Effugium

On her third Tuesday home from school Anna rolled out of bed after ten and opened her closet door, staring blankly at the clothes hanging before her. Muted sounds of her parents arguing carried up the stairs to her room and she knew it would be a battle to get either of them to proctor her online calculus test that afternoon. 

“I have to work,” her mom would say, her screen giving away that she was dealing with their crisis via online shopping. “Isn’t that what the teachers are being paid for?” her dad would grumble.

Without a parent proctoring, she’d have to call in with video so her teacher could watch her taking the exam. The same teacher who wasn’t fired after a student had made credible claims about his inappropriate behavior because apparently in a global pandemic student welfare comes last.

Anna’s phone buzzed on her nightstand, snapping her back into the present. “Hello-o-o-o-o-o!” Michaela yelled through the phone. Anna held the receiver away from her head. “I thought maybe you’d got the virus and died! You’ve been totally silent on the group chat, what’s going on?”

“That’s not funny, Kay,” Anna said flatly. “I’ve just been busy.”

Anna returned to her closet while Michaela updated her on their social circle and the goings on during lockdown, but as she spoke something shiny behind a row of dresses caught Anna’s eye. She pulled the clothes to the side and in front of her stood a small door, the size of a laundry chute. The door looked to be of solid gold, with carvings depicting mythical creatures amongst flowers and vines, but when she touched it it felt warm, like it radiated heat. The word “effugium” was carved above the creatures like a banner.

“I gotta go,” Anna said, cutting her friend off and dropping the phone to the floor to further inspect the door.

“What is this?” she thought, “And why haven’t I ever noticed it before?”

All at once a loud crash erupted downstairs and her parents’ voices spewing insults carried up to her room. Without another thought Anna grabbed the sparkling doorknob and pulled.

Sunshine so bright it caused Anna to squint and throw her arm up in front of her face and the strong scent of moss and sandalwood greeted Anna from behind the gilded door. She crawled forward and the feeling of carpet faded to soft earth squelching under her hands and knees. The sound of a creek tickled her ears and a breeze washed over her skin. 

“Paradise,” she whispered.

Wide-eyed, Anna spun around, taking in the world she’d discovered, bright and vibrant like someone had turned up the saturation. She stood yards from a creek which babbled and sparkled in the sunshine, and further from the creek the mossy ground turned to meadow, tall grasses blowing in the breeze. In the distance mountains surrounded her on all sides. The gilded door hung suspended in the air six inches off the earth, still open to Anna’s closet on the other side. She could hear wildlife - birds singing, frogs croaking, insects buzzing - but saw no sign of them.

Anna explored, slowly at first, looking back every three steps to verify the door was still there, her unmade bed and messy room visible on the other side, then faster, until she was skipping through the tall grass and plucking berries from the wild bushes. Lying on the warm ground while the breeze and the grass tickled her skin, the only sounds the creek and the unseen animal life, she felt free.

And in an instant, it all came crashing down.

“Anna!” her father’s voice boomed.

Anna bolted upright, and saw in the distance her father’s head poking through the gilded door.

“Anna!” he repeated, voice thunderous but shaking. She stood and ran towards the door.

“What the hell is this?” he asked, face beet red, spit flying from his mouth.

“I don’t--”

“How long--? Where--?”

“I don’t know! I just found this place this morning!”

“You found it?!”

Anna’s father grabbed her by the arm, practically dragging her back through the door before slamming it shut, then sat down on the floor, flabbergasted. “I’ve half a mind to call the police, report a drugging! LSD in my coffee… shrooms! Trying to get me in trouble… what kind of nonsense…” He stuttered on, eyes closed, massaging his temples, while Anna protested. 

Once he overcame the initial shock, Anna's father proclaimed what a miracle this world could be and spent the next hours on the phone: to the press, to government offices, to anyone he could think of. There were knocks at the door, people with cameras surrounding the house, and eventually men in uniform broke down the door and took Anna and her parents away “for your own safety” and “to ask you a few questions.”

***

Anna awoke on a stiff cot in a mostly-empty room, three men in black suits standing over her, a monitor on the wall displaying fuzzy, distorted footage of her bedroom. People in hazmat suits zigged in and out of the frame, ducking into her closet and crawling in and out of the gilded door. Her head pounded and when she tried to speak her mouth was dry and her tongue wouldn’t cooperate.

“Good morning,” one of the men said. He had a soft face, kind, weathered but not hardened. His voice was molasses with red pepper, dark and smooth with a spiced edge. His greeting felt like comfort but Anna knew he was the reason she was where she was.

“What have you done?” she asked.

“What have you done?”

“I found--” The man put his hand up, big as a bear’s paw, and Anna stopped talking.

“What you found could be our salvation. The world thanks you. Humanity thanks you.” Anna felt her face flush as an involuntary smile crept across it. “But we have a few questions for you.”

Anna passed from sleep to half-wakefulness and back, answering what questions she could, receiving no answers to her own questions, until the man with the bear’s paw hands and spicy molasses voice led her down a too-bright hallway, linoleum floor cold on her bare feet, to a room reminiscent of a hospital waiting room. Her parents stood and rushed to her, taking her in their arms and looking her over for signs of abuse.

“Agent Carter will be taking you to a safe house for now,” the man said before turning and leaving the room. A lanky man whose suit was too big for his frame stepped forward and shook their hands, then held out three blindfolds.

“I’m afraid I have to ask you to wear these,” he said. “It’s safer for all of us.” When Anna’s parents began to protest, two more men stepped into the room, their presence enough to ensure compliance.

Anna stumbled, still-barefoot, down the cold linoleum hallway, one hand in each of her parents’ hands, the hand of one of the enforcers on her shoulder guiding her. A door opened and they crossed gravel and then grass and then stepped up into a tall vehicle. Later, when the blindfolds were removed they were in a hotel room.

“You’re to stay put. Someone will bring you food. Don’t try to escape.”

“You can’t hold us here!” Anna’s father stood quickly, lunging for Agent Carter, but the other two men stepped forward and pushed him back down onto the bed.

“It’s safest for us all that no one know where you are, yourselves included.”

“It’s illegal! Immoral! Unconstitutional!” As each word escaped his mouth, Anna’s father grew quieter until he dissolved into silent sobs, head in his hands, shaking the bed they all sat on. Without a response, Agent Carter left, his men following behind him, and the three found themselves alone.

Anna tucked her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, staring at the wall, while her father cried and her mother paced around the room. Out the window lay a field, a highway in the distance, nothing distinct enough to place their location. “It looks like we’re still in Indiana,” Anna’s mother said, flipping on the television. “Maybe the news will show--”

On the screen was footage of Anna’s bedroom, her closet, and the gilded door, open to the beyond. A news anchor stood talking as people bustled in and out. Through the door there were military tents set up, people in suits and uniforms talking and pointing and planning.

“--unable to bring vehicles through--”

“--no sign of alternate entrances--”

“--as of yet unknown how stable--”

“--a refuge from this disease--”

As her mother flipped from channel to channel, Anna saw clip after clip of footage of her paradise, taken from her as quickly as it had appeared, salvation for humanity but her own imprisonment.

By the next morning her parents were fighting again. They’d started out sharing one of the queen-sized beds, but in the darkness Anna felt her mother come over into her bed, shaking as she cried quietly. When another suit had come to deliver them breakfast - cold oatmeal - Anna asked him if she could stand on the deck outside their room with him if she promised not to run. “I just can’t be here anymore,” she pleaded quietly. The man had turned away and closed the door without answering, but she swore she’d seen regret in his eyes.

The news stations no longer showed new footage of her bedroom or the gilded door or the beyond, as the government had deemed it a danger to show the public what was going on at the site. The whole neighborhood had been evacuated, and the area of displaced families was growing. 

Anna wondered if they were also in mystery hotels, unable to communicate with the outside world. Weeks since they’d been allowed physical contact or to gather in groups, Anna clung to the feeling that this displacement was shared, that her family wasn’t alone despite their isolation.

“Live from Cleveland, we’re reporting a plane crash just outside the city. On board the plane - a Piper Cherokee, a small single-engine aircraft - were the Chinese president and two of his aides and a pilot. All four have been confirmed dead. 

“Last week the president tested positive for the virus. It is believed the four were trying to get to the new world discovered this week by an unidentified teenager. Air traffic in the area is disallowed as government and military officials are controlling entry and exit to the mysterious world, which may be a safe haven as humanity faces unprecedented loss at the hands of this new virus.

Sources are reporting that the plane was shot down. We do not have confirmation at this time.”

The screen went black and after a few seconds the previous days’ footage of Anna’s bedroom was back on the screen as they replayed old speculation about the world and what potential is held to save mankind.

As the scientists rushed to assess the viability of the new world, pushing back on government officials’ insistence that it must be used to protect the uninfected until Earth was once again safe to inhabit, the news reported the shutdown of social media sites and blogs. By the next afternoon all television stations were broadcasting one news feed and the stories were repeats, not live coverage. That evening sirens wailed in the distance and Anna and her parents stood by the window to watch a seemingly-endless stream of emergency vehicles flying down the distant highway.

The next morning Anna’s cough began. A dry cough, wracking her entire body. She showered when the suit came to bring the family’s food to mask the sound. If he heard, he wouldn’t come back, and no one would come in his stead. 

When her mother started coughing that night they weren’t so lucky. The sound of the key in the lock, the door handle turning - her mother’s barking cough, quickly muffled by a pillow - the key turning in the lock once more and the man’s hurried footsteps retreating. Silence.

By midnight their coughing was constant, interrupted only by wheezes and gasps for air. Unable to sit up in bed, Anna lay on pillows her father had arranged before he himself had fallen ill, and the three ignored the stench in the air as they sat in their filth. “How quickly we fall,” Anna thought, her eyes heavy, on the brink of unconsciousness. 

On the television the same looped footage of her closet was interrupted as the programming cut to a frantic anchor. “--gone, overnight. No one seems to have seen it disappear. It is yet unclear how many people were on the other side and who those people were, but estimates are in the thousands. Signals from the other side are not being picked up; we do not have contact with the other side. Experts are trying to--” The anchor coughed and looked up at the camera, eyes wide in panic, and the broadcast ended as suddenly as it had begun.

Anna closed her heavy eyes, lulled to sleep as the bed rocked under her mother’s convulsions. As she slipped into unconsciousness she could almost feel sunshine on her face, hear the sound of birds singing, frogs croaking, insects buzzing. “My paradise,” she whispered.