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By Ryan Woods
For me, it all started with Etan Patz, back in Manhattan in 1979. Though, in all fairness I have my suspicions that it probably began long before that, as far back perhaps as the Middle Ages and to a small town in Hamelin, Germany, and the appearance of a character who would be known as Rattenfanger von Hameln.
In modern day Manhattan, Etan would take his place in history as the first “Missing Child” to have his photograph featured on the side of a milk carton. He was just 6 years old when he disappeared on his way to school on 25th May 1979, and he would be declared dead in absentia 22 years later.
The figures themselves, relating to missing children, are both alarming and mind boggling, with 140,000 children going missing each year in the UK alone, whilst across the pond, here in the good old U.S. of A, that number is a jaw dropping 800,000 each year.
You may be wondering what my particular interest in this subject is. Morbid curiosity? Academic research? No. Neither of those things. It is something much more personal for me, and much closer to home, the specifics of which I’ll get to shortly.
As hard as it may be to believe, I still have one of those original milk cartons that Etan’s details appeared on, and equally as hard to believe, it is still in pretty good condition, as if both the carton, and Etan’s memory have somehow been frozen in time.
You see, my parents originally kept the carton as a reminder, to my sister and myself, of the inherent dangers out there, in the “big wide world”, and particularly the threat that came in the form of stranger danger - the pervs, paedos and weirdos of society, as my dad so poetically categorized them.
So, even after the carton was empty, it was not discarded. In fact, my parents washed it out, dried it, and then purposefully placed it back in the refrigerator, on the middle shelf, right at the front where we couldn’t help but see it.
Every time we opened the refrigerator door, the internal light would cast the carton in an almost ethereal glow. I think that they would have had it permanently, and prominently displayed on the breakfast table, if it wasn’t for the fact that they didn’t want any visitors to the house thinking that we were a bunch of oddballs. Not that we really got that many visitors. We kind of kept to ourselves; a trait which I also think that our parents had thought would somehow keep us out of harms reach.
I was smart enough, or perhaps it was more a case of being scared enough, to heed their warnings. Sadly, the same could not be said of my sister. She always had a rebellious streak, which I often imagined would one day get her into trouble, of one sort or another.
Apparently, she even came out of the womb kicking and screaming up a storm; so much so that my parents decided to name her Rogue. They had originally talked of calling her Grace, but within minutes of her being born they had a somewhat impulsive change of heart, and a rather more fitting name became her birth right. I doubt that they ever imagined how apt that name change would prove to be, nor just how often she would live up to it.
Growing up, I had developed a healthy respect for danger, whilst my sister developed an unhealthy disregard for it. She courted every trope in the horror cliché catalogue, almost as if she liked to tempt fate. She took shortcuts through the woods, hung out on the wrong side of town, and snuck out of her bedroom window at night to meet up with “friends”.
It was the summer that I turned eleven, and she turned thirteen, that I first caught her sneaking out of the house, late at night.
It was hotter than hell that night, making sleep almost impossible, and as a result I’d got up to get a glass of chilled water from the refrigerator’s drink dispenser. I think that I was going through a growth spurt at the time, because no matter how much I ate, I always seemed to be hungry. So, I’d looked inside the refrigerator for a snack, and had, as usual, been met with the angelic face of Etan staring back at me.
It kind of made me feel guilty that I was safe in my home, with my loved ones, and ready to enjoy a late-night snack, while he was God knows where. I still ate the snack, though it left a bitter taste in my mouth, so to speak.
As I was making my way back to my room, I had heard the unmistakable sound of my sister’s bedroom window sliding open, and subsequently entered her room just in time to see her slipping out into the night. For right or wrong, with Etan’s memory fresh in my mind, I elected not to follow her.
The following morning however, over breakfast, I had quietly challenged her as to what she had been up to, and for my trouble I had gotten a real peach of an Indian rope burn from her. Bitch.
Sorry, I shouldn’t speak ill of the de...
I was going to say I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but as with many of the children included in those figures that I mentioned earlier, my sister’s body was never found. In time she became, for many – including the authorities, just another number, and another memory that was destined to fade into insignificance.
My parents were never quite the same after her disappearance. They somehow saw her going missing as a failure on their part. The truth is that some people just can’t heed advice, my sister being one of them.
I had initially made the assumption, on that first night, that she was sneaking out to meet a boy, to suck face and probably get her tits and ass squeezed into the bargain. As it turned out, nothing could have been further from the truth, though the whole truth had always eluded us, and still does, even to this day.
Her excursions out of her bedroom window, and into the night, became an increasingly regular thing, and an increasing source of suspicion on my behalf.
I’ve never been one to snitch, not at home, not at school, but at the same time I had allowed curiosity to creep in and begin to get the better of me, so one night, against my better judgment, I decided to follow her just to see exactly what kind of mischief she was getting up to.
After tailing her for several blocks, I began to get an inkling for where she might have been heading. The Skate Park. And sure enough, by the light of a full moon (another horror cliché that she avidly embraced) I eventually found myself skulking in the bushes like a peeping tom, watching her as she made her way towards a group of what I can only assume were teenagers, because they were all wearing hoodies which for the most part served to hide their features.
They were gathered in the basin of one of the skate park’s half-pipes and were in the process of lighting an impromptu camp fire.
There didn’t seem to be much in the way of exchanges of conversation between them, though I couldn’t help feeling that they were somehow communicating with one another on some other level, one that wasn’t altogether natural.
It wasn’t long before a much taller, almost inhumanly tall, figure materialised from the darkness, like a predator emerging from the depths of the ocean. He approached them, and held his arms out as if he was Jesus welcoming his congregation, and like puppies, pleased to see their master, the children rose in unison and walked slowly, but without hesitation, towards the figure that towered over them.
One by one the children embraced their master, before standing on either side of him to face my sister, who still sat by the now diminishing campfire. Even though my vantage point was some distance away, I could sense that they were beckoning her to join them. You could feel it in the air, like electricity during a storm, but her body language suggested a sense of hesitancy.
I have no doubt that the tall figure could have snatched Rogue up there and then, like a rag doll, and been done with it if he had wanted to, but I sensed that her acquiescence was somehow important. So instead, he simply opened up the long trench coat that he was wearing, revealing a gloom within that was like dark matter, completely bereft of light, and one by one the children stepped into the darkness within, and were gone.
He closed his trench coat, and then just as nonchalantly as he had first appeared, he turned and seemed to dissolve once more into the night. Only then, after a brief spell, did my sister seem to regain her composure, and sense of surroundings. She surveyed the area, at one point looking at the spot where I was concealed, so intently, that I thought she had somehow sensed my presence.
She rose to her feet, glanced at her watch, and began to head home. She didn’t even break into a jog, she just ambled along, her hands in her pockets and her head held low, as if she was somehow annoyed with herself, perhaps for not accepting the unspoken invitation to join the other children.
Night after night, she would sneak out of her bedroom window and make her way to the skate park, where the children gathered. And night after night, I would follow her, despite my misgivings and the sense of foreboding that I felt every time that I was in the proximity of the other children.
I initially didn’t understand what it was about them that made me feel that way. For all intents and purposes, they seemed normal enough, or so I thought. But I was soon to get a taste of the darkness that seemed to dwell within them.
As each subsequent night passed, I sensed Rogue’s resistance to comply with the rest of the group, and embrace their master, grow weaker, and inevitably the night finally arrived when she succumbed and seemed to voluntarily take that last step to join them. Though the tall figure was not around at the time, I still, to this day, believe that he was ultimately orchestrating everything from the shadows, so to speak, like some sort of puppet master.
It angers me to admit both my failure as her brother for not intervening, and in hindsight, my foolishness with regards to my own safety, when I shadowed them through the streets, that night especially. They wandered the neighbourhood like a pack of hyenas, their heads bowed to hide their true selves, though there was none of the chatter, or deranged laughter that would normally accompany such a group.
Silence seemed to reign supreme, which once more made me feel that they were communicating on a level that was beyond my comprehension. And though working as a group, there seemed to be one who stood out as the leader, one who would make themselves known as the spokesperson.
He was a lanky figure, and a seemingly unlikely leader for your average group of teenagers, but then this was not your average group of teenagers. I could have imagined him being the offspring of the one that I had come to christen The Tall Man, a name synonymous with evil, for me, and which conjured up images of Angus Scrimm, from Phantasm. My misspent youth watching horror movies was sometimes a blessing, and sometimes a curse. If I was to compare the tall man to a current malevolent figure, I would have likened him to Slenderman.
From the opposite side of the street, using billboards, parked cars, and the shadows for cover, I had followed them until they reached the parking lot of a Circle K store, at which point I crossed over so that I could see more clearly what they were getting up to, being mindful once again, to not be seen. My fear of being seen by them bordered on paranoia, because I felt that doing so, may have carried with it dire consequences, regardless of the fact that my own sibling was with them.
Initially, they also stood in the shadows, avoiding the glow from the street lights, and at the same time, it seemed, avoiding the C.C.T.V cameras. They watched as people came and went, biding their time for the right moment, for the right person...for a person who was alone.
Eventually their patience paid off, and a lone figure emerged from the store. Carrying an armful of beer, he pushed past those who sought to enter. He showed total disregard for all but himself, and made his way towards his pick-up truck, parked arrogantly not only in a parent and child spot, but straddling two parking bays, as if to make even more of a statement of his disregard for rules, and for other shoppers.
To say that he looked like 10 pounds of shit in a 5-pound sack wouldn’t have been being unduly unkind. The threat of his clothes ripping at the seams, due to him being massively overweight, seemed imminent. He was your typical, heavy drinking, and no doubt heavy handed, red neck.
Further testament to this was evident in the decals on his truck. The hood was emblazoned with the motto of the N.R.A., “The Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms Shall Not Be Infringed.” His fondness for Lynyrd Skynrd was apparent from the words painted on the driver and passenger side doors respectively, “The South Will Rise Again” and “Gimme’ Back My Bullets.” And the confederate flag adorned the rear window of the truck, right behind the gun rack, completing the good ol’ boy package. He wouldn’t have been out of place in an episode of The Dukes of Hazzard.
I got the distinct impression that image was not of paramount importance to him, whenever he left the house. He was country to the core, but a country mile away from babe magnet material.
It was at this point that I noticed an air of agitation, or perhaps excitement, had spread amongst the group, as they had watched him approach his truck and place the beer on the passenger side seat, no doubt so that he could “get acquainted” with it whilst he drove to whatever shit hole, or trailer park he called home.
It was also at this point that I heard a dog barking across the street, which served to distract me, and caused me to look in that direction. I swear that I glanced away for only the most fleeting of moments, but when I turned back, the teenagers, my sister included, were standing beside the truck.
On that night, and even to this day, it seemed impossible that they could have covered that ground, between where they were gathered, and where “Mr Personality” was sat stuffed behind the wheel of his vehicle, so quickly and so quietly.
They seemed to be staring intently at the guy in his truck, (who henceforth I will refer to as Truck Guy) though he had yet to notice them, probably due to the fact that all his attention was focused on the burrito that was clasped in his chubby, sausage like fingers, and was about to start its penultimate journey into his cavernous gut, and the indignity of what lay beyond that.
For a while, none of them moved, and then the lanky one stepped forward, so that he was stood right alongside the driver’s side window. Moments passed, and eventually he tapped on the window of the truck, keeping his head bowed all the while. Perhaps, tapped is the wrong word to use, as it was an action that seemed forceful, and insistent.
Truck Guy seemed none too pleased to have his burrito party interrupted, as I heard a barrage of expletives spray from his mouth as he wound down the window, no doubt accompanied by wads of partially chewed up burrito. He didn’t even give the spokesperson time to speak. None of the teenagers, however, my sister included, seemed phased or intimidated by his foul-mouthed outburst, nor the level of animosity aimed at them.
It seemed that Truck Guy intended to get out of his truck and add injury to the insults that he had already unleashed, but the spokesperson of the group raised his head in order to finally make eye contact. As he did so, each of the group raised their heads in unison. At the time, I didn’t know what it was that he had seen in their eyes, but it had been enough to put the fear of God, or whatever superior being he believed in, into him, because he screamed three words, in a voice that sounded shrill and frightened, as if it didn’t belong to him.
“WHAT THE FUCK!!”
He turned the ignition, gunned the engine and reversed out of his parking spot, wiping out an empty shopping cart that someone had left in an adjacent bay, before speeding out of the Circle K parking lot, probably never to return.
“Strange things are afoot at the Circle K,” I muttered to myself, remembering a quote spoken by Keanu Reeves in a movie I had recently seen.
I’m not sure if my attempt to inject some humour into the situation was intended to calm my nerves or not, but if it was it didn’t serve its purpose. There was no humour to be garnered from the situation, only an ever-increasing sense of dread.
With truck guy’s hasty exit in a cloud of dust and burning rubber, it seemed that the group no longer had a quarry, until a young woman, who looked to be in her mid-twenties, emerged from the store carrying her baby and an armful of baby supplies.
I had started to grow anxious about, for all intents and purposes, wandering the streets on my own. I didn’t know what Rogue and her newly found friends were up to and I wasn’t even sure if I cared any more, but it certainly didn’t warrant me getting kidnapped or suffering the wrath of my parents had they found out, so I left her to her devices and made my way home.
The following day three people would be officially declared “Missing.” Rogue...the young woman from the Circle K parking lot, and her 6-month-old baby, Joshua.
I distinctly remember the baby’s name because the news channels and tabloids all used the same photo of baby Joshua when the story broke, and they were scrambling to be the first network or newspaper to air the story.
It was a very recent photo taken just the day before Joshua and his mother disappeared, and it showed Joshua held aloft in the air by his proud mother. He was wearing a cornflower blue onesie, embroidered with a huge J on the chest. A mischievous looking chimpanzee was hanging from the hook of the J and yellow letters beneath announced, “I’m a cheeky monkey”.
The young woman’s car had been found abandoned just a few blocks away after her distraught mother had reported her missing when she hadn’t returned home. Apparently, she had popped out for a few emergency supplies and had assured her mother that she would be straight home. Within hours of being reported missing her car had been discovered.
There were no apparent signs of foul play, nor had anyone seen or heard anything suspicious in the neighbourhood where the car had been found. The vehicle was neatly parked at the side of the road with the keys still in the ignition. It was as if both mother and child had simply vanished into thin air.
After further investigations and despite her mother’s vehement protests, the police began to form the opinion that she had eloped with the baby’s father; an ex con who the young woman’s mother had forbidden her to see. He had recently been released from his latest stretch behind bars and had soon after disappeared off the grid.
I sensed that the explanation was far more sinister than that, and linked directly to Rogue and the band of ragamuffins that she had been associating with. To go to the police meant, in my mind, admitting guilt, so the frightened eleven-year-old boy that I was spoke of nothing that I had seen the night before, not with regards to the young woman and her baby, nor my sister.
As for Rogue’s disappearance, the police had of course asked the usual questions. Was she having any problems at home? Was she having any problems at school? Did she have any reason to run away, or had she ran away in the past? Did she have a boyfriend?
I think it was the question about having a boyfriend that strangely seemed to make my parents, particularly my father, most irate.
“She’s thirteen years old for Christ’s sake. What would she be doing with a boyfriend?”
I almost forgot about the severity of the situation and said, “Getting some tongue,” but I held mine and no doubt saved myself a good lecture and perhaps a good beating; not that my parents were big on corporal punishment, but I think that this would have been an exceptional, and I have to admit, deserved case for it.
As the weeks went by and turned into months, and not so much as a scrap of evidence or a credible witness turned up, both cases became destined to be resigned to the ever-expanding list of Cold Cases.
And as the weeks turned into months with alarming regularity, another child would go missing, and then another, and every once in a while an adult.
The police never seemed intelligent enough, or willing, to make the connection between the two, but I did.
In the months after Rogue disappeared I began to research cases of missing children state wide, and then country wide, looking for any tentative links. I didn’t expect to find anything. After all, what could I possibly find if the whole of the combined forces of the various law enforcement agencies couldn’t come up with anything? But you know what? I did find something, as irrational and far-fetched as it first seemed.
I found mention of what at first seemed like nothing more than an Urban Legend. As I dug deeper, I found an ever-increasing number of unofficial reports of the specific anomaly, I began to realise and accept that the perpetrators behind the said crimes were Black Eyed Kids, or B.E.K.’s.
Some claim that the B.E.K.’s are indeed nothing more than an urban legend, a myth, an allegory for what is wrong with society, but in my heart, if not my mind, I know that they are real and I know that in some way Rogue had fallen foul of them, just as had the young woman and her baby that night at the Circle K. One thing that was consistent throughout all the encounters with B.E.K.’s was the sense of malevolence felt when in their presence, and of course, those eyes, those black, soulless eyes – void of iris, sclera or emotion.
Of course I could never go to the police with my suspicions. Who’s going to believe my claims of a group of misfit teenagers, possibly demonic, who wander the streets at night in search of victims? They would have been dismissed as the ramblings of a horror obsessed juvenile with an over active imagination, clutching at straws and possibly suffering from P.T.S.D. due to his own sister having gone missing.
As I grew older, and continued to come across mentions of the B.E.K.’s, I continued to keep my mouth shut and my suspicions to myself. I had a good job, as a school teacher, and I had a mortgage to pay. Rumour mongering about other worldly, soulless Black Eyed Kids would probably have not helped to find any of the missing children, but it would have found me being ostracised by my peers at best, and at worst, perhaps finding myself the object of suspicion.
Guilt however, is a terrible thing to carry with you for so long. It eats away at you like cancer. It keeps you awake at night like a ghost, playing on, and with, your mind.
I am sure that one day I will be called by some higher force to explain my actions that night all those years ago, and since. Though I myself did nothing wrong, I can’t help feeling that some sort of atonement is required. There is a fee to be paid, and interest is due.
I have never let myself forget my sister’s disappearance, nor the events and circumstances leading up to it. History has a way of repeating itself, and old habits die hard. Some we maintain because they make us feel safe, some because we need to be reminded that safe is a fallacy, and nothing more than a state of mind.
So, in my refrigerator, on the middle shelf, right at the front where it will be cast in an almost ethereal light whenever I open the door and the internal light is activated, sits an old milk carton. It features the photograph of a young boy named Etan Patz. Next to it, sits another old milk carton. It features the photograph of a thirteen year old girl, named Rogue.
To this day neither child has ever been found.
It’s getting late. I have work tomorrow. A day filled with classrooms of young children with their whole lives ahead of them, the wind at their backs, and not a care in the world. So, I must bid you goodnight.
Wait...
Did you hear that, or was it my imagination?
There it is again. Knocking at my door; only more forceful this time. Less patient. Thank God for spy holes. With my over active imagination still running riot inside my head, I never answer the day without first taking a peep at who’s standing there.
Oh my God. It can’t be.
My sister is outside, knocking on my door – and asking to come in. It’s so fucking weird, because she looks almost exactly the same as she did on the day that she went missing. And she’s cradling a baby in her arms. The baby is wearing a cornflower blue onesie, with a J on the front. Though the night is mild, they both look cold, and their skin looks so pale; and their eyes, oh my God, their eyes are...
Author bio – Ryan Woods
Ryan Woods was born in the North West of England, during a year that saw war continue to rage in Vietnam, and the assassination of both Martin Luther King Jnr and Robert Kennedy.
He learned to escape into the realms of Greek Mythology, his first literary love, whilst in high school, but before long, horror, in both written and cinematic mediums, became his passion, and began to influence the direction that his writing would gravitate towards.
Ryan makes no bones (pun intended) about admitting that his writing is influenced by his fascination with the macabre, the darker side of human nature, and the deeds (both good and bad) that we are all inherently capable of.
His first published piece was his short story, The Highland Thing, his own take on the Bigfoot legend, which he set in the Highlands of Scotland, and was featured in the Bigfoot Special Edition of Devolution Z horror magazine.
As well as horror, he is known on occasion to write poetry, though don’t expect to find unicorns or bunny rabbits in his poetic ramblings. His poetry is dark, gritty and unforgiving; examples of which can be found in the anthology, Beautiful Tragedies.
Ryan hopes to see his manuscript, The Journal of Cinnamon Paige, Un-Death by Chocolate, a tale of Voodoo, Chocolate and Zombies, published in the near future, and in the meantime, is compiling a collection of his own short stories.
Ryan’s ramblings can be found on social media at;
Facebook.com/ryanwoodsauthor
Twitter.com/ryanwoodsauthor
Instagram.com/ryanwoodsauthor