In the fall of 1993, a dark shadow fell over Harting Farms. Newspapers called him the Piper, like the minstrel of Brothers Grimm lore who lured all the children away. There were other darker names, too—names kids whispered throughout the halls of Stanton School and carved in the wooden chairs of the library like dirty, fearful secrets. The cafeteria rumbled with talk of escaped mental patients from Sheppard Pratt and lunatic mariners, lustful for child blood, who ported in Baltimore and found their way to our sleepy bayside hamlet.
In homeroom, Michael Sugarland drew pictures of werewolves with dripping fangs and claws like bayonets until Mr. Johnson, shaking his head and looking terminally exhausted, told him it was disrespectful of the missing. No one referred to the children as dead because none of them were found—not at first, anyway. They were the Missing, the Disappeared. The first few were even thought to be runaways.
But all that changed soon enough, and my friends and I were there to see it happen.