My father once took a wrong turn while we were driving through the countryside.
We ended up in a small town neither of us recognized. It had a church, a gas station, a diner, and maybe twenty houses. We stopped for coffee at the diner, and I remember the woman working there because she had a silver necklace shaped like a bird.
Nothing about the town seemed impossible.
Just quiet.
Years later, I tried to find it again.
I knew the road. I knew the area. I checked maps, satellite images, old records, everything.
There was no town there.
No church. No gas station. No diner. Not even ruins.
I asked my father, and he remembered it too. He remembered the coffee, the empty street, and the woman with the bird necklace.
We drove that route again last year.
There was only forest where the town should have been.