??

November 13th 1761 5.43 AM

He didn't know how long they had been walking for. His, at first, clean boots were now covered in mud yet they were still going.

Why did he say yes to this again? It was way too early for him to walk this distance, especially with his older knees. He longed for his warm office and a nice, strong cup of coffee, then and only then his rotting brain would work. But he didn't get to have his coffee this morning. He was quite literally pulled out of his bed, some case about this missing girl. He couldn't even remember her name.

He started focusing on the rhythmic sound of their boots going in and out of the mud. At this point only that could keep him awake. Not that he had much else to focus on, this early in the morning the woods were covered in a deep fog. The only thing he could see, if he looked back, was the vague outline of his younger colleague, a few steps behind him. In front of him was nothing but the endless gray of the trees, surrounded with fog.

He looked back down again, the trail they were following was barely visible. Most of it had been washed away by the rain last night. The thing he could still make out from the trail was that the girl had been walking with bare feet and it looked like she was all alone. He didn't understand why she went out in the rain without any shoes on. In the middle of the night for fucks sake!

His initial thought was that she probably ran away with some boy from a different village, your typical forbidden teen romance. The only thing that wouldn't work with that theory was that she didn't take anything from her house. Almost as if she vanished out of thin air. If it wasn't for the mud he would think she had been kidnapped.

He looked behind him again seeing if his colleague was still right on his tail. His colleague, too scared to walk in front of him, stayed closely behind the older man. He chuckled at the thought, he used to be just like that. Oh what he would do to go back to those days. He almost got lost in thought again when the rhythmic sounds of boots being sucked in and pulled out of the mud behind him stopped.

He looked back, his colleague was inspecting the trail closely. The old man realized he had been dozing off and not keeping his eyes on the trail, like his colleague had. Because when he looked down; the trail they were following was gone. He walked back towards his colleague. The tracks were a bit deeper at this part, as if they had stopped for a bit. It didn't continue after.

"What do you think happened?"

He mumbled something in reply and started inspecting the bushes around the scene. No tracks inside the mud.

"Do you think someone abducted her?" The younger one asked.

"Maybe."

He looked at the other side of the trail. Not a sign either. He started scrunching his eyebrows in confusion, like he always did.

"It looks like she just vanished..."

Well no shit, he could see that already. He started scratching his chin; checking the tracks again. He noticed a little lump in one of the tracks. He ran his fingers through the mud and bumped into something. After brushing some of the mud off with his finger the object looked a lot like a bracelet. From the victim he guessed.

"Did you find something?" The younger one's head appeared out of one of the bushes.

He chuckled at the sight of some of the leaves stuck in the curly hair of his colleague.

"Some kind of bracelet,"

"Do you think it was hers?"

"Well from who else do you think it could be?" The old man chuckled at the obvious question of his younger help.

"But to be sure we should check with the parents."

They both went silent for a bit.

"Should we head back?" The younger one suggested. "I didn't find anything at my side of the trail either."

"Yeah, good plan. I'm dying for a cup of coffee." The old man responded.

I looked at the two police officers as they left the scene, grinning. With one arm I held the struggling girl, the other I was holding in front of her mouth not letting a sound get out. As I slowly opened the portal again leaving the scene without leaving a single trace of her ever existing.