Growing up I was always told not to go to the Rain Town. As a child I didn’t understand why, but as I became older, I realized that the fear in my parent’s eyes was not unfounded. The small town just north of my own, within walking distance, is not always there. It only exists on days when it rains. And I don’t mean that is the only time you can see it from afar. I mean, if you go to the location of the town on a sunny day, it will not be there. And neither will the people who live there. No one really knows where they disappear to, but it is generally accepted that you don’t want to get caught within the town borders when the sky clears. Every year, people disappear from our town. Mostly teenagers, who go into the Rain Town on a dare and never make it out.
You’d think that the people who get trapped there would return the next time it rains and the town reappears. It is a logical assumption. But that never happens. They are never seen again, not even if you go there and search for them.
How do I know this? Because I have tried. I used to have a sister. She was a year younger than me and the sweetest girl that I ever knew. But she was also childish, naive and easily talked into doing things she shouldn’t. I didn’t know that her classmates had dared her to go to the Rain Town until my parents told me that she never came home that day. The rain had already stopped. I was fifteen at the time, and she was only fourteen. The next time it rained I went to look for her. I spent three hours in that town, searching everywhere I could think of and asking every person I came across, but I never saw my sister again.
I already lost one loved one to that town, and I refuse to lose another. Which is why I am going back there, before the rain stops. My daughter just turned fourteen, and her best friend just knocked on my door to tell me that she had gone on a dare an hour ago and hadn’t returned yet. So now I am returning to the place I swore I would never go again, and this time I am not leaving until I find her.
