7) Follower

David's investigation continues.

7) Follower

He stares at the wall before him, a bunch of string leads from one photo to another. Cliché but he doesn’t care. It clears it all up. All of this confusing mess. It all revolves around the centre. Artemis Kaliaski. His child. His missing child. From them strings of yarn come spiralling off. To Dante Smith, a troubled teen with no connection to the outside world. To a mall in New York. To a hospital. To Barcelona. To Paris. To a small town just outside London. To Chloe Maxwell. To James and Max Ritargo. To Ellie Pascal. To himself, David Kaliaski. The world has become a topsy turvey place. Chloe dies, sending Artemis spiralling down a rabbit hole. They take a holiday to New York. Artemis is blown up in what is believed to be a terrorist attack, but no terror organisations have taken responsibility two years later. Artemis is dead for thirty-eight minutes before entering a coma. Scattered terrorist attacks litter the globe. The quiet town of Parlor descends into chaos. Every child vanishes; Max and James vanish. Ellie drops of the face of the Earth. A federal investigation into the disappearance of the children of Parlor yields no evidence and the case is shut with nothing else ever being said. Artemis wakes, and manages to disappear. Terrorists obliterate Paris, and no group claims responsibility.

He doesn’t understand. Something about all this doesn’t sit right in his mouth. He stares at the wall in utter bewilderment. Maybe he’s looking for a connection where there isn’t one. Maybe these are just purely unconnected events. His wife, Marianne always had a saying, ‘Coincidences are God’s way of winking at you.’ Are these coincidences or are these connected events? He isn’t sure. He has no way of telling. Artemis and Dante haven’t been seen in several weeks. There’s no new evidence suggesting foul play in the mystery surrounding Parlor. No evidence to suggest that anything out the ordinary is happening. But he knows. He knows he knows. But what is it that he knows? The sound of the phone ringing shatters his thoughts. He looks at the phone. He recognise the code. St Louis, Missouri. He picks up.

“David?”
“Yes.”
“We have them. Both of them.”
“I’m coming.”

The drive from New York to Missouri takes fourteen hours. Deep down he knows that this isn’t it. This is just the beginning of something bigger. He knows it. But he doesn’t accept it. He wants it to be the end; he wants his child back. But he knows that it’s not going to be that easy. That this isn’t what it seems.

He’s right of course. By the time he arrives in Missouri it has already happened. By the time, he gets to the police station in St Louis. Let’s just say there is no police station. Instead, there’s a pile of smouldering rubble, several hundred dead, a handful missing. And no sign of Artemis or Dante.

Paris is gone, 2.2 million dead and hundreds of thousands more missing. The world is changing. All around him, he sees it. People swing banners claiming the end is neigh. Wars are ending. Governments pulled out of Syria. The Middle East was left to its own accord. North Korea overthrew the Kim dynasty. Despite all the good changes, all the News talked about was the bad. The Vanishing of Parlor, as they had so lovingly called it, had thrown the quiet town into the medias glare. Paris, Parlor, and now Missouri. How many people had died? Twenty million? More? When will it stop he wonders, will it stop, or is this the end?

He sits in his car watching the emergency services excavate the police station. They work tirelessly to find survivors. David already knows that they won’t find anyone. Who ever wants Artemis dead will stop at nothing to do so.
“Let’s just hope it isn’t now.” He sighs. He knows it’s not; that they’re not dead, that they escaped. All that had to be done was to wait for the next sign. Whatever it might be.