VANISHING ACT

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Chapter One

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I'd like to tell you about my sister. She was taken from us a long time ago - I was a child - so I can only piece things together from what others have told me. There's that, and what I've seen for myself in visions and dreams.

As she vanished when I was three, Sarah – in my view, at least - became something of a mythic figure. She was an idol to be revered, but not a daughter or a sister in the functional sense. Mom and Dad made a few feeble attempts to explain what had happened to her, but were never able to articulate her fate beyond "she just disappeared."

I could easily spend hours looking at the framed picture of her on the mantle, as I enjoyed making up stories about her to fill the gap she'd left behind. In my imagination, Sarah was many and all things: a princess, a warrior, an intrepid explorer, a sorceress. She filled my dreams, assuming a different role every night. One time she'd be red-faced, hacking her way through the undergrowth in a jungle in Columbia; another she'd be dressed in gold and watching as a bland Prince Valiant clone slaughtered a vast, silver-scaled dragon to win her love. The settings of the dreams were often copied wholesale from TV shows or movies I'd seen; consequently, many of my nights involved Sarah snooping around haunted mansions and abandoned mine-shafts with Scooby Doo.

Sarah was very beautiful – far more so than anyone else in my family. At best, Dad was homely looking – he had rough, ruddy skin and his nose was far too large for his face. Mom was moderately pretty, but only in the blandest, most manufactured way. I hated her hugs because of the toxic scent of her hairspray. As for me, I'm something of a compromise. I'm just bland, the sort of person you glimpse in the street but never really pay attention to.

By contrast, Sarah is exotic. I have never been able to pin down why that is - exotic feels like a strange word to use for a girl with creamy skin. Perhaps it's her black hair, her green eyes. Whatever it's down to, her distinction was always clear – she didn't belong with us. When I was very small, that was all the explanation I needed for her absence; having such a striking person in the house would have been wrong. At one stage I convinced myself that I was being lied to, that Sarah wasn't related to us at all. She was the proverbial cuckoo in the nest, the twist being that she was the beautiful one. Now I think of it, the only earthly person she bore any resemblance to was her mother. Both were glamorous, dark haired and eminently mysterious.

I only discovered the identity of Sarah's mother by accident, after a particularly adventurous afternoon when I snuck into Sarah's room. It had been raining steadily since midnight so I was being kept inside – I only tried the door out of habit, never expecting it to open. When it glided open I darted through, only just remembering to close the door quietly. That will sound odd, so allow me to add some context – the door to Sarah's room had been kept locked as long as I could remember, its contents a mystery. It was off limits to everyone and the key was kept securely in my Dad's back pocket. He insisted that the room remain exactly as Sarah had left it.

"But why, dad?" This was a few months before I found the door open. I was asking why the door was locked, and dad's initial response had failed to satisfy me.

"We're keeping it safe for when she comes back."

I had the good sense not to ask 'why' again.

Sarah's room had all the pull of the forbidden, and thoughts of it fired my imagination. Occasionally, it figured in my dreams. One night I imagined that the room was decorated with spider's webs – mom never cleaned it so that kind of made sense. Another night, I dreamed that it was carpeted with feathers; I was never able to make sense of that.

The best word I can think of to describe Sarah's room is uncanny. In my early years everything connected with Sarah had a slight tinge of unreality; the only solid evidence testifying to the fact we'd spent time together was a few home movies and a series of photo albums dedicated to the two of us. My favorite photo showed us together in a park when I was about two – Sarah was beautiful and smiling, I was beaming and had ice-cream smeared around my mouth.

But that's all beside the point – the most important thing I need to get across is the fact that Sarah's room was deeply, irrevocably strange. It seemed to occupy a different plane of existence to the rest of the house: it looked different, felt different, smelled different. Though there were only a few faint traces of pink visible, it was undeniably a girly room – everything from the dolls and teddies soaking in dust on the shelves to the fancy, satin drapes hung over the bed marked it out as feminine. Even though I was alone, I pulled a face to signal my disgust.

After absorbing the strangeness of the place, I found myself at a loss for what to do. In the end I decided to try the draws and see what I could find. I was seven years old and becomingly an increasingly competent reader, so found the prospect of a secret diary or a scrawled notebook exciting. Sarah's books proved to be unobtainable, neatly stored on high shelves.

The draws in her prim white dresser were filled with junk – mangy tubes of lipstick, dried flowers that crumbled when I touched them and a few slim novels with curling pages. They smelled funny, so I rooted through them quickly before moving on to her wardrobe.

The wardrobe smelled even worse than the drawers, and I pinched my nose after opening the door. The clothes all smelled musty and old and rained dust over me the moment I ducked my head to look under them. Struggling not to cough and alert Mom to my presence, I patted the bottom of the wardrobe. The clothes themselves – jeans, baggy jumpers, and the odd floaty dress – had no appeal, but I knew from personal experience that wardrobes were liable to hide other, far more interesting things. I encountered an eclectic range of shoes and managed to nick my hand on a particularly sharp heel; I was on the verge of pulling out when I felt a stretch of stiff, rough paper beneath my fingers. I grabbed the edge of it and yanked, only to find that the object wouldn't budge. I seized it with both hands and pulled at it with all my might, but it was stuck fast. Though I squinted, I couldn't see where it had got caught – the back of the wardrobe was deep with shadows.

Intrigued, I took a chance and sneaked out to my room to grab my torch. When I returned and shone it into the wardrobe, I gasped and dropped the torch– there was a massive hole in the back of the wardrobe and beyond, seemingly reaching deep into the wall. The object I'd been pulling at was a huge, ratty scrapbook – it was wedged fast in the opening, trapped so intensely that there were deep marks in its side where it had been caught. Picking up the torch to shine it on the book I saw that it was plastered with clippings, stickers and drawings. Throughout, the same woman's name and face repeated again and again. The woman's face was something like a poor, generalized likeness of Sarah and that combined with her name – Linda Williams – made me realize that she had to be her mom. Though I'd come to understand that my mother wasn't Sarah's a long time before, the discovery of her actual mother made me shake with excitement.

I was so busy attempting to decipher the tight newsprint of the articles –'Williams Wows in Antigone!' - 'Bright Stars Spice up the Local Stage' – 'New Talent Shines in Broadway Debut' – that I didn't hear the sobbing straight away. When I first became aware of it I thought it was the wind swilling nosily around the cavity in the wall. I persisted, trying to make sense of the clippings only to find everything besides the headlines unintelligible– I stopped reading altogether when, with a single sob, the noise became unmistakably human. In between the sobs I could hear trembling, unsteady breaths. I found myself reminded of a girl called Candy in my class at school – she was the resident cry-baby and couldn't pass a day without bursting into tears and hyperventilating. When Candy cried I would walk away, annoyed, but these sobs were different. There was something intensely sad about them – they were so drenched in despair I couldn't help but feel sad as well.

"Hello?" I called out timidly, inching closer to the opening. "Is someone there?"

The sobbing paused. Then, I heard her speak, "Toby?" The voice was sharp and alert, cutting through the awful stillness that had set in.

I'd only heard Sarah's voice in old home movies, and she'd always sounded happy in those. Now she sounded panicked, frightened. I don't think I've ever heard anyone sound as scared as she did then.

My heard thudded at a tremendous rate, and though I was terribly afraid there was something electrifying about hearing her speak. I opened my mouth and was about to call back when I saw a pair of eyes gleaming at me from the dark gap in the wall. I kept dead still and stared straight back at them; as I watched, other eyes winked into view. Gradually, I started to withdraw from the wardrobe, never letting my gaze slide from the eyes. It was only when I heard a cruel, animal snigger that I pulled out entirely and fled, slamming Sarah's door behind me and barreling down the stairs to launch myself into my mother's lap.

I cried at length before speaking, burrowing my face in her skirt as she smoothed over my hair and asked me what was wrong. I could tell she was annoyed from how she held herself - stiffly, as if afraid for her posture - but she kept the irritation out of her voice.

"I was in Sarah's room," I gasped out eventually, "I found a book with her mom in it, and she spoke to me and there were monsters in her wardrobe!"

"Toby!" My mother exclaimed, pulling me up by my shoulders. What in the world are you talking about?"

I repeated my story, taking my time and expressing myself more carefully. By the end of my account, my sobs had softened to snivels.

"Look, you're upset. Why don't you sit down and watch TV? I'll fix you something to eat." And with that, Mom walked away. She returned after a few minutes to place a sandwich on the table in front of me. She looked surprised when she realized that I hadn't turned the TV on. "Don't mope around – why not watch some cartoons?" She grabbed the remote and switched the TV on for me. The volume was turned up to the max in record time.

I remained huddled on the sofa to a soundtrack of Tom and Jerry cartoons until Dad came home. I stiffened when I heard the door open, listening intently to the fraught whispers he and Mom exchanged in the hall. I couldn't make out what they were saying, but didn't need to to know they were talking about me. I buried my head in the dip between my knees, hiding my face. I knew what I'd seen and all I wanted was for my parents to believe me, for them to go into Sarah's room and see the glowing eyes for themselves.

Dad didn't shout at me when he came over like I'd feared he would, but he didn't smile either. Instead, he said nothing, took my hand and led me towards the stairs. When I protested and tried to dart away, he stopped. "Toby, it was wrong of us not to let you in your sister's room. I can't blame you for being curious, for imagining things-"

"But I wasn't imagining things! I heard her – there were eyes staring out at me from the back of her wardrobe!"

"You know that's impossible, Toby."

"There was a scrapbook filled with pictures of Sarah's mom – Linda! The creatures were trying to take it – they were pulling it through the wall."

Dad had to take a long, deep breath before speaking. "You could well have seen a scrapbook – her mother's an actress, and Sarah collected clippings and news stories about her. But you really mustn't fib about monsters-"

"I'm telling the truth!" I insisted, "Go and look – you'll see!"

"We'll look together," Dad said kindly, tugging at my wrist.

"No!" I sobbed. "Please don't make me!"

Despite my protests, Dad managed to haul me up the stairs and through Sarah's door. I attached myself limpet-like to his side until he strode up to the wardrobe. I stayed back, cowering by her bed. Dad pushed the hangers of Sarah's clothes aside, launching a flurry of dust into the air. Once the dust had mingled fully with the air, he bent to peer at the back of the wardrobe.

Eventually, Dad reached back for my hand "Come on, take a look."

My stomach heavy with dread, I inched forward. Dad put his hand on my shoulder as I moved to his side. Though the scrapbook was gone, the dark, cavernous hole in the wardrobe remained. Besides the opening, everything was normal – there were no eyes gleaming in the shadows, only shoes and a few crumpled clothes that had slipped from their hangers. "But it's there!" I cried out, my eyes welled up with tears. "Can't you see it? There's a big hole right there! The creatures have gone and so has the scrapbook – they must have stolen it. I could hear Sarah crying, Dad – she called out to me."

Dad was quiet for a minute. When I looked up, he'd closed his eyes – he looked pained. When he opened them again, he released a long sigh and squatted so he was level with me. I didn't look at him, my eyes fixed on the gaping hole in the wardrobe. "Sometimes, when we miss someone very much we like to think they're still around – we hear their voice, maybe see them at a distance. You were very young when Sarah vanished, but you were very close to her all the same – it makes perfect sense that you'd come in here and imagine things. I don't blame you, but you've got to know this – whatever you heard, it wasn't Sarah." He reached into the wardrobe and tapped the wood; the sound made me flinch. "See? That's the back of the wardrobe – it's solid, just as it always has been."

I went to bed that night afraid and filled with questions. My bed was positioned against the wall that separated my room from Sarah's, so I dragged my comforter onto the floor and bedded down there. I couldn't sleep for the longest time, feverish from thinking. I didn't understand how Dad hadn't seen the hole in the wardrobe – it had been there as plain as day, a large opening surrounded by needles of broken wood. Then there was the question of the scrapbook. Even if I were to accept what Dad had said, that I'd imagined it all, there was no way to explain how I knew the name of a woman I hadn't known existed before.

Starting that night, my dreams of Sarah changed. Suddenly, they weren't so friendly anymore. Sarah stopped being bright and happy and smiling, instead she was locked in a dark hidden place, sobbing. The worst of it was that a part of me – the part that frightened me - knew that the dream wasn't a dream at all.

I had heard her voice; I had heard her crying. I knew one thing for certain – if I hadn't heard the real, living Sarah, I had heard her ghost.

The dream stuck with me until I went to college. Things changed then, for it was while I was studying in Chicago that I saw Linda Williams for the first time in the flesh.

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Author's Note

This was written for the 2013 labyrinth_ex fic exchange - the recipient was themsmine. I had fun writing this fic and hope you enjoy it - please R&R. The more reviews that come in, the faster I'll get new chapters up! This version has been revised since it was submitted to the exchange.

Many thanks to the ever reliable Nienna Telrunya for the beta.