Hannah McLeod

Drew had learned that people rarely noticed when someone disappeared. They noticed the empty chair, the unanswered messages, the rent left unpaid. What they rarely noticed was how long a person could be missing before anyone thought to look.

Walker called it experience.

Drew wasn't sure what to call it.

He only knew that, lately, the cases Walker brought him seemed to have something in common, and it wasn't until he began looking at what everyone else had overlooked that he realised how much could hide in plain sight.

Every Halloween, somewhere in America, a party takes place that nobody remembers attending.

There are no missing persons. No abandoned belongings. No reports of anything unusual. Just an empty stretch of land where, according to one emergency call, a wooden cabin once stood beside a river.

The dispatcher remembers the caller's name.
She remembers the screams.
And when she plays the recording back, she can still hear them.

Nobody else can.

They tell her it's static.

Beneath the workbench, a small puppet lay forgotten in the dust.

Orange yarn curled around its painted face.
One eye was dull, the other lost to the shadows. An arm ended abruptly at the forearm.

William stared.
He had drawn that face before.
He was certain of it.

From somewhere deeper in the theatre came a faint, mechanical click.

William turned towards the sound.
When he looked back, the puppet was still.

But its remaining eye caught the light.

And for one fleeting moment, its painted smile seemed almost sad.

The cake was sweeter than she remembered.

Invis paused with her fork halfway to her mouth, studying the pink and yellow sponge as though it might explain itself. Beneath the familiar sweetness lingered something bitter, something metallic that clung to the back of her tongue.

Across the Living Space, a chair scraped against the floor. Someone laughed. A staff member murmured, "It's time to be better now."

Then she heard it.

Crying.

Faint, distant, almost swallowed by the hum of the lights.

Her fork trembled.

Invis took a bite.

The crying stopped.

For a long moment, she stared at the empty space where the sound had been, her stomach hollow despite the cake sitting heavy on her tongue.

Perhaps Kael had been right.

Perhaps the cake wasn't making her better.

Perhaps it was making her forget.