Behind the Curtain

The disappearances were infrequent at first. There would be one, sometimes two every few weeks and then everything went quiet. Occasionally the breaks lasted longer, and you’d almost start to think life was getting back to normal, but then someone else vanished, and the temporary illusion of normality was once again shattered.

A disappearance wasn’t a sudden event but rather a slow drawn-out process which took several days to complete. First the person’s overall frame started to fade, then their bones became brittle and lost the strength to support the skin which in turn slowly melted off the bone, exposing the hollow skeleton underneath. This is when they looked most frightening. In the end the remains of the skeleton evaporated as well, and the person was gone entirely.

Those who vanished were also rubbed off from photos, their clothes disappeared from their own wardrobes, even the person’s name was deleted from the telephone book where it had quite often been for years, even decades. Most curious of all however was how they were wiped from everyone else’s memories. With the minds of those that remained scrubbed clean no one would question why someone had gone missing.

Except me – for some unexplained reason I saw the people fading away and I remembered them after they were gone. 

The first disappearance I witnessed was that of Amelia James, a widower in her seventies who lived down the road from us. I used to come across the old lady when she was taking her walk in the afternoon when the mid-day sun had subsided. She’d move very slowly through the neighbourhood and if my path on my way home from school crossed hers, I always said hello. Sometimes she’d hear me but mostly she was focused on getting her old arthritic joints to obey. 

I didn’t pay much more attention than that but one day I noticed how she looked faded, slightly transparent. It was only a fleeting moment, and I wrote it off as a trick of the light, but the next day her face looked shapeless like melting plastic, and the day after it had come off altogether, exposing the fragile structure of the skull underneath. 

I gasped loudly as I passed her on the pavement, and she stopped right next to me. As I stood there with wide eyes, not even daring to breathe, she leaned over. Her boney face was mere inches from mine - where once had been her eyes were now just black holes, yet I felt like she looked right inside of me with these voids. She let out a strained noise accompanied by a vile rotting smell; I started screaming but she didn’t react when I ran away.

I locked the door when I got home and stood behind it in an attempt to reinforce it more with the sheer force of my own rather small teenager’s body. Trying to control my tremors, trying not to breathe for fear of someone, anyone hearing me on the other side, I stood there for several hours. It was dark when my mother came home, and I was still standing there behind the door when she opened it. I must have looked like a cornered wild animal, paralysed by fear but ready to attack.

“She’s melting, Mum! Mrs. James, she’s literally melting on the street, I can see her bones. You must do something. Mum, do something!” my voice shook as I pleaded with her. 

The initial look of surprise and confusion on her face was now replaced with deep concern. It was a frequent expression I saw these days and I couldn’t quite understand why she was so worried about me.  

“I have absolutely no idea who you’re talking about honey, who is Mrs. James?”  

“Mrs. James?! She lives down the street, in the yellow house - the old lady, she’s lived here, like forever!” I raised my voice in amazement, but she was even more puzzled, the frown between her brows deepening.

“Go to be bed honey, I am very tired, we will speak again in the morning,” her tone left no space to argue. 

The next day I woke with the most terrible flu. I stayed in bed for several days, and in the middle of a dangerously high fever, I became convinced Mrs. James was in the room with me, for a moment I even confused her with my doctor who my mother had sent for.

Perhaps Mrs. James had given me whatever disease she was suffering from, and my face too would soon melt away like hers. In a sweaty sleep I hallucinated about my own death, thinking about the peculiarities of my body, the flesh, the bones. What did the inside of my skin look like, was my skull grey like Mrs. James’s or was it white like the one in the science lab at school. What about my organs, my intestines, what were they like? In these fever dreams the bizarre stories were weaved together in disjointed ways that made no sense. 

I could hear my mother coming and in and out of the room but also strangers dressed in white, probably doctors again. When the worst of it passed and I regained my strength I was allowed to return to school. I did not see Mrs. James on her walks again. 

I wondered later if she had died from whatever illness made her look the way she did but there was nothing in the local paper, and I didn’t want to ask Mum again. I was troubled by the look in her eyes the day she found me standing like a statue behind the front door, crippled by terror and mania. She had deeply concerned but not for poor melting Mrs. James whom she could not even recall but for me. So, I left it there and for a while, things appeared normal again.  

***

“Honey, Mrs. Galsworthy’s husband left her years ago, even before she moved here, and you know that very well! What were you thinking, for heaven’s sake, asking how he was doing? That was very thoughtless of you!” 

My mother scolded me all the way home after I brought Mrs. Galsworthy to tears with my innocent question: “Is Mr. Galsworthy feeling better now?” 

I had seen him looking unwell, much like Mrs. James, when I walked by their house that morning. He was mowing the lawn, and as I passed their house he turned around. He looked melted, skin dripping off his face in the sweltering heat of the day. I walked away fast, afraid he would make me sick too - like Mrs. James had.  

I couldn’t understand what was happening, or why I was the only one cursed seeing the disappearances, yet no one believing me. Was there perhaps some new chemical weapon being tried out in our small town; perhaps it was in the town water supply, maybe the air? But then why would it not affect me? It made no sense.

It was a horrible, anxious feeling, and made me question my own sanity. Was I going mad, like my father had many years prior?

There was a family on our street, mother a chef, father a lawyer. First went the dad, then their eldest daughter, then the mother, then the youngest daughter. One day I could only hear the dog bark in their house, hungry and abandoned. I went to their garden through the side gate, opened the back door which was unlocked and fed the poor creature. I did that for several days until one day when I went in, the dog was gone too. 

I started to break into other houses where I saw families disappear; I wanted to make sure their pets were fed while they were still there. We had a cat ourselves, a tuxedo called Tommy; even though she was a girl cat – mum said it’s short for Thomasina, her favourite food writer, but really, I think she just didn’t check when she brought the little kitten home many years ago. Tommy was always hungry and threw enormous tantrums if her food was not served in a timely manner. I went to the abandoned houses to make sure other poor animals were not hungry. 

“Eat your breakfast, you’re late for school. I really cannot be called in again to talk to your headmaster about your strange behaviour and constant absences. I’ve had enough dealing with the complaints from the neighbours. The hospital will start asking questions if I get called away again in the middle of the day!” 

My mother was the head nurse in the local hospital and worked hard to look after us. I never knew my father. My sister’s father was different to mine; he was nice and came to visit her all the time, and he was kind to me too. Mum didn't talk about my father; whenever I asked about him, she’d brush me off, and often I would hear her crying afterwards. I have heard from others in the family he struggled with mental health all his life. He had been doing good for some time until he became convinced my mother was trying to kill him; that everyone was trying to kill him. Eventually he was sectioned and years later he died of cancer in the mental hospital, having never been released. 

I was sitting at the breakfast table eating toast and eggs when my sister Milly came down. My heart sank when I saw her - she was also fading! She was only twelve years old, how could this be happening! Now it was starting in our family; soon it would be Mum and me, and Tommy would go hungry too because there would be no one to feed her when I was gone.

“What are you staring at, what is the matter with you? What are you - retarded?” Milly looked at me like I was crazy when I stared at her, mouth open, still full of scrambled eggs. At least her mind was still there, and her dirty little mouth! 

“Language!” my mother said to my little sister. She didn’t see anything wrong with Milly’s appearance. 

“Both of you - school, now!” she said standing up to clear the table. 

“Hey, wait for your sister!” she shouted after me as I ran out, leaving both of them in the kitchen. I usually walked with Milly, but I couldn’t bear the idea she’d be next to me the entire walk slowly fading, knowing that soon she’d be gone. 

As I walked in a hurry, I saw more melting faces and disappearing people, some were no more than mere skeletons walking down the high street. It was happening everywhere now! When they realised that I could see them, they all wanted to come after me. Some even tried to chase me but they were slow with their brittle bones, and I got away easily. 

Hoping for sanctuary at school I was greeted with a near empty building instead; whoever was still there was already halfway faded, some just skeletons. I searched the building for anyone familiar, anyone who was still intact but there was no one so I ran back home.  

When I got in the house was empty. I walked over to the table in the hallway that had many family photos on it; I picked up one Mum took of us at a picnic by the lake last year, and where my sister had once been was now just an empty space. There was another of her, a portrait taken at school which was now nothing more than a grey wall.

A panic took over and I called mum – the phone rang until it went to voicemail. I rushed back to the street and knocked on the doors of neighbouring families to see who was still there. There was no answer in any of the houses and as I scanned the street, I saw a few melting faces, heard distant barks, but otherwise it was all eerily quiet. 

I started running towards the hospital where my mother worked. She was fine this morning and I hoped, prayed that she was still there, that she had not yet disappeared. 

The hospital was also quiet with no one keeping guard at the doors nor at reception. I walked straight through and then around various waiting rooms. No one - just suffocating ominous silence. Not even birdsong could be heard through the open windows.  

I kept shouting for my Mum as I walked through the building. Where was everyone? What the hell happened here, what the hell happened in our town? 

Suddenly I was exhausted, the tiredness overtook with sudden aggressiveness. I sat on a bench, then shortly after laid down and fell asleep. 

When I woke there was a girl sitting next to me. She was about my age, sixteen-seventeen perhaps, but she looked like a dishevelled witch. Her hair was wild, her clothes torn; I thought for a moment that perhaps she was fading too but then I saw the manic look in her very large pupils and realised she was there next to me, clear as day. 

“Why are you here?” she asked me. 

“I’m sorry?” 

“What do you see? Tell me, what do you see?” she kept insisting, while grabbing my arm. 

“Nothing, I’m fine,” I tried to free myself. 

“I know you’re fine, it’s the rest of them that are not fine! What do you see?” 

“What do you mean?” I raised my voice now as she was almost pushing me off the bench with raw force. 

“If you’re here now, then you must be seeing too!” 

I hesitated: “I saw them disappearing, all of them. No one else did, just me. And now there’s no one left. Everyone is gone!” 

She went quiet as if needing a moment to let the answer sink in, even though it was exactly what she had been expecting to hear. She let go of my arm.

“I think my sister disappeared this morning,” I said while the girl was contemplating my story, likely same as hers.

“They bring us here, the ones who can see what’s really going on,” she responded ignoring the comment about my sister. 

“What do you mean?” 

“It’s all an illusion, everything that’s out there, even the people, they're not real! But only some of us can see it. The ones that do, they lock us in here. We're dangerous because we can see behind the curtain, see through the charade, and the smoke and mirrors. Like that old film, with the red pill and the blue pill. And then they will call us crazy, and everyone believes that because that's easier than believing the truth.” 

"But why is everyone disappearing, what's happening to them?"

Before she could respond to the question I most needed answered, a loud alarm went off on the wall right next to us. 

“Lunch!” the girl said, suddenly jerked back to reality with excitement.

“Girls, it’s time for your food and for your medication. Don’t be late again, you know Doctor James won’t be pleased about that,” said the man in a white uniform who came to take us to the large familiar dining hall.

It was Mr. Galsworthy and when he turned, I could have sworn I saw the skeleton glowing under his skin.