The Disappearance of a Girl

It was a day before my seventh birthday when my sister left. No, she didn't die, as many slowly began to believe when days turned to months, and months to years. She just vanished. Evaporated. Dematerialized. Ceased to exist. Gone. She had been 13 years of age at the time. The reason behind the eight years of difference between our ages was because my parents got married due to my mother's unexpected pregnancy with my older sister. While her birth was erratic and unplanned, mine was perfectly thought out. I guess that could be used to describe how we lived our lives; ever since I can remember she had been crazy and hard to control. My mother always complained of how much of a handful she was. Several times my parents took her to be tested for ADHD or some other disorder they could blame for her wildness. The tests always came back negative, and my parents refused to blame themselves. They restricted her as best as they could, but their stamina was quickly exhausted. I was the exact opposite, as you may have guessed. Quiet, calm, and collected were just a few of the words used to describe me when my parents visited my teachers at school. Sometimes I was too quiet, and it concerned my instructors. I didn't like to interact with the other children in class. It's not that I didn't like them, they just weren't interesting to me. My parents were too busy with Lillian to be concerned with my lack of friends, and I was content enough that they didn't see a reason to be concerned. 

My sister's disappearance hit me hard. We'd always had a special connection with each other. Or so I'd thought. Maybe we hadn't, and it was all in my head. During summer, on evenings that the moon was as round as a quarter, Lillian would sneak into my room and we'd climb out of my window. We'd dart through thick shrubbery and across silvery moonlit backyards in our thin pajamas and bare feet until we hit the treeing of Deephaven Woods. We used my window because it was right above the porch and adjacent to the porch was a strong, thick oak tree. In the autumn it would shed so many leaves, causing my father to threaten to retrieve the rusty ax from the shed and chop it down. This caused me to try to estimate how many rings would encircle its stump. Of course, my mother never let him. This had been her childhood home. Her parents died soon after Lillian's birth, so I never met them. After their death, however, my mother couldn't bear to part with the place, so, with a lot of bribing and convincing, my father agreed to move into the old place, but only if he could upgrade some of the appliances and other assorted things around the old Victorian. 

Each night we did this, Lillian would dare me to to follow her into the forest. She always promised that we'd catch a fairy or an elf, and if you didn't let them go, they'd turn you into an animal. I was always cautious and never believed her, but was afraid of being called chicken, so I always followed her. Between full moons, Lillian would make us extravagant flower crowns to wear on our journeys. When I asked her who had taught her to make them, she always claimed it was the fairies that she'd caught and befriended before I was able to come along. She'd tease me and tell me that we'd never caught any because they sensed my disbelief. "Alice," she'd begin sternly as she placed the smaller of the two crowns on my head, "do you promise me you'll believe this time?" Of course, wanting to keep my sister happy, I said yes. She would give me a look that gave me the impression she knew I was lying, but wasn't going to push it. Lillian would place her crown of larger blooms upon her curly, thick, auburn hair and peer out at me between long lashes with her uniquely silver eyes. This feature was one of the few things we had in common with each other, and one I was very proud of. We also shared the same deep scarlet colored hair, though hers was wild and curly and mine was straight and plain. My sister became the thing that I wanted to become, and the thing that I would always strive to escape the shadow of...until her disappearance, of course. 

As the months dripped into years, and the years crawled slowly by, the search that had been created to search for my lost sister dissipated. But I never gave up hope that she would someday return to us. Birthdays and holidays and celebrations all blended together after Lillian's disappearing act. Nothing was the same. I could tell even my parents were effected by her absence, but I could never tell if it was positively or negatively. As I grew older, Lillian began to fade into a thing of the past, as an imaginary friend does when your parents begin to tell you that there's really no one there, and you slowly outgrow them. 

The day came that I was going away for college. My father had finally convinced my mother to move out of her parents' house. They wouldn't know; they'd been dead for a while, and wouldn't find out to make her feel guilty for abandoning it. My parents moved to a lovely seashore cottage along the coast of the Atlantic, across the continent from where we'd lived our entire lives. There was that little nagging feeling in the back of my mind, as I assisted the movers with carrying the heavy cardboard boxes into the moving van for my parents, but I shoved it down and ignored it. My first year of college passed like a blur, and before I knew it, I felt the light breezes twirl my thin hair and dance across my freckled nose that promised the coming of warm weather. I'd told my parents that I'd be delighted to join them in the guest bedroom of their beach cottage. As I was speaking to my father the night before my plane departed from California to Virginia, he informed me that someone was finally buying our old Victorian. That nagging feeling I'd been repressing for the longest time finally resurfaced as I knew that I had to visit my childhood home for the last time before it was no longer mine. I told my parents I'd be catching a later flight, and, packed up my car to make the drive up. By noon the next day, I pulled up to the street next to it. Sure enough, as my father had told me, there was a large red sign screaming at me that the property had been sold. As I began up the front walk, memories played like little clips of scenes through my mind. There's the rock I tripped and scratched my forehead on, giving me the scar that I still have. And the remnants of the rose bushes my mother so fondly cherished and cared for. Stepping across the threshold brought up a cloud of dust and I had to step back outside to cough and wait for the air to clear. 

Searching the house didn't satisfy the nagging feeling, however, as I'd hoped. Instead, it seemed to me to be growing stronger. Remembering Lillian and our midnight trips to Deephaven Woods, I decided to take a trip over there. Trekking through overgrown backgrounds that had a cloying smell of flowers that had blossomed during April showers gave me the sense of being a child again. Reaching the treeline, the foliage seemed to reach out to me, desiring to pull me into its embrace. Entering tentatively, I felt as if I might suffocate underneath all the green that surrounded me. The ivy that encircled thick tree trunks appeared to be reaching their tendrils out to me, begging me to twine them through my fingers and wrap them through my hair. The sunlight fell through the overhanging of leaves and branches above and dappled the ground with golden spots. 

I don't know what was leading me, or how I knew which way to go, but it seemed to me that I was following some secret path. I had no idea how deep I was in the woods, or how far they went before the next field. As I continued on, I had no idea why I'd even ventured in, but my curiosity was too strong to turn back. Besides, I don't believe I could've found my way back to begin with. As the sunlight overhead began to fade, a spark of fear ignited in my chest. I'd spent to long here, and I needed to get back. I'd missed the flight to Virginia, and who knew what kind of creatures called this forest their home? But I'd come this far, and I wasn't about to turn back now. Curling my hands into fists which dug my nails into my palms, I continued on until all light had gone and I couldn't see my hand in front of me.

In pitch black situations, you tend to notice every little light that's winking at you. So it wasn't difficult to notice the little bluish light that seemed to be bouncing slightly in the air. It wasn't obvious at first, but as I started towards it, it grew lighter. But I never seemed to reach the light or close the distance between it and me. I was about to give up and claim it a figment of my flustered and worried mind when it finally appeared to be growing closer. Breaking into a faster walking pace, I tried my best to climb through the undergrowth and under low hanging branches that were heavy with leaves. Once or twice I froze in place and almost ceased moving forward due to strange noises nearby that I couldn't decipher if I was to become a predator's next meal. As the light continued to increase in size, I slowed and wondered what awaited with the light for the first time. Was it like the Anglerfish, in which they used the lights attached to their heads to lure their prey closer to their imminent doom? There was no way to tell unless I saw what it was. Moving forward and pushing aside some branches, I came across a scene that caused my heart to skip a beat. 

Before me was a beautiful fox. She was sitting upon a large rock, her tail tucked neatly over her paws. I wasn't sure how I knew it was a vixen, but it just seemed to me that she was. Her head was lowered and her eyes were closed, and it looked as if she was concentrating on something. But that didn't seem right, as foxes weren't the type to concentrate on things. Casting a quick glance around for the source of the light that had guided me here, I realized that the fox seemed to be the source of light. But that couldn't be right either; foxes didn't glow. Stepping into the little clearing, I move so I'm standing before the fox. I wait for what seems forever, but what must've been only a moment, as the light slowly begins to fade until it's only a dim beacon. As the light fades, the fox lifts its head until its level with mine. I didn't realize how high up she'd been sitting on the rock, until I realized she was eye level with me. Either that, or I didn't realize how short I was. As I waited another moment that dragged on for what was longer than a moment, the fox snapped her eyelids open and cast a pair of strangely familiar silver eyes on me. I inhaled sharply and took a stumbling step backwards as if I'd been struck. Then, the light was gone and I was left in the dark. 

Author’s Note:

This story is about a little fox figurine that I received as a child. Foxes are my favorite animal, and a unique creature that I’ve always admired.