Prologue - The Vanishing of Millie Thompson

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Friday Night Lights

October 25th, 1996

Millie Thompson drowned out the shouts outside her door with the sharp edge of Alanis Morissette’s voice in her ears.

She paced in tight circles while her parents were at it again in the kitchen, words like knives bouncing off the walls. Her father was telling her mom to ‘just lay off’ and that he ‘had it under control.’

Millie knew better.

The sour stench of alcohol clung to her father’s breath most mornings when he dropped her off at school and said, “Have a good day, Millie girl,” as she pretended not to notice.

She lowered her headphones and set her yellow Discman on the dresser, pulling her blonde hair back as a thin-sounding chorus came through the headphones hanging around her neck:

“What it all comes down to is everything’s gonna be quite alright.”

She held on to that, wishing it were true.

But Millie could not know what was coming.

No one could have.

#

The Slate River stood placid, the last of a late autumn sun searing a red line over the shimmering current. Millie passed the old high school, abandoned and looking more and more like a haunted house by the minute, and ahead, the Westville Showboat sat steeped in shallow waters, looking like a relic incapable of floating, despite the sizable bright red paddlewheel on the stern.

She crossed Main Street, skirting through the downtown parking lot, then onto the train tracks, following them onto the trestles over the river.

She stepped out onto the trestles as water roared from the dam, spilling into the banks where her grandpa’s company, Prince Milling, loomed. In theory, her dad would take it over one day, but Millie wasn’t so sure anymore. The subject always seemed to turn into a fight between her parents.

She passed the big silos and grain bins as the tracks came back onto solid ground, then banked left toward the fairgrounds and the football field.

She saw Olivia leaning against the concession stand and teasing Kyle, who was in an apron grilling hot dogs, and when his mom wasn’t looking, Kyle flipped Olivia off, and she laughed.

“Mil!” Olivia grinned, waving her over. “I was just telling Kyle he’s found his calling.”

“Maybe,” Kyle shot back. “Or maybe I’ll get a job as a busboy down at Fischer’s.”

“So you can creep on my sister?”

“Why else?”

Kyle’s mom called him, and he trudged off.

“You love riling him up, don’t you?” Millie said, shaking her head.

Olivia shrugged. “Easy target.”

That was one of the things Millie admired about Olivia—how she just did what she wanted, said what she felt, no hesitation. It got her into trouble sometimes, but there was a kind of freedom in it.

“You like the CD?” Olivia asked, gesturing down at the Discman.

Millie nodded. “Yeah, it’s maybe just a little better than Amy Grant.”

“Told you.” She gave Millie a sly look, her voice dropping. “So, I’ve been thinking…”

Millie recognized that tone. It meant trouble. “We’re not ditching the game.”

Olivia rolled her eyes. “Come on, why not?”

“Because I told my parents this is where I’d be.”

“And what if I told you we don’t have to go far?”

“For what?”

“Brett Huizenga and some others invited us down by the river.”

Millie’s suspicion flared. “Liv, come on.”

“We’ll just go for a little bit. I promise we’ll be back before halftime. No one will even know we left.”

“I don’t know…”

Before she could finish, her friend had grabbed her hand and was tugging her away from the field, back toward the tracks.

Millie eventually yanked her hand free. “Why does everything have to change just because we’re in high school?”

Olivia stopped, turned, and brushed a wild red curl out of her face. “It doesn’t have to change. But if some cute boys want to hang out—”

“Brett isn’t cute. And did they even invite me, or just you?”

“I may have mentioned you’d be joining me.”

Millie offered a weak smile and followed reluctantly.

A small group of lanky upperclassmen, mostly boys, huddled near the river, swearing and laughing. Brett Huizenga stood at the center, greasy as ever, like he’d washed his face with a slice of pizza.

“Who’s your friend?” Brett asked, eyeing Millie.

Olivia shot Millie an apologetic look. “This is Millie Thompson.”

“Wait, Thompson?” Brett’s eyes flicked to the PRINCE Milling sign glowing through the trees. “We’re in the presence of Westville royalty,” he joked, bowing dramatically.

Millie flushed. “Not exactly.”

“She’s cool,” Olivia said quickly.

“Yeah, well, her old man fired mine last week.” Brett’s grin faded, his tone turning cold.

“My dad doesn’t run the company,” Millie muttered, glancing for an exit. It was true, though her dad did run the floor, and he probably had fired Brett’s father.

He shoved a bottle of Jack Daniel’s toward her, the cap off, its sharp scent burning her nose. It reminded her of her dad’s breath in the mornings, and a wave of nausea churned in her gut.

“I’m good,” Millie said.

“She doesn’t really—” Olivia started, but Brett pushed the bottle closer.

“What are you, a narc?”

“No,” Millie said, her voice quieter. “I just don’t—”

Olivia grabbed the bottle, then took a hearty swig. Her face scrunched, and she wheezed out a cough, then pointed to Millie. “She’s allergic.”

Brett shrugged and backed off, heading toward the others lighting joints by the river. “Whatever.”

Millie swallowed hard, watching the thin wisps of smoke rise into the air, mixing with the cold dampness of the evening. “I shouldn’t be here.”

Olivia sighed. “Come on, Mil. Just loosen up for once.”

“It’s not—I just don’t want to be here.”

“You drag me to that youth group every Sunday, and I don’t complain.”

“You do, just not out loud.”

“Maybe because I don’t want to talk about that stuff.”

“What stuff?”

“If God gave two shits about me or my dad, he wouldn’t have let him suffer like that.”

Millie’s chest tightened. She remembered Mr. Fischer’s face, gaunt and pained, lying useless in a downstairs bedroom.

“I’m sorry, Liv.”

Olivia shook her head, sniffing. “You don’t get it. You have a perfect life. Perfect family.”

“You don’t know that.”

Olivia wiped her face and took another swig. “Just stay and hang out this once. If we hate it, we’ll never do it again.”

Millie shook her head. “I’m going back.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. Seriously.”

Millie walked back alone.

#

The sky had dimmed to a bruise-violet, as bloated gray clouds burned with the last of the sun’s dying fire.

Coming near the mill over the tracks, Something red shifted in the corner of her eye. Millie tensed all over, her eyes tracing the tallest concrete structure nearby to the culprit—the scarlet neon PRINCE sign, aglow in the chill night. She stopped and took her headphones off, looking down the tracks. The only sounds were the distant din of the crowd at the game behind her and the droning sigh of ventilation from the mill.

A horn honked. Millie’s stomach dropped and her heart jumped all at once. The white Methodist Church minibus idled, and the driver’s side window rolled down. A grinning, heavyset face with a gray-white beard appeared.

He wheezed out a laugh. “Whew, that got you good.”

“Hey, Mr. Myers,” Millie said, offering an obligatory smile and taking off the other ear of her headphones.

“What kind of mischief are you getting into tonight, young lady?” he asked.

It was a facetious inquiry Mr. Myers often made, and she would usually joke back with him. His sense of humor lacked nuance, but she couldn’t help playing along. Olivia, on the other hand, had never been as amused.

The thought of her friend soured Millie as well as brought her back to reality.

“Headed home,” Millie said, and added, “Game’s pretty much over, anyway.”

“Them Hawks are gettin’ after ’em this year, huh?”

Millie nodded, then said, “I’ll see you Sunday night.”

“I can give you a lift. Been shuttling folks back and forth from the school lot.”

“That’s OK, I don’t mind.”

“All right,” he said. “Just straight home, though, you hear?”

“Got it.”

#

But Millie Thompson didn’t go straight home.

She walked clear past her street, and wanted to keep going, even as she came to the end of the album for the third time that night.

Millie passed rows of old two-story houses down Harrison, until the street emptied out into Elmwood Cemetery. She kept to the paved path that hugged a black chain link fence, through which she could see the factory down near the river, the parking lot bathed in that strange orange radiation certain streetlights gave off and to her right varied gravestones seemed to glow in the moonlight, shades of slate and red granite.

Slowly, the fragile comfort of knowing you were surrounded by warm bodies within nearby homes faded, until it was replaced with a cold creeping loneliness.

Not to mention it had turned frigid in a hurry, like the cold had been hiding below the ground waiting for the sun to leave so it could have its fun. Millie breathed warm air into her hands, vapor rising in the air. She kept on down the pathway as the hypnotic groove of the closing track ‘Wake Up’,Alanis chanting, ‘Get up, get outta here, enough already’.

Millie suddenly couldn’t help herself agreeing with the sentiment.

A stark feeling of unease grabbed her, that creeping sensation through your veins that settled in the chest and made it harder to breathe. She turned on the path that cut through the cemetery, looking to Harrison Street, which would lead her back home, where she suddenly wanted to be very badly.

When she turned, she was blinded by bright light, and she winced and put up an arm.

Headlights. She couldn’t make out the kind of vehicle, only that it was bigger—like a truck or a large van maybe.

It wasn’t moving.

Olivia took off her headphones. It just sat there, like it was staring at her—if a car could do that—and she wondered just who was behind the wheel and why they were staring.

Her skin prickled and she walked briskly along the dirt shoulder, keeping far as she could to the side. She just needed to get past and on her way home…

The engine suddenly wheezed to life with a diesel growl, and like a threat it lurched forward and stopped, a wild animal preparing to clamp down on its prey at the right moment.

Millie heard her pulse acutely in her eardrums now, and her arms shook.

The engine revved again and this time the vengeful scrape of tires on dirt accompanied it, and it suddenly careened toward her.

Millie turned and ran, the vehicle roaring into pursuit.

Her heart pounded and whenever she looked back it was like it was toying with her, getting close enough to make her think she’d be under its tires any moment, then slamming brakes and starting all over.

The road had turned to dirt, and ahead she saw the old boy scout cabin, a single blue-white street lamp lighting the dead end turnaround. She ran through the grass circle in the middle then hopped over a rusted gate into the trees.

She darted through the dark two track path and hadn’t got far when the cord of her headphones caught, a branch yanking like she was a dog on a short leash. She stumbled and felt her foot catch in the pitch dark on an upturned root or a rock, a blinding pain shooting up through her leg. Her CD player flying off somewhere.

She clasped at her searing ankle.

The headlights shone on her now, the vehicle idling outside the tree line, casting crooked shadows of the branches and trees all around her.

“Leave me alone!” Her voice broke when she yelled, and she barely recognized it.

The engine shut off, and so did the lights.

Quiet. Dark.

Then a red light began to glow on the other side of the windshield, and cold unexplainable dread pooled in her stomach.

She panted, working her ankle free and despite the pain got up and ran limping through the woods. She came out into the clearing, tears streaking down her cheeks now from a sheer and potent combination of raw fear, confusion, abject agony.

The river was just ahead and the north country trail. She could follow that to a different road, but there was no way she was going back the other way.

She started making for the trailhead. Nowhere to go but further into the woods.

Then came the deep groaning creak, as if all the trees were bending under a weight that would break them.

She stopped, turned, and saw it.

A glaring red circle emerging from the woods. Growing bigger, brighter until it seeped out of the tree line, and there was a shape in it now.

The towering and wrongly twisted crimson shadow pulled itself forward with deliberate jerking movements, too long limbs and jagged protrusions from its head like antlers.

A sharp hissing grew deafening, hands trembling, legs quaking.

Millie wanted to run, but her legs wouldn’t obey. She couldn’t move.

So she screamed instead—and knew somehow that no one could hear her.