The Night They Disappeared

 

There are moments in childhood when reality splinters.

Not with a loud crack, nor with thunder or lightning, but quietly, in the darkness between two rooms, while adults believe children are asleep.

Libertine crept onto the landing and crouched between the stair balustrades. The polished wood felt cold beneath her bare legs. Raised voices drifted from the room at the front of the house, the room she called the Sunday Room.

It was a place that seemed frozen in time.

A small fireplace that beneath sat an electric Sunray heater whose orange bars flickered like captive flames. A dark green three-piece suite occupied most of the room, its polished wooden arms gleaming even in poor light. A coffee table stood neatly in the centre and against the wall rested a sideboard topped by a Swiss weather clock.

The little wooden doors fascinated Libertine.

Each morning either a tiny man or woman would emerge from inside. One meant sunshine. The other meant rain. She could never remember which was which.

Tonight neither seemed important.

The voices were growing louder.

A man.

A woman.

Angry words colliding like crashing cars.

Then suddenly she heard it.

Her name.

"LIBERTINE!"

The woman's voice cut through the house like a blade.

Libertine shrank instinctively.

She hated her name in moments like these.

The way the woman said it.

As if it were dirt.

As if it tasted foul.

The fat woman never wanted somebody else's children. That much Libertine understood. Children heard more than adults imagined.

She listened harder.

The man's voice erupted.

"Of course I didn't expect you to love another woman's children! What did you expect me to do with them?"

The woman shouted back.

The argument spiralled.

The school was asking questions.

Child services were becoming suspicious.

The girls rarely attended lessons.

Coraline barely spoke.

Libertine spoke too much.

She told everybody everything.

The adults hated that.

Truth was dangerous in a house built upon lies.

Then came the sentence that split reality in two.

"I have a plan," Jimmy Snr said.

The room fell quieter. Libertine leaned over the bannister. 

"I'll take a carving knife from the kitchen and kill them."

Silence.

Libertine stopped breathing.

"They won't be missed. "

"Child services will ask questions. "

"We will say they have gone back to their mother, that will be the end of that."

The words landed heavily in the darkness.

The sisters had outlived their usefulness.

No longer assets.

No longer burdens worth carrying.

Simply problems to be removed.

Jimmy Snr spoke of dispatching them as one might speak of unwanted animals.

Bury them somewhere.

Out of sight.

Out of mind.

The shouting ended.

Libertine pressed a hand over her mouth to stop herself making a sound.

Her heart hammered wildly.

For a moment she remained frozen between childhood and terror.

Then instinct took over.

She ran.

Back to the tiny room she shared with Coraline.

The room where two forgotten girls slept beneath thin blankets.

She shook her sister urgently.

"Coraline."

No response.

"Coraline, wake up."

The younger girl stirred.

Confused.

Half asleep.

"We have to leave."

Coraline blinked.

"What?"

"Now."

The seven-year-old didn't understand.

She only knew her sister looked frightened.

That was enough.

They dressed in silence.

No shoes.

No coats.

Throw them from the window incase they got caught leaving.

No questions.

On the way through the garden Libertine stopped beside the apple tree.

She filled a small cotton bag with fruit.

It seemed sensible. Coraline cried when she was hungry.

Children always think of hunger before danger.

Then they slipped through the gate and disappeared into the night.

No one saw them leave.

No one tried to stop them.

The woods waited beyond the fields.

Ancient.

Dark.

Silent.

Coraline trembled as they walked.

She hated the darkness.

Every snapped twig sounded like pursuit.

Every rustling leaf became a threat.

But Libertine squeezed her hand.

They eventually reached the old oak tree.

The largest tree in the forest.

A giant older than memory.

They curled beneath its branches.

"I'll look after you," Libertine whispered.

Coraline buried her face against her sister's shoulder and cried.

Libertine held her tightly.

Neither child understood the absurdity of the promise.

One was seven.

The other only nine.

Neither could truly protect themselves.

Yet love creates courage where none should exist.

The woods were peaceful.

There was no shouting.

No slammed doors.

No insults.

No hunger.

No footsteps approaching bedrooms after midnight.

For the first time in a long while, the girls felt something close to safety. In the moonlit forest.

Eventually even Libertine's determination surrendered to exhaustion.

Her eyes closed.

The forest breathed around them.

And sleep came.

When dawn finally arrived, nobody had been stabbed with a carving knife.

No father stood over them.

No false mother spat obscenities.

The sisters woke beneath shafts of golden light filtering through the trees.

Birdsong replaced arguments.

The river glistened nearby.

They walked beside it hand in hand.

Two tiny figures moving through a world that had suddenly become enormous.

Behind them lay the house.

The lies.

The fear.

The people who never wanted them.

Ahead lay uncertainty.

Yet uncertainty felt kinder than certainty had ever been.

So they followed the river.

Holding hands.

Watching the morning unfold.

And wishing with all their hearts that nobody would ever find them again.