Scary Stories - The Cove

In the desert somewhere between Paseo de Luce and Faraday’s Crossing—landmarks the narrator says you’re better off not knowing—there is a place where the world gets thin. Locals won’t talk about it. Those who go looking usually come back sunburnt and disappointed, having found nothing but dirt. They lose a little faith in the strange, but they gain years of ordinary life. The others—the ones who find what they’re looking for—don’t come back at all.

The narrator, an old man who lives along the road to that place, has seen it happen many times. He used to try warning people. It never worked.

One afternoon, a van pulled up with five young people in their early twenties. Their leader was a woman with close-cropped red hair who went by Ember. They were hunting the boundary, convinced it was a UFO hotspot. They planned to camp for a week and get footage. The narrator told them people had gone missing out there. Ember said someone had to document it. He pointed them toward a safe camping spot near a dry arroyo, hoping they’d stay clear of the real danger. They thanked him and drove off.