Chapter Text
On the night of November 16th, 1969, Police Chief Anderson received a frantic call from Maria Harrington. Between sobs and desperate shouts for Anderson to find him this instant, Mrs. Harrington managed to convey that her three year old son had gone missing.
At first, she hadn’t provided him with many details. She’d insisted he was just with her in the house a moment ago, and he must have been snatched by some hooligan or horrible criminal that had broken in, and that she certainly had no idea where to look for him. After a quick search of the house, she let it slip that she’d left him out in the backyard for only a moment while she’d come in to answer a call from her husband Richard, and when she’d returned he’d vanished.
Anderson took one look at the deep, heated swimming pool in the Harrington’s backyard, still uncovered in the November chill and lacking any sort of fence, and was at least thankful the missing kid had been smart or lucky enough to stay away from the water. It was something he and Mrs. Harrington should discuss at a later date, but he had more pressing concerns at the time.
Chief Anderson followed their typical procedures for missing person’s cases and potential kidnappings, though Hawkins didn’t often see many of those. He checked in on Richard Harrington, but if the phone call didn’t give him a solid enough alibi, the business trip to Chicago he’d been on certainly did. Not to mention the fact that he and Maria still lived in the same house, so there wasn’t much for him to gain from taking the kid.
After that, all their hope went into search parties. It was possible the kid had just wandered off; the Harrington property was right at the edge of the woods, which meant a kid his age left to his own devices might have headed into the trees and gotten lost on his way back. About the only semi-promising clue they’d gotten had been found by Rodriguez and Hopper, which was something that looked like it might have been tire tracks if you squinted hard enough and brushed away the covering of leaves. When the trail dead-ended at the fence around the Hawkins Lab, they disregarded the tracks as a lost animal and wishful thinking, and headed back into the hunt.
Anderson had tried tracking down anyone the Harringtons knew that might have had motive to take their kid, but nothing ever came of it. No ransom note was delivered, and after all the searching they’d done in the woods there was little chance the kid was hiding out in there. After two days Anderson confronted, for the first time, the possibility that the kid might never be found. Maria Harrington might never see her son again, only because of a lapse in attentiveness and some damn rotten luck.
It had been a simple mistake. A single act of negligence on a record that Mrs. Harrington repeatedly assured Chief Anderson was otherwise perfectly spotless. And yet its consequences were no less dire for the accident it had been.
After a week, the search parties slowed. After two, hardly anyone spoke the boy’s name. By the time a month had come and gone, it was almost as if the youngest Harrington had never existed in the first place. Maria had dried her tears, Richard had gone back to work, and Hawkins had swallowed up the dark secret of the missing boy.
Anderson could never let himself forget about that boy he’d been unable to save though. It was a regret he’d felt every day since, and one that had followed him into retirement and eventually into the grave. It had been ultimately why he’d picked Hopper as his successor all those years later; even as a wet-behind-the-ears rookie, Hopper had dedicated himself entirely to leading search parties and hunting down potential witnesses. He’d been shaken by the idea that a Hawkins kid could be snatched right out from under them without a trace. It was a pain Hopper later felt much more keenly, much more personally, but back in those days he’d felt it for a little boy he’d never even met.
Anderson knew he was leaving the position in good hands. By the time he passed away, nearly a decade after what they’d ultimately ruled as a kidnapping with no suspects, there was hardly anyone who still thought of the missing boy, and none who spoke about him. Because Hawkins was a safe town. It was friendly and quiet and you knew your neighbors, and there was absolutely nothing to be afraid of. It’s what everyone said, so it had to be true.
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On June 25th, 1978, a young boy emerged from the woods, and something unhinged in Hawkins clicked quietly back into place.