Static!

by Michael R Collings

  “This be all?” the man asked as Payne set the soft drinks on the counter.

  “Yeah.”

  “Sale on the six-packs, you know. Two-forty-nine each. Singles are sixty-five. Almost cheaper in the long run to get another six-pack.”

  “That’s okay. This’ll do.” The clerk nodded and began punching buttons on the register. “Three thirty-five.”

  Payne pulled out his wallet and withdrew three singles.

  “Just a minute,” he said, dropping the crumpled bills on the counter. “I’ve got the change in my pocket.” He started to reach into his pocket, then realized with embarrassment that the material was stretched so tight that his hand wouldn’t slip in. He knew he had some change in there. He looked down and could see the coins outlined against the denim; but he simply couldn’t get to them.

  He glanced up.

  The man was still watching him. He reached into the wallet again and pulled out another bill.

  “Sorry. No change.”

  The man rang up the payment, counted out change and handed it to Payne. He stuffed the coins as far as he could into his pocket, aware that the serrated edge of one quarter stuck out half an inch.

  The man bagged the drinks. Payne picked up the bag and started out.

  “Hey, man,” the clerk called as Payne reached for the door. He turned.

  “Yeah?”

  “You didn’t slip or anything out there in the parking lot, did you?”

  “What?”

  “Well, you’re limping pretty bad, like you’re in real pain, and I wouldn’t want the store to get sued because you fell in the parking lot or anything.”

  “No. I didn’t fall. Polio. When I was a kid.”

  “What?” For an instant, the clerk’s eyes widened.

  “Pulled the muscle. Bad break when I was a kid.”

  “That’s not….”

  “It doesn’t really hurt,” Payne said quickly. “Just looks that way when it acts up.”

  “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean.... I was just worried....”

  “It’s all right. It wasn’t that bad”—like hell it wasn’t, the pain, the twisting, the hours of therapy, and the uncertainty of not knowing whether the legs would ever bear weight again or whether the disease would turn really nasty and stuff her into an iron lung for the rest of her life but she beat it by god just like she could beat everything even death itself—“and it was a long time ago.”

  He started through the door.

  “Polio. Shit, I thought they licked that one fifty years ago,” the counter man said, more to himself than to Payne.

  They did, Payne thought as he unlocked his door and tossed the package onto the passenger seat. They did. And I never had polio.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Payne was badly shaken when he finally angled into his own driveway and up against the closed garage door, so much so that he left the bag of sodas on the front seat of the car when he bolted from it and crossed the back lawn in three long steps that were almost a run, and slammed through the door and escaped into the silence of his house.

  What was I doing?

  Why was I thinking about polio?

  Why do I hurt so much, my hips and my wrist?

  Where was I tonight?

  Why did I drive out there?

  What was I afraid of?

  Why am I afraid?

  Afraid. Afraid. Afraid.

  Too many questions.

  No answers. He kicked his shoes off, not caring that they flew across the back porch like canvas and white leather missiles and thumped hollowly against the inside wall, leaving faintly green stains on the white paint.

  He stripped his jeans off. He pulled the T-shirt over his head and wadded it up with the pants—both legs inside out so the white-blue threads showed, pale and wraith-like—and threw them into a darkened corner of the porch.

  Exhausted, he went into his bedroom and threw himself down on the bed, sweating and panting and more frightened than he had ever been in his life. He still didn’t know exactly why he was frightened or what he was frightened of.

  He lay for a long time, his arm crooked over his eyes to shut out the filtered light. He listened to his breathing and his heartbeat, noting how both gradually subsided, how his pulse thinned and his body quit spewing sweat from every pore.

  Finally, he opened his eyes and dropped his arm to his side. He was breathing normally. He was all right now.

  He sat up and thought about a shower or a cold drink. He even remembered the sodas sitting on the seat of the car. They were no doubt tepid now, probably as warm as the night air.

  But instead of taking a shower or getting the drinks, he went down the hall to the Control Room and walked in, flicking the light switch on. The sudden brightness hurt his eyes. He squinted and almost raised one hand to shade his eyes but stopped before completing the motion. His eyes adjusted quickly. Without moving, he scanned the room, the shelves of cases stacked neatly on every wall, the equipment on his left, all of it bright and spotless and perfect except for the hole where the missing DVD unit should be. But there were still the other two, and he could rig them in tandem and they would play two films sequentially. That should get him through most of the night.

  He crossed to the other side of the room, to the comedy section of the library, and grabbed a disc at random. He glanced at the cover.

  Hold That Ghost. Abbott and Costello. Not a bad film, as he remembered. Some funny moments.

  I keep my money in my head...in my head...in my head.

  He walked down a few more steps to the science-fiction section and repeated his previous action, reaching up and taking out a case without looking at the title.

  Forbidden planet. A moldy oldie. Still, not a bad film. It had held up pretty well over the years.

  He put one of the discs into each of the DVD units, switching on the small auxiliary unit that allowed for continuous play between the two. He had never seen a set up quite like it before; this one looked homemade, probably something Aunt Emilia had cooked up.

  He set the timer-delay for five minutes. That gave him enough time to slip out the back door and grab the sack of sodas, pull an ice cube tray from the refrigerator and a glass from the shelf on the way through the kitchen, and set them all on his night table. He glanced up at the monitor. Nothing yet. He checked his watch. A minute or two left before they went on.

  He hurried into the bathroom and grabbed a wash cloth and soaked it in cool water and passed it over his forehead and down his face, under his arms, along his shoulders and chest. Then patted dry with a clean towel. Not a shower, but enough for now.

  From the other room, he heard the hiss of static.

  The films were beginning.

  He returned to his bedroom and dropped onto the bed, pouring himself a drink of soda and plopping three ice cubes into the half-full glass. The soda fizzed and bubbled and threatened to spillover the top of the glass. He sipped at the froth, nearly choking when he breathed some of it up his nose.

  He settled back to watch the films.

  Hold That Ghost was first. He got all of ten minutes into it, sipping at the soda now and then, before he settled back onto the pillow and fell asleep.

  He roused a couple of times during the film, opened one eye and closed it again and drifted back into dreamless sleep. The only time he noticed enough to place the plot of the film was when the little fat guy—Abbott or Costello, damn, can’t ever remember which is which—reached into the moose’s stuffed head and pulled out roll after roll of illicit money (in my head in my head in my head in my head) that nobody expected to find there.

  The image triggered something in Payne’s mind, and for a moment he struggled to figure out what. But finally the struggle was too difficult and he was too tired. He closed his eyes.

  When he opened them again, the monitor showed a scene in full color. The Abbott and Costello thing is off, then, and the other one, what was it? Yeah, Forbidden Planet, that one’s on. I li
ke it, should try to watch it.

  He wanted to, he tried to, but the exhaustion that had filled his body like a drug was still too strong, too heavy. He roused several times, almost often enough to keep track of what was on. But well before the final scene, he was sleeping again. Another phrase rolled over and over itself in his mind now. The monster from the Id repeated again and again until it sounded like a litany. In the wilderness of his dreams he saw himself

  walking down the long aisle of a church, between rows and rows of silent watchers who turned their heads away from him when he moved past their pews. His legs rustled against something soft and filmy but he didn’t dare look down, didn’t dare look anywhere except straight ahead, into the wooden Christ hanging from a dead-white cross and staring at him with dead-white eyes. The Christ was naked, with great gouts of white blood oozing from every inch of its body. He tried to turn and run but something spoke in Walter Pidgeon’s voice and said monster from the Id monster from the Id and terrified Payne until he screwed his eyes closed and saw no more but only felt the silkiness brushing against his naked legs and dropping like a veil over his naked shoulders and back. He reached the end of the cathedral aisle, stood squarely beneath a gigantic dome made of pink translucent glass, and listened to the bass murmurings of the worshippers, whispers that rose and fell like waves and crashed against his ears. For a long time, he could only listen. He didn’t want to open his eyes, couldn’t open his eyes because he knew that the dead-white Christ was staring down at him with dead-white eyes and that the shadows behind the image were black as black and rustled with hidden sounds. The whispering grew, deeper and darker and more rumbling, voices edged with pain and horror. The silkiness grew sticky where it touched the tops of his thighs and he felt a scream growing from within, surging through his gullet to press against his teeth where he clamped them shut. He breathed through his nose and smelled the acrid smell of vomit and the churning smell of oceans at low tide, the fishy smell of oceans where the waves have rolled back and exposed the naked shoals. And he opened his eyes and he

  screamed but didn’t really. No sounds came out, even though the air exploded from his lungs in painful gulps that hurt his throat as they strained outward. He was sitting upright on his bed, his body bathed in sweat and his hands held out in a warding gesture that seemed both necessary and ridiculous. He was staring at the monitor.

  Forbidden Planet had apparently finished some time before because another film was playing, a third film that he hadn’t put into the machine, couldn’t have put into a machine because the third unit was out being fixed. He didn’t recognize what this film was. He could see the characters clearly enough, but he just couldn’t identify any of them. There was a woman, youngish and attractive but at the same time hard and harsh. Payne didn’t like her from the first image. There was a youngish man as well, quiet and studious, but there was something effeminate about him—nothing obvious or vulgar, just a matter of the hand held so or the shoulders swung in just that way. Payne felt the same instant distrust of him.

  And there was a third character, a man, listening to the others as the other two talked around him as if he didn’t exist. The sound was bad, gritty and raw, and the voices muffled the words until he couldn’t understand a bit of the dialogue, but there was apparently a love triangle of some sort that he could not quite understand. The sets were more impressionistic than he liked, with broad swatches of white and black in quasi-geometrical patterns that denied any illusion of perspective and forced the three characters—in living color—off the screen and into his room. He had never seen anything like that, but he didn’t like the effect. Without thinking, he inched himself along the bed, away from the monitor, until his back pressed against the headboard.

  The white enameled wood rubbed coolly against his skin.

  He stared at the monitor.

  He knew that he should recognize the characters, but the names just wouldn’t come. He struggled to attach a name, a date, anything, to the film, but it was impossible. Nothing fit anything he remembered, but he felt as if he had seen the film an infinite number of times (remember those people who watched Star Wars five hundred times or more, standing in interminable lines for hour after house just to watch it again)—he felt as if he knew before each line was spoken what it would be, what intonation the character would use, how the hand or lip or shoulder would move to add depths of meaning to the words.

  It terrified him.

  And then, suddenly, with the clarity of a frosted window suddenly drenched with heated air, the characters came startlingly to life and he saw that the central character, the one listening and watching to the other two—the central character was himself.

  “No!” The sound was as much moan as cry. It could have carried on the night air until it slipped through the cracks in night-veiled windows all along Greensward. It could have nipped at sleeping ears and twisted and brought dreamers out of their dreams with vague memories of pain and fear and insistent feelings of evil.

  But it didn’t. Instead, the sound hung against the walls and drooped to the floor and lay like heavy oil against the polished wood floor.

  “Nooo!”

  Payne thrust himself from the bed, his feet barely touching the floor as he ran through the door and down the hall. The other doors were closed, except for the entry into the living room. Something blue and silver tinged with red flickered in the living room, reflected from the white carpet and furniture. He ran into the room, standing in the center, his chest heaving and his breath heavy. He stared around the room; his eyes were white against the darkness and looked more like the eyes of a hunted creature than of a human.

  He glanced up at the inner wall where that monitor—like every other one in the house—was playing the same scene.

  Himself.

  With a single fluid motion he scooped up the black king from the chess board and threw it against the monitor. The piece ping-ed and rebounded and landed silently on the carpet.

  “Noooo!” Payne screamed again, feeling more than hearing the sound as it echoed and echoed through the room. He grabbed an edge of the chess board and flung the board through the air. The leather-sheathed cardboard spun three times before smashing into the monitor as well. The screen shivered. It cracked in a single jagged lightning-bolt that ran from corner to corner. The chess board dropped to the ground.

  He ran from the room, ran like a frightened rabbit back to the light and the security of his bedroom. He threw himself onto the bed and covered his head with the pillow, pulled the sheets up around his ears.

  Still he could hear it, the hiss-hissss of static.

  Then it stopped.

  For a long time Payne did not move. Then he turned just enough to look over his shoulder at the monitor.

  A single figure dominated the dark center of the screen. It was old and bent, draped heavily with black cloth that disguised features and height and weight and sex. When it moved, it moved with painful, anguished slowness. One foot dragged behind the other, scraping arhythmically against the concrete of a night-shaded walkway. The figure held one hand curled tightly against its side.

  It was shuffling away from the camera while remaining in the center of the screen. Just as it reached an invisible but critical place on the sidewalk, it stopped and began to turn.

  Payne watched, a knot of terror growing in his stomach.

  Before he saw the figure’s face, he twisted away, so violently that he felt a spasm of pain through his hip, as if he had sprained it. He buried his face in the pillow and wept silently into the white pillowcase, biting down on the cloth until it was sodden and sticky and he breathed the fluid stench of his fear and horror.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Payne sounded different when he called Cathy the next morning to talk about dinner that night. His voice was strained and hoarse, as if he had yelled too long and too loud at a home-club championship basketball game that had gone into overtime. Their conversation had been short, almost curt at times, but
she was relieved to hear him.

  “Seven okay?” he asked.

  “Great, can I bring anything?”

  “Nope. This one’s on me.”

  “Shall I dress...formally?”

  That melted his stiffness a bit. Payne made a small sound that might have been a stifled laugh or a chuckle.

  “No, nothing like that. Just don’t put on too many layers. We might end up...playing chess or something.”

  She wanted to respond, and was wondering how much overt sexiness she could get away with talking to him over the telephone without offending him or coming on too strong, when he made the issue moot by hurrying on. The stiffness was in his voice again.

  “Gotta go. Lots of things to do today. See you tonight.” And then he was gone.

  Cathy stood listening to the distant buzz of the lines and wondering.

  By evening, she felt better about the situation. Payne was a little odd at times, but who wasn’t. And most of the time he was a gentleman, the stablest, most considerate man she had known in...in a long time, she started to think, then amended it to ever. He was the most considerate man she had ever known. She suspected more than a little that she was falling in love with him. Tonight could be more important than just a dinner among friends, no matter how good the friendship was. It could be the start of something deep and wonderful.

  So watch it. Don’t come on too strong. Let him take the lead.

  It wasn’t that Cathy was particularly manipulative; it was merely that she felt strongly about Payne.

  The feeling intensified as soon as she saw him that night. He didn’t come out to the car this time. In fact, she had her finger stretched out to push the bell before the door opened and Payne stood before her. In the shadows, he seemed paler than usual, worried, thinner almost, except that not enough time had passed since they were together for him to have changed that much physically. It was just a trick of the light.

  “Hi,” she said, her voice rich with as much sensuality as she dared project.