1 Prologue

Wrightsfield was a typical small town. Just like most places in Indiana, its cornfields were plentiful and livestock could be found just about anywhere. It was a quiet, peaceful place. Home of routine and house of normalcy. Except for the occasional traffic jam when residents were pulled over for possession of meth, of course. Crimes were docile and practically nonexistent in a place where everyone knew everybody.

The teens at Wrightsfield High all had their cliques. The place where they fit in, whether they chose to be there or not. The adults all had their jobs, co workers becoming companions. All was right in the world. Until the day that it wasn't. Until they showed up.

They weren't siblings. Or related in any way. So the fact that four new students suddenly appeared simultaneously with no explanation of where they were from or why they moved, it was only natural that people would be curious. This may also have been due to their secretive behavior and overall mysterious air. But their arrival was only the kick off to a series of curious events. It was the beginning of the end.

The second unexpected occurrence was the seemingly random abduction of little miss Mary Lou. Mary was a petulant four year old that was struck with an unfortunate case of being perpetually trapped in the terrible twos. Her mother, Janey Lou, dropped Mary off at the one and only daycare in town called Sweet Angel's Haven. Upon returning later in the evening to round up her daughter, she was shocked to discover that little Mary was gone. The owner of the establishment, Miss Ida, swore up and down that she'd witnessed the child packing her belongings in preparation for going home at her cubby just seconds earlier. The police searched every nook and cranny of the place, expanding their search party to practically the whole town. All to confirm that Mary was gone.

Mary Lou might have been the first child to go missing, but she was not, by any means, the last. In only a week, four more children, no younger than four and no older than seven, disappeared from various locations. The front yard while bouncing a ball. Their rooms while getting ready for bed. Even the bathtub. The police never found any signs of foul play at any of the locations in which these children vanished. They were just gone. And nowhere was safe.

Only two days later, one of the last of October, the third oddity began. Nearly everyone in Wrightsfield owned a dog or two, maybe even a cat. Some kids took it upon themselves to beg for chickens. But on this perfectly sunny and breezy October day, the dogs began barking at nothing, the cats started to hiss at walls, and chickens took up clucking fixedly at fences. Of course, there were numerous other pets to be seen in town, though the rest were wholly unaffected by the strange phenomenon. The first morning after such behavior, these pets were all found dead. Bodies stiff, frozen like gruesome statuettes, eyes glazed over with death. No injuries could be found on the poor creatures. They were simply dead with no scientific explanation as to how or why they ended up that way.

The final clue that something in Wrightsfield was going terribly wrong were the murders. People of all ages would be discovered deceased in what should have been the safety of their own homes. All of the victim's bodies were found without a drop of blood in or around them, their skin a sickly gray. In nearly two weeks time, the body count had reached a dozen.

Stranger still was what would soon befall four unsuspecting teenagers.