Sunset City: Fantasy

When the sun set, the city rose up. When we were kids, our moms would take us out to the pier to watch the city rise up. They would tell us all sorts of tales about what the city was, whether it was magical or terrible or both, but all the tales would end with the same moral: don't go there. Even the good stories, the ones about enchantments and magic and fairy princesses, emphasized the sadness and the way that nobody who ever went there ever left. Some of the stories said it was because the visitors ate or drank something, but when I was a little older and started reading the books in the library, I stumbled across an old book of fairy tales and there it was. Does that mean the city was made by real fairies, or just that the idea of somebody being trapped by their own appetite was derived from those old stories? Could be either, I guess. At any rate, I never was one of the kids who dreamed of the city, who imagined going there and returning rich and famous and with all the girls smiling at them because they had done what nobody else does. Every year a kid or two leaves to "go to the city." They never come back. Truth, I suspect a handful of the disappearances of kids or adults isn’t because of the city at all, but it's easier to point a finger at that mysterious thing that rises up at sunset every winter night and say, "They did it," then it is to suspect someone else of murder or worse, or to think that your husband or wife or child simply left to go somewhere more mundane. Then one winter, it was my sister's middle child who disappeared.


Inspiration: Photo of a city along the shoreline that is almost invisible in the twilight. http://www.flickr.com/photos/pitgreenwood/12083163145/
Story potential: High.
Notes: Not sure what the city is, but it isn't what's expected. And by the same token, this protagonist isn't what the city would expect.