The Missing Case(Noah Goldberg) Summer 1984

I stand numbly staring at the base of a street sign. There is a flyer on the pole staring back at me: MISSING
Alex Campbell
16-year-old teen. Last seen two nights ago near Reeves High School.
Last seen wearing jeans, a red shirt, and a brown jacket.
Call the town sheriff if sighted or have information.

“Jonah!” I hear a familiar voice behind me. I turn around stiffly to find my best friend Joshua smiling at me. Behind him is my younger brother Kaleb. “Did you hear that Duran Duran is singing the theme song to the new James Bond movie?”
Joshua’s smile falters when he notices my body language. “Hey, you okay man?”
“Uh....” I try to talk but my voice fails me, so I just nod my head toward the missing person flyer on the pole. Joshua and Kaleb walk to the pole and quickly read the flyer. They must’ve felt the same way as I did because they just stood there not talking for a few moments. We weren’t the best of friends with Alex but we were still friendly to him. The town we live in only has about 2,000 people in it and there are only 25 people in our class, so we knew everyone.
Joshua slowly turns to face me. “We saw him the night he disappeared.” He turns to point back at the flyer. “Look it says he was last seen at the end of school bonfire celebration.”
“Shit, yeah you’re right.”
Kaleb joins the conversation. “Wait guys. Didn’t Alex say he was going to go into the woods to do something when most of us started to leave?” Kaleb may be my younger brother, but we were only a year apart. He was 16 and me 17 so he had the same friends that I had.
“He did!” Joshua said.
“Okay guys.” I say. “We need to find Alex. We may not know him very well, but he is still our classmate and he’s probably in trouble. Meet me at my attic in thirty minutes.”
Joshua nods and runs toward his house. Kaleb and I go the opposite direction to our house.

Once we get to the house Kaleb and I race up to the attic and clear some random crap and dust the couch that hasn’t been sat on for a while.
I’m cleaning but my mind keeps drifting to Alex. My friend group now doesn’t know Alex very well but Alex and I were best friends up until high school. Once we started high school the two of us started to drift apart. We are still friendly and talked but we just weren’t as close as we were. I remember having a small crush on him back in middle school but that didn’t last very long. With his blond hair and blue eyes it was hard to miss him. He was the first person I came out to, and it couldn’t have gone better. He was one of the few people who was there for me. We drifted apart because of our interests, and he made some new friends. But we were still friends and I had to try and find Alex.

“Another mystery to solve!” Kaleb says. “I was getting a bit bored.”
I spin around snapping out of my thoughts. “Having another mystery to solve isn’t a good thing Kaleb.”
“Come on Jonah. You’ve got to admit that it is fun to solve a mystery. We haven’t had one in like a year!”
“I mean it is, but we aren’t cops. We’re just teens.”
“Which is even better! It’ll be an adventure!”
“Okay, okay. Settle down. I know I said we need to find Alex, but we need to be smart about this and find clues that might help us.” I look at my watch. 1:45. “Josh will be here in a few minutes so let’s talk more when he comes.”
“Okay.”
As if we summoned him Joshua walks through the door with our friends Rufus and Gina. I must have made a face because Joshua stops. “I hope it’s okay that I brought them to help us?”
“Oh....yeah that’s fine.” I say. “Sorry I just wasn’t expecting you guys to also come.”
“I filled them in on what we know so far,” said Joshua.
“Okay, good.” I turned around to get a chalkboard that I noticed when we were cleaning up that was sitting in the corner. “Okay so here is what we know so far. The last time we saw Alex was at the end of school party and when we left Alex said that he was going to do something in the woods. Is there anything I’m missing?”
Joshua and Rufus shake their heads but Gina said “I noticed that he had something in his hand when he was heading into the woods. I couldn’t tell what it was but it sort of looked like a gun to me.”
“Wait, WHAT?” Joshua, Rufus, and I all say at the same time.
Kaleb’s eyes got wide as if he realized something. “Hang on.” He walks past me and faces the blackboard. “So, Gina said that it looked like that Alex might have had a gun when he walked in the woods.” Kaleb picked up a piece of chalk and started writing. “But the missing flyer said that he was last seen two days ago by the high school.” He turns around to face us. “But the high school is all the way on the other side of town. He has a car, and it was parked in the parking lot at the celebration so why would he have walked through the woods to wherever he wanted to go to when he literally had a car he could use?”
Rufus suddenly blanched. “I’ve been seeing strange things these past few weeks, but I didn’t think much of it. I just didn’t think I had to worry about it.”
“Strange things like what?” I breathe.
“The first thing was that I noticed my dad urm- I mean the sheriff and another cop talking to one of the teachers but I didn’t even think about it because it didn’t seem like my business, but I noticed the sheriff and same cop there again talking to multiple students several times that week. Then at the end of the week I went into my dad’s office because he left me the house keys because he had to go out of town for the weekend, but he didn’t mention why. When I went to his office, I noticed that on one of the walls there was a map of the town and notecards pinned in certain places on the map. I just happened to notice that several of the notecards said something about a brown panel van and how it didn’t belong to anyone in town and how it would just stop in front of random houses. I didn’t do anything because I just figured that my dad would handle it, but I can’t shake this feeling that this case my dad is doing might be related to Alex’s disappearance.”
“Okay then.” I say uncertainly. “If this van is related to his disappearance, we just need to figure out if there are any other strange things happening in town that your dad hasn’t mentioned.”
“I agree,” said Kaleb.
“Alright.” I turn to Rufus. “Do you think that you can sneak into your dad’s office and see if there is anything else that might mean something or help us?”
“I can try.”
“Okay good. How about while Rufus is doing that we all think about what we might’ve seen that seemed strange recently and meet back in the morning at Pierce’s”
Everyone nods and Rufus and Gina leave.

Joshua stays behind. “Hey, are you okay, Jonah?”
“I think so, just really hope that Alex is okay.”
“Yeah, me too.”
I kiss him quickly. When I pulled away, I noticed Kaleb gaping at me. He was still up here? Crap. Suddenly, he bursts out laughing. “I knew it! I called it!”
“Huh? Anyway p-please don’t tell anyone. Joshua doesn’t want anyone to know.”
“Your secret is safe with me you know that.”
I smile. “Thanks bro.” I turn to face Joshua. “So, what were you saying earlier about Duran Duran and James Bond?”
Joshua breaks into a wide grin. “Okay so they just announced this morning that Duran Duran are going to sing the theme song to the new movie!”
“Seriously? That is amazing! I can’t wait for it. Too bad it doesn’t come out till next year. “
“Yeah, I know.” Joshua looks at his watch. “Oh, shoot I have to head home. I promised my mom that I would be home early today. See you in the morning.” He kisses me again then races out of the attic.
When I hear the door close Kaleb starts vomiting questions. “Okay what is going on?” How long have you been dating?” “I knew it!”
I can’t help but smile. Kaleb is my biggest cheerleader when it comes to my personal life. Guess that’s what brothers are for.

****

Kaleb and I walk into Pierce’s Diner and look around to find the gang. I didn’t see any of them, so I found an empty table and started to run through the things we know about Alex’s disappearance. I’m deep in thought when Joshua walks in. Kaleb, who got coffee for all of us waved at Joshua. When he sits down, he leans to me and whispers “I found something disturbing last night.”
I spin around to face him. “What!?” Joshua starts looking around. “What?” I whisper back.
“I’ll tell you when the rest of us comes.”
I nod. A few minutes later, Rufus and Gina walk in. They immediately spot us and sit down at our table.
Kaleb leans in and asks “What did you guys find?”
“Some pretty disturbing things,” said Gina.
“Yep me too,” said Joshua.
“Okay what did you find out?” I ask.
Joshua talks first. “Okay so apparently Reeves isn’t the only town that has something like this happen.”
I frown. “What do you mean?”
“I mean I did some digging to try to help us find Alex. I didn’t find much to help Alex but apparently several small towns in the Midwest has had four 16 year-olds disappear while in the woods and get this in every single town there is a brown panel van spotted somewhere. Also get this, there have been three towns that have reported four missing teens and if Alex is the first missing teen and is connected to these other three towns then….” He takes a deep breath. “three more teens will be missing soon.”
Kaleb butts in. “We can not let that happen.
I nod “Agreed.” I turn to Gina who has been oddly quiet throughout the whole conversation and slouched in her chair.
Gina straightens. “Hang on guys.” She turns to Joshua “You said that four people would disappear and then the van would go to another town?” Joshua nods. “And that it has happened to three towns already?” Another nod.
“Yeah, but it’s not that really important. Those three didn’t happen here,” Rufus says.
“No that’s where I think you’re wrong.” We all make puzzled faces. “Okay,” Gina continues. “So we know that four people go missing before it hits another town. It has happened to three towns already and it seems like Reeves is the fourth town.” She pauses and takes a deep breath. “Four teens missing, and Reeves is the fourth town so what if this is just the start of something much bigger? Four teens missing from four towns and every disappearance involves a brown panel van and since Reeves is the fourth and my guess last town then what happens afterwards? It’s not like the kidnappers will come back and say ‘Sorry I just wanted to borrow them for something,’ and give the people back. Something bigger is coming and we need to find out what.”
“But how do they choose which town they are going to?”
Gina suddenly pales. “Uh….Joshua what towns have been visited already?”
Joshua looks puzzled again but he looks at the news article he brought with him and reads off the three towns listed. “Trenton, Strand, and Finite.”
Gina pales even more and races to Pierce in the back of the café. A few moments later she comes back to us with a map and a sharpie in her hands. She shoves everything out of the way and places the map of the state on the table. “Okay so here is Trenton,” she places a dot on the map where it is with the sharpie. “Here is Strand and over here is Finite.” She marked the next two towns. She takes a deep breath. “And here is where we are. Reeves.” She makes a dot at the final town. Ours. “Do you guys notice anything?”
We all cock our heads to the side. “It’s uh- It’s a square.” Kaleb says.
“Right,” Gina says. “So you see anything else?”
“Besides a square? No not really.” Rufus butts in.
“What’s in the square?” Gina looks at us like we are supposed to know.
“Farms?” I guess.
Gina groans. “Don’t you guys know the history of Reeves and it’s neighboring towns?” We all shake our heads. “Okay so almost 200 years ago there was nothing here except prairie.”
“It’s still like that,” Kaleb mutters.
Gina shoots a glare in his direction. Kaleb puts his hands up in surrender. “Okay go ahead. I’ll shut up now.”
Gina continues. “So like I was saying almost 200 years ago when there was only plains here a sudden sinkhole formed and nobody knows how it formed. After a few days the sinkhole vanished and it was replaced by four towns.” Gina looks up at us. “That’s Trenton, Strand, Finite, and finally Reeves. They formed on the corners of where the sinkhole was. What scares me is that some people say that the sinkhole can reform and destroy the four towns. Which does make sense. I looked that up also but that isn’t supposed to happen for another 500 years in 2500 but then I stumbled upon a way to speed up the progress and have the sinkhole form whenever you want. Anyway the book says that the way you form it early is to have sixteen gifted sixteen-year-olds standing around the square with four on each side. If it does happen and the sinkhole reforms then these four towns will cease to exist.”

We all just stare blankly at her. Rufus bursts out laughing. “Yeah right. That was a great story but for real what actual things did you guys find?”
“It’s all true,” Gina snaps at us. She bends down and reaches into her backpack and pulls out a thick book and drops it on the table with a loud smack. She turns to a bookmarked page and pushes us toward us. We all crane our heads to see what she showed us.
Kaleb is the first to pull away from the book. He looks at Gina. “You weren’t kidding.”
“Yep,” is all Gina says. “It’s literally in the history books. So what if this is what is actually going on.”
“Okay, so let’s assume this is true for a minute,” I say. “It says sixteen gifted teens. What do you think that means? What gifts did Alex have?”
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out. I hate to say this, but I think we just need to wait until the second person goes missing and we can then try and figure out a pattern that might help us know what they all have in common.” Gina explains.
“Okay,” Kaleb says. “So we just lay low until something happens then.”
We all nod and eat our breakfast.

Once we’re done eating I head to the town library to do some more research on this whole sinkhole debacle. Kaleb goes back to our house to set up our police crime board.
When I get to the library I ask the librarian where the books about the town history is and she points me to a corner of the library where a couple dozen books are. This is going to take all day. “Thank you,” I say to the librarian and with that I start going through the books. The first book I picked at random was about the 16th century. Nope, not that one. I set aside all of the books that covered the area around 200 years ago. When I do that I have a pile of five books. It takes me another two hours to finally find the information we need. It was only in one book. I skim through it until something catches my eye. What the shit. I double read the paragraph to make sure I was understanding what I was reading and when I realized that what I read was legit, I scramble all my things together and quickly checkout the book. I’m typing a text to the group as I’m running to my car. I think I found something. It’s urgent. Meet me in my attic in 45 minutes. I get responses from Gina and Rufus almost immediately. I chuck my phone into the passenger’s seat and race home.

I burst into my attic and Kaleb, Joshua, and Gina are already there waiting for me. “Where’s Rufus?” I breathe. As if I spawned him he comes barreling through the door.
“So.” Gina says. “What’s the urgent thing you found?”
I take a deep breath and take the book out of my backpack. “Okay so I went through some books to find anything that might help us understand this sinkhole better and after looking through multiple books I found this one.” I stop. “Oh by the way what I found out is a bit disturbing.”
“Well spit it out,” Gina says.
“Okay.” I take another breath and lay the book on the right page onto the ground. “So we knew how the sinkhole just formed randomly and then disappeared a few days later and four towns appeared but we never found out who found the sinkhole.” I stop. Four sets of eyes laser into me so I continue. “Look at this picture. It's the four people who discovered it. Notice anything about them?” Joshua shakes his head and the rest of the group does also. “Look at the names,” I reply.
Kaleb cranes his neck to read them out loud. “Gilbert Matthews, Cole Turner, Sebastian Strand, and Mabel Vega?”
“Do those names sound familiar to you?”
No one says anything for a few seconds until realization crosses Rufus’s face. “Hang on….”
“Exactly. They are our great-grandparents. Our great-grandparents were the ones to discover the sinkhole.”
Rufus suddenly stumbles backwards into the chalkboard. We all spin around to look at him. He looks like he’s seen a ghost. “Hey man, are you okay?” I ask him.
He gets up slowly and without warning he sprints out of the attic and before I have time to blink he is gone.

We all just stare at the place where he was not even 10 seconds ago. Rufus’s face suddenly pops back into the attic. “A-a-are you coming or not?” Joshua and I look to Gina and Kaleb and they nod with wide eyes. When I turn around Rufus is gone already. The four of us race down the stairs to catch up with Rufus. He reaches the front door and he throws it open. I run out of the door, almost running straight into it and looking around frantically to see which direction he went. “There!” Gina yells pointing to the left. I turn just in time to see his leg escaping from my view. Rufus doesn’t even look back to see if we are following him. Before we know it we are running down main street and when Kaleb notices where we are he stops abruptly. Gina, Joshua, and I all collide into each other. “Oof! What the hell Kaleb?” Gina snaps.
“He’s going to his dad’s office. Look!” He points and we all follow his finger. Rufus is already at the sheriff’s station.
“Well we can’t just stay here!” breathes Joshua. He darts to the station and we all follow him. Once we enter the station there are two sheriffs that block us from entering.
“Do you kids need something?” he stops when he notices our faces. “What’s going on?”
“Did another teenager just run in here?” Gina pants.
This time the second sheriff spoke. “I didn’t see anyone.” He notices the look of panic on our faces. “Okay what is going on here?”
“Where is Sheriff Turner?” Joshua blurts.
“He’s out patrolling a strange call that came from a farm a few miles out of town.”
“Okay. Can we go into his office. His son should be there we just need to pick him up because his dad isn’t here yet.”
“Okay.” The sheriffs make way for us to head to the sheriff’s office. Gina spins around and says to the sheriffs, “You might want to call for backup.” At there confused faces she added “Just please trust me.”

By the time we fly through the door Rufus is standing in front of us his eyes puffy and face red. “Okay what is going on Rufus?” Joshua breaths.
Rufus takes a deep breath. “Okay so back in middle school my dad told me to get something from his office and when I got there a drawer in his desk was open and I looked into it because I was twelve and that drawer was never opened. Right at that moment my dad walked in and saw me going through that drawer.” He shivers. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so mad. He told me to never open that drawer again and then he pulled out a key and locked it. I never forgot about it because I just thought it was weird and I noticed where he kept that key and I went back. I don’t know why but I did and there were a whole bunch of random papers but I did notice one paper that said sinkhole and another word stuck with me.” He takes a deep breath and says “open. Guys it said open. I need to get back into that drawer and see what I really saw and if I’m worrying about nothing.” He whirls around and speed walks into his dad’s office.
Joshua and I exchange glances. “Hang on,” Joshua says. “You think that you’re dad is involved in Alex’s disappearance?? No, that can’t be right.”
Rufus shakes his head slowly. “I honestly don’t know what to believe anymore.” He backs away slowly and walks into the wall.

What happened next seemed like it was happening in slow motion. Like I was in some dumb action movie or a James Bond film. The wall starts to crack and chunks of the wall the size of basketballs started falling toward Rufus. “Rufus watch out!” Gina screams and grabs Rufus. Gina shoves Rufus out of the way but I don’t think Gina will move in time.
“GINA!” I roar. “MOVE!” Gina puts her arms on her head and crouches down to protect herself but right when she does that something that shouldn’t even be possible happens. I close my eyes and put my hands in front of me. When I open my eyes a few seconds later I see Gina still in a ball.
“GINA!” Kaleb screams and darts to her. She stands up slowly. She is covered in what looked like….sand? The huge chunks of the wall turned into sad as it was going down and now there was sand covering every square inch of the small office they were in.
“What-the-actual-hell?” Joshua breathes.
Gina lets out a sound that sounded between a sob and a gasp. “Rufus, you need to look at this.” Rufus who took cover in the opposite corner of the office walks toward the wall that vanished into sand. We all take a closer look at the new wall. There is so much stuff pinned into it that I don’t even know where to look first. There were news articles about the sinkhole, a list of what looked like a list, a page ripped from the same history book we read about how to reopen the sinkhole early, and pictures of a couple dozen teenagers.
“Like I said, what-the-actual-hell?” Joshua says. He suddenly squints at the piece of paper that looked like a list. “Hang on. Look at this list. They are names.”
Kaleb is shaking but he manages to say, “d-d-do you think what I’m thinking?”
Gina nods her head stiffly. “A-are they sixteen-year old’s?” She turns toward the sheriff’s desk. There is a folder laying on it. Gina opens it and gasps. “Guys? You’re going to want to see this.” Rufus, Joshua, and I turn to walk to the desk. Gina takes out four sheets of paper and I notice the top of one of the pieces of paper:
Sixteen-year old’s living in Finite
“No,” Joshua whispers. “I-it can’t be.”
“Wait where did this folder come from?” I ask suddenly realizing something. “There was nothing on the desk when we came in.”
Gina’s eyes get wide. “You’re right Jonah.” Her voice drops to a whisper. “And look at the other three sheets. They are lists of sixteen-year old’s in the other three towns.”

Rufus and I stagger back. I turn back to the new wall. Kaleb is frozen in front of the wall. “Hey bro, are you okay?” After a few seconds he doesn’t respond. “Kaleb?” I say a bit louder. He turns around and his eyes are sparkling with tears. “Kaleb? Are you okay?” He shakes his head and points to the pictures on the wall. I suddenly realize that there are sixteen pictures of teens on it. Four groups of four pictures each under a town name. I look at the photos of the teens in Reeves and my heart stops. Right below a picture of Alex is Kaleb. “N-no, no, no, NO!” I scream.
“What is it?” Gina demands.
“L-Look,” I say pointing at Kaleb’s picture.
Gina looks to where I’m pointing and starts crying right there in front of me.
“What on earth is going on in here?”
All five of us spin around with our hands to our chest. When I see who walked in my heart drops to the ground. The sheriff, Rufus’s dad is standing in the doorway, his face red as a tomato. He quietly walks to the new wall. As he walks to the wall we slowly and quietly try to escape when he isn’t paying attention. We’re a few feet away when the door slams closed in front of us. The sheriff spins around and faces us. I gulp. “Do you have any idea what you’ve just done?” He yelled, touching his gun in his belt.
“What we’ve done?” Rufus growls. “We haven’t done anything. But it looks like you are responsible for Alex’s disappearance. And you were going to do something to Kaleb! Kaleb! One of my best friends.” Tears start to fall down his face. “Why dad? Why?”
“You don’t understand. This is not what it looks like I swear!”
“Really? Because to me this looks exactly what it looks like! You were going to reopen the sinkhole weren’t you?”
He pulls his gun fully out of his holder and points it to the five of us. “How dare you ac-“

Before the sheriff had time to finish the door flies open to reveal the head sheriff of Reeves as well as the head sheriffs of Trenton, Strand, and Finite. Rufus’s dad’s face pales. “Aaron Turner, put your hands behind your back, you are under arrest for the kidnapping of thirteen teenagers and endangering hundreds of lives.” He grabs a pair of handcuffs off of his belt and places them on Aaron’s hands. He gets escorted out by three of the sheriffs.
Before I think I run to one of the sheriffs. “How did you find us? How did you know we were in trouble?”
He smiles and turns to a hidden button on the wall by the main desk of the sheriffs station. Someone pushed that button and that alerted all of the sheriff stations within a 50 mile radius. I’m glad you kids are alright. I’ll be back soon.”

When he leaves I wonder aloud. “Who pushed the button? We were the only ones in here.”
Rufus is the one who talks. “I did when I ran into the station. I had a hunch that something bad was going to happen so I pressed it just in case. I was just hoping I was wrong with the hunch.”
We all look at each other and then Kaleb whispers “Hey are you okay man? Your dad just got arrested.”
“Yeah,” Joshua chimes in. “Just know that we are all here for you if you need us.”
Rufus gives us a grateful half smile. “I love you guys.”
We all smile and go to hug him. “Group hug.” Gina says. “Oh we love you too.” We don’t move and stay like that in our group hug for a few more minutes. I suddenly feel Joshua’s hand on mine and at that moment I realized that I was okay. We all were. Even if our town was about to be erased.

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