She sighed, eyes scanning over my sunglasses, my face, my clothes—a sky blue tank top, with my jacket hanging on the chair, and a low-waisted pair of jeans. “You don’t exactly look local. People don’t come here for vacation. Not unless it’s for research.” She glanced at the table. “And you’re sitting here with a notebook.”
I grinned. “That was...uh, impressive,” I stumbled on my words, not knowing if to compliment her for being quick witted, or maybe I was just stupid because a kid would have guessed that, too. “Would you mind answering a few questions?”
She glanced at my notes, then back at me. After a pause, she gave a small nod.
Relieved, I flipped open the page. “How long have you lived here?”
“Since I was born.”
She looked like she was in her late fifties, maybe older. That was promising. I adjusted in my seat. “How many researchers have visited here in recent years?”
She let out a long breath, tapping her fingers on the table in thought. “Could’ve been more, but I’ve only heard of five groups in the past couple decades. Most people don’t come here again, this place used to be flooded with them back in my great-grandmother’s time.”
“Do you know why that changed?”
She shrugged. “How would I know? But I heard they kept getting the same results. There was nothing new to record. They lost interest and quickly got bored. Also, the world is evolving. Only a few youngsters are interested in the past. No one really cares about the history of this place.”
I gave a tight smile. “And...have you ever heard of a researcher not making it out?”
“I’m not sure,” she said, thoughtfully. “They usually came in groups with their...equipment. And they usually left the same way. I wouldn’t know if someone went missing among them.”
“By equipment, you mean...”
“Cameras,” she clarified.
I nodded. “Right...”
I looked down at my notes to ask the next question, but she cut in, voice quieter.
“But...twenty years ago, there was a little chaos in this town. A girl went missing.”
I picked up my pen, flipping the note to a new page. “How did she go missing? Can you elaborate? Please?”
“Well.” She sighed. “She went missing overnight.”
That made me pause for a second or two. “And?”
“Her team went wild searching. They knocked on doors, turned the place inside out. It was a mess.”
“Did they find her?”
She shook her head. “No. They left without her when the next train came.”
“Could you, maybe, provide more details about the girl? And the speculations that were roaming everywhere during that period?”
“I heard she was young. Couldn’t have been more than twenty-six. One of her team said she went back to The Crater to retrieve something she’d lost during their visit earlier that day. According to the team member, the thing had been a valuable piece from a dead friend and she didn’t want to lose it. The other one had gone to sleep after trying to persuade her, and she had stubbornly gone to the hills that night.”
“She went alone? She walked?”
“That’s what they said. But no one believed it. A young girl walking to those hills alone at night? They thought it was impossible. The team had rented three cars on getting here, and she had not taken any.”
“So they searched everywhere else but the hills.”
She nodded. “They eventually did when they didn’t find her here. But they didn’t go far since it gets chilly up there. They came back empty.”
I scribbled quickly, my thoughts turning cold. If she didn’t walk and didn’t drive, how did she get there? What was the thing she lost? What could have gone wrong that night?
Is it similar to mine?
