Apprehensions and Other Delusions

by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

  By the time she had been back in her flat for twenty minutes, Eric Muir was knocking on her back door. Reluctantly she let him in, not bothering to apologize for her bathrobe and ratty slippers.

  “It’s been worse,” she said, indicating the low level of throbbing that echoed through her rooms.

  “You could put it that way,” said Muir, leaning back against the old-fashioned kitchen counter and crossing his arms. “We listened to the tape today.”

  “And?” She had started to make some soup, and offered him a bowl with a gesture instead of words. She was pretty sure she could keep soup down.

  “Let’s go out for some fish instead. I’ll give you fifteen minutes to change. There’s a lot to tell you. This whole thing is damned weird. And that’s a rare admission for a theoretical physicist to make.” He looked at her more closely, as if seeing her for the first time. “You’re exhausted, aren’t you?”

  “I suppose so. I haven’t been sleeping much.” She might have laughed if he hadn’t been so worried.

  “It’s more than that. You’re ... drained. Get changed. Find your coat. It’s starting to rain and you shouldn’t get wet.” He did not wait for her to refuse but turned off the fire under her pan of soup. “You can eat that tomorrow, if you want to.”

  “I can’t afford another dinner out,” she warned him, recalling the twelve dollars in her purse that was supposed to last her until Friday. “I don’t have enough for anything fancy.”

  “Then I’ll buy. I think I owe you something. You’ve been through a lot, and you haven’t anything but circles under your eyes to show for it.” He rested his hands on the back of one of her two kitchen chairs.

  “Yeah,” she said, trying to remember the last time she had had dinner out with a man for any reason other than professional.

  “Good.”

  She changed and ran a brush through her hair. As an afterthought she put a little lipstick on, then took her four-year-old trenchcoat from the closet before joining him at the front door.

  They drove in silence, and when they reached the restaurant they were told that it would be a twenty-minute wait until they could be seated. Eric accepted this with a shrug and left his name with the hostess. “No smoking.”

  “It might be a little longer for that,” the hostess warned.

  Muir found a table as far from the large-screen TV as possible and held the chair for Fanchon. “I’ve spent the afternoon going over the tape we made in your flat. It’s almost completely silent,” he said as they were waiting for his name to be called. “There are sounds of you moving about the flat, talking to yourself occasionally, and muttering about the noise, but for the rest, there’s a few whispers and something that could be the sound of traffic in the street. We took more than four hours to go over the tape. We can make out a little rhythmic pattern, but that’s all there is.”

  “Oh, come off it,” she said, not willing to fight about it.

  He looked directly at her, as if eye contact would convince her where explanations would not. “I’m telling you the truth, Fanchon. I listened to it first, and we checked out the equipment, to make sure it was working right. It’s delicate and sophisticated, and if there were any sounds there that were real sounds, that machine would pick them up. I guarantee it. No question. It didn’t fail. We checked it for that.”

  “Then there has to be noise on the tape,” Fanchon said reasonably. “Lots of noise.”

  “As I’ve already told you, only a few whispers and the hint of rhythm. Nothing else. Nothing like what I heard in your flat. I know what I heard in your flat, and it isn’t on the tape.”

  “Oh.” She realized her appetite was gone. No matter what they were serving tonight, she could not eat it.

  “I don’t know what’s going on there yet, but I want to put my graduate students on it.” He looked over at her. “I know it isn’t convenient for you, but all that noise has to be less convenient than a couple of students monitoring the noise. Can’t you stick out a couple days more?”

  “And then it’ll be over?” she said wistfully.

  “I don’t know. I damn well hope so. You don’t want any more of the noise, and neither do I. But we’ll have a better understanding about it than we have now, that much is certain.” He paused as the waitress approached. “I think our table is ready.”

  “Fine,” she said, rising and following him so automatically that she might have been mechanical instead of human. “Lead the way.”

  “Come on,” said Eric. “Let’s get some food into you.”

  She couldn’t eat much at dinner, no matter how she tried. She was embarrassed that Eric had to pay when she wasn’t able to eat anything. By the time he drove them back to the house, she was so tired that all she wanted was a chance to sleep the clock around. Maybe, she thought as she opened her front door, I should give up and move out. Maybe I should call Peterson and tell him I can’t deal with this any longer.

  The noise pressed on her like thick blankets when she went to bed. All attempts at sleep were useless.

  For three more days there was no news from Eric Muir. Fanchon saw him only once, and he had nothing to say to her then. She made herself go to her classes, did extra research to keep away from her flat, and tried to catch naps at her office when her partner was off doing other things. She wasn’t certain if the noise were getting worse or if she were losing her ability to cope.

  When she met Naomi for lunch, Naomi said that it was probably nerves, since she—Fanchon—had gone so long without real sleep. Going without sleep was an invitation to disaster. She wanted Fanchon to know that at any other time she would have taken her into her house. But Bill had just moved in, and there was less time for things outside their relationship.

  Her own depression deepened as Fanchon once again wished Naomi the best of luck.

  The next morning when she returned from running fifteen minutes early, she saw Eric Muir was waiting for her.

  “We’ve been over the tapes and over them,” he said without any greeting. “It’s still a mystery, but we’ve been able to add a few more wrinkles to the mystery. That might or might not help you out.” He indicated the stairs to his flat. “I’ve got some fresh coffee brewing.”

  “I ought to shower,” said Fanchon, but followed him up the stairs.

  “There really are some words in that noise, did you realize that?” he said when he offered her a white mug filled with hot coffee.

  “Really?” She didn’t care about the words, just the noise. She had nothing to contribute to his revelations.

  “And they’re recognizable with a little fiddling with the tape.” He sat down opposite her. “They’re from a song that was popular back in the early seventies, done by a local group called The Spectres. They never got very far, and apparently they broke up in seventy-four or -five. Their lead guitarist went to a better band, their main songwriter went to L.A. to write lyrics for commercials—they tell me he’s been very successful—but the others just ... disappeared.”

  “Okay.” Fanchon tugged at her fleece pullover. “So they disappeared. What has that to do with the noise in my flat. If anything?” She thought about the many times she had used the present to make a bridge to the past, for she did it often in her classes. But what could a rock band have to do with a history instructor?

  “I said disappeared,” Eric repeated.

  “College towns are like that,” Fanchon reminded him. “Take any five-year period and about a third of the town will change.”

  Eric ignored her. “And no one knows what became of them. We called the two we could locate and they haven’t heard from the other four since they broke up, and that was years and years ago. They don’t know what became of the others.”

  “What’s all this leading up to?” Fanchon asked, drinking the coffee he offered her. It was strong and bitter;
she found it very satisfying.

  “People disappear. They disappear all the time and no one really notices, especially in a place like this. Students move and transfer and drop out. No one expects them to stick around, so they don’t pay much attention when they go.” He held up his hand. “Bear with me.”

  “Go ahead.” There was some noise in his flat, but not very much, nothing like what she endured downstairs.

  He gathered his thoughts. “People disappear. We always assume they go somewhere else. And in a certain sense, they do. Everyone goes somewhere; into a grave or ... away.”

  “Is this physics or mysticism?” Fanchon asked, looking past him to the window where tree branches waved.

  “It’s something between the two, probably,” he answered without a trace of embarrassment. “Consider this: a person disappears sideways, to use a metaphor. This person goes somewhere else not spatially but dimensionally.”

  “More spooks,” said Fanchon. “Naomi suggested poltergeists.”

  Eric would not be distracted. “And when there is someone who is also slipping away—”

  “Now, wait a minute—”

  He went on. “When someone is slipping toward the same dimension, they become sensitized, like an electric eye, and ... and that person, it’s as if they’re being drawn to that sideways place. Do you follow this at all?”

  “Not really, no,” she lied.

  “You’re triggering this because—”

  “You mean it’s my fault? I’m going sideways and all this noise is the result?” She put down the mug. “A few unsuccessful rock musicians disappear fifteen or twenty years ago, and this noise is the result? And it’s my fault?” She started to leave, but he took hold of her wrist.

  “You live alone, you do most of your work alone. You have no close friends here, and your family is scattered. That makes you—”

  “Makes me what, Dr. Muir?” She pulled away from him; she slammed the door as she left.

  “Fanchon!”

  Outside, she paused long enough to shout, “Just do something about the noise, that’s all!”

  Back in her own flat, she listened for the words that Eric claimed could be heard in the sounds, but she could make no sense of it. She went to the bathroom and filled the tub, hoping that a warm soak would help her to sleep. She felt sweaty and sticky, and solid as granite. She wanted to be free of Eric Muir’s absurd notions. “He’s ridiculous,” she remarked to the walls as she peeled off her clothes. It would serve him right if she used all the hot water and he had to shave with cold. “He doesn’t want to tell Peterson to fix the wiring, or whatever’s wrong. He’s making it up.” She stared into the full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door, examining herself. In the cream-colored, steamy bathroom, her pallor made her appear transparent.

  She leaned back in the bath, letting the pulse of the music blend with the movement of the water and the blood in her veins. It wasn’t as bad as she used to think, that music. Once you accepted it, it could be fairly pleasant. The music wasn’t as disruptive as Muir’s ludicrous theories. Her life, she thought, was not so empty as Muir had made it sound. It was not awful or painful or degrading; it was not pleasant or fulfilling or challenging. It was just ... ordinary, she supposed.

  Perhaps it was nothing, and she was nothing, too. She laughed, but could not hear herself laugh over the welling music.

  * * *

  “Do you hear something?” Sandra asked Paul as they stopped at the top of the stairs, a bookcase balanced between them.

  “Just my joints cracking,” said Paul. “Where do you think this ought to go?”

  “In the living room, I guess,” she said.

  “It’d probably make more sense to put it in the hall,” he said.

  She nodded at once. “Sure. In the hall’s fine.” She got into position to drag the bookcase a few feet further.

  “We were lucky to get this place on such short notice,” he said for the third time that morning.

  “Great,” she said. “We didn’t have a lot of time to pick and choose.”

  “All the more reason to be glad this place was available.” He shoved at the bookcase, cursing.

  “The upstairs neighbor said it was haunted.” She hadn’t intended to tell him that, but she was getting tired of his insistence at their luck.

  “Hey, he’s a theoretical physicist. Peterson told me about him. You know what those guys are like. Give me engineering any day.” He stood up. “Why don’t you bring up a couple of boxes? I can manage the sofa cushions on my own.”

  “Fine,” she said, glad to escape. As she came back up the stairs, she paused once more. “He said—the man upstairs—that she just disappeared. The woman who used to live here.”

  “Come on, Sandra,” Paul protested. “What’s in the box?”

  “Kitchen things,” she said, squeezing by him. As she passed the bathroom door, she paused again. “Do you hear something?”

  “Not again.”He rounded on her. “This is an old house. It makes noise. We’re not used to it. Okay?”

  She continued to listen, a distant, distracted frown blighting her face. “I could swear I heard ...”

  “There’s a lot to unload,” he warned her.

  She made herself go to the kitchen and put the box down. She stood listening a few minutes.

  “Sandra!”

  She shook her head. “Never mind,” she said. “It’s nothing.”

  About Become So Shining That We Cease to Be

  This story probably developed out of visiting a flat here in Berkeley, which, owing to some engineering oddities, magnified sounds from the apartment next door. The couple living there joked about their “haunted house” and it eventually—a decade later—mutated into this flat. The characters in the story came from wherever it is characters come from.

  IN THE name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen. I, Brother Luccio, at the behest of the Prior of this monastery, have recorded the Confession of the lunatic known as Brother Rat, though he has said he was once known as Bertoldo Cimoneisi and was an apothecary by trade—the records of the monastery show no such name or calling among the entries, but it may be that this is truly his name and his profession, for he spoke it under the Seal of Confession. Then again, it may be more of his madness.

  Brother Rat has been confined here for sixteen years, during which time he has had no visitors—no inquiries have been made for his welfare and no one has attempted to seek him out. Upon his delivery here by the Secular Arm, it was stated that his family and relatives were dead of the Plague that came to Amalfi in the Kingdom of Napoli twenty years ago. He had been given to the Secular Arm before being entrusted to our care, for it was thought that he was filled with heretical notions. When he was given to our care, the Secular Arm had conducted a Process against him. It is written in the records of the monastery that all the fingers of his left hand were broken, that he was blind in his right eye, and that all the lower teeth had been taken from his head. Because of the answers he had given during this Questioning, it was decided that Brother Rat was not a heretic but a madman, and thus was sent to us.

  During the last winter, which has lingered well into spring, Brother Rat developed a cough that has not lessened as the weather grows warmer but instead has grown more fierce with each passing day so that it is now acknowledged that there is no medicine but the Hand of God that can deliver him. To that end, so that he may come shriven to the Mercy Seat, I have been entrusted with the task of recording the Confession of Brother Rat for delivery to the Secular Arm and for inclusion in the records of this monastery. May God grant that I perform my mandate without error for His greater Glory.

  Because Brother Rat is known to be dangerous, he has been confined to a cell alone. There is a window in the cell, set near the ceiling so that he cannot see out. His leg
s are shackled and a chain holds him to a cleat in the wall that allows him little more than twice his height in range. He has a pallet for sleep and the rushes are changed twice a year. A single blanket is provided him in the summer, two in the winter. He is fed twice a day, as are all the fifty-four madmen confined within our walls. There is a privy hole in the floor of his cell. He is clothed in a peasant’s smock, for it is not fitting that any who are mad should be habited as monks. Brother Rat is very thin, and the cough has taken more flesh from him so that his face is gaunt as a skull. He has some hair left, most of it grey, as is his beard. The nails on his right hand are very long, but on the left they do not grow well since the fingers were broken. His speech is not easily understood because he has so few teeth, nonetheless I have striven to record every word correctly, and if I have not been accurate, I beg forgiveness and offer as my excuse the difficulty of discerning his words.

  When Brother Emmerano and I entered the cell, Brother Rat was lying upon his pallet. He blinked many times at the light of the three torches we brought, and shielded his one sighted eye until he was accustomed to the brightness. As he saw who we were, he spoke.

  “So I’m dying.” He raised himself, spitting copiously as he did. “About time. Perhaps God is more merciful than I thought.”

  Brother Emmerano blessed the poor madman, and then said, “This is Brother Luccio, who will record everything we say here. He is a scribe and a true monk who will take care to be correct in what he writes. I am come to take your Confession.” He spoke slowly and clearly, for he has often maintained that madmen are more sensible when they are addressed in this way. “Two of the lay Brothers wait outside the door.”