. Learning the rules of being a ghost was probably a programme taught in little steps.

  The pair of them stepped away and Terry stood up.

  “I’m going to go to the station,” he told them both.

  “Ok, I’ll keep an eye,” Jim nodded. His eyes seemed bright and clear. He also looked euphorically happy. Terry couldn’t imagine how he was feeling, he’d been a silent spectator to his family for the best part of a decade and now he finally could reach out to one of them. After years of being the grandpa they never knew, he could finally be involved.

  It was a bittersweet moment and Terry tried to hold onto that brief little glimmer of happiness.

  He turned and left, he needed to move.

  ----------------------------------

  The composite sketch in his hand was eerie. The fact it had been constructed from his drawing blew his mind. The sketch artist, called Terry, had been impressed with Terry’s line work. “You should be a sketch artist,” he’d said.

  Perhaps it was a future career choice but right now he had a different objective. He’d photocopied it, copied that many copies he’d lost count long ago. They were sat in a box behind him. He’d found himself drawn to the ‘board’. Or the map in particular. He was looking at Manchester and the local area.

  What had Christine said? A big house. Smelt like ‘where Nana bought chops’. Heard a pig.

  His initial reaction was a farm, but every single farm in the area had been investigated already. Where else would he find a pig? A domestic pig would be incredibly difficult to pin down. Sure they could get a warrant for the addresses of all the local domestic pigs, but getting the warrant would be the problem. ‘Because a man says a dead five year old girl heard one in a bad man’s house’ was hardly a strong reason.

  Perhaps he was looking at this the wrong way? Isn’t that what all those TV detectives said? Look at something from a different angle.

  He took a deep breath. He cleared his mind, time to start this afresh.

  “A big house,” he reminded himself aloud.

  That narrowed it down to nothing. It would take far too long to canvass all the houses that fit that criteria. And how big was big? This was a child’s perspective, what seemed big to a five year old might be modest to an adult. Besides, Christine never mentioned ever leaving the basement.

  English houses with basements weren’t all that common in these parts, but still it would be too time-consuming to narrow the field of investigation by that factor.

  “The smell,”

  To Terry the only thing he could think of was a butcher shop. But he wasn’t all that convinced that a butcher shop could manage to keep children locked in a basement without someone noticing. It also made little sense, if you were going to go to all the effort to abduct children you wouldn’t keep them in a public area. The man who did this was intelligent, he was thorough. He planned his abductions, he wouldn’t then jeopardise the whole thing.

  So what else would smell like raw meat…?

  And keep pigs?

  A slaughterhouse. It occurred to him suddenly. A slaughterhouse! Of course! He spun on the spot, picked up his phone and quickly googled the local slaughterhouses. Surprisingly he had three hits. He considered texting Matt his find but decided that perhaps he would wait. He’d canvass the three slaughterhouses first, show the composite around and see if he got anything.

  ----------------------------------

  The first slaughterhouse he’d visited had been insightful, if a little disturbing.

  There was a rare phenomenon on grounds that had suffered incredible emotional trauma. Red smoke slowly leaked from the ground. Whether the ground was concrete, grass, sand or ice, it didn’t matter. Faint red smoke would slowly trail up from the floor. Terry always thought it was what blood would like if it turned to gas once spilt.

  The slaughterhouse was pretty thick with this red smoke. He’d met an incredibly helpful and charming operations manager called Gary Hobbs, who’d happily agreed to cooperate with Terry’s questions. Terry had no authority but the man was happy to show Terry around. The slaughterhouse itself had been pretty intense, the sounds of pigs screaming in millions of voices was deafening. He hadn’t realised he was hearing dead pig’s screams of terror until he remarked on the noise and Gary looked confused. He said the slaughterhouse was silent.

  Safely ensconced in an office, well away from the red smoke and the dead screams, Terry had shown Gary the composite. His heart leapt for joy when Gary identified him as a Russian man named Anatoly. He owned one of the competing slaughterhouses, only the slaughterhouse wasn’t operational anymore. It had been closed earlier in the year.

  Gary hadn’t dealt with the Russian much, but he obviously knew him.

  He looked a little surprised that Terry was holding a rendering of Anatoly, especially in connections to a police investigation.

  But then he made a throwaw
ay comment about the Russian being an ex-soldier and he was surprised to hear he was in trouble. He apparently always came off as very attentive and polite.

  An ex-soldier, that’s how Jim had described him.

  Terry had promptly made his exit and jumped in the car. His entire drive to Anatoly’s slaughterhouse was pushing against the speed limit. Terry’s teeth were grinding with tense nerves. Was this is it? Had he finally found him?

  The ‘bad man’…

  He pulled up on the side of the road. It was a quiet country road and the evening was quickly settling in. On a normal day he should’ve been home to cook tea, but this wasn’t a normal day. The slaughterhouse looked deserted. Two big strong metal gates barred the works entrance. They weren’t however chained shut. Terry noticed sets of thick tyre prints in the mud underneath the gate, it didn’t look like business had completely shut down after all.

  At the front of the property was a large rundown farmhouse, its faded mint green paint was in desperate need of a re-coat. Quite why anyone would want to live where animals came to die disturbed Terry. Behind the house was two large barns connected by a long metal bridge. Was one of them a holding pen and the other the actual slaughterhouse?

  He had no idea how a slaughterhouse really worked. Even his demo thirty minutes prior hadn’t educated him, but then again he’d been distracted by the sounds of pigs screaming.

  The basic concept was the same - animals went in and came out as meat.

  It was enough to shake his beliefs on eating meat, but he didn’t have time to consider it. He pushed the thoughts away, now was definitely not the time to consider going vegetarian.

  He climbed out of the car.

  There was no lights on in the house, but that didn’t mean nobody was home. He let himself onto the grounds and closed the gate behind him. He wasn’t surprised to see the red smoke drifting around his feet. He traversed through various potholes and muddy puddles to get to the door.

  The grounds felt empty, no they felt desolate. Like they had been abandoned long ago.

  He suddenly feared he was about to come to another dead end. His mind started projecting possible outcomes; Anatoly had left the country, or Anatoly was dead, or Anatoly was not the man who had abducted the children, or Anatoly - Terry stopped himself. He had suddenly become fixated on this one man being the culprit. He needed to keep an open mind.