Linda Willrow was the first of nine citizens to go missing in the rainy city of Sequim, Wash.
Reports to the station declared that she was last seen by a sheltered bus stop, on her way to an outdoor yoga class. By the end of that week, eight more “missing person” signs had been put up around town reporting the disappearance of citizens ranging from age 14 to 87.
Sequim was a mostly liberal area with a population barely over 8,000. Trees were scattered abundantly throughout the city in every space untouched by pavement, and grass was consistently ankle-height from the ever-present rain. Children ran freely on the typically quiet streets, kicking soccer balls into their neighbour’s lawns and joining their parents in neighbourhood barbecues. It was the last place anybody would expect to have a missing person problem, at least in the opinion of police officer Rod Gibson.
Officer Gibson was a well-liked man in his mid-50s with stormy eyes and an explosive laugh that often made secretaries drop their papers. Although he was low-ranking with an even lower work ethic, Gibson was well-liked by his co-workers for his jovial nature and humour. Despite his popularity, Gibson was lazy, and his assignments generally required minimal effort. This was why, the week after the No-Show Nine Case (as coined, somewhat darkly, by the officer himself), Gibson was assigned the investigation of an abandoned bus near the local park.
Gibson arrived at Clements Park just before noon — a popular spot for citizens, easily accessible and bursting with wildlife. Yoga and park runs were held there in the spring, while tobogganing and ice-skating reigned in the winter. Near an open area speckled with wildflowers stood the infamous bus, parked against the sidewalk. It was large, rusted and yellow, with no license plate and mud clinging to its tires.
Before the tedious paperwork and phone calls could begin, Gibson stopped in a coffee shop across the street to relieve himself. He bought himself a bagel and crossed the street to find an empty space where the bus had been parked minutes before. After a minute of frenzied searching and confused silence, Gibson drove back to the station.
“I crossed the street for a bagel,” he explained to his co-workers, perplexed. “When I came back, it was gone.”
“Skip the food next time,” advised his commanding officer, to the laughter of Gibson’s coworkers.
Gibson folded his hands over his stomach, ignoring the jab. Sometimes, he thought sourly, a man needs his food.
The next day, the bus was reported outside a run-down house belonging to a woman in her late 80s who did not appear to be home. Gibson jumped at the chance to redeem himself, hustling out of the station to handle the case. There the bus was, throwing a hulking shadow across the old woman’s lawn. Just as Gibson dialed his commanding officer’s number, a child screamed from the neighbouring house.
On instinct, Gibson jogged over and stopped in front of the yard. A little girl sat red-faced and sobbing on the grass, clutching a teddy bear with its head torn off. A labrador sat nearby with stuffing in its mouth, panting happily. Gibson huffed in annoyance and strode back to the bus, which was no longer there.
This bizarre phenomenon became a baffling reocurrence; the bus seemingly evaporated into thin air each time Gibson located it. His superiors were becoming increasingly frustrated, a sentiment Gibson had become familiar with.
“Let’s make this the last time, Gibson,” said his commanding officer thinly.
“Yes, sir,” mumbled the officer bitterly.
It was Gibson’s final time searching for the bus; that night, he did not come home.
The morning after Rod Gibson’s disappearance, signs were put up around the city offering generous rewards to any citizen who provided information on Sequim’s missing citizens.
That afternoon, citizens began pouring into the station. By the end of the day, there were 25 people in the lobby. Each one had a story or a secret and wished to speak anonymously. Officer Tanya Snow was assigned the task of hearing these stories; she set up camp in a private room near the entrance and took in speakers one by one. The first was a heavyset woman with plaited brown hair and large grey eyes.
“My name’s Melanie Shallers,” she said in a high voice. “I’m Rod Gibson’s cousin.”
Snow felt her eyebrows climb. “I’m very sorry for your-“
“Yeah, well, we don’t know if he’s dead yet,” interrupted Melanie, waving a manicured hand. “What I’m here to tell y’all is that Rod had… a bit of a history, back in the day. I just have this feeling that it’s somehow connected to his disapearence.”
“Miss Shallers,” said Snow urgently, leaning forward in her chair. “What do you mean by ‘history?’”
“He was a drinker.”
“How is that relevant?”
“He killed a man,” said Melanie carefully. “Drunk driving. He was 16.”
“How did he get on the force?”
“His record was sealed. I’ve kept this a secret for 30 years.”
This was the first of many dormant truths placed upon the shoulders of Officer Snow. They all led a trail of whispered footprints to the disappearances.
They all had secrets, every one of them. Each missing citizen had something to hide, or something to tell, that only their closest confidants could reveal. The 87-year-old woman had five husbands, each one dead from mysterious heart attacks. A middle-aged yoga instructor had beaten her three children. An elderly professor paid a little too much attention to the girls he taught. And each one had gone missing directly after the peak of their wrongdoing. This was no longer a case for the police to handle, not when more and more citizens could disappear at the same rapid pace.
The FBI became involved.
Three days later, a report was issued to the station that the infamous, disappearing bus had left tire tracks leading into the thick forest between Sequim and the neighbouring cities.
The forest was a wild place, untamed and full of dipping valleys. Trees were abundant and so close together that their roots entangled, making it impossibly expensive to uproot the greenery without damaging the ecosystem. Bears, wildcats and wolves scrounged the woods for prey, making the forest an off-limits area for citizens who did not have a hunting license. Even those who did were warned to go in at their own risk. It baffled officer Snow when she heard the report- why on earth would the bus have gone into such an isolated area? Which maniac was driving it?
Then she froze, her stomach dropping to her feet.
Who was in that bus?
“Sir,” yelled Snow, dashing into the office of her commanding officer. “Sir, who’s conducting the bus?”
“I’ll ask you to walk, officer,” said her commanding officer sharply. “And for some context, if you please.”
“The bus, the one that Gibson disappeared after investigating,” explained Snow, the words tumbling out of her mouth in a rush.
Recognition flashed across commanding officer Laybough’s face. “The vehicle appeared unattended, according to reports.”
“Sir,” said Snow grievously. “We don’t know who’s driving the bus, or why, after all these stops, it would drive into the forest. Meanwhile, there’s been a total of ten missing citizens in Sequim near areas the bus visited.”
Laybough stared at her. “I’ll be damned.”
“You think they’re connected?”
“I’m sure of it,” said Laybough, removing his glasses and rubbing his eyes. “Bring in Agents Wallace and Sanchez. This is out of our hands.”
Robert Sanchez had a history with school buses. His twin brother, Jandro, drove kids to school in the northern parts of Sequim. Robert had helped Jandro get his license by doing his driver’s test for him. The twins were identical, and this had been their system their entire lives: Rob helped Jandro, and Jandro paid him for his troubles. It had started out with exams and essays, nothing big, until it turned into charming girls and being an alibi when Jandro snuck into nightclubs. With the increasing seriousness of the act came an increasingly large amount of money that Jandro possessed from God-knows-where.
Eventually, that money started to run out. After Rob refused to hand over any money, Jandro begged for one last favour — brother to brother — to help him get a job. The license was the brother’s last venture; One morning, Jandro, high out of his mind, drove his school bus into a streetlight. The accident resulted in the death of six children, and Jandro was sentenced to serious prison time. When Rob was assigned the Missing Person/Disappearing Bus case, the familiar feeling of unshakable guilt stirred in his gut that arose whenever a bus was mentioned.
You were complicit, whispered the voice in the back of his mind, which he immediately shut out. Rob Sanchez hardened his face, drew back his shoulders, and stepped out of his vehicle to enter the forest.
“Good?” yelled officer Wallice from a distance. They had entered the forest half an hour ago and were separating slowly in order to cover as much ground as possible. They called back and forth continuously to ward off bears and other wildlife.
“Good,” shouted officer Sanchez. He stepped over a fallen tree and stopped short. On the foliage, before him, lay a pair of rhinestone-rimmed sunglasses.
“What in the…” Sanchez picked up the sunglasses.
The lenses were cracked, with dark brown blood crusted against the sparkling stones. Sanchez glanced up, scanning the forest for signs of human activity. There, on a tree 50 feet south, was a large smear of blood. Sanchez took off, sprinting to the tree and following the tire tracks he found at its base. They led him down a low valley, a dip in the ground that gave way to rocky terrain and tangled undergrowth.
Had Sanchez been paying attention, he may have noticed that the tracks began seemingly out of nowhere. Had he been paying attention, he may have noticed the sudden silence of the birds. Had he been paying attention, he may have noticed that the trees seemed a little farther apart.
“Where are you, where are you?” muttered Sanchez under his breath. The sound of his own words reminded him to call to his partner. “Wallice! Good?”
There was no response.
“Wallice!” Louder this time. “WALLICE!”
Nothing.
Sanchez sprinted in the direction where he’d last heard from his partner, climbing up the wall of the valley and dodging trees. All the while, he shouted Wallice’s name, and all the while, she did not yell back.
Suddenly, the tire tracks reappeared. Sanchez froze, scanning the forest floor as his eyes followed the path of the tracks. They forced him to look up as they wound deeper into the woods, and yellow flashed across his field of vision.
“Gotcha,” breathed Sanchez, grinning grimly. He ran towards the colour, hidden for the most part by treetrunks and fluttering green foliage. The tire tracks came to a stop, and Sanchez did the same, pushing aside branches and leaves.
Before him stood a rusted yellow school bus, tires covered in dirt and branches. There was dark mud splattered on the windows, hiding the interior from view.
Sanchez approached the vehicle, apprehension forming a pit in his gut. He strode hesitantly to the door of the bus, climbing the extended steps with caution. They creaked slightly under his weight. His hand closed around the handle, almost without his permission, and he swung the door open.
The sharp twang of blood hit Sanchez as soon as he stepped inside; bile flooded his mouth as he realized that the windows were not coated in mud. Worse, however, was the sight he took in as his eyes roamed the seats of the bus. Each one was occupied by a slumped body, blood and entrails soaking through their clothing.
An elderly woman in the front was pinned to the back of her seat by a stick through her heart. A middle-aged woman’s clothes were ripped to reveal deep gashes across her body; her belt was burrowed in her eye socket. An old man’s flesh oozed from his skull onto the windowpane, gluing him to the glass. His hands were cut up and his neck dotted with bruises. Farther back lay a man in a police uniform, black tire tracks rendering his face unrecognizable. Sanchez stumbled backwards, hands grasping towards the door, but it was closed. He whipped around, pounding a boot against the door, to no avail.
“Let me out!” moaned Sanchez at the roof of the bus. He hadn’t remembered his knees giving out, but he was slumped on the floor with his face soaked in tears.
“What is this?” screamed Sanchez to the bodies around him, taking in the blood and the smell and the ripped clothing.
Hell, he thought. I’m in hell. Where’s Jandro, then?
His eyes flitted to the driver’s seat, and he started upon realizing it was empty. Upon closer inspection, Sanchez spotted a small slip of paper on the steering wheel. He snatched the note with twitching hands and read the bloody scrawl:
Peter
Jasmina
Carly
Johnny
Madison
Sheila
Last stop, kids!
And with that, Sanchez understood it all. The empty seat. His presenceo here. For why else would the names of the six children his brother had killed, all because of him, be in this bus?
A rasped chorus of eerie, childish laughs sounded behind him. Sanchez turned, and started to scream.
- Annika Jessome, New Westminster
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