The Disappeared

by Amy Lord

  I found myself returning to the abandoned houses on Penny Crescent, to the house where Caleb had told me about my father. I crept down the basement steps and tried the back door, heart pounding. The handle was icy against my skin.

  The door swung open with a creak. The room beyond it was a black mouth; my senses were screaming, but I placed one foot over the threshold and then the other, feeling my way into the darkness with one hand pressed against the wall.

  ‘Hello,’ I called, as loudly as I dared. ‘Is someone here? Caleb?’

  My voice disappeared into the void. I could hear my own breathing, too loud, as though someone was standing right behind me. I tried to hold the air in my lungs, until black specks flickered at the corner of my eyes. There was no answer.

  I crept further into the old house, aware of every scrape of my shoes on the tiled floor. ‘Hello,’ I called again.

  Somewhere above me, a floorboard squeaked. I froze, ears straining through the darkness, heart racing. Another squeak, slightly to the left of the first one. I thought about calling out once more, but my voice stuck in my throat.

  ‘You shouldn’t have come here.’

  The voice came from an empty doorway. I shrieked and leapt forward, ricocheting off the wall with a crack. Hands grasped my arms as I stumbled, trying to recover. I fought them but they pulled me out of the hallway. Behind me slow feet climbed the wooden stairs.

  The hands released me and I staggered back, trying to reach the door, but the other person was already behind me, coming into the room. There was the flare of a match and the outline of a man hunched over the fireplace, lighting a storm lantern. He turned as a soft light filled the room. I vaguely recognised him as part of the group in the park that first night.

  Behind me, Caleb said, ‘Clara, we weren’t expecting you so soon.’

  He came into the room. ‘I don’t think you met Zeke the last time you were here?’ He gestured to the man on the other side of the room, whose hands had grabbed me so furiously. I rubbed my arms.

  ‘No. We haven’t met.’

  ‘Zeke is one of my lieutenants. We were working on our plans to infiltrate the Authorisation Bureau headquarters when we heard someone come in.’

  I nodded. ‘Good. That’s what I came to talk to you about.’

  Zeke glowered at me. He was tall, with dark skin and a shaved head. I watched as the soft light reflected on the planes of his skull, giving him a ghastly air. When he spoke, I noticed a slight accent that I couldn’t place.

  ‘She doesn’t belong here. There will be trouble, Caleb, you’ll see.’

  Caleb laughed. ‘Of course she belongs here. Clara has lost as much as any of us have; we need her.’

  Zeke scowled, the muscles of his upper arms bulging as he folded them across his chest. My eyes shifted from one to the other. Neither looked away.

  I spoke softly. ‘I went to see my mother. To confront her, about my father still being alive.’

  They both turned to look at me. I could sense their interest. ‘She told me that the major had my parents’ marriage annulled. He had my mother sign the papers first, before he took them to my father. He wanted him to see, that she had already left him.’ I blinked quickly, looking at the floor. ‘She said it was for me.’

  ‘Clara…’ Caleb took a step towards me, holding out his hands as though to offer some kind of comfort.

  I raised my own hand, palm outwards. ‘No. That’s why I’m here.’ I looked Zeke in the eye, taking in the impassive details of his face, the way his eyes looked hollow in the light. ‘If she destroyed my father because of me, then I want to do something to make amends. It’s too late for me to help him, but maybe I can help Simon, or the others who are trapped in that place. There are others?’

  Zeke raised an eyebrow. ‘There are always others. It never stops.’

  I nodded slowly, thinking about all the people who had disappeared from the fringes of my life over the years: a teacher, a friend’s brother, a boy from my university study group. ‘You need to tell me the plan. I can’t stand this waiting. It feels, all the time, like something bad is about to happen. I walk down the street and it feels like there are eyes everywhere.’

  They exchanged a glance. Zeke gave a curt nod and I knew they would tell me their secrets. Caleb beckoned me to follow him. ‘Come upstairs. We have the plans there.’ I shadowed him as he left the room, with Zeke close behind.

  ‘You must understand,’ Caleb said as we climbed upwards, ‘that this incursion, rescuing Simon, it’s part of something bigger.’

  ‘Bigger how?’ I asked.

  He laughed. ‘We’re going to bring them down. The government. We’re going to stop this.’

  I stopped abruptly. ‘You’re going to overthrow the government. And how do you propose to do that? It’s not as though you have an army at your disposal.’

  He turned back to smile at me. ‘Oh there are more of us than you realise. Lumière is made up of groups all across the country. There were a dozen of us originally, until we split off and travelled to different corners of the country, recruiting others and quietly spreading our message. There’s Leanna, with her pack of young fighters who live out in the wilds of Exmoor, periodically attacking the prison camp there. And Fraser on the Scottish borders. He never got over what happened to his fiancée, Marianne, who disappeared when they were young.’

  I stared at him, trying to wrap my head around the scale of this operation. I wasn’t entirely sure I believed him. He seemed to see it in my eyes.

  ‘Come on.’

  They took me to one of the rooms on the first floor, which must have been the master bedroom, once. The windows were lined with heavy blackout curtains, so the room could be fully lit. A grand fireplace dominated one side of the room, but there was no fire in the grate. I wondered if the chimney was blocked after years of disuse, or if they were afraid that the smoke might bring them to the wrong people’s attention. In the centre of the room was a huge table, covered in rolls of paper and photographs.

  Caleb stood back so I could examine the contents of those papers for myself. He watched from the doorway as I ran my hands over the plans, which showed layer upon layer of prison cells, driving down into the earth. The scale of the building made my head spin.

  But the photographs were worse. I don’t know who had taken them, why, or how old they were, but my heart froze. Men and women – some barely old enough to be acknowledged adult – were shackled on mattresses weighed down with filth, their eyes staring blankly at the camera. They were bloody and emaciated, their clothes torn or covered in bodily fluids. Some of the pictures depicted scenes of torture. There were women being raped by gangs of men, wearing balaclavas to shield their identities from the camera. There were people strapped to tables or hanging from chains; masked doctors with syringes and scalpels, poised to inflict damage even as they saluted the camera; there were even executions. A boy with a spade crying as he dug his own grave. As I handled the photos I came across a series that captured a mass execution. A dozen people knelt before the trench that would become their final place of rest, a trench that they had no doubt been forced to dig, before they were forced to their knees in the dirt. I flicked through the images as the soldiers lined up, automatic rifles in hand. They towered over the prisoners, who slumped, awaiting that final moment. There were pictures of the soldier who had given the order, his arm raised; of the bullets slicing through the air; of the people as they fell, heaped together on the ground. The final picture showed a seemingly empty field, its wretched secret buried beneath the soil.

  ‘Why are you showing these to me?’ My voice shook, but I didn’t mean it as a reproach. I needed to know. All those years of imagining had left their own scar. The reality couldn’t be worse than the scenarios I had spent my whole life visualising.

  It was hard-faced Zeke who stepped forward from the shadows to answer me. ‘We need to know what we might find when we get there. It won’t do any good for us to collapse in horror at the stat
e of the people there. We need to try and get them out. Then we need to make sure the world knows what the Authorisation Bureau did, so that they can pay.’

  I nodded. I understood. ‘Is this what they do… to everyone?’ I thought of my father and of Simon. He’d been gone so long already. My mind couldn’t handle the implications and I squeezed my eyes closed, trying to force away the images as they threatened to emerge.

  Zeke’s voice was much softer when he answered. ‘The things they do… depend… it’s different for each person. It depends on what their crimes are…’ He almost spat out the word, heavy with sarcasm. ‘… and who they were before, who they know. What secrets they might be able to reveal.’

  I could tell then, that he had lost somebody too. It was etched in every line on his face. But I couldn’t bear to ask, so instead I said, ‘Does anyone ever get out?’

  He gave me a smile so twisted that I feared this question was worse. ‘Some do. The lucky ones.’ He started to laugh. It chilled me so profoundly that I couldn’t move or speak or do anything beyond stare at his face, examining it for some kind of madness.

  My father had been trapped in that place for over a decade. There was a kind of madness in that too. I recognised it in myself.

  Caleb walked to the table and swept the photographs into a tidy stack, placed them into a folder and closed it. Even though we could no longer see the images, our eyes followed the folder as he carried it away and onto a shelf in the far corner of the room.

  ‘We should concentrate on the plans,’ Caleb told us firmly.

  We all sat around the table as he spread out the copies for us to see. He pointed to a network of dotted lines that circled the main building. ‘These are the hidden tunnels. The ones that are marked anyway.’

  I focused my attention on these tiny pathways, such an insignificant detail; an afterthought for the planners. Yet my entire life might depend on them. Clarity descended on me as I examined the outline of the building, trying to commit every corner to memory.

  The secret tunnels were intricate; they zigzagged across my retinas, the hope of freedom. I screwed my eyelids shut, trying to sear them into my brain.

  When I opened my eyes again, they were watching me. I took a deep breath.

  ‘I need you to tell me the plan.’

  ‘We will,’ Zeke said. ‘But we need you to do something for us first.’

  *

  I left the house via the back door, emerging again into the alley. I rattled the handle to make sure the door had closed behind me and turned to climb the steps.

  Before I could move, there was a rustling noise and a figure emerged from the darkness.

  ‘What are you doing down there? Those houses are empty.’

  I flinched as a bright light shone into my face, exposing me. I raised my arm to shield my eyes, but there was nowhere for me to go.

  He repeated the question, louder this time. ‘Well, what do you think you’re doing?’ The light came closer. ‘I ought to turn you in – you were robbing that house.’

  ‘No! I…’

  A hand grabbed my arm. ‘No please, let me go. You don’t understand.’ He pulled me up the steps and into the alleyway. The soft click of the door unlocking was barely audible.

  I was trying to wrest my arm free when Caleb emerged from the shadows.

  ‘Let her go!’

  ‘What the hell…’ the man began, trying to swing his torch around so that it illuminated Caleb. He didn’t get the chance.

  There was a sudden movement and a popping sound. Something sprayed across the side of my face. The grip on my arm loosened as the man fell to the floor.

  ‘Caleb,’ I cried, my voice verging on hysteria, ‘what did you do?’

  He tried to hush me, taking hold of my arms and shaking me gently. ‘I had to. He saw you coming out of the house. He was going to turn you in to the authorities. We couldn’t let that happen. He’s probably a spy; he must have followed you here.’

  ‘You killed him. You killed him.’

  ‘Clara, calm down. The man was a spy. I stopped him from taking you away. But you have to help me; we have to hide him.’

  I began to shake my head. ‘No, no. I can’t.’

  Caleb tried to reason with me, his voice low and urgent.

  ‘What the hell is going on out here?’ Zeke materialised out of the night.

  I suppressed a shriek. ‘Caleb shot someone.’ I began to panic. ‘Oh God, I’ve got blood all over my face. That was his blood wasn’t it?’

  I flapped at my face, trying to rub away the wetness that felt as though it was burning into my skin.

  ‘Probably some brain too,’ Zeke said. I gave a small wail.

  ‘Shut the fuck up,’ Caleb ordered. ‘This guy obviously followed Clara here. That means they know where we are. We’ve got to get rid of the body and get out of here. It isn’t safe.’

  Before Zeke could respond, there was movement in the bushes beside us. Caleb sprang into a crouch, his gun aimed. Something slithered through the fence and brushed against my legs, heading towards the dead body. There was a snuffling sound and a low whine.

  ‘It’s just a dog.’

  A cold sensation flooded my body. ‘A dog? Where did it come from?’ Full of foreboding, I crouched and felt around on the ground until I found the torch, which had been extinguished when it fell. I switched it on.

  ‘Clara!’ Zeke hissed, ‘Turn that off!’

  I swung it around so the beam of light broke across his face. ‘No. I need to check something.’

  I turned back to the body. It was a middle-aged man, wearing narrow-rimmed glasses. His eyes looked unusually wide behind the lenses, as they stared up at the stars. Half his head was missing.

  I fought the urge to vomit. The dog was lying on the floor beside him, its face pressed into its paws. It lifted its head when I shone the torch in that direction, the light catching on a name tag dangling around its neck.

  Taking a deep breath, I leaned forward and began methodically going through the man’s pockets. Slowly, I pulled my hand out and turned so that the others could see what I was holding.

  ‘Shit,’ Zeke said. Caleb kept quiet.

  ‘He was walking his dog.’ I waved the lead at them. ‘His fucking dog! And you shot him. He was an ordinary guy; he’s probably got a family somewhere waiting for him to come home.’

  Caleb’s face was expressionless under the light of the torch. The shadows gave him a sinister aspect. He looked me in the eye.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. He saw you coming out of this house. He would have told someone and that would have been it for us.’

  ‘But you didn’t have to kill him!’

  Caleb shook his head. ‘The only thing that matters is the mission. He isn’t important.’

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. For a minute, no one spoke. My head was spinning. The dog pressed its warm body against my legs.

  ‘We have to move the body.’

  I stared at Caleb in disgust. ‘Clean up your own mess.’ I flung the dog lead at him and walked away, rubbing hard at the side of my face until my skin felt raw, trying to ignore the animal as it followed in my wake.

  Thirty-two

  I would have stayed away from my mother, if it were up to me. I would have ignored the messages that waited for me when I returned home from work each day, imploring me to talk to her. I had nothing left to say.

  I couldn’t forget what had happened in the alley. The look on Caleb’s face when he told me the man he killed didn’t matter. I never wanted to see him again.

  But I knew that would mean giving up on Simon. There was no one else who could help. And Caleb wanted me to visit my mother.

  I put my feelings aside and grudgingly accepted an invitation to have a family dinner with her and the major. I tried to think of myself as a soldier, doing my duty by following orders, no matter how distasteful.

  I arrived late, anxious in my best dress and low-heeled shoes. It seemed right to make the ef
fort, to consign my jeans and ratty sweatshirt to the back of the drawer for one night. I even brought a bottle of wine, a heady red recommended by the man in the village shop. When he rang it up I winced at the price. But he had the grace to smile as I counted out the coppers from the bottom of my purse and handed them over to make sure I had enough.

  When I arrived at the house, it was Will who answered the door. He was sullen in tracksuit bottoms and an old t-shirt with some forgotten comic-book hero on the front. He looked so much younger without his uniform. I gave him an awkward hug and felt his hands press lightly against my back.

  ‘I didn’t know you were going to be here. How’s the academy?’

  He shrugged and rubbed his nose. ‘Yeah, fine. I’m just taking a few days off.’ He avoided my eyes so I didn’t question him further.

  My mother was waiting for me in the lounge, sipping a cocktail. She stood by the fireplace, glass in one hand, the other fiddling with the rope of pearls around her neck. When I came in she started forward as though to embrace me, then stopped, suddenly self-conscious. She tossed back what was left of her drink and waggled the glass towards me.

  ‘Martini, darling?’

  I nodded, ‘Okay.’ Remembering myself, I held out the bottle of wine. ‘Or red, if you prefer? I brought you this.’

  She took it from me carefully and scrutinised the label. ‘Lovely. We’ll have this with dinner, shall we?’

  I didn’t reply and she turned to the sideboard, where an array of liquor bottles and crystal decanters were on display. I watched as she mixed two martinis, the tremor in her hand almost imperceptible. Over her shoulder she called, ‘Will, darling, do you want one of these?’

  My brother was lurking in the doorway; I’d forgotten he was there.

  ‘Yeah, okay.’

  She brought us each a drink and we sipped them slowly. The martinis were strong; the alcohol burned its way along my throat and my eyes watered. Will tried not to grimace. She collected her glass and took a gulp. None of us sat down.