Scary Stories - The Cove

In the desert, between landmarks called Paseo de Luce and Faraday's Crossing, there is a place where reality frays. The locals know to stay away. The out-of-towners who go looking for it almost always come back disappointed, having found nothing but dirt and scrub. But some never come back at all. The narrator of this episode—an old-timer who lives along the road to that place—has seen it happen many times. He has also been through the gateway himself, and lived to tell about it. That experience, and the weight of carrying it alone, is the spine of the story.

The episode is built around a single extended encounter. A group of five young people in a van stops at the narrator's porch, asking for directions to the "UFO hotspot." Their de facto leader is a woman with close-cropped red hair who goes by Ember. The narrator tries to warn them off, but he knows from long experience that warnings never work. He directs them instead to a safe camping spot near a dry arroyo, hoping to steer them away from the boundary. They ignore him. Hours later, Ember comes speeding back alone, hysterical, and collapses into his arms. Her four friends have vanished in a flash of light. She does not understand what happened. She wants answers.