Why You Were Taken

THE SEVEN THAT WERE TAKEN ₂₆

Johannesburg, 2021

There are two folders on Keke’s Maneki Neko flash drive. The first one is called ‘The Seven That Were Taken’ and has seven old, scanned and archived newspaper articles, dated from 1991. The second folder – ‘R.I.P.’ – contains four recent PDFs from Echo.news

They start with the folder called R.I.P. Kirsten recognises the first article immediately. She had read it a week or so before at her shoot at the aquarium, about Betty/Barbara being found dead in her flat.

‘This is – was – her,’ says Kirsten. ‘The crazy woman who gave me the key.’

‘The key?’ asks Seth.

‘The key that opened the safety deposit box at the seed bank that had the list in it. Look at the date of her birth, the colours are backwards.’

Seth frowns at her. ‘You are truly odd.’

‘Look,’ she says, and shows him that Betty/Barbara’s date of birth is backwards in the third line of numbers on the list.

‘So the one date is our birth date,’ he says. ‘What is the other?’

They open the next article. It’s about a well-known composer, found dead in his bathtub, by his lover. Drowned, it said, apparent suicide, or accident, although the lover wouldn’t accept it, said they had everything to live for. They were about to be garried: a trip to Paris planned for spring, after an intimate wedding in Paternoster. On finding the blue body, the lover had smashed up the apartment, destroying any evidence that may have existed. He swears foul play: Blanco’s most prized possession was missing: an antique ivory piano key from a Roger Williams piano. It had been his proposal gift. He required sedation, and was not being treated as a suspect. The musician was dead, their future washed away in a couple of inches of waxy grey liquid (Cold Dishwater).

‘It could have been suicide,’ says Seth.

‘He was first on the list.’

Seth hesitates, then opens the next document. A picture of a blonde woman laughing into the camera comes up on screen. Top executive dies in front of toddler son. The story is about a high-flyer corporate who accidentally ingested peanut matter – the source unknown – and went into anaphylactic shock and died in the kids’ park down the road from her office. The people at the park had tried to resuscitate her but her airways were swollen closed and CPR wasn’t successful. The white-haired child was taken in first by the paramedics, then the policewoman on the case, and eventually collected by the husband who had unplugged on the golf course and had heard about his wife’s death on the radio on the way home from the pub. The fourth article was Soraya’s organ failure. He had felt a connection to Soraya. Coincidence?

They move on to the second folder; there is a picture of an awkward little boy, a toddler, dressed in a brown suit, sitting on a piano stool in front of a baby grand. Baby Beethoven Kidnapped, reads the headline.

‘The drowned composer,’ says Kirsten.

Seth opens the other archived articles: they are all stories of abduction. Toddler Missing, about a too-blonde two-year-old who could speak 4 different languages. The executive.

Has anyone seen Betty Schoeman? A mug shot of a not-pretty baby dressed in old-fashioned clothes, frowning at the camera. Betty/Barbara.

Child Abducted from Nursery School, reads another, about Jeremy Bond, a two-year-old snatched from a crèche playground just minutes before his parents arrived to collect him.

Seth reads the fifth one:

That had to have been William Soraya. Ben/Bill. They open the last PDF.

Kirsten and Seth stand pale under the fluorescent light in the office, looking at each other, speaking aloud as they process the jolt of information.

‘Holy fuck,’ they say at the same time.

‘Samuel and Kate,’ says Kirsten. ‘The mad woman – Betty/Barbara – called me Kate.’

‘Samuel and Kate, abducted at 3, become Seth and Kirsten.’

‘Moved to a different province, and split up.’

Kirsten shakes her head. It doesn’t make any sense.

‘Wait, it says ‘brown-eyed.’ She looks into Seth’s blue-green eyes that mirror hers (Sound of the Sea).

‘They must have had our irises lasered. Strōma’d the brown out. It’s easy enough to do.’

She thinks of her biological parents, the Chapmans, and feels overwhelmed. What they must have gone through. What she and Seth must have gone through. There is an extreme feeling of loss for the life she should have had, the life that was taken from her. And here he is now, standing in front of her: the missing piece of her puzzle.

‘The Black Hole,’ she says. ‘It finally makes sense.’

He blinks at her. She has the feeling he understands, maybe he felt The Black Hole too but filled it with other things.

‘I was always – disconnected – with my father,’ he says. ‘Never met my mother. Never felt he really wanted me around, didn’t understand why they had me in the first place.’

‘Exactly,’ says Kirsten. ‘But why abduct a child you don’t want? Surely a creep so desperate for a baby would, I don’t know, love the child more?’

Seth is silent.

‘It doesn’t add up,’ says Kirsten, ‘It’s too much to take in. I don’t have the mental bandwidth to cope with this.’ She moves to run her hands through her hair but feels her prickly scalp instead, the plaster on the back of her head. Realises she’s been holding the knife all along and puts it on the desk. He glances at it and narrows his eyes.

‘Whose knife is that?’ he asks.

‘This?’ she says, ‘It was my father’s – well, whoever he was – the man who pretended to be my father for 28 years. Why? What’s wrong? Why are you freaking out?’

‘Who was your father? What did he do?’

‘Who was my father? I don’t know. He was a research guy, a lab guy, a grindaholic who ignored his wife and daughter to read a lot of scientific literature. I still don’t actually know what he did. Will you please tell me why you are getting so freaked out by the knife?’

‘You’re not quite Nancy Drew, huh?’

‘What?’

‘Did you even think to look up that insignia?’

‘No. Why would I? And who the fuck is Nancy Drew? I’m a fucking photographer, not a member of the Hawks. All this,’ she motions around her, ‘this fuck-circus, is new to me, okay?’

He stares at her, then scans the insignia of the pocketknife and does an image-match search. Nothing comes up.

‘You recognise it – the logo – I can see.’

‘Yes, I recognise it,’ says Seth. ‘But… it’s impossible. An urban legend, a myth. It’s not supposed to exist.’

‘I don’t understand.’

Seth points at the diamond-shaped insignia. He traces an angular ‘G’ in the left of the diamond and a ‘P’ in the right.

‘The guys at Alba are going to flip out when I show this to them.’

Kirsten looks at the knife, looks at him. She sees him smile for the first time.

‘G.P.’ he says. ‘It’s the fucking Genesis Project.’