There Is A Place On The Mountain Called ‘Borrasca’ Where People Go To Disappear

“Dad…just don’t.” I threw open the door of his cruiser before he could say anything more and slammed the door on his amused laughter.

Kyle was already waiting for me at the flag pole with Kimber looking around nervously. “Dude, you almost missed the bell!” He yelled when he saw me.

“I know, sorry.”

“Whose class are you in?” Kimber asked. She was wearing a red sweater and leggings with frogs on them. Her curly orange hair was brushed into ringlets and her lips were pink and shiny. She’d never looked more feminine and I was surprised to realize I’d never really seen Kimber as a girl.

“Ah, Mr. Diamond’s.”

“Me too!” She said cheerfully.

“Lucky,” Kyle scoffed. “I’m in Mrs. Tverdy’s. Only two 6th grade teachers and I get the crappy one.”

Kimber grimaced. “Yeah, my mom had her when she was a kid.”

“What’s wrong with her? What did your mom say?”

“Just that she’s strict and gives out homework on the weekends.”

“On the weekends? Fuck!”

“Excuse me, Mr. Landy?” I immediately recognized the tall man that had suddenly appeared behind the white-faced Kyle.

“So-Sorry, sir. I meant ‘dang’.”

Kimber giggled.

“I’m sure you did.” He nodded.

“Hi, Sheriff Clery.” Even though I’d only met him a few times I liked my dad’s boss and I think he liked me.

“Well hello, Sammy, are you excited for your first day?” Sheriff Clery crossed his arms in front of him and widened his stance imposingly, but gave me a wide smile.

“Yes sir!” I said. And then added lamely, “What are you doing here?”

“I’m giving a presentation to the 3rd and 4th graders about safety when walking to and from school.”

“Yeah, he gives it every year.” Kyle muttered.

“Cool,” I smiled.

Sheriff Clery nodded at me and then turned and walked away. I turned to Kimber to find an empty space that smelled slightly of strawberries.

“Where’s Kimber?”

“She took off. She is annoyingly on time to everything.” And as if to illustrate his point, the bell rang. We both ran up the stairs and inside the doors.

I walked into class and smiled when I saw that Kimber had saved me a spot next to her at the back. Mr. Diamond, a short, round man of 40 or so nodded at me when I came in.

“Mr. Walker, I presume?”

“Um, yeah, that’s me.” I mumbled as I rushed past him to the desk next to Kimber.

“Welcome to Drisking Elementary. And for the rest of you, welcome back. Go Grizzlies!”

The class echoed a reluctant and subdued “go grizzlies”.

Throughout the morning Kimber introduced me to the other kids in our class. Most of them were nice, if sort of underwhelmed by me. They said their hellos and asked where I was from and the conversations usually ended with an unimpressed “okay”.

A group of girls who sat near the front, snuck looks at us all morning and snickered to themselves. I asked Kimber who they were and she just shrugged. During our second break they managed to accost me at the pencil sharpener.

“Are you friends with Kimber Destaro?” A tall, dark-haired girl asked me.

“Yeah,” I answered and looked over at Kimber. She was watching me with worried eyes.

“Are you related to her?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think so because you don’t have orange hair.” I didn’t know what to say to that.

“You don’t have to be friends with her, you know,” said the second girl with the oddly round face.

“I wanna be friends with her.”

A third girl lurking behind the other two snorted. She had pretty auburn hair and a rude, upturned nose.

“Well, if you do you’re going to be very unpopular here,” the first girl warned. “And once you’re in that group you can’t ever leave it.”

“Better than the bitch group.” I said. Rude Nose and Round Face gasped but Dark Hair smiled.

“We’ll see,” she said and the three returned to their corner of the class room and continued whispering to each other. I sat back down next to Kimber and continued what I’d been writing as if nothing had happened.

“What did they say to you?” Kimber asked nervously.

“They said you’re too pretty to be near them and that you make them look ugly in comparison. They’d like us to stay away from them.”

“Liar,” Kimber answered, but I could hear the smile in her voice.

We met Kyle in the cafeteria at lunch and listened to him artfully complain about his morning. Mrs. Tverdy was ancient and cruel and she’d made every kid in class stand up and say something about themselves even though her room consisted of only 14 kids who’d all known each other since pre-school.

When the bell rang for recess Kyle and I walked over to throw our lunches away. I threw the tray on top of the can and turned around slamming into some kid I’d never seen before.

“Oh, sorry,” I mumbled as Kyle laughed at me.

“Wait, are you Sam Walker?” The kid asked.

“Yeah.”

“Oh. Your sister is dating my brother.”

“Oh man!” Kyle laughed. “Your sister is dating a Whitiger!”

“Shut up, Kyle.” The kid snapped.

“She’s gonna be Whitney Whitiger!”

As funny as it was I couldn’t help but be a little surprised. Not that I’d been paying much attention but I’d only seen Whitney out of her room a couple of times over the entire summer.

“Um, where did she meet him?” I asked the Whitiger kid.

“I dunno. Probably at his job.”

“His job where?”

“He works at Drisking Water.”

It didn’t make any sense to me but I shrugged it off. I did remember my mom giving Whitney some menial tasks like getting the car washed and setting up some utilities to get her out of the house. Maybe she met him once and they started dating over text. Teenagers were weird.

The rest of the school week followed much like the first day. We were well into the first month before I heard someone mention the Skinned Men again. We were out on the playground and Kyle and I were trying to start a fire with two large wood chips. I’d just given myself a splinter when the distant sound of metal grinding on metal flooded onto the playground, silencing every one of us.

“Borrasca,” I said in awe.

“Yep,” said Phil Saunders. “The Skinned Men kill again.”

“Kyle said only little kids believed in Skinned Men.” I threw an accusatory look at Kyle.

“They do! Phil is just stupid.”

“Screw you! Why don’t you ask Danielle, she’s seem them.” Phil scanned the playground and then yelled at a blonde girl talking to Rude Nose. “Hey, Danielle, come here!”

The blonde girl rolled her eyes but came skipping over anyway. “What do you want? I already told you Kayla doesn’t like you, Phillip.”

“No, tell them about the Skinned Men.” Phil gestured to the air around us which was filled with the metallic scraping coming down from the mountain.

“Why don’t you tell them.”

“Because you saw them and I didn’t.”

“I didn’t see them, Paige saw them.”

“Oh.” Phil said and an uncomfortable silence descended.

“You guys are weird,” Danielle said before flipping her hair in our faces and leaving.

“Who’s Paige?” I asked when she’d gone.

“Her sister,” Phil said.

“Paige disappeared when we were like 5.” Kyle said.

“After she saw the Skinned Men,” Phil added.

The sounds from the mountain abruptly ended and the subdued atmosphere of the playground disappeared with it. When the bell rang we lined up with our respective classes. Since Phil was in my class, I made sure I was behind him. The teachers began to count us off.

“Hey, what else do you know about Borrasca?” I whispered to him.

“My brother said that’s where people go when they disappear. To Borrasca to meet the Shiny Gentleman.”

“What happens to them there?”

“Bad things,” he said, and then shushed me when I asked him what he meant.

The year dragged on and it wasn’t until Christmas break that I heard the machine at Borrasca again. It was December and there was a thick blanket of snow on the ground which only served to amplify the noise from the mountain. I sat in my room listening to it for a few minutes trying to decide what was happening in the place that bad things happen. I saw my dad’s cruiser pull up out the window and went down stairs to meet him. As I passed my sister’s door I heard her giggling in that annoying, teenage girl way and I cringed. I hoped Kimber never got like that.

“Hi Dad,” I said to him as he opened the door. My dad stomped the snow off his boots and smiled up at me.

“Sammy! How many years has it been?” He joked.

It was true I hadn’t seen much of my dad lately since he was working so much. Doing what, I didn’t know since this was the quietest, lamest town ever. Mom thought the Sheriff was grooming dad for his job since Clery was so old and Dad never really agreed or disagreed with her. He’d only been at the department seven months, after all, and my dad doubted people in the county would vote for him.

“Feels like about six this time!” I laughed. “But, um, do you hear that noise in the distance? That like machine-sounding noise?”

“Yep! I hear it in town every now and then, too.”

“Do you know what it is?”

“You know I asked the Sheriff that same question and he told me that noise is coming from private property up in the Ozarks.”

“Is the property called Borrasca?” I asked quickly.

“I have no idea. Borrasca? Where’d you hear that?”

I shrugged. “Kids at my school.”

“Well, it’s nothing to worry about, Sammy, probably just some logging equipment.”