CHAPTER I - July 1979

Richie was gone.

That's all Thomas knew - his friend just disappeared. 

They had gone to visit a classmate, a girl with the unusual name of Amethyst, though they called her Amy. She was like them, enjoyed the same nerdy things, and was lovely at the same time. She also seemed to enjoy taunting the "normal" people at school. 

She was gone, too. So was her mother. 

Their car was still there, sitting in front of their apartment off of Hogan Road. The door was left opened, as Thomas discovered when he backtracked trying to locate where they went off to. 

When Richie and Amy disappeared, the three of them were hiking in the woods adjacent to the apartments, talking about their coming junior year. Amy was busy asking Richie about some of the birds they were seeing when her mother called for her. She said she'd be back in a minute, and ran to see what her mother wanted. 

Her mother sounded stressed. 

Amy didn't return, so Richie went to see what was going on. 

He didn't return either. 

And now Thomas was wandering and wondering. There was nobody in the apartment. He walked into what he knew was Amy's room. Clothes were strewn all over, and her notebooks, all of them, were gone. 

He went to the other room, the mother's, and it looked the same - clothes everywhere. 

Thomas ran back out, and noticed that Richie's bike was gone. 

He grabbed his bike and began walking towards the road. As he reached the edge of the parking lot, he saw tracks in the dirt, bike tires and shoe prints, three set. They appeared to be crossing Hogan Road, and sure enough, they resumed on the other side. 

Some distance into the forest, they abruptly stopped at the base of a large pine tree. They didn't go around. They stopped. 

But the bike was still there... at least part of it. It was jutting out of the tree, as if it had melted into it. 

And Richie was gone.