"The List"

Sheriff Sheldon McDonald was looking over a handwritten list 100 years in the making. It was attached to a clipboard in the bottom drawer of a black metal filing cabinet in the basement of his office, a place that was used primarily for broken chairs, outdated police equipment, and records of old cases. The majority of them were neatly filed, in folders filled with color coded documents, and photographs. But this was merely a list. It had been rewritten because the paper it had been started on around 1940 had begun to tatter and fray, as if someone had been wringing it nervously for a long time. Someone had placed the first list in a dingy plastic bag which was taped to the back of the clipboard. Attempts to discover who exactly had started and maintained this list were fruitless. They hadn't been signed, and no one knew anything about them in his office. As far as he could tell, there were three distinct types of handwriting on it, meaning that he was the fourth keeper of the list. The only item of note other than the names, dates and places was a series of numbers and letters scrawled at the bottom of the first list. "135.7 - MCM"

It had 9 names on it, each with a date, and a location. The first was from 1911. Abigail Fortenberry. The location listed was "Pilgrim's Swamp". This name meant nothing to the Sheriff when he first read it back in 91'. He however had done some studying of an old Maiden Valley map from 1952 and discovered that there had once been a marsh on the site of what was now the Quail Run Housing Development at the base of the south foothills below Mount Hummingbird. The first new name on the rewritten list was from 1981. Taralee Spencer, age 9.

The last time he had looked at this list was 2004, but then he had been looking at it every day as it sat on his desk since 2002, the year that Chaney Kelland had been added to it. Kelland was a 15 year old Maiden Valley Sophomore that had last been seen in the fall of 2001 near the water plant one mile west of Oak Grove Forest, which bordered Quail Run. He had gone into the woods alone to write a song for a classmate on his guitar. Kelland had lived with his mother in one of the smaller duplex homes in Quail Run. He was a pleasant yet shy boy, with an obsession for music, well liked by those few students who had taken the time to get to know him. After the police had scoured the area they found no evidence, and his guitar was never recovered. There had been no signs of foul play, and everyone assumed he had either fallen into one of the old abandoned mine shafts that were common in the area, or had simply run away. His mother Janice Kelland did not agree with either one of these assessments.

Sheldon had promised himself that he would never look at this list again. That it was only a list of coincidences, that a paranoid person or someone with far too much free time had started. After all, the children's disappearances had taken place every 10 years since 1911. Who exactly could have been kidnapping children for 100 years? Still it was a striking pattern, that at least three of his predecessors had picked up on, and that now even he continued to document. He simply hoped that he wouldn't have to add another name in the coming months.