Chapter 1: Time Of The Season

October 29th, 1979. In the small town of Hollow Hills, Oregon; the dark clouds began to slowly shift over the autumn sun.

It was almost Halloween. Everyone in the town always pitched in to celebrate.

Kids carved jack-o-lanterns and put them at the end of every street,

streamers with pumpkins and bats hung from the windows of shops and other buildings. Most stores are filled with plastic masks and costumes of popular pop culture.

Life never seemed to get boring this time of year.

"Wait up!" Katrina struggled to keep up with her friend as they walked down main street. Her brown leather boots clunked on the pavement and two paper shopping bags hung around her arm as she jogged past the strip of shops.

"Della, you've got to quit speed walking, Girl, I can't keep up sometimes."

Her friend laughed, her dark skin still seemed to give off a glow despite there barely being any sun.

"I'm not speed walking. Maybe you shouldn't wear high heeled boots to go shopping."

"They are not high heels, they're called platforms."

Katrina struggled to catch her breath as she adjusted her bellbottoms.

She sniffed the crisp autumn air; so many different smells accumulated around the atmosphere. She caught a hint of apples and cinnamon attempting to mask over the smells of exhaust fumes from cars passing by.

"Man, I can't wait for Halloween," Della said as Katrina finally caught up beside her.

"Eh, it's alright." Katrina shrugged, "I stopped trick-or-treating when I was like eight."

"Well, there's other things to do on Halloween besides trick-or-treating.

Just because you're seventeen now doesn't mean you can't have fun."

"Yeah, I don't know, Halloween's never really been a special holiday for me."

The girls stopped at the end of the sidewalk and crossed the street. Heading into Greenwood park, they sat down at a bench in front of the red and white gazebo, decorated with small hay bales and little pumpkins.

"I guess I do love carving pumpkins and those hay rides they have at festivals."

"Yeah see, there you go." Della giggled as she adjusted the red ribbon wrapped into her dark, coiled hair. "You should do pumpkin carving with your brother when he comes home."

Katrina let out a small gasp, "That's right, he's coming home tomorrow morning!"

She smiled as she let out a breathy laugh, fidgeting with the ends of her golden hair. "Man, I haven't seen him since he first left for college. All the way from California too."

"Wow, so it's been four years?"

"Yeah, we've been talking through letters, apparently he's married now.

We couldn't go to the wedding because that was the day our car got stolen."

She let out another breathy laugh.

"You must be excited."

"Definitely."

They gazed around the park, taking in all the different views;

children playing frisbee in an empty field, people walking their dogs down the dirt paths, and a young man with long hair sat beneath a tree playing guitar.

Katrina shivered, she checked the time on her wrist watch which read 7:02.

"We should probably get going, mom said she wanted me home before dark."

"Alright, I need to find a trash can first."

They stood and walked towards a public trash sitting underneath a lamppost.

Katrina looked over the wooden pole covered with missing person posters.

"I've never seen so many missing posters before." She looked over each of them, all with recent dates.

"Oh yeah, you haven't heard? People all over town have been disappearing, some parents won't even let their kids go trick-or-treating because of it."

"That's weird. First I've heard of this."

"Well, you make sure to be careful on your way home."

"You do the same."

They said their goodbyes and parted ways, Katrina walked down the street humming to the tune of Take It Easy by the Eagles.

The setting sun peeked from behind the gray clouds, leaving an orange glow

on everything around. A gentle breeze whispered through the red, yellow and orange autumn trees. Katrina embraced the weather as she made her way

Home…