Red Stone

A short story I wrote.

Red Stone, IA 1981. The disappearances started in June. A young high school student, Mary Thompson never came home after work. Her walk from home usually took fifteen minutes, but in that fifteen minutes, she disappeared from the face of the Earth. The second disappearance was her boyfriend Tom Grant who went missing two days after Mary Thompson. His parents heard a noise in the middle of the night. When they went to check on him, his bed was empty and his window was open.

The local police were baffled as no signs of a struggle were found at the sight of both locations. The belief is that the couple took off and would show up again in the coming months. After this the disappearances ramped up.

In less than a week half of the town's population of 357 souls had disappeared. The last phone call recorded came from Deputy Marshall Twedt was made to the sheriff of the neighboring town of Farnham.

Twedt: “Hello? Is anyone there? This is Deputy Twedt from Red Stone. We need immediate assistance. Something is happening. People are in the streets and att...”

Sheriff Elds arrived in Red Stone with officers from Farnham at 8:00 a.m., the following morning. Red Stone had become a ghost town. Cars were in the driveways, houses were empty, and the shades were still drawn. An abandoned doll sat in the middle of the street. It's black eyes and serious look seemed to reflect the atmosphere in Red Stone that June morning. After several hours of searching the town, not one individual had been found. Several local communities were called in for the search efforts, but no trace had been found of the residents of Red Stone. After several weeks the searchers went home and Red Stone laid abandoned.

25 years later, rumors have been spread about the fate of the townspeople. Government conspiracies, alien abductions, and even satanic plots have been the reasoning for the mass disappearances. Local teenagers had reported strange eyes peering at them in the dark and a prevailing sense of dread when traveling through the town at night. Officials are especially quiet on the subject of Red Stone. The same people who will talk at great lengths about politics, the weather, and farming, will go silent when asked about Red Stone. Visitors are strictly prohibited and were escorted out of town until 2002. All roads leading into the town are blocked off and the only way to get into the town is by hiking through the surrounding farm fields and woods.

The big question is what happened to all of those people? How could 357 people just vanish into thin air? Why do the surrounding communities want to keep people out of the town?

Reviews

[VanjaEmilie]

Hello Jeff,

Wow! What a suspense filled story you wrote. It totally keep the readers attention to the very and. I like such kind of thrilling stories.

Tough questions, maybe there is more in between heaven and earth?

Thank you for sharing, it was nice reading.