Static!

by Michael R Collings

  The cyclopean eye that was the attic window caught the final gleam of sunset and fractured the light into scarlet shards, throwing them back at Nick. They seemed baleful and malevolent. Sentient. Evil.

  Unblinking, the house watched Nick, its canting shutters transforming in his imagination into cancerous lesions on the mottled flesh of its wreath-red siding. Even the ragged line of shingles jutting over the eaves seemed alert, patient, preposterously alive.

  He stood barefoot in the dying grass, armed only with a book, already having to consciously suppress an irrational but compelling urge to fling the book through that upper window as hard as possible, if only to watch the glaring redness shatter, fall inward into the dust of the dead attic, and be replaced by blackness, blankness, and night. Even dark, staring blindness would be preferable to the glow that seemed focused on him.

  Something further down the street caught his attention. From the corner of his eye he saw an old couple walking in the dusk. She was supporting him. He seemed frail and fragile, his face almost transparent in the increasing gloom. His arm wrapped around hers, his shoulder rested on hers. She was the pillar, he the vine.

  They were watching Nick from where they stood motionless on the sidewalk across the street.

  He realized with a shock how odd he must look—wild-eyed no doubt, half naked, hunching near the shadows of the hedge, clutching a book and staring like an idiot at the sagging roofline of an old house.

  The couple shifted slightly but made no move to continue their walk. They just stared.

  Finally, Nick moved. Turning around and retreating to his own house might have seemed suspicious, so he continued on to Payne’s, striding up the steps with a force and confidence he really didn’t feel. Keep up the image, you know.

  When he reached the door, he glanced surreptitiously over his shoulder.

  They were gone—or at least going. They had already shuffled past the driveway of the house opposite and were staring ahead. Most likely they had already forgotten that they had seen him.

  He could turn back now, slip across the lawn and back into his own....

  That was stupid! Letting a trick of the light scare him. He had Payne’s key, Payne’s permission, even his blessing. And he had nothing better to do—no, to be honest, he had nothing else to do that night.

  So he slid the key into the lock and swung the door open.

  It was cool, just this side of cold inside. There must have been some kind of air conditioning, although Nick had never seen a unit on the roof or out back. Thinking back, he realized at that instant that Payne’s place had usually seemed cooler than his own, but only marginally. Nothing like this. Unless it was just the differential between the house’s normal temperature and the oven outside.

  But tonight, the air felt downright cold. Especially against Nick’s thin T-shirt. His skin prickled. For a moment, again, he considered going back to his place. Just to put on something warmer, a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt, he told himself. But he closed the door instead and stepped through the entry into the living room.

  It was pitch black inside. He didn’t know what else he should have expected. With those curtains, it would have been dark even in the middle of the day. And at dusk....

  But he did know where the light switch was.

  Shifting Christine to his other hand, he felt along the wall.

  And touched something cold and damp and....

  The wall.

  The plaster seemed super-chilled, clammy, almost resilient, like newly dead flesh.

  But it was only the wall.

  He touched the light switch plate and flicked the power on.

  The light was blinding. It glared against white walls, white drapes, white furniture, white carpet. Everything reflected light except the black chess pieces gleaming like ebony in the center of the room.

  He hurried through the room, feeling out of place in his grubby shorts and old T-shirt, once blue but now a decaying gray, so faded that the writing—“SMILE: It Increases Your Face Value”—had almost faded into the background. This room demanded crispness, sharpness, creases in trousers, spit-polished shoes, and shining brass belt buckles.

  The hall seemed more inviting—or perhaps merely less overtly intimidating. It was shadowed, with only an angle of light piercing it from the living room. He went into the kitchen first, flicking on that light as he walked through the doorway.

  Whiteness here, too. Payne had apparently put everything away. There was nothing on the work counter, no stray bottles or solitary glasses left over from a quick drink before the trip. But at least there were shadows here, angles and patches from the tables and chairs, from the handles on the cabinets. There were enough, at least, to make the place seem less unapproachable. Even the television monitor, hanging dead and silent from its bracket, seemed neutral.

  Nick crossed to the refrigerator, opened the door, and rummaged through the shelves. Payne wouldn’t mind. Besides, there was almost nothing there except some milk, half a carton of eggs, a couple of slices of bacon next to invisible underneath the coating of fat on the plastic packaging, and a few cans of beer.

  He grabbed one of the latter and left the kitchen, leaving the light on and letting the fridge door swing shut by itself. He was in the hall before he heard the soft whump of door meeting insulated rubber. He shivered.

  That had been the first, the only sound in the place since he had entered. It rang unnaturally loud in his ears, suddenly as threatening as the attic window had seemed. He shuddered away a temptation to turn. Instead, he continued on to the Control Room.

  Inside the room, the walls seemed wonderfully alive with colors and shapes, especially after the sterility of the other rooms. DVD cases and video machines, filing boxes, swirls of color everywhere blurred in the sudden light as he flipped the switch on.

  He popped the tab on the beer can and tilted it up. The coolness was startling against his lips, even in the chilly air. For some reason, all of his senses seemed different—either blunted or preternaturally sharpened, he couldn’t decide which. His skin crawled with the chill, his lips with the biting cold of the beer. His throat hurt from the cold.

  His ears hummed—it was the sound of the refrigerator in the next room as the motor kicked in. He swallowed hard, gulping the beer, emptying the can in a single breath. He tossed it into a small wastebasket in the corner, wiping his lips afterward with the bottom of his T-shirt.

  Payne kept his files on a narrow shelf on the opposite side of the room. He had managed to check through most of the films and had given Nick a rough orientation as to where to find what. Nick pulled the master list down and checked through entries until he located Christine. After that, it took a full ten minutes to find the DVD. Payne’s system—or The Greer’s, more likely, since he probably hadn’t changed it much—was not easy. Nick might have had as much luck if he had simply gone from shelf to shelf reading out titles. But he finally found it, slipped it into the unit Payne most often had him use (not the one that acted up that first time), and left the room, closing the door gently behind him. Nick didn’t want to let it slam.

  He made his way to the viewing room. It felt empty without Payne. Instead of settling into the armchair that had become tacitly his, he stretched out on the sofa, relaxing, enjoying the sensation of the rough texture against his bare legs and through his T-shirt.

  He crossed his hands behind him, pillowing his head on them. The angle was perfect.

  He closed his eyes for a moment, breathing deeply and enjoying the quiet, the coolness, the stillness. What’s to worry? Stupid to let yourself get jittery.

  The monitor crackled and faded from black to gray and finally to silver. Colors rose and separated into shapes. The film began.

  Nick had dropped his copy of Christine on the floor. He thought about picking it up, but it seemed too much effort at the time. Later, when he noticed any major divergences, he could always lean over and retrieve it. Not now. He relaxed, waiting for the action to begi
n.

  Only much later did he realize that he had not touched the monitor. Somehow, it knew which room he was in. It had turned itself on.

  The film was both a pleasure and a disappointment. There was much of the movement and direction of the novel—transporting it to California weakened it, though. The haunting narrative needed the snow, the coldness, the darkness of King’s original vision.

  Still, Carpenter’s version moved well. Nick gradually forgot his first intention—to compare the film with the text—and just laid back and enjoyed watching it. By the time the film was halfway over, he was almost drowsing. The room was just cool enough to keep him minimally awake. More than once he considered rummaging through Payne’s closets to find a blanket or robe or something but the chill never quite penetrated enough to make him move.

  Even so, he must have drifted off at least once, because suddenly, characters were standing in a junk yard, a hunk of crushed metal crouched in front of them. One piece squeaked to its original position and the film ended.

  He closed his eyes, wishing he could just stay there for the rest of the night. He had done that often enough at home—fallen asleep in his recliner late at night and awakened stiff and unrested the next morning. But Payne’s sofa was so comfortable, and Nick felt so heavy, so tired....

  A flutter of cold air washed across his face.

  At first, half asleep, he thought that he must have left a window open, probably the bedroom window, I always sleep with it open and in the winter the draught through the house can get bitter.

  Then with a suddenness that unaccountably made his pound and his breath tighten, he remembered where he was. There was no open window here. Nick didn’t even know for sure whether windows could open in The Greer’s house—he had never seen one open, and besides, with the sensitivity of the equipment, stray dust would have been unthinkable.

  The flutter returned, more insistent. Nick shivered. On the screen the credits were still running.

  He shivered again, feeling the chill bite into flesh and bone through the thin material of his clothes. Chafing one arm with his hand, he sat up, stretched...and froze.

  The credits had finished.

  For a second the screen was blank, just a flickering pattern of black and silver.

  Then the second film began. He stared without thought for several minutes, unable to move, unable to think. The cold intensified, raising goose bumps on his arms and legs, then running in lightning flashes up and down his spine. He felt like someone—something—was watching him with as icy an intensity as he felt toward the screen. He would have turned to look behind him except that he couldn’t force his eyes from the screen.

  The film was grainy. The colors were so flat and washed out that they suggested one of those persistent films from the late sixties that continually made it onto the Saturday afternoon movie programs in spite of their faded, untrue colors—but even the sixties had never produced anything like this, Nick was certain. The lighting was bad as well, casting shadows so stark as to become abstracted. A quick glance at the screen might almost have left a casual viewer with the impression of an art film, consciously (if not self-consciously) distorting reality for the sake of image. But this was no art film. Texture, color and lighting were serving an altogether different master this time. There was no missing what the film was about. Limbs, naked limbs and torsos entwined like vines grown mad and rank, curling and twisting and swirling in an open sensuality that imparted more agony than ecstasy. Nick couldn’t tell how many figures were involved—men and women writhing and coiling like so many maddened serpents. It was morally repulsive, openly sexist, horrifyingly exploitative...and repellently, undeniably fascinating. He watched.

  The cold increased. He felt as if at any instant he would see his next breath outlined like a cotton puff in the chill of the room—yet the actions on the screen increased, heated, became feverish and frantic. He could barely breathe. He felt his own flesh, his own body responding, heating, increasing the differential between it and the surrounding air.

  One of the men thrust. For an instant the camera focused on the angular planes of his back where muscles suddenly tightened to outline the row of spinal nodules that rippled beneath his damp flesh. There was a moment of relaxation, followed by an even greater tightening, then an abrupt shift in camera angle—at first Nick could not figure out quite what he was seeing—and the entire screen exploded into scarlet as blood ruptured from the man s chest and belly even as he rode to his climax.

  It must have been some kind of hideous signal. Within seconds all of the intertwined bodies were sheathed in blood, sliding in death agonies onto thin sheets of blood that glistened like oil and glinted evilly in the angular lighting of the screen.

  Nick screamed.

  Inside him something tore, ripped through layers of muscle and tissue, like an alien struggling for freedom. He felt sick. He tried to vomit but nothing came. Instead, he doubled up in an agony that burned through sexuality, burned through pulse and breath. Through it all, the house swirled chilling air around him, playing in perverse whorls and arabesques along his back, his arms and legs.

  He woke.

  He was lying stretched on the sofa, facing away from the monitor. For a second he stared at the intricately woven white fabric inches from his eyes, tracing patterns of light and shadow as something behind him flickered light and dark. A button set deeply into the fabric expanded until it filled the limits of his vision. It became his universe. A world of intricately woven white flickered with reflected shadows—but no red thank god no red he intoned mindlessly.

  He expelled his breath, shuddering, only then realizing that he had been holding it pent inside. He was bathed in sweat, his clothing damp and clammy. The night air felt chilly but no longer cold.

  There was no sound.

  Slowly Nick turned to face the opposite wall.

  The screen was blank except for the flat gray luminance that usually marked the end of a film.

  Nick leaped up and ran from the room, covering the length of the hall in two strides. He flung open the door to the control room and entered, crossed, and jabbed viciously at the eject button on the DVD player. Next to his finger, a red light glowed balefully.

  He pulled the disc out. It was Christine.

  He jammed it back in, punched “play,” and watched the monitor over his shoulder. It showed nothing but black and silver. He pressed “play” again.

  For a moment the screen remained blank, then Christine played again, but backwards this time. The credits rolled from top to bottom. There was no sound.

  Nick stood there, transfixed, until the hulk of crushed metal appeared, one piece collapsing back into the ruin.

  He reached out to try fast forward.

  The machine shorted out. Blue sparks arced from the metal, bit into his wrist, curled around his hand.

  Once, years before, Nick had worked at a scout camp. During one campfire ceremony, a brainless idiot cunningly disguised as a staff member spilled a can of gasoline that he had smuggled into the campfire bowl to avoid the embarrassment of not being able to start a fire with three hundred kids watching. The spilled fuel ignited and flickered like a hungry serpent along dry leaves and browning needles. Ten or so of the senior staff members—not one of them over seventeen—had scrambled to the fire, kicking dust and dirt to suffocate the flames. In his haste, the same feckless idiot had kicked the can again. What little gasoline remained in it had swirled out at Nick’s feet. In seconds flames licked at his legs, played along the stiff ribbing of his knee-length hiking socks. He could remember looking down, seeing the flames, not being able to move, to think. He could only wait for the pain.

  It never came. The flames were fume-fed. They rose to his knees, but only insubstantially. They were mere wisps of color and light devoid of heat. When the fire finally died, Nick was standing there staring down at his legs.

  It was the same here.

  The blue fire swirled around his hand but did not touch
it. He stared, hypnotized by the patterns and the threat.

  When he moved, when he jerked his hand away, the pain came.

  He yelped and jumped backward and almost tripped. Somehow he stayed on his feet and ran through the hallway, the living room, out the front door and onto the lawn, now a stretch of blackness in the night.

  Behind him, he heard something.

  Whirling, he saw the door close. He heard metal on metal, locking mechanism tumblers closing on each other, and he knew that if he were to climb those stairs again and put his hand to the cold metal knob and turn, nothing would happen. The door was locked. The house was dark. The fire in the attic eye had long since died.

  Nick ran across the lawn, his feet rasped by harsh grass and weeds. He pushed through the hedge, feeling spines of dead growth plucking at his shorts and abrading his legs. At the back door, he paused and looked back across into Payne’s yard. In the single window at the back of Payne’s place, a sliver of silver light played across dying leaves.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  When Nick woke the next morning, his heart was racing like he had had a nightmare. He was panting. When he sat up, he saw that he was lying on top of the bedspread. The thin cloth was stained with dirt. His feet were tender, almost painful.

  He was naked. In a pile beside him, his T-shirt and shorts lay like the discarded skins of molting snakes, coiled in and around and through each other. He stared, frightened and fascinated, trying to remember another kind of swirling and entwining that lay just beneath the surface of memory.

  For a second, it seemed that the memories would flood back.

  He jumped up, wincing as his feet hit the floor, and dressed hurriedly in jeans and a pair of comfortable old sandals. By the time he had finished, he was calmer.

  It had only been a dream; what else could it be, after all. This wasn’t the movies, where machines came to life and tried to get people in viciously inventive ways.