She Was Nine When Her Class Vanished—Decades Later, the Bus Resurfaces (2 of 3)
At the site, the crew had stopped digging. A sunken bus, yellow metal dulled with rust, jutted from the soil. Its back exit hung open, a dark mouth in the dirt. “We quit when we realized what it was,” the foreman said quietly. “You’ll want to look inside.”
The air was damp, sour. Dust clung to the torn seats. Some belts were still fastened. A pink lunchbox lay beneath one bench. On the last step, a small moss-covered sneaker. But no bodies. No bones. Just silence.
Taped to the dashboard was a class list, written in looping handwriting Mara recognized instantly: Miss Delaney’s. Fifteen names. Ages nine to eleven. At the bottom, in red ink: We never made it to Pine Hollow.
Mara staggered outside, her breath sharp in the cold air. This wasn’t just a discovery—it was a message. Someone had been there. Recently.
The investigation reopened old wounds. The bus driver, Carl Davis, had no background anyone could confirm. The substitute teacher, Ms. Atwell, had vanished along with her listed address. Rumors swirled for decades: a cult, a crash, a cover-up. No proof. No trace.
Then came the hospital call. A woman was found wandering half a mile from the excavation site, barefoot and nearly unconscious. She kept insisting she was twelve. Her name: Nora Kelly—one of the missing children.
When Mara entered the hospital room, Nora looked at her with startlingly familiar green eyes. “You got old,” Nora whispered. “You were supposed to come too.”
Mara sat at her side, speechless.
“They said no one would remember,” Nora added, voice trembling. “That no one would come for us.”
Over the next days, fragments emerged. Nora spoke of a barn with boarded windows, clocks stopped at Tuesdays, names taken away and replaced with strange ones: Dove, Silence, Glory. Some children forgot their families. Some tried to escape. Many never returned.
Following her memories, Mara uncovered an abandoned barn owned by a man named Avery. Inside: Polaroids of children, their real names crossed out and replaced. In the dirt outside, a child’s bracelet engraved with Kimmy.
