The Vanishings of Mazarae

“Coffee?”

Casey raises a flask, “No, I’m good,” and Adrian gives him “the look.”

“What? It’s a nightcap.”

“At five in the morning?”

“Just drive, rookie,” snickers the great Sergeant Casey Cole.

The hills of the Mazarae mansion are just coming into view, an expanse of buildings and crops alike, with a great golden fence and a dramatically long driveway in between.

Corporal Adrian sighs. “Hopefully we can wrap this up quickly before Maria’s birthday.”

“Look rookie, if you didn’t wanna miss your kid’s birthday, you should’ve stayed in Queens.”

“Pass. I did need a break from everything. At least I can clear my head out here.”

“Too bad we’re not here to clear your head. We’re here ‘cause two kids went missing at an orphanage, ironic as that is. And ‘cause apparently, I was personally requested to take the case.”

“Aye Sarge, how come you never had children?”

He rolls his eyes, taking another swig.

“You ever heard of the sins of the father coming upon his kids?”

The most evident oddity of Mazarae is its almost purposeful deceptiveness. From outside it seems like a farmland paradise. But inside the orphans' housing conveys that of a sorrowful home for the lost, a paradise only for those who had never experienced paradise. Walls are a sad brown, coupled with stained carpet and lingering smells. The staff building, however, is brandished with hardwood floors and remodeled kitchens. The estate as a whole is divided into three main buildings: the orphanage, the staff center, and a far off barn. Beyond them is a lake, and miles of crops. There’s also a smaller welcoming building, making the shape of a huge diamond, all together. This is where the detectives are housed during the duration of their investigation.

Phillis Turner, the Administrator of Mazarae, is dodging most of their questions, even after informing them of a third child, Lila’s, disappearance shortly before their arrival at nine.

“Are you always this careless with the childrens’ whereabouts?”

She grunts back at Casey.

“Are you always so careless with your lungs?'', motioning to his not so hidden pack of Newport’s. The Corporal butts in to stop any further confrontation.

“So, Ms. Turner, we’ll need full access to your cameras, as well as copies of everyone’s daily schedules. I’ll be talking to the children while Sarge looks over the footage.”

She forces a smile, replying, “Very well,” and struts off to her office.

Adrian whips out his notebook and begins questioning Leo, the last person to see Lila. He first notes the constant, overbearing supervision from security...They definitely have something to hide.

“So, Leo, can you tell me everything you remember from last night? I was told that you and Lila were close.”

“Me and Lila like hearing the birds when the sun comes up, and this time she wanted to hear them up close.”

“Ok.”

“So we got up and left out the back door, and someone stopped us.”

“Who? Can you remember their face?”

“No. But they took Lila’s hand and told me to go back to bed.”

“So they spoke to you? Was the voice familiar?”

Leo shakes his head, stops the Corporal’s pen, and comes closer to whisper in his ear.

“The man who took her, who took them….it was the devil.”

Casey comes back about an hour later lugging a box full of tapes and files. Adrian had already interviewed about half of the children, but none of them said anything remotely helpful, besides Leo’s testimony.

He decided not to share what the boy had told him until they returned to their room.

“He said “the devil?””

“Yea. Whoever did this really scared him, and I get the sense that he knows more than he’s letting on. The others seem generally clueless, though.”

Casey steps back from their profile board, focusing on the pictures of the now three victims.

“Aye Rookie, doesn’t it seem odd that all the disappearing kids are the eldest?”

“Hm?”

“Look. Mason was..is, eleven. And so is Charlie.”

Adrian agrees. “Yea and Leo told me Lila’s birthday is just a few days away. Guess how old she’s turning.”

“Eleven,” Casey connects. “So if they’re being taken in descending order, then who’s next?”

“That’s tricky. Some of them don’t know their birthdays, and as we’ve seen already, the staff aren’t too keen on helping us.”

The pair arrive at the same thought in unison.

“Makes you wonder why they even sent for us in the first place…”

The next day is quiet, spent looking over footage and adding to the profile board. They learn the schedules of all the staff, narrowing down a suspect list to eight high-ranking individuals, including Administrator Turner, of course. Head Nurse Hawethorn seems harmless, but is kept in mind on account of her unverifiable whereabouts on the morning of Lila’s disappearance. She claims she was in bed, but the cameras never show her leaving through the joint tunnel like everyone else.

The tapes corroborate Leo’s story, showing an adult in a black cloak leading little Lila outside. Unfortunately, no cameras exist beyond that point, so they thoroughly inspect all properties, including the barn. There are several areas in the housings that the detectives were initially not allowed in...But of course with Casey’s bravado and badge, the world is an all access pass.

After a long, fruitless day, Adrian Hernandez retries to bed and cuts the lights. Sarge is in the bathroom mumbling a song, perhaps. Casey’s music is never tasteful, but the American persists nonetheless, singing Elvis, probably. His muttering grows so annoying that the Corporal gets out of bed to go tell him off.

“Aye Sarge, you ever heard of singing in your hea—What the fuck?!”

Casey’s standing in the mirror, gun out, staring at himself in a trance like state, repeating the most simple, yet complex phrase ever spoken by man. He kept saying...”Who am I?”

Needless to say, day four of the investigation is quite..tense. The two decide not to talk about Sergeant Cole’s assumed mental break, for now. As no new leads turned up, it was time to begin surveillance on the main suspects: Ms. Turner, her Co Administrator Samantha Wallace, Nurse Hawethorne, and Head of Security, Jared Cooper. Their patterns remain relatively constant every day, each one doing their best not to give the detectives any leeway to brainstorm. Nevertheless, predictable movements allow for certain..opportunities.

Despite his higher ranking, or maybe in light of it, Casey uses his dedication to cases to justify whatever his shifting moral code leads him to do. In this case, it’s rummaging through everyone’s things according to schedules. Due to the “incident” the night before, the Corporal chooses to investigate separately for the time being. He, like his superior, is ex-Marine, part of the Force Recon division. As a sniper, he’s gifted in the art of patience, so Casey isn’t surprised when his partner elects to lie in wait in the crop fields for a few days.

“A criminal who believes they are alone is bound to mess up,” Adrian reasoned.

That fourth day brought an end to suspicion of the head nurse. She had two grams of marijuana buried in her drawer, which coincided with fresh paper butts Adrian found in the field. She was enjoying a smoke, but this could also mean she saw or heard something on the morning Lila vanished. Ms. Turner, however, has everything under lock and key, even inside several previously locked doors. Only a person with something very important to hide would do so.

On the fifth morning of the investigation, Casey wakes up to a picture of a barn on the profile board, pinned by Adrian the night before, presumably. There’s also a photo of Leo

grouped with the suspects’ pictures.

“What the hell are you thinking, Rookie?”

Of course the only reply is the faint sound of children playing, as “Rookie” is still in the fields. “What makes you think a ten year old kid has something to do with this? What did you find??”

His question would never be answered. Sometime around noon, a scream came bellowing through all of Mazarae, emanating from the lake. By the time Casey’s crippled lungs get him there, the security are pulling a 5’8, 140 pound body from the bank. It’s honorable Corporal Adrian Hernandez, stabbed once in the chest with a kitchen knife.

Sergeant Cole swears to return with backup, cranks up his car, and speeds away from the hills of Mazarae. He parks far away enough that they’d believe he was gone, and sneaks back in to find whatever lead Rooki-..Adrian, was following.

By nightfall he sought shelter in a tree grove behind the orphanage. As impatient as Casey is, he has to do this for his partner, foremostly, and for the children, too. Nothing happens until dawn, when a cloaked figure emerges from the barn and treks north. After being in the orphanage for two minutes, he comes out with Adrian’s last suspect, a dazed Leo. Sarge’s gun is already drawn, but it’s wiser to follow them, for now.

They return to the barn, where a mass of animals lay disgruntled.

“Leo,” the man says, “This job is very important. I need you to be brave. Can you do that?”

He nods.

Through the crack in the door, Casey’s vision becomes blurry, then glitchy, just like it did in the mirror that night. He slaps himself, takes a swig, and goes in.

The paid retreat to the far back wall, and the cloaked man opens what is apparently a door camouflaged with a massive hay stack.

“Motherfuckers!”

The sound of an elevator follows, sliding down a mile into the earth.

At the bottom is an empty white room. The man was nobody they’d seen, interviewed, or suspected before. He’s twelve years Casey’s senior, making him 49.

Before Sarge can even raise his gun, or yell anything witty and assholeish as the doors open, the man says one illogical statement, and the Searge collapses. He says....”Welcome back, Leonard Cole.”

“Leo, Leo,” the name echoes.

“Leo, it’s time to wake up.”

“Why, why are you calling? Why are you calling me Le-“ Casey gasps, seeing the hands of a ten year-old attached to him. The previously cloaked doctor, Administrator Turner, and Jared Cooper, hover over him in a lab, in angst.

Doctor Keller continues. “I suppose I owe you some answers. It’ll do better on your recovery, anyway.”

“What the fuck did you do to me?!”

“Please, allow me to explain!

So, four months ago, detectives Casey Cole and Adrian Hernandez went missing. They are dead. So are the missing orphans, Mason and Charlie. Their procedures proved too much to handle. Here we research how to extract memory through DNA. And not just the patient’s own, but that of their parents, and so on. We were successful with Lila. Her memories were intact, and she did not have an aneurism. However, we realized that during these procedures, the patients relive those ancestral events as if it was their own life, and a sense of identity is lost.

The next logical question was, “During these memory simulations, what if a patient were to see themselves through their parents eyes? Would they remember, or be pliant?”

“What the hell does that have to do with me?!”, the once great detective begins to cry.

“Turns out, Cole had a child ten years ago. He never even knew about you, Leo. And the events you just experienced for..well six days for you, were the memories of your deceased father that took place four months ago, with little variation. As for Hernandez, he decided to investigate Casey, instead, and theorized that you might be his child. He was an unforeseen casualty. But you, Leonard Cole, are a success. You, my boy, are the first hint at decoding the secrets of all history….past, and one day, future. Now…let’s try another simulation.”

“Nooooo!!”