Screaming to Get Out & Other Wailings of the Damned

by J. F. Gonzalez

  “Something is crashing into them. In one case, a woman reported that her house was basically crushed. Like something walked right through it. We cut now to Alan Turin, who is reporting from York County.”

  (There is a click, and then the narrator cuts back in)

  I’ve been watching this the past hour. I also went online. This is big news.

  I know it’s tied to those large circular prints I saw behind the Sallee house.

  Something is out there.

  Billy Sallee did something. He called something up.

  (There’s another pause on the tape, as if it was turned off momentarily, and then the narrator is back).

  It’s four hours later and my parents aren’t home yet. I’m worried about them, and I almost went out to see if I could find them—the invitation to the Christmas party is on the refrigerator door, so I could just drive over there if I wanted to. But something is keeping me inside the house. I’m afraid to go outside.

  It’s getting worse.

  During the past four hours, I’ve monitored the news and done some research.

  First, the news. Like I said, it’s getting worse. The phenomenon that’s being reported– buildings falling down or being crashed into by something invisible—is becoming not only more widespread, it’s starting to happen in other places. Detroit. Nashville. Los Angeles. Even London and Buenos Aires, of all places. Just ten minutes ago there was a report that it was happening in Brisbane, Australia.

  And new stuff is happening too. Not only are buildings being crashed into, but more of those large circular prints are appearing. It’s as if something giant and invisible with a lot of feet is walking around. People are reporting from all over the world that they’re hearing it. That tells me there’s more than one.

  There’s also something that sounds like it’s being dragged along the ground. Whatever it is, it’s big....big enough to demolish not only buildings, but also cars, bridges, even skyscrapers. It’s almost like a giant, invisible child is dragging a large blanket or something behind it through a miniature tinker-toy city and the blanket is destroying everything it’s dragged across, only the tinker-toy city is a real city.

  Anyway, I wanted to tell more about Billy really quickly. I have a feeling that he has something to do with this, and it all has to do with what happened to him when we were kids, and how bad he was teased.

  When we were seniors in high school, Billy and I had the same World History class. One day, we were studying Mayan History. Actually, we were studying South American history and we were covering all the indigenous people of Central and South America. We covered the Incas, the Aztecs, and then we got to the Mayans and their belief systems. How the Mayans were a highly advanced people, and how they had a complex system of mathematics, astrology, and astronomy. They’d even developed a calendar, and had it worked into a magical system. The teacher made an off-handed comment about the Mayan calendar being not only accurate with our own calendar, but he also mentioned that it ended on December 21, 2012. He mentioned that many people believed that was a sign, an end of the Great Cycle which many scholars believe began in August of 3114 B.C. Other people believe the Mayan Calendar doesn’t end at all, that its like the odometer on a car that simply starts a new cycle when 9 clicks over to 0 and so on, only in this case it’ll change from 2012 to something else. Anyway, he talked about many theories and he had the nerve to laugh about it all in class. Rather dismissively, too. But then he never did offer an alternate theory.

  Anyway, Billy was riveted by the story. Especially when Mr. Chapman talked about the ending of the Mayan Calendar.

  There was something about Billy that changed that day. I noticed it right away.

  For the first time he actually raised his hand in class and asked Mr. Chapman questions.

  I don’t remember what the questions were now. For the life of me, I wish I did. But I remember it was pretty far out. Something that wasn’t even covered in the class. I remember a couple kids kinda chuckled, and Mr. Chapman looked out at the classroom kinda disapproving. Then he turned to Billy and answered his questions. They had this five-minute discussion on the Mayan Calendar. Billy was asking him not only about the calendar, but the Mayan belief system. Mr. Chapman seemed really interested in fielding Billy’s questions. I gotta admit, the change in Billy was astonishing. For the first time he seemed sure of himself. Like he had purpose.

  In the weeks that followed, I noticed Billy spending a lot of time at the school library. While Billy was always smart, he never spent a lot of time at the library. Sometimes I caught a glimpse of the books he was checking out. Volumes on ancient history, astronomy. He must have been hitting up bookstores, too, because some of the books I saw him reading during study hall, or during lunch break were definitely not library books from the school. These were big books on mathematics and the occult (I could tell from the weird symbols on the covers). And there was this intensity about him while he was reading these books....an intensity I hadn’t seen in him since we were in the eighth grade.

  When we were in the eighth grade, Billy created a device in science class that threw a mock explosion. That’s about the closest I can come to describing it. We were supposed to be making transistor radios, but like I said before...Billy is smart. That year was particularly bad for him because he was getting bullied pretty much everyday. Anyway, he made this thing...Ted Gleason said it was a superconductor because that’s what his father had called it in the days that followed. I only caught a glimpse of it during class one day, and it was this little square metal thing, about the size of a wallet. It had a couple of wires sticking out of it, and a button in the center. It sure didn’t look like the radio we were supposed to be building. Instead, Billy put it inside a very large glass jar, screwed a lid over it, then drilled a hole in the lid. Then, using a straightened out hanger, he inserted it through the hole and pushed the button with it.

  The button was a detonator.

  We were in the final stages of our projects. We were supposed to be able to turn our radios on and get signals. Our electronics teacher, Mr. Eschbach, had been circling the class during the week we were building them, and I remember him stopping at Billy’s station to look at what he was doing. I heard glimpses of what Mr. Eschbach told Billy. “....you’ve got this all wrong, Mr. Sallee...” and “...you haven’t been listening or paying attention...you’re deviating from the scope of this project...” and “...no matter the outcome of your project, Mr. Sallee, I’m afraid I’m going to have to fail you...”. And then, finally, the coup-de-grace.

  I was watching as Billy inserted the straightened-out coat hanger through the little hole and pressed the button.

  And I saw the mini-explosion that brightened the glass jar his little metallic box was in.

  We all felt a mini-concussion rock through the atmosphere of the class. Ted Gleason and I were the only ones who saw the flash, and then the miniature mushroom cloud flared inside the glass amid fiery smoke and blowing particles of metal and wire.

  Mr. Eschbach ran up to Billy upset and astonished. “What have you done? My God, what have you done?”

  I remember the panic that ensued as Mr. Eschbach ushered us out of the room. I remember him grasping Billy’s arm firmly as he led him down the hall to the principal’s office. I remember the police and the fire department coming to the school. I also remembered guys coming to the school dressed in white plastic coveralls, wearing face masks and helmets with the radioactive symbol stenciled on their backs.

  Billy Sallee was almost expelled from school for that stunt. He was even visited by the government. I think it was the FBI; they wanted to know where he’d come up with the formula for creating what was essentially a mock nuclear device. For weeks our town lived under a cloud of suspicion as the once tranquil streets crawled with government vehicles. They whisked Billy and the remains of his device away to some lab, and it was later determined that what he’d created wasn’t radioactive at all. It was eventually deemed to be harmle
ss; using materials he obtained in class, he simply created a superconductor made from carbon nanotubes coated with an amine through which gases absorb on the surface. He created an electrical charge which “ignited” the gases and—viola!—a fake hydrogen explosion within a controlled environment.

  The school didn’t expel him, but he was suspended for three days. In the months following that incident, people seemed to be afraid of Billy Sallee. It was almost as if the harassment and teasing, which had reached its pinnacle in the days prior to that incident, proved to be the catalyst for Billy to demonstrate what he was capable of and it worked. I later found out that what he did in class that day would have required somebody at a PhD level to accomplish and Billy not only figured it out himself, he seemed to have done it without the aid of any Internet “how-to” guides. I think it was his way of sending everybody a warning that he’d had enough, and the message was not only heard, it was taken seriously. The jocks and preppie kids that constantly tormented and picked on him suddenly let up. The teachers and administrators that had turned a blind eye to it all suddenly went out of their way to be nice to him. I admit that I even made a small attempt at being friendly with Billy. Perhaps even then, we were all afraid of what he could do.

  I later learned through Ted Gleason and his father (who, for some reason, had taken an interest in what happened) that the school district reached out to the Sallee family and began a series of meetings. They realized they had not only an exceedingly brilliant student, but one who had the capability of even greater things. They realized he could use his knowledge, his talent, for good if he was only properly mentored. So with that, Billy had a mentor in the form of Mr. Eschbach (who, despite the scare Billy put into him, took an interest in his scientific mind). The harassment from the jocks stopped in the ninth grade, and by the time we entered Warwick High School, that was all in the past. Billy Sallee was still a social outcast, still avoided by the social elite, but he was on the fast track to bigger and better things. He was on the fast track to a promising scientific career.

  The harassment levied against Billy might have stopped on the surface, but it was still going on in more subtle ways. In the tenth grade yearbook, his photo was credited to ‘Spaz’ Sallee; Kevin Malone was suspended for that. The one time Billy tried to reach out to his classmates in a gesture of friendship resulted in a nasty rumor being spread about him (that he was sexually attracted to chickens, of all things). He got a new nickname because of that: chickenhead. He retreated socially again, and as the years passed into our junior year and the early part of our senior year, he became even more withdrawn. His physical appearance became disheveled, which didn’t help matters. If he thought withdrawing would make him more invisible to the more popular jock crowd (who were the main culprits of the continued harassment), it didn’t.

  The administrators tried to stop it, of course, but nothing much was really done about it. After all, the jocks were higher on the social ladder. They carried the football and track teams. Some of them were academic stars, too. The teachers and administrators mostly tried to keep them—the jocks—and Billy away from each other.

  It mostly worked.

  And like I said...I could have stopped it. Or at least I thought I could have. I could have at least influenced the jocks—who I knew very well on a social level—from harassing Billy. I was a popular student. I was a leader. Other kids looked up to me. They respected my decisions on various councils I sat on. I had a way with persuasion.

  I could have done something.

  But I didn’t.

  (There is a short pause on the tape and several sighs are heard. Then the narrative continues)

  That brings things to the day in History when Billy learned about the Mayan calendar.

  Like I said, after Billy heard this it was like he became a changed person. He began reading books on ancient religions and cults, began poring over books on mathematics and astronomy and physics. It almost seemed like he had a sense of anger in him, an emotion I’d never seen in him before (prior to that he’d always seemed shy, scared, or pleading with whoever was near him to leave him alone and stop bothering him). Now, though, he was angry.

  I also detected a sense of hate coming from him.

  In fact, he seemed downright spooky.

  My girlfriend, Heather, mentioned to me one night while we were on a date that he creeped her out.

  I can only imagine that if he evoked those feelings in Heather, he evoked it in other girls too.

  But Billy wasn’t interested in girls in high school. He wasn’t interested in much of anything, really, until that day in World History. After that, he developed a keen interest in physics.

  Several big colleges courted Billy, including Harvard, Stanford, and Yale, but he settled on a little college in a place called Arkham, Massachusetts. I’d never heard of the school before, or the town, and I remember wondering why he turned down such prestigious universities to attend a school that wasn’t such a heavy-hitter. I remember making this remark to some friends over pizza one Saturday night, and Ted said something about Miskatonic University being a pretty good school. It was one of those institutions that flew under the radar but was considered top pedigree nonetheless. In fact, it was Ivy League. Regardless, that’s where Billy was going.

  And so that’s how things went for the next three years.

  (There’s a strange noise in the background of the tape. We hear the narrator mutter “shit”, then the audio cuts off, as if he has turned off the tape recorder. Audio resumes a moment later)

  That was some shit! Man...it was like...damn, I don’t know how to describe it...it was like something...something that sounds like a...lion...or a wolf or...some kind of animal that’s...well, it was indescribable, to tell you the truth. It had a growl, that much was certain. But it also had a strange whining tone to it. Almost like a whistling. And it sounded like it was coming from right outside!

  Whatever it is, it’s gone now.

  (There’s another sigh on the tape)

  I’m in the basement now. My folks’s basement is completely finished. I turned off all the lights upstairs, brought some food down and stashed it in the fridge we keep in the downstairs bar. I turned on the baseboard heater, so I’ll at least be warm tonight.

  Anyway, I want to continue about Billy. I’m almost finished, so this won’t take much longer.

  The first time I came home for Christmas break, Ted Gleason and I went out. We got to talking about our friends from high school and Billy came up. Ted said he’d seen Billy at the Park City Mall the day after he came home for winter break. Ted said he looked worse than he’d ever seen him. He was wandering around the mall with a glazed look on his face, his appearance grubby, just watching people. Ted said he even stopped to say hi and all Billy did was look at him like he didn’t even know him. Ted said he asked Billy how Miskatonic was, and Billy warmed up to that. He smiled at Ted, said school was great! Like he was real enthusiastic about it. Ted asked Billy what he was studying and Billy muttered something else again. Ted thought he said he was studying physics, but he wasn’t entirely sure because Billy kept muttering about “angles” and “portals” and “the spheres beyond” or some nonsense. That’s when Ted realized that maybe Billy was going crazy.

  For some reason after hearing that I had the wild urge to head over to Billy’s house to maybe see for myself what he was up to.

  Ted was totally up for that.

  So we got in my car later that night and drove over to Billy Sallee’s home on Spooky Nook road.

  We parked at the end of the rural, two-lane road, then made our way on foot to the house. Spooky Nook Road is pretty far out in the country, and there are only half a dozen homes on its half-mile run. Across the road from the houses is farmland. Behind the homes are thick woods. Ted and I hiked over to Billy’s house and, once there, crept up to the house.

  The windows were dark. I noticed a car parked in the driveway. By all outward appearances, though, I had the impressio
n nobody was home.

  Ted and I crept up to the side of the house, being as careful and quiet as we could. We stood still for a while, trying to get a sense if anybody was home.

  It sure didn’t seem like it.

  Ted grabbed my arm, pointed toward the ground, and I saw what he was getting at. There was a faint light coming from the basement.

  We crept forward slowly and knelt by the basement window. The window was set at ground level. We could see a light emanating from somewhere within, and once we got close enough we began to hear the sounds.

  I got down on my knees, shivering from the cold, and crawled to the window. I put my face to it, cupping my hands to the side of my eyes to see inside. Ted did the same. I really wasn’t worried about the repercussions should somebody—Mr. Sallee, or even Billy himself— come out and catch us. I could just claim that we knocked on the door and nobody came and we went around back to see if anybody was home. No big deal.

  What we saw in the basement, though, almost made me bolt for the car right then.

  Billy was in the basement, his back to us. He was in a room that was off the area we were peering in. There were lit candles everywhere. The candle flames cast iridescent shadows on the walls. They illuminated what we were seeing perfectly.

  Billy was standing on the floor, his arms outstretched, head tilted back. There was a big black book lying open on a podium, as if he were reading or reciting from it. There were candles on the floor. There was also a weird shape drawn on the hardwood floor, with strange symbols scrawled here and there. There were also large scraps of paper with other symmetrical shapes and designs scrawled on them, with writing that appeared Arabic. I also saw bottles with different kinds of liquid resting on a bench nearby.

  Then we heard the sounds.

  It almost sounded like Billy was chanting.

  And there was something in the atmosphere, too. Something that was heavy, and malevolent and dangerous. I could feel it closing in on me. It almost felt like some awful force was being conjured, that it was simply waiting for some kind of signal to unleash its damage.