by Amy Cross
“I felt something,” she whispered. “What the hell do all these numbers mean?”
“Have you ever heard of infrasonics?” he asked.
“Sure, but -”
“I'm talking about sounds you can detect but can't hear. Just because something is beyond your usual range of hearing, that doesn't mean your body doesn't process it in some other way. It's a big field of research at the moment, the idea that infrasonic signals around the 19Hz range might be the cause of the sensations that people interpret as ghost sightings. People like Wiseman and Tandy have published some really interesting papers on the subject, but I've been looking into it for my thesis and I've got a few ideas of my own.”
“So it's not a ghost?” she asked, looking through to the hallway. “It's just some kind of creepy vibration?”
“A lot of people think these frequencies explain ghosts, but I think there's a more subtle link. Maybe they just make it easier for us flesh-lumps to notice them. Come on, Rose, how many train lines run past that building?”
“I don't know.”
“Go and look.”
Getting to her feet, Rose hurried to the window and looked out. Through the rain-spattered glass, she counted the lines.
“Four.”
“Four tracks,” he continued, “each with two main rails, so that makes a total of eight long, thin metal bars. Think of what happens when you hit a tuning fork and you hear the vibrations. What if those metal rails are working the same way, but because they're so close to the building, they're interfering with the structure of the place? What if the vibrations from the rails are passing through Marshall Heights, and the building just happens to be built in a way that amplifies those vibrations and turns the entire block of flats into some kind of echo chamber?”
“You're kidding, right?” she asked, turning back to look at the laptop. “The building didn't vibrate when the last train went past.”
“Not on any kind of level that a human can perceive,” he replied, “but I'm talking about other frequencies.”
“So you think this whole situation is just caused by vibrations?”
“No, I think they're just one part of it,” he continued. “A lot of people use infrasonics to explain ghost sightings away and rationalize them, but what if they're linked in some other way? I've been reading a lot of papers by people like Coseby and LeGuerre, about the idea of a barrier that separates different worlds, and I figure that regular, persistent vibrations on certain frequencies might weaken that barrier. If I'm right, the architecture of Marshall Heights just so happens by a complete fluke to have caused enough of those vibrations to weaken the barrier and allow...”
She waited for him to continue.
“And allow what?” she asked nervously.
“And allow things to pass through.”
Six
“Just give me the pills,” Charmian said as she tried to avoid eye contact with Doctor Rogers. “Please, this doesn't need to be a big conversation, just give me the same prescription you gave me last week. That's all I need.”
She waited for a reply, but finally she looked at him and saw the hint of concern in his eyes.
“Please,” she added, almost whimpering with desperation.
“Hold your hand up,” he said after a moment. “Like this.” He raised his right hand and held it straight for a moment.
“Why?”
“Just do it, Charmian.”
She paused for a moment, before raising her hand and holding it above the desk. Unable to keep it stable without a steady tremor, she quickly lowered it again. She knew she'd failed the test.
“Okay?” she asked.
“Not okay.”
“It's just a small shake,” she protested. “Everyone gets them.”
“If you're really taking these pills that I keep prescribing to you -”
“Of course I am!”
“Are you sure you're not doing something else with them?” He stared at her, as if he was trying to unpick the truth from all the lies she'd spun since she walked into his office a few minutes earlier. “You're not selling them, Charmian, are you?”
She shook her head.
“It's illegal to -”
“I'm not selling them!” she said firmly. “I need them!”
“Because I don't think you're taking them,” he continued. “I've looked at your blood-work, I've listened very carefully to what you told me, and I think that for whatever reason, you're coming to me every week and asking for these strong sleeping pills, and then you're going home and using them for something else.” He waited for a response. “I'm your doctor, Charmian. You can tell me anything and I'm legally barred from going to the police or telling anyone.”
“Please,” she whispered, “You wouldn't understand.”
“Try me.”
“You'll think I'm crazy.”
“I don't use words like that. I'm here to help you.”
She stared at him. “What does it mean if you hear voices?”
“In your head?”
“In the world.”
“It can mean a few different things,” he replied, making a note on his pad. “It's certainly something that we need to address, though.”
“But what if other people hear them too?”
He stared at her.
“Sometimes, anyway,” she continued. “What if you know the voice can't really be there, because the person is dead?”
“Are you talking about your late husband?”
“He comes to the door sometimes,” she explained, with tears in her eyes. “I know that sounds crazy, but Beth heard him one time too. She was screaming to go to him, but I held her back. Eventually she started scratching and biting at me, begging me to let her see him one more time. She didn't understand, she hated me for a while because I wouldn't let her go, but I had no choice. I held onto her and made sure she stayed with me.”
“Why did you do that?”
“Because he's been dead for a year!” she hissed, leaning forward in the chair for a moment and wringing her hands together before leaning back again. “Since then...”
Her voice trailed off.
“So you both thought you heard his voice?”
She nodded.
“But only one time?”
“She only heard him once,” she continued, as a tear ran down her cheek. “I hear him most nights, always at the same time.”
“Three in the morning?”
She nodded.
“Is that always when it happens?”
“I can feel something around us most of the day,” she continued, “but three in the morning is when it gets worse. I don't know why, but it's like three is when... It gets stronger.”
“But Beth doesn't hear him anymore?”
Charmian opened her mouth to reply, but finally she looked down and began to wipe her eyes.
“I think I'm starting to understand,” the doctor said after a moment. “Charmian, it's very important that you listen to me. The pills I prescribed for you are not intended for children, they can be extremely dangerous if -”
“I only give her a half-dose,” she said, looking back at him. “I'm not an idiot, I researched it online at the library. I just mix a little in with her bedtime snack.”
“So she doesn't know you're drugging her?”
“It's just temporary, until I work out a way for us to get away from Marshall Heights. When I get a job, I can start looking for somewhere else.”
“Still -”
“The pills work,” she continued. “She sleeps through it. She has no idea that... She thinks that one time it happened was just a bad dream. She was so mad at me for not letting her go to him, so the next morning when she woke up I told her she'd had a horrible nightmare. It took a while, but eventually she started to believe me. I felt so bad for lying to her, but I had no choice.”
“There must be side-effects,” Doctor Rogers replied. “She's nine years old, for God's sake. Nausea, drowsiness, incontinence
, long-term psychological problems...”
“All of those are better than the alternative,” Charmian said firmly. “If she heard her dead father's voice every night it'd drive her insane. I can't let that happen to her.”
“And what about you?” He waited for a reply. “So you've been saving the pills and using them for Beth, at your own expense? Meanwhile, your own emotional and physical health is clearly getting worse with each passing week.”
“I can manage,” she said quietly. “I have to manage, I have to look after Beth. I know you think I'm a bad mother, but I'm just -”
“I don't think you're a bad mother,” he replied, making some more notes on his pad, “but I think you're in a very desperate situation and your attempts to deal with it are misguided. You need real help, and you can't get it by lying to me and then giving your pills to Beth.”
“You can't take her away from me. I won't let you.”
“No-one's talking about taking your daughter away from you,” he continued, “but I am worried about the fact that these voices seem to be persisting. You do know, don't you, that there's no way they can be real? I don't want to seem insensitive, Charmian, but your dead husband simply can't be talking to you in the middle of the night.”
“He wants me to open the door,” she replied, wiping more tears from her cheeks.
“And what happens when you do?”
“I haven't yet,” she whispered. “I don't think it's really him out there, I think it's something that uses his voice. It wants Beth.”
“Why would it want your daughter?”
“That's what scares me,” she continued, “but she's going to be okay. It only happens at night, and so long as I just keep the door shut when it's out there, she's safe. There's no way in hell I'm ever going to let it get to her. I'd rather die first.”
Seven
“What?”
Sitting up in bed, Rose stared across the dark room. Something had woken her, something that had suddenly intruded into her dreams, and now she was alert and worried even though she had no idea what had happened. Instinctively, she reached out and grabbed the knife she'd left on the bedside table, and her first thought was that perhaps the creepy building manager had somehow made his way into the flat.
She opened her mouth to tell him to go to hell.
And then she heard the faint beeping sound coming from the front room.
Checking her phone, she saw that it was exactly 3am. She felt a little relief at the realization that it was the laptop that had woken her, having apparently decided all of a sudden to whir back into life. She'd left the antenna running to collect data during the night, but Ben hadn't warned her that it might start making noises. Climbing wearily out of bed, and muttering a few choice obscenities under her breath, she put the knife back down and headed out into the dark hallway. Reaching out to grab the handle on the living room door, she was about to pull it shut and let the laptop get on with its business when she noticed something flashing on the screen.
Making her way across the room, she stopped and stared at the graph. The antenna was still scanning for electrical and magnetic disturbances, and the line on the screen had rise way beyond its earlier peak and was up around the fifty mark. Bathed in flickering blue-white light, Rose sat on the wooden chair and watched as the line edged higher: fifty-one, fifty-two, fifty-four...
Scrolling back through the event log, she saw that the increased activity seemed to have been building steadily for a couple of hours and was now peaking at 3am. The laptop's clock ticked over to 3:01am, and a moment later the line began to slowly edge down, as if it had now past its maximum level.
Outside, a train could be heard rumbling past the building.
Bringing up Ben's number on her phone, she hit the Call button and waited patiently, and as soon as he answered she began to tell him what was wrong:
“It's over fifty!”
“What?”
“Your program, it almost went off the scale at 3am. What does that mean?”
“It means you're lucky I'm nocturnal,” he replied wearily. “What's the second readout on the main screen?”
“Four.”
“Huh.”
“What does that mean?” she asked.
“It means Offsteder's theory might be right.”
“Off-who?”
“Don't you know anything about interpretational field dynamics?”
“No! Just tell me!”
“Klaus Offsteder was a German scientist who studied infrasonics,” he explained. “His main claim to fame was this series of experiments he carried out in West Germany a few decades ago, measuring the electrical and magnetic readings in various buildings, trying to isolate any element that had a significant effect on the field's frequency. That was all fine and dandy, but his real achievement was that he ended up with all this data that suggested a circadian rhythm to the fluctuations, with the peak readings usually occurring at 3am in any given part of the world. By peak readings, he meant that there seemed to be extra strength to the frequency distortions, which in turn seemed to indicate that the barrier was weakest at that point.”
“In English?”
“3am is when things are most likely to be able to break through.”
“From where?”
“That's the million dollar question. Obviously it's not a free-for-all, 'cause whatever makes it through seems to struggle. There must be some kind of limit to their power, but...” He paused again. “3am is the one constant in all the research. Come on, Rose, don't tell me you've never woken up at three in the morning and just felt like something's not right in the room? Throughout human history, we've always been scared of the dark. Besides obvious reasons linked to predators and whatnot, I think this might be a serious reason, like on a subliminal level humanity is aware that the veil thins at a particular time each night. All those people who reckon midnight is the witching hour are wrong, the real witching hour – or whatever the hell you want to call it – is three in the morning. I think that's what this is, it's the weakening of the barrier between life and death.”
“You know you're seriously freaking me out, don't you?”
“I try my best.”
“So how does this link in with my sister?”
“Beats me. I'm trying to pull up the original plans for Marshall Heights and the topological surveys of the surrounding area. If I can simulate the entire location, along with the train line and anything else that might have an impact, I can try to work out what's going on.”
“You think you can do all that?”
“I can try. It won't be completely accurate, but it might help.”
She stared at the screen for a moment, as the graph continued to slowly descend into the high forties, almost as if the peak had already been passed.
“If 3am is when things can break through,” she said after a moment, “maybe that works both ways.”
“Hold up, I'm running some calculations.”
“Maybe something happened at three in the morning one night,” she continued, “and somehow she got taken.”
“Come again?”
“If dead things can come through to this world, maybe living things can be forced through to... whatever the hell is on the other side.”
“That's a bit of a leap, Rose.”
“All doors are two-way, aren't they?”
“God,” he replied, “I remember when we first met, you totally dismissed all my crazy ideas. I guess I finally loaned you enough books to change your mind, huh?”
“I really, really hope I'm wrong,” she continued, “but it's the only theory I've got so far. I've got no internet here, but I'll find somewhere tomorrow. Can you email me anything that might be relevant to all this? Explain things like I'm five, 'cause this is way, way beyond anything I've got experience with.” She paused for a moment. “If even a tenth of this is possible, Megan was getting mixed up in something that was completely beyond her understanding.”
“Finally,” Ben rep
lied, “all those years of reading dope science magazines is paying off.”
“I should have come with her,” Rose added. “This is all my fault. I could tell something was up with this place, but I had my exams and other things going on, and I thought Megan would be...” She paused. “If something's happened to her, it's all my fault.”
“It's precisely none of your fault.”
“If I'd been here with her, I'd have been able to run these tests in front of her. I should never have let her come up here alone, I should have postponed my exams...”
“And she'd have told you to stop messing about,” he replied, “like she always does.”
“I could have done something,” she continued, before glancing at the front door. “She's a good person, she's better than me. She mentioned something about being told not to leave the flat at 3am. Someone told her, I think it was the building manager guy.”
“Sounds relevant.”
“Hang on.”
Wedging her phone under her chin, she picked up the laptop and carried it through to the hallway. Once she had the front door open, she stepped out onto the freezing cold walkway and looked both ways, and the graph on the laptop began to rise again. A gentle, cold breeze blew along the walkway, ruffling Rose's hair and causing her t-shirt and tracksuit bottom to ripple in the wind. With just a few lights visible in the distance, and the sound of sirens ripping through the night air, she felt for a moment as if she was on a balcony overlooking the end of the world.
“Rose?” Ben said after a moment. “Talk to me, Rose.”
“The signal is stronger out here,” she said as she balanced the laptop on her knee and took the phone from under her chin.
“Are you out of the flat?”
“I'm on the walkway that runs along the front. It's open-air on one side.”
“Whatever's happening,” Ben replied, “it doesn't penetrate the flats so well. It's more in the communal areas. I guess that makes sense, those are the empty spaces where there's more room for something to stretch out. I guess the flats themselves are more densely packed with psychic energy, whereas the corridors are more transient.”