“Where are you!?”

I yelled for her in the darkness. “You need to come back! I’m sorry for getting angry, I am. But, these past few weeks have been hard for both of us!” I yelled out into the blackness, hoping for a response.
But none came.
“Listen, if you can hear me… I… I love you!” There. I said it. After all this time I said it. Though it doesn’t mean as much if she doesn’t hear it. She isn’t beside me when I say it either, which diminishes it’s meaning, I think. “Erica!”
I spent the next hour yelling her name and looking for a trace of where she’d gone, but I could find none, it was too dark to see anything out here. ‘I’ll continue looking tomorrow, there’s no way she could have disappeared out here, not with her condition,’ is what I thought. But I had the feeling in the back of my mind that I was wrong.
1 Month Earlier
A scream. “Did you see that!?” A question that could be asked anywhere, at anytime something out of the ordinary happened. “What’s wrong!? See what?” “Gregory! He just disappeared!” “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Are you feeling okay?” “Listen to me! Gregory, he was right over there!” the woman said, pointing to a vending machine a bit away. “Maybe he just went back to the car to get some more money or something, try his cell,” the woman’s friend offered up a logical explanation.
But Gregory hadn’t gone to the car. His cell wouldn’t be reachable. But no one knew this yet. No one knew anything yet. Simply because Gregory was the first. His disappearance would soon be chalked up to kidnapping. The police would do a search but find nothing. And, for a few days, that’s how it went; Random disappearances in small towns or remote areas blamed on kidnappings. Until it was caught on video, all it was… was kidnapping.
Present
I didn’t sleep at all last night. The constant fear that I, too, would be taken kept me vigilant and awake. The various sounds that the cabin and forest made had me on full alert, never letting me have even a moments rest. I’m tired. Running on fumes, as they say, and not likely to last the whole day. But I need to look for her. She can’t have disappeared. We’ve survived for this long, there is no way she could have gotten taken.
Breakfast. Breakfast was just a bar. One of those things with the peanuts, peanut butter, honey, you know. I couldn’t eat much more than that. The stress of the whole situation had taken away my appetite and I could barely even down a glass of water. However, despite not being able to eat or drink much, I had to go out and search for her.
I put on my coat and gloves and boots and headed out into the cold white morning.
3 Weeks Earlier
The video shocked the world. Not a city, not a state, not a country, but the world. It was right there on video; a man disappearing. At first people thought it might be a joke, someone edited some video and sent it to the news stations, but then another video. And another. From completely different parts of the world, 3 videos showing a person disappearing from doing whatever they were doing about their daily lives.
-In the first video, a man was holding a plastic mask up to his face, playing with his daughter. Then, in a blink of an eye, he disappeared. The plastic face falls to the ground and the wife panics. The daughter has no clue what’s going on. Cut to black.
-The second video, a father filming his son taking his first bike ride around the driveway when he goes away. The bike falls to the ground. The father is crying, confused. Cut to black.
-The third video is of a crowded train station. A man stands, as any man would, waiting for the train. But then as the train pulls into station, he runs and jumps in front of it. But there was no collision. No blood splatter. No body. He simply disappeared.
This was the first video of a disappearance in front of a mass audience.  People began to panic. But at that time… no, even in the beginning, it was already too late.
“What do we do,” Erica turns from the TV to me and asks. We’re sitting in a coffee shop, when the third video breaks news coverage around the world.
“I don’t know.”
Present
Snow coats the ground 6inches thick. I trudge through the snow while yelling her name. “Erica!” Over and over again. Each time, the only response I received was the white silence of the forest. No birds or bugs made a racket right now. The sound was pure.  The only thing that broke the silence was the crunch crunch of my boot-covered feet stepping into the white blanket that covered the ground. It had not snowed last night, so I should be able to see her footprints in the snow. But when everything is white, it is hard to find footprints unless they are right in front of yo-there. And I ran, following the path of the footprints.
3 Weeks Earlier
“… Run,” Erica said quietly to me. “What? Why?” She offered not a vocal reply, but an answer in the form of grabbing my hand and running. “Erica, what’s wrong!?” I asked in between heavy breaths. I saw it, I saw it, she kept saying. “What did you see?” She explained to me that she had seen what was taking the people away. Massive pitch black figures, tall as lampposts, snatching people up. “But why can you see them?” “I don’t know! Just keep running!” So we ran. We ran until neither of us could run any longer. Hands on my knees, I asked her: Are we safe?
“I don’t think we will ever be safe again.”
Present
She could have been the only one in the world that could see them. No one else must have, because no one ever came forward to any authorities or news channels saying they could. Or maybe… maybe there were some, but it was too late for them by the time they figured it out. But no matter the case, Erica could see them. So she should be safe.
Except at night.
2 Weeks Earlier
It was dark. Sometime around 24:00. “Do you see anything?” I asked her as she peered around a corner. It was dark, hard to tell, the usual answers I got from her when asking at night. But she seemed fairly confident that aside from the usual, we were safe. If only they made a noise or something. Much to our dismay, they were silent. They could sneak up on you without warning and snatch you out of this world. So we were cautious. We carried flashlights and spare flashlights and spare spare flashlights just in case. However, the lights only did so much to illuminate the darkness. We couldn’t find any torch lamps, so we were stuck with simple flashlights. Point your light over there, she’d tell me occasionally. I did, and it would always be just a random shadow.
“Tom, point your light over there, at that car.” I swiftly, as if it had come to be a habit I had gotten down perfectly, waved the light over in the car’s direction. Erica gasped and we began to run. Her hand pulling mine, as I would not know where and where not to go. We ran for at least a mile before ducking into a house on the edge of the town. “Was it close?” Yeah, she said.
Present
I wasn’t scared of being out here without her. I always had the idea that if it was my day to die, it was my day to die and I wasn’t going to worry about when that day would come. Not to say I wouldn’t mind knowing, but because I don’t, I do not let the future of this matter bother me. I was afraid of the entities, though. Just the description of them scared me. But I don’t know why. Maybe it’s the thought of some hulking black figure just lurking around the corner. Maybe it’s the fear of the unknown. Whatever it is, it scares me more than the thought of disappearing.
I’d been following the footprints for a while now. 30 minutes if I had to take a guess. I was tired, running on empty. But I couldn’t give up. I had to find her.
1 Week Earlier
We had been on the move for almost 3 weeks now. We had made it out of the city that was now almost completely empty and were on our way deep into the forests. We figured that maybe these beings were only going after populated areas. No need to venture deep into the forest where no one lived.
We had managed to grab lots of food before we left, putting as much into two backpacks as we could. We were sort of well off, all we needed to do was find a source of fresh water. But we found something even better. Just before the cold set in, we found a cabin deep in the woods.
Present
“Erica!” I still yelled her name every few minutes. The snow absorbed the sounds and there was no echo. It was getting colder and it seemed as if it might start snowing soon.  But I couldn’t stop and turn around now, I had already come this far. So I kept on going, repeatedly calling her name out.
Then I came to a clearing.
3 Days Earlier
It started snowing.
“How long do you think we’ll have to wait out here, Tom?” Erica asked me, laying down on the bed. “I have no idea. It could be safe now, for all we know. After all, we-you, I mean, hasn’t seen one of those things for at least a week now. So perhaps they left,” I tried to give her a positive answer. “But what if it’s just because we are so deep in the woods?” She offered up that possibility. “Yes, there is always the chance of that, but I’d like to believe that that isn’t the case.”
Finding this cabin was a blessing. It had running water, wood for a fire, food and a bed. We could live here for a while. And for the past week or so, we did. Everything was fine. And I had come to know Erica better than I could have dreamed. I came to like her.
1 Day Earlier
I had come to love her. But I couldn’t tell her. Not in this situation, the end of the world. It just didn’t feel like the best of times to tell someone your true feelings. Then again, it never feels like the best time, does it? Not for me, anyway. But I had to tell her. If I didn’t, I might never get the chance again. Yet, there was always that fear that she would reject me and then I would be alone in this place.
But we had a fight. Erica had begun to grow scared of this place. Of the woods at night. She said she could feel them out there, waiting. And when day broke, she couldn’t see anything but she could feel something. I tried to persuade her that it was just the forest scaring her, but she refused to believe me. So she decided to run away from the house. The worst possible decision she could have made, especially if she was scared.
But she ran. And I began to look for her.
Present
Which brings me to where I am now. A small clearing somewhere in the forest. A place of no trees surrounded by trees. “Erica!” I yelled, desperate to hear her voice, I yelled out her name thrice. But there was no response.  Just silence. But there was more silence here than there was in the rest of the forest. As if someone had taken a vacuum and placed it over the small empty area. I walked to the middle of the clearing and stared up. I just stared straight up and watched the snowflakes fall from the sky. Then I remembered….
Today is Christmas.
This is the first Christmas I’ve spent alone. It’s sad when you really think about it. Christmas is supposed to be a time for being with people you love and a time to be happy… but I am neither of those. The one I love is not here and I am not happy. I felt tears welling up in my eyes. “You can’t be gone. You can’t just leave me here alone!” I yelled out at the sky, even though I was sure no one would hear me.
But.
“Don’t be afraid,” a voice said. And then I was surrounded by hulking black figures.
“Erica?” That was her voice. That was Erica’s voice. “Erica! Erica, where are you!?”
“Don’t worry, everything is going to be fine now,” I heard her say. I looked around the clearing desperately but saw no sign of her anywhere. No footprints, no movement, and I could hear no sound. “Just let is all end,” she said.
And then… blackness. A warm, completely enveloping and overwhelming blackness overtakes me.
“I am here.”