The Vanishing Girls

by Callie Browning

  He snorted. “My father made me promise to look after Paul.” He chuckled dryly as he mimicked a deep voice. “‘Son, I named you after me because you’re the next best thing. Don’t forget it.’”

  Despite the misery with which he said it, she laughed and observed, “Your father was very wise.”

  Holden looked at her again. In the glistening moonlight, his eyes glowed back at her, focused and unrelenting. “He’s a brilliant man. Was.” He shook his head self-consciously, his eyes drifting to the tangle of tree branches that shivered overhead in the deluge. “I’ll be honest; he wouldn’t have wanted me to hire you. He would’ve said you’d be too much of a distraction.”

  Eileen stared back at him, her brow furrowing. “Am I?

  “Yes,” he said, softly. “One I needed.”

  Eileen looked down, her cheeks aflame.

  “Eileen?”

  “Yes?” she said breathlessly.

  “The rain stopped.”

  * * *

  SO IT HAD.

  Holden checked the time. Two glowing hands spread wide across the watch face in the dark and his eyes flew open. “It’s almost ten,” he said.

  “Do you think it’s too late to walk to the phone booth on the main road?”

  Holden was surprised, but not because of the late hour. As Eileen had rightly pointed out, he was a man — that kind of fear wasn’t ingrained in him. What unsettled Holden was that they had spent three hours talking in a dark car. Three hours with no food, wine, or other amusements and yet he felt sated and free. The desert island he had waxed so philosophically about had materialized and he was on it with Eileen. He glanced at her, thoughts foaming in his head like bubbles, each one fraught with peril if he were to let them escape.

  In some ways, Eileen was a complete mystery to him. Her cadences were artificially hardened like those of a catholic school girl who had ended up on the wrong side of the tracks one day after school and never went back. She was insightful and sharp, but gritty around the edges. She was well-read, having an absurd amount of pop culture trivia knowledge coupled with historical and social theories. He’d heard her cuss more than once and seen her drinking beer with Clifford. All of it only served to make her more intriguing.

  She turned to him, eyes questioning because he hadn’t responded. He opened his mouth, ready to say the words on his lips when headlights beamed through the windshield, dousing them in sharp light. In unison, they raised their hands to shield their eyes. The oncoming vehicle rocked closer and closer on the dark road, splashing through puddles on the uneven gravel driveway and, for a brief moment, Holden felt Eileen’s hand clasp his. “Oh, my — is that Clifford?”

  The van jerked to a stop and a loping figure emerged, sauntering in front of first one headlight and then the other as he traipsed around to the passenger side of the car. “Boss,” he nodded. “Eileen,” he grinned. “Y’all ready to go home?”

  “Clifford, how’d you know we were still here?”

  “I ain’t see y’all come back. I had a mind that Ol’ Faithful wasn’t so faithful,” he chuckled and tapped the rusty car door. “That Baygon ain’t save you tonight, girl. Let we go home.”

  Eileen grinned and got her bag from the back seat. “Good thing he’s so nosy, isn’t it?”

  Holden was silent as he got out of the car and walked across the wet gravel driveway. He didn’t think Clifford’s nosiness was a good thing at all.

  * * *

  LATER THAT NIGHT, his mind troubled, Holden lay naked on his bed at the Davis family home. It was a sprawling great house, painted in warm brick red and bordered by a ten-foot wall. He felt like an old man whenever he reflected how he came to live there alone. First, his mother had died. Then Paul moved out to marry a socialite who came from plantation money. A few years passed before his father also died and now only Holden remained. Since then, he'd toyed with the idea of renting the great house and moving into the living quarters above the funeral home. The savings would be immense, but Holden suspected that memories of residing above the funeral home were more alluring than rental income.

  Like most traditional merchant buildings in Barbados, the parlour's second floor was outfitted as living quarters. His memories of living in a happy home were strongest there. He remembered his mother lighting the kerosene lamp at night and if it were warm, she'd pad silently across the wooden floor to throw open the jalousie doors to cool the house. Holden would trail her in his little pyjamas and beg for permission to sleep on the verandah like a big boy. She’d make up a cot for him, telling him to be careful even though she never went too far. His mother would spread a blanket across a chair by the door and watch as he stretched his little hand through the wooden rails to count the stars until he fell asleep. He would dream that he was high above the world, carefree and happy as he played in the sky. But what he looked forward to most were the mornings.

  Every morning, Holden would wake up early to watch as the dray carts came down from the country laden with fruits, the donkeys' hooves clopping in a rhythmic beat on the road. They'd be joined by vendors who pushed boxed carts full of vegetables to the outdoor markets. Merchants would open their louvred double doors for business, one after the other, like a row of dominoes, tipped over by an unseen hand. Large trucks with barrels of rum would pass on their way to the careenage to be shipped overseas. The barrels were stacked so high that Holden tried to reach them as they passed by. Holden had loved living on a street that was always so full of life.

  He was seven and Paul was five when his mother pressed his father to buy a family home. For years she complained that the living shouldn’t sleep under the same roof as the dead. In the end, his father was persuaded. He often said his wife poured so many libations to keep the spirits at bay that the living room smelled like a vat of overproof rum. So, to keep the peace, his father purchased the great house and converted the second story home into storage space.

  For a few months, Holden had faced the very real possibility that if business didn’t improve that he’d have no choice but to climb the dusty stairs and clean out the cobwebs on the second floor. But then Eileen arrived and things picked up considerably. Eileen was organized and full of great ideas. He made many more grief visits and the bills were paid on time. Her make-up skills were exceptional and soon, word spread that if you wanted your relatives to look good in the hereafter that Davis and Sons was the place to go. She had recently suggested that with her artistic talents and the unused refrigeration space, she could easily start creating wreaths for retail, a venture which she forecast could bring in hundreds every month. She was also shrewd enough to suggest that she be paid a handsome commission for each piece, an observation which Holden didn’t argue with. Truth be told, it gave him a slight thrill when she was so assertive with him; at times he found himself being difficult on purpose just so she'd square him up.

  Work had become an effortless hobby. Eileen was smart, funny and so energetic that she made him yearn to spend his days in the warmth of her smile. At first, it was unthinkable that he would find her sassy antics endearing. Now, he felt he couldn’t live without them.

  He had avoided broaching the line between passion and professionalism with her before, but earlier that night, he had felt himself heading perilously toward the void. Maybe it was the intimacy of the dark or their close confinement inside the car, but either way, he didn’t like it. His stomach churned when he thought about businessmen with an endless stream of secretaries that they took for mistresses. It was contemptible when men tampered with their businesses and jeopardized their marriages. His father had been a captain of commerce above all else and never approved of such base behaviour.

  “Six children in four houses, a wife and two outside women that can’t stand him,” Holden Senior had said to his boys at one shipping merchant’s funeral. “His daughters won’t trust men and his sons won’t respect women. What a lovely legacy he’s left.” Holden Senior shook his head in disgust before escorting the coffin down the c
hurch aisle. As the casket went by, Holden remembered the outside women looking daggers at each other from opposite pews at the back.

  Holden never wanted that kind of life for himself. He sighed as he headed into the shower. He pressed his hands against the wall and leaned forward, letting the warm water flow through his hair and down his muscled back. Eileen drove him crazy in more ways than one. Sometimes he worried that the thrill of having illicit desires might be to blame for his attraction to her. He truly hoped it was. Because the alternative — that he might have deeper feelings for her — was terrifying.

  Chapter 10

  Two of a Kind

  It was too late on a Saturday night for the phone to ring. And yet, at 9 p.m. it jangled in the darkness, rattling a loose linoleum tile on the apartment floor. Eileen rubbed her eyes, her mind caught between sleep and wake when dreams and reality intertwine. It was Holden calling to say that another body had been found in a cane ground. “Do you need me to pick you up?” she asked as she swung her feet over the edge of the bed and fumbled for her clothes in the dark.

  “No. Clifford and his son are going.” The line went quiet, with only the gentle ticking of Eileen’s alarm clock counting the seconds that passed.

  “Hello?” Eileen said, after a moment.

  “I’m still here,” Holden replied.

  On the surface, his response seemed ordinary, but the heaviness in his voice told Eileen it wasn’t. “Holden?” she said. His name sounded strange coming out of her mouth, the first time she had ever uttered it. She had never liked the idea of calling someone her “boss”; it didn’t seem like a smart thing for a woman to imply to a man that he owned her. But the flip side of that was not calling him anything at all. Holden had become known as “he” when she mentioned him to Clifford or “excuse me” when she spoke to him directly.

  He exhaled as though releasing a breath he’d held for hours instead of seconds. “It’s just…,” he faltered and tried again. “…sometimes descriptions and situations can make you presume the worst.”

  Eileen was confused for a moment before recognition flooded her consciousness. She squeezed her eyes shut as the image of a moonlit cane field took shape in her mind. The bent body of a woman with light brown skin and a shock of thick curly hair lay among a patch of young green plants. Glassy eyes identical to her own stared back at Eileen.

  She blinked.

  The scene vanished and Eileen’s bedroom floor and wardrobe slid back into place, her nightgown clinging to her body and the cold telephone receiver gripped in her hand. Her breath caught in her throat.

  “You thought it was me.”

  “Yes.”

  A chill crept through her body and with a start, she realized she'd been holding her breath as she waited for his answer.

  “I’m fine,” was all she could finally whisper. It was a trite thing to say at that moment, the bed still warm enough to remind her that her life and all of its inherent potential were safe. The fragility of her existence exposed itself, laying bare the entitled ease with which she assumed she could do things in that flimsy theoretical place called tomorrow. For the young woman who resembled her, tomorrow, with its procrastinated promises and deferred dreams would never come.

  “I wanted to know you were okay.” He sighed, the noise coming through the receiver like a sad gust of air. “Goodnight, Eileen.”

  There was a clatter and the line went dead. Eileen hung up too. Being presumed dead was stressful. Suddenly, every unfulfilled task was thrown into sharp relief, impatient to be fulfilled. Every noise outside the house was magnified and menacing. Restless desires warred with relentless fear as time ticked by. Eileen spent every minute of it wondering when and why it became acceptable for women to live in a world where they were forced to worry about their safety. Finally, Eileen dozed off again.

  A deep slumber begrudgingly agreed to gather her in its warm embrace, but the universe mutinied. Flashes of a doppelgänger, bloated and crawling with maggots that worked their way through her flesh and laid eggs in her ears haunted her as she slept.

  As the sun crept higher in the sky, the morning heat baked itself into the wall next to her bed and warmed the room, drawing sweat and leaving a damp outline of Eileen’s body pressed into the sheets. Hot and restless, she woke up and wandered into the bathroom. She splashed cold water on her face and stared into the mirror, searching her eyes to reassure herself that her nightmares were unfounded.

  The serial murders were perplexing on their own, but the fact that this woman looked like her piqued Eileen’s curiosity even more. Eileen was an orphan after all. What if the latest victim was a relative? A sister or a cousin perhaps? What if she could find out more about her mother and her real family? The possibility was too great to pass up. Eileen downed a cup of scalding hot tea and pushed her feet into red rubber slippers before she headed out the door.

  Just a few houses down the narrow lane was a clapboard chattel structure with flaking brown paint that housed a shop at the front and a residence at the back. The shop’s bifold wooden door was topped by a faded sign declaring it to be the property of Mr C.J. Briggs, licensed seller of liquor. Despite the unassuming facade, the business was the village’s hub, a place where residents could get gum, gossip and rum just a stone’s throw away from home. Inside the packed shop, women bought pork chops, chicken backs and rice by the pound, ingredients that would find their way to modest kitchens to be heavily seasoned, stewed and baked. One woman with a skirt pulled over her breasts gossiped with a lady decked out in neatly pressed church clothes. Two men were huddled in a dark corner, the window above them closed tight so the sunlight wouldn’t sting their rummy eyes. The large glass case on the counter was devoid of the usual ham cutters and cheese cutters. They wouldn’t sell on the Lord’s day when pots bubbled merrily on every stove with Sunday food. Next to the glass case, two stacks of newspapers were weighted down with chunks of wood that had been rubbed smooth after being handled by Briggs and his father for almost sixty years.

  The headlines screamed ‘4TH WOMAN FOUND DEAD’ and ‘CANE SLASHER STRIKES AGAIN’. Eileen greeted everyone, picked up a newspaper and pushed a worn red one dollar note across the counter. Briggs nodded, pocketed the bill and puffed on his cigarette all without interrupting his argument about the pitfalls of the West Indies cricket team.

  Eileen read as she walked. Last night’s victim had been discovered. The details were almost identical to the previous victims: her body was dumped in the cane field after being murdered elsewhere. A couple was out for a late-night dalliance when they found her body and reported it to the police. The article continued on page four, but even on that page, there wasn’t a picture of the victim. A brisk wind blew, fluttering the pages of the newspaper and snapping Eileen back to reality. She glanced around, her nerves on edge, but saw nothing except the houses on her left and the field on her right. The canes across the road were young, but the bright green leaves rustled irritably in the wind like footsteps on dry grass. She tucked the paper under her arm and hurried home.

  * * *

  THE NEXT MORNING, Eileen got to work extra early and waited in the car park for the others to arrive. In the time that went by, she read the rest of a book, painted her nails and considered getting a jheri-curl. The afro she saw in her car’s cracked wing mirror was an unruly tangle of pencil-sized curls that spread out around her face like a fuzzy halo. She twirled a lock of hair around her finger and pulled it taut until it touched the tip of her nose. Instead of staying in the middle of her forehead the way Michael Jackson’s did, the hair sprang back up and lost itself in the tawny pile on her head.

  “Girl, that hair just as disruptive as you. Try and stop forcing it to be something it ain’t,” came Clifford’s taunt as he swung onto the lot and parked neatly next to her.

  Eileen scowled but didn’t retort as she gathered her things from the back seat and headed into the building.

  “You very early,” Clifford observed as he unlocked the back door
. His voice betrayed nothing, but suspicion lingered in his eyes.

  “I’ve got a lot of filing to do.”

  When Clifford walked past her desk to unlock the door and windows at the front of the building, Eileen saw him raise an eyebrow at her neat desk.

  “You mussy think I is Queen Isabella,” he mumbled to himself.

  “Pardon?”

  “Columbus convinced a rich woman to finance a trip to a place he wasn't sure existed to bring back things he didn't know were there. That was genius. This…” He gestured to her paper-free desk, “…is just sad.”

  Eileen’s face reddened. Clifford whistled as he picked up his yard broom on his way through the front door, pausing briefly to greet Holden who had just arrived. Holden didn't make eye contact as he said good morning, choosing instead to sit at his desk and make himself busy doing nothing. Eileen wondered if he felt uncomfortable after their late-night conversation. His discomfort only served to increase hers and for four hours, both of them tried to pretend the other wasn’t there. Their interactions took on the stilted, overly polite rhythms of two strangers on a bus who wouldn’t verbalize which one of them wanted the last seat.

  At lunchtime, the news came on. Both Eileen and Holden listened with rapt attention as the police commissioner asked the public to remain calm and cooperate with officials as they investigated the murder of Michelle Jones who had been found over the weekend. Of course, mass panic and speculation ensued. The public’s anger was palpable on the call-in programme that aired immediately after the news. Callers blasted the police and politicians, the former for doing too little and the latter for doing too much.

  “Somebody high-up killing these girls! That is why dem ain’t catch them yet.”

  “All of this foolishness about amnesty! The government put way the hangman last year and since then this place gone to the dogs.”

  “I got two young daughters and dem can’t even go outside. That murderer want lashing with the cat-o-nine.”