by Ike Hamill
“That’s totally different. That’s people getting together to support each other in the pursuit of writing. Totally different. Hey, Jim, you should come out to one of those this fall. They’re after dark. You could come write with us.”
James shook his head. “I have to write here,” he said, pointing over his shoulder. “It’s my habit. It’s necessary. And please, call me James.”
Danielle nodded quickly. She folded her lips between her teeth and then nodded again.
“Okay!” Bo said. “That didn’t sound too creepy.” He smiled at James. “I think you’ve been trapped in there alone a little too long. Did you know that James has agoraphobia?”
James shook his head.
“Oh? That’s the fear of being outside, right?”
“Open spaces and crowds,” James said. “It’s mild.”
“You handled the hike the other day very well then,” Danielle said. “Congrats.”
“Thanks,” James said.
“Oh, shit, I’ve got to go, Danny,” Bo said, looking at his phone. “I’ve got closing at the Foodway.”
“You have too many jobs,” Danielle said.
“Said the woman who doesn’t have enough jobs,” Bo said. “You coming?”
Danielle looked to James. He happened to be looking down at the floor, where the bottle of gin should have been.
“Sure,” she said. “I’ve got to get back to not working.”
“Okay,” Bo said. “To get down, you have to slide your leg down this post until you find the ledge from the trim. Bo began to climb down. Danielle leaned over the balcony to watch the process. She jumped onto the railing and put her leg over the side.
James kept his seat and watched.
She got as far as crouching down and sliding her leg, but then she came back up. She repeated this process several times and then stood up, shaking her head. She made eye contact with James.
“I can’t do it,” she said. “I’m not tall enough.”
From the ground, Bo shouted his rebuttal. “You just have to go a little farther. You were tall enough to climb up, you can climb down.”
She tried once more, but with no more success.
“I can’t,” she said. “Bo, can you go borrow the ladder from somewhere?”
“Nonsense,” James said. He stood up.
Danielle looked back to him. Fear scrunched up her face. He didn’t know if the fear was of the climb, or of him.
“You can go through the living room and out the front door.”
“Oh, no,” Danielle said. “Bo said you don’t let anyone in—not even the landlord.”
James blushed. He had tipped the landlord well for privacy. Apparently, he hadn’t tipped well enough for his silence.
“It’s okay. Just understand, the place is a mess. I’ve got all my father’s archives in there.”
“Don’t worry,” Danielle said. “I’m a total slob. I won’t even notice, I promise.”
James nodded and dug into his pocket for the keys. If he was honest with himself, the tingling in his stomach wasn’t completely fear. Some of it was excitement. It was exciting to let Danielle enter his world. He knew he shouldn’t do it, and he knew nothing would come of it. Still, it was exciting.
He unlocked the sliding door and pushed aside the curtain.
She entered behind him. The room was dark. He closed the door and waited for his eyes to adjust. Danielle followed him closely through the maze of stacked boxes.
“This is your father’s writing?”
James didn’t answer until they reached the front door. He opened it and let the light from the hall in.
“Most of it, yes. Some of it is mine.”
“He must have been really prolific.”
James nodded. “Yes. He was.”
“I would love to read something sometime. Something of your dad’s, or maybe yours? Even if I don’t understand the subject, I like to see how people write. It fascinates me.”
James nodded. “Sorry about the mess.”
“Oh, don’t apologize. There’s nothing wrong with living how you want to live, as long as you don’t feel like you have to apologize.”
James tilted his head. He tried to figure out exactly what she meant, and came up confused.
“Okay,” she said with a smile. “Thanks for the chat. I’ll see you next time.”
She slipped through the door. James watched her round the corner to the stairs. He closed himself in again. With all the doors locked and the room appropriately dim again, James found himself in the kitchen. The alcohol was gone, of course. Even the small amount that would have been caught in the sink trap was washed away with water.
James looked at the envelope on the counter. It was the thick letter from his father—the only unread letter left. It was marked October 3rd.
Tomorrow.
James tried to forget about the letter as he got ready for the night’s work.
# # # # #
Dear James,
I’ve sat here for the last twenty minutes, looking at those two words, and not knowing how to write the rest of this. This is the last letter I’ll write to you. I’m going to finish it, put it in a box, and hope that it finds you well twenty-five years from now. I know it’s not fair to reach forward into time and drop this burden on you. I love you so much. You’re my perfect boy. Every day I wish that I had somehow been stronger, or more careful, and given you a better life.
I have to write this letter, but you don’t have to read it. You can tear it up now and forget about it. I won’t hold any grudge and it doesn’t mean you’re weak. If you’ve healed from the wounds my imperfect life has inflicted on you, then so much the better. I couldn’t be more proud of you either way.
Should you choose to read on, please know that I’m going to write the rest of this letter with emotional distance that I do not feel. I’ve thought about it a lot, and it’s the only way I believe I can get through it. I love you. Please forgive me.
-Dad
# # # # #
Thomas Hicks fell into a pattern. Each night, he wrote stories of terrible crimes. It was a compulsion, and he was weeks into the habit before he began to suspect the cause. It was the cell. Like The Big Four before him, Tom had been infected by the cell. It had twisted a part of his brain, and turned him into a creature of unimaginable cruelty.
But he was not a violent man. He’d never committed a crime more serious than stealing a newspaper. Tom was a writer, and that’s how the crimes expressed themselves. At sunset, he would sit. Then, against his will, his hands would begin to write. Out would spill tales of torture, arson, and murder. He hid the stories instinctively, stapling them and burying them in a cabinet. He couldn’t let anyone see down into his soul.
The stories were beginning to pile up by the time his wife, Judith, became aware of, and disturbed by his new career.
“How’s the story coming?” she asked, referring the piece Tom was supposedly writing about The Big Four.
“Slow,” he said. “I need to take a few more drafts before it will be ready. I’m trying out a few new angles.”
“Maybe you need a change of scenery,” she suggested. “You work all night and sleep during the day. That has to be screwing with your perspective.”
“Trust me, it’s the only way it works for me right now.”
“Okay,” she said. “Just try to not get too ingrained. I miss you when I wake up in the middle of the night and you’re not next to me.”
“I miss you too.”
If only it were as simple as making the decision to stop writing. By sunset, his fingers practically burned for the typewriter. And once he started, there was no stopping until he finished. His hands moved automatically, his brain shut off, and he typed. He kept everything he needed close to his desk, because nothing could interrupt the writing until dawn, when the stories automatically wrapped up.
On October 2nd, 1977, Judith was waiting as Thomas pulled the last sheet of paper from his typewrite
r. Outside the window, dawn was breaking on a crisp fall morning.
“Honey,” she asked, “what are you writing?”
“It didn’t go anywhere,” he said, shaking his head. “I was trying a fresh approach, but it didn’t work.”
“You’ve been in here typing, every night, for weeks. I wish you’d tell me what you’re really working on.”
Thomas blinked slowly. “I’m too tired to talk about it. Let me get an hour of sleep, okay?”
“We are going to talk about it. Tonight.”
At some point during the day, Judith arranged for their son, James, to sleep at his best friend’s house. They would have an evening alone. She came home from work a little early to find that he’d cooked a lavish dinner. They never ate before six, but he had everything ready. He hoped to forestall the discussion. It didn’t work. As they sat down for their salads, she opened the topic.
“If you’re working on some new fiction, that’s great,” she said. “But it seems to be consuming you. It’s not healthy.”
“You know I can’t talk about it,” he said.
They had an agreement—he wasn’t required to divulge the plot of new fiction he was writing. Tom had a superstition about giving away the plot of an ongoing piece. It was like over-handling bread dough, he said. Discussing a plot had the tendency to let all the air out of a piece before it was fully-baked.
“You don’t have to tell me the plot, but you do have to tell me why you’re so obsessed. You have to tell me why you’ve been ignoring your deadline on the prison piece and working exclusively on a secret project.”
Tom sighed. He put down his fork and rested his elbows on the table. With his head lowered, he pressed into his temples with the heels of his hands.
“Oh, Christ,” he said. “I don’t know what’s happening.”
Judith took one of his hands in both of hers. She pulled it to her.
“What? Tell me.”
“I don’t know. It’s probably just psychosomatic. I think the prison cell infected me.”
“What? You’re sick?”
“No,” Thomas said. “I’m not sick. Well, maybe mentally sick, but I swear, it’s nothing.”
“What is it then?”
“You remember my theory about the prison. Do you remember what I said about the cell where The Big Four stayed?”
“The who?”
“Hudson, Mitchell, Hopkins, and Poole—the criminals. The guard referred to them as The Big Four. I’m going to use it in my story.”
“Oh.”
“Anyway, I had this theory that the cell where they all stayed somehow had something to do with it. One of the reasons I wanted to stay there was so I could see if there was a way that someone had communicated with them somehow. I had the theory that maybe someone had put a bug in their ear, you know? Somehow they didn’t all happen to go crazy on their own.”
“But the date,” she said. “You went there on a specific date, and there was nobody else at the prison, was there?”
“No. You’re right. I also wanted to see if the date pattern that Jeremy found could have anything to do with it. Jeremy had an idea that the pattern of the dates was somehow, by itself, evil. I know it sounds crazy.”
“Evil?”
“Yeah,” Thomas said with a big sigh. “Yeah. Crazy. And Jeremy’s one of the most rational people I know. Anyway, it feels like something in me changed that night. When you brought me home, I thought I had the whole story figured out. I was going to write it as a brief history on the notorious criminals, and use the coincidence of the prison cell to talk about recidivism and how prison actually engenders crime.”
“That sounds good,” she said. “But it’s not what you’re working on?”
“No,” Thomas said, shaking his head. He took a sip of wine. “No.” He glanced at the window. Sunset was coming in less than an hour. At sunset, his urge to begin writing would overwhelm him again. As the days grew shorter, his call to the typewriter shifted earlier and earlier.
Judith was still waiting on more of an explanation.
“I have this urge to write. It’s unavoidable. But it’s not the prison piece I’m working on. Each night, it’s something new. They’re terrible, terrible things.”
“What do you mean?”
“Imagine the worst, most horrific thing. You remember all those accounts and police reports I was reading a couple of months ago? Imagine those, but worse. I don’t know, maybe they just feel worse because I’m really seeing them with my own eyes and then writing them down. It’s awful.”
Thomas realized that tears were streaming down his face. He used his napkin to mop them up.
“Just stop writing them,” she said. “I know how you are with writing, but you can stop, I’ve seen you do it. Go cold turkey. If these stories are so terrible, you should stop.”
He shook his head. “That’s the thing—I don’t know if I can. Somehow I think that once the story gets into my head, if I don’t let it out, it will consume me.”
“What does that mean?” Judith asked. She looked down, saw the fork in her hand, and seemed to remember her dinner. She stabbed into her salad.
“I’m not myself when I’m writing these stories,” he said. “It’s like I’m channeling them from somewhere else. I’m beginning to feel like I’m one of The Big Four, but instead of using a knife or a gun, I’m using a typewriter.”
“Honey, that’s absurd. You’re nothing like those men. You wouldn’t hurt a fly, and you know it.”
“But it’s not me,” he said.
“That’s it,” she said. “No more writing. You’re taking a break, starting right now.”
Thomas looked out the window. The light was getting long through the dry leaves that would soon fall.
“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea,” he said.
“I’ll be with you the whole time. We’ll get through this night together, and tomorrow night will come even easier. In a week, you’ll be good as new. Trust me.”
Thomas nodded. He wanted to believe in something, and Judith’s confidence and enthusiasm were always contagious.
“Yes,” he said.
“Good.”
# # # # #
As the sun set, and they settled together on the couch, Thomas was convinced that he wouldn’t make it. His fingers began to tap out tiny patterns on his leg.
“Stop,” Judith said. “Don’t think about it. Time will pass faster if you don’t think about it.”
She was right.
They watched TV. They finished the bottle of wine. She fell asleep against his chest with his arm draped protectively over her. Hours passed, and the urge to type left. Tom found himself over the hump and glad for the effort. His spirit soared with new optimism. Perhaps if he took a little time for himself and then came back to the prison story, he could attack it with a fresh perspective. Now that he had broken the spell of the place, he could finally achieve real objectivity.
He let his eyes drift shut to the evening news.
In his dream, they were putting a blindfold on him while the band played The Star Spangled Banner. He heard the firing squad raise and cock their weapons at the marshall’s command. In a second, it would all be over. Once they fired, his suffering would end forever.
Static.
He wakes to a wall of white noise.
The only light in the room is the flickering static of the television. He blinks and shakes his head. The random dots on the screen invite him to stare. They offer whispered secrets, just for him. He turns away from the black-and-white noise and turns on the lamp. He stands, shuts off the TV, and decides to head for the bathroom. Tom doesn’t make it that far.
There’s a note on the side table, near the phone.
“Tom—didn’t want to wake you. Greta called. James had a nightmare and wants to come home. I’m walking over to get him. Back soon.”
Tom sets the note down and continues to the bathroom.
# # # # #
Thomas w
as urinating when the story came to him.
It began with the dinner he and his wife had shared. They moved to the living room, and settled into a nice evening. Sometime after she fell asleep, the story turned very dark. In his story, as his wife slept, Tom had engaged in serious mischief.
The Millers lived around the corner and down the block. He crept through back yards and along the edge of the road to get there undetected. Once he found the house, Tom set about climbing onto the roof of their side porch. He looked in through the window of the sunroom. When James slept over at Bobby Miller’s house, that’s where the boys stayed. He saw his son, stretched out on a makeshift bed on the couch. Bobby was on the other couch.
Tom put on his mask. He wore a skeleton mask. It was an early Halloween purchase that he hadn’t yet shown his son. Skeletons were James’s favorite, probably because they always scared him so much.
Tom waited. He was certain that James would wake up. He believes there’s an instinct people have when someone stares at them, and its strongest in children.
In a few short minutes, he’s proven right. James opens his eyes to the dark and blinks rapidly as his eyes resolve the figure outside the window. When he sees the grinning skull, James opens his mouth to scream. Nothing comes out.
Tom smiles beneath the mask.
He pulls out the other prop he brought along. It’s the butcher knife from the kitchen. He twists it until it catches the moonlight and carves a sliver of light for his young son.
James’s lungs find fresh air and his scream finally emerges, piercing the night.
Tom sprints back to his house to a chorus of barking dogs.
He dumps the knife and mask in a bush and slips back under his wife’s sleeping form a full minute before the phone rings. She stirs at the sound. He’s already fast asleep.
Judith rises, puts her hand on her husband’s forehead and notes his elevated temperature. Before rushing to the phone, she pulls the blanket on top of him.