PROLOGUE
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0. the disappearing act !
— DECEMBER 9TH SEEMED LIKE IT WAS GOING TO BE A WONDERFULLY MEMORABLE DAY. But 'wonderful' didn't seem like the right word.
After decorating the house for their favourite holiday, Jonathan and his older brother Vincent had met up with some friends at their favourite diner. They spent most of the day laughing and gossiping and chowing down on Pop's famous basket fries.
It was perfect and innocent, just as their day's normally were.
Not one of them were aware of the shadows settling into their small town, too preoccupied with watching their redheaded friend laugh so hard his chocolate milkshake made a second appearance coming out his nose. Vincent was struggling to hold his own laughter down, while Jonathan was helping Kevin Keller dry his shirt in hopes that the milkshake stain wouldn't set because unfortunately, Kevin was sitting across from the poor Archie Andrews.
As Archie grabbed a few napkins to dry his nose, the beautiful blonde Betty Cooper turned her attention to the diner's window, gasping at the sight.
"It's snowing!"
All eyes went to the skies, watching the unique flakes tumble gracefully through the air.
They simply enjoyed the moment in each other's presence.
It was like the calm before the storm.
Before long, everyone had to leave. Betty claimed that her and her sister, Polly, were going to bake Christmas cookies while Archie jokingly offered to eat some. So the two made their way out into the cold.
Kevin left sometime after, saying he had to plan out his dad's Christmas gift before it was too late, knowing how forgetful he could be.
This left the brothers, Jonathan and Vincent. They finished off the fourth basket of fries that night, said goodbye to Pop, and stepped out of the diner, unknowing of what lie ahead.
A walk home was simple, they didn't live that far and the snow had only just started to fall, barely a layer on the ground.
Easy. Routine.
That's what it was supposed to be.
But when they didn't show up at home around 8:00 pm. The King's family started to get worried as the snow blew in more harshly than it had earlier.
12:00 am and still a no show.
After 1:00 am, there was so much snow that Rupert and Minnie King assumed their boys had stayed over at a friend's, not wanting to risk getting caught up in a storm.
But the next day they still hadn't stepped into the house. Minnie started calling everyone she knew, starting with the Coopers. Then Fred Andrews, Archie's father. Then Kevin, knowing that Jonathan was at the Keller's a lot.
No one had seen or heard from the boys since they left their booth at Pop's Chock'lit shoppe the previous night.
Everyone was keeping an eye out for them. The King's recruited a search team of Archie, Betty, Kevin and their families included. Even the more secluded member of their clique, Jughead Jones was on the hunt for the missing boys.
But after walking throughout the whole town, calling out their names. They began to lose hope, and within a few days, those smiling and innocent faces had become poster children with the phrases 'have you seen me?' and 'call this number if you have any information'.
Everywhere you went there was another poster. In grocery stores, the hospital, the diner and even scattered around the school halls (which Betty Cooper stuck up every month).
The group of friends had somehow fallen apart and gotten closer at the same time. This supposed abduction really took its toll on everyone's mental state.
Jughead was quieter, Archie was angrier, Betty was anxious and Kevin was heartbroken.
They all missed their cheerful and fun loving best friends.
People wanted to know what happened. They wanted answers to their never ending list of questions.
Why were there no traces? No clues?
Did they leave on their own accord?
Did someone take them?
Who took them?
'Who took them?' Seemed to be the biggest one.
But, a couple months passed by and the possibility of them still being alive was slim.
So Vincent and Jonathan King's family and friends had a funeral. Despite Betty and Kevin's protests, still optimistic that they would come back.
The snow was washed away by heavy rainfall for the next few weeks. As if the skies were trying to rid any traces of the two young boys.
The funeral affected them all differently.
Rupert and Minnie threw themselves into their work, trying to forget they even had children.
Archie tried that same tactic, trying to focus on one certain thing to try and keep his mind off the darkness of their town.
He ended up getting more into music. He'd mentioned it as an interest a while ago and Vincent has given him an old guitar. So he'd decided it'd be a good time to start learning the chords.
Jughead never took off his crowned whoopee cap. The memory of getting it on his birthday a few years prior was always fresh in his mind.
He remembered catching Jonathan sneaking the wrapped box into his backpack the morning of.
Johnny never forgot a birthday and always respected that Jughead didn't like to make a big fuss about it.
That wasn't gonna stop him from gift giving.
Betty still searched.
Everytime she went out to refresh the missing posters, she'd glance at everything around her in hopes that one of those paper grins would really be there, and that the King brothers would step out of the shadows and hug her and say that they'd only gone out for while but they were back.
Betty Cooper sighed disheartedly when her daydream disappeared with a blink. Just like they had.
Kevin spent a lot of his free time alone, sitting between the two headstones in the private meadow with a journal open on his lap. He'd bring flowers and then plop down and lean against the engraved marble that said 'here lies the spirit of Jonathan King'.
Then in that journal he'd write everything he knew and every possible idea about where his closest friends had gone.
He wrote memories that he'd had of them, never wanting to forget. It wasn't the best, as longhand wasn't a friend of his, but he made it work.
He wrote about the time Jonathan made the group matching flower crowns, which wilted away within the day.
He wrote about the time he snuck out to meet the King children, and they stargazed until well past midnight.
Or the time his father was working late at the station, so Kevin had thanksgiving dinner with Jonathan and Vincent's family.
Oh, how he missed all those moments that he'd taken for granted.
Kevin's father, the sheriff, wouldn't like to admit it; but even he couldn't crack the case of his son's missing friends. It was an unexplainable misfortune.
Three weeks after the funeral, the sun finally tore through the dark clouds and the town's residents slowly stopped talking about the King's tragic disappearance.
They avoided locking eyes with the missing posters, which was difficult since Betty made sure they were everywhere. They tried to forget such a thing ever happened in their perfect town.
But some people just couldn't forget.
author's note
Word count will be 1000 p/chapter in ghost town, it may get updated more frequently that way
the current book cover is also temporary until I make something else ♥️