This story is dedicated in memory of Mary G. Hook, 1955-2014. Rest in Peace.
Mary grabbed her phone and dialled Jimmy's number, before pressing the green button and pressing it to her ear. "Come on, please pick up!" she said, her face contorted with worry. Lunch had been an hour ago, and there was no sign of her son anywhere.
The phone kept ringing, on for a few minutes, but then cut to the answering machine; "This is Jimmy Hook; I am currently occupied, so please leave a message after the beep."
Mary set the phone down as Roy, her husband, and by logical extension Jimmy's father, entered. "Did that one get through?" he asked.
"No," she replied. "Just like the last six."
Roy walked over to the wall chart and consulted a giant map of the Pike Road area. "Where precisely did he say he was going?" he asked, as he tugged at his enormous beard that would rival that of a certain Mr Kringle.
"The forest. But there's miles of forest out here-"
"And no cell signal except at very short range," Roy said grimly, already beginning to accept his potential worst fear. "I'll try him; maybe he blocked your number by mistake."
"Why would he do that?"
"We all make mistakes sometimes." Roy took out his own phone and began to dial Jimmy's number. His effort rang out and went straight to voicemail. "Great."
Just then, a truck engine could be heard outside, followed by voices. "I'm just pulling up now, I'll answer your call then."
"David's back?" Mary asked. "Oh no! I'd forgotten he was coming to visit today!"
Having ceased to be frustrated with his phone and lack of coverage, Roy turned back to her. "But he does give us an extra pair of eyes," he answered. "I think it's time to go on a search."
David killed the engine on his pickup truck and got out, wincing as the full force of the Alabama sun hit him. He closed the door behind him and smiled. "Sweet home, Alabama!" he exclaimed, striding over to the door and ringing the doorbell.
The door smacked into his face and sent him flying until he collided with a hedge.
As he came to, he saw Roy extend a hand to him. "We need to go," he said, as he pulled the young man up.
"Go? But I only just got here!"
"Your brother has disappeared in the forest," Roy informed in. In case you hadn't figured it out, David was JImmy's older brother. "Your truck has got a GPS; ours hasn't. Your mom's already called the police, and I'm going to contact the locals and ask them to assist. We'll tear the entire forest down if it means finding Jimmy."
As they waited for the police to arrive, the trio chose to ask around the neighbourhood and see if anybody had seen Jimmy anywhere.
"Hey Harry!" Roy called, greeting a man operating a barbeque.
"Well, if it isn't the Man from Monmouth!" Harry replied, looking up from his barbeque momentarily. "How can I help you?"
"Have you seen Jimmy anywhere?"
Harry thought for a moment. "I saw him walk into the forest near here, about there. This was at eight in the morning, mind."
"Why were you cooking a barbeque at eight in the morning?" Roy asked, confused.
"I wasn't!" Harry replied, defensively. "I was testing a new batch of propane I've received and the chance to cook something was too good to miss."
Roy nodded. "Thanks for the help. This narrows the search... a bit."
Meanwhile, David had restarted the engine on his truck, and was consulting the screen on the centre console which was feeding him location data, topography, and even a tracker for cell numbers. He peered at the screen closely. There was a lot of forest near Pike Road, and that made scouring the area especially difficult given that Jimmy could be basically anywhere. He stopped the engine again, and took out his own phone, dialling a number as he did so.
"Who is this?" asked the voice on the other end.
"Hey, John, it's me, David, your flatmate."
"What do you need, Dave?"
David spoke more quietly now, as if somebody was listening outside. "You know that software you have for picking up cell numbers?"
"Yeah?"
"I need you to run this number through the system; 01896 19202122."
"Isn't that your brother's phone number?"
"How do you know that?"
"I once saw you dialling him whilst we were out on business in Chattanooga."
"Right." David was keen to get back on track. "I need you to run a ping for that number and feed it to my car's GPS."
"Copy that, I'm on it now. Why are you talking so quietly; this isn't illegal!"
A few moments later, a flash came up on the car screen. A set of coordinates briefly flashed, and numbers appeared on the screen. "Coordinates received; 32 degrees by 17'54.1 degrees North and 86 degrees 10'24.3 degrees West."
"When did I ever let you down, Dave?"
"Thanks for this," David replied. "I'll tell mom and the police when they arrive. I'll keep the coordinates locked onto my phone and car GPS."
"No problem. Have a nice day." With that, the line cut out. David glanced over his shoulder to see a police cruiser pulling into the lot.
Mary was growing all the more frantic, and she had every right to be. None of her neighbours had seen Jimmy anywhere. Where on Earth could he be? It was madness going into the forest after him without any useful information, and the police said they would be there in a few minutes. Just every minute seemed to stretch into eternity.
After what felt like hours, a police car pulled into the street, sirens blaring. The door opened, and out stepped Captain Sanders, a prominent member of the local police and a good friend of the Hooks. He shut the door behind him, and walked over to Mary.
"Afternoon, ma'am," he said, maintaining his trademark formality whilst on the beat. "We received a missing person report from this area."
"Please! You have to find him! Jimmy's gone missing in the forest and we have-!"
"Ma'am, I understand you are worried. We will do our utmost to find him, but first you need to calm down."
Mary nodded.
"OK." Sanders took out his notepad. "When did Jimmy go missing?"
"He headed out this morning for a walk and said he would return by lunchtime. He's got-"
"All I need is a description of what he was wearing," Sanders interrupted. "I know what he looks like from when I've visited."
Suddenly, the door of a truck popped open, and David walked towards them. "I've got the last known location of Jimmy's cell phone," he said. "It's on my truck's GPS display."
Sanders nodded. "I'll take a look." As he walked past, he turned back to Mary. "I promise you we will find him," he said. "No matter what it takes."
Two hours had passed, and the search had been widened. Additional officers had been called in from Montgomery and several other regions, and a RADAR van was even being employed to assist with the search. Captain Sanders stood, looking closely at the established coordinates on his map.
"The phone signal is still going strong, and hasn't moved," he noted. "This is good. It means that the user hopefully hasn't moved."
"Sir!" called a fellow policeman. "You may want to take a look at this. Something very odd at the epicentre."
Opening the door and stepping out of the door, Sanders adjusted his sunglasses and shielded his eyes from the sudden increase in brightness. "This had better be good, Kowalski."
They walked for a few minutes, until reaching the scene where Jimmy's phone was transmitting. It was still there, transponder still going strong, the battery nowhere near flat. But what was baffling was the complete lack of a person. There was absolutely no trace of their ever having been a person there. No clothes, no body, nothing. One of the forensics team was already analysing the footprints.
"We think he tried to climb this bank, but the mark in the mud shows he slipped and fell back into the mud. The mudprint created matches his size and height, but this is where it gets really odd."
He pointed to a trail leading away. "Hoofprints. Leading away from us toward an old cabin. I already had Jackson trace it back."
"I know this seems crazy sir, but-" Kowalski began.
"I have reason to pursue any line of evidence if it should yield results," Sanders replied. "Thanks for bringing it to my attention."
Just then, Roy and Mary arrived, escorted by a policeman equipped with a rifle. "Why have you got a rifle?" the forensics officer asked.
"There's a report of a black bear on the rampage."
"Have you found him?" Mary asked.
"We found a bodyprint," Sanders replied, "but no body. We think he's moved, and a trail of hoofprints is leading away from the scene to a cabin."
"Hoofprints?" David exclaimed, having joined the team.
"Don't tell me this is happeni-" Mary started to speak, but stopped herself. Sanders could sense that she knew something, but decided not to pursue it.
"Is that Mad Uncle Geoffrey's cabin, by any chance?" Roy asked.
"Yes, indeed." Sanders nodded. "Why do they call him Mad Uncle Geoffrey, given he isn't mad or an uncle?"
"Don't ask me," Roy sighed. "I say we go and talk to him."
"I'll come with you, in case he tries anything funny," Sanders noted. He looked to the officers. "Get this sighed cleaned up and move the evidence for inspection!"
Roy stepped forward confidently and knocked on Mad Uncle Geoffrey's door. A second later, he opened it, his beard rolling down his face. "Can I help you?" Geoffrey asked.
"Have you seen a pony around, by any chance?" Roy asked. "I know it sounds ridiculous, but-"
"There's a white unicorn trying to make tea in there," Geoffrey sighed. "And failing horribly. All I can tell you is she is in a red dress, and it looks hideous."
"May we come in?" Sanders asked.
"By all means," Geoffrey replied. "Coffee?"
"No thanks, I don't drink caffeine on duty," Sanders replied. The four stepped in to find the aforementioned white unicorn trying to use a tea brewing machine. Trying being the operative word.
"Could he have got it?" Mary asked absentmindedly.
"Sorry, what was that?" David asked.
"Oh no, nothing. Just thinking out loud."
"This machine is ridiculous!" Rarity exclaimed.
"It's not the machine's fault you cannot operate it," sad Mad Uncle Geoffrey's wife.
"Do not tell me who to be annoyed with!"
Roy sighed. "What on Earth was in that soda anyways?"
"I'm seeing the same as you are," Sanders sighed. "Excuse me, but are you Jimmy?"
Rarity stopped, and looked up as a flash of realisation went across her face. "David?" she asked, recognising a face before her.
"Is that really you, Jimmy?" David asked. "What did you get as a present on New Year's Eve 2008?"
"Bubble wrap," Rarity replied. "Oh, this is a terrible mess!"
"Come here, kid," Roy said, extending his hand. "Let's get you home. Even if you are now a horse thing, we still love you, no matter what."
Rarity tentatively extended her hoof, and there was a bright flash of light and whirling of wind. Seconds later, Rarity was gone. In her place was Jimmy, for whom everything was in its proper place. No horn, no fur, especially no dress, just the normalness of Jimmy, who had regained his glasses in the confusion.
"Where am I?" he asked. "I was in a pit near a crown and now I'm here! What's going on?"
David laughed. "You wouldn't believe us if you told us."
"But we are headed home," Mary finished. "And I think a hero's welcome is in order."
The residents of Pike Road had initially been frustrated and annoyed by the quantity of police presence in the town scouring the nearby woods. But when they saw the Hooks returning home, they immediately forgot to be angry, and gathered together their resources to prepare possibly the largest barbeque ever seen in the history of Alabama.
And what could have been a more pleasant surprise. Part way through the festivities, a white Dodge Caravan pulled into the suburb and stopped outside the house next to Jimmy's. Out of it piled two people that Jimmy knew very well.
"Mike!" Roy called. "What brings you here?"
"Tom and I are here on holiday, and secured two weeks here in Pike Road through VRBO," Michael replied, the Welshman's accent even more obvious than usual, jarring dramatically with the abundance of Southern drawls on display.
"Mum's following down in a few days," Tom added. "She's visiting Beth in Topeka."
"Katrina's mom?" JImmy asked.
"The very same," Tom answered. "I don't really know how Kat's getting on, though. Maybe we could skype her?"
"It can be considered," Roy smiled. "Drinks are on me tonight; my mates at work just gave me untold amounts of beer, and there's no way the residents of this town can drink it without outside help. Wanna join in?"
"You're talking to a former Maerdy man," Mike smiled. "Count me in."
Tom went around the back of the hire car and took something out of the boot. In his hands was an electric guitar case, an amp, and a maze of electrical cables. "As you asked, Dave," he replied. "I brought my guitar and my amp so I could play along with you guys."
David grinned at that. "It'll be nice to have a guest star," he said, with a smile.
A few hours later, the external festivities had died down, and the families had retreated to their homes, apart from the Haddingtons, who had been invited over by the Hooks. As the parents sat around the table and shared tales tall and true, Tom and Jimmy were looking through an old photo album of various images.
"Some nice snaps at Chattanooga there," Tom observed. "It was 630 when I was there last year; 610's undergoing overhaul."
"Did you get behind the window?" Jimmy asked.
"Do you mean behind the engine?" Tom corrected. "Yeah, or as close as I could; my sound recording module was a little shaky, so what I got wasn't great to be honest."
They turned another few pages, to one dated around 1980. It caught the pair completely off guard. It was a picture from Maerdy colliery around 1980, with a group of men stood in front of an engine. Tom recognised his father amongst them, but to his surprise-
"What are they doing here?" Jimmy asked.
"You just read my mind."
At that moment, a brief snippet of a conversation could be heard. "I'm certain he's inherited it!"
"How is that possible? We haven't been through one in decades."
"Keep it down! The kids might hear."
Jimmy glanced to Tom. "They have it too?"
Having heard Jimmy's exclamation, the three adults came in through the dividing door. "Is everything OK?" Roy asked.
Jimmy glanced over to his dad. "What were you guys talking about?" he asked. "And in this picture from Wales, why are you two in it?"
Roy looked about to answer, but Mary got there first. "We know Mike from a trip to South Wales we took long before you were born," she explained. "We were allowed onto the mine to take pictures as a friend had asked for some. Michael took us onto the footplate, and it went from there."
"But you two weren't the first to have this affliction you have," Michael finished. "We did. It's quite the story..."
Author's Note
Hello everyone!
Discord gave me permission to write a sequel to one of his stories, and so I followed up with this tale. Noting that his descriptions closely matched Pike Road, a place where Jimmy used to live in the main timeline, I chose to set the tale there.
The characters of Roy and Mary are loosely based on Jimmy's real world parents, based on what he has told me about them. If you are reading this Jimmy, I hope I did them justice. David is loosely modelled on his brother.
Maerdy Colliery was a real Colliery in South Wales that served the Rhonda Valley. The railway closed in 1987, but the mine continued operating until 1990.
Another note: this story takes place in an alternate universe where the Hooks never left Alabama.
