In 1994 Little Josh Disappeared From Forsyth, Missouri — And I Finally Know What Really Happened To Him

I reached over and tried the lamp next to my chair. It flicked on and bathed the room in soft light. The power wasn’t out, but I definitely had lights on when I fell asleep. How did they all turn off then?

I made my way to my feet and stumbled around, trying to find my bearings and figure out what happened. I found my first clue when I retrieved my cell phone.

There were three texts from Krista waiting for me on my phone.

Be there in five minutes.
I’m here. Sorry it’s late.
Hey, didn’t want to wake you, but found my clutch and wallet and went home. Thanks. See you next week. Krista.

So Krista had came in through my unlocked front door, retrieved her stuff without waking me up and left again in the middle of the night? Seemed impossible, but there was no other explanation which could have made sense.

None of that felt good, but I guessed if there was anything sinister about Krista, she could have executed it while I was passed out, so I also thought I didn’t have too much to worry about. I could retreat back to my bedroom in peace, join my cat Ranger in my bed and sleep away the night in hopes that I wouldn’t have a raging hangover the next time I woke up.

beetlejuice

That hangover I feared more even more than a crazed woman who may have been pretending to have a murdered child came on hard as soon as I woke up just before lunch time and launched back into my research of Krista.

Facebook had proved fruitless, but Google would not let me down. Well, to rephrase that, Myspace shockingly did not let me down. After a Google search of “Krista Gunderson,” I was able to find a Myspace.com link a few pages into the search results which pulled up the ancient bones of a bedazzled Myspace profile for Krista which clearly hadn’t been updated since 2008 and listed her location as in Oklahoma.

Most of the 200 or so pictures attached to her profile were useless. Just low-quality snapshots of her at bars with friends. I almost gave up scanning through all of them, but was glad I didn’t, because the very last picture in the gallery took my breath away.

Captioned with the phrase “I love my baby,” the photo was of a slightly-younger Krista sitting on a dock on a lake with her arms around a teenage boy with sandy blonde hair and a smile I couldn’t mistake. It had to be a coincidence, but the boy looked exactly how I imagined Josh would look had he not been taken from me.

Just looking at the picture of someone who looked so much like him, brought tears to my eyes and I had to pause my investigation.

Jack has written professionally as a journalist, fiction writer, and ghost writer. For more information, visit his website.

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