The Case Closed
The father slipped out of the house at midnight, sketchbook pressed to his chest like a holy text. He crossed the yard in silence, his breath sharp in the cold, the street swallowed by shadows. The oak tree loomed ahead, its silhouette against the pale moon like a figure waiting.
When he reached it, he pressed his hand against the bark. Warm. Almost feverish. He whispered their names into the branches, listening. For a moment, he swore he heard it: faint, like breath drawn through wood. Father…
Then movement in the soil caught his eye. Something glinted half-buried between the roots. He knelt, scraping dirt away with shaking fingers. A bracelet. Elena's. The one she never took off.
His heart lurched. He held it to the moonlight, trembling, whispering, "I knew it."
By morning, he marched into the police station, the bracelet wrapped carefully in a handkerchief, demanding they reopen the search. The officers took it without ceremony, promising to "analyze it." Hours later, they returned it with a shrug. No blood. No signs of struggle. Just a bracelet in the dirt.
That afternoon, they came to the house one last time.
"The case is closed," the sergeant said flatly, avoiding their eyes. "A warehouse burned down last night. Arson. Several dead. All of our resources are needed there. We'll keep your daughters on the books as missing, but officially… it's classified as a runaway case."
The father's jaw tightened. "They didn't run away."
"Sir—"
"They didn't," he snapped, slamming his fist against the table so hard the tea cups rattled. "Elena's bracelet was at the tree. Do you understand me? She wore it every day. She never took it off. Someone—something—took them."
The officer's gaze was as empty as the paperwork he carried. "We can't chase ghosts when people are dying in real fires." His words stung with the finality of a slammed door. And then they left.
Silence flooded the kitchen. The mother sat at the table, her tea gone cold, staring at the swirl of dust motes in the air. The father was already pacing, opening and closing the sketchbook like it could finally confess its secrets.
"You believe me," he said suddenly, turning to her. "You've seen how the tree pulls at them. You've heard the voices, too."
Her hands tightened around her cup until the porcelain creaked. "I don't hear anything."
"Yes, you do." His eyes were bright, fevered. "You just don't want to admit it. That tree isn't just wood and bark. It's alive—it wants them. And it has them."
She stood, the chair scraping sharply against the tile. "Stop it."
"What?"
"Stop… this." Her voice trembled, not with weakness but with the fury of someone barely holding herself together. "They're gone. And instead of being here with me—grieving, searching—you're chasing whispers in the dark. You're clutching that damn sketchbook like it's scripture. You're leaving me alone in this house while you go to that cursed tree in the middle of the night. Do you even hear yourself?"
His face twisted, somewhere between pleading and anger. "It's not madness. It's the only thing that makes sense. They're not gone. They're caught in something. If I can understand the drawings, if I can listen closely enough—"
"Then what?" she cut in sharply, tears brimming in her eyes. "You'll bring them back? You'll drag them out of the dirt with your bare hands? You think you're their savior?"
He faltered. The sketchbook trembled in his grip.
"I want my daughters back too," she whispered, her voice cracking. "But I won't lose you to this obsession. I won't watch you disappear into those woods like they did."
The father turned away, shoulders hunched, staring at the bracelet on the counter. He said nothing. Only breathed, ragged and shallow, like someone drowning just beneath the surface.
The mother finally walked out of the kitchen, her footsteps fading down the hall. He didn't follow. He couldn't. His hand slid back over the sketchbook, opening to a page of twisted faces and trees with hollow eyes.
He whispered, almost tenderly, "I'll find you. Even if no one else believes me."
And in the silence of the empty kitchen, the oak tree seemed to shift in the father's imagination, its branches creaking like laughter.