The mist rolled low over the cracked asphalt of Route 7, thick as breath on glass. It was just past 5 a.m. when Deputy Alice Mercer spotted the shape. At first, it looked like a post, or maybe a scarecrow left too close to the tree line. But as she slowed her cruiser, the outline grew clearer—slender, human, unmoving.
Alice had been in law enforcement for over fifteen years, but she'd grown up here in this same town, just like most of the people she served. She wasn't someone prone to superstition, but she remembered the old stories. The missing girl. The search parties. The silent river.
The figure stood at the edge of the riverbank—barefoot, thin, and trembling faintly in the cold dawn air. She wore what might have once been a nightgown, now tattered and filthy, soaked through with mud and dew. Dried blood crusted one shin. Her skin was pale as frost. Clumps of dirt were tangled into her hair, which was once light brown but had darkened with grime. Her face was gaunt, cheeks hollow, lips split and dry.
Alice stopped the car and stepped out cautiously. The crunch of her boots on gravel echoed too loudly. "Ma'am?" she called. "Are you hurt?"
The girl didn't move.
Alice approached slowly, her pulse quickening. The closer she got, the more unsettling the scene became. The girl's eyes were open—glass-clear and fixed. Her arms hung limp at her sides, her fingers curled as if she'd been holding onto something that wasn't there anymore.
For a few seconds, Alice didn't recognize her. She looked too thin, too aged by something deeper than time. But there was something about the shape of her jaw, the angle of her cheekbones. A memory tugged at Alice's brain.
She had been a patrol rookie when the town lost Esme Winslow. She remembered the search flyers taped to telephone poles, the vigils, the press conferences. She remembered Esme's face—not as it looked now, but soft and hopeful on a school photo. Still, it wasn't the photo that struck her.
It was the scar.
A faint, silver line just under the girl's left eyebrow. Alice remembered it because her own daughter had pointed it out once, when Esme went missing: "She has a scar like me."
It couldn't be her. Esme Winslow was declared dead five years ago. But the scar—God, the scar...
"Esme?" Alice whispered.
The girl turned her head. Her neck moved stiffly, like her body wasn't used to weight anymore. Her gaze met Alice's.
Alice felt her breath catch. There was no confusion in the girl's eyes. Just stillness.
"Are you… do you know who you are?"
The girl blinked slowly. Then, voice dry and barely audible:
"I was elsewhere."
Alice stood frozen for a moment longer, then moved slowly, deliberately. "I'm going to help you into the car, alright?"
The girl gave no response but didn't resist. Alice guided her—one careful step at a time—through the damp grass and gravel back to the cruiser. The girl's skin was cold through the thin fabric, colder than the morning could account for. Each step seemed to require enormous effort, as if she was remembering how legs worked.
At the cruiser, Alice hesitated. Protocol said cuffs for anyone being transported who wasn't under arrest—for their safety and hers. But looking at this girl, this ghost of Esme Winslow, she couldn't do it. Instead, she opened the back door, revealing the hard plastic seats and the cage partition that separated the back from the front. The car smelled of coffee and the pine air freshener dangling from the rearview mirror—normal smells that seemed obscene next to this impossible girl.
Alice helped her sit, noting how Esme's body folded into the space like she didn't quite understand the geometry of it. "I need to buckle you in," Alice said softly. The girl didn't respond, just stared at the mesh partition like she could see through it to somewhere else.
Alice clicked the seatbelt into place, her hands trembling. The girl's breathing was so shallow it barely fogged the window. Once back behind the wheel, Alice called in the find. "Possible ID match. Requesting medical response and record verification for Esme Winslow. Repeat, Esme Winslow."
She glanced into the rearview mirror.
The girl—Esme, maybe—sat statue-still, watching the sky lighten outside the window. She didn't speak. She didn't cry. Her posture was eerily perfect, like she'd been carved to fit the moment.
It took seventeen minutes to get to Memorial General. Seventeen minutes of silence except for the occasional burst of static from the radio and the hum of tires on asphalt. Alice kept glancing in the mirror, half-expecting the girl to vanish like morning mist. But she remained, solid and impossible.
Twice, Alice tried to make conversation. "Are you cold? I can turn up the heat." Nothing. "Do you remember what happened to you?" Silence. The girl just stared out the window as the town rolled past—the 24-hour gas station, the elementary school, the church where they'd held vigils. Places that should have meant something to Esme Winslow. Places that clearly meant nothing to whoever was sitting in the back of Alice's cruiser.
At the hospital, three nurses and a doctor met them at the emergency entrance. The automatic doors whooshed open, bringing a wave of antiseptic smell that made Esme flinch—the first real reaction Alice had seen. They helped her onto a gurney, and she moved like a marionette whose strings had been cut. She didn't protest. Her pulse was low. Body temperature was 94.3 degrees. Dehydrated. Malnourished. Her fingernails were cracked and stained with something that wasn't quite dirt. But the most shocking detail came later: her vision was perfect.
When Esme disappeared, she had been blind.
Now, she tracked faces. Read name tags. Watched her parents arrive.
Laura and Michael Winslow were unrecognizable versions of themselves—grayer, thinner. Laura collapsed into a chair as soon as she saw her daughter in a hospital bed. Michael stood frozen in the doorway, gripping the frame like he might fall without it.
"Esme," Laura sobbed, clutching her daughter's hand. She reached up with trembling fingers to touch her daughter's face, needing to confirm she was real, not another cruel dream. "It's Mom. We're here. You're safe."
Esme blinked at her. "Safe," she repeated softly, like she was trying the word for the first time.
"You've been gone," Michael said hoarsely. "Seven years."
Esme tilted her head. "That long?"
Laura looked at her husband, tears still streaming. "She doesn't recognize us."
Michael didn't cry. Instead, he moved to the visitor's chair and lowered himself slowly, mechanically, like his joints had aged decades in seconds. His hands gripped his knees so hard the knuckles went white.
"I remember falling," Esme murmured. "But not into the river."
Laura frowned. "Where then?"
Esme's eyes drifted to the ceiling. "Somewhere cold. Somewhere… bright."
Michael's voice came out strangled. "Esme, you were blind when you left. Do you know that?"
"I remember darkness," she said. "But it wasn't empty."
Laura leaned closer, voice gentle. "Where were you?"
Esme's eyes flicked toward her, but her expression didn't change. "I don't know."
Michael finally spoke again, his voice soft but urgent. "Esme, do you remember us? Me? Mom?"
Esme looked between them—blankly, distantly. Her lips parted, then closed again. Her gaze wandered past them, to the IV line, to the white tile on the floor. "I don't know who you are," she said. "But you feel... familiar."
Laura's hand trembled slightly as she gripped her daughter's fingers. "It's okay. We're here now. Just rest."
Esme's eyes slowly drifted to the corner of the room, where a soft shadow stretched toward the ceiling. Her voice came as a whisper, more to herself than to anyone else. "There was someone... I think she helped me."
Michael leaned forward. "A nurse?"
Esme shook her head faintly. "No. Not here. Before."
Laura exchanged a glance with the doctor standing silently near the door.
"I don't remember her name," Esme murmured. "Maybe I never knew it."
And that was all she said.
She stayed in the hospital for two more days under observation. No signs of lasting trauma. No explanation. Her memories came in fractured pieces. She spoke calmly, often abstractly. When questioned, she responded clearly—but with answers that made little sense.
Detective Miles Renn was brought in. A thirty-something with soft eyes, a quick mind, and a tired soul. On the morning of Esme's third day at Memorial General, the hospital staff—unsure of her mental state but needing answers—transferred her under quiet supervision to a secured psychiatric interview room within the facility.
The walk there was a study in contrasts. Esme moved between the nurse and orderly like water, flowing rather than stepping. The hospital corridors were bright with fluorescent light that made her squint and turn her face away. She passed other patients—an elderly man with a walker, a woman holding a newborn—and each time, she stopped and stared as if she'd never seen such things before. The nurse had to gently guide her forward.
The interview room wasn't a cell, but it wasn't soft, either. White walls that seemed to press inward. Stainless steel fixtures that caught the overhead light like knives. No windows—just an air vent that hummed with recycled air. The door locked with a soft click that made Esme's shoulders tense. She was walked to a bolted-down chair and sat without being asked, her posture perfect, her hands folded in her lap.
She's not catatonic, Miles thought as he entered, taking in her stillness. But this is something else. Something I've never seen.
He slid a bottle of water across the table. Esme didn't reach for it. She stared past him, at a corner of the wall where the paint had bubbled slightly. Her breathing was so controlled it seemed practiced.
"Esme," he said gently, "can you tell me where you were?"
She didn't look at him. Her lips barely moved. "I don't know."
"Do you remember anything at all? Anyone?"
Her eyes finally shifted, landing on the table between them. The metal surface reflected the overhead lights, creating patterns that seemed to hold her attention. "There was water," she said. "And glass. And a humming sound. It never stopped."
Miles kept his voice low. "Were you alone?"
Esme hesitated. For the first time, something flickered across her face—not quite fear, but recognition of something she didn't want to remember. "No. But I can't remember their names."
"Did someone hurt you?"
She didn't answer. Her fingers, which had been perfectly still, began to trace small circles on her thigh. Round and round, like she was drawing something only she could see.
Miles leaned back slightly. He hesitated, then set his pen down. "We found some of your old school files. You had trouble with your vision, right? And some notes about… anxiety?"
He paused. "We're just trying to understand where you've been. You don't have to explain everything now. Just… something."
A pause. Then the faintest flicker in her eyes. But no words.
"Was there a way out?"
Still silence. But her finger-circles grew faster, more agitated. The fluorescent light above them flickered once, and Esme flinched like she'd been struck.
Miles closed his notebook. "It's alright. We'll take it one day at a time."
Esme's gaze drifted to the air vent. The humming from the ventilation system seemed to grow louder, filling the room. Her breathing synced with it.
She whispered, almost too faint to hear: "I wasn't supposed to come back."
He didn't write that down.
On the third day, she was discharged. No legal case could hold her. She had no wounds, no proof of abduction. Her parents signed for her and took her home, Michael's signature shaky, Laura's tear-stained.
The drive home was twenty minutes of suffocating silence. Esme sat in the back seat of her parents' sedan—not a police cruiser this time, but somehow the space felt smaller. The car smelled of Laura's lavender hand lotion and the vanilla air freshener that had probably been there for years. Normal smells. Home smells. They made Esme press herself against the window.
The Winslow house hadn't changed much. The same faded blue siding, the same crack in the driveway that Michael had always meant to fix. Neighbors' curtains twitched as they pulled up. Word had already spread—the Winslow girl was back. The impossible girl.
Her room had been kept intact—part shrine, part time capsule. Posters on the walls of bands she didn't remember liking. A dusty bookshelf filled with books she couldn't recall reading. Clothes still folded in drawers, smelling of the lavender sachets her mother refreshed every few months, waiting for a girl who was supposed to be dead.
Esme stood in the doorway for a long time, like crossing the threshold required courage she didn't have.
When she finally entered, she moved like a stranger. She ran her fingers across the edge of the dresser, picking up dust. Opened drawers without purpose, staring at clothes that belonged to someone else—someone younger, someone who could see only darkness. She sat on the bed, stiffly, as if unsure how beds worked. The mattress creaked under her weight, a sound that made her freeze.
She glanced at the mirror on the opposite wall and flinched. Then slowly walked toward it.
Her reflection stared back: thin, pale, older than her years. Eyes too wide. Expression unreadable. She raised a hand to touch the glass, and for a moment—just a moment—she thought she saw something else in those reflected eyes. Something that wasn't quite her.
She turned away.
That night, long after her parents had gone to bed (she could hear her mother crying softly through the walls, her father's low murmur of comfort), Esme lay staring at the ceiling. She didn't blink much. Shadows twitched at the corners of her vision. She didn't move.
She lay still for what felt like hours, watching the ceiling blur into shadow. The air in the room was heavy—not warm, not cold, just too quiet. Too still. Like the house itself was holding its breath. Her fingers curled into the blanket like she was holding on, anchoring herself to this world that felt tissue-thin.
Something moved—no, not moved. Shifted. As if the room itself had blinked.
She sat up slowly, head turning toward the far corner of the room, the one that never quite caught the light from the street lamp outside. It was empty. But her breath caught anyway. The darkness there seemed deeper, more substantial. Like it was watching her back.
Esme got up and walked to the window. The old floorboards creaked under her bare feet—a sound that should have been familiar but wasn't. She pressed her palm to the glass. It was cold, colder than the room, colder than the night outside. Her reflection looked back—fragile, thin, unreadable.
For a moment, the reflection didn't move.
Then it did.
Her heart jumped. She turned sharply. The room behind her was still.
But something in her chest whispered: this wasn't over.
She had come back. But not all of her.
And maybe—not entirely by choice.
Behind her, the floor creaked. Just once. No wind. No footsteps. No shadows.
Esme turned around slowly.
Nothing. Just her room. Still and small and suffocating. But the air felt different now. Charged. Like the moment before lightning strikes.
But she didn't go back to bed.
She stayed at the window, waiting. Not because she expected someone to appear—but because some part of her already knew something was watching.
She breathed in. Steady. The glass fogged with her breath, obscuring her reflection.
And for the first time since she returned, she whispered a word even she didn't understand:
"Soon."