No One Really Knows When It Started.

                No one really knows when it started.  Probably with the rats and mice.  We tend to only think of rodents when we see or hear them.  No one notice when they were gone.  Oh sure, the folks in the pest control businesses probably noted the diminishing calls about rat infestations, but they still had the bugs to keep them busy.  The first inkling any of us had was in the mayor's press conference when he boasted about the city making the top ten cleanest cities in the country.  Even then, he barely mentioned the downtown area as being "rat free."

                The first hint that something was wrong was when the pets started disappearing.  People notice when dogs or cats go missing.  It started slowly – a few flyers stapled up here and there.  Missing – Have you seen this cat?  Grey.  Answers to the name "Pepper."  Or – Reward!  $100!  Lost Dog.  Have you seen Rex?  Please call!  Even then, it wasn't until almost every telephone pole and public message board in the city were covered with the pleas of sad pet owners that it really became news.  A couple of newspaper stories and one report on the evening news.  People who didn't own pets just didn't see it as a problem.  We didn't think it affected us.  Probably just some heartless crooks stealing pets to sell for medical experiments.  Sad, but it didn't really mean anything to us.

                We did notice when there seemed to be fewer panhandlers and homeless people, but that didn't seem to be a bad thing really.  It was an improvement.  No dirty, smelly people bumming change.  No sob stories about needing five bucks to get something to "eat."  We knew those people just wanted to buy booze and drugs.  The mayor tried to take credit in one of his press conferences, boasting that his initiatives were responsible for ridding the city of "blight."  Blah, blah, blah.  But in the city's homeless shelters and soup kitchens, where the dwindling numbers of hungry and needy were really being noticed, there were whispers.  Horrible white phantoms lived in the darkness.  Packs of monsters came out of the shadows.  And scratching noises.  Always those scratching noises.  But these were just brushed off as delusions of crazy street people or hallucinations of drunks and drug addicts.

                But when the children disappeared, we knew something horrible was happening.  The first child went missing on a Friday night.  It was big news because nothing like that ever happens here.  The story was plastered on the front page of every paper.  It was the lead story on every newscast.  The police set up a special investigative unit.  Search parties were organized.  But they found nothing.  No witnesses.  No clues.  Nothing.  Investigators were baffled.  And then, a second child disappeared.  And then a third, and a fourth, and a fifth, and it got worse.  In two weeks' time, twelve children disappeared.  Vanished.  No one saw any of them talking to strangers, or getting into an unfamiliar car.  And no suspicious characters were seen in the neighborhoods.  A couple of neighbors reported strange scratching noises around one of the disappearances, but authorities didn't think it was related to the incident.  Police did discover that all the children had gone missing in the evening, when it was dark.  They were all alone, either running an errand for their parents or returning from a friend's house.  The police had no suspects or even any theories, but the city instituted a curfew for everyone.  No one was to go out after dark.

                The curfew was intended to keep us safe but it only made things worse.  Whatever had taken the rats and the pets and the homeless and the children off the streets, got bolder and started taking people out of their homes.  It started with people who lived alone, mostly the elderly.  Someone's grandma was the first, but five others disappeared over the course of a week.  And then there were the calls to 911.  Reports of prowlers and strange scratching sounds.  One lady said she saw the ghosts of children in her yard and they scratched at the side of her house and tapped on her windows.  One old man swore there was a pack of white chimps in his back yard one night.  The police came and found nothing.  No chimps.  The old man said they ran off when he turned on his outside flood lights.  Of course, aside from the disappearances, these sightings could have been written off as poor eyesight or lonely people looking for attention, but more people vanished.  And the sightings became more frequent.  One family claimed they saw a gang of pale naked children on their property.  Another guy said he was awakened to find aliens with huge eyes staring in his window.  Everyone gave a slightly different description – ghosts, naked children, aliens, apes, but they all mentioned the scratching sounds.