I let out a gasp. I staggered back, away from the girl.

Her tears carved dark lines in her pale cheeks. Her slender shoulders sagged. “Please find me,” she whispered. “I vanished. Please find me.”

“I … I’ll try,” I said.

I didn’t know what else to say.

Jillian stepped forward. She gazed down on the shadowy little girl. “I’m trying to read her mind,” she said. “But I’m getting only static. It’s like … the signal is too weak … too far away.”

A young man and woman stepped up behind the little girl. They wore black T-shirts and black shorts. Their skin was the color of ashes after a fire dies out.

“We all vanished,” the woman said. Her gray eyes were blank, like clear glass.

“We all vanished when the park disappeared,” the man said. “We are the shadows. We are the shadow people.”

“I don’t understand you,” I said. “Shadows? What are you saying?”

“We’re all that’s left,” the man said. His voice sounded muffled, far away. “The park disappeared, and we did, too.”

“Find me,” the little girl repeated. “Find me. Can you find me?”

“You mean — you’re DEAD?” Matt asked.

“No. We’re what’s left,” the woman said. “We’re the shadows we left behind when we disappeared. Don’t you see?”

“We … don’t understand!” Matt cried.

More shadowy, black-and-white people arrived. Little boys and girls and their parents. A few gray, sad-looking teenagers.

“I vanished,” the little girl said. She began to sob. Her whole body shook. “Can’t you find me? Can’t you find me anywhere?”

The shade people formed a circle around us. They began to move around and around us. Their low voices were chilling as they murmured to us.

“We’re all that’s left.”

“Where did we go?”

“Can you find us?”

“I vanished. Please find me.”

“I’m a shade now. We’re all shades. It’s so drab and dark here.”

“Where did we go?”

Muttering their sad words, they circled us faster and faster — until they were a moaning blur of charcoal gray.

“Find us! Find us!”

“Don’t leave us here!”

“We can’t let you leave till you find us!”

“Let’s get out of here!” Carly Beth screamed.

We took off running.

I ducked my head — and ran right into the swirling shadow people.

I felt a shudder of cold, as if I were breaking through solid ice.

And then I was on the other side, outside the twirling circle of gray. Outside the wailing voices.

The others came bursting out, and we kept running until the voices faded behind us.

A strong gust of wind blew hard against us. I heard a smaaaack sound.

Robby let out a startled cry. I turned and saw him struggling to pull crinkled newspaper pages off his face.

He unfolded them. “The wind carried this …” he started.

But then his eyes went wide as he read the front page — and he gasped in shock.