Flashback
508 Words
Lena didn’t mean to fall asleep, but she did, still in her clothes, lying diagonally across the bed, clutching the edges of Emily’s old notebook like a lifeline.
She dreamed of lights.
Blinding, spinning lights.
And Emily’s voice, calling her name.
It was the last Saturday of summer break.
The Ridgewood Fair had arrived like it always did, set up in the school’s open field, with its tilting Ferris wheel and rusted popcorn machines. The air had smelled like sugar, oil, and grass. Lena and Emily had begged their parents for five more minutes, then five more after that, until the sky turned gold and purple and the stars started peeking through.
Emily had worn denim overalls and jelly sandals, her hair pulled up in two messy braids. She was always the braver one. Always the one who dared first, who climbed highest, who laughed the loudest.
“Come on, slowpoke,” she had said, tugging Lena by the wrist. “Let’s go to the fortune teller’s tent.”
Lena had hesitated. “What if it’s scary?”
Emily had grinned. “Then we scream and run out and get cotton candy. Duh.”
That was Emily. Everything was an adventure. Everything could be fixed with sugar and laughter.
They never made it to the tent.
Lena didn’t remember the exact moment Emily disappeared, only the hole she left behind.
One minute they were standing near the carousel. The next, Lena had turned around, and she was gone.
No scream. No goodbye.
Just...gone.
She remembered calling her name, over and over until her voice cracked. Remembered running through the crowd, breathless and frantic, until her mom found her crying near the prize booth.
The police came. They questioned everyone. They searched the fairgrounds, the woods, the creek.
Nothing.
Not a single trace of Emily.
Some people said she ran away. Others said she was taken. A few whispered about something darker something unspoken that lingered behind closed doors and shuttered windows.
Lena had told them everything she could. But there was one thing she’d never said not to the police, not to her parents, not even to Aunt Claire.
An hour before Emily vanished, she had gone pale and quiet. Her laughter had stopped. She kept glancing over her shoulder. Kept saying someone was watching them.
“Do you see him?” Emily had whispered.
“Who?”
But Emily never answered.
She just shook her head and smiled like it was nothing.
But it wasn’t nothing.
Lena woke with a sharp inhale, the notebook still clutched in her arms. Her room was dark now, save for the orange glow of the streetlight outside. Crickets chirped in the distance, their song sharp and mechanical.
She sat up slowly, heart thudding in her chest.
The memory clung to her like cobwebs. She hadn’t thought about the fair in years — not like that. Not with such vivid detail. And she hadn’t remembered that final conversation until now.
Someone was watching them.
Emily had felt it.
And maybe...they never stopped.
- Writer
