As I watched tree after tree in silence I thought about the note I received not that long ago. Over the weekend I’d done some research and… nothing, just about everything was a dead end. All I had to go on was that note, which only confirmed that Leigh was probably not dead, and for some reason had chosen me as the person to contact. Why? I guess I’d have to wait to find out.

For now I tossed an extra spicy, “nuclear” buffalo nacho chip into my mouth as I propped my feet onto the dashboard. Grayson hated it when I propped my feet on his dashboard. He didn’t say anything of course, but I could tell by the short, barely noticeable glares of death, that it bothered him. I don’t even know why I got a thrill out of it, perhaps its just inherent to being a younger sibling.

“So… are the chips as spicy as promised?” He asked. We’d been on the road about two hours, which meant we were about halfway to our grandfather’s in Charleston. At the last town we were in, I’d incessantly begged to stop at a continence store, firstly so I could pee, and secondly so I could get snacks. Ever since leaving that town all we’ve seen are trees and ancient, rundown houses, so it was fortunate that we stopped when we did.

“Eh, its not that spicy.” I said. The “nuclear” part of the flavoring was undoubtedly overhyped, these weren’t even as spicy as mild queso dip let alone Chernobyl. Otherwise they weren’t terrible as chips go, and since my phone couldn’t even get a 4G signal out here pretty much all I had to do was eat and annoy my brother. “Are we there yet?”

Grayson gave me a look, which sadly only rated about a 3/10 on the annoyance scale. He merely turned his head and lowered his eyebrows in a manner that more suggested really, you thought that would work? rather than a you are being so annoying look. “I know you can see the GPS, we’re about three hours away. So we are not THERE yet.”

Resigned to the fact that I wouldn’t get any entertainment out of this I merely stared at the trees passing by out the window. This continued for a solid ten minutes of silence, not even the radio worked out here. We really were in the middle of nowhere.

It was at that exact moment that fate decided to rear its ugly head. At the very worst possible time it could happen, as if predetermined by whatever god or devil to be the most hilariously ironic turn of bad luck in the history of ever… the car died.

Of all the times it could have happened, it had to be when we were literally in the middle of nowhere, no cell service, no wi-fi, miles from the nearest town, and not a single car that we’d seen for ages. This was just about the definition of “screwed.”

We got out of the car to assess the damage. My brother had me get the map out of the glove compartment my feet had just been resting on minutes earlier. Nearest town was about… 50 miles away… great.

Grayson popped open the hood and attempted to figure out what went wrong. I didn’t even have my license yet, let alone knew anything about the inner workings of cars, so I merely stood on the edge of the road and watched. At least it was early enough in winter that the cold wasn’t too bad, and having my hoodie on helped.

Eventually my brother walked to my side, obviously defeated by whatever had gone wrong. He took the map out of my hand and looked at it for himself. “Damn. We are a long way away from anything close by.” My dumbass brother said.

“I hate you.” I said, even though I couldn’t help but smile.

“I know.” He replied, smiling back at me.

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In all my 200 years on this godforsaken Earth, this had to have been the worst foie gras I’d ever had. Of course my opinion didn’t count for much here, the Americans loved it, and most of these people would probably never even leave this country, let alone try real French food. Still, the wine at least made it tolerable.

Not that I was in this tourist trap for the food of course, I was here to meet a fellow Seraph, who predictably was already past late. I raised my phone, twenty minutes late, impressive. It always amazed me how little regard others had for their time in this life.

As long as I was being kept waiting, I figured I might as well make some calls.

“Office of Ms. Lawson how can I help you.” I hear the familiar voice of my secretary, Holly. “Julia Lawson” was my fourth “cover” identity. I was the “senior communications investor” for Hammurabi International, which was itself a bull**** identity. Basically an excuse for me to poke my nose into anything I needed to.

“Hey, it’s me, have you heard anything from that detective in Virginia Beach?”

“Oh I did hear from him actually.” Holly said “I’m sorry but apparently he wasn’t able to find anything. Would you like me to get another one?” Holly was a pleasant young lady, always showed up on time, handled my paperwork without a fuss, and most importantly, never asked any questions.

As she said that I saw the man, Bartholomew, finally walk in. I didn’t even bother hiding my rolling eyes. I should have dragged out the conversation and made him wait, but I actually valued my time and wanted to get out of here. “No, that’s fine. Thank you Holly, I’ll be back at the office in the morning.” I hung up the phone. “I was just about to leave.”

“Don’t be mad, I had a uh… business opportunity on the way here.” He said. As much as he annoyed me at times, including this one, I couldn’t deny he was an attractive man, dashing in the way a lot of British pretty boys were, tall, strong chin, yellow eyes, and long blonde hair which in contrast to my violet hair, was easier to blend in with. “So how’d you do it? The Archer merger, couldn’t have been easy, those guys did not want to give it up, even for the most generous offer.”

“I did what I usually do when people don’t cooporate.”

“Oh, of course. So what’d you put in that poor bastard’s head? Actually maybe I don’t want to know. I still get chills from what you did to that last guy.”

“Maybe next time you’re late I’ll take a visit inside your head.”

“Okay I get it, I’ll try to be more punctual next time.” He leaned back on his seat.

“I’m just saying, if you’re going to set one of these up, you should be on time for it. Speaking of which why did you want to meet with me?”

“Why are you so interested in that Leigh Leblanc kid? And why are you trying to hide that interest from Inanu?”

Oh, so he found out about that, I guess Adama must have talked, shouldn’t have trusted him to keep a secret. “Call it an intuition. I think they know more than they let on, and the whole crazy conspiracy angle is a facade to make us think they don’t. I think the disappearance was deliberate too.”

“I see. A new piece on the board. The question is, does this help or hurt us?”

“It’s a shame that my people couldn’t find anything. Guess we’re at the mercy of whenever they decide to come out.” I take a sip of wine. “Although, perhaps if you were to conduct your own search, perhaps that would yield better results?”

Bartholomew leaned forward. “Where did you say they lived again?”

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The sun had nearly set behind the waters of The Atlantic ocean, the sky orange in the waning hours of the day. It made me realize how long I’d been sitting here pondering this case. I’d been doing this long enough to know that not everyone was found, not every story had a happy ending. Some eventually turned up dead after the fact, a few seemingly never turned up entirely, as if they’d vanished off the Earth entirely.

It was those cases that intrigued me the most. One had to wonder what exactly happened to these people. Were they simply dead? Or had they started new lives somewhere, some place where the world would never truly know what happened to them. It was the lack of closure that killed me I suppose, it was horrible to find someone dead, but at least you knew, with this… it was like reading a book only to find the last few pages missing.

This case especially bugged me for some reason. It wasn’t because this kid had made national news, I’d never heard of them before, it was something I couldn’t put my finger on… something fishy.

Leigh Leblanc, 29 years old, born 11/1/92. Identified as non-binary. No wife, no kids. Lived right here in Virginia Beach. Practically a recluse, mostly kept to themselves. Worked at home writing books and producing internet videos. The landlady of the apartment complex said they weren’t late with rent even once and described them as almost a perfect tenant.

That was pretty much all I had to go on. I watched one of the videos this person made, to be honest I found it to be conspiracy theory gibberish, but what do I know. The note they left certainly screamed “conspiracy nut”, talking about secret societies and cults and other such nonsense. This was a side they seemingly never showed to their landlady or family, at least not until the days before they left. The mom recalled their last phone conversation just before they disappeared, where they ranted about how “they found out” and “were coming for them.”

There was still almost no explanation for the disappearance itself. Leigh just left their apartment as normal one day and… never came back. Nobody knew where they went, I asked seemingly everyone they knew, all across town, nobody had a clue. There was no video, no sightings, nothing. Even the most desperate cases usually had something, even if unsubstantial. All I had here was the camera footage of them leaving the apartment. It was genuinely like they’d literally disappeared.

I’d done all I could, the trail was cold as ice, I’d done all I could but… that wasn’t much. Even as I knew I had to move on to another case… I couldn’t stop thinking about this one, there had to be something I was missing, some shred of evidence that would lead me down the right path.

The sun had almost set entirely in the distance, so I picked myself up and walked back to the car. I thought back to those weirdo conspiracy videos… what exactly was a seraph anyway? The more I thought about it, the more questions I had.

Better not to think about such things I suppose. At any rate it seemed like this Leigh Leblanc didn’t want to be found. And so I put it out of mind, filed it with every other person still missing, every story without closure, every abrupt en-

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It was almost 8:45 AM when I was walking as fast as I could reasonably get away with through the college halls. I had fifteen minutes to turn in my paper before the deadline of 9:00 AM. Last night I got distracted and didn’t start my paper until 7:55 PM. I finished the entire thing at 6:27 AM thanks to the power of energy drinks (the final paper isn’t my best work by a longshot, but right now it would have to do). Because of the caffeine I wasn’t able to even take a nap. Thus it was now over twenty-four hours since I last slept.

I stumbled through the college corridors, left, left, right, right, left, until finally arriving at my classroom. My professor was just about to enter actually.

“Just in time.” I said out loud, not realizing I was doing so until it slipped out. I held out my essay.

Professor Kelly took the document. “You look rough Ms. Blackwell.”

I feigned a laugh. “Well you know me, always staying up late going to parties.”

“You know, your grades have been good.” The professor says. “But, they’d be a lot better if you took more time on them. I know its hard, but you’re a natural in this class, and I just hate to see wasted potential.

Just what I need, another lecture I think. “Yeah, I… I just didn’t know what to expect when I started. When I get back for next semester, I’m going to do much better.”

“We’ll see. Just remember, this is your life, you have to think about what you want to do with it.”

Well if that wasn’t the big question. In eighteen years I had still not figured out what I wanted to do with my life exactly. I didn’t even know why I was taking theological studies as a major, besides that its something that I just happened to already know a lot about. What exactly am I going to do with this degree though? Get a job teaching kids the same useless stuff I learned? Write a book? Get a different degree? Become the manager of a Target and have to talk down Karens every single day until I go insane?

I am so unbelievably jealous of my brother. He didn’t have to choose what he was going to be, some random anime lady just smashed the door down and dragged his ass into secret demon wars. My interest in the paranormal may have come from that incident in the basement, but really, maybe I just hoped I’d find get whisked away to some hidden magical world, like Harry Potter or something. But no, I’m the ordinary one in the family.

Besides the fact that I’m inexplicably the only one that remembers any of this of course.

---

My classes flew by, an hour here, an hour there, until finally I was back in my dorm. I felt like I was on the edge of death. As I walked in Laura’s eyes widened, apparently I looked as bad as I felt.

“Hey.” She said waving.

I collapsed face first onto the bed “Hey” The pillow muffling my voice.

“I was going to ask what you planned on doing with the weekend, but I have a feeling it’s going to be sleep.” She pushed something under my pillow. “This came for you, dunno who it’s from.”

I grabbed the paper from under my pillow and sat up. It was an envelope, sent from an address in Virginia, sender name “Alan Smithee,” forwarded here from my Aunt’s house. I opened it and took the letter out, it was a handwritten message.

Dear Kish,

By now both you and the world have noticed my disappearance. I am a creator who has abandoned my own creation. There is good reason for all of this which I cannot disclose at the moment. I wish for us to meet, in person. Further details to come later.

– LL

For just a brief moment I forget about how damn tired I am. I just got mail from a famous missing person. Now life was throwing me something interesting for a change.

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The Peachtree Times:

Top stories

1. Report: Shield of Cyprus leader Farshid Hassan confirmed dead in drone strike in Turkey, SOC threatens retaliation
2. Report: Archer Enterprises unveils unprecedented A.I. for military use.
3. Exclusive Interview: President William Marshall on his unprecedented third party upset in 2020, heightened terror threats, economy, and more
4. Box Office: Shadow Prince has best video game movie opening weekend of all time, Hudson Hawk remake flops
5. Report: Details from missing Youtuber Leigh LeBlanc’s family on their mental instability, paranoia, cryptic warnings about a “secret society”
6. Opinion: Molly Ellis: The real reason depersonalization and derealization disorders are on the rise in 2021.

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“What are you writing there?” Laura said as she entered our dorm behind me.

“Nothing.” I said as I slammed my notebook closed. “Just some uh, worldbuilding for my fantasy novel.”

“Okay.” She sat down on her bed, which was on the other side of the room from the desk and my bed. Despite there being two students per dorm, there was only one desk in each. This was quite unfortunate for the students, but presumably cut corners for whoever pays for this. “Only a few more days until winter break.”

“Yep, just got to get through these finals.” I said. “Oh man I need to finish that term paper.”

“You haven’t finished it yet? It’s due tomorrow.”

“Well, not exactly.” I said. I realized right after that I was adjusting my glasses which was probably my most obvious nervous tic. In truth all I’d done so far was get my sources together. So I knew I’d be grinding all night to get this paper down. “I’ve got it started though. Might wanna, get some caffeine to power through though. You wanna, go down to the cafeteria, get some of that awful food?”

“Well actually, I was planning on going out with Amy. But maybe we can hang out tomorrow, after you finish your paper.”

Having a dorm with my best friend sounded like a dream come true, but if anything we were hanging out less than we did a year ago. Laura was spending more time with her new college friends, I didn’t want to say we were drifting apart but, it did kind of feel that way.

I hadn’t really made any new friends here yet so I devoted most of my free time to either my crackpot conspiracies or… well procrastinating. I could use any excuse I want but the truth was I wasted my time not working on this paper, and now the day of reckoning was here. Guess I might as well get this over with now.

First I open my schedule to remind myself of everything I’ve got going on this month, which was an unfortunately significant amount. First I had to get my term paper done tomorrow (which mercifully I was allowed to pick my topic on, and since it was for Theological studies I chose a topic I already know fairly well, the Seraphic Bible), then finals for this semester Friday, a brief weekend where I would have two days to myself, and then… the big Blackwell family Christmas get together, which came as quite a shock to everyone in the family. My grandfather hadn’t even SEEN any of his children or grandchildren since grandma died ten years ago. Hell I don’t think he’d even talked to them on the phone.

Why the change of heart from him? I’ve no idea. Nor do I know why I agreed to come. I suppose it would be amusing watching the drama between him and his children, I hadn’t seen any of these people in years. My uncles and grandfather…. didn’t exactly approve of my mom, Aunt Catherine was the only one who’d even talk to him for a while.

At any rate I was too young to even remember these people. This will practically be like meeting them for the first time. Either they’ve had a change of heart, or I’ll get to enjoy some amusing yet mildly uncomfortable holiday drama.

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…

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Sometime after all that Hayden finally got out of the hospital. Our house was fixed up, everything went back to normal. Which honestly was the weirdest part.

Laura and Hayden were all there for all that weird shit. They saw as much as I did, but they never once mentioned it again, even looked at me like I was crazy when I asked them about it. Somehow they’d completely forgotten. Even Grayson never acknowledged it. He moved out a few months after this, moved in with Thalia. I can tell he hasn’t forgot, he just always dodges it. Damn overprotective brother.

Even I’m starting to have doubts about all this. I’d never written any of this down until recently, and reading it back I can tell my memories have started fading. Details are more absurd than I remember, the line between memory, perception, heightened imagination from shock, I can’t tell the difference. Describing all this feels like writing a YA book. Did I just imagine all this? Maybe I really am crazy.

It’s not knowing if I’m crazy or not that hurts the most. So many parts of my life I’m unsure if they are fiction or not. I stare at my notebook which I’ve written every detail onto. Somehow I’m creative enough to imagine my life turning into an anime and inexplicably me being the only one who notices, but not so creative that I can come up with a name for it other than This Book.

Even if it is all bullshit I want to know the truth, I have to, I can’t move on otherwise.

My name is Kish Blackwell, I’m 18 now in the year 2021, I live in a college dorm with Laura as my roommate, and I will find the truth.

The truth that lies in THIS BOOK.

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The barely lit figure of Hayden stood in front of the only way out of this dark, damp dungeon, staring directly at us. I was just behind Thalia and trapped between shelves upon shelves of stuff. The metaphorical noose tightened.

“Interesting, that you thought that broken down old church was so interesting, when this, the real haunted place, was right here all along.” He said.

“Hayden?” I said.

“That’s not Hayden.” Thalia said.

“No point in trying to fool you huh? Well in that case allow me to introduce myself. I am called Xegluron. I used to have a different, more normal name but honestly I don’t even remember what that was anymore.”

“So is that what we’re looking for?” I asked Thalia.

“Not exactly.” She said. “The fragment has corrupted his ego.”

She keeps throwing all this jargon at me like its supposed to make sense. “What?”

” Destroying the projection of his ego, which is what we’re looking at, would be counterproductive. We need to find the actual fragment which has taken control of the subconscious.” Thalia explained, as if it was obvious.

“If you want to find the fragment, follow me.” A new, familiar voice came from behind us once again.

“Laura?” I said, immediately recognizing her. “How did you get here?”

“She isn’t here.” Thalia said. “That must be his conscience. The uncorrupted parts of the soul always fight back when a foreign one enters.”

“Like the body fighting infection.” I said.

“Yes, exactly like that.” She said.

There wasn’t much of a choice in what to do at this point. Behind us was the demon, forward was at least a chance. We followed Laura… the mental projection through the basement maze once again. The room darkened more as we ran, getting closer to the pitch black outside. Eventually Laura stopped and picked up a shoebox off the top of the shelf and handed it to me.

“Destroy this.” She said. “And then find its equivalent in the real world. Your sister will understand.”

I took the shoebox and smashed it on the floor. The darkness of the basement was instantly replaced with a blinding light, and then…

---

My eyes opened and I found myself back in the hospital waiting room, the real world, sitting next to Thalia, who was also just waking up, and Kish. Laura was sitting next to her.

“That wasn’t very long.” She said. “Did it work?”

A nurse approached us and we soon had our answer. “Good news, he’s finally waking up.”

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