Being a security guard was never easy. Especially not in the summer when the kids were let loose, and tourists flocked, and the heat drove everyone a special kind of insane. Especially not in a town like Santa Carla, the land of the weird, wild, and wonderful, where all the country's miscreants and mischief makers seemed to congregate. It was exhausting, but less so than it used to be. It wasn't just experience finally building up enough to make the job a little more easy, more tolerable. Something was wrong, and Rick Bolan couldn't put his finger on it.

Santa Carla had changed.

On the surface, everything had stayed the same. The kids were weird and only getting weirder, the tourists annoying and clueless as ever. There were still fights to break up and thieves to track down, gangs of hoodlums to shoo off the boardwalk. But there was something in the air, or rather, there wasn't, that made the back of Rick's neck prickle as the sun slowly began its descent below the horizon and the boardwalk came alive with lights and sounds. It felt deserted somehow, haunted. The way a school felt after hours, empty of students and faculty and fundamentally different from its usual self even though nothing had actually changed. It felt, almost, like he was holding his breath, waiting for something that he wasn't actually sure would come; wasn't sure he wanted to come. It was unnerving, shook him to the core.

The heat. It had been a long summer. It must be getting to him.

Rick sighed. The bulletin board had been mostly empty for a while now. For the first time in years the cork that had been buried beneath layers of missing peoples fliers was exposed, looking almost new despite its age. There were fluorescent advertisements for the end of the season concerts; pages declaring rooms for rent or jobs that were hiring; a vandalised pamphlet for the Church of Latter Day Saints. He pulled a sheet from the bundle he carried in his bag and stapled it in the direct center of the board. Something felt right as he took a step back to regard the face staring blankly out across the boardwalk, the lips not quite managing a smile, the hair styled into its picture day best. It felt normal.

Jane Harrison. Missing since August 9, 1989.

Perhaps Santa Carla hadn't changed after all.

This is my attempt at giving the Lost Boys the sequel it deserves. I hope you hang around to see how it turns out.