The Day I Went Missing in My Life

I barely slept that night.

Every time I closed my eyes, I could see the map — the red dot bleeding through the paper, the saw-edged lines slashing across the forest. And the date. Today.

By morning, I'd reasoned myself out of it.

Then, by mid-day, I was already driving for the edge of the forest.

The highway became smaller until asphalt became gravel, and then dirt. These forests here weren't the little clumps of trees along the city. These were ancient ones. Dark ones. The sort that drank in light and sound.

I stopped at the trail-head, stuffed the map into my pocket, and walked.

The deeper I went, the quieter it was. No birds. No wind. Just the crunch of my boots in the ground and the pounding of my own heart in my head.

Twenty minutes passed, and I saw it — a clearing, where the red circle had been drawn. And in the centre of it was something I hadn't been looking for: a little, weathered cabin.

Its windows were obscured from within. The door sagged slightly open, creaking with a sluggish motion.

I drew closer. My phone buzzed in my pocket — one new message from Kevin:

"Don't go inside."

I stood there. He hadn't told me why.

Something moved in the darkness beyond the doorway. Not much — only enough to make me realise I wasn't alone.

I should have turned around then. I should have listened to Kevin.

Instead of that, I stepped out on the porch.

Inside, a voice, far away but unmistakably clear, said my name.

"Moses."

I listened for my name to freeze me in position.

It was not Kevin's. It was not anybody I recognised.

I tiptoed, pushed the door open slowly. The smell hit me first — wet wood, rust, and something slightly metallic, like dried blood.

The cabin was dark, illuminated only by thin slivers of daylight piercing cracks in boarded windows. Dust danced in the air like miniature spectres.

There was a table in the centre, with yellowed newspaper clippings spread across it. They were all seemingly random at first — until I understood that every headline was a missing persons report.

Some of them older. Some of them newer. Some of them with dates similar to my own disappearance.

And then I noticed it — my own face staring back at me from a clipping that had a date of twelve years previous.

LOCAL BOY VANISHES — SEARCH UNDERWAY

The photograph was fuzzy, but there was no question. It was me. Smaller, younger… but me.

I stepped back, my heart thudding in my neck.

This couldn't be. I had never ever disappeared as a child. My parents never once said anything like that to me.

A board groaned on the floor behind me. I spun around — and froze.

There was a woman in the corner, half-illuminated. Her dress was torn and tattered, as if she'd stepped out of another time.

"You came back," she whispered.

I attempted to move my mouth to speak, but she put her hand up.

"You shouldn't be here. They'll find you again."

"Who?" I asked.

She took a step closer to me, a look toward the door.

"The ones who took us."

Before I could even get her to explain what she meant, her eyes glanced over me — and her face went white.

"They're here."

Her voice was barely above a whisper, but it hit me like a bullet.

"They're here."

She stepped before I could — three quick steps back into the cabin — and drew me towards the rear wall by the arm. Her fingers were cold — not from the freezing air, but from fear.

Behind us followed a sound: slow, ponderous footsteps on the porch.

She touched her hand to some of the wall, and to my surprise, it opened up. Behind it was a dark crawl space.

"Go," she ordered. "Don't breathe. Don't speak."

I slipped inside as the cabin door opened. The crawl space was darker than coal. I could only hear the pounding of my own heart and the shallow raggedness of the woman's breathing beside me.

Two voices entered the cabin — deep, male, and peaceful in a terrible sense.

"Check the back," one of them told us.

Footsteps followed across the floor, kicking near enough for me to hear the rasp of dirt under their boots.

Something metallic scraped on the tabletop.

"She was here," the second voice informed us. "And now he's with her. I can smell him."

I felt the woman stiffen beside me.

A blast of light cut through the crawl space. I was holding my breath.

The man with the light flashed a smile — not at me, but through me, as if he were confident I couldn't move.

"Not yet," he said to me. "We'll discover him when we're ready."

He stepped back from the beam. The footsteps receded. A second later, the cabin door slammed shut.

We crouched there forever. Finally, the woman turned to me.

“They’re not going to stop, Moses. And now you’ve led them back to me.”

When finally the woman had opened the secret wall, the light outside hit me as a blow.

She did not pause to utter a word. She simply motioned me to follow her through the forest, racing so fast that I could hardly keep up with her.

We did not stop until the cabin was far from our horizon.

Only when we were beyond view of that did she turn to meet me.

My name's Claire," she said, her voice still gentle. "I've been on the run here for years."

I thought of the clippings in the cabin. "You're one of them," I said. "One of the missing."

She nodded briefly.

"They kidnapped me when I was fourteen. Same people who kidnapped you — twice."

I felt my chest tighten. "Twice?"

She looked at my face, as if deciding whether to go on.

"You were here before, Moses. You were maybe six years old. I saw you. They took you somewhere under the ground… then you just disappeared one day. Like that."

I tried to make sense of it. "I don't remember any of that."

"That's because they wipe out your memory," Claire told me. "They take what they need, and they wipe out your memory. Until they need you again."

The trees enclosed us. I could not get rid of her voice: Until they need you again.

"Why now?" I growled.

She said nothing at first. And then she took something from her pocket — a photo.

It was the missing girl from the newspaper photo. Same blurry picture, except here she wasn't alone.

She was holding the hand of a boy. Me.

Before I was able to speak, Claire's head snapped in the direction of a far-off engine sound.

"They've found us again," she said to me.

To be continued Episode 3