Apparitions

-2024 IPPY Gold Medal in short fiction-

“Readers looking for a psychological thriller with a purposeful message will find it in Apparitions. It is quietly riveting, emotionally tumultuous, and with it, Sybil Baker offers a new kind of feminist novel.”

-Nicole Yucaba for Tupelo Quarter

The Picture Vanishes
When Simone meets Agnes in the first grade, she becomes convinced that her brother Glenn, who died the previous year in Vietnam, has been reincarnated in her new friend. After a photo of Glenn and Simone disappears, Simone is convinced Agnes has stolen it, but doesn’t confront her. Connected for reasons they don’t fully understand, Simone and Agnes remain best friends until high school, when Agnes’s popularity increases at the expense of Simone’s. Simone is determined win Agnes’s back, even if it means stealing a picture as well.

Apparitions
After Simone learns that her ex-husband Guy has died unexpectedly at the age of fifty, her only regret is that she didn’t expose his affairs when she had the chance. But when a woman asks her to help her disrupt his Celebration of Life planned in Northern Cyprus, Simone wonders if she has a last chance to reveal Guy’s hypocrisy. Accompanied by her best friend, Simone arrives in Cyprus; however, the circumstances surrounding Guy’s death become increasingly mysterious. Worse, since Guy’s death, Simone has been haunted by Guy and the ghosts of her loved ones warning her of impending danger. As the Celebration approaches and Simone’s mental state deteriorates, she must decide who she should trust and who she must betray in order to save herself.