“Let me take you back to where it all began,” said Sara as she reached into the depths of the memory. “It was a very long time ago, and I was only fourteen years old.” 

The town was different then, all the cars were black in colour, and there were no speed limit signs, cause the cars would only be able to get up to fifty-five km per hour. 

The houses were all painted one colour, white, and the streets had no lights after dark. Most people living in the township knew each other, the good and the unhealthy habits of each person. There was a corner store that sold all the best chocolate, sweets, milk, newspapers, and knick-knacks. There was also a bakery, a hardware store, a small theatre, boutique store that sold the best roses. It was a small town, and so this story has stayed with them for years, generations really. 

My name is Sara, and I lived in this town till I was fourteen years old. I will never forget the incident, and it stays with me wherever I go. I have only ever discussed this incident once and told myself never to mention it again, until today. 

Joseph and I were best of friends. Joseph lived two doors down from my small house on Fern Street. All the streets in this town were named after plants for some reason. Joseph was an only child and loved to come over to my house, because there were three kids to play with all the time. He would find any excuse to pop over, and we did not really mind; he was always interesting to talk with. My mom and dad were not as strict as Joseph’s parents. They were strict with him because he was the only child they had, and so they were very cautious with everything and everyone around him. But they trusted my family, and so Joseph coming over every other day was not a problem. 

I am now fifty-four years old, and my own children have all grown up and are living in various parts of the world; my dear Fred has passed away, and I live on my own. My friends come over occasionally, and last year I happened to see Joseph from a distance. I was not sure it was him, but it triggered this memory, this story, this incident. He did not recognise me or chose not to see me, but either way, it was weird, the feelings of fear rushing through me as my thoughts came flowing back. I have since tried not to think about that day or the days leading up to it, but I think it's time, time to share my story. 

While we were not all Christians in the town, there was a church and most people would dutifully visit to morning mass every Sunday, and Joseph’s parents would drag Joseph along. Joseph usually turned his mind to other things while the sermon was being shared with those in the church. But that Sunday, something the Pastor said caught his attention. He was particularly surprised by the change in the Pastor’s tone towards the dark creatures that lure people to harm. Joseph visited us that Sunday afternoon, and he was sharing this new insight. “The Pastor sounded like he was in favour of violence, hate, and evil thoughts,” said Joseph. I am sure I was not the only one who heard it. “What did he say?” I asked. “Well, to me it sounded like, do unto others, you would not want done to you,” replied Joseph. “That could mean anything, Joseph, don’t read into it too much, perhaps a play on words,” I replied. 

Little did I know that this was just the beginning. 

This sleepy town was about to get a real shock. 

Joseph did not speak about the Pastor again, but he would regularly attend church enthusiastically, which was very strange for us to watch. Each Sunday, he would turn up with a new story, and I noticed a change in him as well. He was becoming increasingly confident in expressing his thoughts. 

His opinions were always a little out of the norm, strange and peculiar. We just listened to him and never took what he expressed too seriously because it was Joseph, the little boy who lived alone from down the road. 

A couple of weeks passed, and we noticed Joseph becoming more aggressive in nature. He would yell out at strangers on the street, and he would just stare into blank spots on the wall. This erratic behaviour was a little frightening at times, and we started to pull away from him as friends. His behaviour became a little unpredictable, and we were all still too young to understand or to help. 

Sometimes he would be missing for weeks. When we asked his parents about this disappearance, they would be perplexed and look at us strangely, because to them, he was never really missing. They would say that he has been at home, or he went to school every day, and perhaps he was just avoiding us for some reason. 

Weeks passed, and the sleepy town started to see a lot of notices about missing cats and dogs. People would be talking about their missing pet in the local grocery store. Ms Alba, who lived next door, came around to our house asking if we had seen her cat, Nelly. Nelly never leaves the front porch, but Ms Alba had not seen Nelly for a couple of days. Excitedly, we told Ms Alba that we would investigate this disappearance and would come back with a report. It was like a mystery that we had to solve. 

It was a Saturday morning, and we decided to gather our notebooks, pens, binoculars, and torchlight to begin our search for Nelly. There were three investigators, and my two sisters. I am the elder of the three siblings. Megan is the youngest, and Philipa is the middle child. Megan was about ten and Philip was twelve years of age when we decided to conduct our investigation. 

We began our search just after breakfast, notebooks clutched like treasure maps. Megan was full of ideas, Philipa was serious as always, and I, well, I was determined to prove myself the leader of our little detective agency.

We checked Ms Alba’s Garden first, peering under bushes and rattling the gate. No sign of Nelly. The town streets were unusually quiet that morning, the kind of quiet that presses against your ears. A crow followed us from rooftop to rooftop, its caw sharp against the emptiness.

By midday, our search had taken us to the edge of town, toward the river that wound like a dark ribbon through the fields. The grown-ups always warned us to stay away. The river was deep, unpredictable, and carried stories of accidents whispered in hushed tones. But we were children on a mission, and the thrill of solving a mystery pushed us on.

The air grew cooler under the canopy of trees. The river smelled of mud and something else, something faintly metallic. Megan, who had been skipping stones, stopped suddenly.

“Look,” she whispered, pointing to a patch of reeds near the bank. At first, I thought it was just driftwood. But as we drew closer, my stomach clenched. The shape was small, limp, and wrong.

It was a cat.

The fur was patchy, stiff, and almost mummified by the sun. The body looked shrivelled, as if every drop of life had been sucked out. I knelt beside it, hands trembling, and brushed the dirt from its side. There, beneath the dull coat, I saw a faint white marking, like a crooked stripe.

Nelly’s marking. Philipa gasped. “It can’t be…” Megan backed away, shaking her head. “No, no, no.” I wanted to deny it, too. The body was too dry, too strange, to be certain. But in my bones, I knew.

The river whispered beside us, carrying secrets downstream. I forced myself to write in my notebook: Subject found. Possibly Nelly. Deceased. Cause, unknown. But even as I wrote, my mind spun. The body was not just dead. It was emptied. Drained. I had never seen anything like it.

And then, in the silence, we heard a branch snap. We froze. Slowly, we turned toward the trees. A figure stood there, half in shadow.

Joseph.

His eyes fixed on us, unblinking. A faint smile tugged at his lips, the kind of smile that made the hair on my neck rise. He said nothing. Just stood, as if he had been waiting. Megan whimpered. Philipa grabbed her hand. I clutched my notebook so tightly the pages bent. And in that moment, I knew. The missing pets. The strange sermons. The darkness in Joseph’s gaze. Something inside him had changed.

Something had awoken.

We did not speak the whole way home. Our feet pounded the dirt road, our breaths ragged, hearts thumping like war drums. When we burst through the front door, Megan collapsed into a chair, pale as the moon. Philipa sat against the wall, rocking back and forth.

I forced myself to walk next door to Ms. Alba. She opened the door with hope in her eyes, but as soon as I stammered the words” we found her, down by the river…” the light drained from her face. She did not ask how Nelly looked. She did not need to. The silence between us told the story.

I said nothing about Joseph. Not his presence, not the smile. I could not. Something about it felt too dangerous, as though naming him would give him more power.

But that smile. That faint, satisfied curl of his lips. It has lived in my memory for forty years, as vivid as if it happened yesterday. It was the smile of someone who wanted to be seen, who was glad his secret had been discovered.

That night, Joseph went home to his mother and father. They sat in their lounge chairs, watching television, sipping tea. They never asked where he had been.

The following week, everything changed.

A girl from our school, Lucy Harper, fourteen, just like me, vanished. She had been walking home from choir practice and never arrived. The whole town turned frantic. Posters were printed, volunteers scoured the fields, the riverbanks, the theatre, every corner of our little world. But Lucy was never found. Not her books, not her shoes, not her body.

My sisters and I did not say it aloud at first, but the thought hung between us like smoke: Joseph.

We began to watch him more closely. He stopped coming to our house altogether, but we saw him often, standing too still in the schoolyard, staring at the walls again, muttering to himself. Sometimes his hands twitched, as if pulling invisible strings. And sometimes…he looked right at us, as if daring us to speak.

One afternoon, Megan whispered what we were all thinking. “We need to ask him. We need to know where he was when Lucy disappeared.”

Philipa shook her head violently. “No. He is not the same anymore. He is dangerous.”

But I could not let it go. My notebook filled with scribbles: Sunday, church. Tuesday, missing from class. Friday, seen near the river. I tracked him as best as I could, the way a detective clings to a lead.

Finally, one grey afternoon, the three of us cornered him behind the schoolyard fence. The air was sharp, the playground deserted.

“Joseph,” I said, my voice steadier than I felt. “Where were you the night Lucy disappeared?”

He tilted his head, eyes glittering. Then that smile again, slow, deliberate, curling at the edges like smoke rising from fire.

“Why?” he asked softly. “Do you want me to tell you the truth?”

Megan whimpered, clutching my sleeve. Philipa’s nails dug into her palm.

And in that terrible moment, I realised something. Joseph did not care if we knew. In fact, he wanted us to.

This is not a story with a ‘happy ever after’ nor is it a story with an ending. 

Little did I know that my parents were already planning to move out of this township, with all the rumours flying around about satanic groups, murders, kidnappers, soul retrievers; there was a whole lot of controversy and fear in the town. The dead, missing animals were finally found near the riverbed, looking more like a sacrifice. While these rumours were making their rounds in schools, neighbourhoods, my mum and dad were busy packing up our belongings. 

It was the last Thursday before were moved out. The plan was for us to leave that weekend. My sister and I had packed everything from our rooms and just left a few toys, books, and clothes out. Megan, the youngest, decided that she wanted to play outside in the backyard. Our backyard has no fence; in fact, back in those days, no one fenced their yards. People would just walk through your yard, and no one was worried or bothered. 

Megan went out to play, very much oblivious that someone was watching her. Parents are busy doing the last part of the packing. It was close to the end of the day, say five-thirty pm, and the sun was slowly setting. Philippa and I were in our bedrooms. I looked out my window and saw Megan playing with her dolls. She was close to the back door. So, I was not concerned. I continued to talk with Philippa. Time passed, and it was around six pm when I looked out the window again. Megan was no longer there. I assumed she was back inside the house, so I  did not bother to call out. At six-fifteen pm, my mum called for us to come and have our dinner. Philippa and I make our way to the dining table, and we wait for Megan.

 “Megan?” Mum called toward the back door. No answer. She frowned. “She was just outside, wasn’t she?”

“Yes,” I said, glancing toward the window. “I saw her. About half an hour ago.” Dad sighed, tired from the day, and walked into the yard. His voice boomed, “Meggie! Dinner time!” Silence. He walked farther, his shoes crunching the dry grass, then came back in, face unsettled. “She’s not out there.”

A chill slid down my spine. I pushed back from the table and ran to the back step. The yard stretched into the fading light, shadows spilling long across the grass. Megan’s dolls still lay scattered where she had been sitting, one toppled face down, its porcelain cheek cracked. “She must have gone inside already,” I said, though my voice betrayed me.

We searched the house. Every room. Every box half-packed, every closet, under the beds. No Megan. By now, dusk had settled in, and the whole house carried that strange, hollow sound of panic pressing in. Mum’s face had gone pale, Dad’s jaw tight. He marched out the front door to the neighbours, calling her name.

Philipa clutched my arm. “Sara…” Her whisper trembled. “What if, what if it was him?”

I did not want to hear it. Did not want to think it. But in my mind, that smile surfaced again, Joseph’s eyes glittering in the shadows by the river. We ran to the back door once more. The dolls lay abandoned, but something else caught my eye this time. A faint scuff mark in the dirt, leading away from the step. Almost like a shoe dragged, small and hurried, toward the trees at the edge of the property.

The sun was nearly gone now. The world dimmed to a bruised purple. And somewhere, out there in the silence, I knew Megan was not playing anymore.

The search for Megan lasted weeks. Neighbours combed the fields, police dogs prowled the riverbanks, posters with her picture were plastered across every lamppost and shopfront. My mother never slept; my father’s hair seemed to grey in a matter of days.

Even Joseph’s parents joined the search, their voices loud among the calling, their eyes wild with worry. But Joseph himself was nowhere to be seen.

Three months passed. Each day without an answer burrowed us out a little more. At last, the police sat at our kitchen table, hats in hand, and told my parents what we already knew in our hearts: there were no leads. Nobody. Nothing more they could do.

We were leaving the town anyway, but now the decision came without hesitation. Boxes were loaded, furniture tied down, and windows shuttered. My mother walked through the house one last time, touching the walls as if to apologise.

That final morning, the car groaned under the weight of our belongings. We climbed inside, silence heavy as stone. As we rolled down the street, past the bakery, past the corner store, past all the places that had once been safe, I turned my head to the river.

And there he was.

Joseph.

Walking slowly toward the water, shoulders loose, face unreadable. In his hand, dangling by the arm, was one of Megan’s dolls, the porcelain cheek cracked, just as it had been the night she vanished.

I wanted to scream, to throw open the car door, to run. But the words stuck in my throat. My parents drove on, never seeing him. Only me.

That image is carved into me as deeply as bone.

We never spoke of Megan again, not really. Not after we left that town behind. My parents tried to bury their grief in silence, and my sisters and I in time. But silence does not erase.

I am fifty-four years old now. My children are grown, my husband long gone. And still, when I close my eyes at night, I see Joseph’s smile by the river. I see the doll in his hand.

And I wonder, did we grow up with a killer living just two doors down? Or was it something worse than a boy at all?

What I know is this: Megan is still gone. And the killer within us…never really leaves.

This is the end of my story. I leave it with you to decide what happened to Megan.