by Sean Oliver
A big part of this was having all the doors close in her face as she got closer, she thought, to details about Trisha. It didn’t matter who was sitting across from her at the dining room table.
After dinner, Deanna headed right for the bedroom. She threw on sweats and a T-shirt and propped herself up with her iPad resting on her knees. She undid the belt of her terrycloth robe and slid it off, dropping it on the floor beside the bed. She leaned back into the pillow. Silence was an enemy lately, forcing her mind to plug the gaps and it always gravitated to Trisha. Deanna grabbed the remote and clicked on some bachelor dating show for mindless noise.
Jared had gotten the hint pretty well and stayed in the living room, busying himself with schoolwork. He’d been quiet also. Had no choice, really. The guy tried to talk to a wall during dinner.
Deanna Googled circle of tomorrow survivor escape and scrolled through her hits. There had to be more information about the one who got into that boat and tried to sail away. The Honduran government had released so little information at the time of the incident, but since then there had to be some more out there. There was so much uncertainty regarding what their army uncovered, particularly on the heels of the coup two years earlier. They kept everything close to the vest. All they’d said was that sixty people had died, including Tarkay, and one got away and landed in the hands of Honduran authorities.
Each search and click into this event was a journey further into a belief in a story that somehow traversed sixty years and landed in the now. It landed in her school, now in her home. It was patently ridiculous, but it was the only thing that lined up thus far. Exploring it further would probably challenge her sanity.
There was a piece from The New York Times shortly after the Heaven’s Gate mass suicide in 1997. It profiled cult survivors and it seemed there was some mention of the Circle of Tomorrow defector. She clicked into the search result. There was an abundance of information about survivors of these kinds of groups—past and present. The Circle of Tomorrow had just one paragraph mention. In it, the reporter emphasized how much about the Circle escapee was kept confidential in Honduras and then in the United States, fearing a broader international incident. No one had bothered to poke around much in recent years regarding the one who got away, and when this Times reporter did, they got just a shell of an identity—a name and gender.
Deanna was looking for some indication of how that person fit into the present. In actuality, a big part of her needed to satisfy one intense curiosity, one that would set her days a little more upright and allow her to drop her guard some more. The name of the escapee meant nothing to her, nor did any of the other members’ names.
But the defector was a man. That detail was like the satisfying click of a puzzle piece fitting into place.
Jared had a ton of work to do grading the seventh graders’ website creations, so Deanna’s retiring to the bedroom was a blessing. He was affected by her distance and certainly accepted the blame—a blind, unfair blame, perhaps. But it was something he understood. More now than ever, he felt isolated. Jared met and fell in love, unhealthy love, with that young flash of dynamite with the curly black hair and forked tongue. Finding someone who so perfectly filled voids in him seemed improbable and too good to last. His backward, cautious nature was, he supposed, a fit for her in some way. She’d called him an idiot and a douche bag, but she never let him feel like there was any other place she’d rather be.
Now Jared had learned that his entire life up to that point was a sleeve—a placeholder for a stranger, ready for infusion into the shell that had been Jared for thirty years. Who Deanna loved wasn’t real. Jared was a non-entity, and all he did with Deanna a false promise.
That feeling he’d been familiar with his entire life, the Smoke, was revealing itself to be a defect of some kind. Elias Albrecht would have him think it was a gift. But Jared didn’t feel that way.
He sat on the couch with his laptop, a student website displayed. He should have been clicking the menus, checking links, making sure that Diego Santiago’s website about video game evolution through the years was functional. He just couldn’t bring his mind to meet his eyes. He stared at the screen and felt the entire world pull ten miles away from him. He was alone in the abyss. He leaned back on the couch, sending the remote control off the arm and clanking down on the end table.
Deanna jolted and slid the iPad under the covers when she heard a noise from the living room. Jared might be coming in and she wasn’t exactly sure why she was hiding the article. Everything was out in the open now. She just didn’t want to talk about it with him, and also didn’t want to look obsessed. Though if anyone could see her thoughts throughout the day, they’d see that she was. She needed the space to work all that out.
Jared didn’t come in the room but Deanna was now jittery. She couldn’t live like this and wouldn’t be sentenced to an anxiety disorder since being sent out of the school—being forced to sit home and think, fear, and hope. It wasn’t in her makeup. She knew that nothing could be solved from the outside. That giant building was cultivating a monstrous evil—who knew its true reach?
Deanna could sit on the sidelines no longer. She decided she would be marching into the Carson Public Schools central office the next day, up to human resources on the fourth floor, and filing whatever papers would end her leave of absence.
Deanna pulled the iPad out from under the covers and opened her school email. She scrolled through the list until she found the confirmation letter from HR regarding her leave. She opened the pdf attachment and sent it to the printer she never used, across the bedroom. She would bring that confirmation letter into HR the next day and undo it.
The printer remained silent. Wi-Fi was likely lagging again—a hazard of the growing metropolis that was downtown Carson. She lay back into her pillow and watched a grown woman crying on the TV, lamenting losing the man of her dreams, engineered by a television network, who she’d known for about four weeks.
Pain is pain. Deanna had heard that somewhere.
The printer tray still hadn’t sounded its telltale clicking and cranking. Deanna grunted and slid out of her warm covers and headed to the computer desk, assuming the printer was off. Could’ve been. She hadn’t printed anything in weeks and Jared’s schoolwork was mostly web-based. She slid aside a stack of books she’d started reading and not finished, as well as a gift bag from Sephora that had become a permanent fixture on the catchall desk.
The printer’s power light was on, but so was the paper jam blinker. Jesus, how long had that being flashing? Deanna opened the printer door and reached in to clear the trapped paper.
The Smoke lurched through Jared’s spine with such heat that he was thrust upright, off the couch. His laptop fell to the floor and he stood frozen while the tingle, more like a burn this time, flooded his upper body. He thought his head might explode once it settled there, clearing his mind and washing his face with rippling warmth. But it didn’t. After the initial crescendo, everything cooled. It had him. He felt his body walking to the bedroom.
The printer kicked into gear as Deanna delicately crumpled up the toner-stained culprit and dropped it in the wastebasket. Then the printer was chugging along, finishing its last print job where it had gotten jammed. The machine was cranking, grinding, and spitting out multiple pages.
Grind-grind-grind-spit
Grind-grind-grind-spit
Grind-grind-grind-spit
She turned back to the desk to retrieve the printout of the leave of absence form, and there was Trisha.
Again. And again. And again. Trisha.
Grind-grind-grind-spit
Grind-grind-grind-spit
Grind-grind-grind-spit
The printer was cranking out page after page of her face, each with the Carson Public School District logo emblazoned below the image. It was her school ID photo.
More sheets. Still more.
Deanna was locked in place, ice water flowing through her. She turned to the bedroom
door, which was ajar. That printer was loud.
Grind-grind-grind-spit
Grind-grind-grind-spit
Grind-grind-grind-spit
Deanna took another look down at the images coming out. They were unmistakably the ones she looked down at weeks ago, cut out and stuffed in a wedding dress. That was the very image she’d studied with the detective standing next to her, contemplating a break-in.
They were printed in her home, in her bedroom.
SIXTY-SIX
Honduras—April 3, 1961
EVELIO BARRELED INTO the camp in his pickup truck that morning, and Tommy could tell something was wrong. He’d jumped out of the vehicle and started walking through the camp. He went immediately to Markus’s cabin as Agatha tried to keep up with him. For a guy as old as Evelio, he had a brisk step. He was outpacing her.
After he went in, they were behind closed doors for a long time. Agatha was summoned. Gradually, the members of the Circle began to trickle down and assemble in the green. They waited for news—some sitting alone, and others clustered in groups talking. A couple of people asked Tommy what he thought was going on. He said he had no idea.
In truth, he had a pretty good idea. Since the two lookout towers had been constructed in the trees, Markus had been spending much more time locked in his cabin. When he was outside with the group, he was distracted and distant. That was so unlike him. What was the approaching threat that necessitated the towers?
When the towers were erected, Markus began talking about something he was calling the Transition. They’d spent two years out there in the forests of Honduras and now there was talk of another transition. But it seemed this one was more of a spiritual transition. That intrigued Tommy.
He’d spent less time looking out at the water beyond the trees. He thought about his brothers and sisters to whom he’d grown so close in the past few years. Did he reinvent himself? Maybe. But he was trying to run from a life he couldn’t ever get away from, like a cat that hated its tail.
Markus came out of the cabin alone. He walked to the village green and those assembled there and around the perimeter came toward the center. They circled around him. Tommy joined them.
Markus walked over to a couple of the members of the Circle. He touched the face of one, rubbed the arm of another. He crossed the circle and arrived at Tommy. Markus was smiling, though his eyes looked red and raw, like he’d been rubbing them. He reached out and rested his hand on Tommy’s shoulder.
“I love you,” Markus said. “I hope you feel that.”
“I do,” Tommy said.
“I love who you’ve become, and who you still are to become.” He smiled broadly and tussled Tommy’s hair.
“Is everything…?”
Markus nodded. “Oh, yes.”
He stepped back to the center of the circle and looked around. He was still smiling.
“Our time is here,” he said. “Our Transition is upon us. It is time for our tomorrow. I always said this day would come—the hour when their world out there crosses the threshold into ours. Our world is infinite, though. They don’t understand that. We can instantly disappear, and begin our tomorrow.”
Markus walked over to Tina, the youngest member, only eighteen. He brushed her hair from her face, looking into her worried eyes.
“Let’s go,” he said as he joined hands and stepped out into the circle with the others. “With love in our hearts…let’s go.”
This was better than the water. Tommy was done with it all. Tomorrow sounded real, real swell.
SIXTY-SEVEN
DEANNA WAS TREMBLING when she stepped into the master bathroom and pulled the door shut. She unlocked her phone, opened her contacts, and tapped Dad.
She didn’t know if she could even trust her own father any longer; maybe she was truly alone. But she was operating on instinct. She sat on the floor in front of the sink and dropped her head. She counted the rings that seemed to be oozing through the phone, taking forever. Where was he?
“Hey, Dee,” George said when he answered. Deanna realized she had to formulate her discovery into words and none were coming out. She looked toward the door. Still closed. She’d have to stay quiet.
“It was Jared,” she whispered through her panting. The phone in her fluttering hand tapped her cheek. Saying the words nearly brought forth a flood. Deanna slammed it back, clenching her bouncing jaw.
“What was?” George asked.
“The wedding dress.” That came quickly. There was a stark change in George’s voice.
“Where are you?” he asked.
“Home.”
“With him?”
“Yeah.”
George sighed into the phone.
“Okay, Dee, you need to leave—right now.”
She thought of a million obstacles in a single burst. Would she just breeze past him in the living room and head out the door? Where would she say she was going? Was she leaving forever? If not, she’d be back in a little while. What then? She didn’t think she should run. She thought she should confront him.
“Hello? Are you there?” George said, yanking Deanna out of those considerations.
“I’m here.”
“Go. Are you dressed? Just leave.”
Deanna stood and looked in the mirror. She began to break down at the sight of her desperate expression. It was a failure of the utmost degree. She was standing in a bathroom, crying to her daddy, having just discovered the man she was marrying was another man altogether. Deanna looked down and gently brought her head forward to lean on the mirror.
“Why would he do that to me?” she said through her tears.
“To scare you,” George said. “I’ll explain later, just get out of there.”
Right in her own fucking house. He stood beside their bed in shock with her when it happened. Deanna was heartbroken and so confused. She needed out.
“Okay,” she said into the phone. She ended the call and looked up into the mirror again, just inches from it. She needed air—she just couldn’t face him right then. But that’s exactly what happened when she brought her head up and saw his reflection in the mirror, standing behind her. The door was open and he was inside the bathroom with her.
She thought about screaming, or turning around and punching him in the face. She could hit him and make a break for it. But he wasn’t doing anything. What did he want?
Her mouth was hanging open as she looked at the Jared in the mirror. He was expressionless—he looked as if he might make a joke, or maybe ask where she’d put his shoes. He was standing relaxed, between her back and the wall behind him.
Neither one spoke. He stared blankly while she began to tremble and bring her hand over her mouth, her eyes tearing.
“You wouldn’t leave the school,” he said. She squinted in confusion.
“Where is Trisha?” she whispered, watching him in the mirror. She could feel his breath on the back of her hair but she didn’t turn. She couldn’t. She was a plank driven into the ground, watching everything play out in the mirror.
“Gone,” he said.
Deanna didn’t respond. She squeezed her eyes tightly and wept. Jared watched.
“She couldn’t stay there, and she ran out of time. She wouldn’t leave, either.”
Deanna opened her eyes and looked right at his reflection. Rage began to flow through her fear.
“Where is she?” she said, louder this time. He remained absent of expression, his voice lifeless, too. He kept looking.
“Gone.”
“You printed all those photos?” she asked.
“Don’t ask me how much toner I killed.”
“The wedding dress?”
“My mother will be quite angry.”
“You sick motherfucker.” She still didn’t turn. Just watched.
“It scared you. The car accident scared you. Trisha scared you. But despite all that, you wouldn’t go. You stayed there, like she did. And that’s why we’re here.”
“Where?”
she said.
“Here.” Jared threw the white, terrycloth belt from her robe around her neck, crisscrossed it in the back, and pulled ferociously. Deanna opened her mouth to draw in a gasp of air, but nothing came. He’d cut off her windpipe with the belt.
Deanna began to flail, swinging her arms around, eventually going for his face behind her. But he buried it in her back, where she couldn’t reach. She tried to jerk herself left, then right. But Jared was firmly planted. Though her lower body swung to a side, her head and throat stayed dead center in his grasp. She felt like her head was going to explode—it was hot and pulsing with trapped blood. She caught a glimpse of her purple face in the mirror, her eyes filling with blood, becoming pink. Things were getting cloudy in both her mind and vision.
She realized she was off the ground, her legs dangling. She kicked her feet and one of them found footing against the side of the sink. She brought her other one up beside it, knees bent, and thrust them with death-throe might. Deanna and Jared flew backward and Jared’s head thumped the tile wall with a force that loosened his grip, and Deanna dropped down onto her backside. Life splashed back into her body and she inhaled as much as she could, her dry throat scraping with each desperate gasp.
Jared was mumbling behind her. She rolled to the toilet near the doorway and used it to pull herself up. She stumbled out of the bathroom with the soft belt still around her neck, both long ends flowing as she went into the hallway. She panted while she balanced herself against the walls, pushing forward.
She grabbed her keys from the dish on the table beside the apartment door and didn’t break stride to the doorknob. But she let go of it, turned, and quickly surveyed the area by the foyer closet. She rubbed her neck as she looked around—where was it?