MISSING

Genre: Horror 

 

 

 

MISSING

By Randy Romero

 

 

 

It all started with Ms. Kinsey’s missing cat, Oscar.

Don’t ask me why, but she loved that cat. Oscar was a plump grey tabby, and I say plump from all the overfeeding on Ms. Kinsey’s part. She spoiled that cat rotten. Must’ve fed him three or four cans a day.

And don’t get me wrong, I love cats…all except Oscar. When he prowled around the neighborhood, people knew not to get too close. Oscar was known for leaving his autograph on people’s arms with his jagged claws that Ms. Kinsey rarely trimmed. He was so grumpy and miserable that we all nicknamed him Oscar the Grouch behind Ms. Kinsey’s back.

I, like many others, absolutely hated that cat. But I still felt bad for her when Oscar disappeared. That poor old lady flooded the town with flyers and missing posters, offering a reward for anyone who found and returned Oscar safely. She called all the shelters. She even tried to file a police report.

We thought it was an isolated incident. Dogs and cats run away; they go missing. It’s sad, but unfortunately it happens. But then Mr. Sheridan’s Corgi, Cooper, disappeared one afternoon. One minute the dog was in his front yard, and the next minute, he was gone.

But it didn’t stop there. There was Mrs. Freemont’s Maine Coon, Popcorn, that vanished without a trace. But the most unsettling incident was the case of Mr. and Mrs. Pickman’s missing German Shepard, aptly named Grizzly. That dog was one vicious beast. The Pickman’s couldn’t keep him in the house. Grizzly had a doghouse outside but he spent most of the days chained up in the backyard so he wouldn’t hop the fence and attack anybody. Mr. Pickman went outside to feed him one day and found Grizzly’s chain snapped in half. Cats and Corgi’s are one thing, but how does a dog that big disappear without a sound?

Was someone in the neighborhood abducting animals? Everyone had their own theories or suspicions. I had a theory of my own, but it was one I didn’t dare share with my parents.

My mom and dad couldn’t figure it out. But they were worried about Archie and so was I. Archie was a boxer that we had adopted from the local shelter. She’d been with us for five years and she seemed to prefer to sleep outside in her doghouse.

My parents were quieter than usual at dinner that night. And they decided that Archie would stay in that night. Archie didn’t seem too happy about it, scratching at the back door and howling away. But my dad wouldn’t budge.

“Ronnie, don’t you dare let her out,” my dad ordered me. I promised him I wouldn’t. And I was grateful that he called me Ronnie. It was my mother’s idea to name me Ronald, after my uncle on her side of the family. Most people called me Ronnie instead, which I preferred. Some kids at school called me Ronald McDonald, which I didn’t appreciate that much. But hey, I was fourteen and kids my age could be real dicks sometimes.

I took that moment alone to be candid with my father. “Dad, whatever this is…I don’t think it’s human.”

“Beg your pardon, Ronnie?”

“All these animals vanishing without a trace…there’s got to be a cause for it. And whatever’s behind this, I don’t think it’s like you or me. I think it’s…” I trailed off and let his mind fill in the blanks. I couldn’t bring myself to say something so ludicrous.

“Son, there’s no monsters out there. You want the truth? It’s probably some sicko going around kidnapping people’s pets for the reward money. Some people will do anything for money, Ronnie. And people would pay practically anything to get their pets back. I heard about two guys pulling a scam once years ago. They’d kidnap people’s dogs, wait for them to put up flyers offering a reward, then they’d show up at their front doors and say they found the dog, collect the reward money, and move onto the next sucker.”

My dad was probably right. And as sane and realistic as that sounded compared to the idea of a monster devouring animals in the neighborhood, I still wasn’t convinced.

Archie finally stopped scratching on the back door and settled down that night on the floor of my bedroom. We all settled in too and slept through the night until about four o’clock. We woke up to what felt like a massive earthquake. I was half asleep and my eyes were barely open, but the first thing I noticed was that Archie was missing.

I figured she got spooked by the earthquake and hid somewhere in the house. But when the ground settled, we searched high and low and couldn’t find her anywhere. But my mom was the first to notice that the door leading to the garage was open. My dad surmised that Archie must’ve escaped through the dog door he had installed in the garage a few months back. But where would she have gone?

Everyone in the neighborhood woke up that morning to discover that their pets were missing. And that’s not all they found. On the hood of Mr. Clark’s BMW, they found teeth marks. Embedded in the concrete, they found footprints, bigger than any humans.

My dad looked terrified just trying to imagine what could’ve left those footprints behind. Whatever it was, it was big enough to make the ground shake and cause an earthquake-like side effect. Everyone was at a loss, nobody had any explanations.

But there was still my theory. I believed that this creature, this thing, was slowly consuming pets around the neighborhood, growing with each animal it consumed. Until its hunger finally took control and it grew to monstrous proportions. I was just a kid, so what did I know. But you know what, I wasn’t too far off from the truth. Soon, people from the neighborhood started disappearing instead of animals.

That’s how it all started. How it ended was a very different story.