by Yannick Hill
But then, one day last year, she disappeared. For a long time there was no music, no new photographs or videos. Nobody knew where she was, not even her family, think of that! It was the biggest story on the internet for a long time. They thought she had to be dead. Such a famous girl, it was like the earth had swallowed her right up! One year. She was gone for a whole year and then she turned up again, just like that. A new video of Scout dancing in the desert with a sword. But no music; it was strange. And after that, images of her with the sunglasses getting in her car and driving away down the street, camera flashes in the black windows. Like all the other celebrities, not answering any questions and getting in their cars with the dark windows. Not the same Scout as before.
Something changed, and this was her first interview since the disappearance. Wearing sunglasses and very careful with her answers. I won’t say where I was. It doesn’t matter where I was. What matters is who I am now. I fell in love . . . No, it wasn’t a boy, it’s not any one person, it’s an idea, a system of ideas . . . Not a cult, no. Deep Sky is a state of mind. She touched the side of her sunglasses, her hand was shaking a little. I can’t say anymore about it, I’ve already said too much. After that, the interviewer asked Scout about a new album. She smiled nervously, said that she was working on new material, but asked her fans to please be patient. It will be worth the wait, you guys, I promise. But Leticia wanted to know more about this Deep Sky. She searched the net for Deep Sky, but there was no information about it. Only scary stories. Very strange. Scout Rose talking about Deep Sky and nothing about it on the internet. How could this be?
That night her dream is of her parents’ farm, a view across the rice fields towards the deep, deep forest. A creature just inside the trees, a big cat but strange, its body not reflecting any of the sunlight coming through the leaves, not gleaming but shining, not fur but hard plastic, black plastic inside the shadows, moving very slowly but always inside the line of trees, the hot sun reflecting off its plastic armor. This is not a bad dream, it is a dream of childhood, not hers, but this is her parents’ farm, the rice fields bordering the forest, a creature just inside the trees, the darkness of her childhood, the forbidden forest, so deep her imagination cannot reach, the screech of cockatoos and wet earth beneath the fallen leaves, the glint, glint of the mawmag’s eyes, the rain sounding in the upper canopy, growing heavier, and now she feels it on her face, in her hair, the forest of her childhood and she’s well inside the treeline, the creature tracking her, but this is not a bad dream, Leticia does not feel afraid, and this is not a good dream, not gleaming but shining, rain beading on its surfaces, black plastic in place of shadows.
She was woken by an electronic bell sound. She knew that sound, but wait, how could it be here in her apartment? Leticia rubbed her eyes like in the cartoons. This wasn’t her apartment. This was her old room at Versailles. Then she remembered. Synthea had sounded so bad on the phone. A broken woman. She had asked Leticia to come to Versailles, forget about Mr Casey, he was out of town on business anyways. She had asked her to please come over, she did not want to be alone at this time. She had sounded very upset on the phone and so Leticia left her apartment and got in her car right away. She found Mrs Synthea in her office and she was a mess, saying things that made no sense, so Leticia took her to the bedroom, put her in her bed like a child.
And now the electronic bell that told her Synthea was awake and wanted something. She picked up the handset clumsily and put it to her head. ‘Yes.’
‘I had a dream last night,’ started Synthea. ‘It was Missy on a beach, a strange mist coming in from the sea. She always told me everything, Leticia, she always did, but something changed. Our relationship changed and now she’s gone and I don’t know why. It’s all my fault, Leticia. I should have been there for her and I wasn’t. Missy always told me everything and something must have happened because she didn’t want to talk to me, not like before, like when she told me her problems, we talked about everything, Leticia, and now she’s gone and I know it’s got something to do with my husband, I just know it has something to do with fucking Casey. It’s all him. I just know he did something. Call it a woman’s intuition, a mother’s intuition. And get this, he won’t let me call the police because . . . and he won’t tell me where she is. Can you believe that? He says he has the situation under control, that she just needs some time and not to worry. Then where is she, Leticia? It’s been two days. Where is she, where’s my daughter if it’s all under control? Why won’t he tell me? I know why. Because he’s lying, Leticia, to protect himself. He doesn’t want me to call the police because of the attention it will bring to the family. I think he’s lying to protect himself and his precious network. Over our daughter! Our daughter has gone missing and all he cares about is the fucking company! Oh my God! And it’s always been like this, Leticia, you’ve seen it, you’ve seen the way he shuts us out. His family. You’ve seen the sacrifices he’s made. You know what he’s capable of.’
‘Yes, but I don’t understand you, Mrs Synthea, I don’t understand everything you are saying, but I will come upstairs and you will tell me again. Stay where you are and I will come to you and we will talk some more. Would you like some food, Mrs Synthea? Would you like me to bring you something from the kitchens? Some yogurt, some blueberries?’
‘Blueberries, yes,’ Synthea said, ‘but no, no thank you, Leticia, I couldn’t eat. I really couldn’t eat. And, anyway, you don’t have to bring me anything, not after what happened. I asked you here as a friend, Leticia. You don’t have to bring me anything. Somebody else can bring me blueberries. But not now. I asked you here as a friend because I trust you and you know my daughter, I think you love my daughter. I have to find my daughter. And River. My River. He’s so angry with me. He’s so angry with me and I don’t know why.’
‘Okay, but we don’t need to talk like this on the phone if we are in the same house! Please, Mrs Synthea, calm down and I will come to you and we will talk. Don’t worry, we can work this out. Together, we can work it out, alright?’
By the time Leticia got to the bedroom, Synthea was gone. When she opened the heavy curtains, such terrible, heavy, black curtains, she saw the chaos. Horrible. There were clothes everywhere, all over the floor, the bed, it was a big mess, almost scary in a way, like the mess left by an angry spirit. Leticia remembered other times like this, Mrs Synthea acting like a crazy person, walking naked in the house, sometimes sleepwalking, other times just like that because she liked going naked! She’d scared the kids a couple of times, turned up outside their rooms, knocking on the doors. They should never see their mother like that. They should see her as she was, as they knew her before, as Leticia knew her. Leticia was angry. Leticia was scared. Leticia wasn’t used to this chaos anymore.
It was not her job, but Leticia felt like cleaning up the clothes. Even when she worked here it was not her job, but she wanted to help somehow. Maybe Mrs Synthea would feel better if she cleaned up her clothes, so she could see everything in the right place and then she could decide. Maybe decide to make another mess, but never mind, she would try! Maybe Mrs Synthea could decide who she was after that because it was time she recognized what was important: her responsibilities! Her children! Her future! This Casey Baer. But Leticia did not understand about the police. Why not call the cops? That was their job: to look for people, bring them back safe. Why would Mr Casey do that? Mr Casey did a lot of things, but he would want his daughter safe. He was Missy’s father, whatever Mrs Synthea said. Nothing could change that. He was her father, and a father would not let his daughter go like that.
All the beautiful dresses, all these beautiful dresses. White dresses with grass stains, her shoes full of sand from the beach . . . A lost woman, yes. Leticia closed the door to the wardrobe and went looking.
24
River replayed the Scout Rose interview a third time. It was the top trending story on the internet right now. Deep Sky. It sure sounded like a cult! unknown_user. ruhin. scoutfan. Ri
ver was sure they were all connected. And if Deep Sky was a cult, then maybe it was them who had his sister.
The fan site was still River’s best lead, but he needed to stop lurking and start intervening, posting, even start some threads, gain the attention of the moderators, but his persona had to be right. Just be Missy. You can do that. He signed into scoutfan as pr1ncess, clicked the first thread he came across and hit the post reply button. Blinking cursor. Again River hesitated. Again he checked the rearview mirror for movement. Again he remembered unknown_user’s words on chat: You don’t find us, we find you. River clenched his fist till it hurt. This feeling that someone was watching, looking right through him. It was giving him that thing. What did they call it? Writer’s block.
It was like that time he fell off his skateboard and cracked his head open. The doctors said the fracture was along the suture lines in his skull, the areas between the bones that fused when he was a little kid. Missy was the one to find him unconscious and she told him later she could see his brain peeking out. There was no damage but this idea of his head being open had stayed with River . . . His sister seeing inside his actual head. Even after he was healed, it took him weeks to want to get back on a skateboard, and even then he’d had to relearn some of his most basic tricks, and not because he didn’t know what to do. It was a confidence thing. Then one night, he had this weird dream. He was lying on the beach outside Versailles at night, the water lapping gently around him, and someone was filling the cracks in his head with wet sand. It didn’t hurt, it felt good and loving and when he woke up he was like a different person. He felt new.
River stared into the monitor. Blinking cursor. He hesitated . . . Fuck it. This was his art, his thing, pretending to be different people, dreaming other lives online. He wasn’t going to let one hacker stop him doing what he did best. No way. Versailles was locked tighter than the White House. He’d taken every precaution online. Now he just had to get back on the board. No typos. If this unknown_user freak could be anonymous, so could he.
Just be Missy.
Blinking cursor.
River thought he knew his sister, her way of thinking. But being her was a different thing. He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. When they were younger they pretended they were telepathic. Because they were twins the other kids believed them. They called it their pirate frequency, but they just had stuff worked out ahead of time (What am I thinking about, Missy? / Crocodile!) But in real life they did have a special connection. River just liked his sister. They were friends. And now she was gone and River had to do something. Best case scenario, somebody was using scoutfan to recruit teenage girls to join a cult. River had to get the attention of scoutfan’s moderators somehow. But before posting, he had to have his act together, he had to have this pr1ncess character perfect. River figured having a sixteen-year-old twin sister was a good start. He could just pretend to be Missy. Couldn’t he?
He kept his eyes closed, imagined her in the room with him, her endless excitement about whatever, acting out what she was saying in wide, arcing gestures, like a ballet dancer, like a ballet dancer that is making up her routine as she goes along, that was his sister, writing her name in the dark with a sparkler, M–I–S–S–Y, but then also shooting fireworks straight ahead of her into the darkness to see how far they’d go, that was his sister, talking, talking it up like time was running out but then giving, giving you as much time as you needed to say what you really meant, listening, she was a good listener, that was his sister, her imagination, her ideas for games when they were kids, running through the corridors of Versailles like a wild animal, always moving, always dancing, acting like a nerd in your peripheral vision to make you laugh, that was her, her need for your attention but then her power over you, that was her too. He imagined her in the room with him, talking about this and that, trying to get his attention and him not listening really, caught up with something he was doing online, and then her leaving, telling him she loved him and then leaving, and he realized this was memory, this really happened. The night before she disappeared she had come by his room to say hi, and now he saw she was really trying to say goodbye, trying to get his attention and him not listening. River, wanna play a video game? River . . . River . . . He played it back but the memory wasn’t all there, fragmented because he hadn’t listened to her, hadn’t even looked up from his computer screen, too caught up with some random shit he was doing online, some stupid fucking meaningless internet shit and now she was gone, somewhere he could not follow. He remembered. That moment when he got ahold of the inflatable crocodile and how he wished – how they’d both wished – it had got away. That twin thing they talked about in books and movies. The speaking without words. River squeezed his eyelids. She was out there. Somewhere he couldn’t follow. It made him want to get that thing, that crocodile, and shred it to pieces with a knife, shred it into ribbons until . . . until it was nothing.
River opened his eyes, checked the rear mirror, pulled the black blanket over his head, and started typing.
25
Leticia couldn’t find Mrs Synthea anywhere. So many rooms in this place, she’d worked in Versailles for ten years and had not seen inside most of these rooms, strange to think. To live in a house for so long and not know what was there, behind that wall, and all the other walls, it always gave her bad dreams, even nightmares. But Leticia knew by heart which doors were locked, she’d tried opening all of them at some time.
She had searched for her former mistress in every other room, the doors that opened without a key, calling her name, even looking under tables sometimes! She wasn’t in her office. The indoor swimming pool. She tried the Grand Ballroom, the dining room, the kitchens. Nobody had seen Mrs Synthea, although they were happy to see Leticia, thinking she was coming back to work, but she told them no, only for today, she had her own apartment now and she was quite happy, thank you for asking.
She took the elevator down to the den. This was where the family had watched movies together when the kids were much younger, movies and TV on the big cinema screen, played all the latest board games, so many rules, so much plastic, so many fights, but it was a happy time in a way, when the family could spend time together, laughing, arguing. But over the years, as the kids got their devices around them, their TVs and computers and phones, they didn’t want to go down to the den anymore, they wanted to stay in their rooms and play video games and text their friends and post pictures. Now the den was like a big cupboard full of junk! Boxes, cardboard boxes, outdoor equipment, colored ropes, surf boards, skis, bicycles, more bicycles. This was where everything ended up that the family did not want. Some of this stuff was still in its packaging, not even opened! It was a shame, really.
The den was also where they kept Louis, a rare forest monitor lizard Casey bought as a Christmas present for the family, but they forgot about him, like everything else down here in the den, they forgot about Louis after a while, but not Leticia. She loved him, she loved Louis. Such an amazing animal, with his shiny armor and perfect, perfect face. Like a handbag! Leticia had felt so sorry for Louis down in the den all on his own, he should have been outside like other animals. And he was Filipino like her! No kidding! Louis was all the way from the Philippines! She cared very much for him and after the Baers forgot about Louis she carried on feeding him, looked after him, talked to him every day, every single day she talked about her life, celebrity news, gossip around the house, her job, her plans for the weekend. Sometimes she even talked to him about the Philippines, like she was sharing memories with him, haha!
She wished he could talk sometimes, but she enjoyed being with Louis because he listened to her, with his cute little yellow eyes and teeth like he was angry all the time. But she knew he couldn’t help it if he looked that way, he wasn’t angry with her, he was just Louis, eating mice like they were candy! Yummy, squeaky snacks! He also ate fish, shrimp, crab meat, turkey, chicken, and eggs – all raw – just like that. Hungry boy! Louis. It was her name for him. The
y never gave him a name but she gave him a name. She named him after Louis XIV, the king of France who lived in the real palace of Versailles in Paris. Right? Because Louis was a very special lizard and he deserved a special title like that. Nobody else knew his name but she did. Wow, the den was even more full of junk than the last time she was here. Leticia had to climb over some boxes to get to Louis.
She let out a shriek when she saw the enclosure. The wire mesh on one side had been ripped away from its plywood frame from the inside. Louis had escaped. She had seen him try before and told him no, to leave his cage alone, that if he ever escaped they would kill him. They will not hesitate, Louis. They’ll shoot you like a dirty dog if you ever get out of there, I’m telling you that right now. But he was determined. Louis had escaped, but where was he? Oh, my goodness, it’s my fault. She realized right away that she forgot to tell somebody. She forgot to tell somebody to feed Louis when she left Versailles. She was so upset when she lost her position, her contact with the kids, she had forgotten all about it and now he was hungry, her poor, poor Louis. She wanted to cry. He was hungry and looking for food. Hunting somewhere! That made her laugh for some reason, but this was not funny at all, no, no, no, no, no! Louis had lots of teeth and maybe now he was angry, maybe after all this time of just looking angry, he really was angry! First thing she thought was call his name. ‘LOUIS! LOUIS!’ She called him again and again, but what was she thinking? He didn’t really know his name was Louis, and even if he did he wasn’t going to come to her like a little doggy. She had to find him and Mrs Synthea, and Missy, everybody, she couldn’t believe it, she couldn’t believe it. Really. Everybody was disappearing, all around her. But Leticia didn’t panic. She was not a panicky person. Breathe, Leticia, calm down. Right, Louis first. She had to find Louis first because this was dangerous, somebody might get hurt even if he did not mean it. ‘LOUIS! LOUIS!’