The inside was unlined beyond whatever light varnish had been used on the wood itself, and as my father said, there was just a small rock sitting in there. It was very rough and porous, much like I would imagine rocks from some underwater volcano looking when you first brought them out into the air and the light. But part of why I thought that was because of the condition of the rock itself.
It was wet. It was visibly moist and sitting in a small pool of clear liquid like an ice cube plucked fresh from a drink. I involuntarily moved the box further away from my face as the realization of what I was seeing sunk in. How could it possibly be wet or even oily after all this time? Was it just a trick of the light?
I tilted the box and saw the liquid flow languidly in the direction of gravity before suddenly fading away. Within moments it looked as though all the moisture had evaporated. Tearing off a piece of the shipping box, I used it to experimentally poke the rock, moving it around the wooden box and looking for any sign of the liquid.
But there was nothing. It just looked like an old, dry rock now.
Deciding I had imagined it due to being upset, I closed the box and carried it with me back to my old childhood room where I had been sleeping. That night I told my mother that I was going to have to leave on Sunday. That I had spent as much time as I could spare.
****
The next morning I went down to the mailbox to get the mail and I noticed something strange on the mailbox door handle. It was greasy. I saw nothing on it, and aside from being slightly distasteful, I didn’t think much of it until I opened the door.
Sitting on top of the mail was a dead mockingbird.
I let out a little scream, but I made a point not to touch it. I’m a bit of a germaphobe, and I certainly didn’t want to catch whatever had killed that thing. In my initial panic, I wasn’t yet to the point of wondering how the bird had wound up in the closed mailbox, but more just thinking of ways to get it out. In the end, I just rolled over the outside trashcan and used a stick to rake the poor bird’s body into it.
It was as I was picking through the mail to see if any of it was worth salvaging that I started thinking more about the mechanics of it all. It had to be some kind of dirty practical joke. There’s no way the bird flew in there, closed the door, and then died. The house was out in the country, so neighbors were few and none of them would have done it. My mother didn’t have any real enemies that I knew of, and neither did I. So that left random kids or some nut either delivering the mail or coming by the house on a whim. Either way, I was going to try and make sure nothing like that happened again.
I called the post office, and while I was initially slightly harsh and accusatory, they just kept being reasonable and apologetic, assuring me that when our mail carrier, who had been at it for over twenty years, had delivered the mail about nine that morning, there had been no bird in there.
I then called the police, but they just politely laughed it off. Said to call back if there were any further signs of “disturbance”. I couldn’t necessarily blame them, but I was still frustrated. I really did have to leave soon, and the discovery the day before had just made it easier. But I still loved my mother, and I didn’t want some demented kid, or adult, fucking with her after I was gone.
I debated telling her about the bird as I walked back up to the house, and in the end, I decided against it. It would only make her worry or give her ammunition to try and guilt me into staying longer. I would just keep watch for the next couple of days and see if anything weird popped up. The rest of that day was uneventful, and by the time I went to bed, I had half-forgotten about the bird already.
****
The next morning I couldn’t find my mother. I had searched her room, the bathroom, everywhere I could think. She clearly had gone somewhere, because her walker was gone too. After checking the house thoroughly, I went outside. That’s when I saw her lying next to the mailbox.
I let out a yell and ran to her, afraid she’d had another stroke or broken something in a fall. Just as I reached her, she sat up and her eyes found mine. She gave me a small smile.
“Hello, Collie. What are you yelling for?”
I came up short. She looked well…better than she had since the stroke…and her voice didn’t have the slight slurring lilt I’d had such trouble getting used to in the last few weeks. And Collie? She hadn’t called me that since I was a little girl. It was always “Colleen” with a clipped and almost formal tone.
I realized my mouth was hanging open and I closed it as I knelt down beside her. “You fell or something. I just found you out here. We need to get you to a hospital. Let them check you out.” As I was speaking, she was already standing up and waving me off with a light laugh. Her walker lay discarded in the overgrown ditch nearby and she was showing no signs of needing it.
“No, no need for that. I’m doing okay. I just…” She paused, looking up at the sky for a second before smiling wider and pointing at the mailbox. “I just came out to get the mail…figured I should try and do it myself…and I found that dead mouse in there.” She pointed to the ground near the mailbox post where a fat grey field mouse lay dead. “I picked it up, thinking it wouldn’t bother me to just toss it in the trash, but I guess I’m more…” She paused again, looking up for a moment before continuing. “Squeamish than I realized.” She let out a delighted laugh. “But I’m feeling fine now. Better than fine, really.”
I wasn’t sure whether to be happy or worried, but what she was saying seemed to be true. She talked with sense, I saw no signs of confusion or lack of coordination, and she actually was moving and talking much better than she had before. I watched her carefully the rest of the day, scrutinizing her for any sign of a change, but she continued to move around the house like her old self again.
I’d made her promise to follow up with her doctor the following week, and to let me know if she started feeling the slightest bit odd. She said she would, but that she thought it was just one of those things. “It may be,” she mused, “that picking up that smelly little mouse was just what the doctor ordered.”
We stayed up late that night playing cards, and when I went to bed, I slept better than I had in a long time. I didn’t claim to understand it, but wasn’t that the definition of a miracle? I chided myself to just be grateful and hope that it held.
I woke up early the next morning just as the sun was coming up, and I tried to be quiet as I moved around my room and made my first attempts at organizing and packing up all the clothes I had brought. After a few minutes I realized I was hearing noise from the kitchen. My mother must already be up, and if she was in the kitchen, maybe it was a good sign that she still felt good.
I was walking down the hallway toward the kitchen when suddenly I froze. I heard a soft, fast rasping sound that reminded me of a rattlesnake’s rattle. I looked around but saw nothing out of place, and the noise seemed to be coming from the kitchen anyway. It was fading but still present as I rounded the corner and saw my mother standing at the sink, looking out the window.
The noise seemed to be coming from her, as insane as that sounds. The feeling that she was somehow making the sound was reinforced when it cut off as she turned and looked at me, her eyes sharp and bright. “Good morning, sleepy head. I made breakfast.”
My mind was racing throughout the meal. I kept trying to think of some way to ask her about it, but I couldn’t think of anything that didn’t make me sound crazy or foolish. Yet as we made idle chit-chat and I talked about my plans when I got back to work, I came to realize the real reason I wouldn’t mention it to her.
I was afraid of her now.
Something was different than it had been before. More than her new found health and energetic demeanor, more even than the strange, dangerous sound I fucking know came from her before she realized I was there. She was just…wrong somehow.
By ten I had my stuff packed and was about to go inside for the last time to say good-bye. My hopes were that, given time and distance, I would realize
I was just stressed and stir-crazy and I could go back to just being happy that my mother was okay. It was as I was turning away from the back of my car that I realized that, in the excitement of the day before, we had never gotten the walker from where it lay near the mailbox.
Seeing it made me feel a surge of guilt and relief. I was just being silly. Whatever the reason, she was doing better. She wasn’t shackled to this thing any more, and God willing, she wouldn’t ever have to…
I was bending down to pick up the walker when my gaze wandered to the storm drain that ran under the driveway. My mother’s dead eyes were staring back at me.
She had been stripped naked and stuffed into the drain, her body torn and broken in several spots but somehow dry and bloodless as well. Pushed in deep enough that I hadn’t seen her body the day before at the mailbox, but not so deep that I couldn’t see now that she had died screaming. I fell to my knees, my head swimming as I crawled toward her. Reaching out my hand, I touched her and she began to crumble away. I recoiled, and then trying to find a way to have proof, I fumbled for my phone. But by the time I had it out, her body was only so much pink, powdery sludge in the bottom of the storm drain.
I saw something out of the corner of my eye and turned to see the thing that looked like my mother staring down at me, her face looking concerned.
“What’re you looking for, Collie? Lost something in there?”
My hands shaking, I pushed myself to my feet and stepped back to the other side of the ditch. “I don’t know. I…I thought I saw something but I guess it was just my imagination.”
She chuckled raspily. “Yes, probably so. Just be careful messing around with things like that.” She gestured toward the drain. “Could find something dangerous in there.”
I tried to laugh, play it cool, but I couldn’t manage it. “I really have to get going. See you later. Bye.” I hoped that my tone was light, but I doubted it. It was all I could do to not run to the car, and as it was, I still gave her a wide berth and kept glancing back until I was inside with the doors locked. Twenty minutes later, I stopped at a gas station until I could stop shaking so bad.
Since yesterday, everything has been quiet…until a couple of hours ago. That’s when I got a text.
Mom: Still feeling great. Miss you. Thank you again for staying with me and helping out. I’ll have to come visit soon and find a way to thank you.
The Monster of Memory
There is music in my heart
My best friend Terry died three months ago. I did the things a best friend does—I spoke at the funeral, I comforted his family, and I helped his fiancée Hannah pack up his things. Terry had been a constant in my life since junior high, despite all the obstacles that usually erode a twenty-year friendship like time and distance. We came from vastly different backgrounds from the start—I was from a small working-class household, while he grew up in a large family so wealthy that money wasn’t even really a consideration for them—just a given, like water or air.
Yet growing up, his parents were always kind and welcoming to me, and while I was never close to Terry’s brother and two sisters, they were never stuck-up or mean. When I stayed with them during the funeral and the following few days, they were just as I remembered, and I could tell they appreciated having another person there that loved Terry and could share the burden of losing him so suddenly.
Still, he was my only real connection to that family and their lives, and when I flew back home the following week, I had no expectation I would ever have much contact with any of them again. That’s why I was surprised when a few days later I got a call from Hannah. She told me Terry had bought me a gift before he died, a very unique kind of service that they had both used before and really loved. He had wanted it to be a surprise for the next time we were together, but now that wasn’t possible, so she wanted to let me know.
I was strangely touched by both the gift and her thinking to call and tell me about it. It sounded just like something Terry would do. Wiping my eyes, I asked her what kind of “service” it was. She gave a short laugh and said it would be better for it to be a surprise. The people should be contacting me in the next few days to set up an appointment, and everything would be explained then.
With that, she said her goodbyes and was gone.
****
The following Friday, I was sitting in my living room across from a distinguished-looking man in a well-tailored suit, his vaguely European accent adding a pleasantly cultured lilt to his words as he told me about his company, Mneumonica. He said his name was Dimitri Aller, and he had a very special gift for me.
“Andrew, if I offered you the chance to take a wonderful trip to anywhere in the world, a true adventure full of beauty and excitement, wouldn’t you want to go?”
I gave a slight smile. “Well sure, yeah.” Was that the gift? A trip to wherever I wanted?
The man returned my smile briefly as he nodded. “Of course you would. But now, what if I told you that after you took that trip, you would have no memory of it at all? You would have no trace of it having happened in your life whatsoever?”
I frowned. What was this? “Um…I don’t know. I don’t think I would, no.”
The man’s expression turned to a contemplative frown. “And why’s that?”
Shrugging, I paused a moment as I tried to find the right words. “I just…I don’t know what the point would be. I would just be losing time from my life and having nothing to show for it when it was done.”
Aller raised a finger. “Exactly. We are, in many ways, our memories. Things that happen that we don’t know about or don’t remember…well, they are of little power or value to us. Would you agree?”
“Yeah…I guess so.”
Nodding, he went on. “Well then, would you also agree that the opposite is true? That memories of things that did not occur can be very powerful and of great worth?”
I felt a growing unease at all this. This man, while very polished and pleasant, was making little sense. I almost felt like I was being given a sales pitch for a self-help seminar or a fancy cult. Hoping I didn’t sound rude, I asked him what exactly he was offering. Far from looking insulted, the man’s face brightened as he leaned forward.
“I’m offering you, or rather, your friend Terry is offering you, the gift of memory.”
****
“We have developed a method of permanently implanting knowledge and memories inside a human brain. I know it sounds like science-fiction, but I assure you it is not. Our research and technology is thirty years ahead of what is commonly known or available because we have the support of a small but very powerful clientele that can afford to pay substantial sums for such advancement.”
I shook my head. “Still, how is that possible? It sounds like something out of the Matrix.”
He chuckled. “Or Total Recall. Believe me, I’ve heard them all. But it is nothing so fantastical as all of that. Essentially, we have perfected a technique by which we can induce a dreamlike state in a subject. During this period, we can then introduce very specific memories into the brain. You know how some dreams seem very real and stay with you after you wake? It is akin to that, though much more detailed and resilient. Your sleeping brain will think it’s a dream and when you wake, it will be recalled as real past events.”
Swallowing, I weighed his words. I had trouble believing it was true, but even if it was, I wasn’t going to trust someone to mess with my memories. On the other hand, Hannah said that she and Terry had both done it, and I knew he’d never have gotten it for me as a gift if he didn’t believe it was safe. I had the worried thought that it seemed strange he had never mentioned it to me before, but possibly that was just so it wouldn’t ruin the surprise if he planned on getting me to try it in the future. Either way, I decided I could at least finish hearing the man out.
“So…what kind of things can be implanted?”
The man sat back in his chair and folded his hands across his knee, looking distant as he began ag
ain. “Oh, all the things you might expect. Wonderous vacations, exciting adventures, elicit romances.” He shot me a sly look at the last. “Of course, it cannot be anything too fantastical or the brain won’t accept it as reality. So no trips to Mars or having superpowers, I’m afraid. And, those things are beyond the scope of what you’re being offered in any case. We have three Tiers of service. Tier One is the least expensive and is where everyone has to start. It is what we call the Knowledge Tree.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Have you ever wanted to know how to build a car engine? Or fly a plane? Or play the piano? Tier One will give you a professional level of knowledge in one subject area. Something that would normally take years of dedication will be learned in less than one day.”
My eyes widened. “Are you serious?”
Aller smiled again. “Very much so. You’ll still have to train the muscle memory, of course, but that usually takes a few hours of practice at most. It will be like you are an expert returning to a well-known skill after being away from it for a year or two. And you will keep it forever.”
I was starting to be excited in spite of myself, but I thought back on something else he had said. “Why did you say everyone starts at Tier One?”
“Well, for two reasons. First, the human brain is very adaptive, but we find the greatest success by starting with something relatively small. As strange as it sounds, it is much easier to teach you how to be a tennis pro or an excellent computer programmer than it is to give you a week-long adventure as a deep-cover secret agent. The brain accepts the core information easily, but the experiences themselves are trickier. With Tier One, we’re merely giving you what we call “filler experiences”—you on a tennis court or sitting at a computer in a bare room. Just enough memory of learning the skill that your brain accepts it as reality and does not experience any mnemonic dissonance. After a brain has experienced the technique, it becomes more accepting of more elaborate realities and the other Tiers become an option.”
Incarnata Page 3