Church of the Disappeared

Even Faith is Guided by Evil

The black cassock of Father Martim Almeida snapped in the wind as he hung from Igreja de Samodaes’s bell tower. Stuffed in the priest's mouth were loose pages of Notari while other pages fluttered throughout the square.

From across the valley, Metteo rocked on the balcony of a rented house. For the first time, he couldn't relax after he finished an assignment, because he didn’t finish it. He changed plans and changing plans had consequences. Soon the East Block Coalition would know what happened to the priest and internally ask questions. When word circles through EBC’s network that no one approved of the priest’s murder, the hunt will begin for Metteo. There wouldn’t be questions, only the demand for an immediate refund. And in Metteo’s line of work, refunds weren’t repaid with money.

There is only one reason why someone would contact Metteo, so his terms and conditions for an assignment were straightforward. Supply only a photo and a name. No questions were asked, and no negotiations. If a customer didn’t like the price, they could go elsewhere with all communications severed without repercussions from either side. This discretion allowed Metteo’s communications to remain open to further requests. It was similar to Non-Disclousure Agreement between employers and their employees, except it was drawn for contract killers and their requesting customers. In return for this discretion, Metteo set a high price that he hasn’t changed for years. There was room for variances, of course, but that depended on the complexities of the job, which didn’t happen often. But just as important, the customer was happy. And a happy customer is a recurring customer.

Only this time, Metteo did ask questions, which even surprised him. He usually valued apathy over empathy. How could he not? His occupation demanded insensitivity. It allowed him to complete an assignment on time and with acceptable results. If he didn’t do either, well, there were no negotiations. So Metteo watched the morning sun ignite the crest of the hillside, making its way to the church, and accepted that he would need to repay the EBC with his own blood. But the EBC wouldn’t stop there. They will want interest. And the woman in bed, who valued empathy over apathy and resurrected value to Metteo’s life that he didn’t know he had, completed the debt.

Jana frequently searched for Metteo's body with her foot at night. When she found him, she would immediately fall back to sleep. However, this morning, Jana found warmth and sat up. He was up early. Something was wrong.

Jana didn't hear his shallow breathing last night, and she didn't wake when he woke in the middle of the night as he often does during an assignment. He was agitated.

“How much time do we have?” she asked.

No answer.

“How much - “

”We'll know soon enough,” he snapped and took a deep breath. “The church bells start the day, then the congregation comes. But it won't sound at its usual time. Some will come early wanting to know why.”

Saying they met at the Metropolitan Hospital in Basel is an understatement. He was there to kill a money launderer. She was there to guide him.

The money launderer was in the Intensive Care Unit due to a staph infection he contracted following surgery. His prognosis was grim, but the doctors and staff were optimistic he would pull through because the launderer’s lab work showed improvements. Improvements meant possibilities for the launderer's employer, and the employer wanted those possibilities to be unlikely. So they hired Metteo.

He hadn’t worked for six months when he took the assignment. It was nice to have. One could only do work around the house for so long until one begins to shake from withdrawal. Besides, the assignment was easy. He did this before. Slip into the room, silence the alarms long enough to inject the target’s veins with large amounts of air, and walk away. But as he uncapped the needle, the slightest cold breeze raised bumps on his arms and ruffled his hair.

“Not today,” came from the corner of the room.

Shocked, stunned, and terrified, Metteo dropped the needle and turned to face a woman in a long black frock coat.

“The hell!”

He remembered the needle he dropped and tried to casually cover it with his boot.

“There’s no need to do this,” she said.

He was speechless. He thought, no, he was sure he was alone in the room.

“This isn’t the first time I had to step in,” she said, stepping closer, which surprised her because her training taught her to keep a distance, observe, and only interact in extreme necessity. This situation was none of those, but she found a faint attraction to Metteo that went against the laws that governed her position.

“Who are you?” Metteo said.

Jana Bollag was born and partially raised in Lugano until she was a teenager and moved to Basel where she learned to speak fluent German and French. Her teenage years were also the time when she learned to cross The Plane and enter different worlds, which she found out by accident.

Angry with her parents because they wouldn’t let her meet a boy, she channeled that anger into a passionate want that took her to The Plane, a lighted space between her world and other worlds. Not parallel worlds, but different worlds. At first, The Plane was a sensory confusion. She could hear muffled sounds. Cars. Birds. People. She could see shadowy, distorted shapes. Then there was the movement. Quick. As if the body couldn’t keep up with its speed.

When Jana landed in another world, and her body abruptly stopped, she vomited. People tried to help, but she shuddered away from them. She was scared and disoriented because she didn’t know what was happening. When Jana crossed back to her primary world, which took about a week, she suffered from the same sickness and disorientation.

Jana never talked to her parents or friends about this, and over the next five years, she moved between worlds without side effects. She never interacted with the people of different worlds. Because she didn't know what would happen if she did. So Jana would observe. She didn’t know what else to do. That was until a tall man with a long black frock coat showed up at her house in the primary world, and her parents let him in without hesitation.

Her parents suspected she was able to cross The Plane for those five years and didn’t say anything. They let her experience it while knowing who would eventually knock on their door. And on Jana’s twenty-first birthday in late July, her parents and the tall man sat at the dining room table where the tall man explained that she had a random genetic mutation that affected, maybe, ten thousand people in her world that allowed them to move across The Plane. What made her unique, however, was that she inherited the mutation. She was part of a bloodline.

The tall man pushed a document across the table that outlined a high-paying position within The Manager's Sect of Observation and Interaction.

Many years prior, Jan’s parents refused the same position, because their personalities didn’t match the core values of the MSOI. But they didn't feel they should make that choice for her, so they let Jana choose for herself. With few friends, and no decision on an occupation, she let her intense passion for moving from world to world guide her, and she accepted.

There were simple rules to follow. Only observe those in other worlds if they are contributing to the good of the world. Interact with people in other worlds only if there is an extreme necessity, regardless if their intentions are good or bad, you can guide them, but not directly change the action. There were other smaller personal rules, dress code, decorum, attitude, and so on. If the rules were broken, then a subjective mitigation was ordered with an appropriate disciplinary action. Most of the broken rules weren’t enforced with nothing more than a slap on the wrist.

Of all the rules, however, falling in love was not tolerated. It violated the entire MSOI governance doctrine, observation, interaction, chance, and change. More importantly, love complicated the relationship between the MSOI’s observers and the person they are in love with. Love granted biased opinions about a situation and an MSOI observer had dominion over those situations. If there weren’t constraints, outcomes wouldn’t be based on the actions or inactions of a person, but on who has the most to gain. So the MSOI felt nothing good could come out of love. But like the constraint Jana’s parents made with her first teenage crush, she refused the MSOI's confinement.

Jana stepped towards Metteo and felt her heart flutter. It was similar to the sensory confusion when she first crossed The Plane. The uneasiness. The muffled sounds. The shadowy objects. No other worlds existed within the space between other worlds or beyond the room’s four walls. The only world that existed was hers and Metteo's. Even the five-foot canyon that separated the two couldn't restrain Jana from taking a leap of faith. With a deep breath and with deliberate and unapologetic insolence, Jana fell in love.

For the MSOI, however, Jana's arrogance disobeyed their tenets. They disregarded the intimate emotional and mental states that blindly encompass two people. She broke the love rule and her reward for the natural attraction between humans was the immediate loss of her position within the MSOI and the inability to cross The Plane. This was now her Primary World and she didn't care. Her freedom of choice was more important than any position or wanderlust. This independence made her love Metteo even more.

“I don’t need to ask you why you’re here,” she said in Italian.

Metteo ignored her.

“This isn’t the first time I had to step in to something like this,” she added. “You will not harm him today.”

She studied him for a beat.

“I know you understand me,” she continued. “You signed the book with an American name. But we both know you’re from Northern Italy. Close to Varese, my guess. Am I wrong? Hmm, I’m not.”

He was intimidated. How could he be? She was maybe five feet three and thin. He could break her arm just by gripping it. But she had a convicted countenance, that no matter what he said or tried to do, she wouldn’t waver regardless of what it would cost her. Two attractions. Opposites. One that stops life and the other that promotes life.

He left the room as deftly as he entered it. She exhaled deeply too. Not knowing she was holding her breath. He quickly exited the hospital and stood in the cold. With snow blanketing his jacket and wondering what happened, he confusingly wished to see her again. Up in the room, Jana was wondering the same. She pocketed the syringe. She wanted to see Metteo again. For Jana, that would be easy.

Neither one saved the money launderer. He succumbed to the infection. For Metteo, this was good news since he didn’t kill the launderer that day he met Jana, this meant he wasn’t a marked man. For Jana, since she somewhat guided Metteo and preserved the launderer’s life, she maintained her position within the MSOI.

For the next year, Metteo didn’t have any assignments. He was alright with this. It happened occasionally, but if the unemployment persisted too long he grew anxious. Fortunately, his unemployment meant he could spend more time with Jana who periodically showed up.

At first, her materializations frightened Metteo but he did come to like them, with a heavy dose of caution. Was she working for a group? What are her motives? It was her ability to find him any given time that made him uneasy.

When a coffee date lingered into a weekend stay and the weekend stays became week-long sleepovers, his suspicions subsided and he curated a new character trait, trust.

During their time together, Jana explained who she was and how she can appear and disappear. How she was recruited and the contract she signed. Neither of them was sure if Metteo could cross. Jana explained how she did it and proposed he do the same. Nothing happened. Eventually, they both completed a Karyotype Genetic Test with Jana explaining what the mutations should look like if a person can cross. Unfortunately, Metteo didn’t have the mutation.

The MSOI let the relationship last for so long until they decided that Jana breached her contract and that she needed to be stripped of her MSOI position and expel her ability to ever cross The Plane. She accepted the decision without recourse. She had her life and her love. Metteo, however, wasn’t so fortunate.

The murder of Father Almeida breached Metteo’s contract he had with the East Block Coalition. They weren't going to be happy. The target wasn't the priest, it was a rival human trafficker that was encroaching on the territory governed by the EBC.

During Metteo’s surveillance of the rival, his thoughts centered the boys and girls that disappeared. Abducted in one world and dispersed throughout others. Constantly evading authorities to a point where they would be lost forever.

These abductions disgusted Metteo and when he found out that part of the trafficking route went through the church, he acted out of impulse and killed the priest. His impulsiveness was motivated by his impassioned love for Jana. The MSOI had it right. Love complicated things. At the very least, Metteo should have killed the rival first then the priest. He would have taken heat, but he wouldn’t be a marked man. They would have found someone else.

Now it was too late. Soon the rival would know what has happened and go into hiding. Metteo wouldn’t see him again. The EBC, however, are going to want a refund and collect interest. That interest is sitting in bed.

“What about him?”

An old man made his way up the dirt drive to the gate of a crumbling farmhouse he was renovating. Fumbling in the pockets of his dusty overalls, he found a set of keys and opened the rusty gate. The old man worked on the farmhouse chipping at the terra cotta roofing and cement steps during the day and removing rotting floorboards at night.

“Do you think he knows?” Jana said.

“I’ll visit him tonight,” Metteo said.

“I don’t like that. He may not care about us.”

Jana never liked Metteo’s occupation. Regardless of her contempt for the MSOI, she believed in their values, making subtle suggestions, as she was trained, to Metteo about how not taking assignments might give more value to the world if the person made their own choices. Her allusions, regardless if they were enveloped with kisses, always found the two of them exchanging heated insults. Then they would makeup and Metteo would sit quietly in a dark room and know that she was right. She was always right.

In the end, Father Almeida’s murder was an act of conflict. Kill the rival or the Father. The rival was evil. The Father was faith. The Father broke the faith of all those boys and girls. Jana, again, accepted Metteo’s decision with the awareness that she may not have his love for much longer.

This is love. Happiness. Glimmers of excitement, pleasure, and passion condensed in the short breaths of a life. Then there is the sadness, sandwiched between fortune and richness in the same fleeting time. A tear ran down Jana’s cheek. She was also aware that she may not live much longer either.

"We have to know for sure."

"And if he suspects something?"

The house had a beautiful silence like in the backcountry where the sounds of cars, people, and the wind don't reach, but last for a few seconds. That was about how long the silence lasted, a few seconds, for the sirens started at the river’s edge and echoed from one hillside to the other. The old man watched the National Republican Police car snake its way up the opposite hillside.

“Start getting ready,” Metteo said.

“Metteo…”

“We talked about this. It’s too late to second guess.”

“I wasn’t second guessing.”

Metteo laughed at her. When she either lied or was, she had a slight lilt in her Swiss-German accent.

“Tell me again what you’re going to do,” Metteo said.

“What if I stay with you?”

“They’ll kill you. You'll have a better chance if you left.”

“So they’ll kill me. I'll be with you.”

“Again! What are you going to do?”

His anger emanated from frustration that he couldn't protect her. Jana didn't care for protection. Being with him was all that she wanted, but this was the consequence of falling in love with a contract killer and her marked life was the consequence that was hanging from a clock tower on the other side of the river.

She wrapped her arms across his chest, feeling the vulnerabilities in his shallow breaths. Jana loved him, but she didn't touch him enough. And Metteo was too proud to tell her what he wanted. Besides, her strength, her stubbornness, and her security are the reasons why Metteo fell in love with her. To change her would change what he loved about her. When she did wrap her arms around him, though, he was comfortable. Now that their time together was shortened, this small gesture bridged the gap of regrettable time.

"I'm sorry Jana," he said in a whisper.

She stroked back his hair and turned his face to hers.

“Don’t you ever feel sorry for me,” she said. “You have and will give me the best years of my life.”

“Then please, tell me again.”

“I’m to take the train to Salamanca. There I’m to rent a car and find my way to different cities and lay low. I’m to get lost in the cities. I may be easily spotted in the country. I’ll try and cross The Plane when I’m sure I can do it safely if I can. The MSOI stripped me of crossing.”

“You’ll have to figure it out,” Metteo said. “The EBC will be watching me. They’re probably watching you too. We have to assume they know you can cross. Waiting and surprising them, may be the best way to do this.”

That night, the old man had a fire going as Metteo entered the farmhouse with a bottle of wine and two glasses.

“Com licença,” Metteo said in his few Portuguese words.

Startled, the old man turned and relaxed. He smiled and waved Metteo over to a makeshift seat next to the fire and offered him apricots.

Metteo asked how the work was going and what he was doing with the farmhouse when completed. With the old man’s splatters of primitive Italian and Metteo’s sparse Portuguese, they got along. The old man scooped a pit from the apricot and put the apricot in a bowl. A thin, dusty dog came from the corner shadows and ate the apricot.

The old man was restoring a farmhouse to rent to tourists that came to the valley for its wine and food. He moved slowly and enjoyed a slow living with his dog. Metteo considered the old man and what harm would it be if he kept him alive.

“Esposa?”

It took Metteo a beat to realize the old man asking about Jana.

“Ela foi comprar mantimentos,” Metteo said.

Metteo didn’t correct him about Jana not being his wife, but replied she went out for groceries.

After a few quiet moments, the old man said, pointing to the hill across the river, “Você ouviu sobre o pai.”

Metteo didn’t need a translation.

“Não,” Metteo said.

“Triste.”

Tell that to the disappeared boys and girls, if Father Almeida's death is sad, thought Metteo.

“Quanto tempo você vai ficar com sua esposa?” the old man said.

Metteo understood enough that the old man was asking how long he was staying at the house with his wife. Metteo smiled and lifted his glass in salute. The old man sealed his fate.

Nine weeks later, Jana questioned why she was sweating through her clothes as she rode the subway. She dismissed it as a virus and that maybe she hadn’t cooled down yet from her gym workout. But with each jostle of the car, she became nauseous. With some water and rest, she'd be fine.

Jana emerged from the La Latina subway station in Madrid with a hunger craving. The burgers from the restaurant across the street smelled delicious. She hadn't eaten meat for twenty-five years. Why the hunger now? But there she was, inhaling the burger special. Afterward, her stomach cramped. Racing to the bathroom, she vomited in the closest stall. Jana slipped to the floor, exhausted. She was dozing until the latch on the bathroom stall began to turn.

“Besetzt,” she said in German but “occupied” in German was not the same as in Spanish.

She tried to hold the latch, but it kept turning. The door opened, and a tall man with a top hat and a long black frock coat stood over her.

She begged him not to touch her as she tried to slither to the back of the stall. The tall man squatted down and took her by the forearm.

"Please," she begged. "You don’t have to do this."

"I"m not here to hurt you," he said in fluent German. “You don’t have much time.”

“For what?” she said.

“You’re going to be taken. You’ll need to cross The Plane. If you don’t, you won’t be able to cross ever again.”

"I don't understand," she said. “You stripped me of that ability.”

“We never did Jana. Every time you tried, we stepped in to block your cross. You always had the ability. Remember. We step in when there is an extreme necessity.”

She didn’t know if she should be mad or insulted. In her weakened state, she couldn’t do much of anything anyway.

"You’re having trouble crossing now because your strength is weakening. You'll need to find that strength again, Jana. This is it if you don't."

Two men burst into the bathroom. The tall man vanished. Jana screamed and kicked, but the two men grabbed her like a doll and dragged her from the stall. On the sidewalk, she was forced to her knees. She tried to scratch and claw at a cinder block forearm, but the hold on her hair pulled tighter. Jana gave up the struggle when a man walked up to her. He was young. His milky white complexion made his dark hair and suit appear jet black.

“I’m surprised you haven’t crossed yet,” he said, pulling out a handgun.

“You don't have to do this.”

“Yes I do.”

As the man raised the gun to Jana’s head, she said with the last breath of her strength, she said as sure as day. "Go."

And she crossed.

Instead of the bullet catching bone and brain, it caught air and ricocheted off the pavement.

Not long after Jana crossed The Plane, a young boy cut a small path through the reeds along the banks of the Rio Cries. He was excited to catch his first trout and grill it with his father.

He stumbled over rocks to get to the secret fishing hole his father told him about and stopped. The body of Metteo Jossa was rotting in the summer sun.