“Night came.

The cashier left. The pump attendant who had seen her last went home to bed. Rex was the only person at the gas station who had ever seen Saskia. He called the hotel, but she didn’t come and she didn’t come. He called the police, no hospital had admitted her.

Rex paced ellipses around his car and the station building, and upon none of his returns was she there. The autoroute secreted a car only rarely now. A soft, buzzing silence settled over the TOTAL station.

As her wisps had predicted, the night was pure and clear, endless. She was somewhere. It broke his heart that he couldn’t know where.

Finally he stayed in the car, staring at the little notepad with numbers, and at the note under the windshield wiper that occasionally lifted a comer. Wanting to sleep, being unable to sleep and sleeping became a single thought: Saskia was undergoing something horrible at this moment. It was as if he felt what she was feeling now - the fear and the loneliness of the Golden Egg, and as if in that his wish had finally come true: to be one with her.”

— Tim Krabbé, The Vanishing