How to Disappear Completely

by Melody Ann Ross

  When the phone rang again moments later, he was digging around in a different box, this time in search of a very specific hat. He sighed and answered it distractedly, saying “Cyrus Schock, Technomancer speaking.”

  The caller was a woman, and she sounded somewhat confused, shy, and embarrassed. Cyrus was very accustomed to that.

  “Yes,” she said, “I’m calling about the ad. When is the next event?”

  “You’re in luck!”, he answered, “We’re meeting tonight at 224 East Orange Grove. You’ll need to bring $25 and a personal item. Can you make it?”

  “Tonight? Well…”

  “Oh don’t let the short notice put you off. The longer you wait, the more you have to lose, right?” He had delivered this line dozens of times, and it usually worked.

  “Oh, well, I guess? It’s just… this is all brand new for me,” she said hesitantly.

  “That’s alright,” said Cyrus, “Everyone will be there for the same reason, plenty of other first-timers, and it’ll be over before you know it! Who knows, you might even have fun!"

  “I suppose you’re right,” she answered. She doesn’t believe me, he sensed immediately.

  “So will we see you tonight Miss…?”

  “Menzies, Anthea Menzies.”

  The tall man snapped to attention at that. She’s lying, he thought, that’s… unusual these days.

  “Wonderful! As the organizer, I personally guarantee that you’ll leave tonight with peace of mind and protection for the future.”

  She burst out laughing at that, thanked him, and hung up her phone. Cyrus was surprised by her reaction, but sat and thought for a moment. This woman hadn't believed a single thing he had said, but she was interested enough to consider attending anyway. He’d met a number of skeptics in his long life, and knew which ones could be turned with a little effort and which ones weren’t worth the energy. Normally he wouldn’t have given “Anthea Menzies” a second though, but even from that short conversation he felt a familiar tug. She had crossed paths with someone like him before. It tended to leave a mark.

  Chapter 3

  Night

  Anthea and a few others were walking quickly along the floor of a dense jungle seeking shelter. The thick canopy cast the forest floor in a perpetual state of dim twilight, but the long night was also setting in. The group was nervous, with good reason. The forest was too quiet. Even the birds and monkeys had become unnaturally still. The little group moved silently and carefully, but a menacing presence lingered at the edge of vision. They had no weapons but their minds and bodies and had to find shelter before the night terrors came in search of prey.

  The group would climb up to the tallest parts of the trees and shelter in the thin branches where no predator could venture. But, they had to spread out away from one another to distribute their weight and make the trick work. They did not like to separate.

  The quiet grew. Anthea looked around and her eyes caught on the quiet flash of two golden orbs nestled between distant plants. A chilling fear froze her in place. The eyes, set into an impossibly large head, hinted at the merciless strength of its jaws. Anthea knew from experience that the shadows also hid needle-sharp teeth and claws that could sink into flesh as easily as her own toes sank into the mud.

  The terror had not moved. Its stillness was so eerie that Anthea felt a flutter of hope grow in her chest that perhaps the beast was dead.

  A flickering tail caught her eye a moment later. Hope withered. The beast was alive. The beast was death.

  A long moment passed. The dwindling flicker of hope in Anthea burst suddenly into a flaming desire to survive. She turned to the nearest tree and began to scramble up as quickly as her short arms would allow. She had powerful legs and dexterous hands and could out-climb most of the things that hunted her. But it was now almost completely dark, and she couldn’t see where she was going.

  An emptiness slid along the forest floor where she had just been, a quiet so conspicuous that her blood rang in her ears. She stopped and listened, eyes wide, breathing quietly through her mouth.

  A slow scratch sounded on the trunk of the tree and she felt the waves of it tremble through her. But the beast did not ascend.

  Anthea felt around the branches with her hands, looking for the safest place to ride out the night. She did not have very powerful night vision, instead relying on instinct and memory to guide her to a safe place.

  In her panic, all thoughts of the others in her group had vanished, but now she could hear them moving quietly through the branches around her, and she could smell some of their scents lingering in the stillness.

  The silence continued its pacing below.

  Anthea waited.

  Some time later, in the full, pregnant gloom of the night, Anthea awoke. She was seated on a study branch, leaning against the trunk of the tree, not out on the safer, thinner limbs. She hadn’t meant to sleep. She was frantic and furious as her eyes tried to adjust to the moonless, starless night. She reached her hands up to rub her face.

  A sudden warmth touched the side of her thigh. Anthea froze.

  She watched, helpless and horrified, as three white hooks appeared from the darkness and speared themselves gently into her flesh.

  The pain was like fire, coursing through her slowly at first, then more and more urgently until she felt a shudder begin in her throat.

  Still she could not bring herself to move.

  Powerful force attached to the hooks began to pull her small body toward the forest floor. She slid off her branch, arms still held at her face. The hooks retracted into their warm sheaths. She reached back to grip her branch, to hang on to life, but her shocked senses were awakened too late.

  She fell.

  It took a long time.

  She landed.

  Bones in her arms and chest shattered against the firm roots. Warm blood flowed freely from her wounded leg.

  She rolled onto her back and stopped. Movement was agony. Breathing was fire.

  She began to cry.

  A silence peeled away from the tree and landed expertly next to her.

  She waited.

  Warmth touched her again, gently prodding her damaged belly, a momentary comfort before fire tore into her core. Claws sank into her mangled underside and pulled, shredding her ribs and spraying the terror’s face in her blood. A pink tongue appeared, savoring the warm liquid with a languid lick.

  The golden eyes lowered toward her ruined chest.

  Anthea’s body began to feel cold and her vision began to blur. She was shaking, spasming in pain. Each movement brought low, gasping moans to her throat and she was glad to hear the sound of her own voice.

  Her last thought before the darkness at the edge of her vision overtook her sight was, “This is all my fault.”

  Anthea jerked awake in the silent, looming dark. This happened to her often, and there was usually nothing wrong. She was laying flat out on her back, arms stiff at her sides. Her joints felt queasy and weak with the after-effects of adrenaline. Primordial fear still lingered somewhere in her ancestral memory. Nighttime, solitude, sleep; the ancient enemies, obscuring death as it stalked the living. She coaxed her iron shoulders and uneven breathing to relax, forced herself to feel the softness of the bed, hear the never-ending hum of highways and airplanes. She was indoors, relishing in the triumphant creation of her ancestors. They had defeated the darkness, and so would she. Slowly, stiffly, she moved her fingers to lightly touch the clenched muscles of her midsection, where she found that her stomach and ribs were undamaged and whole.

  Satisfied, she began her routine. She gently reached one arm under her pillow for the comforting weight of the smooth metal rod she kept there, and her other toward the lamp. She had never had to use her makeshift weapon, but it made her feel better to know that she could immediately clobber anyone who might be revealed by the sudden light. She’d never reflected too much on what she might do next, apart from scream a lot and run like hell.

  The ligh
t revealed an empty room, and she slowly crept through each of the rooms of her dark home, checking the windows and doors. When she finished, she lay back down and began her sleep meditation exercises. She had once checked out a 30-day sleep meditation audiobook course from the library and had learned that many people can’t fall asleep or can’t stay asleep for very long due to stress and anxiety; they couldn’t stop thinking about how badly they’d handled an important conversation, they couldn’t stop obsessing over their plans for the next day, they dreaded the outcome of an upcoming event, they replayed the events that led to their getting fired five years ago.

  The difference between her and those people was that she had a high probability of waking up and finding herself in immediate danger. Still, she found the exercises helpful for relaxing her body and slowing her mind.

  Most of the people from the camp had probably forgotten her long ago, her disappearance into a world of sin touted as evidence of her pollution. No, she wasn’t afraid of being found by the members of the Apostolic Oneness Chapel of the Holy Pentecost. She was afraid of being found by her mother.

  The caseworker from the FBI who had helped her settle into the endless sprawl of the LA suburbs still checked in on her quietly from time to time. The man was more of a social worker really, although Anthea hadn’t known what that was until years after she left the camp. She had inferred from these coffee-house conversations that her mother was still looking for her, but Anthea couldn’t fathom why.

  Agatha Mara Jerichoson, as she was currently known, had actually found Anthea twice since she escaped. The first was in Boulder, Colorado, barely six weeks after her dramatic disappearance. One evening, Agatha had simply been waiting in the shadows of the front step of the halfway home where Anthea was a resident. Anthea had been out, attempting to find clothes at a local charity shop. She was exhausted and bewildered from the ordeal. She’d never attempted to buy clothing before. Her mother hadn’t allowed it.

  Anthea wasn’t sure what to think about her mother as she sorted through the traumas of her first 16 years. Agatha loomed at the edge of all Anthea’s memories, and featured in the worst of them. She had started to wonder if her ordeal in the Holy House had been entirely orchestrated by her mother. It wouldn’t have been the first time Anthea had suffered horrendously at her hands.

  When Anthea had spied Agatha from that bus window in Boulder, just before she disembarked, she’d hurriedly turned her face away and stayed on the bus. She rode until the end of the line and called the police from the bus depot. From there she’d immediately boarded an overnight to Salt Lake City, and then Reno.

  The woman who ran the halfway home in Boulder had been kind and patient with the bewildered Anthea, and she would always cherish the weeks she’d spent there, even if her housemates were angry junkies and other runaways. She called the woman from a payphone en route to tell her that she was safe and headed for Reno. But, her mother had found her again in Reno within weeks, and after another narrow escape, Anthea had given up attachment to other people after that.

  Maybe I could stand to make a friend or two, she mused in the darkness, if I’m very careful.

  She chuckled to herself drowsily as she recalled the events of the evening and smiled, her nightmare forgotten, as she fell asleep again.

  Anthea had turned up exactly on time to the address she’d been given by the voice on the phone. She’d thought the man had sounded extremely fake and was over-doing his enthusiasm for a cheesy, desperate courtship event. And then he’d had the nerve to suggest that she might need ‘protection’ for later in the evening! Oh how foolish she felt now. And yet, not.

  When she arrived at the address on Orange Street, she was surprised to find that it was a yoga studio, not a restaurant or community center as she’d expected. Anthea was fond of yoga, and it was one of the first things she’d wanted to try after she escaped. She’d been fascinated and disgusted by all the yoga and fitness videos when she first seen them at Joel’s store. The pseudo-sexual poses, the skintight clothes, the hints of eastern philosophy, even the sweet incense were all so deliciously forbidden that she’d been magnetically drawn to them after her escape. Her yoga practice had seamlessly stepped in to replace her religious practices, and despite the total absurdity of the situation, she’d felt perfectly at ease when she stepped into the studio that night.

  The first thing she noticed was that no one was wearing yoga clothing or even smart casual ‘please date me’ getup. Instead, the dozen or so people gathered in the candle-lit studio were wearing an assortment of flowing robes, kimonos, housecoats and other billowing fabrics. Some had their heads covered, and all were barefoot.

  This is… odd, she thought, but then Anthea had a very low threshold for what she found strange. The success she’d enjoyed in her new life had hinged on her ability to just go along with things until she understood them. It would have been easy for her to be victimized in her naïveté, but she had become too cynical and observant for that.

  As she was removing her own shoes, she was approached by a fragile-looking woman wearing silky blue robes and a white veil. Handmade, arcane jewelry glittered and tinkled from every bit of exposed skin, and she wore a bronze circlet showing three moon phases on top of her veil.

  “Merry meet, fellow traveler. My name is Feather. I’ll be assisting the shaman this eve. We’re so blessed that you have brought your energy to be joined to the ritual.”

  She looked down at her list and nodded, “You must be Anthea—welcome! I have some spare robes for you; the shaman is always forgetting details like this. Would you like to do an aura analysis or biorhythm determination before we begin? Most people find that it helps cleanse and center them. It’s very important to purify before any ritual…to prevent pollution, you know."

  Anthea had been nodding along and smiling, but she started at the last comment and schooled her features into a carefully neutral, casual expression.

  “Pollution?”, she said. “What do you mean by that?”

  “Oh, dear, I wasn’t suggesting there was anything wrong with you personally. Purification prevents interference from negative or ill-intentioned energies. They can enter the ritual through negative emotions like insecurity or anger, and their pollution weakens the shaman’s power. I can tell from your aura that you only have mild negativity, and a few bright pulses of fear. Perfectly normal for your first time. Why don’t we just do a quick sacred elements blessing and a smudge and call you cleansed?”

  Anthea smiled politely and endured the sprinkling of salt and water over her head, heart, and “womb", then stood still as Feather circled her three times with a smoking bundle of dried sage. No one was really paying any attention to her, so she didn’t mind.

  When she was cleansed, she handed over her personal item (a wooden bookmark in the shape of a leaf) and her $25 to Feather and moved to join the others. As Feather groped about inside her robes for her money belt, Anthea was shocked to suddenly be accosted with a full side-view of the woman’s breasts and stomach.

  Before she could move away, Feather addressed her again.

  “One moment dear, your iPhone?”

  Anthea was still processing the revelation that Feather was nude beneath her robes and responded in confusion.

  “My what?”

  “Your iPhone, of course, for the ritual!”

  “I don’t… have-,” but before Anthea could finish, Feather’s eyes went wide as she sucked in a gasp and rushed toward the center of the group.

  “He’s here!” she hissed, and they all turned to face in the direction she was looking and froze in rapt attention.

  Anthea, still as bewildered as before, watched as a tall man in dark flowing robes slowly revealed himself from a back room in the studio. With his eyes closed, he inhaled slowly and silently spread his arms wide. He exhaled and lowered them back to his sides. Feather breathed with him and tracked his every motion with starry-eyed devotion, hands clasped at her breasts. In a serene, commanding voice, he add
ressed the dark room.

  “Travelers, welcome. Please, form a circle of cleansing. We are blessed with too many souls tonight for a circle of diamond light, but a wheel has many spokes, and there are many paths to the domain of light.”

  As people began to shuffle reverently into a circle, Anthea chuckled inwardly and took the hands of the people nearest her, resigned to enjoy this interesting evening as much as she could.

  “Anthea, could you wait a moment please?”, the tall man’s voice called out to her as she unlocked her car about an hour later. Instinctively she looked around to see who else could have overheard him shout her name, but there was no one within sight but the technomancer, walking quickly towards her.

  She had hung around a little bit afterwards to chat with the others in the group to get more of the backstory of… whatever she’d just participated in. During the ritual, when everyone had been focused on meditatively repeating his chants with their eyes closed, Anthea had snuck a peek.

  She watched in surprise as the technomancer stood and returned to the room at the back of the studio. She could just make out a glimpse of the table beyond: a neat row of iPhones and a laptop, all plugged in and waiting for something. He did this several more times during the course of the evening, and she was beginning to put the puzzle together. She had tried to find out whether any of the other attendees had noticed but had no success and eventually everyone except Feather and the shaman had drifted back to their cars and their lives, updated iPhones in hand.

  “Of course, shaman. What’s wrong?” She couldn’t resist trying out the title now that she was talking to him alone.

  “Nothing, it’s just…well I wanted to refund your money, since you forgot your phone,” he said quickly, handing her the cash.

  They both spoke at the same time.

  “Oh I didn’t forget it, I ju-,” she began.

  “Look I know you probably think-,” he said.

  They both paused. He began again, “Would you like to make some extra cash?”