Two months ago in a small town of Cinderfrown.
"Billy! Let's go to my place after school!" Aron whispered to his desk friend before the start of the history class.
"Eh? What for?" Billy looked at him genuinely surprised as Aron's parents were very strict and rarely allowed him to bring any friends.
"Yesterday, in the woods I found something really really cool!" Aron leaned closer to Billy's ear, to and whispered even quieter. He was shaking in excitement to show his new toy.
"What did you find?" Billy asked, while picking up a book from his bag.
"You would not believe if I told you! So I will better show you!" Aron replied.
"Come on! Just tell me!"
"It's a secret! You'll have to see it to find out!" Aron smirked a wicked smile.
Billy was now more curious than ever and so he pleaded with Aron to tell him what it was, but Aron remained silent.
"Tsk! Jerk!" Billy irritatedly clicked his tongue, which caused Aron to chuckle. However, as soon as the teacher entered the classroom, the two stopped speaking.
"Hello class! How are you all today?" Miss Lemons greeted everyone cheerfully.
"Hello miss Lemons!" the class stood up from their seats and responded in unison.
The teacher looked around the class and carefully counted the students.
"10… 11… 12… Jerry? Uh… Kids? Where is Jerry?" Miss Lemons asked after noticing that one student was missing.
After asking, she started to taking out the items necessary for school work. Papers, work plans for the day and a couple of books. She didn't even notice that the students seemed confused by her question.
The kids looked around at each other in confusion. Suddenly, class representative asked.
"Uh… Miss Lemons? Who is Jerry?" Class representative, Jasmine asked with slightly risen eyebrows.
The question took Miss Lemons aback, and she paused before answering. "Eh? Jerry Simmons."
The children kept peering about at one another as they waited for Miss Lemons to clarify who this Jerry Simmons was that she was referring to.
"Do we have a transfer student?" Suddenly Billy raised his hand to ask a question. He was visibly excited, as he was thinking of having a new friend to play with.
"Oh! This must be a prank!" Suddenly miss Lemons chuckled. Jerry Simmons, a young lad, was seated next to Billy at the front table, after all. There was no chance Billy would forget about him.
"So… No transfer student?" Billy asked, slightly disappointed.
"No. No, we don't have a transfer student." Miss Lemons chortled still thinking that the kids were trying to prank her.
"I will simply, write him as absent today." She marked Jerry's name in the student list.
The kids shrugged again, wondering who was she talking about. They all knew there was Simmons family in town, however, they never had a boy. Only two twin daughters.
"Anyway, let's start today's lesson!" Miss Lemons joyfully said as she brought out the textbook and told everyone to open a page 86.
The school hours passed, and when the kids left miss Lemons went to a teacher lounge for a cup of coffee. As she entered the lounge, she noticed a couple more teachers talking to each other in quiet tone, as if they were trying to keep their conversation a secret.
"H-Hello, Evelina." The martial arts teacher, Arnold greeted Miss Lemons. His behavior was a little strange, and there was sweat on his forehead.
"H-Hi, Jeremy…" She greeted him back, and turned to greet the other two teachers, Martin and Amy, however, the two were sitting with their coffee cups, that were already cold.
"Uh… What's going on?" Evelina asked with a worried tone, the teachers's behaviour made her feel anxious.
The teachers were all acting weird, all of them were nervous, as if something terrible have happened.
"Don't worry about it." Martin said while staring at his cold cup of coffee.
"Maybe we should…" Amy muttered something at Martin's direction, however Martin shook his head.
"No." He spoke to Amy before looking at Jeremy, who gave him a simple nod.
Amy nodded as well and finally started drinking her cold coffee. Whatever was troubling the teachers, were bad enough to make them forget that their hot beverages were going cold.
"Yuck!" Amy's face frowned in disgust as she tasted the lukewarm coffee.
Martin and Jeremy took a moment to stare at their coffee cups before taking a sip and rising from their seats.
"Hurry, Amy." The two teachers urged her.
She gave a quick nod and hastily put down her cup. She got up and turned to walk away when she overheard a question that shocked not just her but also Martin and Jeremy.
"Before I forget, did the Simmons family send a letter informing you that Jeremy was ill? Jeremy is in your class as well, isn't that right Amy?" Evelina asked, as she started boiling the water for coffee. She was so focused on the teapot, that she did not notice the weird looks that the other three teachers were giving her.
"This time student is missing from your class? Do the kids remember him?" Miss Amy spoke before covering her mouth with her hands and closing her mouth.
"Huh?" Evelina turned back, as Amy's question startled her.
Martin frowned as he stared at Amy for a few seconds, but after that he sighed.
"I'm sorry" Amy apologized, she seemed on a verge of tears as she stared at the ground.
"It's alright Amy, now that this happened to her class as well, there is no reason to hide it from her." Martin patted her shoulder, to calm her down.
"Miss Lemons, you've been working here for about a year now? Am I correct?" Jeremy asked for confirmation.
"Y-Yes. In two weeks it will be exactly a year." She answered, adding heating water to her coffee. She took a sip, but coffee burnt her tongue. So she put the cup on the table to cool off a little.
"Something weird has been going on in this school for about a decade now, but we kept it a secret." Jeremy told Evelina.
"A secret? What secret?" Evelina's asked in utter confusion.
"Y-You see, Evelina. Over the five years students have vanished every few months. Right now, we have over 60 missing children in total" Amy answered while staring at the floor.
"W-What?!" Evelina's eyes opened wide in shock.
"Then why there were no news about it?! No missing reports?" Evelina raised her voice.
"Because, Evelina. Everyone forgets about them, even the parents. For some reason, only the teachers keep their memories on the missing students." Martin answered her.
"You can't file a missing person report, if you never knew the person was missing." Amy said, as she trembled.
Amy instantly started crying since she could not contain her feelings. Martin started to cry as well as she hugged him and sobbed on his shoulder. Too many of the kids they looked after, joked with, and shared memories with have disappeared.
"Y-You said it happened once every few months… And it's been five years… How could…" Evelina tried to form a question, however Jeremy stopped her.
"How can there be over 60 missing children?" Jeremy finished her question for her.
"Yes." Evelina nodded.
"Because for the last three weeks, kids have been disappearing daily. Sometimes, not one but a few." Jeremy revealed the shocking truth.
"And we do not know how to stop it." Martin said through tears.
Meanwhile, in the other side of the town, Aron was pulling Billy's hand as the two ran through town.
"H-Hey, slow down!" Billy yelled, already gasping for air due to the two of them having run nonstop since leaving the school.
"But we might miss it!" Aron shouted back, but slowed down.
"Miss what?!" Billy was a little irritated since Aron still hadn't revealed to him what he was supposed to see. Was it even worth that much excitement, as showed by Aron?
"We're almost there, just be patient!" Aron flashed a smile again, and held Billy's hand tightly.
"Weren't we're going to your place?" Billy asked him, after realizing they were not going to Aron's home direction. In fact, they were going the opposite direction of Aron's house.
"Well, not exactly! We're going to my secret base!" Aron said gleefully.
Billy looked at Aron for a moment, and smiled.
"Alright! You've got me interested!" Billy chuckled.
When the two arrived at the town's edge, they saw an abandoned home. It was a dark two-floor house, and even a slight breeze appeared to cause the walls to crumble.
"There! Our secret base!" Aron pointed at the house.
"Y-You sure about this?" Billy looked at the house, feeling creeped out.
"Are you afraid?" Aron chuckled.
"N-NO! I am not!" Billy shouted, stammering.
"Then let's go! You're gonna meet my friend inside! He lives there!" Aron said as he started pulling billy into the house.
"A friend?" Billy asked. He questioned in his mind, what sort of person could live in a place like this.
The two of them walked into the abandoned house, and suddenly the breeze of wind shot the doors.
"M-Maybe we should get out of here…" Billy said, looking back at the closed doors.
"Follow me!" Aron said as he started climbing to the second floor.
Billy looked around, having a weird feeling that someone was watching him.
As Billy made his way up the steps, his shadow altered. The shadow instantly grew larger, taking on a grotesque appearance, complete with claws and a red glow around it. Billy was pulled into the same wall where the shadow abruptly emerged from.
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Today -
The alarm clock awoke Erl in the Illuminati facility. When he took a closer look at his paperwork, he saw he had slept off at his desk and that the report on yesterday's anomaly wasn't yet complete.
"Fuck." Erl's first word in the morning.
He stood up, and before he could even stretch his tensed up muscles from sleeping on the chair, he heard James's voice inside his head.
"I have a good news and bad news for you." James' told him cheerfully as ever.
"Fuck." Erl's reply to James's voice, realizing there is a new anomaly to work on.