When I heard from my Mama Petra that the Pine Tree Theatre closed in my hometown, I was devastated. That was the theatre that displayed the town’s greatest magicians. Amazing variety shows and stuff, alongside movies and concerts.
The theatre even had a telethon that was broadcast throughout the whole county!
Mama Sofía told me that the theatre’s last show was why Pine Tree Theatre closed down, out of business, like a company that lost all its riches. Nobody told me about the last show that came on there. Every time I asked, even to my childhood bestie Lilac, no one spoke of it. Instead, they just answered with the exact same thing.
“Keep mum, and he won’t hurt you.”
I asked all my old teachers, who were retired at the time, but they said the same thing.
And I even went to my grandmama, and she said the same thing.
Mama Petra told me that the theatre’s last show was some sort of magic show. No one knew the name of the magician who performed there. But someone revealed him for the two-bit hustler he was. So he took the children who exposed him into the backstage and no one knows what happened after that. Those children have been missing since… or so I was told.
I needed time to think, so I went back to my hometown of Spruce Hills to rest and think on it. Why had my favorite theatre of my childhood suddenly gone out of business? What happened to the children? What could possibly cause the whole town to believe keeping quiet about the whole thing would keep them alive?
Yesterday, I decided I finally had enough of having only questions and decided to go to the theatre myself, armed with a notebook, a 5B pencil, and some pepper spray. I knew I needed to take some notes, note some clues, and solve this mystery like the wannabe private eye I am, what with taking police academy classes in my university.
I took note of the missing posters consistent with the Pine Tree Theatre show. The newer Spruce Hills posters of missing children appeared to have similar locations of where they were last seen.
As an aspiring detective, I knew I had to look for patterns. I wrote in my notebook:
Pattern 1: Missing since last show - all children, usually between 4 and 7.
Pattern 2: Locations - Usually near the theatre, but sometimes on the next block over.
Pattern 3: Looks of missing children - Similar to the ones that went missing on the day of the last show.
And then I wrote the date of the last show: 2022-07-09.
I looked for evidence around the theatre. The descriptions of each location asked for my forensic skills from back in my freshman year of college to go to work. But after some extensive searching late at night, I found zero evidence whatsoever.
This criminal has got to be a mastermind, I thought. Leaving no trace, and yet the possibility of kidnapping had come to mind.
Patterns and consistencies in how the children went missing leads to the possibility that the children may have been kidnapped.
And so, I took this to one of the police officers to report, but he instead tried to snatch away my notes.
“What the hell you doing, man?”
“Keep mum, and he won’t hurt you. I need to burn these.”
I pepper sprayed the officer and just ran off with my notes. I know what I did there was illegal, but because he said the same thing those people did, I knew right away I couldn’t trust him. I know now I cannot trust the police of Spruce Hills because that guy who tried to take my notes and actually burn them was the chief.
That afternoon, I wrote down the consistency in what was said by the people who saw the last show at Pine Tree Theatre.
They all said, “Keep mum, and he won’t hurt you.” Why keep quiet about a string of potential kidnappings? And why do the police want to cover this up?
The police wanted to burn my notes, true. I would know a cover-up when I see the string of behaviors connected to cover-ups.
The person behind this left no evidence, but what I’m certain of is that maybe the police are just stealing evidence, or destroying it.
And when I wrote down that last bit, I realized the connection between my thought of them destroying evidence and the police chief trying to burn my notes.
This evening, I decided to go inside the theatre myself. I knew I’d be digging up old memories, but I had to get to the bottom of it.
After checking to make sure no one was watching, I went on ahead in a sneaky fashion, just in case someone was watching that I hadn’t noticed yet.
I went inside the front door. For a closed-down building like this, the windows weren’t all that boarded up. It was pretty easy to get in.
I checked the lobby. The box office looked whitewashed. Surely whoever was behind this was keeping something secret?
The rest of the place looked empty, and no door was left locked…
As I went inside, I had such a creepy feeling that I couldn’t comprehend. I went in deeper, but my gut was screaming at me.
The theatre appeared empty. I jumped when one of the lights suddenly went on.
A spotlight, coming at me.
What could I possibly be a star for? Spotlights just don’t randomly come on, and right onto you! Especially in a closed-down building!
The lights came on in front of the curtain. The curtain was that red from those years back.
And then I heard a voice. It sounded ominous, spoke like the Wiz in that play, but was also amplified by a microphone…?
“Step forward, Mars Ferrel.”
How did this guy know my name?
Did I have time to write another note like that? I needed to get to the stage to find out who was behind this and stop this string of crimes.
“That’s close enough! Now, sit back and enjoy the show.”
I tried to keep running forward, but it didn’t look like I was progressing. When I finally looked below me, I noticed that the carpet below me was moving like a treadmill.
Hell if I know how that happens. And then, I thought I heard a child’s voice behind the curtain.
“Let’s hope Mars will enjoy their final night.”
I got off the carpet and instead tried to jump the seats and stop this. But every time, I would end up back in the same spot.
As the curtains opened, I felt a twinge in my heart. As the spotlights suddenly flickered on, they revealed what appeared to be a haggard man in a top hat and a trenchcoat. I knew something was wrong from seeing what his face looked like. He. Looked. Like. A. Zombie.
The man then moved to the left and then waved his hand. What appeared to be zombified children came out from the wings.
Missing children are dead. The culprit is a smart zombie or something.
The children then, almost robotically, started drawing a circle in the center. Then they drew what appeared to be a star.
Then, on the sides, they drew sigils. One a few steps stage left of the pentagram the children were drawing, and one a few steps stage right.
Sigils and a pentagram. Possibility of the occult being behind the cover-up.
As I’m taking police academy classes for being a private detective, I was often told that only the logical things mattered. Yet all this was so illogical I had to really think.
And all this was giving me the creeps. My three years of experience with the police academy had no use in this.
And then the magician brought out some cards. He appeared to be tossing them into the air.
“Now tell me, Mars, what card did you see?”
I did not want to oblige in this little magic trick this man was doing, but I got a hell of a scary vibe that if I didn’t I’d die.
“Seven of spades.”
Then the magician pulled out another deck of cards, and did a trick with them to put them all inside his other hand. Then he did it again, but this time to place them inside the pentagram.
The cards had flown and what formed in the center of the pentagram looked like a pillory.
“You may come now, Mars.”
And then one of the children said this,
“They shall be our next sacrifice.”
I was ready to run out of the theatre in my terror, but each time I tried, the doors were locked, and the carpets just made me slip and fall.
And, I was practically crying as the magician dragged me onto the stage.
I tried to reach for my pepper spray. One of the children grabbed it, but I punched her just to get it back, and pepper sprayed the magician.
“Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?” I shouted, half scared and half angry.
“Don’t worry, it won’t hurt.”
“Yeah, Mars, do this with us.”
I instead grabbed the magician by the collar and threw him into the audience area.
I wrote in such terrified haste:
Children are all dead and under control. Magician is the culprit. Can’t back down now.
He got up and appeared to be chanting some sort of spell. I couldn’t understand him, but suddenly my body started to go numb.
I looked under me, and noticed I was on one of the sigils.
I managed to escape, still scared. The magician tried to chant again, but I pepper sprayed him again.
This was big. This was such a big crime and cover-up that I was surprised.
I took a couple of photos of him just as he tried to charge into me, and quickly put my phone away and just made a break for it.
I would have called for backup if it weren’t for the incident with the chief and my notes. Instead, I decided to take things on my own, despite still feeling fearful.
I fled to the doors, and unlocked them. I went inside the box office by breaking the whitewashed glass and noticed that inside, there were four living children.
All tied to the chairs and gagged.
I hurriedly untied the ropes and got the gags off of them, but then they said,
“Keep mum, and he won’t hurt you.”
I instead ran off in fear, knowing the kidnapped children were in on it, too. I went and did all sorts of stuff, just to let in the light.
But it was nighttime.
Perfect, I thought. The sun hurts them, so maybe they decided to do it at night.
I went through all sorts of backdoors. In one room, I found what looked like a ghost light. The light that keeps theatres protected from crime at night, and what makes the theatres look haunted.
I managed to get it to work. So I went through backdoors and then when I brought it in, the zombified children and the magician immediately started attacking, as if it were an enemy.
I made it brighter, but then they tried to attack it even more. But upon touching the lightbulb, one of them disintegrated.
So I ended up using the ghost light as a weapon and disintegrated all the zombified children. Then I pointed it to the magician.
“Mars, you don’t know what you’re doing. Stop this, and we’ll proceed with what we have to do.”
“No,” I yelled, “You’re going to tell me what you did with all those children, and you’re going to do it right now or so help me I will kill you! Understand?!”
He then tried to chant that foreign language again. I was suddenly bombarded with the thought about what they all were saying.
My thoughts just said, “Keep mum, and he won’t hurt you.” Over and over and over. The hell?!
And my body was going numb again.
My pepper spray was handy again (pun intended), right in my left hand. I pepper sprayed him, and I suddenly wasn’t going numb or getting that awful thought. I touched the ghost light onto him and he disintegrated. I wrote:
He makes them go numb, and then makes them think the saying consistent with who went to the show.
But, unlike the children, he reanimated. I almost shouted in fear when he did, as I was in the middle of writing that note.
“Mars, Mars, Mars. They are such a naughty teen, they can’t realize what their true purpose is…”
I threw him into what looked like a container with spikes. After it did its thing, I sealed it shut.
After that, I managed to get the story out there. It never made it past Spruce Hills’ local news, however. Other news outlets found it ridiculous.
I’ll be heading back to the college dorms in about three weeks. I’ve got police training to finish, after all.
At least no one is saying that awful thing anymore, that awful, awful, keep mum thing.