On 10 September, 1976, dozens of children, including every single pupil from class 3, Scarfolk High School, vanished on their way to school. A police operation was launched but no clues were ever found. The children were pronounced dead the following Monday, a mere three days later.
Every year thereafter, the police commissioned their sketch artist to draw, in the style of a school photograph, how the missing children might have looked (albeit with their faces removed) had they not disappeared in mysterious circumstances. This was sent to the bereaved parents of class 3 at an exorbitant cost of £31.25.
In the 1979 class sketch, one parent noticed a small label on one of the faceless figure's clothes that contained a code word only their child could have known.
Under mounting pressure from parents, the police eventually raided their artist's studio and found 347 children in his cellar where many had been held captive for several years. The police immediately seized and confined the children as evidence in a crime investigation, which, after much dithering, ultimately never went to court leaving the families no choice but to pursue a private prosecution against the kidnapper.
As the children had already been pronounced dead and the cost of amending the relevant paperwork was high, they were given away as prizes in the Scarfolk police raffle, which helped pay the legal fees of their sketch artist, who, it turns out, was the son of Scarfolk's police commissioner.
It should be noted that by September 1976, Scarfolk had discontinued the Class 3 child as its auto-castrator was proving unreliable and difficult to maintain in the field. Earlier in the year, the Class 4 self-propelled child had been approved for use and was due to be rolled out just after the annual sacrifices.
ReplyDeleteMost Class 3 children were sold as surplus. Aside from the 347 stored as keepsakes, a few were unaccounted for until the Track and Trace programme, where they were tied to the tracks of one of Scarfolk's outsider-pursuit tanks and traces of what was left were washed away by acid rain.
From what I recall one of the parents of Class 3 was a cop. He was friends with my dad, and I'm pretty sure he lost his child for his rival.
ReplyDeleteAs a sophomore in class 2 we always thought Mr Rumbelows had some connection with the painting as the legs on rows 2&3 were not visible. This was unfounded as he was given an alibi by Mayor Ritter between the hours of 3 & 5 am on the night of the said painting. Ritter's alibi was given by nature that he had chaired the annual Benefit announcers conference in the asbestos recycling centre, temporarily located in the kindergarten assembly hall, ( due to the annual infection programme) no minutes were kept as the tradition was that these should be shared mutually via simple olfactory methods, eg the wearing of heavily perfumed lead based personal hygiene products. This was deemed admissable by Ritter's counsel at the subsequent trial a point which was accepted by Cleethorpes J as "good law!"
ReplyDeleteI was also in class 2 at the time so asked my guardian if he recalled the incident. All he could remember was that parents were also offered a black and white print at the slightly more reasonable price of £30.94.
ReplyDelete