Last Seen: A gripping edge-of-your-seat thriller that you won’t be able to put down

The streets of River Ridge looked alien to him.

Nothing was real anymore.

More news crews were waiting on the lawn and sidewalk of the Hudsons’ house when they arrived, shouting questions at them. Cal waved them off. Samantha and Rory Clark, their neighbors who had a key, had hurried outside the Hudsons’ house to help. The paramedics brought Faith inside and suggested she take an over-the-counter sleeping pill.

They put her in bed; Cal sat alone with her, not knowing what to do as his exhausted brain throbbed with thoughts of Gage.

He couldn’t sleep, so after she drifted off he went back downstairs.

Officers Berg and Ripkowski were still in the house.

“We can ensure our people stay the night with you, to be prepared for anything. It’s your option,” the officers had told Cal.

“Yes, I’d like it if someone were here for now.”

Along with Officers Berg and Ripkowski, Michelle and Pam had arrived with their husbands and offered to stay in the room with Faith. Samantha—“Sam” to her friends—had made strong coffee. Cal needed to be alert. He drank two large cups, fighting to hang on to himself while sitting in his kitchen with his friends.

For a burning instant he envied and hated them.

They knew where their kids were. They hadn’t lost a child. He knew what they were likely thinking: I wouldn’t have let my kid out of my sight for one second—not like Cal and Faith, not me.

Cal then loathed himself as his friends expressed their genuine, heartfelt concerns, urging him to eat and rest.

How can I sleep not knowing where Gage is? Is he terrified? Is he hurt somewhere? Is he locked away? Oh God, please tell me where he is.

Cal knew what he had to do.

He hurried to the storage closet, next to the kitchen. He opened a big backpack, stuffed it with items from the kitchen and closet. He got a couple of flashlights, tapped them to test the batteries, grabbed Gage’s hockey stick and headed for the door.

“Where’re you going, Cal?” Officer Ripkowski asked.

Rory Clark glanced at the others, who were puzzled.

“Gage may have tried to walk home.”

“You think so? It’s about two miles and he’s only nine, Cal,” Ripkowski said.

“I know. I showed him once how to get to our place from Blossom Avenue and it leads to the fairgrounds. I’m going to track back to the car and search along the route he might’ve taken.”

“I got a flashlight in my car.” Rory nodded to the other men. “We’ll come with you, unless you officers think that’s a problem?”

“Go ahead,” Berg said, reaching for her radio. “We’ll advise our people and wait here.”

In the following hours, with two news crews in tow, Cal and his group of suburban fathers walked the route Gage might’ve taken. They searched front yards, backyards and driveways, raking their flashlights under cars. They looked in alleys and behind strip malls. Cal used the hockey stick to probe trash cans and poke hedges and shrubs.

All the while the men called out for Gage, they stopped late-night dog walkers, joggers and people on bicycles to ask for help, showing them Gage’s picture on their phones. And the group consulted with every River Ridge police car they encountered, patrolling and on alert in the hunt for Gage.

They arrived at the River Ridge Fairgrounds finding the Hudsons’ SUV was the only vehicle remaining in the southwest parking lot. A patrol car had been watching it from a distance and the men checked in with the officer before moving toward it.

A cold wind kicked up, tossing papers and sending empty Old Milwaukee cans tumbling across the desolate expanse where the Ford Escape stood fast, as if keeping a lone vigil for Gage.

Cal unlocked it, opened the tailgate and lowered the rear seats.

As his friends watched, trying to understand Cal’s actions, he unpacked Gage’s small sleeping bag and spread it carefully on the rear. Then he set out prepackaged cheese and crackers, peanut butter and crackers, three juice boxes, apples and bananas. Gage loved those snacks. Next to them, he set down Gage’s favorite handheld video game, the one he’d left on the kitchen table before they’d come to the fair.

Gage cherished the little game and Cal knew it would be the first thing he’d pick up if he returned to the car. Cal inserted fresh batteries, brushed the game tenderly with his fingertips before typing on the small keyboard. A couple of men watching over Cal’s shoulder saw his brief message.

Gage, we’re searching for you everywhere. You’re not in trouble son, just stay here and we’ll come and get you. We love you, Mom and Dad.

A few people sniffed and throats were cleared as the men turned away.

“Guys, let’s search along the edge of the lot by the fences and the alleys,” one of the men said, intending to give Cal privacy.

The other fathers moved away across the lot in different directions, leaving Cal alone sitting on the Ford’s tailgate.

As the wind kicked up, Cal remembered that Gage didn’t have a jacket or hoodie and wondered if he was cold, wherever he was right now. It may have been Cal’s exhaustion, his strained emotions, but at that instant Cal was hit, like a sledgehammer to his gut, with the probability that he would never see Gage again.

He sobbed into his hands as the wind carried his pain into the night and Gage stared down on him from one of the big screens that were still lit over the fairgrounds, with the words Lost/Missing and Last Seen Wearing calling out above his description and blazing in the darkness.

I’m so sorry, Gage. I’m so sorry for everything I’ve done, son.

9 (#ulink_cd4f9e32-8eed-53d6-acf1-54460072d92a)

“Mom, help me!”

Faith hears him first, crying out, then screaming for her.

“Mom, help me! Please come and help me, Mom!”

He’s still in the Chambers of Dread. It’s where he’s been all this time.

Faith gets in her car, flies to the fairgrounds, scales the fence, rushes into the horror house, passes through the jaws of the Demon King, plunges into the darkness, following Gage’s pleas.

“Mom, please, please, help me!”

“I’m coming, sweetheart! I’m coming!”

A cloaked figure points the way for her with a blood-dripping head. Faith blurs through the labyrinth, races by the flames of the burning witch queen.

“Hurry, Mom!”

Faith comes to the fanged clown thumping a malevolent tune on the keyboard of skulls at the organ and nodding the way for Faith over the river of snakes, through the cavern of bats and spiders. She weaves through the tombstones in the graveyard as the zombie points. “He’s in there!”

“Mommy, help me!”

Gage is lying on a cutting table and the insane butcher—surrounded by twitching limbs and bleeding torsos—raises his cleaver over Gage’s neck.

Faith screams at him, “Stop!”