A Disappearance Echoes
247 Words
She carried the red notebook to the living room and sat cross-legged on the rug, the afternoon light fading into a soft orange glow. She opened the notebook again, slower this time, letting her eyes linger on each line.
Her mother described Lety’s last day in vivid detail—what she wore, what she said to her friends, the way she hesitated at the corner of Maple and Third as if she sensed something was wrong.
Marisol whispered the words aloud, tasting the mix of languages on her tongue.
“La niña que desapareció no se fue sola…”
The sentence felt heavy, like it carried more than one meaning.
She flipped to the next page.
A drawing covered the bottom half—a girl standing at the edge of a river, her reflection distorted into something monstrous. Above her, the same circle-with-three-lines symbol hovered like a warning.
Marisol traced the drawing with her fingertip.
Her mother had been a storyteller, yes. But she had never drawn like this. Never written like this. Never mixed languages and symbols and warnings like this.
This wasn’t fiction.
This was something else.
Something dangerous.
A floorboard creaked behind her.
She froze.
“Dad?” she called.
Silence.
The house felt too still, like it was holding its breath.
She closed the notebook and hugged it to her chest.
Her mother had left her something.
A story.
A warning.
A secret.
And Marisol wasn’t sure she wanted to know the rest.
- Writer
