The town of Elmhollow was nestled deep in the woods, where the trees grew so thick that sunlight barely touched the ground. It was a place forgotten by time, known only to those who had no choice but to live there. Most people avoided it, whispering about strange occurrences and unexplained absences. But for those who called it home, it was just another quiet corner of the world. It began with a child. A boy named Eli, ten years old, who vanished one evening while playing near the old mill. His parents searched for hours, calling his name into the dark, but there was no sign of him. The next day, the police arrived, asking questions, taking notes, and then leaving just as quickly as they came. No clues, no evidence, no explanation. Just silence. Then came the others. A farmer, then a schoolteacher, then a woman who worked at the general store. Each disappeared without a trace, their homes left untouched, their belongings still in place. The townspeople grew uneasy, but no one spoke of it openly. They simply moved on, as if pretending it hadn’t happened. One night, a new family moved into the town—a couple with two young children. They were strangers, but they were welcomed with cautious smiles. The mother, Clara, took to walking the woods each morning, hoping to find something, anything, that might explain the disappearances. She often stopped by the old mill, where she would sit on a bench and stare into the water below. The river was still, almost too still, as if it held its breath. One afternoon, she found a journal in the brush near the mill. It was weathered, the pages yellowed and brittle. The cover was blank, but inside, the writing was neat and precise. It belonged to a man named Thomas Wren, who had lived in Elmhollow decades ago. He wrote about the river, about how it had always been different from other waters—how it didn’t flow like the others, but instead pulled things toward it, like a magnet. He described a ritual, one he had performed when he was young, to protect his family from the river’s pull. But the more he wrote, the more his entries became frantic, his handwriting messy, his words disjointed. In the final entry, he wrote: *“It doesn’t take them. It takes what they are. Not their bodies, but their memories. Their pasts. I can’t remember my own anymore.”* Clara closed the journal, her hands trembling. She didn’t know what to do with it. She told her husband, but he dismissed it as a relic of a bygone era. “People vanish, Clara,” he said. “Sometimes, they just leave.” But she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. That the river wasn’t just a river, that it was something else entirely. Something that didn’t want to be remembered. Days passed, and the disappearances continued. One by one, the townspeople began to forget. Not their names, not their faces, but the details—their jobs, their families, their lives. People would wake up and not know why they were in Elmhollow. They would walk through their homes and feel like strangers. The town itself seemed to shift, as if it were changing, reshaping itself around those who remained. Clara tried to leave, but the roads had changed. What had once been a clear path now twisted into unfamiliar trails. She asked for help, but the townspeople wouldn’t meet her eyes. They smiled politely, but their expressions were empty, as if something had taken hold of them. One night, she returned to the mill. The river glowed faintly under the moonlight, its surface rippling with an unnatural rhythm. She knelt beside it, holding the journal in her hands. For a moment, she thought she heard a voice, soft and distant, calling her name. She didn’t know if it was real or if it was her mind breaking. But as she looked into the water, she saw something move beneath the surface—shapes, shadows, flickers of faces she didn’t recognize. And then, slowly, she felt a pull, not in her body, but in her mind, as if something was trying to take her thoughts, her memories, her identity. She ran, back through the trees, back to the house. She locked the door behind her, her breath ragged, her heart pounding. She didn’t know if she had escaped or if she was already gone. In the days that followed, the town of Elmhollow remained unchanged, as if nothing had ever happened. But those who stayed there never spoke of the river. They never spoke of the disappearances. And when the wind blew through the trees, it carried a sound—not quite a whisper, not quite a sigh—but something between the two, like a memory trying to be remembered.