For my thirty first birthday, my friends got me a heritage DNA test,
one of those where you send a sample again an approximate percentage of what makes
up your background. I don't think there was anything in particular that made them
gifted to me, though, I think they ordered one for themselves and got
a two for one kind of deal. Still, I figured it'd be fun
to check out. My biological grandpa died when my dad was very young,
and my grandmother remarried long before I was born, so I was never told
a lot about that side of the family. I'd always been a bit of
a sickly kid, so I've been wary about looking too closely at my family
and health history. But I figured this couldn't hurt, so I filled out
the form, provided this sample, and sent it on its way. Then
I just sort of forgot about it. When I finally got the results,
it came with a few surprising revelations. While the majority of my heritage was
entirely predictable, there was an eleven percent splash of something called Northern Scandinavian Blue
Hill tribe. I asked my parents about it. While my mother had no
idea what the blue Hill tribe was. She was pretty sure it wasn't from
her side of the family. My dad was equally confused. Sure, he
didn't know much about his biological father, but he knew for a fact that
the man was from Oklahoma. His mom, on the other hand, was
Minnesotan. Dad got curious and ordered his own test within the hour. As
I ended the call and boxed the packaging up, something fell out, a
sturdy envelope of thin navy blue cardboard and sealed with a sunflower emblem. It
had a mild chemical smell to it, like a sweet ammonia. At first,
I thought it was going to be some kind of special offer, much
like what got me that test in the first place. But after turning it
over, I could see it was addressed directily to me in handwritten cursive.
It read congratulations on your recent result. As part of our effort to explore
the diverse world of unified heritage, and in cooperation with our various multinational partners,
we would like to extend an invitation to descendants of Northern Scandinavian Blue Hill
tribe for an eventful day of education, connectivity, and celebration. Please consider
this invitation and review the enclosed details at personal link. Using your log in
credentials, we hoped to see you there. I didn't know exactly what to
make of it, but I decided to check it out, and holy hell,
it reeked of scam. Here's what it offered, A fully paid three
day stay at a hotel in Manchester, New Hampshire, free entry to the
company sponsored heritage celebration event, alongside other members of both the Blue Hill tribe,
but also other unique and diverse backgrounds. There were several groups listed,
mostly hailing from the Scandies, the Carpathians, and the Ural Mountains. I
would have to pay for the trip to get there, though, and they
were clear about food, drink, and room service not being included, But
all in all, it sounded too good to be true. After several hours
of trying to find my way through the customer service websites, I finally got
hold of an actual service rep over the phone. At first, they seem
to have no idea what I was talking about, but when I referenced the
personal case number at the bottom of the envelope, they referred me to a
special events manager. This manager, in turn confirmed everything I know I know.
They laughed. I know how it sounds, but this is actually a
sort of golden ticket thing. It's a biennal event and part of a charity
effort, so there's a tax incentive for us as well. If you can
make it. I'd recommend checking it out. They got some event photos on
our website for reference. I did as she suggested, and I gotta say
I was convinced. I accepted. My flight. Arrived on the morning of
the first event day, about three hours ahead of opening. I I had
an uneventful early check in, spotting the locked doors through the lobby. There
were a few posters marking the Heritage Celebration event, and there were already a
couple of people roaming the halls outside, but I decided to catch my breath
a bit before the doors opened. I got to my room and clocked out
for a couple of hours. I double checked the event schedule on my phone,
making mental notes of the various talks, guided tours, luncheons, dinners,
and get togethers. It was a full two day event. I was
surprised at just how much there was to do, considering the event was intended
for no more than a couple hundred people at most. Still, I couldn't
complain, But just as I drifted off for a nap, I got a
notification on my phone, a text from my dad. Apparently he'd recently gotten
his results back. Strangely enough, he didn't have any percentage of the Northern
Scandinavian blue Hill tribe in his genetic make up. Maybe my mom was in
a southern as she thought. Once the doors opened, there are about a
hundred people walking about. Some looked like average Joe Nobody's. Others were clearly
some kind of corporate representative. I could tell at least six different accents just
by walking around, and a couple of foreign languages. There are a few
booths to check out, mostly advertising various new services and products by the company
behind the DNA test, but also one I was just information about various forgotten
or unusual tribes. Going through the pamphlets, I couldn't find one about the
blue Hill tribe. So I decided to ask the service wrap behind the counter
a blue Hill, He said, raising an eyebrow, I'm not sure.
I Another rap whispered something in his ear, and he nodded right. He
corrected, we don't have any reading material on that subject, but ah I
think there's an infocession should be part of the Tribes of the North meetup.
I double checked the schedule again and made my way to a couple of events.
The Tribes of the North meetup was an after dinner event, part of
the late night off our socializing thing they tried to get going. I spent
the afternoon listening in on various other topics, trying to pass the time.
There was a speaker on the topic of nomadic North American tribes, as well
as a workshop about forgotten languages. It was all interesting in its own way,
but I found myself drifting away just after lunchtime. I had to take
a rest around them three pm because of an upset stomach, a relic from
my sickly past. Later, I took a walk around town and had a
decent meal at a local restaurant before I headed back to the hotel. I
was a few minutes late to the meet up. There were about two dozen
people there in total. We didn't really have any common features. We had
different skin, hair, eyes, and were all from different parts of the
US. A couple of them were Canadian and there was this one guy from
the Philippines. It was pretty clear who the event organizer was, though,
a chipy young woman in a black pantsuit with a company logo pin and a
digital clipboard. She went around the room confirming that everyone was a member of
the Blue Hill. I overheard an older woman mentioning she was categorized as over
thirty percent, while a young man mentioned he only had five percent. The
young woman cleared a throat and excused herself, calmly, demanding the attention of
the room. Thank you all so much for coming, she smiled. I'm
sure you have a hundred questions, and we thought this might be a good
time to get to know one another a little better. Please follow me.
We were led through a corridor to a smaller open room, a sort of
meeting space. In the back. They turned down the lights a bit and
set out a couple of platters of cheeses, crackers, and some alcohol free
sparkling wine. There were a couple of people there already. I was about
to spark up a conversation with a fifty year old man who looked as confused
as me, when the chippy young woman took hold of the room again.
She directed our attention to a man that I can't for the life of me.
Remember the name of Western or Wesley, I think in turn, welcomed
us and encouraged us to indulge in the various snacks scattered throughout the room.
Then he introduced us to the topic of the evening, the Blue Hill Tribe.
If there is one thing I'm certain of, he started, is that
every single person in this room has had a serious medical condition at some point
in their life, something unusual. Does anyone might sharing an example. I
didn't speak up about the severe ulcers I had as a kid and the partial
transplant I had to get. But there were others who openly shared various issues,
heart valve issues, cornia transplants, nerve damage. Everyone seemed to have
something. The man just nodded, as if expecting this. This is sadly
a common attribute of people with lineage dating back to the Blue Hill tribes.
So let's take a closer look at the history and customs of these unique people.
And while we do, please feel free to mark yourself in the attendant
sheet. He continued to speak of a group of people native to the northern
Scandinavian mountain ranges. There were dates locations an approximate number of tribal members and
a few other sparse details. I marked the form while I waited, realizing
pretty early on that what he was saying was suspiciously generic. He spoke of
leather and bone craftsmanship and a belief in mountain spirits, but there were no
details, no references, no pictures, drawings, or artifacts. I noticed
a lot of people around the room paying close attention and not really thinking too
much about what they were filling out on the attendant sheet, but I took
a closer look. Our names were already on the sheet, so we were
only suppose to make a check mark. However, there were also percentages printed
on the side, corresponding to the percentage of heritage we had in common with
this tribe. I recognized my eleven percent and the thirty percent of the old
woman. There was also a series of other numbers that I didn't immediately recognize.
When I thought no one was looking, I snapped a picture of it,
just in case. After a fifteen minute lecture on the history of the
Blue Hill tribe, I came to the realization that I hadn't actually learned anything.
The locations and dates were so generic that there was no way to fact
check it, and there were no details as to the various customs and crafts.
Looking around the room, I noticed the chippy young woman was off in
the corner, whispering to someone on a bluetooth headset, her eyes scanning the
crowd with a serious demeanor. There was a man in a suit by the
doorway taking pictures with his phone, and a hotel functionary offering refreshments being turned
away. This was clearly a private matter and of great interest to the company.
For some reason, I snapped to attention as the room applauded. The
lecture came to an end and we were given some time to mingle, but
not without another reminder to make a mark of the intendant sheet. I chatted
a bit with a few people, but it all felt a bit forced.
Just a few words here and there. I got the impression that none of
us had very much in common. No one seemed to have any idea where
that part of their heritage actually came from. There was this one guy who
had studied his genealogy extensively, who insisted that it was strictly impossible for him
to even be partly Scandinavian. I've mapped out every family member for six generations,
He scuffed, there's no way. As more and more people filled it
out into the night, I decided to lag a bit to see what was
being said behind closed doors. I wasn't sneaking around on all fours like a
spy, just lingered a little too long on the other side of the bathroom
door, or stopping conveniently to check my email near a hushed discussion. I
picked up a few bits and pieces discussions about our percentages. For example,
there was also talk about a second event the following night, and how it
wasn't officially on the schedule. They referred to it as a sort of closing
ceremony. There was also a short talk about inviting a few of us to
a private meeting. I heard two people squabbling a bit about the details,
and I didn't catch much of it, but I clearly heard a sentence as
they finished, just get the ripe ones. One of them snarled, none
of that three percent trash. I didn't like that, not one bit.
Returning to my room, I decided to pack up my things. I had
a bad feeling about whatever they were up to, and I couldn't help but
to imagine that they had something planned maybe it was all a scam after all,
or something worse. Either way, I wasn't eager to find out.
I couldn't find a reasonably priced flight back home until early morning. It was
almost twelve hours away, but I figured I could pull an all nighter and
get out as soon as the sun rose. I could wait a few hours
at the airport if need be. With my bags packed and ready, I
settled in for a long night. It was somewhere around two a m.
When I found myself staring at late night TV and scrawling on my phone as
a salesman prattled on in the background. A stray thought hit me. I
decided to take another look at the attendant sheet photo. There was a set
of numbers by each person that didn't make immediate sense to me. I brought
out a pen and paper and started breaking them down, first in sets of
twos, then individually, then sets of three, trying to find some pattern
or idea. It took me a little longer than I cared to admit to
recognize something. The last four numbers correlated to one pattern four and room number.
That left four other numbers, which, when broken down into pairs of
two, correlated to a month and a day. The date itself didn't make
much sense, though for me it was a few days after I'd sent in
my first sample. Then it hit me it was probably the day they received
the sample. Taking a closer look at the percentages, I could see that
everyone with a nine percent heritage or lower was situated on lower floors, while
those with ten percent and higher all seemed to have the higher floors. Maybe
there was a sort of unspoken threshold happening at ten percent and up. Could
that be what they referred to when they said to get the ripe ones.
As I scrawled through various images from previously hosted charity events, I got a
notification my phone warned me that my camera app had unexpectedly closed. Strange,
seeing how it wasn't open to begin with. A bad feeling settled in my
stomach. I was on the hotel WiFi. Could they be monitoring our activities?
I considered the option that I was just being tired and paranoid. That
might very well be the case, But on the other hand, I'd heard
what I'd heard. It was stressing me out, further upsetting my already sensitive
stomach. I could feel a tinge of pain and decided to go get some
mice. Might sound like a stupid home remedy thing, but sucking on an
ice cube has always helped me calm down. I followed the corridor, got
myself some ice in a bucket, and returned to my room. As I
was about to round the corner, I recognized as familiar sound my hotel room
door being closed and locked from the outside. Peeking around the corner, I
noticed two people dressed in black disappearing down the hall, mumbling quietly to one
another, returning to my room. I couldn't help but a second guess myself.
Had the bathroom door always been open? Was the same channel on the
TV playing Had some one moved my bags? It was hard to tell.
That's how I spent the night wondering. My heart sometimes skipped a beat as
I thought I noticed something new, but ultimately I couldn't find anything immediately threatening.
I pulled out my phone battery just in case, and kept it in
my other pocket. No one would be tracking me any time soon. I
messed my bed to make it look like I had slept in it, even
though I spent most of my time in the bathroom. Ready to lock the
door, and call the police. I nodded off a few times, but
eventually the sun broke the horizon, a few rays of sunshine slipping in through
the frosted bathroom window. So I got my bags and left. One nervous
elevator ride later, I slapped down the hotel key on the reception and headed
for the exit without elaborating. I accidentally made eye contact with the hotel security
guard by the exit, who gave me a curious side eye. Sir,
he asked. I stopped briefly and excused myself. He held up a hand,
Sir, may I speak to you, he repeated, I have an
appointment. I smiled, Sorry, it won't take long. He smiled,
right this way, looking at the silver colored revolving door that could get me
out of there. I considered my options. I could make a break for
it, or I could just see what this was all about. I decided
to just talk to the man, banking hard on it not being anything serious.
In hindsight, I should have gone for the door. I was taken
to a small room right next to the reception. There he asked to see
my phone. I showed him, although the battery was still out. My
supervisor has a couple of questions. He said, she's just outside, won't
be a minute. I'm sorry, but I got it. He pocketed my
phone, smiled and stepped out of the room. But it wasn't an ordinary
service personnel kind of smile. It was almost apologetic, like he knew he'd
landed me in some kind of trouble. And through the door came the chipper
young woman from the previous night. She wasn't as chipper this time. She
didn't sit down, instead opting to stand on the opposite side of the room
with a arms crossed. For a solid minute, she just stood there,
considering what to say. Finally, she let out a sigh and took a
step forward. I felt like a scorn schoolboy being dragged into the principal's office.
Are you leaving early? She asked, would be a shame to mister
get together to night. I'm thankful to have been part of this, I
said, but I really ought to get going. Oh, she feigned surprise,
family emergency, and that's private, I said. I could still hear
the hotel personnel outside, and figured she didn't want to make a scene.
I leaned back in my chair, confident and quiet. She didn't take that
too well. I think it'd be best for you if you've stayed a little
longer, she continued. I don't think I will. I don't think there's
much to debate. I'm sorry, but you've no. She slammed a fist
on the table and stared me down, unblinking and furious. There was a
slight tremble in a movement. There was no way those outside didn't hear us,
and yet no one moved a muscle. Perhaps she was in more control
than I'd anticipated. I think you're going to stick around for a while,
she snarled, or we're going to have a problem. You'll have a problem
with me, No, I said, shaking my head. Ah, er,
I don't. Then you're going to shut the hell up and play along.
I was dumb struck. There was no ambiguity here. She was outright
threatening me. I could barely understan and why. Maybe she'd seen something on
my phone while I was connected to the hotel WiFi, or maybe they noticed
me spying. Perhaps they saw me pondering the attendant sheet. I don't know.
Either way, they weren't taking any chances. I didn't see that hotel
security guard again. Instead, They put me in a room with a very
quiet man in a suit. He didn't answer any questions. He wasn't much
for small talk. All he did was stand outside the room, checking in
on me as soon as I made a noise. I spent all day in
that room, this small ten x fourteen room with little more than a couch,
a coffee table, and the most generic looking hotel painting I'd ever seen.
Still as calming as that room was, I was freaking the hell out,
but there was nothing for me to do at that point. No hair
schemes could make me magically phase through the wall. I was stuck there,
and I sure as hell wouldn't fight That guy didn't take a detective despot.
He was armed. The stress made my stomach act up. I was allowed
to use the bathroom, but they kept the stall door open. Then it
was straight back to the room. I tried frantically to come up with some
kind of plan, or figuring out some specific turn of the corridor where he
wouldn't have a clear shot, but it was useless. There were long,
wide open spaces and no harsh corners, but that was my mindset. I
was still under the impression that there was something I could do, but in
reality I couldn't. Once that started the dawn on me, I realized how
screwed I was. It was the emotional equivalent of sinking into a deep black
ocean. It was late afternoon when the door opened. Having spent most of
the day napping on the couch and anxiously wandering back and forth, I got
on my feet like a soldier. One of the guards coaxed me outside.
I could tell something was up. People were rushing past us, speaking into
their ear pieces removed in the opposite direction, but I caught a glimpse of
a well dressed group of people used as human shields for someone very important.
I was quickly ushered along. I was taken through the hotel kitchen they'd cleared
out the staff. They took me to what looked like an abandoned old walk
in freezer. I was pushed inside and the door was closed. I don't
know how those walk in freezers, I suppose the work, but this one
locked from the outside. There were no lights, and I could barely make
out what was happening through the little windows. I didn't have to wait for
long. Just minutes after I could hear other people entering the room, some
curious, some angry, some crying. One by one, the guests from
the previous night were ushered into the freezer, even the old woman. Well,
not all the guests, only those ripe enough. There were nine of
us in total. Some were mildly annoyed, others were confused. Finally,
they dropped a guy who had been beaten straight onto the floor. He was
clearly not okay, trying his best to breathe through his mouth. That set
most of us off. Some banged on the door, others screened at the
top of their lungs. No one had a phone or a weapon. The
panic rose, and it spread like wildfire. Soon I was right there with
them, screaming for someone to let us out. I screamed into my voice
hoarse, but no one came. We must have been in there for at
least forty to forty five minutes. Our protests died, and in the following
silence we heard someone enter the room, a single set of footsteps. They
approached, and we all quieted down. I could see the vague outline of
a man outside, but our breaths had fogged up the windows and the door.
He had a black suit with a blue tie. He stood there with
his hands in his pocket, watching us. I backed away from the door.
The others did the same, No matter how bad the freezer was.
There was something telling me that this guy was somehow worse. He was too
calm, like this was all normal, he'd done it before. As the
door opened, we all scrambled to get back. He stepped into the entrance,
obscured by the bad lighting, but for all I could see he was
a man, a little shorter than me, a bit round around the stomach,
bald, maybe glasses. There was something reflecting off his face, and
yet there was something about him that screamed danger. The man who'd been beaten
was ready to roll the dice. He took off running, trying to push
past and get out. There was a kitchen exit not too far away,
so if he could just make it past this guy, then maybe he'd be
in the clear. But no, he didn't get that far. The strange
man didn't tackle him, or attack or scream. In fact, he didn't
seem to react at all. But the runner, well, he stopped a
few steps short of leaving the freezer. He clutched his throat, gasping for
air. The man spoke in a raspy, matter of factly voice, as
if counting the inventory on the supermarket's shelf. Male thirty eight years old,
six years spread, reaching a total of eighteen percent implanted the Risophagu's surgery,
and then there was this ungodly noise. The runner collapsed to his knees.
He was trying to scream, but all that came out was a sort of
guturo wheeze. It escaped him in waves, involuntarily, until we could see
something poking out of his mouth, like the silhouette of a wet branch being
pulled out. Finally, there was a snap as it fully dislodged, and
the freezer began to re reek of blood. He stopped moving. The panic
consumed us. I may read calm here in the aftermath, but in that
moment I was an animal. I was scratching on the damn walls trying to
get back. I didn't care if I was pushing people into the floor or
stepping on someone's head. I was desperate. The strange man spoke again,
but this time his raspy voice seemed better improved. Female twenty nine years old,
four year spread, reaching a total of fourteen percent implant through spinal surgery.
One by one, he counted us off male female, male female,
four years, five years, nine eight percentages going up and down, lung
cancer, cornea, transplant, dialysis, screams, and blood, one by
one, being pulled out of the crowd and then pulled apart. I'll never
forget the sounds. Small bones sound like carrots when they snap bigger ones.
It differs the dripping noise as human spillach mixed on the floor. Drops a
blood really do sound heavier than water. And with every victim, I could
see something shift in our captor, straightening back, deeper breaths, like he
was absorbing it all into himself, taking something back, harvesting. The sixth
person on the chopping block was me. He read it all out loud,
male. He began thirty one years old, twenty four year spread, reaching
a total of eleven percent implant through also treatment. My stomach rumbled, moved,
twitched, as if calming alive. It wanted to escape me, to
break free. It strained against me. I collapsed to the floor, my
hands slipping on the blood seeping into my skin, itching under my fingernails.
Then I felt something move in my pocket. I almost dropped it. I
still had my phone battery. I took it out and held it up to
my mouth. I could bite down on it, drenching myself in acid.
Oh god knows what. My stomach ceased moving, if only for a short
reprieve. I looked up at my captor. See see this, I said,
it'll it'll screw us both up. But you need it right, you
need me whole. There was no response. I could just see him tilting
his head down at me. Yeah, if I destroy myself, you get
nothing right. That's it, isn't it. Huh. I placed it between
my teeth, ready to bite down like a rabid dog on a juicy bone.
He didn't move As I got up, He circled one another. He
wasn't about to let me go. He wasn't looking at me in the eyes.
He was staring intently at my stomach. He wanted to pull it out
of me, to turn it into something else. Or maybe it was part
of him all along, something coming home. No, he said it ends.
He reached out a hand for me, and I bit down without hesitation.
To my surprise, there was just a little puff, but that was
it. The battery tumbled to the floor useless. The man instinctively recoiled,
but upon seeing that there was no danger, it all came back with a
vengeance. The pain was immediate and incredible. Something in me moved and I
immediately spat up a glob of stomach acid. Then the battery exploded. It
wasn't a big explosion, just a loud bang, like the starting of a
pistol race. I slipped and slid my way out of the freezer and had
to make a split second decision. I could close and lock the door behind
me, effectively ceiling him and everyone in there. Or I could leave the
door open for others to escape. But it wasn't really a choice, not
really. It never is when you get pushed into something like this. I
slammed that door shut and led it auto lock without even thinking about it.
Perhaps he asked the guards to clear out. I don't know, but there
was no one else in that kitchen. I grabbed a knife from one of
the counters, burst through the exit door, and disappeared into the night,
my stomach stirring like a restless animal, but settling as I got further away.
I can only regret what happened to those left behind. It still makes
my spine itch. A police patrol found me wondering the streets about an hour
or two later. I can't imagine it looked good. I was taking such
small, shallow breaths and I was still clutching the knife. Not to mention,
I was covered in blood. They were convinced that I killed someone,
but I surrendered willingly and eagerly. I tried to tell a coherent story,
but they just didn't understand me. Probably didn't make much sense. A shower
and a fresh set of clothes later, I explained my experience of the hotel
to the best of my ability. Sadly, it didn't really do much.
There were no records of the men I described ever visiting that hotel. As
for the missing people, those I claimed had been murdered, they had checked
out one by one at different hours of the day prior. According to the
hotel records, they might be missing, but there was no indication of foul
play. Yeah, I'm calling lies on that. So yeah, that was
by far the worst time of my life. Looking back at it, it
feels unreal, like it happened to some one else. But even now I
can still get little flashes of something there reminds me of that night, and
it just pulls me right back. It never really leaves Whoever that man was.
He was important enough to get a whole company to cover for him.
I'm sure not all of them knew why they were doing it, but they
were complicit. I think we're looking at someone with a lot of resources and
a lot of reach. I never got a name, and seeing how he
seemed to change with every victimy consumed, I can't really tell what he looks
like any more, not even his age or hight or weight. There are
surprisingly some real records about a small tribe of people living from the Blue Hill
in the Scandinavian Mountain Range. There isn't much out there about them, just
to mention that they worshiped immortal mountain spirits. Others say they worship devils.
It's a mixed bag. I don't know what to believe. I don't know
what I saw, but I'm living with a knowledge that a part of me,
something inside me, isn't my own. It moves with me, it
lives with me, but at the snap of a finger from that thing and
it will rebel, it will fail me. And I'm just at what eleven
percent. What happens when I reach fifty or one hundred. I decided to
post this after getting a video ad that I could never have anticipated. It
seems that this company is still in business advertising their new generation of DNA tests.
I'm sure some of you out there have seen it. Twenty seconds unskippable
smiling faces, distant family members being tied together by CGI blue ribbon. I
think they have some of those damn sunflowers in the background, still colored that
basic company blue. And seeing it like that, it just it made my
stomach turn. I remember the first time I saw the man, the thing
with a face like melting wax. I knew he had many masks and many
names. He had followed our foundily for years, and from father to son,
mother to daughter. The fear and terror of the faceless man got passed
down. Every time he came, he would have a different face. The
first time I saw him, he looked like a withered old Asian man,
leaning heavily on a wooden cane with a silver top. Our front door stood
wide open, and I saw my mother and father standing there, their faces
as pale as ghosts as they looked down upon the stranger I couldn't have been
older than eleven years old, but the memory is still as sharp as a
butcher's knife stuck in my brain. I walked forwards from the living room,
the cartoon noises still blaring loudly in the background. The man looked past them
and straight at me. He squinted his eyes and grinned another lamb so pretty
and young, he mused, isn't it a shame when a child is taken
so early in life? And yet God kills children every day? I heard
last month a hurricane blew an entire school down and killed a hundred of the
little buggers in one swift go. So perhaps God will forgive me from my
small sins, my taking of a few here and there to keep my appetite
satiated. Get out of here, my father snarled with gritted teeth. He
clenched his fists until the knuckles turned white, looking as if he would strike
out at any moment. Do you know who I am? The faceless man
asked in a whispery voice. Then he began chuckling. It sounded like someone
trying to laugh with a slit throat, a harsh gurgling sound that raised goose
bumps all up and down my body. My father slammed the door shut,
quickly locking the dead bolts. I fingered the silver cross my mother had given
me nervously I always did when I was anxious. Feeling it laying there against
my cold skin helped bring me back to the moment. My father turned to
look at us with panic stricken eyes. I heard light knocking on the door
behind him as the demonical laughter continued to grow until it became all I could
hear. Then, without warning, it cut off. When I looked at
the peep hole on the front door, I saw the front stoop stood empty.
Get my gun, my father said to my mother. She left the
room quietly, sobbing as she went. Sunlight from the warm summer sky continued
to stream in through the windows. What a beautiful day, I thought to
myself, Such a beautiful day and maybe my last. Then I saw a
shadow cross in front of the living room window. I saw someone peeking in
with wide excited eyes. A grin like a skull spread across his leathered old
face. As I watched, the face began to drip and contort as it
continued to smile. He started slowly around the lips and eyes, and then
he began speeding up. Within seconds, I saw the flesh running down his
cheeks and chin in rivulets, dripping like flesh colored whare. Behind the masky
war, I caught a glimpse of something horrible before new streams of flesh rolled
over it from its scalp and forehead. Then the last of the human skin
dripped off, and I found myself staring into the face of hell. I
could never explain the true horror of the thing lurking behind its costume of human
skin. He felt like staring into a puss filled wound with maggots writhing around
the edges, or maybe like falling into a mass grave. Some of his
body seemed flipped inside out with the glistening muscles on the outside, But the
bloody, demonic face was far more disturbing. It had eyes like two smoldering
cigarette burns. Its mouth was a slash, disgusting thing. The lips looked
eaten away, the ragged patches of flesh surrounding them that seemed to make the
smile seem much larger, reminding me of how a clown would do his makeup.
I saw that grinning mouth filled with countless needle sharp teeth above black soarid,
and gums that writhe and shivered in its lipless mouth. Even through the
window, the smell like sulfur and reeking spoiled meat filtered into the house seemed
to fill the air like a physical presence. Its body looked flipped inside out.
I could see the quivering muscles on the skinless figure. It looked deathly
thin, and veins ran along the outside of its face and body, like
thick dark worms, pulsating with each beat of the satanic heart that lay inside
that thing's chest, emanating sickness and evil through every pore of its gleaming body.
As it stared into my soul with its black, lidless eyes, I
saw in that face all the worst nightmares of the universe. I saw mountains
of corpses festering under a hot sun, black holes eating worlds as masses screened.
I saw mothers drowning their children in bathtubs, and animals eating each other
alive. I saw into eternity, and it looked so dark and empty that
I fell to my knees, pleading make it stop, make it stop.
I cried, tears streaming down my face. My father ran in with his
shock and raised but when I looked back up, the window was empty.
Yet the visions continued to run through my mind like a movie, atrocity after
atrocity, and somehow it all connected back to the faceless man. After a
few seconds of utter silence, that deep gurgling voice rang out, making us
all jump. It seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at once, reverberating
throughout the room. It said something that made my father waver on his feet.
A strange verse, but one I remember by heart to this day.
Here is bella Donna, the lady of the rocks, the lady of situations.
Here is the man with three staves, and here is the one i'd
merchant. And this card, which is blank, is something he carries on
his back, which I am forbidden to see. I do not find the
hanged man. After that, we barricaded the doors and locked all the windows.
I knew it wouldn't keep the faceless man out. He could easily just
smash through a window, and perhaps he wouldn't even need to do that.
Maybe he could pass inside the house any time he wanted. And yet,
if so, why hadn't he so it started again. My mother said,
looking at my father with a powerful intensity in her eyes. He has come
back again for a sacrifice. My father nodded slowly. Well, what do
you mean a sacrifice, I asked, my child's mind, not comprehending the
magnitude of the situation. Yet my father hesitated. He eats the souls of
people, My father said, he and my great grandfather drew up a contract
a long long time ago, and ever since our family has had great wealth.
You're young, so you don't really understand fully yet. But not everyone
lives in mansions like us. Not everyone vacations in Paris and Buenos Aires during
the summer vacation. Not everyone has a garage full of Porsches and Mercedes.
So why don't you just tell him no, I asked, in my childish
way, We don't need all this money. The left side of my father's
face began to twitch. He stumped towards me, shouting as tears ran down
his face. I don't give a damn about the money, he cried.
The deal was drawn in blood and cursed from the first day. Do you
think if I could get him to go away by giving him everything I own?
I wouldn't. I would do it in a heartbeat. I would live
in a goddamn trailer and eat instant noodles if I had to. But there's
no escape. He looked around as if expecting to see the faceless man standing
right behind him. He began looking at the windows, seeing nothing but a
bright summer's day. We need to go, my mother whispered. Now,
let's take Susan and go. He won't find us. If we keep moving,
he'll find us, my father said, looking defeated. Tears continued to
stream down his face. He looked like a defeated man he always does.
But screw it. Let's go. We'll take this asshole on and run around
the world. We took off from the property, and my father told me
more about the deal. As we flew out of town in inexpensive Mercedes,
redlining the accelerator. I thought, more than once he would crash and kill
us all in his frenzy to put distance between us and the faceless man.
Once every fifty years, my father said, he comes. He has his
bigger the lists, as he calls it. He takes one child from our
family, and in exchange, our wealth is guaranteed for the next fifty years.
Even during the Great Depression, our family didn't suffer, except, of
course, the periodic deductions of children. He makes the parents watch as he
takes the soul of the child into himself. I don't know what kind of
foul magic it involves, but from what I've read in the diaries of my
grandfather, it's a very painful ritual that involves skinning the child alive and rubbing
the body with special herbs. Then he makes them walk totally skinned and bleeding
to death until they collapse, and that's when he takes the soul. He
sucks it out of their eyes. It looks like thin wisps of light when
it finally goes. I shook inwardly in horror. No one would ever allow
that to happen to their kid, I said, confidently. My father shook
his head. You act as if we have a choice, he said.
The first time he comes, politely knocks on the door and tells the parents
it's time to fulfill the contract. If they say no, then he leaves.
But he always comes back, and the next time he won't be polite,
and he won't leave. He'll come into the house when we're sleeping torture
me and your mother to death, slit off the roads, and then take
you away. He's tireless, he doesn't age, he doesn't sleep, and
as far as I know, he can't die. How can we fight against
such an evil by going to the moon. But why would great Grandpa make
a deal like that anyway, I asked, because at the time he had
ten children, and all of them were starving, a few were dysentery,
and he didn't have a penny to his name at the time. He chose
the sacrifice one and give it to the faithless man to save the other nine.
My father shrugged. I don't know if we can understand it. I
certainly don't agree with it. I'm not sure he realized at the time that
our family would suffer eternally afterwards, and that the contract could not be voided
except through death. He laughed bitterly. We should have just let our family
line die out. Maybe that would have solved the problem. What about those
words at the end, Daddy, I asked, what did those mean?
Oh, that's just a famous old poem. My grandfather used to recite it
to me before he shot himself. He loved t s Eliot and he thought
the poem had some relevance to our problems. For some reason, he never
got over the loss of his son to the faceless man. You see.
Never He used to wake up screaming at night. He tried to drink his
memories away, But in the end, my father braked, suddenly, bringing
the car to a full stop. I looked up, seeing forrests on both
sides of us. We hadn't traveled long. A hitchhiker stood at the edge
of the road in grimy blue jeans and a bright, tight eyed shirt.
His long hair rippled around him as he stood with his thumb out, but
his face had started the drip and melt. Me all saw it and froze.
My father reached down below his seat and pulled out the black shotgun.
He ran out of the car like a madman, his eyes blazing with anger
and terror. Get out of here, he cried, as if to a
rabid animal, then raised the gun and fired. The faceless Man's tied eye
shirt burst into shreds as bookshot tore into it. The faceless man smiled,
raised his hand to us in a wave, and disappeared. The clothes fell
limply to the grass. Blow now totally empty. My father shook his head
grimly and turned around to come back to the car. A dark shape zoomed
out of the forest, holding a sharp knife. Before my father could turn,
he raised it to his throat and pulled. My mother screamed, getting
out of the car to go help my father, but he was dead.
Even as a child, I knew it. I could see the knife had
practically severed his head from his body except for the spine and a thin bit
of flesh on the back. Blood poured out, flooding down his chest as
he stood there for a moment, uncomprehending. Then he began to fall forwards
and his head snapped back, revealing the gore, muscle and ligaments beneath.
I watched as my mother ran to his side, panic stricken. The faceless
man looked on with glee, laughing and shrieking. His black eyes blazed with
an inner light as he looked towards me and grinned, showing the hundred needle
sharp teeth behind that supertuating sore of a mouth. My mother looked up at
him, trying to grab the gun from my father's stiff hands, but the
faceless man didn't flinch. He ran forwards, his sleek, bloody body as
fast as the greyhounds. He opened his mouth wide and my mother's face.
I saw the teeth bite into a skin, and he began to shake his
head like a dog, ripping and shredding. Her face became a mask of
gore, and I screamed in the car, nearly thrown up, but something
inside told me I needed to move. I wasn't a stupid kid, after
all, I was going to die here next to some woods in the middle
of nowhere. I ran out of the back seat and jumped into the driver's
seat. I'd never driven a car, but it was, after all,
an automatic. He didn't take much intelligence to put it in drive and hit
the gas pedal. Of course, I didn't really know how to drive,
and I nearly hid a tree. I skidded, turning the wheel with two
bumps. I accidentally ran over my mother and father. The faceless man shrieked
with laughter as I drove off down the road, crying and screaming in the
car, I abandoned it a few hours later in the city. My father
had brought a massive envelope of cash with him in the center console, and
I counted it with awe. It was hundreds of thousands of dollars. I
went on the run soon after, moving across the country and living on the
money I found. It was four years later when I went to a carnival
board and decided to have my future read. I hadn't seen the faceless man
in years, and I figured I'd lost him. If only that were true.
The old woman pulled out a tarot deck and began flipping them over one
by one. Ah, she said, in a voice that seemed to deepen.
I see here is the man with three staves, and here is the
wheel, and here is the one eyed merchant. I screamed, backing up
quickly as the flesh began to drip from a face. And this card,
which is blank, is something he carries on his back. Mitch, I'm
forbidden to see. The last of the skin dripped off the grinning thing beneath
froze from the chair. It's sleek, bloody body and black holes of eyes
regarding me with glee. Ah. Yes, I am forbidden to see,
but I've seen it, and look what it's done to me. Susan,
Look what it's done. Your mother and father weret in a shallow grave somewhere,
picked clean by animals. And now it's just you and me, Susan,
and we are alone. The card is blank, but he doesn't have
to be. Come and see what it holds. He rose into the air,
his bloody, skeletal feet dangling above the ground. Come and see.
I bowled the pistol I always carried out of its holster and began firing point
blank into the demonic face and black heart of that thing. People began to
scream all around me at the carnival. I turned to run out of the
tent, but a cold hand gripped my shoulder, leaving so soon. His
soft voice whispered in my ear, laughing with a sound a drowning man might
make. Ah. But we haven't finished, Susan, Worthy is the lamb?
Worthy is the Suddenly the hand touched the silver cross my mother had given
me as a small child, and it flinched the way I felt the grip
loosen, and I ran without looking back. People had taken cover all over
the carnival. Many had started to leave, and I saw agitated police and
security trying to find out where the gunshots had come from. Immediately mixed into
a large crowd and made my way towards the exit, but I constantly looked
back, expecting to see a man with a melting face. Perhaps he would
act like a police officer and pretend to arrest me before bringing me to some
dark forest and starting the skinning process. I keep running now, but I
always look over my shoulder, because the faceless man does an age, and
he doesn't sleep, and he never ever stops looking. I barely made it
home in time. One minute singing along to the radio, and then next
I was staring slack jawed at the most menacing storm clouds I had ever seen,
as some one born and raised them for a month. I was no
strange as the snow squalls, but there was something foreboding about the dark clouds
blowing in over the mountains. After reaching my house, I opened my car
door and stepped out into a cold evening. The wind lashed at my face
and made a terrible howling in my ears as I raced up the steps and
slipped through the front door to my house. Just in time, Luke said
to me and greeting. My husband was staring in front of the living room
window, surveying the mountains beyond our city. By the time I walked over
to him, I could barely see two streets down. Seemed like we would
be spending the evening inside. Came out of nowhere, I commented. Before
I so much as set my bag down, I heard the doggy door open.
We didn't own any pets, but we often entertained visits from a neighborhood
cat, whom Luke had called RIGATONI. Sure enough, an old orange cat
soon appeared in our living room, leaving a trail of muddy Poor Prince as
he trotted over to Luke. Ah, the serial cout server, returns too
cold out there for you, he asked, the cat currently rubbing her head
against this shin, whom he yowed as if in affirmation. Tony wasn't terribly
fond of most people, but Luke had away with animals. He reached down
to Petter, eliciting a melody of purse from the contented cat. Come on,
he said, standing, I'll fix you some dinner. Thank god,
I'm starving. I wasn't talking to you, Luke said, with a warm
laugh, walking into the back of the house to vetch some cat food for
Tony. Half an hour later, just as Luke and I had finally sat
down to eat, we heard the doggy tour open once again. I raised
the brow at my husband. Tony was our only regular four legged visitor.
I wondered who else could have let himselves inside our home. I didn't have
to wonder for long seconds later, a Border Collie tore into the dining room,
barking and whining with urgency. Luke and I rose sharply to our seat
to the table, watching the dog as it came to a stop in the
corner of the room. I realized as the poor creature lowered its head and
tucked its tail between its legs that I recognized it. Hey that's missus Johnson's
dog, I said, rounding the table to check if the dog was hurt.
Tucker, Yeah, I'm pretty sure I see her walking him all the
time. I crouched down next to Tucker and slowly reached out my arm.
To my surprise, the usually sweet tempered Border Collie pulls its lips back in
a snarl, lunging forward slightly and snapping his teeth. It was a warning,
not on an attempt to hurt me, but I backed off all the
same. Luke shot me a worried. Look, he's a usually more mild
mannered. I'll give her a call and let her know he's with us.
Luke left the room to grab his phone while I studied Tucker from a safe
distance, looking for signs of injury. His frantic barks had been replaced by
occasional mournful wines. He was no longer racing around, seemingly content with his
place in the corner, but his posture remained fearful and defensive. It was
hard to tell with the way he was carrying, but I saw no visible
wounds on him. Do you have signal, Luke shouted from another room.
I took my phone out of my pocket to check, and to my surprise,
I didn't. We had generally reliable coverage, and I couldn't remember the
last time I'd lost cell service. I tried restarting my phone, walking around
at different spots in the house, and turning airplane mode on and off.
Nada. Unfortunately, if it was affecting both of us, it was probably
an issue with our service provider, meaning there was little we could do.
I was about to ask if he still had Wi Fi on his phone,
when a light but urgent tapping sound filled the room. I listened for a
moment, trying to place the origin of the sound, and soon traced it
to the bathroom, or more specifically, the bathroom window. When I got
there, I saw a small, fuzzy animal standing on the window sill and
scratching fervently at the glass. What in the world the little creature didn't seem
to notice my presence. I took another step forward into the bathroom, and
I realized as I approached that the animal had torn right through the window screen.
No cell service, no Wi Fi, no nothing. At least the
lights are on. Luke trout off as he entered the room, looking over
my shoulder at the frantic creature. Is that a weasel? I asked my
resident animal lover, who shook his head. Pretty sure, there's a Martin
neat. I was about to compliment his identification skills before I looked over and
saw the look in his eyes. Don't ask me what I think you're about
to ask me. Please, they're endangered. You know this isn't Noah's ark,
Luke, we can't shelter every animal in Vermont. I swear the rodent
took a break from ripping through my window screen to glare at me, Ay,
glared right back. Besides, this little thing here looks rabid. Luke
and I spent a couple minutes arguing I wasn't keen on taking in any more
impromptu guests, but Luke was adamant and saving it from the storm. There's
something off about how desperately he's trying to get in, He said. It
might be on the verge of freezing to death or something. After a while,
he convinced me to take pity on the Martin. I had to admit
the way it was throwing itself against the glass was a little unsettling. Reluctantly,
I opened the window and allowed to squeeze through the hole in the screen.
However, I didn't realize that the Marten wasn't the only creature waiting to
get inside. Before I could shut the window, a flurry of about twenty
mice searched into the bathroom from the hole. They must have been sitting on
the sill as well, but I guess I overlooked them, mistaking their fluffy
white bodies for snow. I jumped backwards, swallowing a shriek as one of
them landed right on my foot. Eventually I managed to shut the window without
stepping on any mice, but not before a red bird, a cardinal,
I think, squeezed this way in as well. Stunned, I hurried after
the animals as they made a bee line for the center of the house.
When I entered the dining room, I saw not only Tucker and the animals
who had just burst in through the bathroom, but also a cat and two
dogs that I didn't recognize. Cursing, I realized that they must have entered
through the doggy door, so I yelled out to Luke to lock it.
As I tried to make sense of the scene in front of me, the
animals gave each other a wide berth. The cat didn't so much as look
at the mice, nor did the dog seem at all interested in the cat.
All of them were carrying, shivering as they pressed themselves into corners or
squeezed into whatever hiding spot they could find. The dogs whined, the mice
squeaked. Even the cardinal was making a strange, almost mournful sounding chirping noise.
The only one who was behaving normally was RIGATONI, who I had to
show away from the trooper mice hiding under the china cabinet. The hell is
going on? Luke asked, and I had no explanation to offer. We
had nasty storms before, but never had I seen one inspire so desperation in
our local wildlife. After another failed attempt at coaxing Tucker out of his corner,
I made my way to the living room and stared out the large window.
A total whiteout stared back at me. I could only see a few
feet out in every direction before the world was swallowed up by darkness and snow.
It was hereie, but it was beautiful in a strange way, hypnotic.
It was easy to loose myself in thought as I watched the snow fall.
What could have spooked the animal so much? I wondered? Could it
really be the cold alone? The weather hadn't seemed all that bad. Sure,
I'd been cold outside, but not a blizzard cold. When I had
opened the bathroom window. I'd been distracted by the mice, But when I
thought about it, I didn't remember a freezing cold wind sweeping into the house
alongside our animal guests. I raised my arm, pressing the back of my
hand against the glass, and then stilled Loo, I quietly called out.
He appeared around the corner seconds later, Tony cradled in his arms. Is
it just me or it's the glass warm? Luke stepped closer, shifting to
hold the cat in one arm and placing his free hand against the pane.
He didn't respond, but the way his mouth set into a thin line told
me that he felt the same thing. What does this mean? I don't
know. We both stood in silence for a while. The wind howled outside,
but either sense that if I opened a window and stuck my hand out,
it wouldn't feel cold. I didn't want to find out, though,
opening any windows or doors at that point seemed like a bad idea. In
fact, I was about to check that all entry points to our house were
secured when Luke pointed at something outside. A large black mass ambled its way
towards us. At first, I didn't understand what I was looking at.
Its shape and gait were so strange that I thought I was looking at a
brand new animal, But once it stepped fully into the faint glow emanating from
the porch light, I realized that it was a black bear. Its lower
jaw on one of its hind legs had been ripped off, and from the
trail of blood it had left in its wake, it was clear that the
wounds were fresh. The bear stumbled closer, stopping only inches from the glass,
and with every step I could make out another laceration on its body.
I watched in horror as the massive creature stared directly at us, with a
look in its eyes that it could only be described as pleading. I held
its gaze for a few seconds, and then the creature collapsed onto its side.
A puddle of dark red pulled outward from its body, and soon the
strange expansions and contractions of its rib cage ceased. Never once did it look
away from us as it bled out and died. There was a long silence
before Luke and I dared to speak. You think, Luke began, You
think that's what the animals were afraid of? I hoped so that something in
my gut told me that it wasn't. After all. Even if that was
the creature that had been running from the question still remained, what could have
inflicted that level of trauma on a black bear of that size. I think
we should get away from the windows. As we made our way to the
middle of the house. The lights flickered once twice, and then abruptly went
out altogether. We were plunged suddenly into darkness, and it seemed to put
the animals even more on edge than before. The squeaks and wines increased in
volume. As I procured two flashlights from our kitchen cabinet, I handed one
to my husband, and then the two of us tug to the dining room,
sitting on the floor with our backs against one of the walls. Luke
was calm on the surface, but I could tell that the strangeness of the
situation was causing him distress. At least, Tony's presence seemed to bring him
some peace of mind. For some reason, she was unaffected by whatever ailed
the others. I studied her as she relaxed in Loose's lap, her eyes
closing, as the absent mandily stroked her fur. Why was it that she
was unafraid? She had come to our house right before the blizzard set in,
whereas the rest of the animals likely had been outside for longer. Had
they seen something out in the storm. If they had, could it have
been the same thing that killed the bear? Hey? Luke's shaky voice broke
through my thoughts. Do you hear that? I didn't hear anything? And
then I realized I didn't hear anything. No wailing of the wind, no
sounds from the animals, nothing. It was like the whole world had suddenly
gone quiet. I logged around the room. All of the animals was so
still it was as if they were afraid to move. I clicked my flashlight
off, wanting to attract as little attention as possible, and Luke followed suit.
For a moment, we just sat there in the dark, listening,
and then I heard a voice. Hello, clear as day, the voice
of a person was calling to us from outside our house. Hello, anyone
in there? It asked. It's tone far too nonchalant with someone weathering the
full brunt of a blizzard. I need some help out here. Next to
me, Lup shifted as though you were about to stand up. I reached
out and grabbed a hold of his arm, grabbing Tony and pulling Luke back
down to the floor. There wasn't a chance in hell I was about to
let him investigate the voice. It was so strangely quiet that I could hear
the crunching of footsteps in the snow. As the person moved outside, Please,
the voice said, it had gotten closer, like it was circling the
house. Please, I really need help. Can I just come in for
a minute. It's so cold out here. My grip tightened on Luke's arm,
the complete lack of emotion in the voice's tone sending a chill up my
spine. He reached over, holding my hand in his as the source of
the voice moved even closer. Come on, now, don't you have room
for one more? It was right outside the dining room window. I closed
my eyes like a coward, not wanting to see whatever it was about to
step into view. Next to me. There was a single, sharp intake
of breath for what felt like an eternity. Neither of us moved, and
then there was a light chuckle from outside the window. There were more footsteps,
for this time they were moving away from us, and they seemed to
be taking the silence with them. The wind remembered itself, returning with a
howling vengeance in the visitor's absence. Luke's hand had gone slack in mine,
but I held on to it for a long time, sitting there with my
eyes shut tight. It must have been an hour before I dared to open
my eyes and breathe normally. Again, are you okay? I finally asked.
No response. I tried asking again, a little louder, and still
my husband didn't respond Luke. When I clicked on the flashlight, I saw
Luke staring at the window. His face twisted into an expression of horror I'd
never seen before. His skin was pale, and his body was rigid as
a corpse. And try as I did, I couldn't get him to respond
to me in any way. His look of sheer terror never once changed,
even as I carried him to the car and drove us as fast as I
could to the hospital. The doctor said it was a stroke. Of course,
I was incredulous that such a thing had happened to my fit, non
smoking, twenty nine year old husband, but no one could offer me a
better explanation. For the next few days, I waited for a recovery that
never came. Then the days turned into weeks, the weeks into months,
and the months into years. While Luke regained some very minimal motor control,
blinking and twitching his fingers, it was clear that he would never be the
same. I became his full time caretaker, spending my days attending to all
of his needs and my night's praying that he would make a miraculous recovery.
As of this evening, five years have passed since the storm. Old Rigattoni
is still alive and kicking somehow, and her visits always seem to make Luke
perk up just a little bit. She's sleeping on his chest as I tell
this, taking care of him in her own way. I'm glad to have
her around, but even though I try not to be superstitious, her presence
always brings me back to the night of the blizzard. I think about Tucker,
who ran away after the storm passed and was never seen again. I
think about the Martin and the mice and the bear, and the way all
of them acted like they were fleeing from something terrible. I think about the
look on Luke's face, and I can't help but wonder if they all saw
the same thing. Maybe Luke saw something he wasn't meant to, something that
his brain had destroyed itself trying to comprehend. I look at my husband,
the love of my life, and can't help but mourn what was taken from
me that night. If I had opened my eyes, if I'd been brave
enough to look, would I have met the same fate. What did you
see? I asked him, like I have a thousand times before. I
never get an answer. My name is Kada. I take pride in my
work, and I work on the pipes. My current job revolves around an
oil pipeline in the Persian Gulf, into the very bottom of the sea between
Saudi Arabia and Iran. It's just gone midday, but unfortunately we are too
far down for the light of the surface to reach us, so my current
surroundings are illuminated by nothing more than the yellowish beam of my flashlight. A
small collection of bubbles escape from my diving mask. They ripple up and out
of sight as I gently kick my flippers, slowly propelling myself through the gloom.
As a worker down here, I am one of three, but the
other are not currently visible to me. My beam lands on a great metal
pipe, the one that extends up into the habitat a cage like artificial pockets
of air, and down down to the depths below. I look down and
cast my beam over the pipe's body. The light catches on nothing but the
rusted metal, alone cylindrical obelisk in the watery world around me. I lower
the beam, I cast it as far down as it will go. For
all I see are my flippers beneath me, gently kicking, and the great
pipe vanishing into the blue black darkness beneath my feet. A chill passes through
my body. I hear the sound of my heartbeat to my ears. Where
this vertical pipe connects to its horizontal brother on the ocean floor, there is
an enormous metal structure of sorts, one with the purpose of keeping a series
of temporary installments attached to the pipe in place. I cannot see this monstrosity
at present, but the simple act of knowing, knowing that far below lurks
a monstrous metal skeleton waiting patiently beneath my feet, I shiver. They tell
tales about this place, you know, about the sea, Tales of malevolent
spirits that play tricks on divers waters inn they're called these spirits show divers,
illusions and distortions to confuse them. They get them deliberately lost as a form
of amusement, the tales say, and then, depending on the spirit's moods,
they either get bored and let them go, or they devour them.
Something glitters in the gloom in the corner of my eye, and I wheel
around in the water, raising the beam of the flashlight, a gasp escaping
into my mask, But the beam lends on nothing more than a school of
tiny silver fish. They flit aby and pay me no mind, and I
catch my breath. Idiot kadah, I muttered to myself, my voice obscured
by the mask, and I kick my way up through the water, following
the pipe towards the habitat's air pocket. I see the waterline rippling above me.
It draws closer and closer, and I catch sight of flashes of color
beyond my comrades. Eventually I break through the surface, popping off my mouthpiece
and raising my mask, shaking my hair as I clamber up onto the little
platform that surrounds us, a bench like apparatus that goes all the way around
the inside rim of the habitat. As I said before, I am one
of three. My colleagues are called Amir and Ahmad, and they sit waiting
for me, their legs dangling over the side, their flippers dipped in the
water. Beneath. I let out a grunt and a sigh as I take
a seat beside them, my own flippers half submerged in the water beneath.
It seems almost paradoxical, this little space, a marvel of physics. We
sit far below the surface of the sea, in the small confines that the
habitat provides, and yet we have air. The habitat is a metal box
about four meters in width and three in height. The air in here is
dank and stale, but it is at the least quite breathable. From the
center of the water between us, the pipe extends up and into the stagnant
air. The pipe is currently corked by an enormous rubber plug, one that
we will need to deflate before our shifts is over. Its purpose is to
prevent the oil inside the pipe leaking out into the sea. Thanks to the
habitat, we can safely remove it now without risk of environmental damage. The
pipe in question goes all the way down to the bottom of the sea in
a straight line, and there it's split in two and travels horizontally across the
seafloor. One end travels north a few miles out of the Saudi Arabian coast,
and the other travels south. It's just about wide enough for a man
to squeeze down should an emergency repair need taking place from the inside, but
the diameter is not large. I wipe some of the salt water from my
face as a mere connects a long black cable to the depressurizer. The end
of the cable leads down into the pipe and is connected to the rubber plug.
See any spirits down there, day, Kadar, Emir asks me as
he fastens the seal on the cable the gene Baha. Akhmed chuckles, scratching
his beard his voice as there's Amir's echoes around the somewhat clostophobic confines of the
habitat, I smiled dryly. No spirits, Amir, Just I think about
the pipe disappearing down into the darkness far below. I can't quite explain why
it gives me the creeps, It just does just what. Emir asks,
nothing, I finish. What about you, guys, any spirits? I
turned to Akhmad, Have you finally caught sight of gine Baha? I wave
my hands and fingers, mysteriously, teasing him, But Ahmed is undaunted.
You mark Kadhah. But the sea, this ancient sea. If we're going
to see one, then it'll be here. He claps his hands together,
and a small shower of water droplets splashed down onto the water by our feet,
the shimmering blue gateway to the sea below, the sea above, and
the ocean all around. And I'll tell you what else, he continues,
raising a finger. I did see something. Oh here we go, Emir
mutters, rolling his eyes. No, no, listen, Ashamed says hurriedly,
just listen to this. So there I was, right about an hour
ago, swimming around near the pipe, when it may have gotten a little
distracted by a fish. Emir shakes his head and we exchange a glance.
You should have seen it, Emir, a great golden thing. I wanted
a better look, so I left the pipe and followed it, just for
a short while, And eventually he got spooked and varnished into the blue falters.
He rubs his chin. It was actually quite an alarming experience. I
turned back to the pipe, and of course I saw nothing but the endless
void of the ocean. I tried to rejoice my steps, but again there
were no steps. I was alone. It was frightening Emir and myself remained
silent. But then that's when I saw it. I saw them. Achmed
continues practically jumping on the metal ledge. We're all perched on. Ay easy,
I say, as I feel myself rattling time to his jumps. A
Mere flicks a switch and a depressurization machine it starts to rumble. Ahmed leans
forward, looking between us. Out there in the far distance, I see
a trio of shapes, three figures, like shadows in the deep, in
the gloom. Take a poetry, A Mere mutters as he flicks another switch.
Against my sense of better judgment, I am too engrossed by Ahmed's story
to pay attention to exactly what it is he's doing. What kind of shapes?
I ask? What kind of figures? They were? Like smoke,
except no, more like mist, maybe thick, dense mist, with eyes
that flickered pale, like refracting sunlight. You had to look a certain way
to see them. Akman's voice drops low, becomes wistful. I saw them
for only a second or two, and then they were gone, vanished.
How do you get back to the pipe? I ask? Did the spirits
show you the way? Emir chuckles, Well, no, I just used
the compass, Ahmed says, But that's beside the point. I saw something
I know I did. I thought the spirits were supposed to be dangerous,
Amya says. The stories always tell of how cruel they are. They play
pranks on divers like us. You know, they bang on the pipes,
They groan and moan from the inside. Makes you think that they are monsters
inside waiting to burst right out and get you. Maybe that's why they appeared
to me, Acmed says thoughtfully, then gestures to the pipe between us.
Maybe they were trying to warn us. Perhaps there's a monster in the pipe.
Emir snorts, don't be ridiculous. Maybe once the plug is deflated,
Achmed says softly, maybe the beast will spring right out. And where would
we go? We were effectively trapped down here. When you really think about
it. There was a moment of uncomfortable silence, broken only by a slow
hissing produced by the depressization machine begins its work deflating the plug in the pipe.
Nonsense, Emir says, after a beat, shaking his head. Don't
say such stupid stuff. All I'm saying, Akhmed finishes shrugging. Is that
the spirits aren't necessarily something to be feared. I know you guys don't really
believe, but they can be helpful too. They don't devour people the genial
Bihar mischievous maybe, but not unkind in their own way. Emir grunts and
waves his hand dismissively. Akhmed looks at me for support. Then I just
laugh. Come on, I say, enough is enough. I think we
have worked to do. I wouldn't want Zahar to snitch on us again.
The conversation shifts, and a collective groan echoes around the habitat. I can't
stand that guy, Emir says dramatically, and we all laugh. A collective
dislike of the man has become a running joke between us. So here is
technically a colleague of ours, and although we rarely work in close capacity,
his projects always seem to be in tandem to our own, so we're never
quite rid of him. He has thick red hair and a ridiculous scraggly beard,
and all in all he makes himself an easy target, a busy body
and a teeder's pet. You see, he clocks in more hours than he
has to unpaid I my add Yet despite his enduring and tragic efforts, he
always gets passed up for promotion because he has a vacuum for a personality.
So here is entirely devoid of charisma. Maybe we should play a prank on
him before we go up, Emir suggests. As the machine deflating the plug
kicks up a gear, the hissing grows louder. What kind of prank,
Ahmeda asks, I don't know. We could head over to his site in
Azrakwan. Bang some pipes, make some noise, give him a little spook
of for his shift is over. Could be fun. Wouldn't be worth it?
I reply, As much fun as that sounds, as Rakuan is a
kilometer and a half away. Do you really want to swim all the waves?
And childish prank? And besides, we never falls here with that spirit
nonsense. The man doesn't believe in anything, He's got no imagination, true,
Emir nods regretfully. He fiddles with a machine beside him, then gives
it a light slap and it does its job. It finishes deflating the plug
to a sufficient degree, freeing up a space around it, and opening a
way down into the pipe. What this was supposed to do was allow us
to reach in all the deflated plug out check for leaks, damage, and
whether the plug needs a potential replacement. We should have been able to do
this easily and safely, as the pipe at this time and on this day
is supposed to be filled with oil. For whatever reason. However, the
pipe is not there is as it turns out, significantly less oil inside than
we were told and as was believed, And so what happens instead takes place
over the course of a few terrible seconds, a true nightmare that I will
never ever be able to forget. The positive pressure inside the habitat, the
little atmosphere keeping us alive, rushes instantaneously into the pipe and forces down the
small amount of oil at a monstrous inhuman speed. This motion creates what I
can only describe as a blinding vortex. The air and the ocean are hauled
up and around us like a sudden whirlwind of chaos and terror. In the
blink of an eye, my vision is lost to a brutal, an immediate
rush of darkness as my body is slammed into the habitat wall. I scream,
but all that I could produce is froth and bubbles. As my shoulder
cracks on the edge of something metal. I do not know which way is
up or down. The safety and sanctuary of the habitat is shattered. I
can see nothing but shadow as water blasts into my nose and my mouth and
eyes, and I am sucked instantly and brutally down into the pipe. I
can feel its walls pressing against me on all sides as I am dragged cataclysmically
between them. I'm forced through the water and the oil head first, at
near breakneck speed. Blood rushes to my head as my arms and legs are
smashed and battered against the meta. There is only terror, terror, and
darkness. My head strikes against the metal as the pipe levels out, and
the world behind my screwed shut eyelids flashes red then white. Are ringing echoes
in my ears and competes with the thunderous rush of the water. As I
release an involuntary bellow of pain, oil and seawater pour into my mouth my
lungs, and I swallow some and breathe in the rest, choking and drowning
as I am dragged to the pipe along the seafloor. I'm going to die.
This one singular thought plays over and over in my head. I'm going
to die, and this is the end. The terror of my situation,
for a quick, fleeting moment, is replaced by an eerie calm. The
sounds of the rushing, hammering water do not lessen, but I find my
altitude changed. It soothes me, and I think about a beach I visited
as a young child with my family as I prepare to exhale my final breath,
except instead of producing bubbles as I do so, I instead begin to
choke and to splutter. I start a cough, spluttering, coughing, and
I realize at once that this can only mean one thing. I have found
air. I gasp and wretch. I tried to bring my hands up to
my mouth, but they bang painfully against the inner wall of the pipe.
My right wrist robs angrily, sending shards of pain shooting up my arm.
I think the entire hand may be broken. Air, I think to myself,
and the vision of the beach is lost. The terror floods immediately back
into my mind in the same manner as the water was hauled into the pipe.
Most of my head is submerged in water, though my eyes, nose,
and mouth are free. I can lift my head. Then my ears
are raised above the waterline and I am able to hear. But the action
presses on my forehead against the cold metal above me. I started moving and
the reality of my situation sets in. I'm in the pipe. Oh no,
I murmur aloud, wretching as I cough up water and oil. Oh
no, no, no no, I scream. I slam my good fist
against the metal, shouting for help. Please, I scream into the pitch
black darkness, please someone, Amir Ahmed. Panic strikes. There is nowhere
to go, nowhere to run, and no one to hear me. I
can barely move. The water ebbs and sloshes around my face and I gasp.
My breathing becomes shallow and dangerous. You're not drowning. I have to
keep telling myself, you're not drowning. You have some air, you can
breathe, You can breathe. Calm yourself, Calm yourself, gaddah. I
tried to raise my legs and one of my flippers kicks against the roof of
the pipe. I tried to turn a little to my side and realize that
to do so requires significant effort and a reasonable degree of pain. I've done
some serious damage to my shoulder and my neck too. Perhaps the simple act
of raising my head causes immense pain to shoot down my spine. But to
allow my head to lower completely would mean the majority my face is submerged.
I force myself to slow my breathing. That's the priority. Nice slow breathing
in and out, slow deep breaths, with grunts of pain and a hammering
heart. I shuffle and twist as best I can, searching my person for
my scuba equipment. I believe that I am wearing only a single flipper.
Now I think the other must have been torn off as I was sucked into
the pipe. No other equipment can be found, my breathing mask in the
air tank. It's all gone. It's gone. Oh God, I whisper,
and despite my sense of logic, I bang on the pipe. Hello,
I shout into the inky darkness. Hello, is anyone there? Kudah,
comes a voice a little ways back along the pipe. It echoes from
the darkness beyond my feet. I try to raise my face a little higher
to look down into the void, but it's futile. I can see nothing.
Hello, I shout back. Who is it, Ahmed? Are you
all right? Kadah? He shouts a relief tempered with terror. You're alive.
I can breathe. Are you okay? Another voice echoes from beyond even
Ahmed. It is fainter, but I can still hear it. Guys,
Guys, comes the voice of Amir. Guys, are you both all right?
Thank the Lord, I mutter, holding back a sob of relief.
Amir, Ahmed, it's kadha. Are you hurt? Yes, Amir calls
after me. I believe one of my arms is broken. Likewise, Amir
shouts, then a little quieter, Damn, I think my legs are too.
Oh God. He releases what sounds like a cry of pain, then
swears, what do we do? Ahmed calls into the pipe. What do
we do? He kicks against the pipe, and the sound reverberates down and
over my head. Okay, hold on, hold on, I shout,
clenching my hands into fists, thinking, using my overheating brain as best as
I can. The three of us are alive. We're trapped in the pipe
at the bottom of the sea. No one knows we're down here, and
once they find the wreckage of the habitat. They'll probably assume we were killed
instantly cast out into the sea. Perhaps I feel the panic returning. I
try to stretch my limbs, but I am unable. I kick the pipe
in frustration and let out a shout of rage. Good ah, calm down,
calls Ahmed. It's all right, We'll be all right. Yes,
yes, I need to calm down. First things first, the pipe,
when it reaches the seafloor, splits into two. I do not know if
we've been pulled north towards the site of Azrakwan or south towards the site of
Azraktu. How far away are they? I try to think Azrakwan is situated
around one point five kilometers north of our former location of the habitat, Asraktu
is over twice our distance south. I have no idea how far along we
were pulled down the pipe. It all happened so fast, we could be
hundreds of meters in either direction by now. All I know is that the
air we're breathing the pocket created It's likely due to the undulations of the pipe,
small bumps and raises over support beams. It's entirely possible that there are
more of these further down the tunnel. But how large is each air pocket
and at what point do they run out? O ka, I shout down,
friends, I have an idea, and we do not have time to
waste. I'm all ears, brother Akhmac calls up. There is a moment
of silence, a meir. Akhmac calls down. Yes, he replies weakly.
I'm here, but I'm not in good shape. I'm going to be
honest. It's O ka, I shout, forcing my own confidence to grow,
believing in hope, for us, for the sake of my friends,
if not for myself, We'll be all right. Just listen. I clear
my throat and the sound bounces off the pipe above me and back into my
face. I raise my head to clear my ears from the water and WinCE
from the pane. We need to move, I shout simply. We cannot
stay here or we will die. Any further press changes and the pipe could
fill with water to the brim, and regardless, sooner or later, we
will use up all of the oxygen and we will suffocate. So I propose
this. We do our best to move. We shuffle away along the pipe
as far as we can. If we're in luck, we've been pulled north,
and I do not know how much distance we've already covered. Azrakwan is
only one and a half kilometers away. Max. That's a distance we can
make. I'm sure of it. And if we've been pulled south, the
Mere calls to this, I remain silent. The sound of something low and
deep reverberates along the pipe. Then shakely, Ahmed replies, all right,
good Aah, I'm with you. We'll do this. We crawl away along
the pipe and we pray. Amir, I call down. What do you
think? He coughs and groans. Kadah. He says, Look, I
can barely move. I can't do this. You can, Ahmed shouts down,
you can, no, Ahmed. A Mere groans again, Ahmed,
my injuries are bad. I cannot move an inch. We can't leave you
behind. Makhmed splutters, but Amir interrupts. Go, he says, and
once you've escaped, you'll know where to find me. Just go, all
right, you said yourselves. The clock is ticking, so go. I
hesitate, then release a long, shuddering sigh, God save you, brother.
I call down. We'll be back. I promise we won't leave you.
I know, he says his voice distant and quiet. Damn, I
mutter angrily, slamming my fist against the pipe. Ahmad, are you ready?
There's a pause, Yes, he says, I'm right behind you.
Goodhah. Let's do this, And so we begin a venture excruciatingly clostrophobic does
not even begin to cover it. The knowledge that beyond these narrow confines is
nothing more than the great weight of the ocean does not fill me with bravery.
Every inch that we travel requires an exertion. I find little to no
leverage on the wet, slippery and oil soaked base of the pipe, so
I have to find the slightest, narrowest of grooves, mostly around the upper
half, and press my toes or heels into them, using my one good
hand and my one broken hand to help force myself along through the sloshing,
sinister waters. I can see nothing. There is no level of light at
all for my eyes to adjust to, so in pitch darkness we remain.
As we move, I try my best to keep track of the distance traveled.
My estimate, I think is reasonable after two or three meters. After
ten, my grasp is feeble, and beyond that I simply lose track.
It's impossible to tell. We keep shuffling our way down the pipe, listening
to the sounds of our breathing, occasionally calling down to each for reassurance.
Act Mad and I slowly and steadily through this underwater pipe, inch by agonizing
inch. It's tough to tell how much time passes, but after around twenty
minutes, I make a disturbing discovery. It was gradu at first, so
gradual that I did not notice that there is now a significant stress placed on
the back of my neck. I'm having to hold my face as high as
I can, and my forehead has been pressed against the metal for a while.
Now. It is only when I have to alter the shape of my
lips to inhale the air that I realize we are running out. I suppress
a wave of panic and stop moving at once, shuffling back the way I
came to give myself a little more air space to work with. Water sloshes
in my ears and obscures my hearing. But I call down to Akhmad.
Ahmad, I call, can you hear me? Yes? He shouts back,
coughing, everything all right, Ahmed, I falter, Ahmed, We're
about to run out of air, As a pause. What do you mean,
he asks, his voice higher, more anxious. I mean the air
pocket is about to expire. Another pause. Maybe there's another further down,
he says. I've seen the schematics of the pipe. The undulations are not
regular, so there could be another pocket. What if there isn't, I
shout back, chest now rising and falling desperately. Damn it, damn it.
There is no space, no light. I can't breathe get a hold
of yourself, be come, my child, and it cuts through the madness.
I seize hold of his words and allow them to anchor me. We
can do this, brother. I take a deep breath. All right,
I say, all right, here's what I'm gonna do. I'm going to
move as fast as I can along the pipe. I'll hold my breath and
I'll search for an air pocket. Regardless of whether I do or don't,
I'll be back to let you know. Okay, you're a brave man,
calls the voice of Ahmed. Don't overdo it, good luck, okay,
I say, heart pounding, I begin to take a series of slow,
deep breaths, gently and gradually expanding my lungs, preparing them to hold for
as long as they are able. The sound is cold and eerie in the
darkness. Steady, deep breaths. My chest rises and falls. I shuffle
back along the pipe, my face pressed against the pipe. The air metallic
and oily and grim. I can't hear anything now. The water comes all
the way up to the side of my lips, shaking. I press my
hand against the side, doing my best to ignore the pain shooting through my
right hand wrist. Here we go, Kada. I take my final breath
in, my lungs filled to the maximum capacity, and I brace myself against
the pipe, using my hands and feet to push myself further along. The
air is lost and I am completely submerged beneath the water. It forms a
constant, steady, roaring rumble in my ears. I use anything that I
can to increase the distance I'm able to move. My elbows, knees,
heels, shoulders, I use all of them to search for leverage, inch
by inch faster than before. I force myself through the pipe. My heart
pounds, the beat is loud, so so loud. My chest trembles,
but I keep moving as far as I can, inch by inch, inch
by inch. Don't if I don't find air. Then there's really nothing for
us. Will suffocate or drown or worse in the belly of the pipe,
and we may never be discovered. I have to keep moving. Inch by
inch, my hands reach a particularly oily section of the pipe. Then instead
of pressing against the sides, they slip right off in a blink. My
momentum is lost, and I fumble and splutter in terror as I realize that
my means of propulsion has now failed me. No, I think, with
flashes of terrible urgency. No, no bubbles unseen escape from my lips.
As I writhe in the darkness, suffocating in the cold embrace of the rusted
beast. Please, I beg, sending up prayers to a god I have
neglected, Desperately searching for a workable surface, My foot finds a subtle groove,
and I'm able to push myself another inch, and from there I'm able
to move another My journey continues, but I am rewarded with no relief,
because soon I will need to breathe in. My lungs have already begun to
ache, and if I don't find another pocket of air, then I'll have
to return through the pipe back the way I came back past the slippery,
oily walls. What if I get stuck on my way back? What if
I don't make it back in time? How the hell was this allowed to
happen. I'm overcome with a sudden burst of rage, and bubbles spilled through
my clenched teeth. As I force myself deeper and deeper through the water as
hastily as I'm able, my lungs start to burn. I'm going to run
out of air. Just a little further, I can search a little further.
I'm going to run out of air. I'm going to die just a
little further. I can do it. I can do it. And with
a sudden gasp and a great shuddering breath inwards, I almost laugh in desperate
thankfulness as the angle of the pipe is suddenly changed and I feel my face
emerge into a fresh, new pocket of air. It's not fresh, of
course, but in that moment, it's the sweetest air I've ever tasted.
I come to a stop and allow some great and rasping breaths, filling and
replenishing my lungs. Thank God, it is all like a murmur, over
and over, thank God, thank God. I can't myself, and once
I have my breath, I try shouting. I don't think he'll be able
to hear me, but I try anyway. I received no response, so
I try knocking a rhythm on the pipe. There is still no response,
so regretfully I prepare for the return journey. I'm scared, of course,
but I now know it can be done, that there is air waiting safely
for me on the other side. So I filled my lungs once again and
shuffled back through the pipe feet first, this time back towards Akhma's location.
I use the material of my diving suit to help me pass by the particularly
oily section and emerged back into the former pocket, spluttering and coughing. Oh
good lord, Ahmed shads, good ah, you took it down time,
I thought you might have. It's all right, I replied, we can
make it. There's another pocket ahead. Now listen, and I go on
to explain the distance and what he'll need to do. Then, finally,
with a third and hopefully final time, we force ourselves through the watery darkness,
back beneath and through the pipe with the promise of the next air pocket,
our guiding light inch by inch as fast as I can, praying that
Ahmad is able to keep up. And then, as before, my face
emerges welcomingly into the new air pocket. But I continue moving along to a
loudspace for Ahmad. The seconds pass, and it's just as I'm beginning to
fret that I hear his coughing, the sound of great longfalls of swallowed air
as he breathes in. Yes, I shout, banging my good fist and
the pipe. We did it, We did it, brother, Yes,
he splutters, Yes, we did. Then it releases what sounds like a
laugh, and it fills my heart with hope. Come on, I shout
to him, Let's keep going, And so we do, and our journey
through the pipe inch by inch. As the hours passed by, the timeless
hours, in the perpetual watery darkness, my joints aake, my muscles tense
and throb with exertion. But I have to keep going. There's nothing else
for it. Our air pocket comes to an end, and as with before,
I scout ahead, I have to, of course, as there simply
no way possible for Ahmed to pass me by. After holding my breath for
another painful period of time, I am blessed with the discovery of a new
breathable space, and so we continue in the same manner. These air pockets,
however, grow shorter and shorter as we progress, much to my quiet
alarm, whether still just enough? And so our journey continues. Every time
I have to hold my breath and go on ahead. It is a cruel
exercising will power and mental strength, but I do my duty. I have
to, We have to get out, We need to. An exhausting struggle
through the pipe comes to a temporary halt as we reach an air pocket a
mere three or four meters in length. I start with fright as my bad
shoulder knocks up against something hard and cold. It moves in little response to
the pressure I exert upon it. So it isn't a blockage of any kind?
Could it be? My heart leaps wriggling, squirming in the pipe.
I do my best to bring my good hand up towards my head. It
is not a quick process and requires some uncomfortable maneuvers, but eventually my hand
can reach my neck and beyond, and my fingers explore the mysterious object.
Despite everything, A grin spreads across my face and I cry out loud with
joy, Ahmed, I shout, Ahmed, I found a tank. I
think, yes, it's all connected. It's all here a tank. He
replies, what do you mean, I mean an oxygen tank, Ahmad.
It's all in one piece, the breathing troupe. Yes, it's all here.
That's fantastic. He exclaims. How many are there? My enthusiasm drops.
I shuffle further down the pipe, searching blindly in the darkness for evidence
of a potential second set of diving gear. Despite my silent please, however,
there is only one. I can only find one here, I tell
my comrade. But there might be another further down. This is a game
changer. We can do this. We can get out whose tank is it?
Kada? Akhmed asks me. I think my own was about half full.
Yes, Likewise, I reply, what about e Mears e Mears?
Akhmed begins hesitating. Kada, I think Emirs was almost empty. I take
a deep breath, right, I reply, well, still, this will
help. I'll use it now, and I'll see if I can find another
set a little further along. Wish me good luck, man achmetays godspeed.
I check the tank over as best I can. I hold the mouthpiece around
my lips, giving it a few test breaths. Then on I go back
beneath the water, though this time armed with the tank to help me along
my way. I grunt and shift my body around, shuffling through the pipe,
squirming my way along, and I find what will come to be the
final air pocket of its type, a mere meet along, not even big
enough for Ahmed and I to share at the same time, and to my
growing frustration, there is no sign of a second tank. So I push
deeper onwards through the pipe, breathing with the tank, pushing it along with
me. As I go I discover, to my bitter amusement, what could
well be my second missing flipper, But there is still no second tank,
and no further air pockets either. Clenching my fist, I realize that I
need to go back before Ahmed starts worrying. So I make the painstaking return
journey in a time that to my friend must have felt like ours. But
at last I returned to our shared location and inform him of the disappointing news.
He is quiet as I relay my findings, and then he says,
in a soft voice, good Ah. I think that this is the end
of the road for me. There is no use in me going any further.
I think that I'll have to wait here. I begin to protest,
but my words dyeing my mouth. What is there for me to say?
He's right? Of course, it's a harsh truth, but he's absolutely right.
He'll simply have to stay behind the next leg of the journey I'll have
to do alone. A sudden rush of emotion swells up inside me, and
I force it back down. There's a time and a place. I try
not to consider the fact that this may be the last time I ever hear
his voice. Perhaps I've heard both their voices for the very last time.
No time and a place. Keep moving, ah Mad. I begin fumbling
for some words that'll do the moment justice, but he interrupts. See you
soon, buddy, he says. In the dark, I'm not able to
reply immediately, but when I do, I say to him, yes,
for sure, see you soon, body, And with that I'm gone.
I forced myself further along the tank, crawling and shuffling. Then I am
submerged. My breathing is loud to the tube connected to my mouth, and
when I reach the final air pocket, I allow myself a second to pause
to steal my constitution, and then this pocket too is left behind. On
I go underwater, the rest of my journey will be underwater, and since
I cannot see, there is no way to tell how much air is left
in the tank. If it was mine or Akhmed, then I should have
hours to spare. If it was a Mears, well, no point in
being coy. If it's a Mears, then I'll likely die down here unless
I'm blessed with another surprise air pocket. It's not impossible, I tell myself
as I crawled through the pipe, water all around me. It's not impossible
then, Yet as the hours go by, there are no more air pockets
to discover, just more pipe, the endless, claustrophobic dark of the tunnel.
How far have I come? No idea, impossible to tell, really,
and I don't even know which way I'm heading. If it's north,
then this hope. If south, then this whole venture was pointless. Anyway,
I'll never make it back to Azrak two Asraq one. On the other
hand, for Asrak one, hope remains. There's still hope onwards through the
pipe, through the oily, poison water, my elbows burned, with pain
from of friction. My shoulders have been rubbed raw. My feet are developing
painful blisters from the places I've been forced to press them against the pipe for
leverage, over and over. My neck is killing me. It hurts the
term I head too far in either direction. I just grip my teeth and
keep on going. Too late to stop now, must keep going on and
on and on. God give me strength, I mutter to myself as my
muscles contract and sting. Give me strength to see this through. Thinking about
Ahmed, about Amir, all alone, just like me. It helps propel
me forward. I can't give up, not while they're counting on me.
I can never do that to them, not ever. So on I go
endless, ceaseless dark, endless, ceaseless torture of the pipe. Except it's
not endless, not as luck would have it. The good news regarding my
oxygen tank is that it definitely was in a meuse. If it was,
it would have expired by now. The bad news is that I've been kneading
deeper and deeper breaths to fill my lungs, and soon the oxygen that the
tank can spare me just won't be enough. It won't go on forever.
I have found no other tanks along my journey. It's just the one on
my person currently, and then that's it. Game over, Come on,
you pipe, I hated as a mouthpiece. You can't go on forever.
You can't, And of course it doesn't. My head bashes against hard metal,
eh, I murmuring confusion. I try to continue along my journey,
but the way is blocked. I simply cannot go any further. My first
thought is one of panic. I fear that I've reached some kind of wall
in the pipe, one that shouldn't exist, and I've come all this way
to find nothing more than a dead end. Upon little inspection, however,
I realize that a space is opened up above my head. I squirm around,
and for the first time in hours and hours, I'm able to change
positions and to sit upright. My back cracks, and a rush of unbelievable
relief in muscle tension flows through me. I bring up my hands to feel
around me in the darkness, and I almost shout for joy. The pipe
has reached this end. It's going up now, vertically, up through the
sea, towards the surface. We came north. I laugh, the cracks
of hope widening, flowing into me like rivers of silver. We've been traveling
north the whole time, the end of the pipe, upwards to the installation
at azra Kwan and to salvation. Unless I take stock and consider the choice
that now faces me. If I'm going to push onwards, then this really
is it. It's a coin flip for life or death. There's not much
air left in the tank. And if I climb this pipe to discover the
worst, if the pipe has been stoppered or plugged, then definitively for me
there will be no way out. I really will reach a dead end.
All hope will be lost, and I will drown down here, with nowhere
to go, no way forwards and no way back. I shake my head.
There's no choice here, not really, it's just willpower. I don't
have enough air in my tank to get back to Ahmed, even if I
wanted to. It's only forwards, forwards and upwards, all right, I
murmur, bobo spilling, Here we go, and I begin my slow,
deliberate ascent, back pressed against the pipe behind me, knees and calves against
the pipe in front up. I go, kicking at times half swimming,
half shimmying up the pipe, up the pipe to the surface, slowly but
surely, grimacing through the strain and the pain, and still so dark,
so unbelievably dark. The lack of light does not fill me with confidence.
If the pipe was not stoppered, surely I'll be able to see some light.
Right I open my eyes in the water. The salt and oil stings
like hell. But I need to see, or to try and see at
least. But there's nothing. There's no hint of light at all. Don't
lose faith, I tell myself, screwing my eyes shut again, Keep going,
keep going. This vertical section of pipe is unlike the one we were
stuck down. This part here goes all the way up to the surface,
up to the bustle and the relative commotion of Azrakwan. Except it won't be
bustling right now, of course, I hesitate, taking a deep, strained
breath through the mouthpiece, grunting with the strain. Thinking about it, the
place could be entirely deserted. I don't even know what time it is.
I've been crawling through the pipe for hours upon hours. I'm not sure of
the exact time, but I'm exhausted, I'm starving and my oxygen is about
to expire if I recall correctly. In fact, the site won't even be
open tomorrow. I rack my brains and try to remember when were they all
off site? Was it tomorrow or the day after? Damn? What if
everyone's come back to shore. What if the site is empty? What if
there's no one to hear me? What if the pipe is stopped? What
if? What if? I bellow and frustration and continue my ascent. Each
breath becomes hard work. I'm starting to feel lightheaded, but there's nowhere to
go but up. This section of pipe can't be longer than eighty meters or
so. So surely, if it was open, i'd see the right,
wouldn't I see the light? Please? I whisper as I opened my eyes
again, squinting through the darkness, terrified that at any second I will hit
a barrier or a stop, and my journey will come to an abrupt and
bitter end. Any second, at any moment, I could strike the ceiling
and I'll be trapped. In the very next second i emerge from the water,
they hear the sounds of splashing as my head breaks free of the surface.
I'm still in complete darkness, but I've reached the top air. I
pull off the mouthpiece and suck it all down, refilling my lungs with far
greater ease, rubbing and brushing the oily waters from my face and eyes.
I made it, I say to no one in particular, my voice echoing
around the narrow little space afforded me. Now I have to come to perhaps
the final hurdle. How cruel it would be, I think, how cruel
to make it so far, and then to be denied rescue, so close
and yet so far. I squirm and bring up my good arm. With
my good hand, I reach it above me, feeling through the darkness,
as the water spills and drips from my elbow. A few inches above my
head, I feel the lid of the pipe screw tight shut. My heart
starts pounding again. Come on, please please. I search desperately for a
release mechanism or a valve that will open the pipe from the inside, but
alas, just as I suspected, there is no such valve. I bring
up my other hand and try to force open the lid. I try to
spin it to s but nothing works, nothing at all, and there will
be no one on the other side. Why would there be. Their shift
is over, they'll have left the side by now crossed back to the shore.
I'm stuck, after everything, I'm just as trapped as a mere and
as Ahmed. I started pounding desperately on the lid. I bang in the
pipe as hard as I can. I start to scream. I start shouting,
though the sounds will be muffled from the outside. My shouts for help
would just sound like a load of moaning and groaning, potentially even mistaken for
the general rumble of the pipe itself. Help, I scream, slamming both
fists on the metal with all my remaining force, not caring for the spikes
of pain that shoot through my broken wrist. Panic threatens, though overtake me
now at this final stage of my journey, Help, I cry, slamming
the lid, kicking the pipe, making as much noise as I am able
before my constitution breaks any one. I roar into the darkness, and with
the sound of a grate and sudden grinding directly above my head, the lid
shifts and a curved crack of light spills blindingly into the pipe. I gasped
with astonishment, the wind taken from my sails, and I slumped back down
into the water with a splash. My eyes are force closed, and the
world beyond my sealed eelt is a dazzling orange red. I don't even know
what to say. I'm too afraid to believe what is happening. I sent
some one talking to me. The voice is confused and alarmed. They grabbed
me by the diving suit, by the shoulders, and with some considerable degree
of effort, but they hauled me out and onto the platform that surrounded the
pipe's exit. I'm unable to help myself from weeping. I still cannot see.
With the tears streak, the salt and the oil from my face.
I've never felt so free. I turn and WinCE and stretch my arms and
legs in ways that they were unable for what felt like ages, I feel
I hands squeezed my shoulder. A bottle of cool, refreshing and above all
clean water is gently poured over my face. Good Ah, comes a familiar
voice. Good aar, What on earth? He fumbles for words, cared
to explain yourself? Goodar, what the hell is this? I finally managed
to open my eyes just a sliver, gradually painfully adjusting to the light from
the flood lamps all around, and I am greeted by the sight of the
only employees still at his station, long after his shift has come to an
end. He stares at me, his scruffy red hair and his beard a
mess, his expression almost comical. In confusion, A dry chuckle escapes my
lips. Hellosa here, I mutter, you know, I don't think I've
ever been happier to see anyone in my entire life. In this, my
friends, is the truth. The hours that followed passed by in a whirlwind.
The company and the authorities were alerted immediately, and the helicopters were sent
up into the sky and rescue boats were out in the water within the hour.
The ruined habitat site was investigated and safely secured. Vast teams of divers
were sent and they traversed the entire length of the pipe way into the night,
knocking and tapping on the metal and hunting diligently for Amir and Ahmad.
Knocking and tapping on the metal, and hunting diligently for Amir and Ahmad.
There was tragically no response. I remember pacing up and down in one of
the control rooms, fielding calls from family in the presence of several officers and
officials, as the pressure in the pipe was carefully leveled as it was disconnected
at the safest point and open for inspection. I remember the way I reacted
when I was told the news the next morning, after a long and sleepless
night, arm bandaged. I remember the breath escaping me. I remember collapsing
into the nearest chair. That's impossible, I murmured, there's no way.
But the bodies of Emir and Ahmad were discovered together about ten or so meters
north from where we were suckered down. It was ruled that the two men
died on impact with the pipe, almost instantaneously. It's likely they weren't even
aware of what happened. Their last conscious moments, I'm told most probably took
place in the habitat itself before the disaster. To this, I say nothing.
I simply look out of the window as the morning sun reflects and glimmers
sparkling in the gentle waves of the sea far below. My father was not
an open book. Those that knew him would call him a reserved man,
or a man of few words, But to me he was like a man
who had retreated into his own universe, a world that seemed filled with shadows
in every corner, a waking nightmare. I would catch him sometimes at night,
just staring out the window, gripping the arms of his chair so tight
I thought his hands would start bleeding. He would lean forward, almost falling
out of his chair, as if expecting something terrible and incomprehensible to show up
at our door at any moment. My father was a man clothed in dread.
It's only something I came to realize as I got older. He hid
it well, especially from my mother, not nearly well enough. Nothing terrified
my father more than piano music, whether it was heard in an elevator or
on the TV, or being played in a shopping mall by a hobby pianist
who wanted to impress onlookers, whether it was classical or jazz, whether it
was happy or sad, simple or complex. When he heard the sound of
a piano, his eyes would bulge out of their sockets, his skin would
go pale white. He would look around wildly, whipping his head back and
forth, like a dog wrangling with a bone. I never had the courage
to ask him why he was so afraid of it. Why didn't I just
ask him? But it wasn't the thing to be acknowledged in our home.
Fear is contagious, and the easiest way to come down with it is to
talk about it. So my father's fear lingered throughout our lives, untouched.
Like a piano that was never sold, it just hung in the air,
playing its own silent music for years. My father passed away a year ago
due to heart complications. I thought his secret died with him. But two
weeks ago I was visiting my mom and decided to go through my father's old
belongings. I guess I was feeling nostalgic. After some time, I was
about to head out when I saw it at the bottom of a cardboard box
that had been hidden in the corner of the attic. It was an unmarked
envelope. Inside was a letter comprised of several sheets of paper. The writing
and the letter was rush and scratchy, but it was my father's handwriting.
There was no mistaking it. What I read in that letter has haunted me
for the past fourteen days. I've decided to share that letter right here and
now, because I feel that in some way it may help me better understand
it. Or maybe the truth is I just want someone to share my father's
dread with. My mother would not listen to me when I told her about
the letter. She told me to burn it and to forget whatever it said.
She scolded me like I was still a child. What you're about to
hear from this point on are my father's words exactly. I have not changed
nor altered any of it. I am transcribing it word for word. This
is my father's story in his own words. I wonder how many times I've
attempted to write this letter, how many pieces of paper I've torn up throughout
the years, how many pens have gone dry, how many pencils snapped?
Too many, far too many. If I do have the courage to finish
it, I wonder who will even read it. Maybe it'll be my dear
Elizabeth, maybe you're even reading it right now. I'm sorry for keeping this
from you. I haven't been a good husband. You don't know all of
me, not nearly all of me. That's a horrible thing to do to
your wife. I hope you can forgive me. Liz or maybe it'll be
you, Jack, my boy, you saw me better than I saw myself.
How many times did you catch me staring? I used to tell you
I was daydreaming. If you are reading this now, you'll know what I
really saw those nights, what I heard. Or maybe it's neither Elizabeth or
Jack. Maybe it's you, Jonathan or your mother. God help me.
If it is, have you finally found me I've seen you out of the
corner of my eyes for the last forty years. Or maybe if you're reading
this, you're a complete stranger to me. Regardless, it's time I told
this story once and for all, even if the pen and paper I'm writing
with end up being the only ones who ever know it. In December of
nineteen seventy six, I was on my way home for the holidays. I
was attending the University of Wisconsin Madison. My parents lived in Lacrosse. It's
only about a two and a half hour drive. But on my way I
got caught in a snowstorm, A storm that came out of nowhere. I
mean really came out of nowhere. Somehow I got turned around. I've never
been good at driving in snow. If you're reading this this you know how
true there is. Remember the station wagon. God, I nearly crashed it
a hundred times. Those were good days. And days like those, I
barely ever heard the piano, or at least convinced myself I couldn't hear it.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. This was not a bad storm.
It was one hell of a bad storm. I've rolled back the clock in
my head numerous times, wondering if there was anything I could have done differently,
what if I'd driven slower or turned into the slide. But I think
in some ways, no matter what I did, that car was destined to
crash that day, and crash it I did, straight into a ditch.
All my attempts to get the car out of the ditch are futile. Snow
was coming down hard. This was no soft powder, but a cook off
in your flakes and harsh sleet. Through the white storm. I saw a
house in the distance. It was the only building nearby, and I hadn't
seen any cars on the road in what felt like forever. I got out
of my car and walked towards the home. I was shocked by how deep
the snow had become already, how unrecognizable. The landscape seemed. I took
one last look of my car, already being devoured by the snow, turning
it into a sad, frozen white monolith in the middle of nowhere. I
drew closer and closer to the home. Each day I took more tiresome than
the last. Then I heard something that stopped me right in my tracks.
It was the sound of music coming from the home. It was the delicate
sound of a piano. The music cut right through the harsh, cold winds
of the storm and went straight to my ears. The music was coming from
the upper part of the house. There was a window to a room on
the upper floor, but a curtain obstructed the view. Still, there was
no question that the piano music was coming from their room. My eyes went
from the top window to a window on the first floor. There was a
woman standing in the window. She was staring right at me with a amused
expression on her face. I waved to her nervously, and then pointed back
at my car. When I looked back, the woman has gone from the
window. Moments later, the front door to the house opened and I made
my way up the porch steps. Can I help you the woman asked,
standing in the doorway. She still had that amused look on her face.
It's a little embarrassing, I said, but I crashed my car into that
ditch down the road and I can't get out. Oh my, how awful.
The woman said, Please come in and get yourself warm. I stepped
inside, and the woman shut the door behind me. All at once,
the noise from outside was cut off. The only noise now was the piano
music coming from upstairs. That and my chill breathing that music, I said,
rubbing my arms to get warm. It's really lovely. Oh that's my
son, Jonathan. He's a wonderful pianist. Please do make yourself comfortable.
I'll fix you some tea. And absolutely dreadful weather. It's simply dreadful.
I sat down in the living room. It was a warm and cozy house,
but there was something underneath that made me uncomfortable. I did not understand
it fully at the time. We're looking back on it, I believe some
part of me noticed all the little things that were off about the home.
For one, there was no family photos anywhere to be seen, and despite
the warmth of the home, it had a bizarre, sterile smell like that
of an appliance store. The house looked lived in, but didn't feel lived
in. Could I use your phone? I asked. The phones are out,
the woman said, bringing back two cups of tea. They won't be
back back up until morning, most likely as soon as they are our phone.
Harvey, my neighbor. He lives the closest. I'll have him bring
his tractor and we'll get your car out of the ditch. Is there any
way to get hold of him? Now? I hate to be a bother,
but how's on my way to Lacrosse to see my folks for the holidays.
I was hoping to get there by tonight. Upstairs, the piano music
stopped. The woman took a large sip of a tea, looking at me
over the cup with her faded green eyes. Then putting the cop down gently,
she said, Lacrosse. Goodness, gracious, how on earth did you
end up here in Dutchville County? I got turned around Dutchville County. I've
never been through her before. Well, there's no helping it now. Harvey
lives a spell away. Unfortunately, you'll have to wait until morning. Dear,
terribly sorry, your son Jonathan, how old is he twenty next month?
She said? Finally, Oh, well, could he? And again
I hate to be a bother. Could he help me try to push my
car out? No, she said flatly, and there was no kind of
amusement in a voice. Now her eyes narrowed. Jonathan cannot move all that
well, even if he could, and even if you did get your car
out, the roads are terrible. You'll just be in another ditch in no
time. You're perfectly fine to sleep on the couch tonight. Come tomorrow,
Harvey will have you out, and you'll be on your way to see your
parents. I realized, I guess it has to be that way. Then
I realized I'd not taken a drink of my tea. We're looking at the
cop I lost all thirst. The tea looked like gross mud water that had
been pulled from a gutter. For some time, we just sat there in
the quiet living room with no music. A dreary silence took over the home.
Where are you coming from, anyhow, the woman said, putting down
an empty teacup. It felt as if an eternity had just passed. I
go to school in Madison. Oh, how lovely, what are you studying?
Engineering. How wonderful you know. Jonathan used to love engineering as a
boy, even more than playing the piano. He would always build things,
little trinkets and gadgets and gizmos. But his condition made it impossible for him
to pursue a higher education. He's been a homebody for years now. All
he does is play piano day and night. He's really great at it.
Oh, where are my manners? I should introduce you both. At that,
she led me out of the living room. We began to climb the
stairs. As we did, a horrible feeling came over me, the one
you might have when you're walking by a dark alley at night, the kind
of primitive instinct that screams in the back of your head, screams, run,
you idiot. Run. We reached the top of the stairs, The
hallway was dark and lit only by a small lamp. We passed several rooms
until we reached the door at the end of the hallway. The woman,
and I realized at this point I didn't even know her name, gently pushed
the door open and said, Jonathan, there someone here i'd like you to
meet. The first thing I noticed when stepping into the room was a large
piano sat in the corner. It was a beautiful looking piano, and it
looked out of place in the small room. A piano like that should have
been front and center at a concert hall. The fading light outside filtered to
the bedroom curtain, giving the room a soft, ethereal look. I felt
I was stepping into some kind of dream world. And then I saw Jonathan
sitting on his bed a froze. I wouldn't call Jonathan a doll exactly.
He was too big to be a doll, but he was like a rag
doll in a way, a human sized rag doll. Jonathan was not a
living, breathing person. He was just an inanimate object dressed up to look
human. He wore sky blue pajamas and had a mop of red hair.
His cloth skin like it had been white once but now had faded to a
sickly beige color. He had two black buttons for eyes, though there were
different sizes, the right eye being much smaller than the left. It gave
him the appearance that he was always winking. I did what I could only
do in that moment. I laughed. It was a hoarse, nervous laugh.
Don't you dare laugh? The woman said sharply. She wasn't looking at
me now, she was staring out the window, one hand rubbing Jonathan's inanimate
leg in a soothing gesture. Oh, how they loved to laugh. Once
Jonathan was sitting on the porch, just minding his own business when these horrible
boys from town came in and began to harass him. I'll never forget the
sound of their laughter as I chased them off on their bikes. Oh,
would I call the last laugh? There was boy's love to bike around a
certain part of town, and one day one of them went over some nasty
gravel and hit his head. He's still in the hospital. Oh, yes,
I got the last laugh. I'm sorry, I said in a dry,
panicked voice. Apology accepted, the woman said, Turning to me,
she had a shocked look on her face. Then she gave me a shark's
grin. A thought then hit me like an arrow striking the center of a
target. So chilling was the thought that I felt I might faint at any
moment. My body felt ten times heavier. When the woman and I had
been downstairs, some one had been playing piano music. Some one else had
to be up here. Obviously, Jonathan playing was out of the question.
Had to be out of the question. The thought of this grotesque rag doll
being alive went against everything I believed in. I looked around the room for
a radio or record player, anything that might have been playing the music earlier,
but there was nothing of the sort. There was only the piano.
Is there anyone else in the house, I asked. The woman gave me
a knowing smile and said, of course not, It's just Jonathan and I.
Jonathan continued to stare into the distance with his misshapen button eyes. For
a split second, maybe even less than that, I thought I saw his
head move ever slightly. I blinked and rubbed my eyes. When I opened
Jonathan was as still as he had been, and the one and was walking
past me. I'll go fix your bed downstairs, she said, walking out
of the room. You'll need your rest for tomorrow. Then she was gone.
Only Jonathan and I were left in the room that began to fill with
an awful silence. So pervasive and relentless was the silence that it felt as
if it seeped into every pore in my body. None of this could be
real, I told myself. The woman was playing a trick on me,
had to be playing a nasty trick on me. And once again looked over
the room, hoping, nearly begging God to show me a radio or a
record player, But there was nothing. I thought about approaching Jonathan give him
a real look over. For one look at that horrible, winking eye was
enough to convince me otherwise. I quickly turned and began to walk out of
the room. Then I heard what sounded like something shifting in the bed behind
me, and I ran. Within seconds, I was down the stairs and
out the front door. I knew he was suicide running out into that storm,
but I couldn't stay in that house a second longer. The snow was
so deep it slowed my running, and for a horrible moment, I imagine
Jonathan chasing after me, gaining on me with terrible inhuman speed, his ragged
old limbs moving in strange, unnatural motions. I heard the woman yelling after
me, yelling for me to come back. Then I heard two horrible sounds.
The first was that the woman was laughing, even in the roar of
the winds. Her laugh was unmistakable, piercing even I turned and saw her
on the front porch. She did, in fact have a horrible grin on
her face, which now looked so much longer and paler than it had before.
Her laugh was an awful cackle, like thin eyes breaking. The second
horrible thing I heard was the sound of a piano being played. It was
coming from Jonathan's room. My car was nowhere in sight, but it was
no use to me now anyway. I ran down the road, and eventually
the woman's laugh faded, but not the piano music. No matter how far
I went, I could still hear it. It followed me the way a
bad memory follows you. I don't know how long I waded through the snow,
but at some point I collapsed and thought for sure I was going to
die. Then I saw a light coming towards me. That light eventually turned
into a tractor with a plow. There was a man driving it. He
got out and began to say something, but I couldn't hear him. I
was fading in and out of consciousness. The last thing I saw before I
blacked out was the man standing over me, a horrible, concerned look on
his face. The last thing I heard was piano music. I woke up
the next morning in an unfamiliar bed. For a horrifying second, I thought
I was back in that woman's house, maybe sleeping in the very same bed
as Jonathan. But that wasn't the case. I was in an unfamiliar room
alone. Sunlight was shining through the window, and I could see that the
storm had stopped. I heard the floorboards creaking outside the room, and again,
for a horrifying second, I thought the woman would appear in the doorway,
smiling cackling. Instead, who was the man I had seen driving the
tractor? Good, you're awake, the man said, warmly. How are
you feeling? Where am I? I asked, ignoring his question. You're
in my house. I found you running down the road last night. What
were you thinking? My car broke down. Aren't you with that woman?
What woman? That one that lives down the road from where you've found me?
The man said nothing. At first, he just stared at me.
Then he said, in a pensive voice, the woman that lives down the
road from where I found you? Are you with her? I said,
I gripped the bed sheets as if my life depended on it. No,
I'm not with anyone, the man said, putting up his hands. I
live here on my own. I relaxed my hands. I need to call
my parents. I was on my way to visit them when my car broke
down. Phones in the kitchen, you're welcome to use it. When you
were out and I was plowing the roads, I saw a car, your
car, I gather. We can go there when you're ready and get it
out. I have already got most of it plowed out. Truthfully, if
you saw my car, then you must have seen the house nearby. That's
the house where the woman lives with a son, Jonathan. He's not a
house where the woman lives. The man said again, in that deep,
pensive voice. Yeah, you must have seen it. If you saw my
car, why don't you call your pairs parents? Then, if you're up
for it, I'll take you to your car. He gave me a reassuring
smile. Then god up to leave. Is your name, Harvey? I
asked him. He turned around and the smile on his face dipped into a
questioning frow. Is it it is? He said? How do you know
that the woman she told me about you and your tractor? Is that right?
For a moment, Harvey said nothing, His frown deepened. Call your
parents and then we'll get going. He left me in the room with the
sunlight as my only company. My parents were relieved to hear my voice.
I didn't tell them about what I saw in the woman's house, that already
was to feel like a bad nightmare. I told them that my car went
into a ditch, and that I spent that night at a kind stranger's house,
and that I had been in Madison later that day, hopefully, I
got into the tractor with Harvey, and as we drove down the road,
I was shocked to see how much of the road had already been cleared.
The storm had been so awful the night before, and the snow had been
so deep. Now it barely looked as if it had snowed. Eventually we
came upon my car. Harvey had told the truth, he had gotten most
of it out of the snow already. He killed the engine to his tractor,
and both her eyes went in the same direction. We were looking at
where the house was, or where it should have been. There was no
house there now, at least not what I had seen last night. Instead,
there were the remains of a house. The roof was gone and part
of the floor was completely carved in bits and pieces of the home jotted out
like the jagged teeth of some ancient monster. Is this the house you were
speaking of, Harvey asked. His voice was soft and empathetic. I don't
understand, I said. I was here last night. I was in there.
It wasn't like this son. That house has been abandoned for years now.
There was a woman who lived there, but that was a long time
ago. What happened to her, it was a long time ago. You
couldn't have met what happened. She took her own life, Harvey said.
As he spoke, we both stared at the wreckage of the home after a
son died. It was a terrible accident involving some of the boys are in
town. I don't know too much about the details. I was young myself
back then. I just know that it was ugly business, and that she
blamed one of the boys for a son's death. That boy ended up in
the hospital some time later. I don't know much else. Like I said,
it was ugly business, but that house has been abandoned for years.
No one lives there, no one could live there. Just look at the
state of it. So you were just pulling my leg right, You couldn't
have been in there last night. Tell me you were just pulling my leg.
I stared into Harvey's eyes, which were now threatening to spell over with
tears, and saw that the old man was in fact terrified. Yeah,
I was just pulling your leg, I said, flatly. Someone from town
told you my name, his voice thin, pleading. Someone from town put
you up to it. Someone in town told me your name. Someone from
town put me up to it. Harvey led out a sigh. Well you
got me, good son, Oh boy, yeah you did. Now let's
get your car out. It did not take long for Harvey and I to
get my car out and running. We shook hands and I thanked him for
his help. As I was getting in my car and Harvey was getting in
his tractor, we both stopped at the sound of something horrifying. It was
coming from the abandoned home. It was piano music, delicate, melancholy piano
music. He stood there and just listened. Neither of us acknowledged it.
Then, after a moment, we got in our vehicles and went our separate
ways. I never saw or spoke with Harvey again, but I've heard the
piano music every night since I'm hearing it now as I write this letter.
God help me, I'm hearing it now. That's the end of my father's
letter. I still can't quite believe what I've read that my father really wrote
these words. At least now I understand why my father spent his life looking
over his shoulder, what he saw in the shadows. Since reading his letter,
I've had this idea in my head of driving up to Dutchfield County and
tried to find the house that haunted my father every step of his life.
But I'm terrified for what I'll see and what I'll hear. My older brother,
Shane, had spent the last ten years in prison, and it looked
like he might be in there for the rest of his life. However,
he called me recently to say that they were opening up a new early release
program and they would let him out immediately on a probationary period if he agreed
to participate some sort of new process and ethical alteration to prevent future criminal activity.
God, how I wish now that he had just told them no.
Growing up, Shane was my hero. My mom has had a rough life.
She got pregnant with Shane when she was sixteen, and her parents kicked
her out of the house for it. Afterwards, she went to live with
Shane's father, who was in his early twenties and had a small apartment in
the worst part of the city, and he treated her terribly, forcing her
to drop out of school and get several jobs so we could spend the majority
of his time drinking and partying, hitting her whenever she stepped out of line.
But she was terrified of raising a baby alone. She tried her best
to make it work with him, but it just wasn't enough. When she
started showing, he realized that he didn't want to be a dad and kicked
her out too. Faced with the prospect of living on the streets, she
lied about her age and managed to secure a lease from a landlord in a
nearby building that preferred not to ask questions as long as she paid the rent.
When Shane was born, she did her best, as she was only
seventeen and without an education beyond the tenth grade. She continued to work multiple
minimum wage jobs and didn't have much time to spend with the new sun until
he was around six. Shane mostly stayed with an older widow, Roberta,
that lived across the hall from them and was sympathetic to their situation. Then
Roberta died and mon decided that Shane was old enough to just stay at home
alone while she was working or increasingly staying out late with her friends or on
dates. Mom fell hard into drugs and drinking to cope with a situation and
took comfort in the worst men. None of them ever stuck around for more
than a few month months, but even still many of them left them Mark
and my mother and on Shane. Coming of age in this environment of loneliness,
poverty, and violence, Shane was a troubled child. He was constantly
in detention at school, getting in fights with other kids, stealing, and
generally raising hell around the neighborhood. That is until I came along. One
of mom's short lived things resulted in a second pregnancy, another boy, and
I was born a little over two months after Shane's twelfth birthday. Seeing that
she wasn't going to change her ways overnight and become mother of the year,
he took it upon himself to be my primary parental figure. He changed my
diapers, did the weekly shopping, fed me, bathed me, cooked,
cleaned, He did every that he could to make my childhood better than his
had been. It became his mission in life to be the father that neither
of us had ever had. At school, he opened up a little bootleg
shop out of his locker where he'd sell candy, trading cards, snacks,
and once he was in high school, cigarettes and liquor just to make a
little extra money to buy me clothes and toys. And then when he turned
sixteen, he took a job at a local water shop, working on cars
in the evening after classes to help pay the rent and narrow other bills.
I never understood where he found the energy to do it all. It was
around this time that I started school myself. He packed my lunch every day
and made sure that I got on the bus in the morning. With his
supplemental income, One was able to quit one of her jobs to be home
to get me off the bus at the end of the day, and to
make dinner at night. Now I'm not sure if he said something to her
or if it was just her seeing him picking up so much of a slack,
but she began to sober up a little and made more of an effort
to be a mother to me than she had with him. It was too
late for her to repair much of her relationship with Shane, but I began
not to dread the time that I had to spend alone with her. After
he graduated, Shane went to work full time as a mechanic in the shop
and started making decent money. With his grades. He could have gone to
college, moved away, and studied something interesting, made something of himself,
but it wasn't even a thought in his mind. His dream was for me
to go to college, for me to grow up and do something important.
All he wanted to do was save up enough money that he could buy a
small place out in the suburbs and put me through school. So he continued
to work his ass off and Mom picked up more hours too. They both
put money away each month into our future fund, and I ended up having
a largely normal childhood while we counted down the days until we get out of
our crappy apartment. We didn't have much, but we had each other and
that was enough. And just when it looked like we were finally going to
be able to make it happen, something terrible happened. When I was fourteen,
Shane got arrested. He was always looking for opportunities to make extra cash
to help us save up faster and start our new life, and his boss,
mister Franks, would give him sidework, sometimes mostly driving one of the
cars from the shop and dropping off or picking up a package here or there.
He never knew what was in these packages, nor did he care to
ask, but he was always well compensated for his efforts. Then one night,
mister Franks told him that he had a slightly different assignment. Shane was
to drive and associate of mister Franks to a house, drop him off,
wait for him to come back out, and then take him right back to
where he picked him up. Originally, that was all the information Shane had,
but it seemed like a simple enough task and he would be making double
his normal fee for doing it, so he agreed. Things went all right
for the first half of the evening. Shane picked up mister Franks's friend at
the address mister Franks supplied, and the man gave him directions and where to
go. They didn't speak beyond him grunting go left, ear right here,
take the next exit at Shane every so often, and they never exchanged names.
He was a little over an hour before he directed Shane to kill the
headlights and pull into the driveway of a home well outside the city. The
man gave him strict instructions to stay inside the vehicle and leave the engine running
in case they needed to make a quick getaway, before exiting and slinking nimbly
towards the house. At this point, Shane was apprehensive. He debated simply
leaving the man behind and driving back to the city, yet he knew the
money was going to be enough to pot us over the edge and would finally
be able to get our house. So he sat quietly and waited, telling
himself that the man was just breaking in to steal something or maybe take some
compromising photos of someone. But with the windows down, Shane heard something that
made his stomach drop. Several quick pops came from inside the house, and
Shane looked up to see flashes of light in the upstairs window corresponding with them
gunshots. Shane panicked. He threw on the headlights and tried to turn the
car around as quickly as he could. No amount of money was worth him
getting involved in whatever he was currently involved in, and he was just ready
to punch the accelerator and fly out the driveway when a loud bang and the
passenger door made him jump. The man was wrenching the door open forcefully and
dove into the seat, screaming at Shane to drive and get us the hell
out of here. Seeing no other options, Shane obliged and whipped back out
on the road while the man kept yelling explictives. Shane realized that he was
in severe pain, and when they passed under a street lamp, he saw
that the man was clutching his stomach and his hands were covered in blood.
Damn it, assholes shot me. Damn it, I'm losing a lot of
blood. I'm not feeling too good. His voice was faltering with each word
he spoke, and he suddenly slumped over against the window. Shane tried to
shake him, told him to wake up, but he got no response.
Not knowing what to do, he searched for the nearest hospital on his phone
and followed the directions to it. He parked on the curb near the emergency
entrance and dragged the man inside, announcing loudly that he'd been shot and needed
help. Several doctors and nurses helped load the man onto a gurney and wheeled
him away into surgery. While they started asking Shane questions about him. What's
his name, how old is he? How is he shot? Shane couldn't
give them any answers. He was in somewhat of a state of shock and
his mind was in process information quickly enough. He couldn't think of a believable
reason on the spot for why he had a man that had been shot in
his vehicle, and simply opted to tell them that he didn't know and asked
if he could leave. They told him that because he'd brought in a gunshot
victim, he'd have to wait to speak with the police, and handed him
off to hospital security. While he waited for the officers to arrive, he
thought of calling mister Franks, but he couldn't get away from security to have
a private conversation, so he just sat quietly and tried to think of a
good story. What he came up with was that he'd been driving nearby when
the man flagged him down at an intersection, and Shane had simply pulled over
to help, only to realize that the man was gravely injured. It might
have been flimsy, but he didn't think they'd have any way to prove otherwise,
and just hoped he'd have a chance to speak to the man before the
cop did so they could corroborate each other. However, it didn't matter much
what excuse Shane came up with, as he was arrested as soon as the
officers arrived before he could even give his weak fabrication. It turned out the
house Shane and the man had gone to belonged to a detective had been investigating
mister Franks for drug smuggling. Shane had only driven the man to an execution,
and the execution had gone horribly wrong. The detective heard their car pull
into his driveway and was armed in waiting when the man broke into his bedroom.
Had exchanged several shots with one another, and the detective had been fatally
hit in the head while his wife took around to the chest. The executioner
must have thought she was dead, but was so flustered at having been shot
himself that he didn't make sure she was gone before leaving the house. She'd
been able to call nine one one and explain what happened before expiring herself.
Given she told them that her husband managed to shoot their attacker. The police
had been put on high alert for any gunshot wounds arriving at local hospitals,
and when they relayed this information to Shane as they arrested him, he broke
down and confessed to the whole thing. Unfortunately for Shane, the executioner didn't
make it. Shane tried to explain to the officers that he had no idea
what was going to happen when they drove to the house, but they wouldn't
hear any of it. Mister Franks was arrested too, but he of course
had an alibi for the night, and they couldn't find any evidence the time
to hiring the men. What's worse, mister Franks tried to pin the whole
thing on Shane. As mister Franks explained it to the police, he had
complained to his employee that the deceased detective had been annoying him and making his
business difficult. He had no idea that Shane would try to kill him over
it. The evidence showed that Shane had been driving the car and there was
nothing forensically to tie him to actually being in the house by having pulled the
trigger, so they charged him with accessory to murder with his word against mister
Franks, and no hard evidence either way. They didn't believe they could prove
that Shane had indeed planned the whole thing, but they could definitely prove that
he helped the murderer kill a detective and his wife in cold blood. They
threw the book at him. We spent all the money that we had on
his defense, even though he tried to tell us not to. But no
matter how much we worked to argue that Shane hadn't a clue what he was
doing that night, we couldn't prove it, and the court wanted to see
justice for such a heinous crime. He was given a sentence of thirty years
to life and hauled after the state penitentiary, with us barely having time to
say goodbye. For the next ten years, I visited him as often as
possible, and he called me whenever they'd let him. Mom and I had
ended up destitute again after the trial, and her hopes of moving on to
better things were dashed. She fell back into her old ways, and I
was left with the burden I've trying to keep us both afloat worse than she
was before. She wasn't able to hold down steady work and I had to
take on several jobs to pay our bills. No matter her faults, she
was still my mother and she had been good to me for years. I
couldn't leave her to die in squalor. Mine and Shane's dreams of me going
to college. Once I graduated high school, he evaporated, Yet Shane remained
optimistic. It's one thing that never ceased to amaze me about him all those
years he spent grinding when I was younger, All throughout his trial and even
throughout his time in prison, he always kept a positive outlook, always wore
a smile. Better times with just around the corner in his mind, and
he continued to encourage me in every one of our conversations that we'd figure it
all out someday. But I knew he was having a hard time with this
sentence. He wanted desperately to get out to help me and Mom, and
his living conditions were awful. He tried his best to hide it, but
he looked sickly whenever I saw him, and often bore the marks of having
been in fights. The little food that he did was made him ill,
and he mentioned that he sometimes had to sleep on the floor if they ran
out of bunks. My brother had just been trying to make us a little
extra money to improve our lives, and now he was suffering for it,
and maybe would be for the rest of his life. Then a few months
ago he called me and was far more excited to talk than usual. He
told me he'd been selected as a potential candidate for the prison's new early release
program. At the time, he had twenty years left before i'd be illegible
for parole, but if he agreed to participate, they'd set him free right
away. As it was a new process, there'd be some additional oversight on
his time outside, and if things weren't going well, he could still be
brought back in. But it was a chance. It sounds way too good
to be true. I said, what's the catch. Well, they said,
I'd have to undergo an experimental procedure called it being ethically altered, cutting
edge science, they say, though, apparently it removes your criminal tendencies or
something and can guarantee that you'll never commit another crime. But the beauty is,
I haven't really got any criminal tendencies in the first place, so we
shouldn't do anything to me. He was speaking so quickly. I barely caught
it all. I was hesitant. I don't know, Shane, I don't
like the idea of you being used like some kind of elaborate and what do
you mean ethically altered? That sounds I don't know. Is it like a
surgery they want to do in your brain? Yeah? I know it sounds
a little off, but it's just the term the prison probably came up with
to make it sound nice for the people outside. Anyway, they said,
no surgery, no drugs. They won't tell me exactly what the process is.
Yes, it's top secret stuff, but apparently there's nothing physically invasive about
it. My guess is they going to strap me into a chair or something
and put a helmet on me that'll pulse some kind of waves through my brain
and try to rewrite it to be more docile. For thinking that he might
undergo a procedure that would potentially alter his brain, he was sounding remarkably nonchalant.
Dude, that sounds super sketchy. If they won't tell you what exactly
they're going to do to you, what if it misses up your brain?
What if it kills you? And I was growing less convinced that the idea
was good. With every word, he won't kill me. They gave me
a guarantee of that. Yes, they said it would change me. But
but like I said, they were talking about removing my criminal tendencies, and
you know that I'm not really a serious criminal or anything. Look, this
is an opportunity for us. Jack ten minutes. That's how long, they
said. The whole process takes ten minutes. And I'm back with you and
Mom ten minutes, and we can get our lives back on track. I
can get a job and we can save up money again. You'll go to
college. It'll be just like we planned. One will probably even get out
of a downward spiral and start helping out again. His last few sentences made
me realize that he hadn't been calling to ask for my opinion on his participation
in the program. You've already signed up, haven't you, I asked him.
I he paused, I love you, little brother. The line went
dead. I didn't hear from him again after that. He normally called once
every few days, but the phone didn't ring for a week. When I
got a day off work, I drove up to the prison to see him
in person, but I was told that I couldn't. He was apparently sick
and in the infirmary. I told them that he had been talking about participating
in the new early release program and asked of his illness was related to that.
They told me that he'd just had the flu. However, they also
said that there was no new early release program that they are aware of,
leaving them with a message to have him call me as soon as he was
feeling better. I went home with a pit in my stomach. Something was
wrong. In all the years he had been inside, Shane and I had
never gone this long without speaking. Sure, he'd gotten very sick a few
times, but he always called before heading to the infirmary to let me know
he might be out of touch for a little while. Why hadn't they known
about the early release program? Were they lying? Did something go wrong with
the process and they were trying to cover it up? Why had it really
been so top secret that not everyone in the prison was privy to the information?
In any case, I knew all I could do for the time was
wait. Another week passed without a call, and I made another trip to
the prison, where I received the same story. He was still sick,
and I couldn't see him. I was more forceful this time and demanded that
they let me visit him in the infirmary if it was really that ill.
They told me that that would be impossible. It wasn't until they threatened to
escort me out physically and not allow me back for future visits that I finally
capitulated and left of my own accord. After the third week with no word
from Shane, I was convinced that something terrible had happened to him and the
prison was trying to hide it. I called up there so much asking for
information on him or his program that they blocked my number, and I was
on the brink of writing directly to the government. When my phone rang.
It wasn't Shane. It was someone from the prison informing me that we could
come picking him up the next day. He was being released on parole.
That was it. I started to try to reply with questions if they cut
me off, saying he'll be available at noon before hanging up on me.
I couldn't believe it. Three weeks of radio silence and now suddenly he was
getting let out. They were really letting him go. I was going to
have my brother back, but Any excitement of mine at having him returned was
tempered with wondering what state had been when we brought him home. They had
put him away believing that he had potentially had a large part in planning the
murder of an innocent man and woman, one of them being a member of
law enforcement. What had they done to him that made them so convinced he
was no longer a danger to society. I only needed to wait until we
picked him up the following day to understand why they weren't worried about him any
more. Shane had been right about one thing. Mom was different with the
prospect of him coming home. Journey had half her normal mourning helping of vodka,
and actually ironed her clothes, although her hands were shaking so badly as
she did it that it didn't help much. We even had our first real
conversation in years about how things were going to be okay now that he was
coming back. Yet when we saw him, we quickly realized that it wasn't
going to be the homecoming we'd hoped for. Shane was different. The smile
that he always wore was gone. In fact, all the life that normally
filled his face seemed to be missing. He wore a vacant expression and stared
into the distance, as if he recognized nothing in front of him. When
I called his name, he turned to face me, but it was as
if he only did it because he recognized the word Shane and not his brother's
voice. I wrapped him up in hug and asked him if he was okay,
told him how happy I was to see him and that he was free.
He didn't hug me back. His arms lay stiff at his side.
Shane had always been a big hugger, especially with me, and I'd expected
that on his first day of freedom he'd give me a huge squeeze. I
got nothing. Pulling back. I grew worried. Shane, What the hell
are you okay? What did they do to you? I shook him slightly
as I asked, I feel okay? He responded so mechanically that I could
scarcely recognize his voice from the AI ones that I used for voiceovers. Just
when I was about to begin screaming at the guards they were helping escort him
to explain what was wrong with him, a thin, dark haired woman in
a lab coat approached us and introduced herself as doctor Cossick, head of the
new program. Are you Shane's brother, she asked. He listed you as
his post release guardian here, I am. What the hell did you do
to him? I snapped at her. She considered me coolly. Your brother
is one of the first people to undergo a revolutionary new process that is going
to change the way we handle criminal justice in this country. No longer will
we need to lock away the worst members of our society for ever. We
will be able to give them thee alteration, and they'll be able to rejoin
the rest of us. You should be proud of him, she said,
with an air of condescension. That's not my brother. I didn't like her
superior attitude. Shane has never stuted for more than ten seconds in my entire
life. Look at him. Shane hadn't moved an inch with a guard that
was escorting him stopped when we walked up. He looked over towards me and
doctor Cossick whenever he heard the word Shane, but then realizing we weren't speaking
directly to him, turned his head straightforward again and stared blankly into space.
You need to lower your voice, she bore, an expression of annoyance.
I understand that the effects of the process may be shocking at verse, but
you'll see in time that he's better off this way. You have to remember
that your brother committed a heinous crime and likely would have done something similar in
the future had we let him out via the normal practice. In any case,
the effects cannot be reversed. What we need to discuss now is the
path forward. Screw you, lady, I was seething. You don't know
anything about him. He was innocent, he was a good man. And
what do you mean the effects can't be reversed. You change him back,
Change him back right now. I don't care if he's sitting here for the
rest of his life. At least he'll be himself. She was starting to
mark some things off on a clipboard, and I could tell was only half
listening to me. Looking up, she began again. The process is irreversible,
and you will find that your brother signed a binding agreement to participate in
this trial. He's been evaluated over the last several weeks by medical staff and
government officials, and everyone is on board with moving forward with phase two public
reintroduction. At this point, you have two options. Option one, you
can sign this and you'll get to take your brother home. For the first
month. You will call me daily to this us how he's doing, and
we will make periodic hone visits to inspect in person will help him get work
so he can start contributing to society again like a law abiding citizen. You
will not disclose anything about this process to anyone, and if anyone should ask
how he got out early or why he's acting so differently, you'll say that
he's been reformed and he was released early due to good behavior and overcrowding.
Any violation of these terms and he will be brought right back here and you
will lose all future visitation privileges. Option two, you don't sign this,
and we take your brother back inside right now, and you'll lose all future
visitation privileges. And before you start spouting off legality or suing us or anything
of that nature, she could obviously see the fury in my eyes, you
should know that we have the backing from the highest levels. Your case would
go no now if you could hurry up and make your decision, please,
I have several more of these to do today. She returned to a clipboard.
I was shaking with anger. Clearly to her, Shane was nothing more
than a variable in her experiment. He wasn't a person, a brother,
a friend, a human at all, just a note on a clipboard,
an alteration for her to study. But what choice did I have. She
had all the power, and she knew it. If I thought her or
refused, She'd takes Shane away and I'd never see him again. And if
he'd been living poorly before, it would be nothing to how I imagined him
living inside now, sitting on his bed day in and day out, wasting
away with that blank stare on his face. Wrenching the clipboard from her hands,
I signed the agreement. We rode home in near silence. Both Mom
and I tried to ask Shane questions about the process he underwent, but all
he could tell us was I don't remember. I was just about to ask
him what he did remember, to see if he even really knew who we
were, when he abruptly announced, I am tired. I need to sleep
again. His voice had no emotion behind it. It sounded as if a
computer was reading off lines from code. Wondering now if they turned him into
some sort of cyborg. I looked in the rear view, half expecting to
see red eyes staring back at me, but I was surprised to find he'd
already fallen asleep instantly. As soon as he'd said it, he went to
sleep like it was the next line in a command string. I made a
plan to go over his entire body with a metal detecting wand that I had
at home from one of my security chops as soon as he got through the
door. When we arrived at the apartment complex and parked the car, he
was still snoring. I had to open the back door and shake him slightly
to wake him. In the past, when i'd woken him from a deep
slumber, he'd always been a little crumpy. It was the only time I
was cautious around him. On instinct. I stood slightly back as he opened
his eyes, awaiting a tirade of frustration and asking for five more minutes,
but he just stared straight ahead again. Shane. I said his name.
He turned to look at me, but didn't reply, Hey, we're home.
You can get out of the car now and we can go inside.
I wondered how much of his behavior was due to the alteration, or how
much might be due to him having been in prison for ten years and always
having to be told what to do. Okay, his vocal chords made the
sound, but it's hard to describe. It wasn't his voice. I know
that doesn't make much sense, but I've heard that voice for twenty four years.
I know the quality, the cadence, the inflection. It just wasn't
his Mom had already given up. She started crying in the drive home,
and the minute we parked, she'd run upstairs. I knew to go hit
the bottle or maybe something stronger. Shane exited the car and I closed the
door behind him. Surprisingly, he started walking towards the elevators like he knew
where he was going. I decided not to say anything and see if he
remembered where he lived. He hit the up button as he should have,
and selected the correct floor once he was inside. When we exited on our
floor, he made a direct line for our unit. I followed him closely
and watched as he opened the door, just as he had done hundreds of
times before. However, he stopped right after stepping through the threshold and stood
stock still again and nearly crashed into him. He seemed to be waiting on
the next set of instructions, so I told him to go sit at the
kitchen table for now. Okay, the voice came again, just as I'd
planned to do on the drive back. I ran my wand over his body
and found he had no metal inside of him. I felt his head for
signs of stitching or scarring, then discovered nothing. I checked every inch of
exposed skin for surgical markings, but at least to my untrained eye, he
was clean. The entire time I did my examination, Shane didn't move,
nor did his expression change that blank stare, just fixated on the wall in
front of him, and I got the impression I could do nearly anything to
him and he wouldn't respond. I sat down at the table across from him
and started asking the questions that I'd wanted to ask in the car. Hey,
Shane. His eyes met mine, and it was only then that we
were sitting down and I was looking directly into them, that I truly saw
that there was nothing behind them. Whatever it was that made Shane Shane was
gone. I was looking only at a collection of cells, a biological mass
that could walk and talk but had no personality, had no life. It
terrified me. My voice quivered as I asked, Shane, do you do
you remember your full name? Yes? What is it? Shane Theodore Thompson.
It was like he was recalling a date stored away in a hard drive.
Do you know who I am? Yes? Who am I to you?
And what is my full name? You are my brother, Jack Francis
Thompson. How old are we? I am thirty six and you are twenty
four. I was happy to see that he at least knew who he was
and who I was, But this was all information they could have had him
memorize at the prison. I wanted to ask something more personal, to see
if he really had all of Shane's memories. Who did you lose your virginity
to? And where did it happen? Elise Sherman and in apparent's basement.
Now, this story was one that Shane and I laughed about often. Elise's
father had come downstairs while they're in the middle of the deed, and he
chased Shane out of the house with Shane's pants around his ankles. It awoke
in the neighbors and several of them got an eifel of Shane's business. While
he desperately tried to pull his pants up and dive back into his car.
For this time, he relayed the information with no humor, no crack of
a smile, remembering the absurdity of it all. The information was there in
his head, but it was as if he had no connection to it.
I realized that they hadn't removed his criminal tendencies as they told him they were
going to do. They'd removed him. I don't know how they did it,
and at the time I still wasn't sure what they'd done, but I
knew that he wasn't there anymore. Shane's body was sitting right in front of
me when my brother had died somewhere in that prison. Over the next several
weeks, I kept my agreement with doctor Carsick. I called her daily and
informed her of how things were progressing with Shane. There weren't really any changes
to report, as she stated they would. They helped him secure a job
at a local grocery store, and she checked in on him in person twice.
She couldn't have been more delighted with the success of her program, if
you could really call it that, I surely didn't. Yes, Shane hadn't
committed any crimes and seemed entirely unlikely to ever do so. But Shane also
hadn't done much of anything. He was operating and what I would have called
pure animal instinct. Outside of being given direct instructions. When he was hungry,
he ate thirsty. He drank. When he needed to use the restroom
or sleep, he did that as well, But beyond that, I had
to tell him to do anything shower, brush his teeth, get dressed,
go to work at the grocery store. He had to be given specific tasks
by his boss, and he was able to perform them perfectly, but he
took no initiative beyond doing exactly what he was told to do, and that's
what it seemed our lives would be from then on. Shane had given so
much of his life for me, sacrificed his entire future. I didn't mind
help influence and decided that I would continue to support him in this state until
the day that one of us died. But then last week something changed.
Shane and I share a bedroom and I awoke around three am to an odd
scratching sound. We hain't no strangers to rat on our building, but this
was different. It was coming from near Shane's bed. I walked over to
investigate, using my cellphone light to check for vermin and I couldn't find anything,
and as I approached, the noise simply stopped. Too tired to care
much, I went back to sleep with plans to look into it in the
morning. Yet in the morning those plans were driven straight out of my mind.
It was the smell of bacon that woke me the second time, and
I opened my eyes in confusion. Mom hadn't gotten up to make breakfast in
years, and Shane hadn't cooked anything since his return. He just ate pre
made meals or leftovers from the fridge. Rolling over, I saw that Shane's
bed was empty, and I sat up quickly in astonishment. I'd had to
tell him to get out of bed every morning since he came back. What
was going on? Then I heard it? Laughter? Shane's laughter drifted through
the doorway. Him and Mom were having an animated conversation in the kitchen.
I heard my name through the cackles. Lavery eyed, I walked in to
join them and saw that Shane was at the stove happily frying up breakfast,
while Mom was at the table, smiling and having a cigarette. Speak of
the devil, mom said, and Shane spun around. He ran over to
me, Spatchelors still in hand, and wrapped me in a massive hug.
Stunned, I only feebly returned it as he said, good morning, little
brother, So glad you're awake. We were just talking about the time you
tried to make me a birthday cache and you mix up the salt and the
sugar. He started laughing hard and pulled back. I was at a loss
for words. He was acting just like his old self, was I dreaming?
As he tried to step back towards the stove, I grabbed his face
with both my hands and looked directly into his eyes. There was life there
again, but still there was something off about them, the darkness I didn't
remember from before. There was a sudden flash of black, and I leapt
back, gasping, what's the matter? Jack still shocked about how much better
looking I am than you. He laughed some more and went back to his
cooking. He was a trick of the light. I told myself, just
be happy he's acting like himself again. Maybe after a few weeks the effects
lesson or something. But I couldn't shake the feeling that there was a coldness
in Shane's laughter that hadn't been there before. Whatever my reservations, we had
the best family breakfast we'd had since Shane was put away. He reminisced about
old times, talked about our future. I nearly cried at how happy I
was to have my brother truly returned. After he left for work, I
called doctor Cossack to give my update, and I debated whether to tell her
the truth. Shane's behavioral change was positive in my view, but she might
not see it the same way. Maybe she'd want to take him back and
do the process over again. For the first words out of her mouth when
she picked up, where is he acting differently today? She sounded anxious.
Her tone made me nervous. Maybe something had gone wrong with some of the
other participants. Yeah. Yeah, he was acting like his old self this
morning, even got up and made breakfast. I replied, did you notice
anything strange about him? How did she know? Nothing serious? I just
thought there was a kind of I don't know, his eyes looked different on
what's going on? Damn? Just hang on tight. I'll come out and
check in on him tomorrow. And she suddenly hung up. My heart was
hammering. She knew something she had been expecting exactly what I told her.
I tried to call her back, but he went straight to voicemail. For
the rest of the day, I tried to act as normally as possible,
just as she had instructed. I went to work myself, but had a
hard time concentrating. I wondered how Shane would be that evening, but when
he returned from his shift, he did so with a bag full of groceries
in his arms and announced loudly that he was going to make us a five
star meal. Seeing his smiling face pushed my concerns down, and I chalked
doctor Cossack's behavior up to her process possibly failing. Maybe whatever she'd done had
reversed itself and she was not, in fact going to revolutionize criminal justice in
this country. With that thought, I wondered if this might be the last
night I have with my brother before they hold him back to prison to do
more tests or simply lock him away again. I decided, if that was
the case, that I should stop my worrying and just enjoy the evening with
my family. We ate, we drank, we laughed, we sang.
It was a perfect night until we fell asleep. I awoke again around three
a m. The scratching had returned louder this time, and I looked over
towards Shane's bed. Damn, I whisper, yelled as I sat up and
slid back towards the wall. Shane was sitting bolt upright in his bed,
with his feet down on the floor. He was glaring at me. There
was a malevolent grin on his face, illuminated by the digital clock on his
night stand. The hell are you doing, man? I yelped. There
was something about his presence. It was dark and heavy. It made the
air around me oppressive, and I was struggling to get full breaths in.
He didn't reply, just kept watching me. His eyes were cold, and
as I stared into them, I caught movement behind him. A shadow was
crawling across his wall, a shadow with red eyes and long, spintly fingers.
He opened his mouth and a voice voices that I did not recognize,
emanated from it. Sh go back to sleep, little brother. There was
no love behind the words. It was malice, was evil. My eyelids
sagged and I collapsed back onto the bed. I tried to fight it,
but exhaustion overcame me and I fell back into a deep sleep. The next
day, I didn't wake up until noon. Shane had already left for work,
and I had six miss calls and a flurry of texts from my manager
asking why I hadn't shown up for my shift. I played the events of
the night before back in my mind and tried to tell myself it was a
dream, that there was no way it could be real. But when I
looked over at Shane's bed, I saw there were deep gouges in the wall
behind it, gouges that looked like they'd been made by massive, clawed hands.
Something clicked into place. I formed a theory on what they'd done to
Shane at the prison. I think they removed his soul. I don't know
how they did it. I don't know if it was magic of ital with
science, but I think the soul that had inhabited Shane's body, the very
thing that made him who he was, had been ripped out. Doctor Cossick
never showed up for a visit, and she stopped answering my calls. When
I contacted the prison directly, they said a doctor Cossick had never worked there.
And told me there was no record of a Shane Theodore Thompson even serving
time at the facility. They've abandoned us. They're trying to cover this up.
He's getting worse by the day. He can move things without touching them.
I've heard him speak in languages I can't understand. I'm sure this is
happening to more of them. Then went through the process to more of them
than they ethically altered, because I don't think they considered that if they removed
the souls that inhabited these people, they left them open to be inhabited by
something else.