THE VANISHING TOWN

The smell of stale coffee and bacon grease clung to the air in the diner, but Rachel could barely taste her food. She sat stiffly in the booth, her mind racing over the waitress’s words: *Crescent Falls ain’t finished with you.* The group had escaped the eerie town, but it felt as though a shadow still loomed over them, creeping closer with every moment of silence.

Mark was the first to break the tension. “We need to get out of here. Now.”

Rachel shook her head. “We can’t just keep running, Mark. The town’s gone. The place doesn’t exist anymore, but somehow… we were there. We need to find out what happened.”

Mark glared at her, his fingers drumming the table impatiently. “That’s exactly what I’m saying. We leave. We go somewhere far away and never look back. I’m done chasing ghosts.”

“Ghosts don’t trap people,” Dani whispered, her eyes wide. “That place was real. The people—or whatever they were—were real. We can’t just pretend this didn’t happen.”

Luke, who had been silent since the waitress’s chilling warning, leaned forward, his voice low. “She said it burned down. Fifty years ago. That’s not something we can ignore. We were in a town that doesn’t exist anymore.”

Rachel nodded, her thoughts swirling. “If the town burned down, there must be a record of it somewhere. A library, maybe? We could check the archives. Find out what really happened.”

Mark threw his hands up in frustration. “And then what? Huh? What do we do when we find out the town was wiped off the map decades ago? What’s the point?”

“The point,” Rachel said firmly, “is that we’re being followed by something. And if we don’t figure out what it is, it’ll find us. I don’t know about you, but I’m not waiting around for that to happen.”

Mark clenched his jaw, but didn’t argue. He leaned back in his seat, crossing his arms. “Fine. But if we hit a dead end, we’re leaving. No more of this.”

Rachel agreed, her gut telling her they were already too deep to turn back now.

---

The small-town library wasn’t far from the diner. It was a brick building with tall windows, dusty and quiet, as if no one had set foot inside for years. Inside, the group was greeted by the soft hum of old fluorescent lights and the smell of yellowed paper. A librarian, a thin, elderly woman with wire-framed glasses, glanced up from behind the front desk.

“Can I help you folks?” she asked, her voice kind but distant.

Rachel stepped forward, trying to keep her voice calm. “We’re looking for information on a town called Crescent Falls. We heard there was a fire—maybe around fifty years ago? Do you have any records or archives?”

The librarian’s expression darkened, much like the waitress’s had. She slowly stood up, eyes narrowing as she took in the group. “Why do you want to know about Crescent Falls?”

“We passed through the area,” Rachel replied, choosing her words carefully. “Something happened there, and we’re just trying to understand what.”

The librarian stared at her for a long moment before sighing. “Not many people ask about Crescent Falls anymore. There’s not much to tell.” She hesitated. “But I can show you what we have.”

Rachel followed the librarian to a back room where rows of old newspapers were kept in dusty filing cabinets. The librarian opened one of the cabinets, pulling out a thick folder labeled “Crescent Falls – 1973.”

She placed the folder on the table, her hands shaking slightly as she flipped it open. The first page was an old newspaper article, dated July 8, 1973. The headline read: *“Tragedy Strikes Crescent Falls—Town Destroyed in Fire, Hundreds Lost.”*

Rachel’s heart skipped a beat as she read the article. The story described a mysterious fire that swept through Crescent Falls in the middle of the night, destroying the entire town and claiming the lives of nearly all its residents. There were no survivors. No one had ever figured out how the fire started.

“That’s impossible,” Dani murmured, her voice trembling. “We were there. The buildings were still standing.”

Luke flipped through the pages, finding more articles about the aftermath of the fire. Investigations were conducted, but no cause was ever found. The town was left in ruins, eventually abandoned, and forgotten.

But then something caught Rachel’s eye.

At the bottom of one of the articles, a small paragraph mentioned something strange. *“In the days following the fire, rescue teams reported sightings of shadowy figures wandering the outskirts of the town. No bodies were recovered.”*

Rachel felt a chill crawl down her spine. “The figures,” she whispered, “they’ve been there since the fire.”

Mark leaned over the table, his face pale. “You’re saying those… things we saw were the people who died in the fire?”

“I don’t know,” Rachel admitted, her mind racing. “But whatever they are, they’ve been there for fifty years. Waiting.”

Dani shivered, wrapping her arms around herself. “Waiting for what?”

---

The librarian had left them alone with the folder, but as they gathered the articles and prepared to leave, Rachel noticed something odd. The room had grown colder, the air heavier. The hum of the fluorescent lights seemed louder, more grating, and her skin prickled with the feeling of being watched.

“Do you guys feel that?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

Luke glanced around, his eyes narrowing. “Yeah. Something’s off.”

Suddenly, the lights flickered, casting the room in momentary darkness before they snapped back on. Rachel’s breath caught in her throat as she looked around the room. In the far corner, standing motionless by the doorway, was a figure. Its face was blank, pale, and featureless—just like the ones they had seen in Crescent Falls.

“Mark…” Rachel’s voice trembled, her eyes locked on the figure.

He turned, his face going white. “Oh God.”

Before any of them could move, the lights flickered again, and more figures appeared, materializing out of the shadows. They were closing in, their blank faces turned toward the group as if drawn by their presence.

“We need to get out of here,” Dani whispered, her voice cracking with fear.

Rachel grabbed the folder, clutching it to her chest. “Run!”

The group bolted from the room, sprinting down the narrow hallway toward the exit. The figures followed silently, their movements unnaturally slow but relentless. The hum grew louder, a high-pitched whine filling their ears as they burst through the library’s front doors and into the sunlight.

Panting, they stumbled into the parking lot, their hearts racing. The figures hadn’t followed them outside, but the sound of the buzzing still echoed in their minds.

“What was that?” Luke gasped, his hands on his knees as he tried to catch his breath. “They found us again. We’re not safe here.”

Rachel’s mind raced as she clutched the articles tightly in her hands. The fire, the missing bodies, the figures—everything was connected. But there was still something missing. Something they hadn’t uncovered yet.

“We have to find out what really happened to Crescent Falls,” Rachel said, her voice steady despite the fear gnawing at her. “Whatever’s following us—it’s tied to that town. And until we understand what happened, it won’t stop.”

Mark stared at her, his face pale. “Where do we even start?”

Rachel glanced down at the folder in her hands. The truth was somewhere in those pages. She just knew it. But as she looked up at the empty street ahead, she couldn’t shake the feeling that they were running out of time.

“First,” Rachel said, her eyes determined, “we need to go back. There’s something in Crescent Falls that we missed.”

The group fell into silence. The last place they wanted to return to was Crescent Falls—but deep down, they all knew the truth.

It wasn’t finished with them.

---

**To Be Continued...**