January Challenge - "She vanished just as the year ended"

She vanished just as the year ended because of a curse. She is not mundane, she is from a parrallel mystic world. She is in love with a handsome human guy who she meets on every new year's day. One time he finally tries to break the damned curse. 

She has disappeared, just as the New Year celebrations are to reach their climax. She often disappears. Rather she hides, and it's his role to find her. But the timing his wrong. He follows the clues to look for her, hoping to do so quickly to re-join the celebrations. He finds her, but not where either of them expected or wanted to be.

The story starts with a girl disappearing, but was she ever really gone? A bit sadder than your average challenge entry, but I hope you enjoy. This story is written in first and third person, in an unusual format that seems more poem than narrative.

Leaving in the Republic of Ireland, I created a story which involves the Magdalene Laundries, which existed in Northern and in the Republic of Ireland. I set the story in the year 1996, so no cell phone etc. existed, as we know it today. It is hardly mentioned what happened at the crime scene, ore what stood in the diary. All persons are fictional, so made up by myself. I do not know, if a similar case once happened, but I think it did not, so also that crime is made up.

The Crimson Echo

Them. New Year’s Eve- New Year

A woman has vanished, but no matter how hard she tries, no one will tell Patience who the woman is, or what happened. Why is everyone keeping the truth from her?

On a frigid New Year’s Eve, Donna disappears, leaving behind only a faint trail of footprints in the snow that mysteriously ends beneath the old sycamore tree. The heart of her neighborhood and the glue of her family, her absence sends shockwaves through her husband, David, and neighbor, James. As fear and unanswered questions mount, the search for Donna grows desperate. With every passing day, the silence grows louder, and the freezing winter air becomes heavy with longing, guilt, and unspoken truths. As the snow blankets the town in stillness, those left behind are forced to confront not only the mystery of her disappearance but their own fears of what might never be found.

When my mother took her life the day before the winter solstice, five days before Christmas, she didn’t just leave me behind—she left me with an inheritance I couldn’t refuse. Darkness became my shadow, grief my companion, and every step forward felt like slipping further into her absence. But the body has a way of keeping score, and now mine has secrets it refuses to let me ignore. This is the story of reckoning with what we inherit, what we bury, and what refuses to stay buried.