Prologue
Bennett and Uriah Stone:Missing
Reagen Swallow: Missing
Noah Bane: Missing
Elliot let out a small sigh as her mind continued to try to wrap around where all her classmates were going. First, it was Reagen and Noah at one of the biggest college parties of the year, booze, drugs, and sex were all the rage. Most were wondering how Noah had convinced Reagen to have sex with him, and many desperately wanted his playbook, but they never got the chance, because no one ever saw either again. Some thought that Noah, amid the raging chaos lured a drunk Reagen into the woods to murder her, then escape, but no one would ever know.
Then it was the stone twins, Bennett and Uriah; they’d gone out on a fishing trip for the weekend. When a friend of their’s father found their boat and went to say hello, but found nothing but the stench of rotting fish, they were called in missing, but they weren’t located either. People thought one fell overboard and the other jumped into the freezing Maine water to save them, and they both drowned, but they searched the lake as much as they could, and no one ever found them.
Elliot’s large dog pulled at its collar harshly as it whined and groaned to keep going like it didn’t like being so close to so much sadness, but there was no escaping it, every turn you took and every path you followed you’d always find the same ending. Darkness.
Everyone knew there was something dark and strange about Lake Eden, it was one of those places you don’t stay in for long, or you’ll never leave, and for that reason, they didn’t have many visitors. It wasn’t a violent place; in fact, the people were quite friendly. If they liked you, no one knows what happens to the ones they didn’t like.
Elliot let her eyes stray from the missing as she looked around the dark streets, the streets where the lights flicker, and shadows lurk around every corner. Though it wasn’t violent, it was still creepy, every person to go missing was between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two, and Elliot was nineteen. The perfect age.
She finally let her dog take the lead as she walked away from the bulletin board, she wondered, right now was someone being taken. In the last month fifty- four have gone missing, almost two a night. She knew someone else had to be gone; she didn’t know if someone else had already been taken while she was worried about her safety on a sketchy street corner or if when she was closing her eyes to go to sleep, someone else who be closing their eyes to die.
When Elliot finally made it back to her apartment, she sent a small thank you to God before throwing her shoes off and throwing herself onto the bed that was almost immediately at your feet when you entered her apartment. It was small, but it worked for her.
As she let the warm embrace of sleep cover her, she couldn’t help but give one last cringing thought to the missing.
Who would be number fifty-five and fifty-six?
…
