The Grimscribe's Puppets
Page 32
(because I think I know)
I mean: How many times do you have to do this, exactly, to figure out the truth? How many times do you have to repeat a routine to know it’s never going to
Oh God, I have to get Thordis out of there.
~*~
Skype log transcript of conversation between Yelena Rostov and Thordis Hendricks, recorded on August 15, 2012 (3:15 PM to 3:27 PM):
Yrostov: Thordis, are you there? I can hear you, but I can’t see you. Do you have your camera turned on?
ThordH: Yelena?
Yrostov: It’s me, yeah. I need to speak to you right now, about—
ThordH: Ha, that’s so weird. I was just going to call you.
Yrostov: You were?
ThordH: What did you want to talk about?
Yrostov: Well, I—was worried—
ThordH: Oh God, this about the blog, right? Listen, I feel so stupid, I was just...you know how it is. My sleep’s been really upset, and I just get down.
Yrostov: So you didn’t find teeth in the wall?
ThordH: No, that part was true. I mean, it’s all “true.”
Yrostov: I don’t—Thordis, I’m still not seeing anything, can you try again? I just want to talk to you about these...patterns in your blog, this toxic repetition, these weird turns of—okay, there, that’s better. Are you still having those dreams?
ThordH: Sure, sort of. But ever since you sent Lee over, things have been so much—
Yrostov: Excuse me, who?
ThordH: Lee, Yelena. You know. She’s been taking me through the meditation sequences in person, and it really helps clarify things. I mean, at first I was a little leery, but turns out having somebody in my space isn’t so bad, when they really know what they’re doing.
Yrostov: The meditation—
ThordH: Corpse posture. The whole rehearsal, Final Checks and all. I can hear everything perfectly, now; I understand. It’s Translated itself for me, so I can return the favour. And it’s just, it’s just, so—
Yrostov: Thordis, wait, slow down. Breathe. I, I need to make sure you know what you’re doing, that you aren’t gonna hurt yourself—
ThordH: Yelena, c’mon. What is it you think I’m going to do?
Yrostov: I—look, that doesn’t matter right now, I’ll explain when I get there. Just...stay put, hold on. Don’t do anything. Okay?
ThordH: No, I’m interested—hurt myself how? Why would I do that? It makes no sense. I’d never do that, not when I came here to get better. No one would. Right, Lee? I’m right, aren’t I? Tell her.
Yrostov: Thordis—
ThordH: Tell her, damnit!
Yrostov: Thordis. Focus. Who’s...that behind you?
ThordH: I told you already, Yelena. Lee.
Shumate House Site Incident Report for August 15, 2012, filed by Saracen Security Guard Margaret Cuchner:
12:00 PM Arrived on site to relieve previous guard. No further incident.
12:30 to 15:00 PM Checks as usual, nothing to report.
15:15 PM (Approx.) Care worker Yelena Rostov entered lobby, greeted me and registered. She then proceeded to Skype with Apartment 5 (Thordis Hendricks) on her tablet, while I filled out site log.
15:25 PM (Approx.) Rostov became upset and waved me over. I heard what I assumed to be tenant Hendricks rambling incoherently. Rostov pointed out what she said was an intruder in Hendricks’ apartment. Hard to see, but looked like a female figure standing behind Hendricks.
15:30 PM (Approx.) I triggered the panic button, summoning police and paramedics, and left my duty station to accompany Rostov up to Apartment 5. No response to knocking and calling. I tried security fob, but apartment door was unresponsive. When I recommended waiting for police, Rostov broke glass on fire extinguisher cabinet and used extinguisher to break door-handle, then kicked in door. I proceeded to do quick check of apartment, but found no intruder.
15:35 PM Police arrived on site and accessed my walkie-talkie. I explained situation. Officer Brian Lum stayed at front desk to direct paramedics, while Officer Chimo Moche joined Rostov and myself upstairs.
15:38 PM Officer Moche, Rostov and myself located Hendricks lying in her own bed, apparently unconscious, with blue lips and a plastic bag half-full of vomit over her head, knotted around her neck. At same time (approx.), paramedics arrived on site and were directed upstairs by Officer Lum. They began resuscitation efforts on Hendricks, broke open bag and turned her over on her stomach. Hendricks coughed up more vomit, then opened her eyes briefly and began to breathe again, erratically.
15:45 PM Paramedics removed Hendricks to St. Michael’s Hospital. Officers Lum and Moche asked me if I wanted to prefer trespassing charges against Rostov. I replied that I was not authorized to do so, and asked to be allowed to call my immediate supervisor on site, Dr Maurice L. Corbray. Officers Lum and Moche asked Rostov to remain in their custody until Dr Corbray got here. Rostov agreed.
15:50 PM I re-set alarms in Apartment 5.
16:17 PM Dr Corbray arrived on site. He elected to waive charges, but told Rostov she would be let go from her current position with MonitorU, and that she no longer had security access to Shumate House. Rostov turned her I.D. and fob over to me.
16:30 PM Rostov, Officers Lum and Moche and Dr Corbray left site. I proceeded to fill out Site Incident Report.
Signed, Margaret Cuchner #TU-4445-000097.
~*~
From This Narrow Life, the blog of Thordis Hendricks
September 30, 2012 (1:28 PM):
But why would I do that? I remember saying. It makes no sense. I would never do that. No one would ever do that.
I would never take three pills, take a sip of vodka, take three pills, repeat until gone. I would never have a bag over my head already when I did it, conveniently open at the bottom and hiked over my nose to free my mouth. I would never peel it back down again after I was done and knot it, once, twice, three times. I would never.
Never make my way back upstairs, weaving slightly. Never feel stuffy and warm and happy and only slightly queasy. Never lie down flop on my bed (our bed), and close my eyes.
Thinking: I would never, no one would. I’m not doing it now.
Except, of course, that I was.
Anyhow: This is what happened after, as far as I can figure out—
I ended up at St. Mike’s, in a private room (thank you, Aunt Hendricks’s money). I remember Yelena sitting by my bed, but only vaguely; I think she might’ve been holding my hand. She looked so tired.
(The weirdest thing is, in context, how I don’t remember “Lee” at all. I read that Skype log and I’m amazed it’s me talking, though it certainly sounds like me. Nothing seems familiar. The dreams, I at least remember having them. But this girl, this—whoever she was? Nothing.
(And I even looked up Leora Soong on the ‘Net, too. Totally unfamiliar.)
Dr Corbray came by a week later, trying to convince me that Yelena was somehow responsible for what’d happened. I disagreed. By that time, of course, the next part was all over the news; I guess he was trying to do damage control, in his own fucked-up way. Maybe that was all he’d ever been trying to do.
It’d make me sound entirely too nice to say I don’t blame him, exactly. Because I guess I probably would, if I let myself think about it. One way or the other, he lost himself a customer; whether or not that’s “enough”, given circumstances, I don’t know. The family lawyers kept telling me I had a serious case—one even said Yelena should co-sue with me, for wrongful dismissal, once her own legal issues were settled. But it’s not like Corbray can do it to anybody else now, either...so, kind of a moot point.
Because that was another thing Yelena was doing, apparently, at the hospital—she got hold of my fob, waited ‘til that guard she found me with was off-shift, then used it. Went in through the fire access door, which I didn’t even know you could (but then again, how would I?). Went upstairs, got back into Apartment 5...where she came up with enough salt to pour around the place that,
when she followed it up with gasoline and threw a lighter in after it, the salt helped act as a firebreak and kept the damage confined to the apartment. No casualties, no damage to the rest of the house—but #5’s gutted. Whatever they put there next, it won’t be the place Leora Soong died in anymore, and maybe that will help.
I’d like to find Yelena, not that I know how to go about it. I’d like to thank her, except that no one really knows where she went, after. The fire department says there weren’t any human remains in the ashes, and you’d think they’d be able to tell. So hopefully she got out, changed her name, went underground; maybe she’s working another job somewhere, keeping her eyes peeled for things other people don’t want to let themselves see. Maybe she’s sitting in front of a screen with her IM left open like some high-tech Ouija board, waiting for someone’s words to fill the box, seeing where they’ll take her. Maybe she’s telling Leora’s ghost the equivalent of Sit down, Miss Soong, we have a lot of work to do together.
Or maybe she walked into that whole Translation routine with her eyes open, wielding a skill-set I’ll never possess. Maybe she took Leora’s hand and pulled her on with her, so they ended up...somewhere else. Not the Kuiper Belt, hopefully, but hell, I don’t know. I don’t know.
(I’ll never know.)
So: This is the new blog, obviously. I’m out of Shumate, on a different cocktail, into another apartment; I go out every day, at least for a little while, and I make myself look up steadily, training my eyes on the blue, the clouds, trying to not think about the cold, huge black lurking behind it. The same black which encircles us all, no matter where we choose to hide, just beyond this planet’s pitifully thin atmosphere-skin. Because there’s no place we can go to escape it, even in our dreams—like death, it just is, and nothing helps for long.
But this much has changed: Instead of thrashing around and trying to avoid them, what I do now is make myself think these thoughts through, all the way, allow myself to, and then I let them go. Get into corpse posture, lit or fig; shut my eyes, and breathe. One day I’ll stop, and maybe I won’t even notice. What happens after that is beyond my—or anyone else’s—control.
This is truth of what I have, what I am—it may get better, but it doesn’t get cured. You find a pattern and settle into it, hoping it holds. And so every day, every night, I feel things moving all around me, a pulse like some universal heartbeat, a million minds rubbing in from every side, pumicing their thoughts against mine. A Signal of sorts, though whether it comes from inside or out-, Tiamat or God or the underside of my very own personal chemistry-soaked brain is simply impossible to tell, or prove.
Which means, our various faiths aside, that we should probably try to be content to deal with the immediate, and let the rest take care of itself.
Still seeing signs and portents everywhere, no matter what, and letting them wash over me, resistlessly as rain. A shadow in a room, darkness on darkness. A light through the bedroom window, shining from nowhere, which follows you everywhere you move to, so you always wake up with it in your eyes. A car alarm that goes off all the time, especially in the middle of the night. Or a voice in your mind, only vaguely familiar, mourning—
Team-mindedness! I broke routine, broke faith. I let my partner down. So I can’t go on, not now, not yet. Not yet...
If that’s Leora Soong’s voice, though, I don’t owe it to her to remember. I don’t owe her anything.
Instead, I sit here typing and I take my pills, determined to keep on living, still haunted or not. Which I am, surely. Aren’t we all?