Just turn around and you’ll figure it out. Eventually.
But.
I couldn’t. In fact, I couldn’t find my way back to the elevator now either. I was starting to feel that familiar feeling I had delivering for Mr. Schwartz. I didn’t want to be known as the late guy, or unreliable. Not here, not at the studio. Definitely not on my first day.
I found myself in a hallway that was darker than the others. I was now genuinely getting scared. I was lost in a maze and at this point my imagination was starting to get the better of me. Each time I turned a corner, my stomach clenched just a bit at the thought of what I might find.
Or who.
I turned another corner, and then I heard something. I strained harder to listen.
Music.
I could hear music. It was faint and thin. Like a slow, high-pitched scream. It grew louder, then faded away. And again, loud and fading. I followed the sound and turned a corner. The lights were brighter here and I came upon a large empty desk next to a door. Above it was a sign: “Music Department.” And the music came from behind the door. Someone was playing. That someone was going to help me get out of this maze.
I carefully opened the door and peeked inside. It was a large room, with a ceiling two stories high and a stage at one end. On the back wall, a square of bright white light flickered as if a reel of film had just finished playing. I turned to look up at the wall opposite. There was a projector booth up above, but the light was so blinding I couldn’t make out if that guy Norman I’d met yesterday was there, or really if anyone was. So I turned back and walked farther into the room. Chairs and music stands were scattered across the stage. And instruments had been left on seats, open cases on the floor next to them. Looked like everyone had taken a lunch break. Except for the lady on the violin.
She sat in the middle of the stage, surrounded by this forest of music stands, her hair long and straight and unstyled. Her sheet music hid her face and most of the instrument, so I could only see her hand and fingers, claw-like, holding down the strings on the violin’s neck.
The music she produced was slow and strained, hardly any kind of melody at all. It shot through my head and made me feel a little dizzy.
“Excuse me?” I said quietly, not wanting to interrupt, but not knowing what else to do.
She snapped her head up and the music stopped instantly. She stared at me from behind heavy hooded eyes.
“Hi, I’m sorry for interrupting, but I’m lost …”
There was a sudden loud crash from outside the room. Then an anguished scream. The woman stood up and stared at the door, and I turned to look, my heart pounding fast. “What is it?”
The woman stared, completely still. Then in a whisper said, “He’s coming.”
I turned back to her. “Who?”
Suddenly the room got dark. I whipped around and saw the projector had gone out. Only a light in the corner lit the room now. I could feel my chest constrict with fear, but it was just a change in lighting. That was all. That was all.
Thud.
I turned slowly back toward the door. I remembered my nightmare then. The darkness around me. The hand through the door. I glanced at the violinist. She stood completely still in her long black dress. Her hair melted into it so she seemed like one long shadow. She wasn’t turning away, she didn’t run. She just stared at the door.
Thud thud.
Like the sound of someone limping, heavy on one foot. Just outside. Getting closer.
No. I wasn’t going to let my brain get the better of me.
Thud thud.
It wasn’t a nightmare.
I made my way slowly to the door, took in a deep breath, and then flung it open wide.
No one was there.
“He’s coming.”
I looked at the violinist. She pointed toward the door with her bow.
“Who?” I asked again.
She said nothing, just kept staring. I was starting to feel more frustrated than scared, and I turned back around with a sharp sigh, only to confront the face of a creature covered in dripping black goo right in front of me.
I stumbled backward, and the folder in my hand fell to the floor, forgotten, as the monster launched itself into the room using the doorframe to push its way toward me. Its whole body was covered in something dark and seeping. It groped at its own face and released a moan of pure anguish as it fell toward me. I hadn’t been able to get away. I tripped on my own feet as it fell on top of me, covering my torso in the same sticky wet substance. I pushed hard as I could as it clawed at its face, that horrifying cry from deep within its throat never ending. Every time it opened its mouth the black ooze slipped down its throat, making it gurgle and sputter.
Finally it rolled off me and I staggered back to standing. I looked down at myself.
My hands, trousers, shirt—everything was covered. I looked closely at my hands, rubbing at the black goo.
“Ink?” I said, gasping for breath.
I turned to the thing on the ground and realized then that it wasn’t some monster. It was a man. Covered in ink. A man covered in ink, writhing on the floor in agony and rage.
I was down at his side at once. “Sir, sir, can you hear me?”
The man suddenly grabbed at the collar of my shirt and pulled me in close. “My eyes!”
I nodded and pried his clutching hand off me as I stood up. I frantically looked around the room and saw a cloth tucked into an open cello case. Behind that, by the back row, was half a glass of water. I rushed past the violinist still standing there like a statue, got both, and, in a panic, returned. “Water, and a rag,” I explained, handing them over to him. He waved his arms around blindly, and I grabbed his hand and wrapped his fingers around the glass. Did the same with the other one and the rag.
I watched as he furiously wiped at his eyes, and it seemed to me he was making things worse. At the same time I wasn’t about to tell him what to do—he seemed a bit … crazed.
Ink can do that to you.
Eventually he was able to clean enough of his face off, because he calmed down and he dropped his arms to the side and lay there staring at the ceiling.
“You okay, sir?” I asked.
The man stared in silence for a moment longer and then turned his head so he could look at me. His face was smeared and the whites of his eyes weren’t white. Instead, they were more like a pale shade of pink. Everything about him seemed pointy. His nose, his chin, even the shape of his eyebrows.
That’s when I noticed the red. The bit of blood dripping down his forehead.
“Am I okay?” he asked with a laugh, repeating my question. He shook his head and then blinked at me hard.
“You’re bleeding,” I said, and gestured toward the spot.
The man touched it, then ran his fingers higher over his scalp. He flinched. And then made a sharp pulling gesture with his hand. He looked at his fingers. In them was a piece of glass. He looked back at me. “Who the heck are you?”
“Oh, uh, I’m Buddy. I’m the new gofer for the Art Department.”
He stared at me longer this time. Then he started to laugh this laugh that was all breath and no sound. Almost like wheezing. “Art Department. Okay. Okay, gofer for the Art Department, answer me this: Why are you guys storing ink in my sheet music closet? And why is Joey running a pipe through my closet that’s apparently filled with ink?”
A pipe? With ink? That definitely didn’t sound normal, but then again, I had no idea what was normal for an animation studio. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know. You don’t know.” The laughter got bigger even though it was still just breath. There was a clicking sound coming from the back of his throat now too. He pushed himself up so he was leaning back on his elbows, still laughing.
“I … don’t know,” I said, as if repeating it would make it sound like a less funny answer. “I … don’t even know where the sheet music closet is.” I didn’t know where most things were. Even now, at this moment,
I don’t always remember where things are.
But I remember the man getting up and grabbing me by the elbow. And I remember looking at the violinist, the way she quietly stared while he pulled me out of the room. I remember following and not knowing what was going on. And his firm grip. His fingers were as pointy as the rest of him.
I remember.
I remember following a trail of inky footsteps along the floor in reverse.
And I remember the closet.
The door was wide open and the floor was pitch-black and ink was dripping down over cliffs of white paper from high shelves like a waterfall had just been turned off. Broken glass was everywhere.
“This is the sheet music closet,” said the man, releasing my arm in a way that felt more like a push. I stumbled toward it. My toe kicked a shard and it clinked away into a dark corner. “And this is the ink that shouldn’t be there.” He pointed to a few remaining rows of unlabeled, still intact inkwells. “And this is the pipe that is inexplicably running with ink and has managed to burst, ruining untold amounts of my sheet music.”
“Okay,” I said. I looked at him. He looked at me.
“Okay?” He sounded indignant, but I didn’t know what else I could say. All I wanted was to get back to the elevator and my work.
When I didn’t say anything, he shook his head at me. Then he leaned in so close I could see the ink that had seeped into each of his pores. When he spoke, I could see his ink-stained gums and tongue. “Clean. Up. This. Mess.”
Then he stormed off and I was alone. Again.
I stared into the closet.
This feeling of being lost just wouldn’t let me go. This feeling of always being wrong. It wasn’t nice. And now, looking at the mess, I just didn’t understand. Didn’t they have people who cleaned up here? How was this my job?
And how was I supposed to do this job?
How do you clean up spilled ink?
This is a tricky question to answer.
Because the answer is: You don’t.
Let me tell you something about ink. It doesn’t go away. I mean, you can wash your hands and scrub, and you think you’ve got it all, but then, a little spot, a small spot will pop up. Something you missed? Maybe. But it doesn’t seem like it. So you wait for the layers of your skin to peel off instead, you wait for black-stained skin to flake onto the floor. Then it’s gone. Or is it? You think it’s gone, but then you find more. Somewhere else. And more.
And more.
Ink never disappears.
It’s always there, like it was hiding, waiting to reveal itself. It’s always there to remind you. It’ll never go away.
At first it’s not so bad. You get used to seeing it on the inside of your index finger like that. Maybe it’s even a friend. Or a mark of pride. That’s how it lures you in.
But it blossoms and burrows. And seeps and sinks.
And drowns and drinks.
It’s alive.
It’s everywhere.
It’s inside me. It breathes for me. I can feel it sloshing about in my lungs.
I can feel it in my brain.
I am ink.
“Buddy?”
I’d been pushing ink around with an old mop I found in the utility closet for probably an hour at that point. Before that I’d cleared away the broken glass and ink bottles. Tossed away the sheet music paper that was destroyed. It had felt like I’d accomplished something. But not now. Now it was just ink swirling but not going away.
I turned.
“Oh, hi.” It was that girl from the Writing Department. The one I’d seen earlier.
It was Dot.
Coming to rescue me.
“What are you doing?” she asked. She said it as if she thought I was crazy.
“Oh, uh, that music guy told me to clean this up,” I said, holding my mop midair as it dripped onto the floor. More ink. “He was in here and I guess broke some bottles and there was a burst pipe or something.”
“Music guy?”
“Yeah. He’s … pointy.” I didn’t know much else about him. Not even his name, now that I thought about it.
“Oh,” said the girl with a small smile breaking her severe expression. “Sammy.”
“Maybe.”
“Oh, it was definitely Sammy. He’s … enthusiastic.” She stepped around me efficiently to look at the mess in the closet. “What was all this ink doing here in the first place?” She reached up and touched a sticky puddle on one of the shelves. “Thick,” she said more to herself than me.
“Tell me about it,” I replied, finally lowering the mop to the floor and feeling the physical exhaustion from all the cleaning come over me.
“Can ink go bad?” she asked, looking at me.
“No idea.”
She shrugged. “Well. Doesn’t matter. He shouldn’t have had you do this. Look at you, you look terrible.”
I remembered then I was also covered in the ink. Because of Sammy. Ma was going to kill me when she saw the state of my clothes.
“Come with me, I wanted to show you something.”
And because anything was better than pushing ink in a circle, I did as I was told.
I didn’t know why Dot was so keen to take me wherever we were going. Okay, so I do admit my first thought was maybe she liked me. I mean, not just liked me, but was sweet on me. If you’re reading this, I know you’re laughing, Dot, but I didn’t really know any other reason a girl would want to hang out with a guy, especially at our age. It hadn’t occurred to me then that we could just be people together.
Friends.
I’m glad I figured that out.
Anyway, I didn’t know where she was taking me or why, but anything was better than cleaning up, as I said, and at this point I was so far off task that I wasn’t really sure what my job was anyway. And I deserved a break.
I was pretty good at making things make sense in my head that way.
I followed her down the hall, turning this way and that until we came to the elevator. I felt such relief seeing it that I forgot for a moment that I wasn’t heading back to the Art Department and was totally thrown for a loop when the elevator starting heading down instead of up.
“Where are we going?” I asked. The cage we were in shook a little, and gears controlling the moving mechanism squeaked a bit too loudly. This elevator must have been one of the first of its kind, I thought. A historic artifact. A really slow-moving one.
“I don’t want to spoil the surprise,” said Dot matter-of-factly.
“Huh,” I said out loud. I’d meant to think it.
She turned and narrowed her eyes at me with suspicion. “What?”
“What? Oh, nothing, oh no. You just don’t seem like the type to go for mystery and games and stuff.” I slowed down as I said it and she stared at me. It felt stupid all of a sudden. I knew nothing about her. I just knew she looked practical.
But looks could be deceiving.
“Not inaccurate,” she said, un-squinting. “But once in a while, you know. A surprise can be neat. Besides, it’s hard to explain, better to just see.”
“Yeah, sometimes words aren’t enough,” I agreed.
She thought about that for a moment. “I’m choosing not to take that as a personal insult.”
“Oh! No, it’s not.” Didn’t mean it any way at all. Just thought I was agreeing with her. She made me feel on edge, like if I didn’t say things perfectly she’d get the wrong idea.
Turns out that was accurate.
In a good way.
“I’m Dorothy, by the way.” Yeah, I think that’s how it went. I think that was our first introduction. I’m Dorothy, by the way. “People call me Dot. I call me Dot. Just call me Dot.”
Right. I remembered now the secretary calling her that.
“I’m Buddy. My real name is Daniel, but everyone else calls me Buddy.”
“Really, why?”
“Well, why are you called Dot?”
“It’s a typical nickname people give Dorothys,”
she replied, as if I should know that.
“Oh.”
“For Daniel, usually it’s Dan or Danny or something. Buddy is weird.”
That took me aback. I didn’t really agree with her on that one.
“No, it’s not. Anyway, it started as Little Buddy. Everyone in the neighborhood called me that. I was pretty tiny and always doing whatever I could to help my folks, with chores and stuff. Just wanted to be helpful. Running around the neighborhood. I guess people just started calling me that. But then, you know …” I looked down at myself, at my narrow legs propped up by my large shoes. Always felt like I was a stick on a stand or something.
“You grew,” she said.
“Yeah.”
The elevator finally stopped with a jerk, clacking my teeth against one another a bit again. I figured I’d need to get used to sudden stops or else they’d eventually pop out of my head.
Dot pulled the grate open and we stepped into a dark, deserted hallway. We were in the basement, that much was clear. And as I looked around it was pretty obvious no one worked down here, that the space was used for storage more than anything. Large people-sized cardboard cutouts of Bendy were leaning against the wall to the right, and as Dot turned and I followed her to the left, I could see several storage rooms with open doors. Inside the rooms, boxes were piled up on each other.
“Are we allowed to be down here?” I asked.
Dot shrugged.
I took that to mean no. She was pretty straightforward answering any other kinds of questions, so I figured: a shrug that didn’t actually answer the question? Yeah, that was probably a no.
“So can I ask you something?”
She glanced at me with, again, that look of suspicion. I mean, I’d eventually learn that that’s how she looked at everyone ’cause she was suspicious of everyone. Still, at first it made me wonder what I was doing wrong all the time.
“Okay.”
“I notice there’s a lot of … ladies working here.” I wasn’t exactly too sure how to put it.
Dot laughed at that. A single kind of coughing laugh. And she shook her head. “Who you callin’ a lady, Buddy?” she said with a small grin.
My face got hot at that. “You know what I mean. Just, you know, girls working here. Like the head of the Art Department. Is a lady. And … you know …” I kind of faded that thought away and was silent.
Dreams Come to Life Page 4
