Correspondent’s Note
You’re still reeling, I know, but what else are we supposed to do? The law says we can’t talk about them, that we’re not even supposed to say their names, but they deserve to be remembered as much as the Disappeared. So, this is them. Their accounts. Hopefully, if we ever need anyone like them again, things will be different. More understanding. A world more worthy of those we would rather not mention at all.
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Maelstrom, Interview Excerpt
Karl Magnus, 34. Born with a storm in his gut. I found him outside a barn in the Midwest, shirtless and filthy, fifty miles from the nearest town. He’s never had a job nor lived in one place for very long. A permanent drifter. By the time we finished our conversation, I knew he had been the one who leveled Central Park, but that wasn’t the hard part. At first, I couldn’t even get him to look at me, let alone talk.
[Me]: How about this, Karl: tell me your first memory. Your earliest memory of the storm. I want to know how you figured out that you can do what you do.
[He stands up and looks away from me, staring off into the pink Oklahoma sunset. He exhales through his nose, and when he does so, there’s condensation despite the brisk November chill. He reminds me of a fairytale dragon breathing smoke atop his hoard.]
[Magnus]: “There’s a storm inside you, boy,” is what my father used to say.
[Me]: Yeah?
[There’s a crackling in his throat when he speaks, a static charge beneath a voice that has to be lower than contra double-bass.]
[Magnus]: He would see me out back in the fields behind our house, the wheat stretching for miles and miles. Every summer, at least one big-ass storm would roll in, the sky turning a shade of black and gray only God could make. [Magnus looks at me, finally, his eyes dark. Heavy. And then he returns to the sunset.] He would catch me out there watching it swallow our farm acre by acre, and that’s what he would say. “There’s a storm inside you, boy.” I was always quiet growing up. I disagreed with him for years. I was just a kid who liked to do what kids do. But the day I saw him throw my mother down the stairs for the last time, I let it out. All of it.
[Me]: What happened?
[Magnus takes a deep breath, inhaling more deeply than anyone of his size could possibly breathe. When he exhales, a single white spark erupts from his throat.]
[Magnus]: I roared a hurricane into the middle of Nebraska.
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Smoke, Interview Excerpt
Jessica Morse, 28. A bartender. Can touch-turn anything to mist, including herself. When I pulled into the Denny’s parking lot where we met, she was already outside, smoking an after-work cigarette by her jeep. The headlights of my own car burned right through her, I noticed, leaving a shadow of everything on the restaurant wall except for her. Unlike Magnus, she was much more willing to open up. Already porous.
[Me]: It has to be hard for you [considering what happened]. I’m sure you’re dealing with some level of guilt, even though the only people who matter think you did the right thing.
[She scoffs and takes a drag on her cigarette.]
[Morse]: You wouldn’t know it. Six months ago, I was a nobody mixing drinks in an Alabama dive bar. Me and the others, we saved New York, and guess what? [She flicks away her cigarette. The stub of a Marlboro.] We’re back where we started.
[Me]: I’m sorry.
[Morse, distraught]: It’s okay. [She pulls a strip of chewing gum out of her purse, pauses, and then pulls out the whole pack. Spearmint.] You want one?
[Me:] Sure.
[I take my piece, and she takes hers. She inhales and then pops a big bubble.]
[Morse]: It’s just…here. You want to know what it’s like? Write this in your little article: never in my life have I felt fully here. Solid. Made of the same matter as everyone else. [She takes my gum wrapper, wads it up with hers, and holds it between her finger and thumb. As quickly as she does so, I watch it sublimate into vapor and disappear.] Once, when I was in first grade, I tried to help a boy I liked up the rungs of the jungle gym, but when I grabbed him, when I wrapped my fingers around his wrist, we locked eyes and fell apart into smoke. [She looks at me then, staring right through me. She shakes her head but doesn’t avert her gaze.] It took me days, almost a week, to reassemble, to build myself back from nothing, but we never found the boy.
[Me]: Do you remember his name?
[Morse]: Jason Clark. He had the cutest little smile.
[I reach out to touch her, but then I remember, and I stop.]
[Morse]: He’s still a part of me, I think.
[Morse]: I think they all are.
#
When I first went looking for the Unmentionables, I knew it would be difficult. Much of the cellphone footage of what happened, as well as the social media posts chronicling the event, had been scrubbed from the internet. A twelve-story Pyramid had appeared over Central Park and attracted over ten thousand spectators – one of which was the United States military – and yet there was barely any trace of it online, including the people who had stopped it. Luckily, before the blackout, I was able to save much of what I had written at the Times.
#
MYSTERIOUS PYRAMID APPEARS OVER CENTRAL PARK, NYC
Nation Baffled – President, Governor Urge Calm as National Guard Deployed
August 20th, 2020 | By Daniel Burgess
(Central Park, NY) It came with the sound of a steam whistle, a bellow from another world: at 7:48 yesterday morning, an iridescent Pyramid twelve stories tall and twelve stories wide appeared above New York’s Central Park, seemingly out of nothing. In a scene that defies comprehension, onlookers describe an ordinary New York skyline and then, this: a massive, bluish-purple tetrahedron shimmering into existence southwest of the park’s Onassis Reservoir.
“I literally jumped out of my seat,” says Carla Ruiz, 43, a curator at the nearby Metropolitan Museum of Art. “It has to be the loudest thing I’ve ever heard – it shook the walls. And then, when I followed everybody outside, and we finally saw [the Pyramid], we didn’t know what it was. A new kind of blimp, maybe? A viral internet thing? We couldn’t believe what we were seeing.”
The NYPD quickly cordoned off the area, and by late afternoon, the National Guard established a perimeter that stretches all the way from the 79th transverse to the northwestern side of 97th street. They then erected a base of operations on the Great Lawn, pitching every manner of temporary facility imaginable, and instituted military checkpoints reminiscent of Checkpoint Charlie.
One onlooker, Bobby Knapp, 52, says he can’t believe the speed with which the National Guard acted, offering, “You ask me, I say the government knew this was coming. I mean, look at all that gear. No one comes up with a plan like this on the fly.”
Researchers and other scientific personnel arrived later that evening, snaking their way up East Drive in a fleet of white, unmarked busses. According to witnesses, they were outfitted with hazmat suits and scientific equipment – undoubtedly the best the Department of Defense has to offer. Despite the potential risk to their careers and their reputations, however, concerned researchers at the site have already spoken out about their findings.
As one scientist reported on the condition of anonymity: “[The Pyramid’s] the strangest thing I’ve ever seen – it’s as if it isn’t really here. It emits no heat, no propellant, no radiation, no magnetic field of any kind. Even under spectroscopic analysis, its composition remains entirely unknown…”
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Sightseer, Interview Excerpt
Nathan Pruitt, 56. Blind, but says he can “see the world’s strings.” Says there’s a thin red line connecting everyone to everything, and everything to everyone else. Unsurprisingly, he was the only one who found me first. I was on a bench in a New York subway station when he sat beside me without introduction. Even stranger, he paid no attention to the leftover national guardsmen, as though he knew, somehow, that they wouldn’t realize who he was.
[Pruitt]: You’re the one looking for us. [This wasn’t a question.]
[Me]: Excuse me?
[Pruitt]: The journalist. [He folds up his white cane, popping apart each of its segments, and tucks it under his arm.] You’ve found Karl and Jess, yes? But not Benji?
[I watch him for a long time, and what strikes me most is how still he is. Serene, even. There is a calmness about him that’s so certain it’s unsettling. He knows exactly where he is and what he’s doing, knows exactly what’s going to happen and what isn’t.]
[Pruitt]: I may be blind, son, but I can still see better than you. Better than anyone.
[I let him talk. I’m so focused I can’t hear the subway anymore.]
[Pruitt]: In fact, I know that you’ve already pressed record on the phone in your jacket pocket. I know that this morning, before you sat down on this bench, the barista at the coffee shop down the street drew a heart over the “I” in your name, and I know that tomorrow, she’s going to do the same. I can see it. I may have never seen the color blue in anything but a dream, but I know that she’s going to say yes when you finally work up the courage to ask her out next week.
[Pruitt]: Ellie, right? Dark glasses, brown hair?
[Pruitt]: How right am I, Danny boy?
[In my years at the Times, I’ve interviewed all sorts of people. Famous people, infamous people. Lost people, broken people. But I’ve never interviewed anyone like Nathan Pruitt.]
[Me]: Is this…is this how you knew how to stop the Pyramid? The people it infected? [My voice drops to a whisper.] Did you know that it would be here?
[Pruitt reassembles his cane and stands tall. No one notices him.]
[Pruitt]: It’s been a pleasure, Daniel. I hope your article makes it to print. [He offers his hand, searching for mine, and we shake. His is rock solid. Confident.]
[Me]: Don’t you already know? About my article, I mean?
[Pruitt smiles, nods, and then boards his train. Unlike the other blind men and women I’ve met throughout my life, he knows exactly where the doors are, and as his car pulls away, he watches me through the window, the gaze behind his sunglasses piercing me through.]
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Mammoth, Interview Excerpt
Benjamin Lisle, 37. A pipefitter. The leader of the Unmentionables, and also bullet-proof. Indestructible. He doesn’t look like it, but he can deadlift a metric ton, maybe two, and take a semi-truck to the face without a flinch. We met at a construction site after dark for two reasons: 1) he wanted to keep our meeting a secret, and 2) I wanted him to show me how he could crush concrete into powder with a single hand.
[Me]: Don’t tell me you’ve never thought about [being a superhero]. The others never have, but you…you can lift cars over your head. I bet you could fly if you tried.
[Lisle paces around the bare, concrete foundation of the office building-to-be where we’ve met. His footsteps are heavy, very heavy. He’s way more dense than ordinary people.]
[Lisle]: I have, yeah. But I’m not a superhero, and neither are the others. We’re just people. People with the right resumés who had a job to do.
[He talks about his and the Unmentionables’ powers in this way a lot in terms of work. He’s worked his whole life, he says. And aside from Magnus, they all have.]
[Me]: Is that all New York was? [He looks at me.] Karl roars a hurricane into Central Park, all those people disappear, and it’s just a job?
[He hangs his head. He’s really struggling.]
[Lisle]: I tried to look at it differently for a long time. I really did. Growing up this strong is hard, hard in ways you don’t expect. I live in a world made of sugar glass. Aluminum foil. And people…people are even more fragile. [He points to a gray wheelbarrow covered in dusty concrete mix.] They’re like that. Concrete before you add the water and stir it with your shovel. I have to wonder if that’s how Jess can do what she does. You take away the bone and the muscle, and what are we? A bunch of water vapor, right? Nothing but smoke. [He sits on the pallet of two-by-fours across from me, and they creak under his weight. I’m surprised they can hold him.] I wish New York had gone differently, but that’s the thing about being a superhero.
[Me]: What do you mean?
[Lisle]: You can’t save everybody. [He grabs a piece of gravel from off the floor – a bullet in his hands – and chucks it, glinting, into the stratosphere.] Hell, you can’t even save most people most of the time. You can only save some people some of the time. And honestly, how’s that different than anyone else? How’s that any different than a pipefitter saving a homeowner from a flooded basement? Or a crossing guard stopping a kid from walking out into the street? [He grabs another piece of gravel and crushes it in his fist. It pops like a cap gun, and he watches the dust fall through his fingers.] Here’s something you can write: I can carry just about anything, except the guilt.
[Lisle]: It’s the guilt I can’t carry.
#
SPECTATORS GATHER AROUND CENTRAL PARK ANOMALY
“There’s gotta be 10,000 people here,” Says National Guard
August 23rd, 2020 | By Daniel Burgess
(Central Park, NY) Over 1,000 spectators by the end of the first day and over 3,000 the next. Within a week of the Pyramid’s arrival, an estimated 10,000 onlookers of every political stripe, class, and identity have come to see what some say is a “herald for the end of the world.” Dissatisfied with the lack of answers coming from both Washington and the researchers at the site, everyday New Yorkers have turned to others for explanation.
“I’m telling you, it’s aliens,” says Johnathan Wright, 49, editor-in-chief of the viral conspiracy theory blog www.truthwatch.com. “We’ve been waiting for the Feds to drop the goods for decades, and now, here it is: definitive proof of extraterrestrial life.”
Other spectators, however, report different reasons for showing up in Central Park. Some say they feel strangely compelled by the Pyramid, that they find themselves unable to peel their eyes away from it throughout the day despite the sun glaring starkly off its pearlescent surface. In fact, here at the scene, hundreds of onlookers seem utterly enraptured by it, as though in awe, as though experiencing, for the first time in their lives, a religious epiphany or calling.
“Have you heard the singing yet?” asks Amanda Casey, 19, a freshman studying journalism at NYU. She caught me by surprise; I was about to leave for the day. “You gotta see the people closest to [the Pyramid],” she says. “They don’t…sound right.”
I let her lead the way through the crowd, and sure enough, there were pockets of onlookers stretched along the perimeter of the Pyramid, each having joined hands and singing some kind of song. I say “some kind” here because their singing didn’t sound like anything I had ever heard before. They didn’t even sound human. Instead, their voices reminded me of something like windchimes, of church organs, of a sound as deep and sonorous as the Earth itself.
“How long have they been doing this?” I ask her, unable to look away. She searches for the words, and in the meantime, another dozen add to the Pyramid’s chorus. “Since I got here,” she says, her voice trailing off. “And I’ve been here since yesterday…”
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Maelstrom, Interview Excerpt
The autumn sun had set, and we’d retreated to the inside of the barn – a musty, leathery place, the smell of old animals lingering in the air. Here, Karl lit a rusty stove with the lightning in his belly, and its firelight stayed the hand of the dark and the cold. He would stay here for only a few more days, he told me, before he moved on. Westward, toward the mountains. He liked to follow the birds, he said, wherever the wind would take them.
[Magnus]: I knew something was wrong before anyone else did, even Nathan. He would never admit it, but I could feel it in the air. Something was coming.
[Me]: Can you always tell? When something’s coming, I mean?
[Magnus]: Yes and no. [He half-sits, half-lays on a pile of moldy hay.] Storms? Absolutely. I can feel it in here. [He places his hand on his bare belly.] But man-made events? Only sometimes. The Pyramid, though…the Pyramid felt different than either.
[Me]: How so?
[He stares at the fire for a long time, breathing deeply in a slow, one-two rhythm. He reminds me of fireplace bellows, of a man barely contained.]
[Magnus]: I was here when it appeared over the park. This very barn. We’re fifteen hundred miles from New York City, and yet at 6:45 in the morning, I sat up right here. Something was watching me, Daniel. Something huge. Like, no matter how far I ran, no matter how deep into the woods, it would still be able to see me. [He closes his fists and furrows his brow.] It felt like my dad coming up the stairs, coming for me or my mother. [He looks at me.] That’s when I knew.
[Me]: Knew what?
[Magnus]: That I had to destroy it.
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Smoke, Interview Excerpt
The parking lot had emptied, save me, Jessica, and whatever staff remained this early into the morning. Hungry, we went inside and grabbed a booth, ordered breakfast, and sipped our coffees. In the full light of the restaurant, I could see her as she truly was; under these lights, she looked unbearably pale, a person paper-thin. When I finally asked her about Central Park directly, she looked away from me and stared firmly into her cup.
[Morse]: I saw it on the news, of course, like everyone else. Poor New York. They really don’t have the best luck, do they? [She makes a face, as if regretting her joke.]
[Me]: No. I suppose they don’t.
[Morse]: Nathan called me about a minute after that.
[Me]: You knew him?
[Morse shakes her head.]
[Morse]: No, actually, if you can believe it. None of us did. But Nathan was the only one who could find us all, so he brought us together. Before I knew it, I was hauling ass in my jeep up I-59, headed towards central Manhattan. [She shakes her head as though she can’t believe it, but later smiles. There’s a pride there that was missing before.]
[Me]: So, let me get this straight: you wake up one morning, see a giant Pyramid floating over Central Park, get a call from a complete stranger, and then drive out to meet him?
[Morse reaches into her purse and grabs another cigarette. She lights up. Inhales. Exhales. It’s still strange, despite having spent an hour with her: the cigarette casts a shadow on the tabletop, as does the smoke, obscuring the lights in the ceiling, but nothing else. She’s invisible.]
[Morse]: You know that story I told you earlier, the one about the boy?
[Me]: Of course.
[Morse]: Well, he told me about it. Recounted the whole thing as though he was there. I picked up my shitty phone in my shitty apartment, still exhausted from the night before, and there was his voice, clear as day, telling me the story of my life. That’s when he told me about the others, about their own origin stories. How they knew they were people with power.
[She takes a long drag on her Marlboro.]
[Morse]: I couldn’t get in my jeep fast enough.
#
PRESIDENT, GOVERNOR DECLARE STATE OF EMERGENCY
Manhattan Under Immediate Evacuation – Martial Law in Effect
August 25th, 2020 | By Daniel Burgess
(Central Park, NY) “There is not a place in the city you cannot hear it,” says a man I never caught the name of, muttering to himself as the National Guard waved us through the Lincoln Tunnel. And he’s right. While the tunnel may have had an amplifying effect on the Pyramid’s Chorus in Central Park, there is no place immune to the noise. Whether you’re in Harlem or in Soho, you can hear its alien melody reverberating inside your skull, bouncing between your ears. For better or worse, it’s become the soundtrack of New York. The anthem played every moment of every day.
“This is only a precaution,” the President stressed yesterday morning in a joint statement with the Governor’s office. Obviously, neither he nor the Governor could say what everyone is really thinking, that they’re trying to mitigate public outrage over the military’s new-found presence in the city. Before I left, I could see the Navy’s destroyers anchored in the Hudson, their massive, 16-inch guns aimed squarely at the Pyramid floating above Central Park – or, I should say, engulfing Central Park. Only yesterday, the scientists at the site confirmed everyone’s worst fears: with each passing hour, the Pyramid grows, and the more who sing its song, the larger it becomes.
Dylan Arias, 32, one of the last people I interviewed before I evacuated with the rest of the Times, agreed: “When I first set up shop here [on the corner of 83rd Street and Central Park West], it was definitely smaller.” Like many others, Arias had taken advantage of the Pyramid’s presence and had started selling “I [Pyramid] New York” t-shirts on the 21st. “But now,” he continued, “you can see it from any street on the Upper East Side.” He nodded toward Central Park and pointed to the Pyramid. “If you ask me, I say it’s planning something. That singing, it’s getting louder. A lot louder.”
I stopped him between sales. A line had formed in front of his table, nearly thirty people deep, while his wife and daughter cut open more boxes of drop-shipped Pyramid-themed merchandise.
“Oh yeah,” he said. “And when it gets whatever it’s here to get, I’d make sure you’re outta town. We certainly will be.”
He handed me a shirt in my size and told me it was on the house as long as I told people where I got it. This was yesterday afternoon, and as far as I know, they left soon after the joint-declared State of Emergency. While kitschy, souvenir t-shirts are definitely not my style, I must admit that haven’t taken mine off since I left with the Times, my other clothes packed away in my overnight…
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Sightseer, Interview Excerpt
After Nathan left me on that subway platform in the Financial District, I never thought I would see him again. It felt like the end somehow, like his meeting me once was all he really wanted. And yet, about a month later, he found me in a booth at the coffee shop down the street from the Times. He simply appeared beside me with his cane and said he wanted to tell me something, something important, so I pressed record.
[Pruitt]: I want to set the record straight before you publish. [He pops apart his cane and places it on the table between us.] There’s something I want to get off my chest.
[I lean back in the booth. This is the stuff reporters dream of.]
[Me]: That’s great. What have you got for me?
[He beckons me with a finger, and together, we lean in close. I can smell his aftershave.]
[Pruitt]: I know the consensus on the street is that Jess killed those people, but she didn’t. I need you to know that. By the time we got there, those people weren’t people anymore. I may not have been able to see the Pyramid, but I could see its strings. It looked like a ball of yarn thirty stories high, with each and every thread running through a different person in Central Park. She did what she needed to do, Danny boy, and so did we. [His voice turns to sandpaper.] You hear me?
[I take a moment to breathe.]
[Me]: Yeah, Nathan. I hear you.
[Pruitt]: Good. [He pulls away, and I do, too. When I look up, he’s staring at me the way he did on the subway platform: cold, hard, his jaw clenched. He can see my entire life.]
[Pruitt]: Oh, and FYI: I’ve been reading the Braille edition of the Times since ’87. You better believe I’m going to read whatever you put in your article. You hear me?
[I sip my coffee in silence. Show me a reporter who says they’ve never been threatened, and I’ll show you a liar, but if there’s anyone who can follow through, it’s Nathan Pruitt.]
[Me]: Yeah, Nathan. I hear you.
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Mammoth, Interview Excerpt
Semi-trucks roared down the interstate behind the construction site, and Benjamin and I watched them race by one by one. We had perched ourselves on the unfinished rooftop, my recorder in hand, more gravel in his. It had taken me all night to pry the events of Central Park out of him, his mind as strong as whatever his body had been born of. I needed to know what happened that night, what really happened, and he was the last piece.
[Lisle]: Jess, Karl, and Nathan…they picked me up the day before, around noon. My crew and I were out front, right down there, eating lunch. [He points to a clearing in front of the building, a not-yet-finished parking lot.] Jess was driving. They were in the jeep. My foreman was about to tell them off when Nathan got out with his cane. And the thing was, despite never having met him, I felt like I already knew him. Like I had known him my whole life.
[Me]: The others said the same. Or similar.
[Lisle]: He told me that “we had a job to do.” He told me that “we were the only ones who could do it.” Daniel, I’ve been “doing jobs” my entire life, ever since I was little. Ever since I was big enough to hold a nail for my Pops. I knew exactly what he meant. [He threw a piece of gravel at the big green sign hanging above the interstate and took out a light. It had to be one thousand feet away.] And then he told me I was their leader. That, to stop “the Pyramid’s chorus,” I had heard on the news, we needed to band together. We needed to be a team.
[Me]: I bet your crew thought he was crazy.
[Lisle, chuckling]: You bet. But you know what? I still went with him. After lunch was over, I grabbed my things and got into the back of Jess’ jeep. It was like there was a string pulling me along, as though I couldn’t get off track, no matter how hard I tried.
[Lisle throws another piece of gravel, and then another, until he runs out. Lights all along the interstate pop out, fizzling in the night. He’s a fantastic shot.]
[Me]: Okay, so, that night, you’re the leader, the muscle. Nathan’s the brains, the tactician. Karl’s the superweapon, the trump card. What about Jess? What did she do?
[Lisle stops and shakes his head.]
[Lisle]: What do you think she did, Daniel?
[Lisle]: She touched it.
#
Of course, you remember what happened next.
On August 26th at 3:37 am, the Chorus stopped. As suddenly as the Pyramid had appeared, its possessed had fallen silent. For the first time in centuries, the only sound to hear in Manhattan was the birds.
And then, like birds, those people began to fly.
All ten thousand of them, maybe more, began to float into the air. This was not an error in your broadcast, a hoax created by the malicious intents of a foreign government, or an internet prank. This really happened. Ten thousand New Yorkers – ten thousand men, women, and children – levitated with their arms outstretched toward the Pyramid, hundreds of feet into the air. The amateur livestreams captured it, and so did the 24-hour news crews. I watched it happen from my hotel room, and I’m willing to bet a whole lot of money that you watched it, too.
They did not, however, capture the jeep hauling ass up Central Park West, nor the bolts of lightning spewing out of the mouth of the man in the backseat. That would come later, after rumors. Eyewitness accounts.
After I decided, more than anything, that I needed to write this story.
#
WHEN THE UNMENTIONABLES CAME TO NEW YORK
How Four Everyday People Had a Job to Do and Did It
May 17th, 2021 | By Daniel Burgess
(New York, NY) Nine months ago, we were visited by a thing from another world, and this week, the rare, bipartisan bill coming out of the White House doesn’t want you to talk about it. All across the country, news stations have been raided, servers have been wiped, and even newspaper print plates (like the ones used to print this special edition) have been seized, censored, or destroyed.
But make no mistake: the Chorus Event happened.
Even though curfews have been lifted, businesses have reopened, and Manhattan has been repopulated, it happened. That pyramid really did appear over Central Park, and over 10,000 people really did disappear. And if it weren’t for four everyday people from all over the United States – a vagrant and a waitress, a retiree, and a pipefitter – that pyramid would still be here, growing in size, growing its Chorus, and devouring whatever of this world it had come to claim.
Despite the law (and, I should say, potentially life in prison), I have spent the last six months searching for these so-called “Unmentionables,” the nickname journalists like me have given them. Needless to say, they never liked the moniker – nor the responsibility. In fact, they don’t even consider themselves heroes…
#
You can still hear them, you know. The Disappeared. If you listen hard enough in the ruins of Central Park, if you close your eyes in the misty crater of the Great Lawn, you can catch their voices rising like dew over the grass. To me, they still sound like windchimes, like church organs, like the city itself does on a cold winter morning.
Somehow, the Disappeared are still here.
Somehow, I think they’re coming home.
END
Riley Passmore is a speculative fiction writer, essayist, and teacher in the American southeast. He earned his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of South Florida in 2015, and his work has appeared in Carmina Magazine, Small World City, Barnstorm Journal, Five on the Fifth, and others.