by Scott Savino
Everyone went silent. That’s how I knew all of us had heard it.
I stood up and pointed the flashlight in the direction of the sound, careful to avoid blinding whatever animal might have had its hackles up. But, Mom, nothing was there. Hand to your bible. We put down our recorders and got up to point every light we had in search of whatever had made that threatening sound. I don’t know why. I didn’t have my hunting rifle in the car at the time, so I don’t even know what I would have done if we’d discovered whatever could make a sound like that. Maybe it was the just allure of experiencing something on our haunted séance trip even if it wasn’t ghosts. Whatever the reason, we all spent several minutes combing between the broken tombstones, except for Pam.
We walked in pairs, everyone taking a hundred pictures of the cemetery like good paranormal investigators so we could get out of there as soon as possible. I admit, as much as I was inclined to believe it was an animal and not something paranormal, in that moment I really wanted it to be something supernatural.
John never left my side while I snapped pictures in the dark. In the distance, the concurrent flicker of Kate and Samantha’s phone cameras in the far corner of the cemetery distracted me from my own picture taking and I stumbled over a particularly small headstone. As I leaned down to read the markings on the stone, I felt a powerful gust rip past me, nearly knocking me over. It came from my left and picked up speed as it passed through me, bulldozing John to the ground.
He didn’t get up. Instead he lay on his back where he fell, gasping like a dying fish.
I was stunned. How could anything have barreled through my six-foot-five husband like that without also throwing me for a mile? I took a moment to scan the trees for whatever had hit us before dropping to my knees at John’s side. Helping him was the priority.
I barely registered the women shrieking a moment later, tending to John as I was, but the engine of one of the cars roared to life and its headlights lit up the whole cemetery. I had to squint against the onslaught of sudden high beams as they peeled out, leaving us there in the pitch dark.
Where was Pam?
I didn’t have time to worry about her. John still couldn’t catch his breath and a creeping dread was gnawing at the back of my neck. So, unsure of how else to help him, I got behind him and crouched to loop my arms through his, pulling his body back toward the car. I stumbled a few times while pulling him along, but he was finally able to get up as we reached the edge of the cemetery and together we ran to the car and jumped in.
When I flipped on the headlights they revealed the pitch black shape of an enormous half man-half buck with thick, gnarled antlers twisting skyward, unending against the backdrop of the trees towering over us.
It was nothing but shadow: no facial features, no clothing or skin tone. Nothing. The figure absorbed every bit of the light that should have revealed it if it were physical, and if it were just a shadow it should have disappeared. But it was there, looming over the hood of our car with the most horrifying white eyes. Even in the headlights its eyes were glowing.
I screamed, my guts loosening when it leaned forward and slammed its hooves on the hood. This wasn’t my imagination, Mom. The marks are still there to prove it!
I threw the car into gear and got us the fuck out of there. I didn’t think twice about Pam at that point. I didn’t know if she’d left us there—if all three of the women had—but in that moment I just wanted to put as much distance between us and that thing as possible.
I looked in the rear view mirror to see if it was following us, but there was nothing on the road behind us.
John was silent the whole way back to Montgomery. I figured he was just as rattled as I was, so I didn’t push him to recall of the terror we’d just experienced.
When we got back to the house, John walked up the porch steps and then stopped and just stood there. I asked him if he’d gotten hurt when he fell in the cemetery but he didn’t answer. Instead, he rubbed his lower back and winced. I decided I’d call the chiropractor in the morning and request a weekend appointment for him.
What I’m about to tell you is why I’ve given you all this background, because John hasn’t been himself at all since that night.
He sits out on the porch all day and night, no matter the weather. He hasn’t slept. Or if he has it’s been with his eyes open. The whites of his gorgeous brown eyes have turned red and the skin of his eyelids is turning purple. He hasn’t touched the food I put in front of him and I tried bringing him water, but he simply ignored the glass and glared at me when I came out of the house. He hasn’t said a word and won’t come inside for any reason, even for the bathroom! He smells like actual shit. I’ve tried to clean him, but that’s when I hear that vicious growl again. The same one we heard in the cemetery. It doesn’t really come from him though. It’s as if the growl is coming from around him.
He’s been like this for the past week.
And Pam came by yesterday. She was quiet and apologetic and told us the paranormal team apologized for sending us out there without more of a structured team. I apologized for John and for leaving in a hurry. I tried to explain what happened, showed her the dents the creature left in the hood of my car. She said she’d fetched the recorders we left by the benches and hidden in her car after a gravelly voice said “bitch” next to her ear. Pam audibly swallowed as she described it. Then she told me she’d seen Kate and Samantha nailing an inverted cross onto the tree nearest our car before they’d peeled out.
I opened my phone to search through the pictures from that night, but all we found were several dozen shots that were either too dark or too blurry to decipher. I promised Pam I’d forward the pictures to the paranormal team so they could spend more time analyzing them.
Pam mentioned that Kate and Samantha’s recording had come back with a lot of what sounded like growling, which corroborates our account, at least. She said the women never came back, though. They’d emailed their séance recordings and never mentioned they’d left us behind. I felt some anger in recalling their actions. I don’t know their side of it, but their lack of engagement with us makes me suspicious. And with what Pam has shared I fear we may be dealing with something much worse than the ghost of a Confederate soldier.
John was sitting on the porch like a stoic maniac when Pam tried to approach him. The growl that erupted was louder than I’d heard from him previously. We both took an instinctive step back and Pam regarded us with bewildered shock. She promised to be in touch, fleeing to her car and pulling out of our driveway quicker than a hummingbird could recite the alphabet.
After she left, I went to a toy store and bought a Ouija board. I don’t really know what I thought would happen, but desperation convinced me it wouldn’t hurt to try. Maybe I thought I could communicate with the spirits in the cemetery and they’d have answers? Call it stupid if you want, but you’d do the same for Grandma if you had no other choice.
I took every precaution I could think of—I brought out every religious item Grandma had ever gifted me and set them up on the kitchen table. I said prayers and lit white candles as I prepared to ask my questions of “the other side”, but as soon as I touched the planchette heavy footsteps thundered across the porch. I looked up to see John standing square in front of our sliding glass door not ten feet away from where I sat.
He stood stock still, though I swear the outline of his body in the porch light shivered from head to toe. The air around him vibrated like intense heat waves floating over hot August asphalt. His exhausted eyes searched the inside of the house before finally resting on me.
Standing there, staring at me like that, I was terrified of him. Me, a grown man with a kitchen full of weapons at my disposal, and I was deathly afraid of my own husband. My hands left the planchette and I picked up one of Grandma’s wooden crosses, clutching it tight to my chest. The man outside—the man that wasn’t my John anymore—smiled and that familiar growl reverberated through the thick glass door between us like a purr. Th
en he turned and walked back to his spot on the porch like nothing had happened.
I put away the spirit board, but kept all the angel figures and religious items out.
I tried to sage the house today, but got the same terrifying reaction the spirit board inspired last night, so I stopped.
Last night, after I finally gave up and went to bed, I heard chanting outside our bedroom window. I got up to see where the hell it was coming from, hoping to find my husband as himself again, but when I peeked outside I found him still in the same spot on the porch, dozens of flies buzzing around his smiling face.
I walked to get the mail this morning, putting as much space between “John” and me to avoid the smell and his gaze, when I noticed knobs at his temples calcifying into what looks like horns or antlers.
Pam left behind the digital recorder and I’ve listened to everything it captured from that night a hundred times. Every time I listen, the recording feels like it gets longer. You can hear us talking and asking our questions, the clink-clink-clink of Kate or Samantha hammering on the tree, then John getting knocked down. Kate and Samantha shriek in the distance, and then there’s this otherworldly voice before a car peels out in the background. It sounds like it’s right up against the mic, whispering or scratching or something. It sounds like a language, like some of it might even be English. So far the only word I can distinguish is “mine”.
Please, Mom, I need your help, but you can’t tell anyone. This is going to have to be as private as possible. I’m afraid if I call you to discuss it he might overhear the conversation. I don’t really know if he can understand me at this point, but he doesn’t like it when I try to leave, so emailing you was my only option.
If you know a priest or maybe a pastor who’s trustworthy, and you can meet them in person, tell them about what’s happening. I need their guidance ASAP.
Please download my attached audio file and forward it to the police if something should happen to me.
I love you, Mom. Please help me. I’m so scared and exhausted trying to stand guard over myself. I don’t know if John will try to come inside, but I’m not sleeping and the chanting doesn’t end. Pray for me, and pray for John.
Love,
Davey
— P.S.
Lock your doors.
Silence
F.I. GOLDHABER
JANINE WATCHED THE DRIFTING SNOWFLAKES through the frosted glass, grateful for something that was supposed to be silent. She enjoyed the radiator’s warmth, but couldn’t hear its hissing. She smelled floor polish wafting in from the hall, but couldn’t hear the machine the janitor used to scrub the worn linoleum.
The empty dorm room—with double bunk beds, matching built-in desks, and mismatched chairs—oppressed her spirit. Her roommate had gone to the gym to “dance”, jumping around to whatever rhythm she could feel with her feet from a band playing so loudly the musicians wore ear protection.
But her roommate had never heard orchestras perform Beethoven and Mozart, had never coaxed a violin to play the Tchaikovsky concerto. Janine didn’t belong in this school, in this silent world. She wanted to go home.
Her breath frosted over the window pane. Letters scrolled across it in a childish cursive.
What would you give up to hear again?
Good question. She wouldn’t want to lose her sight and the ability to read music. Without touch, her fingers would have difficulty finding the correct position on the strings. Taste and smell made the world more enjoyable, but neither enhanced her music.
She stared at the window. Wait, she thought. Who had written those letters?
Blowing on the glass until it fogged over, she scrawled: Taste.
The word faded away, and one by one new letters spelled out, Not enough.
Janine shook her head. Was she having a conversation with a window? She fogged out the letters again and wrote: Who are you?
Not who. What.
She shuddered. Have to be dreaming. She jammed her fingernail into her thumb. It hurt, but nothing changed. With one finger she scribbled: What are you?
Your ability to hear.
Janine almost fell backwards out of the window seat, clutching the upper bunk until she was steady on her feet.
With her hand trembling so much she could barely form the letters, she dragged her finger across the chilled glass. What do you want?
Your legs.
She retreated until she smashed against half open door, slamming it closed.
After the hit-and-run driver ran a stop sign, destroyed her Sentra and stole her hearing, Janine had railed against the gods; wished she’d not survived; gone on an unsuccessful vigilante’s crusade to find the truck’s owner; and imagined losing almost anything besides her hearing.
But her legs?
She slid down until her rear landed hard on the cold floor, her back resting against the door. To play again. To hear Mendelssohn and Dvorak once more. But to never walk or run?
How long would she have to spend in some institution designed to teach her how to use a wheelchair instead of how to function as a deaf woman in a hearing world? Could that be any worse?
She closed her eyes and tried to imagine navigating the backstage corridors at Symphony Hall in a wheelchair. The building—erected in the early part of the previous century—was last renovated in the late eighties, long before the Americans with Disabilities Act. No way to get on stage that didn’t require negotiating stairs.
Another city? But it’d been difficult enough to get a seat in a real orchestra, and she’d only moved up to first violins six months before the accident. Relocating meant beginning again.
She hung her head. Even if she could find a way to get onto her own stage, she’d have to start over anyway. Her chair had probably been filled months ago.
When the hospital had released her, she’d rebuffed any attempts by colleagues who’d reached out. She hadn’t had the courage to contact anyone at the symphony to learn who’d taken her place. She’d even avoided reading the local newspaper, afraid seeing news about concerts and performers would send her back into a tearful rage.
Janine leaned her head against the door and held her hands in position, remembering the feel of polished wood; metal strings pressing into calloused fingertips; the smooth touch of ivory in her bowing hand.
“Your legs” was still scrawled across the window, teasing her, taunting her with hope she’d banished months after she’d woken up and seen lips moving, but heard nothing—no sound from the respirator or other machines surrounding her, no voices from the nurses’ mouths.
She’d wept until she believed she’d never be able to cry again.
Her father had moved her back into her old room in his house, boxes labeled “music” stacked against the wall.
A tear crept down her cheek. For the last six months, she’d struggled so. The school tried to teach her lip reading, sign language, the manual alphabet. But the only language besides English she’d ever been able to understand in her entire life had been music. At conservatory she’d failed all attempts to learn French, Spanish, German. Finally, she’d written a thesis to convince the department music had its own vocabulary, and begged to use that to fulfill her language requirement.
From third grade onward, she’d worked toward only one goal: a career as a professional musician. She’d abstained from parties, dating, even friends. Her life revolved around practice and playing. An amateur violinist himself, her father had taken Janine to her first lesson when she was six and had willingly supported her through conservatory and her first positions in two-bit orchestras that only paid for stage time. Finally, a real job with a professional orchestra and its salary had allowed her to rent her own apartment.
Now, she’d no way to support herself, and someone else lived in her four rooms. Another violinist played the Soffritti she’d saved five years to buy. She’d told her father to sell it, use the money to cover some of her medical bills.