The Girl Who Vanished Twice

The first time Leah vanished, she was six years old.

It was a sticky summer afternoon in the quiet town of Arden Falls. Leah's mother, Marlene, had left her playing in the backyard while she ran inside to grab lemonade. When she returned, the swing was empty, swaying in the breeze. The gate was latched. There were no signs of a struggle—no footprints but Leah’s.

The whole town searched. Volunteers combed the woods, divers scoured the lake, and flyers with Leah’s freckled face and pink overalls plastered every lamppost. Days passed. Then weeks. Then months.

And then, nearly a year later, Leah came back.

She was found wandering near the edge of Miller’s Creek, barefoot, dazed, and holding a toy rabbit that had been buried with her favorite cousin two years earlier. Her clothes were clean but dated—like someone had dressed her in last season’s catalog. She remembered her name, her mother, and that she liked strawberry jam. But she had no memory of where she’d been.

The doctors said trauma. The town said miracle.

Marlene just said thank you.

Leah grew up quiet. A little stranger than the other kids. She rarely talked about her disappearance, and no one pressed her. She drew often—sketches of strange places: silver towers, misty meadows, tunnels made of trees. “Dreams,” she called them.

Her eyes always seemed to be looking at something that wasn’t quite there.

And then, on her seventeenth birthday, Leah vanished again.

This time, the police didn’t wait. They launched an investigation within hours. Her bedroom showed no signs of forced entry. No packed bags. Her phone was on her desk, buzzing with birthday messages she never replied to. She was just…gone.

People talked. Some blamed Marlene. Others whispered about the first disappearance—wondering if maybe Leah had never really come back. The old myths resurfaced: tales of the fae, of children taken by the forest. Arden Falls had always had those stories, passed down through generations like recipes.

But no one had expected to live one.


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Detective Arlen Thorne didn’t believe in stories. He believed in evidence, timelines, and motive. He was assigned Leah’s case after her second disappearance and quickly became obsessed. There was something wrong with the files from her first vanishing. Pages missing. Photos blurred or misfiled. One photo—of Leah the day she returned—had strange symbols drawn in the margins. Faint, like someone had tried to erase them.

He found the toy rabbit in the evidence box. Old. Worn. It still had dirt under its paws, despite being cleaned.

The autopsy report on Leah’s cousin—Amelia—said she’d died from a fall. But Arlen found something else in the coroner’s notes: a deep scratch along her ribcage, “as though made by a branch… or claws.” Not enough to kill her, but curious.

He visited Marlene.

She looked older than her years. Eyes hollowed by worry, lips trembled when she spoke. “Leah always said the trees talked to her. I didn’t listen. I thought she just had an imagination.”

Arlen pressed her for more. Marlene hesitated.

Then she handed him one of Leah’s journals.

The final entry read:

> “Tonight’s the night. I hear the song again. It’s louder than before. If I don’t come back, maybe I was never meant to stay. Maybe this world was only my first shadow.”



It was dated the day before her birthday.


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Three weeks later, Leah returned.

She walked into the Arden Falls Sheriff’s Office barefoot, wearing the same white dress she had on when she disappeared. It was clean. Untouched by the mud or weather. She looked seventeen, not a day older. Her hair had grown an inch. Her eyes… they were still Leah’s, but distant—like looking through glass.

She answered every question with calm detachment.

“I went where I belong.”

“Where is that?”

She smiled. “Where time doesn’t pass the same.”

“Were you taken?”

“No. I chose to go.”

Detective Thorne asked her what was in the woods.

“Doors,” she said.

“Where do they lead?”

“To everywhere,” she whispered, “and nowhere.”

Marlene wept when she saw her. But even she could tell—this wasn’t the same Leah. Not entirely.

That night, Leah stared out her window until dawn. When Marlene brought her breakfast, the bed was empty.

She had vanished again.

This time, no one found her.

No footprints. No notes.

Just the toy rabbit on her pillow, its stitched eyes facing the window. Its paws were clean.


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People still talk about Leah in Arden Falls. Some say she was stolen by something ancient. Others believe she was never truly human—that she belonged to another world and only visited this one.

Detective Thorne kept her journal. He visits the woods near Miller’s Creek every year on her birthday, waiting for a glimpse of white in the trees. Listening for the sound of a song only she could hear.

And sometimes, if the wind is right, he hears her voice—laughing.