“There had been rumors from the North for months. None of us believed it, until one night we started killing our children too.”

Load of garbage. Ridiculous rumors. Lies. Terrorists. Anyone but our own people. Anyone but us.
I think we were in denial for a long time. We’re not anymore.

“It’s just the news being dramatic again. You know how reporters are. They need someone to die everyday for them to keep their jobs.” Grandma said, rocking back and forth in her rocking chair on our front porch late one June. The sun was setting slowly, sinking lower and lower into the blood red sky, bathing the yard in an odd light.
“But Grandma,” Amy, at eleven, protested. “Jeremy Springers went to live up there with his dad back in March, and we haven’t heard from him in weeks! The last time we did, he said weird stuff was...”
“Springers? Is that the family who wrote that blog?” Grandma interrupted her.
“It wasn’t the family who wrote it. Just the Dad. And then the daughter, Jeremy’s sister, after Jeremy was...” Amy started to say, but Grandma cut her off again.
“Pft. The internet. You can’t believe anything you read there.”
“But Grandma!”
“No buts! I’m sorry, but I refuse to believe a mother would eat her own child. Maybe a father,” She joked. “But not a mother. Never a mother. You’ll understand, when you have children.”
“But Jeremy’s father did eat him.” Amy was whining now, an eleven year old whine, that at eleven doesn’t even sound like a whine, more of a defiant tone.
“Don’t talk like that Amy Jennings!” Grandma cried. “Not another word!”
Amy bit her tongue, but shot me a look we often shared when Grandma didn’t understand us, like when I started wanting to wear makeup and Amy had a crush on a boy in my class, three years her senior.
I didn’t say anything, as usual, just turned from Amy and looked back at the setting sun from my spot on the porch railing. The sun was almost gone now, hiding behind the horizon. The sky grew dark as we sat in silence, but no stars appeared.
“Darn,” Grandma sighed. “Guess it’s too cloudy for stargazing tonight girls. Come on...” She heaved herself out of her rocking chair.

I glanced at the sky. “But where are the clouds?”

“Don’t be silly Cindy, of course there are clouds.” Grandma laughed. Amy and I exchanged another look.

‘A cloudless night, but the stars had gone out.’ The first line of the blog Jeremy’s sister had written. One of the reasons Grandma didn’t believe.“We all see the same stars,” She had argued. “Didn’t you teach me that Cindy? I never saw no stars go out.”
And that’s when Amy had muttered the heart-stopping retaliation. “You only say that because you’re a mom. You’ll do it too.”

Which, of course, was my greatest fear. What if it wasn’t a hoax? What if Grandma did go mad and eat us? Did it happen to grandparents too?
However, if she were going to eat us, tonight would be the night she would do it, I was sure of it. Her absolute denial to see what was written in the stars was practically a sign. And the weather. No clouds, but not a star in sight?

“Lets go, girls. Come on,” Grandma said again, a bit more sternly. She opened the screen door, which squeaked and went inside. Amy hopped out of the porch swing, caught the door before it could shut and turned to me.

“You coming?”

I glanced back at the sky. A dark blue that was almost black stretched out over our universe, not a star in sight, and the moon a tiny sliver of a thing way up high, out of reach.

“Yeah,” I said finally, swinging my legs off the porch railing. Amy’s blue eyes watched me. I tried to avoid her gaze as I passed her, into the hallway of the house, but-

“Cindy."
I stopped.

“Cindy, do you think it’s real? All that stuff about Jeremy?”
I hesitated, turning slowly to face her. Amy’s eyes, so big and blue, no longer looked innocent or annoyed. They bore holes into mine, inquisitive, determined.
“I’m not sure...” I hedged, looking back out at the front lawn.
“Cindy.” Her tone was quite serious now, more serious than I had ever heard it sound before. Amy wasn’t one to take life seriously. Everything was a joke, nothing was “real”. She was a daredevil, always taking risks.

“Maybe,” I relented. I didn’t want to scare her, but I couldn’t lie to Amy. She’d nicknamed me ‘truth’ at the age of two, because even then those blue eyes pleaded for nothing but, and that’s all I could tell her.

“I think it is,” she said confidently. “I know it is. Jeremy’s sister wouldn’t make that stuff up.” She ushered me inside ahead of her, following me in and closing the door behind us.














***



I couldn’t believe it. “You want to what?”

“Call Jeremy’s sister,” Amy repeated, looking as serious as she had outside on the porch. “I want Grandma to know what’s happening so we can save everyone else before it hits the South.”

I stared at her. She stared back, perfectly calm, legs crossed, sitting on my bed, wringing out her wet hair.

“But according to the blog, she’s running for her life. You really think she’s got a phone on her?”

Amy gave me a pitying look from beneath her hair. “Of course she does. It’s how she keeps up with her blogs. That’s how we know it’s coming.”

The problem was, I didn’t think that’s how we knew ‘it’ was coming. I wasn’t even sure I believed it was an epidemic that could reach us. I thought it was something that happened for a reason...not some sort of plague. No, something was amiss, and it wasn’t just the fact that parents were eating children.

“Look, let me do some research. Then, if I think it’s necessary to call her, I promise we will. Ok?”

Amy looked as though she was struggling between being annoyed by my paranoia, and being glad I was thinking about it. The thing was, I’d been thinking about it a lot for the past few days, and I was sure whatever was going on was much more sinister and bigger than Amy realized.

I had promised her though, so after Amy left for bed, I sneaked downstairs to the kitchen, and hopped on the computer.


4/29/15
Hello, Kaitlin Springers here, with your one and only true inside look on what’s going on up here in The North.
You may have noticed some weird things on the news lately; missing children, lots of structure fires, teenagers on the run because they supposedly killed their parents. Well I’m here to tell you it’s all real. The missing children, the murderous teenagers, all of it. And it’s all because of something else that’s going on, the thing no one is talking about.
Parents are eating their children. Chopping them up and putting them in their soups, smothering them with their pillows at night. My own stepmother left us, knowing she was the next to be affected. She’d been saying all day how she couldn’t stop eating, and nothing seemed to fill her up. She had a headache. Everything we did peeved her off.
We lived in a farmhouse in Vermont, kind of out in the middle of nowhere, with lots of farmland and, yes, stereotypically, cows and chickens. The nearest neighbor was a family half a mile up the road; sometimes we got together for bonfires and to shop for school clothes in the fall. Anyway, my brother, Jeremy, who lives with us during the summer, had gone over there to sleepover with their son, Toby, and he came back with the wildest stories. Kept saying, “Did you hear about what happened in Burlington?”
It took him three tries to get us to ask him what the heck he was talking about, and when he did, he told us the city had gone wild over night. Every child had disappeared. Several parents were dead. According to Toby, and his god of a brother Daniel, the children had been eaten by their parents, and the ones who fought back and won had to kill them, and were on the run.
My father, as well as Toby’s and Daniel’s parents, said it was a load of garbage. My stepmother, on the other hand, a very superstitious woman, was convinced. Horrified, fearful it was happening to her and our father, my stepmother packed her bags, begged our father to leave with her, and when he refused, left without him.
I left that night after dinner too. Just into the woods behind our house. Not that I believed Toby and Daniel; it’s just that my stepmother had seemed so sure.
I wish I’d brought Jeremy with me. The next morning, I came back to the house. Dad was asleep. Jeremy was gone.
I found his lucky bracelet covered in blood on the cutting board in the kitchen.
So you people ask me how I could possibly believe in something so terrible? I know it happened. I lost my brother. You weren’t there when I found that bracelet. You weren’t there when I heard Toby and Daniel were missing as well. I know this is the truth. And we need to stop it from happening to you.

It was the last thing she’d written, a week and a half ago. I checked back to the first blog entry, one of her father’s, reread it for the fifth time since Amy had told me about it.

MISSING: Ten Year Old Twins, Skylar and Ava Berry. Last Seen At Five o'Clock Sunday Evening, Wearing Matching Red T-Shirts, Jeans and Tennis Sneakers, Outside Of Their Home In Woodstock Vermont. If You Have Any Information, Please Contact 879- 5255, or The Police Station.
A picture followed the announcement of two girls, one without her front tooth, both brown haired, fair skinned with blue eyes and freckles. Jeremy’s dad was one of the first people to call attention to the missing children, the blog’s original use. Rumor had it he woke up the morning after the stars went out, realized what he’d done and killed himself.
10 blogs later, Jeremy’s sister Kaitlin had taken over.

A cloudless night, but the stars had gone out. I noticed it. Jeremy noticed it. My father, the heartbroken man who’d been left by his second wife that day, was the only one who didn’t. I blamed the fact he didn’t see on the pain my stepmother had caused him. Looking back, I’m sure it was a sign, just another symptom of what was coming.

I paused in my reading, glanced over my shoulder. Were those footsteps I was hearing on the stairs?
“Amy?” I questioned the empty room. “Grandma?”
No answer.
Fear trickled down the back of my neck, making my hair stand on end. I looked back at the computer screen. Kaitlin’s blog glowed back at me, surrounded by ads. I exed out of the window, my eyes flicking nervously to the real window to my left as I did.
The reflection of an old woman in the kitchen stared back at me.
I jumped out of seat, spinning to face my Grandmother, who stood with her arms crossed over her chest behind me, her expression not the happiest of ones.
“Grandma!” I squeaked, hand over my heart. “You scared me! What are you doing down here? I thought you were in bed.”
“I was,” She replied, disapprovement showering her features. “But someone woke me up. What are you doing up, Cindy?”
A tricky question. I hesitated. Grandma, seeing the look on my face, smiled suddenly and said, “Oh Cindy. I’ve told you a hundred times, those blogs are a load of junk. Nothing to worry about. I’m not going to eat you.” She laughed a bit at the end of her sentence.
I bit my lip, gazing at her through wide eyes. Hers twinkled back at me, dark brown and warm and friendly. I sighed. She was right. I was being ridiculous. This was my grandmother, who’d raised me since I was five. The one who didn’t necessarily understand me all the time, but baked cookies for me when I was sad and bought me a nice dress for the 8th grade semi-formal even though she disproved. To think she was going to eat me was an insult to her.
“I’m sorry, Grandma,” I apologized, my face turning red. “Amy just seems so convinced.”
“It’s alright dear,” Grandma laughed. “I don’t blame you in the least. Come on,” She wrapped an arm around me, steering us towards the dining room. “How about we talk about this over cookies.”
Grandma and I did end up talking that night, into the early hours of the morning. She explained that the president himself had made a statement that evening on live television, saying the blog was a hoax and would be removed from the internet. Jeremy himself was on the news, explaining his sister’s mental issues and eventual breakdown. I was relieved and convinced of Grandma’s story. Excited to tell Amy, I peeked in on her when Grandma and I finally went to bed around 2 in the morning.
She was gone. And she’d left a phone number written on a sticky note on her pillow, a note addressed to me under it.
Cindy, she’d written. If you’re reading this, it means I’ve gotten away. I called Kaitlin--someone from school gave me her number. If it’s you who finds this, run. Get the heck out. It is real. I know it is. You know it is. You’re smarter than this Cindy. You read the stars. It’s all there. Run.
I wish I’d listened to her.
On May 9th, 2015, in the early hours of the morning, Grandma crept into my bedroom. Her face looked odd in the shadows of my room, hungry and not at all like the grandmother who’d given me cookies earlier that day. She tore the covers off the shape in my bed, intent on doing something to me. If she was really going to eat me I’ll never know, because when she pulled back those covers, eyes on the bed, I came up behind her and stabbed a kitchen knife into her fragile neck.
I wish I’d read the stars correctly. But I guess that kind of thing was a gift given to the fortunate, and I was not one of the chosen.
Grandma chose me though, when I killed her that morning. She latched onto me, and to this day, still refuses to let go. We’re looking for Amy now, and I hope we find her soon, because if I don’t kill my sister, Grandma will never let go.