Poor Aunt Maggie! How could someone disappear into thin air? When my sister, Trudi, called to tell me that Aunt Maggie had disappeared, I couldn’t believe it. Who could? She went to bed one night and by morning there was no trace of her. Nothing was stolen. Nothing was disturbed. Doors and windows were locked from inside. There was no sign of struggle. Nothing was out of the ordinary. The neighbours didn’t hear anything. And the bed seemed as if someone had slept in it. The police could not find any lead into her disappearance.

Aunt Maggie was a friendly old soul, although she was a bit of a loner. Never married and didn’t have any children. She lived in a small rented apartment and didn’t have much and what she had was mostly second-hand. She was a bargain-hunter and never bought anything new. She scoured the markets and second hand shops looking for good deal. I guess because she never had any money to buy anything new.

Three weeks after her disappearance, the landlord called Trudi and told her to clear the apartment. It was hard for us. Clearing her apartment meant we would never see Aunt Maggie again. She was gone. And we would never know what happened to her. So there wasn’t going to be any closure for us. This realisation was very difficult for us to deal with. After all, Aunt Maggie was the only relative we had. She was our mother’s elder sister and when our parents died in a car accident a few years back, we formed an even closer bond with her.

But as upset as we were, we had no choice but to go to her apartment and collect all her belongings. Trudi decided to donate them to charity, except for one item: a painting on the wall over her bed. I took that. Trudi objected. Said the painting was crap. The canvas was badly cracked and the paint was so faded that it was as if I was looking at a ghost – the ghost of a man with wavy blond hair, wearing a 19th century outfit.

“Why did Aunt Maggie buy this? When did she even buy it? Have you ever seen this before?” Trudi kept asking.

“I don’t know. I don’t know. And no,” I kept answering.

The painting gave Trudi the creeps. But I didn’t mind it. In some strange way I was drawn to it. So this morning, two months after Aunt Maggie’s disappearance, I decided to hang it on the wall above my bed.

“Good night, Aunt Maggie,” I say, before turning my bed-lamp off.

I am sure I have forgotten something, but I just don’t remember what it is. All I know is that something is nagging at me that I shouldn’t be here, that this place is dangerous. But where is this place? I am in the middle of a windswept field. The sky above looks pretty bleak. Gosh! What am I doing here?

“Good morning,” says a man, breaking into my thoughts about my whereabouts.

I turn my head around to see a man wearing a tan suit. He looks vaguely familiar, though I can’t quite place him.

“Good morning,” I greet him back.

“I am Ash. Ash Hartford,” he introduces himself to me.

“I am Emily. Emily Wilson.”

“Would you like a tour of this place, Emily Wilson?” Ash asks.

I wonder for a moment whether I should or not, but then I see no harm in touring the place. “Yes, that would be nice.’

We walk for a little while until a grand mansion comes into view.

“Is that your place?” I ask, pointing at the mansion.

“Yes. This mansion and all the land that you see here belong to my family.”

“Wow! Then you must be fabulously rich.”

He smiles. “I guess you could say that.”

I look at his face. He is very good-looking – piercing blue eyes and wavy blond hair. But there is something else too, though I don’t know what.

He loops an arm around mine as he guides me towards the front gates, but then suddenly something pulls me away.

At 6:30am the alarm clock goes off as usual and I wake up. I feel tired and have a slight headache. It is as if I haven’t slept at all, but I can’t do much about it. I have to get ready. I don’t think Mr Carson, the pharmacist, would appreciate if I arrive late to work. I yawn noisily and scramble out of the bed. Oh, how I wish I could go back to bed and sleep, but I can’t. After a quick shower, I go to the bedroom and put on my pharmacy-issued blue uniform, but as I do so I suddenly get the feeling that I am being watched. But by whom? I look around. There is no one in the room. And I am on the third floor, so no one would be loitering outside my window. I sigh nervously. It must be my imagination. Maybe I fear that what happened to Aunt Maggie would happen to me too.

I look at the clock. It is nearly 7:30. Jeez! A whole hour?! I took a whole hour to shower and change! How did that happen? I must be out of sync with time today, I joke to myself. Well, there goes the breakfast. I tie my hair up in a bun quickly, put my coat and boots on, grab a muesli bar from the kitchen drawer and leave my apartment. As I run to the bus stop, a strange feeling comes over me. It is as if I have forgotten something, though for the life of me I don’t know what. I reach the bus stop and wait for the bus to come. Damn! I just missed my bus. I didn’t even see it coming. It just whizzed by me like a ghost train. I am going to be late for work now. The next bus won’t be here for at least half-an-hour.

A gasp escapes my mouth. It is a miracle. Another bus is approaching. Quickly I lift my hand up for it to stop. The bus stops and I get on it. I thank the heavens for its early arrival and give the bus driver a quick rundown of how I missed an earlier one. He looks at me as though I am crazy or something, then tells me that I couldn’t have possibly missed an earlier bus, not unless I was referring to the one that came half-an-hour ago. I am utterly miffed by his response, but I can’t see him being wrong. He must know what bus is running at what time. But then how do I go about explaining what I saw. Maybe I was hallucinating in the same way that I thought I had a quick shower, when in fact I didn’t.

It is 8:45pm and I am dead tired. I had a long day at work. The pharmacy was so busy today. With the flu season upon us, everyone was after some kind of medication to either hold the flu at bay or simply beat it. I sigh heavily as I get ready for bed. What happened this morning with the ghost bus is still weighing on me. Did I really see it or did I imagine it? Surely, I must have imagined it. It is the only logical explanation.

As I sit on my bed, I turn around and look at the painting. A shiver goes through me and I suddenly find myself frightened of the painting. A little voice inside my head says that I should get rid of it. Oh, this is ridiculous. It is just a painting. A lifeless object. To be afraid of it is like being afraid of your own bed. I dismiss the idea. Well, I am off to the land of nod.

I am running wildly across a windswept field, calling for Ash. Once again I feel that I have forgotten something, but for the life of me I can’t remember what.

“Hello there,” calls a man, waving at me.

“Hello!” It’s Ash. “Hello, Ash.” I wave back at him.

“Emily, you came back,” he says, running towards me. “I wasn’t sure if you would.”

“Of course I am back. Why would you think otherwise? You owe me a tour of your mansion, remember?”

“I remember,” he says, with a charming smile. “Shall we?” He offers me the crook of his arm and I loop my arm around it.

“By the way, what happened last time?” I ask.

He frowns. “What do you mean?”

“Well, you were about to show me the mansion when … when I don’t know, I left, but to where I don’t know. I don’t seem to remember. Do you by any chance know what happened?”

“No. You just left in a hurry. To where? You didn’t tell me,” he says, looking a bit uncomfortable.

I get the feeling that he knows more than he is saying, but for the moment I let the matter drop, mainly because my memory is so foggy.

“Ah! Here we are,” he says, just as we approach the front door of his mansion.

We enter the mansion and it is like nothing I have ever seen before. It takes my breath away, literally. It is spectacular. Victorian-style wine-red velvet couches, damask curtains, magnificent Persian carpets, delicately hand-carved mahogany furniture, huge crystal chandeliers, and paintings of various landscapes on the walls. And yet with all this beauty, something doesn’t feel right here.

“Emily.”

I hear someone calling my name. It is a woman’s voice.

“Emily.”

There it is again. I look at Ash. What is happening? It is as if he is fading.

“Emily, Emily, wake up!”

“What?” I wake up, startled. “What’s happening?”

“Mr Carson called to tell me that you didn’t turn up for work today,” Trudi says to me.

“What?” My heart is pounding from waking up so suddenly.

“Did you sleep all day?”

“What?”

“Stop saying what all the time. What happened to you? It’s nearly six o’clock in the evening. You don’t seem to have a fever,” she says, touching my forehead with her hand.

“I’m okay,” I say with a scowl. “How long have you been here?”

“Just got here. Given that Auntie Maggie disappeared, your boss called me to see what happened to you, since you didn’t show up to work and didn’t call in sick either.”

I rub my eyes and do my best to focus. The alarm mustn’t have gone off or if it did, then I didn’t hear it, which means I must have been really tired. “When did he ring?” I ask with a big yawn.

“Around three. I rang your cellphone several times, but I kept getting your voicemail. So, as soon as I finished work and settled the kids I headed for your place to check if my baby sister was okay.”

“Yeah, I’m okay,” I say, somewhat, groggily.

“You want something to eat?”

“Not hungry … just wanna sleep. I’m so tired.”

“Maybe you’re coming down with the flu. You want me to stay with you tonight? Jeff can handle the twins by himself for one night.”

“No, no, I’m sure by tomorrow morning I’ll be fine.”

“This is strange,” Trudi says, looking at the painting.

“What’s strange?”

“The painting! It’s changed.”

“Changed? Changed how?” I ask, twisting my head to take a look at the painting.

“Well, the color is not so faded. And then…” her voice drifts away, as she gets up to her feet to take a closer look at the painting. “Look at the grassy field! And in the distance there is … some kind of a structure … like a mansion.”

“You’re right. The painting seems to have changed,” I admit.

“But … but how could an inanimate object change?” Trudi murmurs.

Something about the painting nags at me. Something about my memory nags at me. I want to tell Trudi about it, but I don’t know what it is that I want to say. And I don’t want to worry her needlessly. She has enough on her plate. Her husband is in between jobs right now and it is the first year of school for the twins.

“Maybe we should take it to an art-dealer,” Trudi suggests.

“An art dealer?”

“Yeah. I wonder…” her voice drifts away once more.

“Wonder about what?”

“I wonder who painted it? There is no name.”

“Well, maybe it’s faded.”

“Maybe! Listen, you gonna be all right tonight?”

“Yeah, I’ll be all right.”

“Call me if you need anything. Take tomorrow off and rest. You look pale. I’ll tell Mr Carson that you’re a bit under the weather. I’m sure he’ll understand.”

With a kiss on my cheek, Trudi leaves. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I want to call her back. Because somewhere in the back of my mind I am terrified of something, but I don’t know what that is. It could very well be the trauma of losing Aunt Maggie so mysteriously. I mean, people just don’t disappear into thin air. Something happened to her and there is someone out here who knows what that something is. – Anonymous

to be continued...