Tales from The Lake 5

by Tales from The Lake

  Kyle’s still asleep when it starts, but even though he’s previously managed to stay dormant through both fire alarms and fender benders, one thing you’ve always been able to count on is that he’ll jolt upright at any hint of distress from you. So he stumbles into the bathroom to hold your shoulders and wipe your face with a damp washcloth, and only after flushing away the aftermath does he finally notice what you’ve been dealing with. “Holy shit,” he blurts, his whole face twisting. “That is freakin’ rancid!”

  “Uh huh,” you mutter, light-headed. Your tongue feels bile-burnt.

  “Okay, that’s it. We’re going downstairs now.”

  “Gimme a minute. Please.”

  He nods, but continues, like he just can’t help himself: “I mean, God—anybody’d have a right to complain, and you’re pregnant, for Christ’s sake . . . ” Here he trails off, though. “ . . . is that music?”

  You listen for a long moment, then shake your head, carefully. “Can’t tell,” you reply, at last.

  ***

  Down at the front desk, the security guard looks sympathetic, but you get there really isn’t much she can do, at least right now. “I can text the concierge,” she offers, “but he’d probably tell you to just go back to bed. I know for a fact he isn’t going to sign off on me calling the cops, not this late. Not over a smell and some music.”

  “I thought you had noise disturbance by-laws,” Kyle says.

  “They’re more like standards. Besides, you said you didn’t even really know where it’s coming from.”

  “Either #766, #770 or #678, if it really is coming up through the floor. That’s just logic, right?”

  She shrugs, helpless. “Have you . . . spoken to any of the people in those units? Before this, I mean.”

  “Isn’t that your job?”

  “Um, not really? I’m just here to accept packages and patrol the halls, then note stuff down in my log so real people can deal with it, you know? I can’t just go around banging on random people’s doors, not in the middle of the night.” She pauses. “Why don’t you record it?”

  “How the hell do you record a smell?” Kyle demands.

  “No, I meant the music. It’s loud, right? Loud enough to wake you up? Play it for the concierge. That might help.”

  More freaky than loud, but it’s not a bad idea.

  ***

  Having made this commitment, it only makes a sort of sense that three more days go by before anything worth recording actually seeps through the walls: first a low beat whose rhythm skips like a diseased heart’s, more felt than heard, followed by strings run through a resonator so their notes bend and warp together (sawing, thrumming, skirling) and a vague suggestion of woodwinds underneath, breath-huffing. You’re alone on the living room couch, waiting; Kyle manfully fought to stay up the first two nights with you, but his fatigue the next day got him a dressing-down from his manager, so you’ve closed the bedroom door on his heavy snores.

  Right, left or hall? The stench seems to point you forward, towards the window and the street below, which is ridiculous, but you grab up your phone and fumble with it nonetheless, triggering the recording app—then pause, realizing there’s a voice woven in with the noise, now. Not quite singing, not quite chanting, but definitely human speech, if not any language you can recognize. Although . . .

  Pressing both ear and phone to the wall, holding your breath to keep out the stink. If you could just hear a bit more clearly, then maybe you could figure out why there’s a pause every minute or so—the voice repeating itself, chanting similar syllables with rising intensity. Angrier? More frustrated? You close your eyes and lean in, straining to make sense of it. Just repetition after repetition, a loop or round, some sort of experimental project gone wrong: John Cage by way of Yoko Ono, or one of those ten-hour-long white noise performance videos people post on YouTube.

  Something coils inside of you, draws taut, seem to squeeze. Is that a kick? Too early, you’d think; last ultrasound showed the creature you sometimes (though only to yourself, in your head) refer to as “Ida Junior” flipping around like some transparent minnow, all head and tail, a bare sketch of potential humanity. But—

  —here you fade out for a moment, then blink, forcing your eyes to focus; the phone’s display says ten minutes’ve gone by, more than enough to be getting on with. So you close out, save the sound-file, plug the phone back in to charge before curling up in the crook of Kyle’s arm. Sleep comes down on you hard, all over, like turning off a light switch.

  It’s not ‘til your phone’s trilling ring drags you up out of the black that you realize just how tired you must have been; when you’re able to get it to your ear and answer, it turns out to be Kyle, already waiting downstairs with the concierge, so you shove yourself into clothes and stumble out the door to join him. Halfway to the elevator, you look around and nearly fall, disoriented almost to the point of fresh nausea: where the fuck are you? You don’t recognize anything. The doors have changed, the carpet’s changed, the lights all have new shades . . .

  Oh, right. The renovation. Fuck. You have to shut your eyes again and take a deepish, centring breath, trying not to choke on glue fumes.

  ***

  In the concierge’s office, Kyle recaps the situation while you open up your recording app, pressing play at his nod. For a second, nothing happens, sending a spike of cold through your gut—maybe you dreamed the whole thing, and the file contains only dead air. But no, thankfully: it’s all there. Eerie, atonal music and unintelligible ranting fills the office while Kyle and the concierge sit bolt upright simultaneously, both looking poleaxed. “Holy Toledo,” Kyle says, after a beat. “The singing’s new.”

  “Sounds more like an argument to me, except there’s only one voice. And it goes on for almost fifteen minutes,” you tell them.

  The concierge stares at the phone, finally shaking his head as if snapping awake. “Okay, enough—stop it, please.” Takes a couple of tries, but eventually, the racket falls silent. “And you’ve been hearing this every night?”

  “Almost,” Kyle corrects him. “And always after three. Right, Ida?” You nod. “First the smell, then the music. Now, this.”

  The concierge’s eyes narrow. “But you can’t tie down the exact point of origin.”

  “Not really. It . . . seems to move.”

  “Well, that doesn’t make any sense.”

  No, eh? you think, but don’t say. Hearing the echo of that weird babble resonate through your head as though the file’s still playing, that note of almost . . . pleading? Begging? All authority discarded in a moment, gone from slave-master issuing orders to a tearful groveller, urgent but servile, almost hysterical: glossolalic prayers vomiting out in a gush, hot with guilty regret. A supplicant worshiping in vain at some empty, silent church.

  Answer me, oh answer, please. Don’t leave me here, all alone. Please, please, please, please.

  The concierge rubs his forehead, wincing. “All right, at any rate—disturbing though that is, until you can identify the apartment, there’s a limit to what we can do.”

  Kyle frowns. “What? Why?”

  “The units are the owners’ property, not ours—we can’t go in without permission unless it relates specifically to pre-contracted maintenance or verified property damage, any more than a cop can go in without a warrant or exigent circumstances. Unless you’ve heard anything that sounds like someone actually being injured . . . no?” He raises his eyebrows; you feel your face heat. “I’m sorry.”

  Kyle lets out a sharp, annoyed breath. “Could you at least have the night guard walk our floor around three a.m., or something? I mean, if we can hear all this, it’s gotta be audible outside. I’m surprised nobody else has complained, considering the last tenants’ meeting memo said every unit’s been filled.”

  “All the units are sold,” the concierge corrects him. “Not everyone’s taken up residence yet—some people are holding off until the renovations are done. And no, I can’t tell you whi
ch units are empty and which aren’t. Security policy.”

  “So what can you do?” you finally demand.

  “I can help you fill out a complaint form.”

  ***

  “Four hundred bucks a month in maintenance fees, and this is what it gets us,” Kyle grumbles, making you some more ginger tea. “I mean, what the hell? You need sleep, for Christ’s sake. You’re pregnant.”

  Like I need reminding, you think—but he’s frustrated, you get it. Which reminds you, in turn, of how you felt at the very end of last night’s recording session, listening to your freaky neighbour’s invocation wind up, or down: that coiling squeeze, that phantom kick. Ida Junior lies quiet under your seeking hand now, as you fumble your phone back out and skip forward to the part of the sound-file the concierge didn’t want to hear, the part you lost when you fell asleep. You tell yourself it’s to see if you can hear anything that might help identify the point of origin, but really it’s just the same impulse that slows drivers down at traffic accidents, an inability to look away whenever the civilized world’s paper-thin scrim of safety strains and tears, even just a little.

  You watch the file numbers count down to the end, the voice decaying into a wavery, barely-audible rasp that stops about ten seconds before the music itself does, seemingly on the verge of weeping. Kyle puts two steaming mugs of tea on the coffee table and sits down beside you, listening in silence ‘til it’s done. “‘Such a quiet fellow, all the neighbours said,’” he announces, at length, and sighs. “Jesus. Guess they can’t exactly vet for mental health before they rent to people, though, can they? And everybody has to live somewhere.”

  “I’m not so sure—whoever that is—is crazy, though,” you reply, without planning to. Then add, embarrassed, as Kyle’s eyebrows shoot up: “I just . . . if it was OCD, or some kind of mania, it’d sound different, wouldn’t it? More disconnected, autonomic.” You hold up the phone. “This guy means what he’s doing. He’s got a reason for it.”

  “And . . . that would be?”

  Without warning, a new noise suddenly intrudes—a muffled yell, sharp enough to make you both jump. The file wasn’t done, after all. Then there’s a beat, a gasp followed by choking coughs, followed in turn by a laugh: loud, but not at all unpleasant. Delighted, actually; almost gleeful. The kind of sound somebody makes when at last, after long, frustrating effort, something works.

  It trails off, peters out. Thirty seconds after that, the sound file finally does end, for real.

  You and Kyle just stare at each other over the resulting silence, mouths open.

  ***

  The apartment’s empty when you wake. Sunlight’s flooded the place, high and warm; it must be close to noon, if not after. You squint around for your phone, which has slid from your hand down to the couch. A red circle on your messaging app’s icon announces a waiting text—Kyle, sent around seven-thirty. Tried to wake you before I left and couldn’t, it says. Figured you needed the sleep. Text me back when you get this. Love.

  You yawn, stretch, and realize with some surprise that for once you actually don’t feel like complete crap; a few aches from the poor posture, sure, but the ever-present fatigue and nausea are almost completely gone. You feel more alert and clear-headed than you have in weeks. Which, of course, sets off its own spiral of worry: don’t stroke victims sometimes get a sudden rush, just before the blowout? You think you remember reading that somewhere, you’re almost certain—

  Jesus, Ida, get a grip.

  Was this a skip night, then, or did you actually sleep through the cacophony, for once? At the idea, disquiet settles back onto you—maybe this is your new normal, the smell, the music, the raving. That infectious craziness, seeping through your walls at random. But then again, how different would that really be, when you think about it? Nowhere’s 100% safe, not really; nothing’s guaranteed. People get shot in high-end shopping malls; kids wander away in their underwear on winter nights and freeze to death, right in the middle of downtown. Somebody with all the privilege and opportunity in the world can turn to black magic one day, decide to kill strangers because an angel appeared in their brain and told them to, for no reason but neurological meltdown. And the only thing you can predict is that their neighbours won’t ever see it coming, because they simply can’t conceive of it.

  My child won’t grow up in a world like that, you swear to yourself, knowing full well that she—or he—most definitely will. Knowing there’s basically shit-all point nothing you can do about it, except in the tiniest of all possible increments. And so:

  “We have to find that guy,” you tell Kyle, the minute he walks through the door at the end of the day. “Like, tonight. If they can’t do anything then it’s obviously up to us, before it’s too late. Yes?”

  “Um . . . ”

  “Say ‘yes,’ Kyle.”

  He looks at you, pauses, then nods—uncomfortable, yet resigned. He can see your face, after all. He knows your mind’s made up.

  “Okay, Ida,” he replies.

  ***

  Three again. Always after three. The time of night when most people die, isn’t it, or at least have heart attacks—when the blood pressure drops lowest; that’s the rumour, anyway. Or maybe that’s 4:00 a.m., instead.

  But tonight it ends, you think, words shaping themselves bravely, not having the least idea how to make them come true.

  “What do we do when we find the guy, if we find him?” Kyle asks, as if reading your mind.

  You shrug. “Knock,” you reply. “Ask him to stop.”

  “What if he won’t?”

  A long pause. “Then at least we tried,” you say, at last.

  You wait what seems like a surprisingly long time until the smell’s bad enough to track, then follow it carefully all around the apartment until you have a clear consensus: from the south, this time, through the front door, which Kyle carefully locks behind you both. “You really think somebody’s going to rob us in the middle of the night?” you ask.

  “Weirder things have happened.”

  True enough, you guess. They’re happening right now.

  You haven’t been out all day, so it’s not as big a surprise as it might otherwise be to realize they finally must have laid down the new carpet. What is somewhat surprising is the way it looks, however—white lines on black, Doppler effect weirdness like a tangle of dying neurons rocketing off into nowhere. It makes the halls seem twice as long, the corners sharper, oddly slanted. The pile’s so soft your feet make no sound.

  You knock on #770. Nothing. #766 has TV noise coming out of it, obviously disturbing the ever-barking dog in #765, which sounds like it’s about to choke on its own spit. #771, nothing; #767, nothing. That’s your end of the hallway done, your immediate circle of neighbours.

  “Should we go further?” Kyle asks, frowning. “I mean . . . how could we even smell it, if it’s coming from that far away?”

  “Because it’s always been coming through the building’s main vents, not from next door at all? You tell me.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Yeah, me either.”

  Which is when the music starts, of course, dim (and far away?) enough that you can barely hear it—more feel it, registering inside you like another heartbeat, diseased and erratic. A series of chords so wrong they make you want to vomit.

  “It’s worse,” you exclaim, and now it’s Kyle’s turn to nod. “How can it be worse?”

  “I don’t know, Ida.”

  “Oh, my God. Where’s it even coming from now?”

  “Uh . . . over there?” He waves vaguely. “Want to check it out?”

  “Want” would be a strong word. But he’s already moving, just as the sound of chanting, ranting, adds itself to the mix. That goddamn sound.Didn’t get what you wanted the other night, huh? You wonder, not knowing in the least who you’re supposed to be addressing—not yet, anyhow. Is there more to do? When’s enough ever going to be enough?

  Oh man, just stop, all right? You su
ddenly find you want to call after Kyle as he slips around the corner up ahead, disappearing from view, hopefully only momentarily. While you still can. Stop, before it’s—

  (too late)

  But on he goes, and on you do too, accelerating ‘til your lungs hurt. ‘Til your real pulse overcomes the music’s at last, rising up and lodging in your throat, making it hard to breathe.

  “We should go back,” you say, out loud.

  “Why?”

  “Because . . . shit, Kyle, this is taking too long. I don’t even know where we are.” You glance around, scanning for anything you recognize, and failing. “I mean—have you ever been here before?”

  “On this part of our floor? No, but who cares? It’s always been here. We just live on a different piece of the exact same place.”

  “Is it? It doesn’t even look like our building anymore.”

  “The renovation just hasn’t reached down here yet, that’s all.”

  “Kyle, it doesn’t even look like it used to look. It doesn’t look like anywhere.”

  “Well . . . ” He stops, glances. “ . . . no, that’s dumb. We passed our garbage chute, remember? Right back there.”

  “Before we went through that double-door?” He nods. “Okay, but how long ago was that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Me either.”

  You both stop, staring at each other, breath ragged. For a moment, you can see it on his face: he gets it. He wants to go back, he just can’t say it—so you have to, show fear, get hysterical. Freak out, the way crazy pregnant women are expected to. Just push hard enough, he’ll give in.

  Then the fucking music starts up again, making his eyes harden. Making him look like a stranger.

  “I’m done with this,” he tells himself. “I’m done, I can’t . . . no, this is it. Just stop it, goddamn it.” Raising his voice: “Just fucking stop, you fucker!”

  You grab his sleeve. “Kyle, I’m scared, please don’t—”

  “Ida, c’mon! We can’t live like this. You have to sleep.”