It had been three weeks since Vera Kline disappeared. Three weeks of searching up and down, left and right, hoping, and wondering where she went. Vera wasn’t the kind of person to disappear. She had a great life in a small town named Ashton where everyone knew everyone. She worked at the local coffee shop, had a cozy apartment, and spent weekends with her friends. Her life was very predictable, and everyone who knew her thought she would be the last one to vanish.
The mystery was made even stranger by the fact that the last place anyone saw her was somewhere no one expected: The Wasteland.
The Wasteland was the nickname given to the only amusement park on the edge of town. It had been shut down years ago, when the rides stopped working, the crowds stopped coming and criminals that no one knew started living there and started trashing the place. The place was crappy, full of rusted Ferris wheels, broken-down roller coasters, and old carnival games that didn’t make sense anymore and were creepy. No one went there. It was dangerous, and the kind of place people avoided, especially after dark. So why had Vera gone there? No one knew. The last person to see her was her friend Maggie. She had dropped Vera off at the coffee shop one afternoon, but when Maggie came back to pick her up, Vera was gone. The coffee shop was quiet, with no sign of her anywhere. Her stuff was still there: her bag, her coat, even her half-finished coffee. But Vera was nowhere to be found.
