I take a look at the tree beside me, then at the gravestone. When looking at the tree, I’m reminded of something sublime that I can’t grasp. When I look down at the gravestone, I’m reminded of my task. I’m also reminded of the person whose name is on the gravestone.
Sara…
Where did she go?
Now I’m back in my house. My hands along the floorboards. Fingers moving like the legs of a spider. Unnatural. They’re not my movements. They shift and slide on their own. Feeling the floorboards of my house. With every touch, the floorboards swell. I feel their hot breaths on my palms. The planks of wood below my hands seem to take a strange pleasure in my touch. Rise. Fall. Quick pneumatic breaths escape the boards below, and my palms grow sweaty.
On the day when they took Sara’s body away, I remember the hand of my father shielding my view. But I saw. Yes, Dad, I saw. I know their secret. The child on the stretcher. The face, slumped to the side, eyes white and rolled back. Still as ice. But they were wrong to think I wouldn’t see it. Of course I saw it. I see everything. The child on the stretcher was not Sara. To think that they got away with it all…
No. The child on the stretcher was not Sara. Because Sara isn’t dead. I am sure of it.
Veronica Auter. That was the child on the stretcher. Similar. But not Sara. There was no one quite like Sara. Veronica’s hair was a deep shade of brown, but I knew Sara, and I saw that her hair was lighter. I knew the eyes too. Sara had brown eyes. Veronica’s was…
Green?
It doesn’t matter. Veronica was the one that they carried off. She had been missing for the last year. They found her, and thought to put Sara’s case to rest.
But I will not rest. I know the truth. I know it all. And I’ll pull the wool from everyone’s eyes. They don’t know that I have seen things now. And I don’t sleep now. Sleep is for those who have found comfort in these lies. No. I won’t sleep. I can’t sleep. When the day bleeds into night, I sit in my bed, and watch, wide-eyed, the lazy sway of the woodlands. The Pines.
It has been seventeen years. You probably think that I am obsessed. That’s all right. But I have been busy these years. And I have it all figured. It’s important, with things like this, to really filter out the things that are an obstacle for progress. The amount of false leads, bullshit stories that I have proved false is endless. But there are three things left. My suspicions are narrowed. We are getting to the end of the tunnel. I can see the light just around the corner. And at the end, I can see the answer. And Sara.
I know she’s at the end of the tunnel, I just don’t know what she looks like yet.
I still remember the day when Sara ran out of the class. Her hair a mess. Her nails all chewed up, spit out. I remember that art class. And it was a thunderstorm outside. When I saw Sara get up and rush out of the class, I watched her faint silhouette vanish into the dark embrace of the storm outside. How the lain lashed down on the window. And then she was gone.
I, too, left the class ten minutes later. I asked to go to the toilet, but I went out. In the rain, I couldn’t see well. I had already forgotten to take my glasses with me. Then, it didn’t matter. But even in the blur, I saw three figures move strangely in the storm. The roar of a van’s engine. White. The rain hid their movements. But I listened. I was at a distance, when I heard the van doors slide shut. Slam shut. One man reaching out from the van before it closed. I remember putting on my glasses, and the rain suddenly quitening down.
I blinked hard a couple of times, and in between, through the slits of my eyes, I glimpsed Sara’s frail frame being snatched inside by the man. And then they were off.
There is only thing I find odd about this whole situation. My memory is a little fuzzy, of course, but all the details are clear. What’s important is in my head. The van sped off, heading straight for me. And I stood there like an idiot, waiting to be snatched, too. But they zoomed past me, and I looked at the men in the van’s front seat. The same exact face. Eerie replicas of each other. The same clean-shave, and the same mannequin-stare. Eyes empty, faces flat and cold. I remember suddenly thinking that these people did not look right. There was something wrong with them. And as they raced past me, I glanced at the license plate. But there was nothing. No plate there. No number to trace. And then they were gone.
Now I am in my basement. I pick up the black paint and the crude brush that sits in it. All along my walls, the drawings stretch out like frightening tattoos on a torso. I dip the brush in the paint, and I draw the insides of my skull. What lies within. The brain, and its curves, and its dents and shades. In the dead of night, I dream without sleep. They come at quick flashes. Visitations. Messages. I can’t understand them yet, but the sketches on my wall will form something. At night, I glimpse the movement of my brain within my own head. And I draw it along the green brick walls of my basement. It’s cold in here.
We shouldn’t forget about the art teacher too. Did I mention I was in an art class when Sara and I ran out? I must not have, because I don’t remember mentioning it.
What was his name? For the love of God I can’t remember his name. It was a he. I know that much. Sara, over the last month before she disappeared, had suffered greatly. Mentally, I mean. I don’t think she was ever ill. But something was troubling her. And not even I was able to pry from her this secret malady that was troubling her. But something was on her mind. I knew this then and know this now.
But what was his name?
He was a younger fellow. Maybe in his late 20s. And there was that look in his eyes. Predatorial. But he wasn’t in the class that day. Absent. Absent right on the day when Sara disappears. And the police didn’t even have him as a suspect. I remember him seperating a girl from her friends so that he could talk to her for the rest of the lesson. I never saw that girl again.
Now the sun is making its way down, and I watch the sky turn orange and pink. I stare out of my window, and think on the images that will flash in my mind. What will I see? But most of all, who is sending me these messages? I glance down at the shed in my backyard, and instantly look away.
I try and look at the distant land beyond The Pines, and I realise that I have never heard anyone speak about the land beyond it. Nor can I see it from here. As a matter of fact, I don’t think that anyone has ever seen what is beyond the woodland. As the sky turns black, I spot five different bonfires in the woods. Smoke signals rise into the sky. But these are messages that I can’t make out.
And still there is one final theory. These woods are not what they seem. We call it The Cliff of Life. It’s a nasty old joke. The bottom of the cliff has been smeared a permanent red from the blood of those who leaped and dared to fly. But there is more to this. Near that cliff is the lake, and I still remember the story of the Church of The New Sun, which my history teacher told me about. He’s dead now.
They formed their utopia in the 60s, in the lakes that since then have been drained of water. There were so many dead that they had to, you see, to find the bodies. Johnny Danglish. I knew I would remember his name. He was the priest behind the whole thing. And I still remember the weeks of searching. Searching for bodies. Weeping parents. Newspaper stories, Snapshots of the mass-suicide. 32 people, all of them dead. Sliced their throats with the same flint knife.
But, there is a problem with this story. When the police looked through the records, they had to check for the list of members. See if every body was recovered. There weren’t 32 people.
The police have established that there were 34 people in the community. However, these two missing people had no recorded names. Supposedly, instead of a name, the word REDACTED was written in block capitals.
It makes for a good spook story. But, during open season, things supposedly get stranger. Hunters of recent time have decided to steer clear of the lakes. They call them ‘Cleaners’. People see them in the distance. Naked people. Throats flayed, their vocal cords exposed to the wind. And every time the wind passes through their open throats, a terrible cacophony echoes through the land. Not just any echo, but the sounds of shrill screams.
According to these legends, these things stand in shallow bodies of water, and wash their arms and palms.
A strange story, for sure. Of its validity, I cannot speak. I have never personally seen them myself. But that’s not what interests me. What interests me is the supposed location of Sara’s supposed ‘corpse’. Right in The New Sun Lake. They never did tell me what she ‘died’ of. Everyone supposed it was suicide. I never got the autopsy report. I don’t think I would have believed it if I read it anyway.
What I’m more interested in are the two people who were never found in 1964. There’s a reason for why they were never found. Because they never died.
There’s something out there in the woods. I cannot explain what is at the edge of the forest. What lies beyond it is a mystery to me, and to everyone. But all of these unanswered questions, I will open up, and reveal their answers to the light.
I don’t have all the answers yet, but I will soon. Nothing will remain hidden.
Pehaps I will sleep tonight. Or not.
It’s not up to me anyway.