The town of Chester was a quiet New England town that had the reputation for being cursed. This rumor had been in existence since the town’s first settlers had burned a witch at the stake and the stories piled on from there. Murders, disappearances, they seemed to happen frequently in Chester. Maybe every town was like this and the stories were blown out of proportion. But then the Vanishing Week happened, and nobody ever looked at the small town the same way again.

Sunday. June 12th, 2013: The first disappearance was a child wearing a Spider-Man mask named Tommy, who had been standing by himself waiting for the school bus. Then Joe Collier the chief of police never showed up to work, and his wife didn’t hear him leave in the morning. Susie Evans left her office for lunch and never returned.

Monday. June 13th, 2013: Three residents of a nursing home were found missing from their rooms. A teenager named Chris Bowen went on a run. His mother Charlotte called her husband frantically after he had been gone for two hours and unresponsive to her calls and texts. David Bowen said he would leave work immediately to come home. He never did.

Tuesday. June 14th, 2013: School Bus #54 didn’t report in after picking up its full route of children in the morning.

Wednesday. June 15th, 2013: Helping to coordinate a manhunt, Tom Wright led a group of people into the woods to search by the river and the old mill nearby. He led ten people in and by dusk they were searching for three of them.

Thursday. June 16th, 2013: All residents were ordered to stay at home under emergency instructions from the mayor and acting chief of police. Still, four entire families - the Turners, the Gesickis, the Browns, and the O’Briens - were never seen or heard from again.

Friday. June 17th, 2013: Ten patients disappeared from hospital rooms and twelve infants disappeared from the delivery room. This time detectives had surveillance. However when they looked through the footage, there was a full minute missing, as if someone had been able to get in and cut it.

Saturday. June 18th, 2013: The mayor was reported missing. This was the last one.

***

Sunday. June 12th, 2023: A young man Nathan is hiking in the woods with his girlfriend Nina. They come across the ruins of the first settlement of Chester. Nathan explains to Nina that this used to be a historical landmark, back when anyone cared about this town. Before everything went to shit. Walking through the ruins, Nina sees an old stone building mostly intact that Nathan says was the schoolhouse.

She sees a figure in the entrance, something that looks like a young boy with big white eyes. Something that looks like…no, it couldn’t be. He beckons her to come closer. There are others behind him, hiding in the shadows. But when she blinks, he has disappeared.

A shiver runs down her spine and she begs Nathan to get out of here immediately. He gives her a funny look but obliges. Later on, when she has had a chance to explain to him what she saw, over hot chocolate and cuddled up with blankets on the couch, all Nathan can do is laugh it off.

“No way,” he insists. “You did not see a four-foot tall Spider-Man standing in one of those buildings..”