Ragnar

by Joanna Bell

  But I wasn't fine. And it began to manifest itself in strange ways. For one, I became obsessed with the time period of the Viking invasions of England. Not obsessed in the sense of reading a book here or there or watching a documentary every couple of weeks. No, I became obsessed to the point of skipping classes to Google various locations, known battles, key figures from that time in British history. I started heading straight to my room as soon as I got home every evening, and skipping college parties with my friends, in order to read further into my new area of interest.

  I also started driving to River Forks on a regular basis, down the road the Renner's house was located on and slowing to a crawl as I drove by, irrationally hoping to see a light on inside, or maybe Mr. Renner out in the driveway, spreading salt on the thick layer of ice that formed on every surface during that cold winter.

  One time, I even parked my car on the road that bordered the Renner's large property on the other side, away from the eyes of the police that were still to be found lurking outside a few days a week, either sitting quietly in their cars or looking around the yard. It took me half an hour to walk through the snowy, overgrown field to the woods, and then I almost got lost, disoriented from only having been on that part of the property once before. But eventually, I found the tree and then I stood there for a long time – until I could no longer feel the tips of my fingers or my toes frozen in my boots – with a feeling of desperation in my heart.

  I missed Paige. I would have missed her anyway, even if I hadn't known exactly where – and when – she was. But her absence was even more acute for knowing she was the only person on earth I could possibly talk to about what I was going through. And she was gone. As thoroughly gone as she would have been had she died, or been kidnapped again by the aliens who then took her and her father and her half-human, half-alien baby back to their home planet (which is exactly what happened, according to certain websites).

  The tree was right in front of me. In my feet was that strange, aching pain I sometimes get when standing on high cliffs or ledges, that feeling of being half-convinced your own brain is going to go rogue and convince you to throw yourself off the edge before you even have time to think about it. In my hands was an itch, an urge to reach out and touch one of the tree's roots or even its rough, thick trunk. But I didn't. I couldn't. No more than I could jump off a cliff. For one thing, I couldn't stay there the way Paige had. How would I explain my absence when I got back? I'd seen what Paige herself had gone through. And what about the 9th century itself? It would be insane to go back there, where marauding Vikings and possibly-hostile locals lurked, unbound by modern laws against the kidnapping of strange women.

  Still. I wasn't there in the woods because I wanted to escape my modern life. Everything that was happening at the time was a trial, but I wasn't in the same boat Paige had been in as a child, with one parent dead and one unable to care for me, no friends, no social life. I was there because I couldn't believe what had happened. You'd think you would. You'd think literal, physical proof would be enough. And then you go back in time, return to the 21st century, and over the next few weeks the sheer power of knowledge – of knowing that something like that isn't possible – begins to go to work on your battered mind, replacing what your five senses told you was true. I could feel it happening to me, the way I'd already begun to half laugh at myself, internally, when I thought about the way Paige's friend Eadgar had looked. I would picture his dirty, bare feet and his nearly entirely toothless grin and smile a little sheepishly. That can't have happened, a voice would whisper. Your mind is playing tricks on you. You imagined it. Or, if you didn't imagine it, your memory is exaggerating things. You know this, you've read about this – how unreliable memory is. Why would you be an exception?

  It was easier to believe the voice. I knew if I kept believing it I might one day be able to tell myself that the whole episode was some kind of hallucination. But even as I began to go along with the cajoling doubts, I couldn't forget what had happened. I couldn't forget that feeling of losing my breath, tumbling through a darkness thicker and more fathomless than any earthly midnight. And then the smell of those woods, of the sea – the smell of home. How could it be that in one moment I was standing on American soil, and the next I was home – in England? It couldn't be.

  I took a small, unconscious step towards the tree. Maybe I could just make sure? Maybe if I put the tip of one finger on it I might feel that blackness trying to suck me in again, and pull my hand back before it took me?

  Maybe, maybe, maybe. No. I stepped back, turned away, and began the long trudge back over the field to the car. There was a heaviness in my heart matched only by the heaviness of my body – it seemed to take more effort than usual to lift one foot in front of the other. It was the weight of a secret – the kind of secret that needs to be shared at the same time it can't be, because no one would believe it.

  2

  Emma

  In early December, just before classes broke up before exams, I got a call from Michael Rappini, my lawyer. He was under instruction from my parents – who were paying his not insubstantial fees – not to contact me unless it was important. So I knew when I took the call that it wasn't going to be a chat about the weather.

  "You need to come into my office sometime over the next week," he said, after we exchanged pleasantries. He sounded casual, but there was something forced about his tone.

  "Oh?" I replied, mirroring his faux casualness. "Why's that?"

  "Some people want to speak to you. I'll be there with one of my colleagues – I've already spoken to your parents about –"

  "Who wants to speak to me?"

  Something was up. I could hear it in the way he was choosing his words with extreme care.

  "Uh, the FBI. It's routine, Emma. Your friend is missing again – and so is her baby and her father – and they're just doing their due dili –"

  "The FBI?!" I exclaimed, hearing my own voice rising sharply. "The FBI? Why does the FBI want to –"

  "Emma!" My lawyer cut me off. "Emma, slow down. OK? Listen to me. This is routine. You were her best friend and you told the police you saw her very shortly before she went missing again. You're not a suspect, it's nothing like that. They just –"

  "Why do you have to be there, then?" I blurted out, terrified at the prospect of having to lie to an FBI agent – which is definitely what I was going to have to do if they asked me if I knew where Paige was. The local cop was bad enough, but federal law enforcement? No part of me was confident that I'd be able to pull that off.

  But Michael Rappini Esq. was good at his job. He had the knowledge and the soothing manner that came from years of dealing with panicky, nervous clients. He talked me through the process, assured me I was not under any suspicion, that the FBI were speaking to everyone Paige knew so I was naturally going to be on that list of people, and reminded me that both himself and a colleague of his were going to be at my side the entire time.

  Three days later, and after telling my parents it wasn't necessary for them to fly out from the UK to be with me, I found myself in Mr. Rappini's office, with him on one side of me, his colleague – a white-haired older man named Murray who would have made a great mall Santa Claus – on the other, and two FBI agents sitting across a table from us. Before I'd gone into the room, I'd been counseled to state that I didn't remember if any questions I didn't understand came up, or any that I didn't feel comfortable answering. I felt a little reassured by that, like I had a little fallback position if the FBI agents started getting too close to the bone.

  At first their questions were routine, although I did notice that they seemed very interested in my relationship with Paige. Had we ever been 'intimate'? No. Had we fought before she went missing the second time? No. The first time? No. And they kept coming back to that point about a fight or a conflict, using different word combinations, slightly different tones of voice, to ask what was essentially the same question over and over. I didn't budge, because I was telli
ng the truth.

  Eventually, they got around to the actual day Paige had gone missing the second time – the day she took me – and her baby son and her father – back to the 9th century and only one of us returned.

  "We'd like to ask you a few questions about Paige's phone records, if that's alright?"

  I shifted in my seat nervously because I knew this was probably the part where I was going to have to lie, and nodded my head.

  One of the agents – an enormous bald man who completely looked the part – pulled a sheaf of papers out and began to leaf through them.

  "Here. She called you the night before, on her cell phone. A short call. Do you remember what you discussed?"

  I told the officers Paige was calling to invite me to come over and meet the baby the next day, which was true. They asked me to confirm I had gone to Paige's house the next day and I did. They seemed satisfied – things seemed to be winding down. But just when I thought I was going to be given the go-ahead to leave, the other agent, a woman with a thick, frizzy brown hair and bags under her eyes, pursed her lips and looked at me.

  "Paige texted you the next morning – yeah, here it is. 'Remember to wear drab colors – nothing bright! I know it sounds dumb but just trust me.' Can you tell us what that was about?"

  What that was about was Paige making sure I wouldn't freak out any of her medieval friends by wearing a pair of bright fuchsia trainers or a kelly-green bobble-hat to meet them. Not that I could tell the FBI that.

  "Uh, I don't remember." I said, averting my eyes from the agents' steady gazes.

  "You don't remember?"

  "No, sorry, I don't."

  "Alright. Well I think that's everything for now, Emma. We may have some more questions in the future if you –"

  Michael Rappini waved his hand in the air. "Yeah, you know the drill – call me, not her."

  I began to stand up, relieved that it was over, and was about to head out of the room when the frizzy-haired agent spoke up again.

  "You don't seem very upset."

  I turned to face her, my mouth open, about to say something I probably would have regretted, when Michael jumped in.

  "Come on," he said, addressing both agents. "You know better than that."

  "It's a simple question Mr. Rappini. Her best friend is missing for the second time – and this time with her newborn son and her father – and your client hasn't shown a single sign of grief or worry throughout this whole –"

  At that very moment, as I moved to approach the woman, angry at what she was implying (which I only later realized was exactly what she intended) and about to tell her she didn't know what she was talking about, Michael shot me a stern look, shook his head at me and guided me firmly out the door. As soon as it was shut behind us I started to protest but he shut me down.

  "No, Emma. Don't do that. That's what they want. They want you to get emotional, to slip up, to say something that could give them a reason to question you further. And it's my job to stop that from happening. So the interview is over and you can go home now, unless you have any questions?"

  I stood back, feeling slightly chastised even though my lawyer had a smile on his face. "Questions? Um. I don't know. Is that it? Are they going to need to talk to me again?"

  "I'm not sure. Maybe. You haven't been following this, have you? The story, I mean – online, on the news? You haven't been paying attention?"

  "No," I replied, because I hadn't been, not for weeks at that point. I wouldn't have been able to function. Of course the headlines were oftentimes impossible to miss, splashed across the top of this homepage or that newspaper lying on a campus bench. I knew Paige's second disappearance had caused a kind of national hysteria that only seemed to intensify as the days passed and wild speculation bloomed and spread like an invasive plant into the nooks and crannies of the collective cultural consciousness. The talking heads on the evening news shows were investigators and officials now, not politicians, and they couldn't offer anything beyond their own baffled statements that they a)had no solid signs of foul play and b)didn't have even the slightest clue as to what had happened to Paige Renner.

  When I left Michael Rappini's office that evening, a man jumped out of some bushes in the parking lot and started snapping photos and shouting questions at me.

  "Where is Paige Renner?"

  "Did you have something to do with Paige Renner's disappearance?"

  "Is it true that there are text messages of a fight you were having with Paige over a boy you both liked?"

  Michael appeared before I could do anything dumb, sprinting across the asphalt and escorting me the rest of the way to my car using his jacket to block the reporter's view.

  That incident was my first real hint that there was a newly direct focus on me in the media-created narrative of What Happened To Paige Renner.

  "Do they think I had something to do with this?" I asked, shaken, once I was in my car and the reporter had been shooed away.

  Michael shook his head. "Half this country thinks extraterrestrials took your friend, Emma. I would strongly advise you to keep doing what you're doing and stay away from any media coverage. Grand Northeastern is still paying for personal security, right?"

  I nodded and held my hands up in front of me to confirm that they were trembling. They were. "Yes," I confirmed, "they are."

  "Good. Go straight home and give your parents a call. Invite some friends over. Make sure you don't spend too much time alone."

  I looked up at my lawyer, then, and asked him if he thought I had something to do with Paige's disappearance.

  "Of course not!" He laughed, and I almost melted with relief when I could see he was telling the truth. "The police have nothing, Emma. Even if you weren't my client I'm smart enough to see there's no motive, no reason for you to have done anything wrong. I don't know what's going to happen – and by that I mean I don't know if they're going to find your friend – but I really don't think you have much to worry about beyond possibly another couple of conversations with our charming friends at the FBI."

  Michael Rappini was a good lawyer. Not just in the technical sense of knowing the law, but in the sense of being very good at getting people to trust him, to open up to him. As he was standing outside my car that evening it was on the tip of my tongue to tell him. It would have been so easy.

  "You're right," I could have said. "There is no evidence of any foul play because there wasn't any. They won't find Paige, though. She's gone. Gone where? Oh, the 9th century. She's a time-traveler, you see. Her baby's father is a Viking – she's gone back to be with him, and she took her dad, too. So yeah, that's the explanation. Do you think we should go back into the office and tell the FBI?"

  But I didn't say any of that. I just gave my lawyer what must have been a rather pained look, thanked him for his help and his reassurances, and drove off. On the way back, I looped through River Forks again, past the Renner's house (there was only one lonely looking media van parked outside now, and I couldn't see any people at all) and down the road that ran the length of their property. It was as if I could feel the tree in the woods, calling to me. My friend Paige, the only person who could possibly understand what I was going through, felt simultaneously quite nearby and impossibly distant. Had she even thought about what it would be like for me? Had she understood that by inviting me over that afternoon – and taking me back to the past! – that she was setting me up for scrutiny from law enforcement and a rabid media? How could she not have?

  I tightened my grip on the steering wheel even as I slowed at the point across the fields from her house where I could see the woods. Was I angry at Paige? I think I was. Part of me understood it wasn't her fault, what was happening to me. And part of me also knew that had she not told me where she was going, I would have spent the rest of my life wondering what happened to my best friend, torturing myself with worst case scenarios. But part of me was just angry she'd escaped and I was still there, dealing with things that weren't mine to deal with. />
  I pulled off the road and turned the car's engine off before I realized what I was doing. It was almost dark. What was I doing? Was I going to stumble across that snowy field again, with only the light from my phone to guide me, to – what? To go back in time? To lay my hands on the tree and confirm that I wasn't losing my mind, that it was in fact a portal into the past and I wasn't developing some obscure hallucinatory condition? And then what? Was I going to come back a few minutes later and everything would be fine?

  In the dying light of the day I caught a glimpse of myself in the rearview mirror and couldn't help sighing. My hair was an un-brushed mess, piled into a lopsided bun on top of my head, and my eyes were ringed with dark circles from the effort it was taking to pretend everything was fine, just fine, nothing wrong at all.

  "Stop being so bloody stupid!" I shouted at myself, out loud, as I turned the car's engine back on and pulled back onto the road, headed back to the shared apartment close to campus where I knew my roommates would be waiting for me with their worried faces and their kindly words that didn't help at all, no matter how much we all wanted them to.

  3

  Emma

  A few nights later, after my parents called to tell me they were hiring a private security company to provide me with 24/7 protection – on top of that provided on-campus by the university, I found myself tumbling down a rabbit hole. Not just a rabbit hole, either, but the rabbit hole. The one I'd been avoiding for weeks – the internet. My mum and dad both refused to articulate why it was, exactly, that I needed even more security and it was that refusal, combined with the genuine worry in their voices when we spoke, that led me to break my personally-imposed moratorium on reading about the Paige Renner case online.

  Within minutes and the most cursory of Google searches I had tens of thousands of pages of news results – and even more of non-news results. Crime discussion forums, blogs, Twitter conversations running for days and days, endless YouTube videos uploaded by random citizens – some more interested in objectivity than others – it seemed that most of humanity in the western world had talked of little else for weeks on end. I wouldn't have thought it possible for people to be more obsessed with the mysterious case of Paige Renner than they had been the first time she turned up missing, but they were. If anything, the tone was now even more hysterical. There were whole sites dedicated to occult theories – Paige and her baby had been kidnapped by satanists, her father had sold them both into slavery and then killed himself out of guilt, beings from another dimension had taken them, Paige was a virgin and her son the new messiah. What I'm saying is, there was a lot of truly insane stuff floating around, and it wasn't difficult to find.