"And the Piper advanced and the children followed,

And when all were in to the very last,

The door in the mountain-side shut fast."

-Robert Browning   

Chapter One

She didn't want this story, but beggars can't be choosers. At least I'm being paid, exposure pieces don't really pay the bills, you know? She told herself. She slept in motels, all with the same bland interior paints and the same bland sheets. How much thought goes into creating a space so devoid of personality?

Every morning Jamie had the same pastries and the same coffee. Then the work began. They say grief takes different forms, but so far, Jamie only saw the same unfocused stare, the same sobs. Nearly everyone left their children's rooms as they were. She spoke to them via Skype and email to set up the interviews. Of the nine families that agreed to be interviewed, nothing seemed very different.

The facts certainly never changed.

Ten years ago, on April 4th, 726 children disappeared in the United States. Investigators say this happened at about one in the morning. They left without noise or screams or any signs of struggle. Although, in one house, an eight-year-old put his brother in the back of a closet, telling him not to come out no matter what. In one girl's room, there was a butcher knife under her pillow. The parents say their goodnight hugs were extra long. Some wanted more stories than normal.

None of them cried and none of them said anything.

Then 726 of them went missing.

Being the tenth anniversary, her website was doing a story. Everyone was doing a story. The site she wrote for primarily focused on music, running nostalgia pieces for older readers, and hyping new bands for everyone else. She wrote the irritating list pieces of course, top five this and seven best that, anything for clicks or shares. Everyone else is closing up shop, their domains expiring, and their writers furiously sending sample pieces to anyone who might hire.

But she hung on. They needed reads. They needed ad revenue. Clicks are clicks after all. She thought about tying this to Norman Peers, who lost his youngest in the disappearances and currently fronts The Stakes.

Over the years, no child has been found. None have been sighted. No evidence has turned up. The police watched the border, and feds scoured the dark web. They found disgusting things, they solved other cases and found other children, but the 726 remain lost.

There were a few things they had in common. In fact, they couldn't find any kind of meaningful connection between any of the kids otherwise. Some came from poor families, while others were members of wealthy, well-connected families, some urban and some rural. They were a variety of races and religions, a variable cross-section of humanity. The investigators could find no messages, no evidence anyone reached out to them online. In fact, the only suspicious correspondence was a handwritten note found in one missing child's room: Are you ready?

The note was written in block letters, no prints could be lifted, and the paper was just generic printer paper purchased locally.

* * *

The mother agreed to meet Jamie at ten in the morning, but no one answered the door. She took notes on the weather, the neighborhood, the cars in the driveway. She knocked again. She swore a curtain moved.

Jamie called. She heard a jaunty cellphone ringtone from in the home. Of the nine families, four have stood her up so far. No call answered, and no emails responded to. She checked Facebook pages, Pinterest pages, and even a LinkedIn or two but no one has been active since agreeing to talk to her.

She returned to her car to call a colleague.

"You having trouble talking to anyone?" she asked Laurence. He worked for a rival site, one that scored an interview with several families as well.

"No one taking your calls, Jamie?" He laughed. "So, it's not just us, then."

Did he receive notification from an attorney, too? She later found her site did. Apparently, any further attempts to contact the Smiths could be considered harassment.

Jamie continued her trip crisscrossing the country. In Oklahoma, Jamie decided to do something a little different. She arrived early, parked down the street and loitered just outside a wall of tall shrubs separating the Chung house from the neighbors. She wondered if they also had a lawyer on retainer.

Mrs. Chung dragged the plastic trash can down to the curb. She wiped her hands on her pants.

"Mrs. Chung!" Jamie called.

She stood up and pushed her black hair behind her ears.

"Yes?"

"It's Jamie, we were supposed to meet today. Sorry I got here a little early."

At the mention of her name, Mrs. Chung started to back up.

"Wait! Just talk to me, please? I'm getting a lot of cold shoulders lately. I guess I'm not as popular as I thought." she laughed. She made her voice high and hand gestures animated. The silly girl routine usually only disarmed men Jamie interviewed, but it was worth a shot. Mrs. Chung looked to her left and turned around, speed walking to the house.

Jamie sprinted, jumping in front of Mrs. Chung. She ran into Jamie.

"Excuse me! I'm so sorry, I just wanted to talk. Are you okay?" Jamie asked, resting a hand on her arm.

"I don't want to talk."

"This is about finding your daughter. You said nothing was more important."

"Please. Leave."

"You said talking was good, that maybe if Jolie could hear you somehow, she might come home."

"She's not coming home."

"What makes you say that?"

"I don't want to talk to you!" she screamed. She gritted her teeth, breathed heavily through her nose. For a moment, before the woman burst into tears, Jamie swore Mrs. Chung might attack her.

Jamie held her. Mrs. Chung's resolve deteriorated as she went limp in her arms. She tried to lower her gently to the ground. They sat beside each other on the bumpy gravel walkway.

"We can't talk to you. Or anyone. Just go."

"You can talk to me. Look, if someone has threatened you, I have connections. We can help you."

She laughed. "Connections?"

"Yes."

Mrs. Chung took a deep breath, trying to bury her sobs. "She came home," she whispered. She leaned in close.

"What?" Jamie whispered back.

"She came home. She was different. But she's gone now."

"Do you know where?" Jamie asked.

"If she finds out I talked to you, she may come back. You have to leave. Now."

* * *

After Jamie called about the encounter with Mrs. Chung, her boss was adamant that she not contact the families anymore. Since Jamie liked being able to pay bills, she agreed. Word spread, and no family members would speak at memorials or agree to interviews of any kind. Many moved unannounced. The number of the missing now included immediate family.

It seemed they fell off the face of the earth. Jamie couldn't publish her encounter with Mrs. Chung. She even offered it to rival online publications, but no one would touch it.

Jamie returned home. She frequented a coffee shop in a chain bookstore. It seemed sacrilege, but a friend always gave her an unofficial discount. Inside, nearly everyone was glued to the TV screen in the corner of the cafe or watching updates on the news.

The anniversary of the 726 had been overshadowed by the news out of Marble Springs, TX. A massive explosion at the city's police station and an at large serial killer with dozens of victims, many of which were fed to a giant alligator, headlined the news.

Jamie decided she needed a new story, and started an email to her boss. She was close to Marble Springs; she could head there. The new barista walked to Jamie's table. Jamie kept her eyes fixed on her screen, managing her inbox. She told the barista she was fine, but the woman just stood there and never asked about a drink.

She was young, and she was smiling. Her dark hair had stripes of pink. She sat down the pot of coffee and cleared her throat. She undid the top buttons of her shirt and pulled her shirt apart just enough to expose massive scarring, a pale uneven T.

"What is that?" Jamie asked. She pushed her chair back.

The barista closed her shirt, buttoned it, picked up the pot, and went behind the counter. Jamie followed her. The cashier gave the girl with pink striped hair a confused look. The cashier, Lacy, had been a friend of Jamie's for years. She told Jamie that she'd never seen the girl before.

After that, people were eager to show her their scars. Bus drivers, a police officer, waiters, and waitresses, all bearing healing wounds from cuts and burns and brands. T scars, like an autopsy, or lines across their neck or belly, scars that would take years to heal from, maybe even a decade. If Jamie found herself alone in the hall outside her apartment, someone would be loitering.

Someone young, sometimes a man, sometimes a woman. Again, a veritable cross-section of humanity. Sometimes smiling, other times scowling.

They never said a word. They just adjusted their collars or pulled up their sleeves, just enough to show off the scar.

Jamie stopped going into the office. The police officer? He was the one who came to the apartment after she reported the stalkers. He smiled, flipped his sunglasses down over his eyes, and walked away.

The bills piled up. Her phone rang until she let the battery die and stopped bothering to plug it in. Her boss tried to contact her, eager to send her out to cover the fallout from the horror show in Marble Springs. But Jamie never responded, breathing a sigh of relief when her phones and devices finally died.

She learned how many days she could subsist on dry cereal, crunching on one handful at a time. The blinds remained closed after she opened them once and found muddy handprints covering them.

Jamie did not live on the first floor or near the fire escape.

The journalist became a recluse, her appearance reflecting her state of mind as the circles formed under her eyes, and her skin broke out. She watched her weight drop precariously and she became accustomed to holding up her pants with one hand as she shuffled around the apartment.

Even walking across the room was enough to wind her as exhaustion became her default mode. If she looked out the door, barely peeked through the blinds, someone on the street would turn and smile. Then that someone might adjust a collar, pull up a sleeve, or roll up a pant leg.

The ten-year mark since the children left long since passed, and she was facing eviction. Once the landlord locked her out, where would she go? Would they settle for following her and showing off their scars? Would they continue to just smile while Jamie screamed and cried and begged them to just fucking say something? Would they finally speak to the mad woman with greasy hair, the skin on her hands dry and cracked, her body odor repugnant because she refused to be in the bathroom for long periods as it was just a tiny room with only one exit?

The mad woman. She told herself. The mad woman.

The eviction notice appeared on her door. It said to be gone by noon the next day. It was eleven at night. The sirens and cars and city sounds seemed to dim when she heard the knock.

He was her age, maybe a little older. He had a scar along the side of his jaw. He smiled and took off his ball cap. His skull was a garden of scar tissue, where flesh had been shorn away. The uneven patches of skin acted like tendrils gripping his exposed skull.

"I don't think you're a mad woman." he smiled. His voice was high, almost a squeak. His eyes were small and spaced apart. He was a short, pudgy man, kneading his ball cap between his hands.

"It's just that...there are going to be sacrifices, you know?"

Jamie only nodded and told him to come inside. She sat down, and he walked around the apartment, kicking up the take-out containers and old clothes littering the floor. He looked at her TV. The news continued to cover the updates from Marble Springs, as every month seemed to bring new layers of awful to the surface. This evening focused on the ever-expanding list of Rick Dickson's victims.

"Fortunate timing," Tim mused. "No one even noticed the explosion at Hausman Hill. How could they? Gators and killers and ghosts, oh my."

"Hausman Hill?" Jamie asked.

"I was Tim," he said, turning away from the TV. "And you were?"

"Jamie," she whispered.

"You want to know why?" He asked.

"Yes." Jamie started to cry. The sob. Loud, pathetic sobs that left mucus running from her nose, and tears pouring from her eyes. She fell to the floor and begged him. She begged him to tell her why.

"Are you ready?" he asked.