The Visible Filth

by Nathan Ballingrud

  “Hello?”

  Something was alive in that silence.

  “Garrett? Hello?”

  It spoke. It sounded broken and wet, like something sliding itself together in a slurry of blood and bones. A tongue testing the border of language. Liquid syllables collided and slipped past each other. It sounded too close, like it was already living in his head.

  He threw the phone across the room in a reflex of disgust, Carrie’s barked cry of shock lost in the echo of the voice leaking from his ear like a thread of blood. The phone came apart in two pieces, and Carrie was already racing toward it, leaving him to rub at his ear with the heel of his hand, tears he didn’t even know he was crying trailing down his cheek.

  Carrie crouched on the floor, fitting the battery back into the phone, snapping its shell back into place. “Was that him? Was that Garrett?” She sounded panicked.

  And why would that be, he wondered, the fear and the disgust of a moment ago settling into a thick soup of anger. She didn’t have to listen to that voice.

  “No,” he said. “It was nobody. Nobody was there.”

  WEDNESDAYS WERE ALWAYS among the slowest nights of the week, so there was plenty of time for the fear to grind away at the levees he’d built to keep the mounting panic at bay. He felt it threaten to breach every time the door swung open, and he hated himself for it. He didn’t know if he’d be able to recognize any of them again, even if they did show up. All college kids looked to him as if they came from the same homogenous gene pool, as if they were all grown in some remote basement laboratory. Arrogant, loud, their little faces as yet unmarked by the heart’s weather – they were like bright, wriggling grubs. Members of the Larval Class.

  He drank a little more than normal that night, riding his usual buzz a little further into the red. The clientele was sparse enough and familiar enough, though, that he could afford to work with dulled senses.

  Derek, the cop, did eventually show up, his partner in tow. They fetched their beers from him and settled into their customary orbit around the pool table, the rails of normal activity so comfortable and rigid that it seemed nothing peculiar could possibly exist in the world.

  He and Carrie did not discuss what they had seen on the phone. She’d looked at the pictures, watched the clip, while he peered over her shoulder. She was quiet the whole time, until the fingers crept over the rim of shaved bone, and she uttered a high, small sound. Then they watched it several more times. Somewhere in there, she cried. Then she stopped. When it was time for him to go, they didn’t say anything to each other, or kiss each other. Something dead was in the air with them, its limp black wings pressing them flat.

  He didn’t consider giving the phone to Derek. His mind corrected for its presence, setting up new neural links to avoid its consideration altogether, so that it existed like a black hole in his brain.

  At some point, Alicia came in without Jeffrey. He felt an immediate lightening of his spirit, and her arrival seemed like a kind of justice to him, as though this were some secret communication from the universe, some kind gesture to balance the scales for him. She took her usual stool and he mixed her usual drink. The comfortable click of the pool balls punctuated the low chatter of Derek and his partner, Sam Cooke crooned easily from the jukebox, and it was as though the true order of the world had nestled back into place.

  “Quiet in here tonight,” Alicia said. “You hear anything about Eric?”

  He’d actually managed to forget about Eric. “Yeah, actually. Went to see him this morning. He’s cut pretty good, but he won’t go to the hospital. He thinks he’s Rambo.”

  “You tell Derek about it?”

  “Not yet. I’m sure it’ll come up.” He didn’t want to talk about Eric. “So where’s Jeffrey tonight?”

  Alicia looked irritated and her gaze travelled along the rows of bottles behind him. “He’s being an asshole. I’m punishing him.”

  “Really? What did he do?”

  “Like I said. Being an asshole. Anybody come in to claim that phone?”

  The mention of it loosed a dark tide through his brain, and he found himself reaching for the Jameson. “Not yet.” He poured them both a shot.

  “Just this one,” Alicia said. “I have to go easy tonight.”

  “Why?”

  “I just don’t feel like being wasted. I want to try to cut back.”

  He wondered if that meant he’d be seeing less of her. The thought was terrifying in a way that even the strange video was not. A great sorrow, disproportionate and bewildering, moved through him. “You don’t have to get wasted,” he said, trying to sound normal. “Just do what I do. Maintain the buzz. It’s like surfing.”

  “You don’t have to tell me how to drink, Will.”

  They drank the shots; and then, as is the way of these things, they drank a few more. The night achieved its rhythm. Derek and his partner shot a few more games, then ambled outside into the course of their own lives. As they left, Will did not spare a thought for the phone he failed to tell them about. The dull anxiety he felt each time the door opened to admit someone new did not abate completely, but as midnight swung around and receded, it faded to a quiet hum. The whole event retracted into a dim kernel of absurdity. Alicia stayed the whole shift, easygoing and flirtatious, just like the old days. She laughed at his dumb jokes, made a few of her own. He felt like a human being again.

  When Doug came in to relieve him at two, he snagged a half-full bottle of bourbon from the shelf and swung it like a pendulum in front of Alicia. “I don’t want to go home yet,” he said.

  “Me neither.”

  “Let’s go up to the levee and kill this thing.”

  Her eyes unfocused for a moment, and he could actually see the doubt pass over her face. It stung.

  “Come on, woman.”

  “Okay. Let’s go.”

  Once they were in his car and on the road, he said, “Listen to this, it’s beautiful,” and keyed in a Pines song called “All the While,” a sweet, quiet rumination which filled the precarious space between them with warmth, a place for them to exist in soft and bleary community. The lights outside washed across the windshield, casting a glow onto her skin and then painting it with darkness again. She rested her forehead against the window and said, “You know what I like about you, Will? When you say something is beautiful, it really is. That word means something to you.” He absorbed the compliment. It filled him up.

  He parked in the grass and together they ascended the levee’s steep gradient, where a walking path snaked across the top. They crossed it and walked a little beyond, settling into the grass along the downward slope. The Mississippi was huge and silent at their outstretched feet, moving the earth’s dark energy through the night. The air was humid and close; clouds cruised across the stars above them. Their shoulders were pressed together as they lay back and watched them. Will took a pull from the bottle and passed it to her; she did the same.

  “This is nice,” he said.

  “Yeah. No people. I like no people.”

  “Me, too.”

  She angled her head so that it rested on his shoulder, her eyes closed sleepily. He turned to her, his nose in her hair. “You smell good,” he said.

  She smiled. “Mmm.”

  “You ever wonder how things could have been?”

  She took a moment to answer, but only a small one. “Yes,” she said.

  He kissed her forehead. Her breath stilled. He did it again, and this time she turned her face up to him, her eyes still closed, and offered her lips. He kissed her there with disbelief that such a thing might be happening to him, with a sense of a great engine beginning at last to turn, with a cresting joy. They kissed tentatively, their lips only grazing, and then more deeply, until they turned their bodies to each other and he put a hand on her cheek. He grazed his fingers across her ear, down the side of her face, and then down to her breast. He felt her bra underneath her shirt, wanted to pull it aside, touch skin to skin. He felt her fingers d
ig into his hair and his back.

  And then she pulled away, pressing her hand against his chest. “Stop, Will.”

  “But…”

  “Stop. Please. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”

  He sat up, dismayed. “Why? What’s wrong?”

  “You know what’s wrong.” She sat up too, adjusting her shirt, brushing her hair back behind her ears. There was more space between them now.

  “Is it Jeffrey?”

  “Of course it’s Jeffrey. And it’s Carrie, too. Come on, Will.”

  “Why? Why him, for Christ’s sake? I don’t understand it.”

  She shook her head. Her face was flushed, and her lower lip trembled. “I don’t know. I’m sorry. I’m horrible.”

  He put his hand on her back. “No, Alicia.”

  Arching away from his touch, she said, “Don’t.”

  He sat there, feeling ridiculous, feeling like something essential had been blasted away from inside him. “I’m sorry.”

  “Let’s just go back.”

  They walked back to the car, and when he started the engine, she reached down and switched off the music. They drove back to the bar in a painful silence. He pulled in behind the place she parked, his headlights illuminating the license plate, the rear window. He saw the empty seats in there and imagined them both sitting inside, in a kinder universe, adjacent to this one, where that would be a normal thing, where they both belonged in the same place. He said, “She doesn’t love me, you know.”

  She looked at him with genuine sorrow. “I’m sorry for that. If that’s true, then I really am.”

  “Does he love you?”

  She nodded. “I think he really does,” she said.

  “I do too, you know.”

  “I know you do.” She put her hand on his cheek, and the gentleness of it nearly made him cry. “I’ll see you tomorrow night, okay?”

  “Yeah. Okay.” He could feel the tears in his eyes, knew that she could see them. He didn’t care.

  She kissed him quickly, chastely. “You’re a good man, Will. Maybe the best one. Good night.”

  “Good night,” he said.

  He was anything but a good man. He knew it. He watched her pull away from the curb and disappear around the corner. Then he rested his head on the steering wheel and sat there for a while.

  BY THE TIME he arrived back home, the sun was bruising the sky in the east. He pulled in behind Carrie’s car on the side of the road, shut the engine off, and leaned back in his seat with his eyes closed. Something big was trapped inside him, some great sadness, and he felt if he could cry, or even articulate it in speech, it would relieve the pressure and provide him some measure of relief. But he couldn’t reach it. He couldn’t find a way to address it. He wondered if it would become the thing that defined him. He imagined himself in the third person, as someone observed and understood by an invisible witness. Would there be room for sympathy? Or would he be damned by it?

  The car was a liminal zone; as long as he stayed there he would not have to face either Carrie or Alicia again. It seemed an attractive prospect. He could easily go to sleep here, let the heat of daylight wake him up in an hour or two. He could think of something to tell Carrie.

  He was pretty sure he could think of something.

  His phone chimed in his pocket, and he fumbled it hurriedly out, thinking for one incandescent moment that it might be Alicia.

  It was Carrie. The disappointment was almost physical. He looked at their apartment across the street. The porch light was on, but everything inside seemed dark. That didn’t really mean anything, though.

  He accepted the call and said, “Hey. Sorry I’m so late. I’m right outside. I’m on my way in.”

  The call disconnected.

  A familiar cold tide flowed through his chest. He told himself she was just angry with him, that she had a right to be – more than she knew – and she’d simply hung up on him. That he would go inside and take what he had coming. But he knew it was something else. When the phone chimed a text received, he found himself unable to make himself look. He stared at the icon for a long time, feeling that strange, unreleasable presence swell inside of him. Finally, he slid his thumb across the screen and looked at the text.

  It was another picture. Taken from inside his house, the lights off. The perspective was from the kitchen, directed at the door to Carrie’s study, but angled in such a way that the picture did not afford a look into it. Only the cool blue glow of an active computer screen, radiating from inside her study like a heat signature, gave any hint of a human presence.

  Will crossed the street, feeling powerfully dislocated from the world. The door was still locked. He applied his key to it and it swung silently open, spilling the darkness of the interior over him. The air was warm. He stepped inside, attuned to each convulsion of his heart. He knew he should find a weapon, but the actual doing of it seemed too complicated. Easier to just walk into the black cave of his home and accept what waited there.

  “Carrie?”

  He entered the kitchen. He stood precisely in the spot the photo had been taken. There, bleeding from her study, was the blue glow of the computer screen.

  “Carrie? Are you awake?”

  He got no answer.

  He stepped up to the door and peered in.

  She was sitting in her chair, elbows on the desk, leaning in close to the screen. Her right hand was on the mouse, still as a held breath. Something was moving on the screen.

  “Carrie. Are you okay?”

  “Huh?” She looked at him, blinking at the adjustment. “Oh. Hey. Sorry, I didn’t know you were home. What time is it?”

  “It’s past five, honey.” He looked at the screen. She was watching a video of a black tunnel. The walls glistened with moisture. The camera moved through it slowly and smoothly, as if it were gliding along a track.

  “Oh man. Really? I lost track of time.” She rubbed her eyes.

  “What’s that? Are you researching something?”

  She switched off the screen. “No. That’s something else.” She arose from her chair and draped her arms around his shoulder. “Are you just getting home?”

  “Yeah. I stayed after the shift. Played a few games of pool. Just hung out.”

  “Good. I like you to have fun.” She kissed him sleepily. “Let’s go to bed.”

  “Did you send me a picture a few minutes ago? Did you try to call me?”

  She frowned, put her forehead on his shoulder. “No. Maybe? I don’t think so. I can’t really remember. I feel foggy.”

  “Are you drunk?”

  “I’m just really tired, Will. Come on. Let’s go to bed.” She headed in that direction, attempting to drag him along behind her.

  “I’ll be right there, okay?”

  She continued on by herself, walking like someone drugged, sagging from her own bones.

  He checked the apartment thoroughly. In closets, under the bed, in the pantry. The place was empty. After double-checking the lock on the front door, he followed her to bed. He stared at the ceiling until the rising sun painted it with light, Carrie still snoring beside him. Only then did he manage to close his eyes and lose himself from the world.

  THEY BOTH SLEPT into the early afternoon. They awoke groggy and irritable. A heavy weight swung in Will’s skull, moving at a slight lag to the rest of him. He moved ponderously into the bathroom, where he took a scorching shower. He felt unaccountably filthy, as though he’d been steeped in sewage. The soap and hot water did nothing to change it. He considered, briefly, that he was feeling guilt about his encounter with Alicia, but in fact the only thing he felt about that was a horror at her rejection.

  In the living room, Carrie was sitting on the couch, staring at the window, her hands folded together on her lap. The blinds were still drawn, and the day was a pale white blur beyond them. She noticed him come in, and gave him a wan smile. He had a hard time returning it, but he did.

  “What do you think it is?” she said.
<
br />   “What do you mean?”

  She opened her hands, and the yellow phone was there. “The pictures. The video.” Her face looked wrong. Maybe she was sick.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I thought you were going to give this to Derek.”

  He shrugged. He resented the question; it felt invasive. “I didn’t want to.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. Just – don’t worry about it. I will tonight.”

  She didn’t respond. Instead she activated the phone and opened the picture album.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m looking at them,” she said simply.

  He joined her on the couch and leaned into her, looking as well. “I don’t think this is a good idea,” he said. She scrolled to the pictures of the severed head, pausing on the first one.

  “I Googled that guy’s name last night. Garrett? Checked if there were any references on nola.com to someone with that name who went missing or was hurt. I didn’t find anything.”

  “We don’t know that anything happened to him,” Will said.

  She ignored this bit of absurdity. “Then I Googled other words.”

  He felt queasy. “Like what?”

  “I don’t remember. A bunch of stuff. Voices on the phone, trading images of violence, death cults, that sort of thing.”

  He shook his head, unable to process what he was hearing. “Death cults?”

  “Well I don’t know, Will! What the fuck are these people doing? Texting each other these things?”

  “Carrie, did you go looking for it?”

  “I was trying to figure this out!”

  He stood and started pacing, his body sparking with an energy as much excitement as fear. “Well? Did you find anything?”

  “I can’t remember,” she said quietly. He thought of the dark, wet tunnel on the screen last night.

  “Don’t go looking again,” he said.

  Carrie sighed, putting her forehead in her hand. The phone lay limply in her other one. “Don’t tell me what to do, Will.”