Gone baby, gone.

Part one.

Small talk and long conversations stopped. Banks unused, key card unused, phone location was off and it had been for two weeks now. Like he vanished into thin air. I was concerned to say the least. Months went by with no contact at all. I figured that I had done something wrong. I thought my son would still be out there. Lost. Confused. Withdrawing. From medication and drugs.

He was working on his mental health or at least he said he was, could have been a lie. He hit the road with a couple of friends, I contacted them and they said that Johnathon wandered off when they stopped to get petrol and they didn't have time to stop. As they had to get to their campsite at a certain time before the gates closed for the night. My heart was racing and my emotions turned to panic and unconrolable sadness came pouring down on me. Had I failed as a mother. I shouldn't have let him go. I thought.

I filed a missing persons report to police and he was on the local news at six o'clock pm. The tenth month of the tenth year and also on the ten o'clock news.. Three months went by and still no contact. I was stressing more and more. My husband Jack was hysterical Johnathon was his best friend and his dad. He has two brothers Mitchell and Leo. They are missing him terribly. Leo the youngest keeps having nightmares and calling for Johnathon. Crying in his sleep. Leo is four and Mitchell is twelve. Mitchell was very sad but he kept a tough face for everyone otherwise we would all fall apart really quickly piece by piece.

The last time he was seen was on CCTV leaving the servo. You could see him wandering off into the wilderness of a ghost town. Called Shadows Hill. It wasn't much but it was a lead. I put up a page dedicated to Johnathon on Facebook. Hoping that someone has seen something or heard something from his friends.

"Search for Johnathon" is what I called it. The police decided to search around the petrol station where he was last seen.

They found his Wallet with his photo ID card next to a tree buried in the ruble of the bush.

I thought maybe he fell and was hurt. Or maybe he fell near the creek and couldn't get up. By now he would be completely dehydrated and his energy would be deflated. He would be starving and cold.

His friends said they couldn't find him when they called for him at the petrol station. But there was no answer back. We put up flyers on everything we could. Telegraph poles, shop windows everything.

Jack took time off work to help around the house as I was bedridden, my heart was broken and my soul didn't exist anymore. My hope was running out. I feared the worst. I kept seeing his face in my dreams but then he would be dragged away into the darkness. I was sure he was trying to communicate with me in my dreams. I would cry myself to sleep and wake up crying every morning. Shaking unable to talk.

I was constantly checking the Facebook page, never away from my phone my brain being buried in comments on Facebook and Instagram.

His girlfriend came to visit me. We had a chat about what we could do next. We arranged a search party and the community was quite happy to help. About a hundred people showed up. Friends from school, close family and family friends and some people that I didn't know wanted to help too. I was grateful.

My fears were eating me. I was slightly in denial. Thinking that we'd find him in the bush somewhere across the road from the petrol station. The day he went missing he wore a fluro pink shirt and black shorts. He had a tattoo on his leg filled with the family name which is Williamson. We all thought he was okay and happy and that he was going to get off the drugs when he came home.

As I talked to the boys things got clearer but not closer and no clarity.

They said that they had a huge drop off somewhere near the Golden Shire. A place where people would run to if they got into trouble. A hiding place noticed for it's strange eerie silence. A ghost down but not abandoned the only way you could get there was to walk. Not located on any man's map. I tried ringing his phone but it went straight to the message bank.

His voice made me cry. His voice was deep but cherpy. Shadows Hill has had many disappearances. Even children as young as two years old.

My hole world was upside down. Our world was upside down. It felt cold I had hit rock bottom. I felt like a puppet on a string. Trapped, and stretched to the core. As I laid in bed my thoughts were running wild. Jack was doing his best at comforting me. I just didn't understand that my son wasn't coming home. I didn't understand anything at this point. I refused to see a shrink. I just couldn't tell my son's story again unless it was to the police or the investigators.

It just got to much. There was a comment that struck me it read "he could be dead." That made it seem soreal. What if he is dead. I decided to talk to his friend again his name was Cooper. He called to check how I was going and I asked him what happened again.

He said that Johnathon had to make a deal with some fellas and he got scared took the drugs and ran off. When his friends searched the car the drugs were gone. They were selling drugs from their car and doing deliveries. Which is why they eloped. But now the drugs weren't there they had to turn back. He explained that they had every drug you could take and Johnathon took them all. Enough to kill eight men.

I was distraught, I was in agony. My boy couldn't have done that. I thought. I just didn't understand at all. My head still buried in comments. Reading all of them with the help from Lilly Johnathon's girlfriend. They had been together for four years, when he got back he was going to ask her for her hand in marriage. He just seemed so happy.

Jack couldn't bear to look at the comments. He was facing demons every day to. He tried to put on a smile but the smile quickly turned to tears. He got into bed with me and he hugged me so tightly. We cried together. He hugged me for four hours and just cried while the kids were at day care and school.

The house got messy really fast and I just couldn't be bothered. I was out of energy I was not eating properly. I was loosing weight every second. I had barely slept. But I still refused to talk to a shrink. Even though the police suggested it. It had been six months now since his disappearance and still nothing but his wallet with his photo identification card. Still no banks had been used, no phone location had been on, completely left in the darkness.

Part two.

An inquest was made to help find Johnathon. Police marines searched the creek. Searched the dimensions of the bush. Phoned, hospitals, jails, friends, family the car they took. Nothing. There was a court hearing that was held and they dumbed it down to "death of exposure".

Everyone that knew Johnathon knew that couldn't have been true. I was a mess. I started to believe that he was murdered for taking the drugs because every time one of his friends told me two different stories. They didn't match at all. Which meant they were probably hiding something. My plan was to expose them in an interview with the detectives of The Golden Shire and the detectives of Shadows Hill where he was last seen.

Seven months had gone by and still nothing. The inquests were useless. I felt useless. My husband felt like he failed, I felt like I failed. I got out of bed and I searched his room. Looked at the photos of him and his friends collaged on his walls. The love notes from Lilly. I also found pills tucked under his bed in the gap between the mattress and the base. They were extasy pills. I was shocked to say the least. I knew he had a drug problem but I didn't know it was this bad. I thought he was just smoking yandi. Yandi is harmless so I just let him do it at home where he was safe.

Then we found a phone also hidden in his mattress and a stash of money, a hundred dollars bills. He was a drug dealer and a drug taker. We wondered why he was always broke.

I was distraught and disappointed in myself for not noticing. Then we found a phone a black nokia.

I showed them to Jack and he went ballistic. We decided to do a little investigation of our own. His phone didn't have a pin so that was lucky. We looked at his messages and Johnathon was in a lot of trouble.

A message from someone named Christa and a hole bunch of message threads.

One wrote "I'll kill you mother fucker, if you don't give me the $5,000 you owe me by tomorrow I'll come looking for ya. You will just vanish. Your family won't know a single thing I'll just make it look like a bloody accident."

I took this straight to the police to see if they could track the caller. They told me to go home and get some rest and they'll see what they could do. The police officer didn't seem very genuine. I was not going home and I was not resting. I went to the local bar and asked if I could put a photo of Johnathon on the wall. They let me.

I ended up getting six shots of whisky at our local pub and I could barely stand up. I called Jack and he got me a taxi home. I left our car at the bar. When I got home Jack was waiting for me out the front. He raced over to the taxi and paid the guy with cash. He opened my door and I was loose. He picked me up with his big broad shoulders and carried me to bed. Thankfully the kids were asleep. But Jack said they were crying for me and were hard to get to sleep.

He undressed me and took my shoes off and changed me in to my pjayamas and put the blanket over me and my head on my pillow. I went straight to sleep. Jack is a good, kind man he has been our hole marriage. I have the biggest rock on my finger and for that I was greatful.

I woke up the next morning absolutely trashed. My head hurt and I couldn't stop vomiting in the bucket next to my bed. Jack put me in the shower and grabbed some comfortable clothes, trackies and a singlet.

"Your to good to me." I said with my head inbetween my knees.

I felt the warm soapy water on my back as Jack rubbed it squeaky clean. He washed my hair. Got my towel and dried me and helped me put my clothes on and I went back to bed. He took the kids to school and I was alone for a moment.

* I thought to myself, what if he is dead. What if I never see him again. My baby, my boy. Where are you?" I screamed into my pillow so the neighbours couldn't hear me.

",I just don't understand."

There was a knock on the door maybe Jack forgot his suit case or something. It wasn't Jack it was the detectives from Shadows Hill. They introduced themselves. Their names were Emily and Garry.

"May we come in?" Emily asked with a long face.

"Sure." I replied not knowing what to expect..

"Christa confessed to everything." Emily said as she said down on the lounge.

"What do you mean?" I replied with tears running down my face..

"We found Johnathon's body it washed up on our shores this morning in the creek. But we need you to identify him..I'm.so sorry Mrs Williamson. But your boy is gone. Christa executed him to the flesh and put shackles on his feet so that he would sink immediately down to the bottom of the creek, His shackles got stuck inbetween rocks. I am so so sorry Mrs Williamson. " She explained holding my hand.

I was in shock, I dropped to my knees and started to scream. Emily held me as I got down on to the floor. My baby boy was dead. I called Jack and I asked Emily to ask him to come home because I couldn't move I couldn't speak. I was frozen. I was hyperventilating and I vomited on the floor. I could not get up my legs and my feet were tingling my face was hot from screaming.

Jack ran through the door almost slipping over he saw the detectives trying to comfort me and that's when he knew what happened. He dropped down to the floor on my level and wrapped his arms around me.

"I don't understand. "Jack mumbled with tears running down his face.

"We have to go down to the creek to identify his body Jack. Christa confessed to everything." I screamed..

Jack got up and helped me get up with his hands. The detectives offered us a ride and we accepted. I was in shock. I didn't know what to do.

"Please oh please don't make it be him." I thought.

We walked down to the creek trying not to fall in the mud. I saw a body that was half degraded I examined the face and I dropped to my knees and hugged his body which was cold. His lips were blue, there was no colour left in him. His eyes where open and I slowly closed them. His fluro pink shirt torn to shreds. His tattoos eaten away. His flesh visible and the truama of his body was sited. I held him in my arms. While I was screaming.

"I don't understand." I cried.

The female detective Emily held me as I was holding him trying to get me away from him. Jack was absolutely distraught and screaming with me. Shaking. Johnathon was gone. The shackles on his feet still attached, his face was degrated and his skin was scaly because of the water. He had strangle marks on his throat and a stab wound near his heart. I couldn't let go of him. But I had to so that the coroner could examine him. Jack took my hands away from him and I loosened my grip.

I couldn't get up. I was covered in mud and so was Jack. As I got up I was shaky with my feet. My whole body was numb. The detectives put him in a body bag and zipped it up. I'll forever remember the sound of that zip. It haunts me in my dreams. And I think It will forever. The detectives told me to go home and have a shower followed by some rest. How the fuck could I rest my son is dead. I thought in my head. I was so angry. I'd never felt this angry before.

I hoped his killer would be in jail for the rest of his life. But he only got fourteen years behind bars. The court process was long and hard. Johnathon got no justice. We got no justice, we got no clarity we got no remorse for Christa. But I had so many questions for him. Like why he killed my son because of a debt that he owed. I just wish I realised sooner then this. Maybe I could have helped him get clean like he said he was going to. But I guess it just got to much. My father his grandfather Joseph had passed away a few weeks before Johnathon vanished. Maybe that was a big factor of him doing drugs.

I didn't know what to tell the boys when they came home from school that day. I sat in silence. Jack went out to pick the boys up from school. I ran the shower and cried desperately wishing that it was my life and not his. I will forever blame myself. The pain never goes away. Agony.

We planned a funeral for him at the local church. The anthology was short but sweet. His brothers carried his coffin and screamed as he was buried in the ground. I held the boys as tightly as possible. I made a promise to them that I would always be here for them. No matter what and that Johnathon was the brightest star in the sky watching over them.

The boys grew up without their brother. Jack and I aged without our son. We got thin, we could never eat much. We had to look at our dinner table and realise that our son would never be sitting in his own seat for dinner or desert. We left the chair empty because the boys said that Johnathon was sitting on it. Despair.