The Man Who Vanishes_a gripping horror thriller spanning 3 timelines_One Man. Everywhere.

by J M Gonzalez Riley

‘And you think I would have taken you with me the second time?’ he spat, struggling against the rope. ‘What, you? A slimy, worm-ridden old bitch like you?’

  Serapia went very quiet.

  So did the crowd.

  ‘Enough!’ cried the General, casting his eyes up at the sky again, a look of worry etched across his face. ‘It's high time you both paid for your crimes.’

  ‘I didn’t kill her!’ Kayn yelled at the crowd. They laughed and shouted obscenities back at him.

  ‘One volunteer,’ said the General, ‘to set fire to the man who has brought so much pain and misery to so many.’

  Commotion stirred up at the back. People parted, some complaining, as the huge brute Fürgos came through, towering over everybody, pushing men and women out of his way. ‘Me! Fürgos! Me!’ he panted excitedly.

  The Witchfinder General seemed to hesitate for a moment, looking over at the sire. But the sire was not about to object.

  The General nodded and Fürgos was handed a torch, wearily.

  ‘I will burn the witch’s pile,’ claimed the General, taking a second torch.

  ‘No!’ Fürgos roared.

  Everybody in the glade went quiet.

  The sire stepped back hastily.

  ‘Fürgos burn him!’ grinned the giant, pointing at Kayn.

  The Witchfinder General fixed the brute with a dark stare.

  ‘I will spare you this time, for you are a God-forsaken idiot,’ he said between gritted teeth.

  The crowd held its breath.

  Fürgos licked his lips in anticipation.

  ‘As I said,’ repeated the General: ‘You will burn him,’ he pointed up at Kayn, at which Fürgos grew excited. ‘And I will burn her.’

  Fürgos nodded and pushed past him toward the second pile. He stood at the bottom, looking up at Kayn. The Witchfinder General strode angrily toward the Incantatrix’s pile and set fire to it at once.

  The crowd cheered loudly upon seeing the flames.

  Fürgos remained transfixed at the bottom of his pile, watching Kayn. But Kayn hadn’t noticed him. Instead, he was looking over at Serapia in horror. The witch met his gaze, and it was a sad, tired look. Even as he watched, her skin loosened and sagged under her eyes and hollowed at her cheeks, washing away her unnatural beauty. Her whole frame shook and shrunk and the crowd gasped in horror, groaning aloud at the site of her.

  The flames grew taller, hungrier, deadlier, and she let them come and lick and eat at her, a withered old woman.

  Unnoticed, Fürgos licked his lips and began climbing Kayn's pile.

  The crowd cheered and danced around the burning pile and Serapia smiled down upon them. Suddenly, the Incantatrix filled her lungs as if to scream, and at once, lethal sticks of burning wood exploded from her pyre in all directions. The nearest onlookers were impaled by flying debris, falling to the ground, dying, whilst the remaining missiles grazed those further out, igniting their robes and their terror.

  The Incantatrix laughed a dry laugh as chaos spread across the glade below her. People ran in all directions as the burning bonfire tore itself apart with the witch's magic. Even the General, who had been trying to calm the crowd, now fell back and joined in the exodus, alongside the sire. Some of the wounded lay wriggling on the ground, smouldering like dolls; others fell to their deaths close by. The smell of charred meat wafted in the strong wind. Amongst the chaos, a man broke forth from the crowd, screaming, wielding a sharpened pole, and pierced the witch's heart.

  Kayn tore his gaze from her limp body and found to his surprise that the brute Fürgos was climbing his pile and was almost upon him. Those who still remained on the hill cried in anger, shouting at him to burn him, glancing nervously at the witch, half-expecting her to come alive and finish them off. Others knelt beside their dead ones, wailing, gripped by grief. But the brute ignored them all and climbed on, until he reached Kayn at the top.

  It was just the two of them now, face to face. The brute laughed excitedly in his face, great streams of saliva falling from his mouth. Leaning forward, his said, ‘Fürgos kill little Titch. Fürgos kill everybody,’ and laughed even louder at Kayn’s horror.

  Then the mountain man bit Kayn’s ear savagely and yanked, and those watching fell into an astonished silence.

  Kayn screamed in agony, blood pouring from his gaping wound. Fürgos slapped him hard across the forehead, once, twice, three times, and Kayn felt a merciful oblivion hovering behind his eyes. He barely saw, through his blared vision, the brute descending back down to the bottom and burying his torch into the pile, much to the crowd’s delight.

  The Incantatrix’s pile burned fiercely next to him, singeing his hair, stinging his face.

  And then came an explosive crack of thunder, ripping the sky above them apart, and the first lightning strike descended through the charged air, illuminating the entire hill.

  Kayn began to laugh like a demented soul, soaked in blood.

  The rain fell hard and mercilessly, yet it failed to quench the growing fire that climbed up steadily toward Kayn’s feet. From his pyre, he eyed Fürgos coldly between the flickering flames.

  ‘I'll come back for you, you bastard,’ he promised, and then proceeded to scream up at the heavens.

  Many of the hamlet folk had perished on the hill, but a few still remained to watch and cheer at Kayn’s demise, vowing to see it through to the end. There would be time enough to grieve for the lost ones afterward.

  But the sound of thunder drowned the cheering, and Kayn’s crazed laughter grew, until some began running away down the hill in fear. Those last few who remained were terrified by the spectacle.

  The thunder cracked mightily above them, felling a mighty oak from the tree line above. Many in the small crowd crossed themselves continually, eyeing the sky with dread.

  And then it happened: a fierce lightning bolt split the night and rushed down toward the hill, splitting into a dozen strands of blue fire, the main bolt falling down with tremendous speed, striking Kayn squarely in the chest. And what the crowd saw then would shake them and trouble their dreams for evermore.

  The lightning bolt struck him with incredible force and he seemed to explode into a million fragments. And then he seemed to flow like liquid and stream, upward with the lightning bolt, disappearing into the ether.

  The crowd ran from the hill, wailing like pigs, fear-stricken. The man they had tried to burn had been none other than the devil himself. He had disappeared, leaving behind him an empty burning fire.

  They crossed themselves incessantly and did not stop running until they reached their homes. But none were nearly as distressed as the killer Fürgos, who had tormented the demon so. He cried and wept as he ran, praying to God, because the devil had sworn revenge.

  When the dawn came and the storm had passed, the hill smouldered with the aftermath of the previous night, as it had a hundred years before. The hamlet folk came up to the glade for the last time, to find and bury their lost ones.

  When they were done, they took one last look up the hill and saw the brute Fürgos, gaunt-featured, red-eyed and weary from a long, sleepless night. He had climbed up to the top of the hill at dawn, to where the tree line began.

  They looked up at him from the glade, watched him perched upon a thick tree branch, like a grotesque bird, shaking uncontrollably. They saw the rope, the poorly made noose around his thick neck, and they saw him jump down from the tree, the branch bending like a bow under the loaf's weight, but nevertheless keeping him aloft, his great feet inches from the ground.

  They watched his body swinging like a pendulum, his eyes bulging, having failed to break his neck, unable to haul his great weight up the rope. They watched him flailing his great arms and legs in the air, a tortured scream ringing out across the glade as his face turned a deep purple.

  And finally, they watched him flail no longer, swinging from side to side silently, his mouth open and his eyes wide.

  26

  The Near Future

  Th
e body of Kayn lay on the hydraulic chair, a pale blue hue lingering, like a ghostly mist, spilling like fog from the photon tubes tilted above his head, like smoke from a gun. A web of hair-thin wires sprouted like weeds from the body’s thumbs and fingers, as if he had lain there a thousand years. The wires linked him to the mainframe and through it to the Virtual Reality Network that spanned the width and breadth of the web.

  This is how we get our kicks: SunCorpSoft’s slogan for the Seek browser, the first of its kind, hung from a poster on the wall. Seek plugged into the VRN, where you could murder your neighbour, shoot his dog, have sex with his wife and visit Jesus to say sorry; steal Genghis Khans’ pony, set fire to Plato’s Academia, jump out on Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin and watch as they fled in terror up the ramp back to their lunar module.

  Seek your reality.

  Seek your fate.

  Seek your dream.

  Dayna tapped in the access code to her private space on the mainframe. Unlimited resources and absolute privacy were two key privileges she enjoyed at SunCorpSoft, along with a reputation that made her no friends and kept those who knew her out of her way.

  The screen filled up with data. A progress bar tracked a burst of activity. The graphic peaked and disappeared, replaced with the words Copy complete. A memory card flashed green from the console. She pulled the card out and held up to the light, her cold grey eyes studying the holographic dancing on the transparent surface, interpreting the data.

  She plugged the card back into the console and turned her attention back to the screen. The binary was still flawed: the data in the card was useless.

  The essence is still missing, she thought, closing her eyes, trying to focus.

  The silence in the room filled her.

  She was tired. The dull throb of pain between her temples rose like waves against jagged rocks on the beach.

  Not now, she thought. Concentrate.

  When she opened her eyes again, the new mail icon was flashing urgently in the corner of the screen.

  A flashing envelope from Doctor Milner.

  Delete.

  Next.

  A skilled piece of electronic corporate-brainwashing disguised as a company memo “…addressing the success of our most recent ventures and to reinforce the company's direction and strategy in relation to current and future projects: endeavouring to remain the Browser giant…”

  Delete.

  A message from the lizard Hopper.

  She hesitated, her pointer hovering over the offending icon, her index finger twitching.

  She opened it and read:

  dayna. my office a.s.a.p. regarding your 'project'.

  J.Hopper, Marketing Director, SunCorpSoft

  She felt her face glowing with a fierce flush.

  ‘Bastard!' she spat at the screen, as if somehow it would relay her words back to the source.

  ‘Bastard!'

  Dayna pushed herself away from the console with both hands, rolling across the office floor on her chair. She cursed Hopper and banged her fist repeatedly on the chair’s armrest until the pain that shot up the inside of her forearm became too much the bear.

  In his typically arrogant manner, Hopper had used the least amount of words necessary to convey his message, implying that the time required to type a message was a huge imposition upon his own time, unworthy of someone as insignificant as herself and her work, which he belittled by referring to it as “project”, as if she were a meek student seeking to impress. Hopper’s patronising a.s.a.p. served a dual purpose: implying that her actions of late needed chastising urgently, and also - needlessly - re-establishing who was in a position of authority and who was not. And, as always, he had employed lowercase throughout the message, even on her name, augmenting his own importance at the expense of hers.

  It was a calculated insult.

  But Dayna knew the real purpose being his poisoned dart: Hopper wanted in on her work, desperately. The man had no spine, but he had a sharp sense for momentousness. Guided by his unfailing instinct, he had created the right conditions for Dayna to hone her excellence, elevating her to project leader and giving her the freedom and space to grow her genius. His gamble had paid off many times over: Dayna had dreamed up Seek and had led her team to develop the best-selling browser of all time.

  Dayna became SunCorpSoft’s senior programmer and used that momentum to buy herself almost absolute freedom in which to grow the next version of Seek, alone. But Hopper had not been so keen on granting her this privilege, and she’d had to earn it from him the hard way.

  Now, despite Hopper’s initial reluctance, evidently he now sensed that Dayna was about to make the headlines at SunCorpSoft once again.

  Furious at his opportunism, loathing him for his arrogance, Dayna picked up her memory card and, slipping it into her pocket, stormed out of her lab in search of Hopper.

  For the first time, Hopper’s sharp sense was way off the mark: Dayna was not only going to make the headlines at SunCorpSoft… she was going to change history.

  Inside the corridor, the artificial light was bright and clean. White doors faced each other along the length of the corridor, like silent guards, each with a secure access keypad.

  Dayna marched down the white corridor, feeling like a lab rat, toward the elevator at the far end. A team of developers milling around the passageway stopped chatting and moved out of her way as soon as they saw her coming. She heard them mutter in her wake, but did not grace their presence with any kind of acknowledgement.

  When she stepped inside the elevator, the couple inside quickly stepped out. Only when the doors slid shut quietly did she allow a small grin of amusement to spread across her face.

  She was surprised to see there were still people in the building on a Friday evening this close to Christmas. This branch of SunCorpSoft was small, housing only about one hundred labs, half of which were never in use at any one time, even on the busiest of days. Over a third of SunCorpSoft’s staff were e-workers, a figure that had preceded the company’s expectations at the time of purchasing office space, some years ago.

  The elevator was white and smooth, its silence smothering. When she reached the top floor, she stepped out and, finding nobody to frighten, marched down the white corridor toward Hopper’s office.

  She had visited him many times over the past twelve months, especially during the first three, when most of her visits had been ‘extra-curriculum’.

  The white corridor agitated her headache and angered her even more. When she reached his door she did not bother to knock, but pushed it hard and stomped inside into the plush office.

  She felt assaulted by the sudden rush of colour, and then by the sight of Hopper. He had obviously calculated her reaction to his provocation, for he sat waiting, posed like a mantis, entirely unsurprised by her sudden, dramatic entrance.

  Despite everything else he did to irritate her, he at least knew not to ignore her. Had this been anybody else, he would have remained seated, pretending to study a piece of paper in his hands or scribbling meaningless shapes onto it, until the visitor wore down with insignificance. Eventually he would look up, gauge the moment, and motion to the seat before his throne, set significantly lower than his own in order to gain a cheap psychological advantage over the visitor. But Hopper refrained from playing those games with her, and face-to-face he was always less brave than the shit he dished out on email.

  Hopper was a very well-paid man and liked to dress accordingly. His tailored, daily suit regime was considered extravagant by most, but to him the real value was in the gossip it generated. He never wore the same suit twice. An old office tale had it that he slept in fine Italian hand-made suits; another was that he sacked at least one person a month.

  Hopper had power and unpredictability, and he used both extremely well to command fixation and dread. You learned quickly from his sharp stare that you could never really befriend him. He was a man consumed by personal ambition and excessiveness, there was simply no room for an
ything else.

  Today he wore a marine, blue three-piece, sharply pressed, like his personality. Dark clouds gathered on the wide window behind his desk, like a premonition.

  Dayna ignored his gesture toward the low seat. Instead, she hovered annoyingly in front of his desk, staring down at his forehead in a way that she knew unsettled him. She revelled in the knowledge that she knew his game psychology inside out, and that, because of her own skill, she commanded his unspoken respect on many levels. And yet, she would have traded all of that to be rid of him. Hopper plotted incessantly to anger her, fuelled by his dependence on her brilliance, and so these confrontations were almost a necessity for him.

  Hopper’s eyes strayed – though briefly – to her breasts. She no longer wore her shirt top unbuttoned, as she had once done for his - and ultimately her - benefit. But even baggy trousers and a T-shirt two sizes too big failed to disguise her attractive figure.

  He eyed her up and down, approvingly, trying to make her uncomfortable, smiling thinly at her defiant stare.

  Despite their differences, Hopper still found himself deeply attracted to her. He felt a himself tightening and shifted on his seat.

  He cleared his throat.

  Dayna said nothing, merely waited for his words.

  ‘Dayna,’ he started.

  There was a pause as he mulled over the structure of his next sentence.

  ‘Where’s Kayn?’

  ‘You didn’t ask for him,’ she replied sharply.

  ‘I can’t keep this up,’ he told her. ‘Management are beginning to ask questions.’

  ‘You’ve been happy to leave me alone thus far.’

  Hopper fixed his tie.

  ‘Things have changed. Everybody’s wondering about your project.’

  ‘It’s a project now, is it?’

  Hopper returned her stare.

  ‘Nobody has ever had this much time and privacy before.’

  ‘So make an exception,’ said Dayna,

  ‘I’ve made an exception for the past twelve months!’ he barked at her.