Croatan 2006
Added: October 31, 2006

Filling the split-level house this evening was the meshed chatter of guests drowning out Walter’s mix CD. Cheap beer and a hint of cannabis filled my nostrils as I strolled through the dining room. In the back, Francis was talking to two girls, but I couldn’t really hear him.

“Ralph is such a jerk!” I heard Virginia snap, emerging from the kitchen with a scowl. She filled her red cup at the keg and collapsed onto the rough blue sofa with John, who set a sympathetic arm around her.

Sure enough, I glanced into the kitchen to see Ralph standing by the sink, red in the face and loud.

“Dude, chill out!” one guy snapped at him, shoving him onto a chair, knocking chair and Ralph backwards to the wall.

Sighing, I waved to Walter, who was looking through his CD case for something else to put on after the current CD was up. I didn’t see the point. Who could hear it over all the drunken chatter and laughter?

“I think Ralph is under control,” I mentioned to Virginia.

“Whatever,” she blurted out over the background noise. “He’s a jerk all the time. We’re all used to it.”

I chuckled. “As long as it’s not a problem then.” With an entertained smirk at the increasingly erratic party guests, I wandered to the back hallway where the bedrooms and bathroom were.

“I can’t believe this!” I suddenly heard from the bathroom.

I glanced in to see Elizabeth glancing around, plunger in hand.

“Wow, it’s a mess in here,” I commented. And it was! The toilet, sink, and bathtub were filled with colorful vomit.

“This is insane!” she whined. “My landlord is going to kill me.”

“Well, if you’d like, I’ll help you clean it up a little later.”

“Great! Thanks!”

With that, I strolled back out into the main room. Walter had put on a different CD, one of some droning emo band I didn’t recognize. By this time, Virginia had gotten up from the couch and was dancing beside Walter, red cup in hand. Walter laughed along with her, although I couldn’t hear the conversation.

“Having fun?” I asked John, now alone on the couch.

“It’s a great party,” John called out to me. “Best we’ve had in a while.”

“Sounds about right.”

I grimaced with a spot check around the room, realizing that a great party certainly meant Elizabeth had a lot to clean up. There were a dozen abandoned red cups on the coffee table, all with leftover beer in them. Four more sat alone on the bookshelf. Glancing into the kitchen, I spotted an unconscious Ralph sitting at the table, his head down on the tabletop. Napkins and more red cups were strewn all about the table and counters.

Back out into the main room, there was Francis talking to John. Here and there, some people ran up and down the stairs, as there were more party guests occupying the downstairs den.

“I need fresh air,” Elizabeth groaned, emerging from the bathroom and heading down the steps to the front door.

“Good idea,” I said, following her down and out the front door.

Two guys were smoking on the front porch and said hi to us as we passed. Elizabeth and I continued until the end of the walk and stopped, each taking a deep breath of the crisp, fresh evening air.

“Nice,” she sighed after nearly two full minutes of silence, rushing the refreshing air into our lungs, replenishing them after spending several hours of breathing in the smoky, beer-tinted atmosphere.

Behind us, one of the smoking guys put out his cigarette and went back into the house.

“Enjoying yourself?” Elizabeth asked the remaining smoker.

“You need more pretzels and chips,” he commented. “We ran out so fast.”

“I know,” she replied with exasperation. “I meant to get more. Oh, well.”

“Yeah,” he muttered, taking another drag from his cigarette. “Was hoping you’d have made strawberry daiquiris. That would have been sweet. Jungle juice, too.”

Elizabeth smiled. “I wish I could have, too. I just didn’t have any of the supplies.”

“Just as well,” I told her. “You have enough of a mess to clean after this already. Jungle juice vomit would not be a very nice addition.”

She nodded. “Yes, that’s a good point.”

The guy put out his cigarette and went back inside. I glanced at the bay window, through which I could see Francis still talking to John.

“Well, we should probably get on back in there,” Elizabeth mentioned, as we still gazed out at the guests’ cars lining the dark deserted street, with the street lights dancing off their windows.

So we turned around and returned to the house. She opened the front door, and I followed her inside. And we both stood still on the landing between the two sets of stairs. We exchanged perplexed glances at the realization that something was missing. The beer still filled the air, bringing its own raid on our nostrils once again. The emo CD still played on and on.

But the guests had all fallen silent.

We rushed up the steps to find nobody in the living room. John was no longer on the couch. Francis was no longer standing around chatting. Walter was not by the stereo. Ralph was no longer passed out at the kitchen table. Virginia wasn’t anywhere.

Elizabeth examined the sliding door at the back of the dining room. I came up beside her, and we both peered through the glass at the dark backyard. Nobody was on the deck or anywhere in the backyard.

Red cups still sat about. Music continued playing. Napkins lay scattered. John’s denim jacket was still hung on the coat rack. Virginia’s purse was still beside the sofa. Walter’s CD case was sitting open on the dining room table. A few other guests’ jackets and purses were still where their respective owners had put them. But there was no trace of the owners.

We went downstairs to the den to find more scattered jackets, purses, red cups, and napkins. No people. Elizabeth and I gazed out the backdoor to still see nobody. After scanning a few closets, downstairs bathroom, and the mud room, we went back to the deserted upstairs.

“Those doors don’t even look like they’ve been opened,” Elizabeth whispered, looking at the sliding glass door. She was right. The door was locked as it had been all evening, with the bar across and everything.

We went to her bedroom, to find a few coats on her bed but still no one. No one under the bed. No one in the closet. No one hiding in the master bathroom. We moved on to the other two bedrooms, finding no one there nor under the beds or in any closets.

I gazed out the window to see all the cars still parked out front.

“This is not possible,” I muttered to Elizabeth, very puzzled and disturbed now to the point I was shivering.

After we took a glance up in the attic, finding none of the twenty-odd missing party guests in there, we came back down and took a few more glances all over the house and outside. The cars were empty. The backyard was empty. The neighbors’ backyards were empty.

“I’m calling Walter,” Elizabeth said as we got back into the deserted house. She pressed her cell phone buttons and held it to her ear, as we scanned the many red cups and other items. When she got no answer, she called more people. I got out my phone and started calling people as well. Between us, we got through trying the numbers of each guest quickly. Tried each one twice. No one answered. Elizabeth called her cousin and gave him several of the numbers to try himself, just in case the guests were intentionally ignoring calls from me or her. He got back to her just a few minutes later, reporting that he also had no luck reaching any of the guests.

Finally, we put our phones away and exchanged confused glances.

“I don’t get it,” I sighed.

That was about right. Neither of us could understand this at all. After all, everything was totally undisturbed.

“If I didn’t know any better,” Elizabeth said. “I’d say they all suddenly vanished into thin air.”

I chuckled nervously, but she was right. It sure looked like they vanished.

Despondent, Elizabeth wandered to the back hall again and glanced into the bathroom. She flicked on the light and groaned at the disgusting vomit and other mess she had to clean up, although still trying to comprehend just what on earth became of the people who made that mess.

All of a sudden, I heard her shriek. I jumped with a start, already jittery from this situation. “What is it?” I stammered while scrambling into the hallway and into the bathroom. “Whoa!”

We had not spotted it when we were first checking around the house. At first glance, it was just more dirt in an already filthy bathroom. A message. There was a message written in black on the bathroom mirror. Just one word.

CROATAN.


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