Stories of the Dark

No one knows exactly what happened to Jane Deer.

One day she was at her apartment, texting friends and getting ready for a party. But she never showed up. Never responded. Never answered her phone. Her room was empty, and her roommates hadn’t seen or heard from her either, the last time they did was the last time she sent a text: Leaving now.

No one knows if she wrecked. Or if she had car trouble and someone picked her up. Or if she arrived at the party and something happened there. Or if she ever made it to her desired location.

The first forty-eight hours were tense. Family and friends sitting at home, all their phones turned up and television on for any updates. The police had said they couldn’t do anything until after two days. They had said runaway young adults were common. One day they were here, seemingly happy and living their best life; then the next they simply vanished. Of course, that was a terrible stupid rule because in most kidnapping cases the majority of the clues or leads disappeared within that time frame.

But after those two long, grueling, torturous days, the police officially declared it to be a missing person’s case.

A description was given to the public: A female; five foot three; light brown hair; brown eyes; and a black tattoo on her forearm, depicting a tree with its roots seemingly digging into her skin – The Tree of Life, she had called it with a laugh and a wink.

Friends and family and ex-boyfriends and ex-friends and current love interests and even teachers and fellow classmates were questioned. Everyone the police could track down that had been at the party had been questioned, but they had been too drunk or high to remember anything.

A search was started, police and dogs and even volunteers searched the surrounding area of the city, focusing on areas with forests or hills.

A bone of an animal here.

The discarded shirt of a teenage girl there.

Lost toys.

Rusted metal.

Dead animals.

Decaying houses.

Fallen trees.

Everything was found except her.

So many fliers were taped around the city. In Walmart. In the newspaper. Against the side of a building. Stabled to a telephone pole. People even held out the picture and asked anyone if they had seen her.

And then the tips flooded in. So many were dead ends – people just wanting some attention from the police and press. People only told the police what they had read in the paper but could provide nothing new.

One of Jane’s friends even admitted to accidentally killing her. She had said the two had been drunk and were dancing. Somehow, Jane was shoved, and she banged her head against the edge of a table. The friend said she had seen blood leaking out from beneath Jane’s light brown hair and had checked her pulse, finding nothing.

No one at the party had said they had seen or heard anything about that, but it still couldn’t be ruled out.

The press had surrounded the friend everywhere she had gone. Taking her pictures. Asking questions. Shouting. Screaming. Bystanders even pulled out their phones and recorded the instances.

But that had turned out to be made up. The friend had come into the police station one day, crying: her makeup leaking and smearing around her face and her hands shaking. She had admitted it had been for attention. That she didn’t like that Jane had all of it. She had wanted to be a part of the chaos.

After that, the girl’s friends and Jane’s family made sure she knew she was unwelcome. She had wasted valuable police time by playing make-believe. What did she think would happen? If by some unlucky miracle, they aligned the evidence to the friend accidentally killing Jane and then disposing of the body, she would go to jail. If they found out the truth, she would be persecuted and ridiculed.

The press had shamed her, showing up to her apartment, taking pictures through the windows and blocking her car so she couldn’t leave. For a week her face had been plastered on the front page, journalists and editors not holding back from making her out to be the worst human alive.

But that too had died down.

Then, the press began to focus on Jane’s family. They had come into town for the weekend to celebrate her birthday. Why had Jane gone to the party if she had family over? Had they killed her and taken her phone, sending those messages to friends and themselves to create an alibi? Had they become mad that she was going to a party instead of being with a family she saw a handful of times a year? Had they hired someone to kill her? They had left the following day to return to Ohio when Jane hadn’t come home. What kind of a family did that? Wouldn’t they have wanted to make sure she got home – was safe – before they left? Didn’t they want to say goodbye? Had there been a fight?

All these questions were thrown at the mother and father who had quickly returned to Michigan upon hearing of her disappearance. They were assaulted day and night. Their cars were blocked. Their doors pounded on at three in the morning.

One day, the mother broke down, crying and screaming at the vultures that had refused to relent. She had accidentally let something slip though. Something that only she, her husband, the police, and their lawyer were supposed to know: that there had indeed been a fight between the three. Despite claiming it had been only verbal and was about Jane going to the party instead of being with them, it made things worse.

With the focus now on the “Bloodthirsty Parents of an Angel”, as the papers stated, the focus drifted away from poor Jane and onto them. No one looked for her anymore. No one looked around. Asked questions. Everyone thought they had their killers right in front of them. Thus far, they had played their roles as the grieving parents well, but no one was convinced anymore.

That was until new evidence arose that meant it couldn’t have been them. They had been at a local bar, drinking throughout the time of Jane’s disappearance and departure. The press attacked them again: “Parents of missing girl first blamed their daughter for a fight, but they had been out at a local bar before she had even made plans with friends,” the newspaper stated.

With their heads down low, the couple had gone back to Ohio and locked themselves in their houses. The photographers only persisted for a week or so before they latched their talons onto another story, newer and more interesting than the same old missing girl.

By the time everything settled down, it had been months. Five months to be exact.

By then, the story was dead, and the media forgot about Jane Deer.

A friend here or there would be scrolling through their phones and say, ‘Hey, do you remember Jane?’

‘Yeah, I do. I still don’t know what happened to her.’

‘You guys are so depressing. Have you seen the new guy in our class?’

And just as easily, she was forgotten.

No one knows what happened to Jane Deer . . . except me.

No one knows that her bloody, bruised body was carried from the trunk of a car and placed in a shallow grave.

No one knows that she was still breathing when she was buried.

No one knows that it was a slow, painful death.

No one knows that for those months they were looking for her, tiny parts of her bone and flesh were in the mouths of animals.

No one knows that when the attention was on the parents in Ohio, a vicious storm had unburied her body.

No one knows that she had been swept down a hill and was stopped by a fallen tree, mud and sticks and branches and leaves coating her body again.

No one knows that over the years, her body provided an echo system for a tree – its roots growing through her bones and pushing her further underground as it separated her skeleton.

Why do I know this?

Simple. I’m Jane Deer.

I don’t know what I did to deserve this. Or why I was chosen. I don’t know why my friend lied. I don’t know why my parents had gone out when I had begged to go to dinner with them because I didn’t want to go to the party. I don’t even know the person who killed me.

But I know all this because this tree is positioned where my car had been found on the side of a road. Sometimes, people will come out to me and hang pictures or newspaper clippings of me on the bark. They might tie a ribbon around the limbs. They pray. They cry. Cold case detectives and teams examine the tree. The police who originally looked for me come out here and take off their hats, mumbling apologies and promises.

The man who killed me occasionally comes here, doing the same. I had watched him as he pretended to search for my body. He had hugged my parents and cried along with everyone. It had been some cruel luck that he had found me after my body was swept away. He had re-buried and revisited me.

But I’m stuck here, shackled to the bones of my former self until I’m found. Until my body is finally put to rest. I don’t know if that will happen, though.

When I was alive, I heard stories of bodies being found and cases being solved decades after the event. Will it take that long for me to be found? To be given a proper burial? For my family to finally rest? For all suspicion to be dropped?

It’s already been four years.

I don’t know any of that.

But what I do know is that my name is Jane Deer and I’m buried in plain sight.