Transcription (9 page)

And the chalk chatter continues. I’ve grown almost accustomed to it. When they put the highway in near my mother’s house, within a month none of us noticed the sound. Every time a visitor came over, it was the first thing they commented on. We weren’t just ignoring it, we couldn’t hear it. It’s the same way with the chalk voice. When I focus on it, I realize that I can understand distinct syllables of the words now. Maybe my subconscious mind is registering it, but I’m not aware of the words until I really focus.
 

I’m trying to maintain composure so I can simply report on what’s happening. It’s difficult. A compelling part of me insists that the chalk voice is seeping into my brain. The shadows are coming for me, and I’m simply too stubborn to admit that they’re a threat. This is how people die—ignorance and complacency.

When I look up from the paper, my hand is guided into a little sketch. I look back down to see the grinning eyes of a cartoon skull. I cross it out quickly, starting with the eyes.

An idea comes to me. It’s just a random musing, but for some reason I can’t shake it.

Our brains are collections of neurons, firing off little electrical impulses that comprise our thoughts. Men have tried to simulate those circuits, with electronic transistors. The complexity is far too vast to reproduce. The most we can manage is a feeble approximation, not even as competent as an insect at navigating the world. I wonder if it’s possible that there’s something even more fantastic than our mighty brains. I wonder if there’s something so intricate that we couldn’t even comprehend it. Could that thing inhabit this same planet without us knowing? Could there be something else living here that gives us no more thought than we’d give an ant? In its face, peering right into its eyes, we would have no ability to comprehend its existence, just as an ant’s brain surely can’t grasp the meaning of our form.

I know—I sound like a grad student who has gotten high for the first time, but there’s a point to my rambling.

I’m looking at the shadows growing from the cell across the way. I’m listening to the voice that has resolved from the chalk chatter. All I can think is this—this may be an infection, manipulating my brain through visual and auditory stimulation. Whatever this phenomenon is, it’s creeping into me and inspiring me to have very troubling thoughts. I’m not just recalling the crimes of The Big Four, I’m reliving them in my mind’s eye. I’m seeing or inventing details that have never been documented. My hands itch to feel the slippery blood and supple organs. My mouth waters for the taste of flesh.

I laugh aloud.

The sound of my voice echoes on the concrete and reverberates off into the depths of the prison.
 

I can picture what insanity is. It’s a warm bubble in the front of my brain. When I step inside, the interior will be as cold as the depths of space.

CHAPTER 9: BALCONY

J
AMES
RAISED
THE
GLASS
of milk with a shaky hand. He barely got his lips to the glass before the shaking started to spill the fluid down the side. He would have to pour out the rest. It was growing too sour to drink.

He twisted the little rod and the blinds swiveled, giving him a view of the parking lot.

Some years back, he’d gotten into the habit of marking the stories where bad things happened to little kids. He put a tiny red dot in the corner, so he could avoid transcribing them again. The night before, he had frantically flipped through the entries. They all had red dots. His heart had sunk.

It was bad enough reliving tales of torture and murder. When the victim was an innocent child, completely dependent on adults for his or her well-being, the process of documenting their demise was nearly unthinkable. Only by suffering through them—feeling every knife wound, every broken bone, and every bullet—could James stop the crimes from claiming actual victims.
 

He spoke into his glass as he raised the sour milk again. “I’ll kill myself if I have to do another kid story.”

He meant it, too. But he had promised his own suicide countless times. So far, he had always found a reason to turn away.

Out in the parking lot, movement caught his eye. He saw Bo walking with two other people. They headed down the sidewalk towards the rows of parked cars.

As if he sensed the surveillance, Bo turned around. He tented his hand against the morning sun and peered up towards the window where James watched. James backed away from the scrutiny. If he had stayed still, maybe he could have gone undetected.

A few seconds later, Bo knocked at the sliding door.
 

James didn’t know what to do. He looked around for a place to hide and then realized how silly that was. He didn’t need to hide. The blinds and curtains to the balcony were drawn. Bo couldn’t see him. With a second revelation, he realized that it was stupid to hide anyway. Bo didn’t have any evil intentions.

James moved to the door.

“Back up,” he yelled. He peeked around the curtain.

“What?”

“Just back up,” James said.

When Bo was far enough back, James unlocked the door and slipped through. He turned around and locked the door behind himself with his key.

“Hey, man,” Bo said. “I saw you in the window. We’re going for a hike—do you want to come?”

“Oh, thanks, but no,” James said. “I can’t.” He pointed vaguely back at his door.

“The trail’s right on the other side of the parking lot. You won’t be going far. The whole trip is only an hour or two.”

“No, I appreciate it, but I really…” James started to move backwards towards the safety of his own apartment.

“Well, okay. I just thought I would ask. Sometimes it helps to take a step away from yourself, you know? Getting outside can help,” Bo said.

James looked down at the key in his hand. The hand was still shaking. If he wasn’t careful, he would drop it. He looked at himself. He wore shoes, jeans, and a t-shirt. The morning was not too hot yet, and he had at least eleven hours before he had to write again.

“Okay, man,” Bo said. “I’ll see you Tuesday with the next bottle of gin.” He began to climb over the edge.

“Okay,” James said. “Yeah, okay.”

“See you then.”

“No, I mean, okay. I’ll come.”

“Oh! Great. We’ll hang out front and wait for you. My friends, Chloe and Danielle, are going too.”

“Oh,” James said. His brain began to waiver. He pressed on. “I’ll go out through the door and meet you there.”

“Cool.” Bo was over the side and climbing down in a flash.

James found himself back inside. Now that he was in the dark again, the whole exchange seemed like a dream. He couldn’t imagine leaving and going for a hike. What if he twisted an ankle, or had a heart attack? What if he slipped and hit his head? So much could go wrong. Why would he risk it?

“A second ago, I was seriously considering taking my own life,” he said to the stacks of boxes.

He didn’t let himself think about it anymore. He simply moved to the front door and stepped outside. He locked it behind himself and walked to the stairs. James had lied about having agoraphobia, but now that he was outside, he wondered if maybe he did suffer from it. The stairway seemed unstable. He worked his way down the banister, hand over hand, like gravity was untrustworthy. He stood with his legs too wide on the sidewalk in front of the building, as if the ground might shake him loose.

They were waiting. He walked towards them, trying to appear normal.

“Chloe, Danielle, this is James,” Bo said.
 

James panicked. He didn’t see which was which, he had been looking down to make sure that his feet were still firmly planted on the ground.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“James, this is Chloe, and Danielle,” Bo said.

James raised his hand to point towards the one named Chloe and she reached up and took his hand. Danielle took it next. Aside from one being on the left and the other on the right, he had no way to tell them apart. They both had brown hair, little noses, pink lips, and stood about the same height. He scanned down until he got to shoes. One wore brown, and the other white.
 

“Let’s get going,” Bo said. “I know you have limited time, James.”

As they headed across the parking lot, James tried to puzzle out what Bo had meant. He had eleven hours, minus whatever time he could manage to sleep. Why would he have limited time?
 

Bo turned halfway around and talked. “Chloe works with me, over at the Grocery Graveyard. She and Danny are roommates.”

“Oh,” James said.

“Tell them what you do,” Bo said.

“Nothing to tell, really,” James said.

“Come on,” Bo said. “He’s a writer. He writes all night and sleeps all day.”

At the edge of the parking lot, they followed a narrow path of dirt up an embankment. The path cut through an empty lot filled with tall grass.

“Really?” Chloe asked.

“What do you write?”

“It’s technical stuff,” James said. “Boring.”

“I write too,” Danielle said. She slowed down until she was matching his stride. They were both walking in the weeds, on either side of the dirt path. “I do some freelance articles here and there, but I mostly write a blog. What kind of technical stuff do you write?”

“It’s boring,” James said. His hands immediately came together in front of himself. He began to press on the meat of his hand between the knuckles. “What’s your blog about?”

Danielle laughed. “It’s a little dark.”

“A little?” Chloe said. She barked out a laugh.

“Okay, a lot,” Danielle said.

James was having trouble catching his breath by the time they reached the other side of the vacant lot. Bo looked both ways and then dashed across the street. It was a decent thoroughfare, with two lanes going each direction, but there was a gap in the traffic. James ran the best he could. His legs were already starting to get tired.

There was a time in his thirties when James had put a strong emphasis on staying physically fit. He had
 
carved out at least an hour of every day when he would exercise. The world had conspired against him, and made his regime difficult to maintain. A woman had moved into the apartment below him. She complained immediately about any noise he made with his weights or treadmill. He had to watch for her to leave the building before he could safely exercise. One winter, when the shortened days already limited his available time for exercise, he had simply given up.

Now, as he struggled to lift his legs, he realized how far his fitness had declined. Since he wasn’t gaining weight, he thought he was staying in decent shape. His burning legs told a different story.

“You okay?” Bo asked.
 

“I’m fine,” James said. “What do you mean, dark?” he asked Danielle.

She picked up the conversation again as they walked southeast down the side of the road.

“I write little horror stories, like ghost stories. Sometimes they’ll be linked into a series, but they’re most just micro-fiction.”

“Tell him about the Dead,” Chloe said.

“That thing creeps me out,” Bo said.

Danielle looked down at her feet and smiled. “I think I might be done with that one.”

“Oh, no,” Chloe said. “We don’t get to find out what happens to everyone?”

“You haven’t read the latest installment. I was going to post it tomorrow,” Danielle said.

James wanted to ask what they were talking about, but he was breathing too hard to form the sentence. He figured they would explain eventually, and he was right.

“Tell James about it,” Chloe said.

“Ugh,” Danielle said. “Where to start? I wrote this little story a couple years ago about this old house near where I grew up. It was older than the other houses on the block, but other than that it seemed perfectly normal. We had this hurricane, and it knocked out all the power. I was walking with my sister—we were going down to the market after dinner to see if they still had any batteries. The whole street was dark, darker than I had ever seen it before, and the wind was blowing warm and humid. It was really…”

“Get to the good part,” Chloe said.

“Yeah, so whoever was in the house was using a really weak flashlight, or maybe a candle to get around. You could see the light coming out through the windows at strange angles. It was the only light we could see. All the other houses just looked like cardboard cutouts against the clouds, but that house had depth because of the light. It was the only one in three dimensions, you know?”

“So she pictured the people inside,” Chloe said, accelerating the story.

“Right. I pictured the people inside and imagined that when they looked out, they saw a migration of dead souls, moving across the landscape and parting around the house like a river going around a rock,” Danielle said.

“The Lonely Dead,” Chloe said.

“So I named them the Lonely Dead,” she said. “But it turns out I wasn’t talking about the migrating people, I was talking about the people still in the house.”

“It’s like
Little Women
meets
Night of the Living Dead
,” Chloe said.

“I wish,” Danielle said. “People who hate it say it’s like a soap opera with ghosts. It’s a
Ghost Opera
. I wrote a bunch of short stories about the people inside, and their struggle to understand the world they’re in. I like the characters and all, but the story doesn’t seem to have a point. It just rambles on and on. That’s why I’m going to put an end to it.”

“You have to give us closure on everyone,” Chloe said. “I swear, if you could find a way to wrap it up well, you could easily turn it into a book.”

“It’s not long enough,” Danielle said. “How much do you write, James?”

“What do you mean?” he managed to ask between panting breaths.

“Do you write on weekdays, or some days, or every day?”

“Every,” he said.

“Cool. I get that—you have to keep the muscles warm. I’ll do that for about eight or nine months, and then I slow down for a bit. I have to recharge my batteries. But I’m not doing my stories every day. I’ll work for a few days on a freelance piece if I get the work. I like to switch it up so I don’t get too comfortable,” Danielle said. “I write my best stuff when I feel like every sentence has urgency.”