by Scott Thomas
The night before had passed without incident. No strange noises. No scratching from the ceiling above. Once he thought he heard Moore stir, footsteps in the hall, but they quickly receded and were gone.
Sam was back on the phone in an effort to rouse Daniel, but he knew that if they wanted to check in with him, they would need a new plan of attack.
Sam plopped down on a sleek leather couch, picking up a small ivory statue from the coffee table to inspect the outrageously large phallus protruding from it. Classic Moore décor.
“So,” he said, “what now?”
“We go to him,” was her answer.
“Go to Chicago?”
“Why not? You came here to see me, to see if I was going through the same thing as you.”
“I came here to make sure I wasn’t crazy.”
“And I’m still not convinced we’re not,” Moore offered, turning away from the window to face him. “Maybe we’re both crazy and Daniel Slaughter is just really bad about checking his voicemail. There’s only one way to find out.”
“Go to him.” Sam sighed.
Somewhere in the sky overhead, thousands of miles above them, a jet screamed by.
TWENTY-TWO
FRIDAY, APRIL 21
THE FIRST RAYS of dawn began to filter through the lopsided venetian blinds, but Kate had not slept a wink all night. She stared into the fuzzy orange light with bloodshot eyes, the shadows from the blinds cutting across her face like black prison bars. Normally—that is, back when her life was her own—she would have been furious at not getting any rest. She would have dreaded the sound of her alarm clock buzzing, of dragging herself from bed, of trudging to the shower with invisible weights pulling her down.
That scenario now sounded like an absolute pleasure, a welcome respite from her current situation. Exhaustion did not even begin to describe it. Her days and nights had begun to blur with only these moments—staring into the growing sunlight—to remind her of the difference between the two.
For the first few weeks after the madness had begun, friends and concerned neighbors would stop by unannounced, knocking on her door and calling out, “Kate? You in there? You okay?” She told them she had the flu, and after that excuse wore thin, she simply ordered them away. Wainwright had been the most persistent, showing up around seven p.m. every night after work. But she managed to discourage even him, and soon they all stopped coming, leaving Kate to the absolute silence of her tomblike studio apartment.
She lay in her bed (a mattress, really, the blankets crumpled in a pile on the floor), her head cocked to the side on her rumpled pillow, her face slack. A few blocks away, church bells chimed. They went through their automated tune with the precision of a Swiss watch, making an artificially joyous sound.
There was the distant feeling that she was late, that she should hop out of bed and scramble to get dressed, but this sensation quickly dissipated. She had nowhere to go. No job. No friends. No life. Only this. Only the claustrophobic isolation of the world behind her locked door.
From somewhere outside, drifting in like echoes from an alternate universe, came the sounds of waking life. A car honked. A dog barked. A man yelled curse words at no one in particular. Kate recognized these individual noises for what they were, but they no longer held the resonance they once did. They were sounds from the past, heard through a tear in time.
In twenty minutes, the sunlight had crept from the uppermost corner of the room to halfway down the wall, illuminating a spread of overlapping photographs as it traveled its daily journey. Each photo was a five-by-seven print, some color, some black and white, most from Kate’s Hewlett Packard PhotoSmart printer. It was a mosaic of random frames from various video shoots. A few were of celebrities, a mixture of staged scenes and candid shots. Others were personal pics, various street scenes, life as she once knew it. These were the most recent additions, photos she had taken as a dark experiment, to make sure that what was happening really was happening.
Now she knew it was. There was no doubt.
In the beginning, she thought it was a fluke. A camera trick. A malfunction within the machine. The first anomalies were present in her footage from the Kill Creek shoot. Most people wouldn’t have noticed them as they flashed by at one-thirtieth of a second. But Kate did. She tracked them down, frame by frame. A shadow that seemed to go against the falling light. A wisp of white in the corner of a dark room. Then they began to take shape. A body. A head. A face staring out from the shadows.
Her first thought was that the entire shoot was marred by distracting flash-frames. But as soon as she showed the video to Wainwright, the aberrations—a blob of light, a faintly human form—disappeared completely. When a colleague played back the footage that now resided eternally on WrightWire and YouTube, she was stunned to see that the images were flawless.
Her mind tried to replay that moment in the second-floor hallway, when she thought she saw something on her LCD screen.
For one split second, the wall was gone, she remembered. And there was an old woman. Not Rebecca Finch in her wheelchair. This woman was standing. Black hair billowed around her head. She was clawing the air as if scraping desperately at the other side of the invisible wall.
But Kate refused to let the image take root in her brain. The shadows and wisps of white in her footage were flukes, she assumed. Her files were corrupted. What the world had seen that night contained none of the deficiencies she now obsessed over.
Her next shoot was for an up-and-coming indie band, the next big thing, straight outta Iowa. Four mopey white guys in dirty jeans and vintage rock tees. It was late when she returned to the WrightWire offices. The sun was setting, cutting strips of gold through the towering black forms of lower Manhattan. Kate plugged a USB cable into the base of her camera, connecting the other end to the port on the side of her laptop. The footage downloaded in a flash. She scrolled through it, pausing when something odd caught her eye.
It was there again. From take to take, she could follow its transformation like a digital flip-book. A fuzzy pale cloud in the first minute of footage. A vertical oval by the middle of the session. By the final frame, the object had taken human form, like a ghostly fifth member of the band. Its hollow black eyes stared out at her, its jaw drooped slightly as if about to scream, its dark hair suspended in air by a phantom wind. While the rest of the group did their best to look aloof, staring off into space to suggest deep thoughts, this horrible wraith looked directly at the camera. Its curled fingers dug at the open air. It wanted out. It wanted through. To her.
She had to tell Wainwright. She could trust him. She needed him to assure her that she was not imagining it, that she was not crazy.
Kate’s foot tapped nervously as Wainwright flipped through the printed screenshots. She watched his face, but his expression gave no hint to his thoughts. And then he simply shrugged, holding the stack of photos out to her.
“I don’t see anything, baby,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
She stared at the pictures in his hand. She did not want to take them back. She was afraid of what she might find.
That night, behind her locked apartment door, the thing returned. Not just to the band footage but to the Kill Creek shots as well. Kate raced to her computer, frantically clicking on the file that contained the bulk of her video. Her entire library blinked open on the screen, a mammoth window showcasing thousands of thumbnails. She scrolled through them, her fingers leaving wet streaks of sweat on the mouse. It was there. Floating next to her famous subjects. Hovering above a subway stop. Lurking in the background of her family’s Thanksgiving dinner.
A pale woman with hollow eyes, standing just behind her happy, oblivious family.
One after another, Kate printed the pictures. She mounted them on the wall in haphazard rows using anything she had—pushpins, tape, glue, rubber cement, chewing gum, nails, screws. She finished late the next morning, the harsh sun of early summer already baking the city outside.
On the wall
before her was a mosaic of random images, a crudely assembled overview of her collection. For a moment, Kate had simply stared at them, not breathing, mouth open. And then she crumpled into the corner, her body trembling uncontrollably as she shook her head.
No, no, no.
Together the ghostly images in each photograph formed one monstrous face, spanning from wall to wall, from ceiling to floor. Its pale form flickered in and out like a dying bulb, but it was there, towering over her, staring into her soul with empty sockets: that woman with the flowing jet-black hair.
Nearly two months later, Kate was curled up on her sweat-stained mattress, knees pressed tightly to her chest, the rising sun painting her apartment with the colors of dawn. Her eyes tracked the room, hopping from photograph to photograph. For the moment, it seemed the invading spirit had been exorcised from the images, but she knew this was only a trick. It would return. It always did.
She gave a tiny, frightening giggle, the sound of sanity escaping like air from a punctured balloon.
Her gaze fell upon a wooden handle on the kitchen counter. Oh yes. Now she remembered what she had been up to the night before. It had seemed like such a cold, cruel thing in the darkness, but now . . . now she welcomed the idea.
She pulled herself across the mattress, over the edge and onto the floor. The polished wood was cold against her bare knees. Her skin squeaked as she scooted her body toward the kitchen.
In the hallway outside of her apartment came a squeaking sound, like a wheel in need of oil. It moved slowly down the hall, toward her door.
Kate did her best to ignore it. She had heard it before, late at night, before she drifted off to troubled sleep. It usually stayed at a distance, a faint sound she could not be sure was even there.
Now it was coming closer.
She stared at the far wall, wishing she could see through it. She tracked the progress of the sound as it inched its way down the hall.
Just outside her door, it stopped.
Her fingers touched the base of the kitchen cabinets. She slid them up to the counter, grasping blindly. They found a wooden handle of a knife. She clutched the object to her chest. She was surprised to find that she was not at all frightened. Just the opposite, in fact. She had not felt this confident in months.
Outside her door, there was silence. And then the doorknob began to turn. Slowly, testing. It was locked.
The knife’s blade was cold against her skin.
“Hello?” a voice called out. It was a woman’s voice, thin and brittle, like ancient paper. “I know you’re in there,” she said.
It’s not really a woman, Kate’s mind screamed. It wants you to think it is, but it’s not.
Kate knew the voice of the thing behind the door was that of a deeper sound being forced up into the higher register of an elderly woman.
“Why don’t you open the door, dear?”
With one hand gripped tightly around the wooden handle, Kate pressed the tip of the knife against her wrist.
The doorknob began to twist violently as the thing behind the door tried to force its way in. Once again, it stopped. Once again, there was silence.
“We just want to talk to you, Katie,” the voice said.
Kate shivered at hearing the thing say her name.
“I won’t let you in,” Kate growled through clenched teeth.
The thing behind the door gave a raspy chuckle. “Oh, sweetheart, you already have.”
A new sound got Kate’s attention. It was coming from the collage of photos covering her wall.
Hadn’t she torn those down? She was almost certain she had. She remembered ripping them from the wall in a panic, desperate to be rid of that staring hollow-eyed face.
Yet there they were. And something was behind the photos, scratching against the back of the wall as if trying to dig through it.
A finger broke through one photo. The pale digit poked into the light and squirmed like an unearthed grub.
Kate held the knife steady. The tip bit slightly into her skin. She sucked in a breath, her entire body shaking.
“That’s my sister,” the old woman behind the door said. “She wants to make sure you help us.”
“I’ll never help you,” Kate sobbed.
“You will,” the voice assured her.
Another finger tore through. Photos began to fall, fluttering to the floor as first an arm, then the edge of a shoulder pushed its way into the room.
“Katie Ann. That is your name, isn’t it? Katie Ann?” the woman-thing behind the door asked.
It began to repeat her name in an awful singsong voice: “Katie Ann. Katie Ann. Katie Ann.”
Kate closed her eyes.
The wall of photos dropped away as a pale form burst through. It tumbled through shafts of morning sunlight and crashed to the floor, stopping in a heap only a few feet from where Kate sat crouched, the knife to her wrist.
The pale form twisted its head, and jet-black hair fell away, revealing a rotting face stretched over bone. It stared at her with hollow eye sockets.
And Katie put her weight into the knife, driving it downward so quickly that the tip broke through to the underside of her arm. Her mouth opened and a shocked gasp escaped. She hated the sound of it. Fear and regret and weakness. And yet there was no other choice.
“Ka-tie Ann . . .” the singsong voice called from behind the front door.
Kate was not even aware as she dragged the blade up her arm, all the way to the elbow, forcing it past the indentation of that groove and into the thick muscle of her bicep. She felt nothing as she twisted the knife around and dragged it back down her arm. A strip of flesh fell free, dangling like the meat of filleted game.
Darkness began to creep into the edges of her vision, overtaking once-pretty eyes that now bulged wildly from her face.
Something warm was rushing down her wrist and into her lap. It began to spurt. Specks of warmth hit the base of her neck.
Her eyes stared straight ahead, into the hollow eyes of a Finch sister.
I beat you, she thought as her mind clouded over.
The pale thing smiled curiously at her, as if to say she were mistaken.
TWENTY-THREE
SATURDAY, APRIL 22
WE CAME ALL this way for nothing, Moore thought.
She looked up at the suburban house as the cab pulled to the curb. It was a quaint two-story Colonial, white with black shutters, on an elegant, meandering street in Chicago’s North Shore. The glow of meticulously landscaped, upscale homes warmed several streets to the east. Beyond these cul-de-sacs and winding lanes, the world was swallowed by the black abyss of Lake Michigan. To their south, the blinking lights of downtown skyscrapers bit into low-lying clouds.
“People actually live like this?” she asked.
“Some people don’t care about a view,” Sam said.
The back door of the cab swung open, and Moore got out. Sam followed. They moved hesitantly up the walk to the front porch. Moore reached out to push the doorbell, then paused, her finger hovering in midair.
“What do we say?” she asked.
Sam didn’t respond.
Moore pressed the button.
From inside, they heard a series of pleasant chimes.
No one came to the door.
Moore raised a fist and pounded loudly on the door.
“Slaughter! Open up!”
Silence.
Come on, she thought. Be home. We have to know what’s happening. We have to be sure.
Without warning, a shiver ran through her body. She suddenly hoped no one answered the door. She wanted to leave.
If you leave now, you’ll never have to know the truth.
There was the sound of a hand on the knob, and the door swung open. A plain, sad-eyed woman stood before them.
Daniel’s wife, Moore realized. What is her name? Sabrina. This is Sabrina.
She was probably in her late thirties, although life had recently added countless years to her.
&
nbsp; A random thought flitted into Moore’s mind: Grief eats your youth.
“Yes? May I help you?” Sabrina was forcing a pleasant tone, trying desperately to hold on to a shred of the decorum she once knew.
Sam did his best to offer a smile. “Is Daniel home?”
“And you are . . .”
“Sam McGarver. This is T.C. Moore. We’re—”
Sabrina’s expression darkened.
“I know who you are,” she said.
“We need to talk to Daniel. It’s important.”
She stood motionless for a moment, looking from Sam to Moore and back. Finally she took a step back, clearing the way for them to enter.
“Come in.”
Sam took a step forward, but Moore pushed past him, entering first.
They stood side by side on the beige tile floor of the foyer as Sabrina closed the door behind them.
“Is he here?” Sam asked.
“Oh yes, he’s here.” Sabrina looked up at the ceiling. “He’s up . . . there. He’s always up there.”
Moore shot Sam a look. She knew where there was: Daniel’s office. He was holed up behind his computer, just as they had been for half a year.
“Well, can we talk to him?” Moore was losing patience. She hadn’t traveled all this way to be stopped by a skittish housewife.
From above, there came the sound of several footsteps as someone moved across the length of a room.
Then, once again, silence filled the house.
“He’s not the same, you know,” Sabrina said. It was not so much a statement for them, but for the universe at large, and whatever being may be turning its gears.
Write. Just write.
It had been there before. It had flowed from his fingertips like electricity. And now it was gone. Cut off. Extinguished like a candle whose wick had burned too low.
You can get it back. You have to.
You have to keep writing.
Daniel rubbed his sweaty palms on the legs of his jeans and placed his fingers on the keyboard. He stared at the last sentence he had been able to write:
The first brick broke free.