If I Disappear

by Eliza Jane Brazier

  My lips stiffen, and I find I can’t form words, can’t think—is this because I think he’s guilty or because I feel guilty for asking? “Florence Wipler.”

  “What? What are you talking about?” he says like I am unhinged.

  “You were together, right? You were seeing each other, before she disappeared?”

  His face closes like a curtain dropping, and I think of all the times I confronted Jed. How I felt safe, even after I accused him of murder. I don’t feel safe now. I don’t feel like I am looking at the same person I was looking at only a moment ago, and when it speaks—when he speaks—it’s like something else, like a robot has taken Homer’s place.

  “. . . No,” he says like I’m mistaken.

  “I thought you were.”

  “I— Why do you say that? Who told you that? What makes you say that?” His voice is measured but angry. His dimples are on fire.

  “I saw your names carved into a tree.” I realize my mistake too late.

  “Well, Rachel, that’s not exactly evidence. Anyone can write someone’s name on a tree.” He steps closer to me, gripping the multi-tool. “Where did you see it?” he says. “Out of curiosity. Maybe I should just do something about it. Wouldn’t want to upset the wife.” He smiles like your father, dopey, like this is all a game.

  There are at least ten ways he could kill me with his multi-tool. I am alone. Your parents are gone. Jed is gone. And no one would know if I disappeared right now. No one except Clem, who’s expecting me. But Homer is her husband. He could say anything to her. He could say I was gone when he arrived. He could bury me in the pet cemetery, hide me under the blackberry bushes. There are a million places out here where he could leave my body and no one would ever, ever find me.

  “I can’t remember.” I want to ask him about the others but I am afraid, afraid of what will happen if he sees, the lines I am drawing, the connections I’m making. Murder. Missing. Conspiracy.

  He stays frozen for one, two seconds; then his knee bounces. “Why don’t you head down? I’m just going to take a look at something. Then we can go have dinner.”

  “I’ll take my own car,” I volunteer. “I don’t want you to have to drive me home.”

  “Suit yourself.” He shrugs and heads toward the water cylinders.

  * * *

  —

  I popped a Dramamine while I waited for Homer but I still arrive in Happy Camp with a syrupy ache in my temples, a dizziness that travels all the way to my toes and makes me walk off-balance up the path to their house. It has the same cookie-cutter quality as their house on the ranch, but it’s hemmed in by a white picket fence. My eyes drift up to the attic, down to the basement. Is that where he hides the bodies?

  Is it Homer? Is it your mother? Is it your father? Is it all of them? Who has access to that computer? Who has been sending messages from Grace’s account? Your parents have access, but they barely know how to use it. And the computer is downstairs, next to the back door, and the door is always unlocked. Everyone has access to it.

  Homer stops at the door and smiles back at me, like Walt Disney on the opening day of Disneyland, and says, “Welcome to our home.”

  I feel sick but I need to act normal, like every day of the week but worse. In a way I’ve been preparing for this my whole life. I force a deep breath.

  Homer opens the door to the life my parents always wanted for me, the life I was supposed to have. The girls are at the table doing their homework. Clementine is in the kitchen preparing dinner. The house smells like baking and boutique candles, is decorated with homemade goods in pastel patterns.

  Homer kisses his wife on her carotid artery and says that dinner smells amazing and did the girls do their homework? The girls explode into a chorus of Disney afternoon-approved complaints.

  “But homework is so pointless!”

  “We’ll never use any of this!”

  And Homer gives me a significant look like we are all in on this together.

  I offer to help Clementine in the kitchen and she is nice enough to say I can, but she doesn’t know how to use me and I don’t know how to be used, so I end up standing off to the side, feeling more and more ineffectual, feeling a kind of shame blossom on my cheeks, like I am embarrassed not to be Clementine.

  I tried the conventional life—the husband and the job and the family—but it didn’t take and I left it without ever considering that there was no alternative. I think of Homer in the woods and I look at him here now, and I wonder if when I wished for this life, I was wishing on smoke.

  “I can’t believe Jed killed himself,” Clementine says over the stove, but really she can’t believe anyone would. She chose the right life, but, more important, she can be happy in it. Jed couldn’t. I can’t. You can’t. The system that sustains her breaks us.

  Then dinner is ready and we put the homework away, shepherd the plates to the table, where Homer sits at the head, with Clem on one side and his daughters on the other, and me on my own at the other end.

  They make cooing noises as they eat, like the food has to be placated.

  “How are things on the ranch?” Clementine finally asks. “I mean, apart from . . .” She grimaces at her mistake. “How is everything else?”

  “It’s all right. It’s so beautiful there.” I think of Grace’s message home, the message that was sent after she disappeared, and I shudder.

  “Will you stay on?”

  “Yes,” I say, no pause.

  A fork scrapes across a plate. “Really? I’m surprised.”

  “Why are you surprised?”

  “I just thought, with everything that’s happened . . .” She wants me to leave. “I think most people would go.”

  “Really?” I challenge. Asha and Aya both look up, then back down. “Do you ever hear from Grace?”

  “Grace?” Clementine says.

  “Jed’s wife. I just wonder what happened to her.”

  “I heard she went back to Texas.”

  “She didn’t.”

  Clementine straightens. “Oh? I always thought she just went back home.” It reminds me of when Jed said, Maybe I just want to believe that Rachel got away. . . . But I do believe it. When Clem herself said, I wouldn’t worry about Rachel. She always took care of herself. Because isn’t that what we do? Isn’t that what we all do? When someone disappears.

  “A lot of people struggle out here,” Homer points out in his collected preacher voice. “They get cabin fever, like Jed. I hate to say it, but he was starting to get pretty sloppy, I thought.” He tugs at his collar, twice.

  “I didn’t realize you had much interaction,” I say.

  Clementine’s eyes dart to Homer. “Word gets around here,” she interjects. “Small town. We were worried about him.”

  “Hey, we like to check in on everyone.” Homer beams like a saint; Clementine smiles.

  “Moroni checked in,” I say. “After Jed died. Looked like he’d been in a fight. So did Jed.”

  Homer stretches his back. “Well, the sad truth is, Sera, sometimes people die in the middle of an argument, before we get the chance to repent and ask forgiveness.” I think of Florence.

  The girls keep their heads down. It’s black outside the window. There is not so much as a streetlight for miles around.

  My nerves collect in my chest. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “You just did,” Asha and Aya say in chorus.

  I take a deep breath. I think, This could all end now. I think, Don’t ask. It’s like the part at the end of a horror film, where the hero is walking slowly down the hallway, clutching a bloody knife, and you’re sitting there on the couch with your fingers clenched as they reach for the last door and you want to scream, Don’t look! Whatever you do, don’t look!

  “Did you know April Atkins?”

  Episode 81:

  In
the Basement

  For nearly six months, they were kept in chains in the basement. He raped and tortured them. They believed it was consensual. They believed he loved them.

  Clem’s chin rises. The girls duck their heads. “April?”

  “Yes.”

  “At-kins?” she says like it’s hard to pronounce.

  “I think she worked at the ranch.”

  “Hmm.”

  The girls don’t meet my eye. Homer blots his brow.

  “I think, maybe, there was an April there, at some point.” Clementine blows out her lips. “It’s hard to remember everybody!”

  “What about Elizabeth Lowe? Leah Townsend? Missy Schubert?”

  “You’d have to ask Addy.” Clementine’s fork scrapes across her plate. “She might have records.”

  The girls stand up at once. “Can we be excused?”

  “Clean your plates.” They lift them in unison, hurry to the kitchen. And I think: They know. And I think: Clementine knows.

  “Where are you getting all these names from?” Homer says.

  “Rachel’s podcast.”

  He rubs his cheeks like he’s trying to remove his dimples. “I wouldn’t trust everything Rachel says.”

  “Some of those girls might have come through here, at one time,” Clementine says. “But this is kind of a place for lost souls.” Homer sets his hand on the table and Clementine takes it, squeezes it, like they are the only two survivors in an apocalyptic world.

  * * *

  —

  I can’t shake the feeling, as I leave their house, as I walk toward my car, that they—Homer and Clem—are exactly why I wanted to run, why I came out here in the first place. In their white clapboard house with their white picket fence and their pastel-painted walls, their patterned kitchenware, their jobs and their homework, they know something. They all know something but they’re pretending they don’t.

  I wonder if I should go to the police. I wonder if the Facebook accounts, the missing women, the names on the tree would be enough to convince them to look twice.

  I start toward town. I head first to the coffee shop, but it’s closed. Then to the grocery store, but it’s closed too. The whole town is closed and I head down Main Street, hear the meth rabbits in their hutches and then a voice calls out to me, from too far away, “Did you ever find that ranch?”

  I turn and I see, at that same too-far-to-talk distance, the man I saw on my first day in Happy Camp. His cat is gone but he is sitting firm, holding his place outside the Happy Camp Arts Center, calling out when it’s too late.

  I walk toward him. “Yes. Yes, I did. Thank you for your directions.”

  He shrinks when I get closer. His eyes are bulbous, yellow. His skin is tough around his lips so they seem not to move when he exhales with a faint, dead puff, like a body wheezing out its last breath. “Why are you still here?”

  “I’m looking for Rachel Bard.”

  “Ha!”

  I am not sure how to interpret that, but then I am used to that with him. “She’s missing.”

  He wriggles a finger, beckoning me forward. I step closer, enveloped in his smell, which is overly sweet, like a flower right before it dies. “I saw her.”

  “What? When?”

  He nods, pleased with the effect. “I see her all the time. No one else sees her—no one else is looking. But I see her. I see her.” I feel a slight chill, wonder if this is how I look, if this is how I seem to other people, a lost soul claiming to see what no one else can.

  “Where?”

  “In the woods, sometimes. By the river. Out there.” He aims his finger at the vanishing point, the end of the road. “Couple days ago, I saw her getting into a big black truck, with that cowboy.” I deflate. He hasn’t seen you. He’s seen me. I am so deep in your disappearance that I have become a clue.

  * * *

  —

  The bell dings overhead as I step into the police station. Officer Hardy sighs, but keeps his eyes trained on his phone.

  “I need to report . . . something.”

  His lips twitch. “How mysterious.”

  I can’t shake the image of that man in front of the Arts Center. I wish Jed were here. I wish you were here. But you’re not, and I have to start believing in myself or no one else will.

  I put both hands on the counter. “Women have been disappearing, for years, from the Bards’ property. Florence Wipler. Elizabeth Lowe. Leah Townsend. April Atkins. And now Grace Combs.”

  “I—”

  “I think Homer Bard is responsible.”

  “Homer?” He nearly chokes on his tobacco.

  “He was seeing Florence, when she disappeared. Did you know that? And then she cheated on him. He acted funny when I asked him about it. And his sister has been investigating him, she’s been keeping a record of every disappearance, and now she’s disappeared too. I think Homer is responsible. Maybe Addy and Emmett too . . . Clementine. Even Tasia.” With every name his eyes grow dimmer.

  He sets his phone down and gets to his feet. His hands go to his holster and I think he could shoot me; he could place me under arrest. Maybe he is part of it too. I can’t trust him. I can’t trust anyone. I step back, analyze exit strategies. “Now, you seem like a nice girl—no—you seem an enthusiastic girl—”

  “Woman.”

  “If you say so.” He leans forward on his elbows. His breath is hot on my cheek. “But I need more than just a crazy story to get out of bed in the morning. What did I tell you? Last time you were here?”

  “I need evidence.” But we know he doesn’t want just any evidence. He wants bodies.

  * * *

  —

  I drive out to the ranch in the soupy, slippery dark. The road seems to have turned against me, slipping and sliding around me in new, precipitous turns, sprinkled with sharp, fallen rocks.

  I make a plan. I will call my ex-husband. I will tell him that if he doesn’t hear from me in five hours (two and a half hours to drive to Yreka, where there is cell service, which means I have two and a half hours to save you), he should call the police. I will say goodbye to Belle Star. (This is one point I can’t find my way around. I have thought about stealing her, stealing your mother’s truck and trailer, driving off and saving her, but that would be a crime. Maybe I can come back for her.) And then I will go to the yellow house with a shotgun. I will blow down the door. And I will find my evidence.

  My hands are shaking when I get to the ranch. I park my car next to your father’s SUV in the lot. Are your parents back already? Or did they take another car?

  I hurry inside to use the phone, but it’s been ripped from the wall. It is lying, smashed plastic, in the middle of the floor. My heart pounds.

  “Hello?”

  I rush to the computer. I wiggle the mouse. The screen lights up but the pages have vanished. Someone has been using the computer.

  I blink and force myself to open the browser. A white page pops up.

  Oops! Something is wrong. You are not connected to the Internet.

  I try again.

  Oops! Something is wrong. You are not connected to the Internet.

  And again.

  Oops! Something is wrong. You are not connected to the Internet.

  I crouch forward. My stomach churns. I hear a click and all the lights go out at once. The moon ebbs in the window and someone is here. Someone is watching me.

  “Hello?” I say again. My voice is a rasp. I stand but my body is stooped, aching. It’s like fear is poisoning me. I take my cell phone from my pocket and use it to light my way across the room. The statue of Jesus flags me down, saying, Calm, calm, be calm. But my heart beats faster. I step across the living room, under the curve of the staircase.

  I duck into the armory. Your parents keep their four hundred and twenty-seven guns in a room off the kitchen.
They don’t keep it locked because of course they don’t. They want someone to find it. They love chaos. They love brutality. They are a real wilderness family.

  The door is already open. I flash the light across the floor and I jump back in surprise. There is a man on the floor in a cowboy hat. At first, I think it’s Jed. He is lying on his stomach in a pool of vomit. The smell hits my nostrils the second I see it.

  I bend down, knees quivering. I press my fingers against his neck. It is only then, touching his papery, wrinkled skin, that I realize it is your father. Your father is dead. Merely a flesh wound, my brain fizzes. And I think that he will pop up and have a good, long laugh about it.

  In either hand he clutches a customized silver pistol. If he was going down, he’d want to go down with a set of ostentatious guns. And I have to remind myself that this is real, that this isn’t just an object lesson. It looks real and it smells real but my brain is telling me, Don’t worry! My brain is telling me, Go nuts! It’s safer.

  I press my fingers to your father’s wrist, under his chest so I can feel the cave where his heart died and I think, I don’t want to die.

  I came out here to disappear but I don’t want to. I want to fucking live. I don’t need to live better. I don’t need to live right. I just need to fucking survive.

  I take the best gun I can find, the one with the laser sight, the one that’s so tricked out it will probably aim and fire without my even having to pull the trigger. I check to see it’s loaded even though I know it is.

  I hold it against my shoulder like I know what I am doing, like I have ever done this before. “I have a gun,” I say, but it’s almost a whisper. “If you can hear me, I have a gun.” I slip back through the kitchen.

  I hear a thud on the stairwell and I whirl around, pointing wildly. Two yellow eyes flash. It is one of the cats. I don’t know how it got in and it hisses and spreads its mouth in a clown’s smile.