Transcription

by Ike Hamill

  “Hello?” she whispers. “No, Greta, it’s fine.”

  After a pause she says. “No, I’m sorry he woke you. Don’t think of it. I’ll walk over and get him.”

  Tom is asleep for this exchange, but the force that’s controlling Tom hears every word.

  She pulls on a thin jacket and slips her feet into shoes. She takes a flashlight from the shelf as she leaves through the back door. Tom’s eyes open as the door shuts. He moves faster than she did. She’s walking along the sidewalk, pulling her jacket tight around her, as he’s slipping through yards. He’s wearing his mask and carrying his knife.

  She turns on to the Miller’s street as Tom slips from behind a hedge.

  Judith spins and her flashlight lands on his shoes. Judith pauses and tilts her head as the beam of the flashlight swings up to his hands and then to the masked face.

  She doesn’t try to run. She doesn’t scream.

  Tom moves forward, holding the knife in both hands, like it’s a present for her. When he draws close enough, he lifts one hand to pull up the mask. The face under the mask isn’t Tom’s. It’s a twisted scowl filled with hatred and loathing.

  Judith’s eyes grow wide. Like her son earlier, her first attempt at a scream yields no sound. She doesn’t get a second chance. The man who is Tom, but not Tom, drives the knife up, under her ribs and into her lung. The muscles that would push air out of her chest are sliced into ribbons as he drags the knife out and plunges it back in.

  Her hands come up and reach for the blade as he pulls it out again. Her fingers can’t grip the sharp metal edge. Tom withdraws the blade and flees.

  # # # # #

  As he flushed the toilet, Tom shook his head to dismiss the story. It was too terrible to contemplate. He tiptoed by the shape on the couch and went to the kitchen. The mess would be twice as ugly in the morning if he didn’t take care of it right then. He stood at the sink, watching hot water and bleach spiral down the drain when the phone rang. Thomas walked calmly over and picked it up.

  “Hello?”

  “Thomas? It’s Greta. If she hasn’t left yet, can you have Jude bring a fresh set of pajamas for James. I just noticed that he had a little accident.”

  “Oh, jeez. I’m sorry about that Greta.” He remembered the note. “She’s already gone.” He pulled the phone cord and leaned back against the counter. The dishes were all stacked next to the sink. He just had to finish drying them off so he could put them away. He pulled the towel from the handle of the oven. “Wait—she’s been gone for, like, ten minutes.” He stood up straighter. “She should be there by now.”

  Two different realities were trying to merge in his head. In one version, his wife was right there on the couch, where he’d left her when he went to use the bathroom. In the other, she had left a note and gone to pick up their son. The shape on the couch was still there, but there was the small problem of the voice on the other end of the phone line. Thomas stretched the phone cord as he walked to the back of the couch.

  “She hasn’t gotten here yet,” Greta said. “When did you say she left?”

  Tom pinched the blanket and lifted it. The other side of the couch was bathed in shadow. There was nobody under the blanket.

  Panic washed through Thomas’s veins.

  “Oh, shit, Greta. It’s been too long. I’ve got to go.”

  He let the phone drop as he ran for the door. It clattered to the vinyl floor and bounced to a stop against the wall. The spring on the screen door groaned and dragged the door shut behind him. Water dripped from the dish rack into the sink. The knife, clean and dry, was back in the butcher block. It was the same knife that a lot of his neighbors owned. They’d all bought their sets at the same time from Mrs. Gunther when she’d lost her husband. She had gone around to all the neighborhood block parties and sold the sets from a color catalog that she had punched holes in and mounted in a binder. The money would go towards her mortgage. Dozens of people had signed up and bought them.

  # # # # #

  Thomas sprinted down the street and around the corner. He saw the bouncing flashlight of a walker, and relief flowed through him. He slowed to a walk.

  “Judith?” he called.

  The flashlight, still half a block away, came up and pointed at his eyes. He advanced, catching his breath.

  “Judith?” he called again. The person didn’t answer.

  Suddenly, the flashlight pointed down at the ground. It looked like someone’s garbage had been tipped over by a dog, and that’s where the flashlight was trained.

  Thomas heard the figure scream. It wasn’t Judith’s scream. Thomas couldn’t identify it. The lights in the nearby house came on, and then the light at the end of their walk. Thomas realized two things at once—it was Greta Miller holding the flashlight, and that wasn’t overturned garbage on the sidewalk.

  He started running again.

  Thomas threw himself to the ground and skidded to a stop on his knees as the neighbor’s door opened.

  “Judith!” he screamed. Thomas lifted his wife’s limp head and cradled it as he smoothed her hair back from her face. “Judith!”

  Greta was running towards the neighbor’s open door, yelling, “Call the police! Call the police!”

  Judith’s eyes came open and locked on her husband. She tried to form words, but had no air to push out the sounds. Thomas found her wounds and clamped his hands on them to try to slow her bleeding. Far away, sirens wailed.

  Thomas is pulled from her as the paramedics go to work. He is held back by neighbors in pajamas and robes. Everyone’s breath fogs from their mouths and catches the flashing emergency lights. The drama has pulled a huge crowd. Greta gives Thomas unheard assurances and then disappears. She is replaced by her husband, Mike. Thomas rides to the hospital in the ambulance. Mike follows in his car.

  Mike is there for everything. He’s there, guiding Thomas by the shoulders towards the waiting room as Judith is wheeled to surgery. He’s there as the police question Thomas again. Mike’s pajama bottoms poke out from the waistband of his jeans. His t-shirt is covered by a suede jacket.

  Mike’s constant mantra is, “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay. She’s going to be fine.”

  The policemen confer with their colleagues, who accompany another victim with a knife wound.

  The detective arrives and asks both Mike and Thomas if they’ve seen anyone lurking in the neighborhood lately. Mike answers while Thomas tries to gather enough saliva to lubricate his mouth. He can’t seem to form words. His tongue is glued to his teeth until someone brings him a paper cup of water.

  # # # # #

  I’m sorry. I can’t write this anymore. I’m sorry you didn’t get to speak with your mother again. Her last words were for the police. She described her attacker. I heard that the sketch the police made was on the news.

  That first night, my heart was torn in two. I wanted to confess, but I couldn’t figure out if I was really the one who had done it. I remembered two versions of that night. In one, I snuck around with the mask. In the other, I was asleep on the couch. After all the horrible things I had imagined, I couldn’t say for sure if I had executed the crime, or simply imagined it.

  As the days wore on, and the attacker she described wasn’t found, my certainty grew. I knew too many details about the attack before that phone call. There was no way I could have had the image of her wounds in my head before I left the house. But your mom had described a tall, heavyset man in his twenties. It took me a week to figure that part out.

  She lied.

  Your mother lied so that I would stay out of prison and I would be able to take care of you. Who else would have stepped in? She lied because she understood somehow that the thing that attacked her was simply using my body. I could have never hurt you or your mom. It was the infection I picked up from the cell. Because I didn’t sit down that night and write about the crime, my body acted it out.

  Your mother died in the hospital, holding my hand.

  I can nev
er forgive myself, and I can’t let her down. Her last words were spent exonerating me so that I could raise you, and I’m going to do that for as long as I can. You’re almost eighteen now, and I think I may finally be at the end of my rope. Your mother’s inheritance, which is now yours, should keep you financially stable for the rest of your life.

  That night, I learned that I could never skip a night of writing. As the years progressed, I learned other terrible truths as well. I’ve left instructions about my stories in the first letter—the one you’ll open after I’m gone. I hope you’ve followed them, and the boxes are tucked away where they’ll be safe. I hope you’ve trusted my warnings that they can never be read, burned, or discarded.

  I hope you understand why I have to leave you. If you’ve followed my instructions, you’re forty-three when you’re reading this. I hope that twenty-five years was enough time for you to have moved on.

  Your mother was a wonderful person.

  Please forgive me.

  -Dad

  # # # # #

  James flipped the last page of the letter, facing his father’s signature towards the pile. He couldn’t look at it.

  He barely remembered that night. The next day loomed so large that it eclipsed everything else.

  He had woken up in Mr. and Mrs. Miller’s bed, rubbing his eyes. He was dressed in his friend Bobby’s sweatpants and a borrowed shirt. Mrs. Miller sat in a high-backed chair, looking through the window.

  “Where’s my mom?” James had asked.

  When she turned, James saw Mrs. Miller’s shiny eyes. She told him to go wake up Billy and for the two of them to get dressed. She didn’t tell him much that he remembered, but she had driven him to the hospital, where his dad had been waiting out in front of the entrance.

  His dad had carried him up to the room, where his mom lay asleep.

  “She’s very sick,” his dad had said.

  “How come?” James had asked. “Did she get sick from dinner?”

  “No.” His dad shook his head. Tears flowed down into his stubble.

  “Can I talk to her?” James had asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Mom? Can you wake up soon?” James heard his own voice in his head. It sounded younger than he felt, like he knew it was an act.

  In his dark apartment, James wiped his adult tears and pushed the letter farther away. Of course he had eventually figured out that his mother was murdered. Of course he had eventually suspected that the murder was somehow connected to his father’s writing. It wasn’t until he read Ron’s story, when he was thirty-eight, that he began to wonder who had murdered his mother.

  It was bad enough to harbor the suspicion. Now that he had proof, James couldn’t cope.

  In the dim light of his apartment, James looked at the stacks of boxes.

  They contained thousands of stories. Each one could destroy a family, leave countless souls in agony, or forever stain a young boy’s happiness.

  James opened the drawer to the left of his silverware. He pulled out a bottle labelled, “Carisoprodol (Soma). Take 1 pill every 8 hours for spasms. Do not exceed 3 pills in 24 hours. Do not drink alcohol. Take with food.”

  He dumped the contents of the bottle into his hand and assessed the pile.

  He scooped the load into his mouth and threw his head back. With a glass of water, he gagged down most. Some pills stuck to the inside of his mouth and it took a second glass to wash them down. They felt like they were moving down his esophagus in one solid lump, grinding their way towards his stomach.

  James burped and felt a knot just below his ribs. He moved towards the sliding door.

  With the curtains pushed aside, he admired the morning light.

  An elephant stood on his chest. His legs threatened to give out.

  James turned the catch and unlocked the door. He pushed with both hands to slide it open. The warm air felt so nice. Birds were singing in his good trees. James decided to spend his final moments out on the balcony. After so many years alone, avoiding human contact for fear of the repercussions, he had finally found a friend out on this balcony. He smiled as he thought of Bo. The young man was strange, and coarse, and way too forward, but he was the closest thing to a friend that James could remember since high school. Ever since that day, when he’d found his father’s body, James had felt alone. Bo had intruded into his solitude and made James a little less lonely for the last weeks of James’s life.

  He regretted not leaving a present for Bo, or at least a note. Wouldn’t it figure—the last person to show him kindness was the last person he would hurt.

  James fell to the deck.

  CHAPTER 14: BODY

  Summer, 1989

  “DAD?” JAMES CALLED.

  “MAYBE he’s out,” Bobby said.

  “No, he’s here,” James said. He moved into the dark living room. Bobby stayed at the front door. They hung out a lot, but James always went to Bobby’s house, never the opposite. Bobby didn’t have to say that he was afraid of Thomas Hicks, everyone was. The man was a drunk—a mean drunk.

  “Dad?” James moved around the back of the couch, where it divided the space between the living room and the hall. “Bingo.”

  Bobby was still in the doorway. He took a step forward. “He’s there?”

  “Yeah,” James said. He bent over and came back up with a grunt. He dragged the body around to the proper side of the couch and then flopped it up. He tugged on the arms until the body stretched out.

  “Is he okay?”

  “He will be in a few hours,” James said. “He’s like this every day. Then, at sunset, he gets up like some kind of literary vampire and starts banging away on the typewriter.”

  “I heard he doesn’t write anymore,” Bobby said.

  “That’s bull—you heard me when I told your mother. He doesn’t publish. He still writes every damn day.”

  “What does he write?”

  “I don’t know. He keeps the room locked,” James said. While he talked, he positioned his father’s arms and legs on the couch. He finished by tilting the man’s head to the side. In his sleep, Thomas snorted and began snoring. James shoved his hand into his father’s front pocket. “Bingo!” His hand came out with a folded stack of twenties.

  James crossed the room and closed the front door behind them.

  “Can you just leave him like that? What if he vomits?”

  “That’s why I turned his head. He’ll be fine. He always is.”

  James fanned out the money and waved it in front of his face.

  “How does he have so much money if he doesn’t write anymore.”

  “He doesn’t PUBLISH!” James said. “I don’t know how much he ever made from his writing. My mom had money. As far as I know, they were just living off of that, and her salary.”

  “Oh,” Bobby said. Any talk of Ms. Hicks always made him very quiet. He still had nightmares about the night that his best friend’s world had come crashing down. They had both lived in fear for a year, fueled by the self-imposed curfew on the neighborhood after the stabbing.

  “Come on,” James said, jogging towards his car. “Let’s go spend this.”

  # # # # #

  At the end of school, James found a job and started earning his own money. He stopped stealing from his dad and spent less and less time at the house. His father seemed determined to work all night and then drink until he passed out. James didn’t see a way to stop him.

  James moved on, and began making his own plans. After careful consideration over a pizza he split with Bobby, he decided his best course of action was to take a year off. He didn’t get much from his trust account—most of that money wouldn’t be available until he turned twenty-one—but with the earnings from summer work and the allowance from his trust, he would be able to scrape by for a year. Then he could start to seriously consider colleges.

  Bobby wasn’t waiting. He was already enrolled in Worcester Polytech, and would start his freshman year in a few short months.

/>   After the pizza, James dropped off Bobby at home and drove slowly towards his own house. He pulled into the driveway and sat behind the wheel. His dad would be getting up soon. Summers were better on his old man—there was more daylight, and therefore more time for him to sober up before he locked himself in his office again. Still, James hated going inside.

  It would be another long night of playing the radio and only hearing the clacking typewriter keys between commercials.

  He slinked through the living room, glad to find that his father had vacated the room at some point. James slipped into his own room and closed the door behind himself. He collapsed on his bed and caught the magazine as it bounced into his hands.

  A timid knock interrupted him. His father pushed the door open and started to come in.

  “Please don’t come in here, Dad, you smell like death.”

  “Sorry,” Thomas said. He retreated a little and stayed in the doorway. He was propped up by the frame. “I wanted to talk to you about graduation.”

  “You missed it. It was two weeks ago.”

  “Yeah,” Thomas said. “I know. I know. Look—I want you to have something.”

  “I don’t need your money, Dad. I got a job.”

  “Oh. Good. But listen. This is a key to our safe-deposit box,” he held it out.

  James raised his eyebrows, but didn’t move any closer to his father’s outstretched hand. Thomas ended up tossing it towards him and James let it land on the bedspread.

  “What am I supposed to do with that?” James asked.

  “Nothing. It’s just—that’s where all our important family papers are. The deed is there. All the papers relevant to your trust. My will. Everything. If you ever need to find anything, that’s where you go. The address is written on key.”