PRETTY LOST GIRLS

Jessica was 16 when she vanished. Not run away. Not kidnapped by a stranger in a van. She just... disappeared. One minute she was walking home from school, her backpack bouncing against her spine, her laugh carrying across the cornfields. The next, the road was empty. And no one asked questions. That was the first rule of Linden Falls. Pretty girls disappear. You don't talk about it. I was 15 then. Jessica's little sister. Sarah. For a year, I watched my mother set an extra plate at the table. I watched my father stare at the road where Jessica was last seen, as if staring hard enough would bring her back. I watched the town move on, because in Linden, missing girls were as common as summer storms. Then the letters started coming. The first one arrived on a Tuesday, tucked into my locker. No stamp. No return address. Just my name in handwriting I would know anywhere. _Sarah's_ handwriting. _HELP ME. THE HOUSE AT THE EDGE OF THE WOODS. THEY'RE NOT WHAT THEY SEEM._ My heart stopped. Jessica was alive. The second letter came two days later. _THEY TOOK THE OTHERS. DON'T TRUST THE SHERIFF._ I didn't sleep that night. I stared at the ceiling, listening to my parents breathe in the next room, listening to the wind move through the corn that surrounded our town like a wall. Linden Falls had always been too perfect. Too quiet. The kind of town where everyone smiles too wide and waves too slow. Where the high school football team never loses, the corn never dies, and girls like Jessica—blonde, bright, beautiful—vanish without a single search party. I knew what the sheriff would say. Runaway. Attention-seeking. She'll be back. But Jessica didn't run. The house at the edge of the woods was real. We called it the Old Miller House, an abandoned farmhouse swallowed by trees at the end of Route 9. No one went there. Kids said it was haunted. Adults said it was unsafe. At midnight, I took my father's flashlight and I walked. The corn was high that October, taller than me, whispering as I pushed through it. My breath came in white puffs. The air smelled like wet earth and rot. Then I saw the light. A faint, yellow light in the upstairs window of the Miller House. And a silhouette. A girl. Her hair long. Jessica. I ran. Branches tore at my jacket, mud sucked at my shoes. I didn't care. I burst through the front door, shouting her name. "Jessica! Jessica, I'm here!" The house was empty. The light was gone. But on the dusty floor, fresh footprints. And on the wall, scratched into the wood with something sharp, more words: _WE ARE STILL HERE. FIND US. BEFORE YOU'RE NEXT._ Behind me, the front door slammed shut. I spun around, heart hammering. Standing in the doorway was not Jessica. It was another girl. My age. Her eyes wide with terror, her school uniform ripped. "You're Sarah?" she whispered. "Jessica's sister? She said you'd come. She said you were smart enough to find us." "Where is she?" I grabbed her arms. "Where is my sister?" The girl looked over her shoulder, into the dark woods. "They moved her," she said, and she started to cry. "Last week. They move us when someone gets too close. There are more of us, Sarah. So many more. And if you don't get out of this town now, you'll be one of us too." From deep inside the house, somewhere below the floorboards, I heard it. Scratching. And faint, faint singing. The school song. The one Jessica used to hum while doing homework. She was here. Underneath me. And I had just walked right into the trap