by Tom Ryan
“My parents took it from me,” I lie. I try to sound like a petulant teenager. “Joke will be on them when they realize I’m gone and there’s no way to reach me.”
Barnabas narrows his eyes, considering, as if he’s trying to figure out whether I’m lying or not, but then he smiles. “You’ll have to contact them at some point,” he says. “But there’s plenty of time for that. In the meantime, let’s introduce you to the family.”
In the kitchen, a few people are standing around the table, talking, mostly women, along with an older man and a couple of kids. Everyone stops talking when I enter the room, standing just inside the threshold of the door. The people are almost all older than me, and a couple look old enough to be my grandparents. The kids—a boy and a girl—both look a bit younger than ten.
There’s no sign of Sibby at all. Of course I wasn’t expecting her, but a soft hollow of disappointment emerges in my stomach.
Pearl precedes us into the kitchen. “Everyone,” she says, “meet our new guest. This is Bridget.”
She proceeds to introduce me to everyone else. I quickly lose track of all but a few names. A friendly looking older man turns out to be Pearl’s husband, Noah, and the kids are Tansy and Al. They stare at me curiously, the way kids tend to, but there’s nothing in their faces that makes me think they’re in any kind of danger. If anything, they seem totally normal, poking and teasing at each other, as their parents tell them to settle down.
In fact, it seems everything about the farm is normal. As they go back to their conversations, I pick up snippets of news about chores and the work that’s going into preparing for planting season.
I’m happy when Pearl gets me chopping vegetables, because I’m trying to settle in without drawing attention to myself. A few minutes later, a door in the back of the porch opens and some boots stomp in the entryway, along with the sound of men talking. It fills the space with the boom of authority and confidence, enters into the empty space of the next room.
A few moments later, Pierre comes into the back mudroom trailed by four men in their late twenties. They kick the snow off their boots and enter the room, followed by a couple of big dogs. The men notice me right away, and a couple of them exchange looks that are hard to decipher, and the dogs are equally curious. They immediately bypass everyone else in the kitchen to investigate me.
“This good old girl is Raven,” says Barnabas, pointing at a sleek, black mutt who is sniffing furiously at my jeans, while an enormous white Great Pyrenees stands back and regards me suspiciously. “And this big fella here is Snowman. Meet Bridget. A guest for this evening. Perhaps longer, if she decides to stick around for a while.”
The men nod at me, but nobody offers me their names. I wonder if any of them were here at the same time as Alice.
The men go off to clean up, and after allowing the dogs to satisfy themselves that I’m not a threat, I move into the kitchen and occupy myself with helping Pearl cook dinner.
Dinner is good but hippie-style. Some kind of a vegetable stew with chickpeas and raisins, along with roasted squash and brown rice.
I’m surprised when Pearl directs me to sit at the head of the table. When I demur, she insists, gently pressing on my shoulder so I sit into the large, armed chair beneath the huge window at the back of the room. “You’re the guest of honor, hon,” she says. “It would be an insult to refuse.”
Large chipped pottery jugs filled with water are passed around, and we fill our glasses. As Pearl directs the action of spooning out the food onto the plates, she asks me unthreatening questions about myself, but nothing too personal, which leads me to believe they’re used to people wanting their privacy around here.
Before we eat, a well-rehearsed silence descends on the table. Barnabas, at the opposite head, puts out his hands, and I follow suit to reach out and take hold of the people beside me, Pearl and Noah.
We clasp hands, and as Barnabas begins to pray, I glance up from beneath my lashes. Everyone has their eyes cast down or closed except for one person.
Pierre is staring at me from across the table, and when my eyes catch his, he holds my gaze until I look away.
37.
After dinner, I attempt to get up and help with dishes, but I’m pushed gently away by Pearl.
“You’ll have plenty of time to help in the coming days,” she says. “Go to the living room. I’m sure Barnabas will want to learn more about you.”
I step out of the kitchen and through the dining room, where a couple of people are quietly clearing the table. They glance at me curiously but drop their eyes when I glance back at them. In the large living room on the other side, Barnabas is sitting by the fire, chatting with some of the young men about the construction of a root cellar. They drink tea, and the big dogs are curled by the fire. Raven opens one eye as I enter to stand in the doorway and watches me warily, but Snowman continues to sleep easily.
I watch the scene in front of me for a moment, allowing my eyes to wander around the room. The house is old; heavy timber beams run across the living room perpendicular to the heavy, oiled floorboards that peek out from beneath a mismatch of hand-woven rugs. There’s no television, just a wall full of books and an old radio in the corner, softly playing classical music. On the floor in the corner, the two kids are playing cards.
This house doesn’t seem like the kind of place that would harbor a kidnapped child. It seems quiet and safe and warm and comfortable. Everyone is polite and helpful. Am I supposed to believe that Sibby is locked up in a basement somewhere? It just doesn’t make sense. I wonder if it’s too late to text Sarah and ask her to come get me now. It’s only about six thirty, but it’s entirely dark outside.
“Bridget.” I turn at the sound of my middle name and realize that Barnabas has finished his conversation and is looking at me. “Come talk to me,” he says.
He gestures to a small wooden stool near his chair, and I grab it and pull it over next to him.
“Is there anything you’d like to know about the farm?” he asks. I wish more than anything that Sarah were here, even Burke, someone who would be able to come up with the right questions, who wouldn’t choke in the line of fire. Even better, I wish I could send out a message to my listeners, ask them to take over for me. I’ve never been the investigator. I’m the person who organizes the investigations and sits back, waits for the clues and tips and solutions to come back to me.
I want to ask him Where is Sibby? Did you even have her? Was she ever here? Instead, I ask, “How long have you been here?”
“About fifteen years,” he says. “A group of us decided that we wanted to leave the outside world, learn to grow as much of our own food as possible. Pearl and Noah, Pierre, myself, several others, we found this house, a small field, enough wood to keep ourselves warm in the winter, and to build the shelters and buildings we needed.”
“And people came to you?” I ask.
He nods. “With time. There were many years of growth.” He stands and walks over to the cabinet on the other side of the room, pulls out a large book, and comes back. When he opens it on his lap, I see that it’s a photo album.
“We’ve taken a picture every year at the end of harvest,” he says. He flips through, and I see that on each page, a full-color photo fills the frame, an image of the farm and its inhabitants. The first few pictures are basic, just the house, a makeshift shed behind, and a large vegetable garden. Eight people turn into twelve, then fourteen for a couple of years, and then I turn the page and the number has more than doubled. I stop, staring, and he laughs.
“That was the year that things seemed to stick,” he says. “We grew really quickly. Doubled our food production, built the barns, and began raising cattle and chickens. The first babies were born that year, and new guests seemed to show up almost every day.”
I flip again, trying to keep up with the math. I’m on the sixth year, the year Sibby disappeared. In the photo, it’s the fall, so it would have been about six months after she went missi
ng. The population has grown again, and in the front of the picture are about eight kids. I quickly scan their faces, looking for Sibby, but she’s not there.
She’s not on the next page either, or the next, and as I make my way through the album, my heart begins to sink. Sibby isn’t in this house. She was never in this house. Alice meant well, but she admitted herself that she hadn’t remembered where she’d seen the girl.
But still, something nags at me. It doesn’t seem right. Alice seemed sure that she’d seen Sibby. Not just suspicious. Confident, as if there was no question in her mind.
Around five years ago, the numbers of people begin to dwindle. Dropping bit by bit, until we get to the most recent picture. Fifteen of them, more or less the same people who are here right now.
“What happened?” I ask, looking up at Barnabas. He has a wistful look on his face.
“People left,” he says. “We couldn’t keep up with the demand, although we did our best. Nobody starved, but ultimately, it turned out that as much land as we have here wasn’t enough for more than fifteen, maybe twenty people. “It’s a good life though,” he says. “If you’re looking for something like this.” He stops and sweeps his hand around. “It’s comfortable. It keeps us fed, busy, as distanced from the outside world as we like. Over the years, many people have come to us who are trying to escape from something,” he says. “The way you are, maybe. People who’ve had enough of their old lives, families, relationships, responsibilities, patterns. It’s easy enough to disappear, if you really want to.”
I wonder if that also means it’s easy to make someone disappear. I know better than to speak that out loud. I know he’s right. I’ve been following missing people forever, and the ones who want to disappear, the Danny Lurlees of the world, they manage to do it when they really want to.
He continues. “The reality is, farming isn’t for everyone. It’s been good for some people. It’s been therapeutic, and that’s great. But not everyone has it in them to stick around.”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I mean, I heard about this place from someone, and I thought…”
“You thought it might be a good way to escape your life,” he says.
I nod.
“If you want my honest opinion, Bridget,” he says, “I’m not sure this is the right place for you. This isn’t a place to come to get away from something. It’s a place to come when you’re looking for something.”
“You’re probably right,” I say.
“It’s okay,” he says with a smile and a little shrug. “We are always interested in meeting new people. Tomorrow I’ll give you a tour of the farm. You can meet the animals, learn more about the work we do here. If you don’t think it’s a good fit for you, I’ll give you a ride back to town.”
I smile at him. Alice was one of the people trying to escape their old lives. Is it so crazy that she could have imagined Sibby into existence? Created a purpose to justify the years she spent here? I realize now that this has been a wild-goose chase. Barnabas is just a guy trying to keep his vision alive, his group together.
I hang out in the living room for another hour or so, flipping through some old books on the shelves, then I call it a night. The sooner I go to bed, the sooner I can wake up and get away from here.
Upstairs, I brush my teeth with a freshly packaged toothbrush that Pearl gives me. I carefully slide my phone out from the hutch and then cross to the bedroom. When I’m under the covers, I text Sarah.
Hey.
She responds right away.
Omg Dee, this is so scary. Are you okay?
Yes, I’m totally fine. I’ll be ready to get out of here first thing in the morning. There’s nothing here. It was a false alarm.
Okay. That’s good. Parents are pissed but we’ll make it up to them. I’ll fill you in tomorrow.
Lol—we’ve earned their trust, right? Okay, good night.
Good night, can’t wait to see you and hear everything xo
Xo
The bed is comfortable, and this part of the mystery, at least, has been solved. I close my eyes, and immediately, I fall asleep.
I wake with a start, ripping myself up from a nightmare. Something is nagging at me. Something someone said or something I saw, but I can’t put my finger on it.
I reach back for my dream. Something in the back of my mind is unsettled, but I can’t think of what.
Suddenly, I want to get away from this house. Everything seems like it’s normal, but somehow, it doesn’t fit.
Around me, the house is sleeping. I slip out of bed and pull back the curtain to look out of the bedroom window. The sleeping house is dark, and the only light is the ambient glow cast on the ground from the external spotlight on the barn.
I reach under my bed and grab my phone. It’s 4:00 a.m.
Are you awake? I text.
Sarah responds a few moments later.
As if I could sleep. Everything still okay?
Yeah, but I’m ready to leave. I think I’m going to slip out and walk down to the road. You think you can meet me? It’s about a 20 minute drive.
Yes thank god
There’s a barrier on the driveway, so just pull in at the end and wait for me there.
K. I’ll see you soon.
I dress as quietly as I can without turning on the light, then I slip out of the bedroom and into the hallway, taking the steps slowly. I still think everything is safe and fine, but there’s something holding me back from feeling totally safe. Something nagging at the back of my mind.
At the bottom of the stairs I stop and stand totally still, listening to the house sleeping around me. There’s no noise except for the tiny creaks and shifts as the house bends with the wind. I find my boots and jacket by the front door, neatly set beside a few other pairs. I pull on my boots, drag my overcoat over me, and slip my hat on, which was in the bin next to the door. I glance at my phone and figure that Sarah will be here in about fifteen minutes. It will take about ten to walk down the driveway, so I might as well leave and walk down to wait for her.
But I don’t. I stay put, thinking. Something is trying to get through to me. Some kind of hint into the mystery about what is actually going on.
I close my eyes and try to reach back for the frayed remains of my dream. What was happening?
My eyes shoot open and I feel my breath go shallow. I remember what I was dreaming, and suddenly, the hidden clues inside my memory float to the forefront of my mind, and connections begin to fall into place, and I realize with a sudden mind-wrenching certainty that these are the people who took Sibby.
Sarah will be here any moment. I should go, but I can’t. Not without some kind of proof. I wrack my brain, frantic to think of some way to find evidence.
Aware of the weight of my boots, I do my best to cross the hallway silently and step into the living room. I pull down the album from the bookshelf, flipping ahead to the year of Sibby’s abduction. When Barnabas first showed me the album, I was so caught up in examining the children, that I barely noticed the clusters of adults around them. Now I scan the faces, looking for something, anything that will prove my theory.
Barnabas is standing in the middle of the group, at the back, a head taller than everyone, which tells me that he’s probably standing on a crate or something. Immediately surrounding him, I recognize other faces, Pearl and Noah, Pierre, and many others I don’t recognize. I assume they’re old guests who decided to leave.
And on the far corner, her eyes squinted against the sun, laughing and smiling, is a face I recognize. A face I spoke to recently. If I’d only met her as she exists today, I might not make the connection here, but as it happens, I knew the young woman in the photograph when she still looked just like this.
It’s Sandy.
My mind is spinning, and I can’t yet figure out what it all means, but I know it means something. I pull back the cellophane sheet that holds the photo in place, and I remove the shot, shoving it inside the arm of my jacket.
&n
bsp; I pull my phone out to check the time. Sarah will be here any minute. As I fumble to put it back in my pocket, I hear a creak behind me.
“What are you doing?” asks Barnabas.
38.
I turn around, and even as I’m trying to think of what to say to tamp down his suspicions, I can see that his gaze is on the open photo album on the coffee table beside me.
“Who are you?” he asks. “Why did you come here?”
I only answer the second question. “I know that you took Sibby Carmichael. I want to know what happened to her.”
He makes a show of looking confused. “Sibby Carmichael?
I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
I don’t even bother to play along with him.
“I saw Sandy in the album,” I say.
Barnabas shrugs. “Lots of people have come here over the years. Some stay for years, and some leave. End of story.”
“Okay,” I say. “I guess I was wrong. Why don’t I just leave?”
I take a step to the door, but he moves to block me. I notice one of his hands clench as his face shifts into something far nastier than he’s let me see up to now.
I step back, trying to keep the distance between us. I know he’s trying to corner me in the back of the room, but I do have one big advantage: I’m already dressed to be outside in this winter air, and he’s barefoot, in sweatpants and a T-shirt. Sarah will be here soon. If I can get out of this room, if I can get to her, I’ll be okay.
He steps again and I move backward, but this time I risk a quick glance at the sofa to my side. He follows my stare, then looks back at me, and for a long, pregnant moment, we both stare at each other, aware of what is going to happen next.
He calls my bluff and fakes at me, and I bend down in one quick motion and flip the coffee table toward him, then leap to the side, jumping up and onto the ragged, beat-up sofa. I’m quick, but he’s quicker, and just as I’m about to clear him and make it to the hallway, he scrambles sideways and grabs my ankle.
