I do. A million forms of me. Emotions, fears, shame I’ve collected over the decades.
And who collects me, and others like me? Death himself, of course. He is the most successful collector. He always wins. Sooner or later, Death makes whimperers of us all.
It’s time to leave this room, to meet my collector. I tell myself to load my gun. Get ready to face them.
But perhaps I’ve been mistaken this whole time. What if I’ve only seen Charles’s ghouls, or only the best of the worst of mine have revealed themselves to me? Is it possible? There are others, I’m sure of it. I don’t want to say more than that. I don’t want to think about them. I can’t.
Still, I have to load the last of my shells. The moonlight clouds lift for a moment, and a glint of light catches my eye from the carpet.
What’s that?
The bottle. The last bottle of booze I’ll ever see. A shipwrecked bottle of hooch on this barren beach of sobriety.
Pick it up? No. I can’t.
I turn toward the door, gripping the gun in cold sweat. What lies beyond the great border of heavy oak? What was inside me these years, what horrifying memories have I repressed? What will they show me?
I turn back to the bottle. I feel better. If I just pick it up, just a little, maybe it will make me feel a little better. Like the old days, before all this.
I do it. I wrap my hand around the glass. Power flows through me. The scratching outside quiets down. My nerves loosen.
I let go of the bottle; my pulse quickens again. No good. I must leave, but I’m too afraid. What if I stare at them too soon, or too late? My gun could jam—and then they could touch me. Oh, no, I’d end up like Lazarus, with stumps. Maybe they wouldn’t kill me, just let me live in torment for years and years. I’d be a prisoner in my childhood home.
And Maggie. The laughing. Even now, I hear her. Yes, she’s still alive, crawling closer to this room. I can feel it. I can feel her laugh, the way she taunts me. I always hated her. Of course I did.
Stop this. Figure this out. What are we going to do?
The windows. Yes, draw the curtains. Make it dark. Leave just one light on. No moonlight.
Good. I feel better already. I’m almost ready to leave the room. Better look around, take in the books, the feel, the odor. All our best memories, except—
That one time . . .
No, don’t think it! And I won’t tell you about it either, Reader, because that would make me think it, and maybe produce one of the apparitions right here, before I’m ready! I’m a mess; I have to get myself organized.
What to do, what to do?
There’s only one thing, one thing in this whole world that has ever helped me calm my nerves . . . And it has always worked. Without fail. Well, except for the last few days—but that was before all this.
The spirits are all out of me now, after all. There would be no harm in just a sip. No problem at all. It would steady my hands just enough. Calm me right down. I’d aim my gun better, I know I would. I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.
It’s only a boost. Yes, that’s it. A—a—a charge. Just what I need for my finale with the Collector.
Just one drink. Before I slip into the underworlds of space and time. Before I head out to sea on the Great Abyss. Just one, like old times. To steel myself.
Just one, before I face what I truly am. Before I face Him, whoever He may be. Just one drink.
What could it hurt? How could it hurt?
Just one drink, they say. Just one drink, and we’ll leave.
I remove the cap, put the bottle to my lips.
Just one drink.
Just one.
Epilogue: In The Walls At Night
Shorty Gray swallowed, rubbed his throat, and slumped back in his chair. Behind him the sun was peeking over the hills, shining between the gaps in the curtains in layers of yellow and gold. I stared at him, and he at me, for some time, until he closed his eyes.
“That’s it,” he said. “All the stories I can remember from that night. I’ve told them all.”
I set my pen down and grimaced as I stretched my cramped, aching fingers. While Shorty recovered, rubbing his eyes, exhausted from the burden of memories, I organized my notes. A hundred pages of scribbled, shorthand, messy writing, only halfway decipherable even to me.
The green and yellow lamp lights around the room glimmered in an ocean of black space. Shorty sat outside the habitable zone of the lamp closest to us, just out of its gleam, the outline of his face and the watery glint of his eyeballs hugging the border of light and dark that separated our little worlds.
Time and space, once thought separate from each other, had collided for him all those years back when he heard the voices in the walls, and had now returned to haunt him. His lids drooped with decades of insomnia—same as me—caused by the fear of voices calling to him from across the universe.
“The stories could have lasted only a few hours, or a few days,” he said. “Perhaps I slept the clock around and woke up a week, a month later. Who knows, when worlds stitch themselves together like that.”
My eyes rested on the black-covered arm and hand that lay across his lap.
He sighed. “While listening to the stories I must have dozed off. I awoke with my ear still pressed against the wall. I rubbed the sleep out of me and repositioned myself.
“I heard something like breathing. Closer to me than before. Then it faded. The next thing I knew was total silence. As I turned away, something reached through the wall and grabbed my wrist.
“I screamed, struggled, tried to wrench my arm away. Almost ripped it loose. Candle flame flung shadows across the room. All I could see were arms reaching through the walls, gripping me. Six, seven, a dozen arms—who knows? Long, short, fat, hairy, scaly, reptilian arms; hands of all colors—some were ladylike and long-nailed, others had missing fingernails and were oozing blood from the nubs. The hands tore through the wall like putty.
“The more I struggled, the harder they pulled. I desperately tried to reach my bedpost with my other arm; perhaps if I could get a hold of it, it would give me more leverage to free myself. But it was just out of reach, and they dragged me closer and closer to the wall . . .”
Shorty retreated farther into the darkness outside his lamplight, his eyes like lost planets, his voice growing louder and frightened and—
“My arm was their property now. They were dragging it into the wall, into the dirt of the cemetery, into the fifth dimension . . .
“I felt the brick at my fingertips. It was not soft or mushy at all. It was hard and cold. There was nothing to do now; fighting was useless. So I let my fingers, my hand, my wrist, enter the otherworld. I was soon up to my biceps in it.
“Then, all at once, I heard a laugh and a loud popping sound. I yanked my arm away and flew back into my bedpost, the candle skittering across the floor of stone. I shot up and raced away, up the stairs, toward the light.
“In one moment I was free.” Shorty paused. “But it took the next several years to . . . adapt.”
Seeing my confusion, Shorty raised his arm wrapped in black material—the one always covered—grabbed the end of the glove with his other hand, and slid it off.
I turned away in disgust. He shouldn’t have surprised me like that.
The shriveled, shrunken forearm; the dozen fingers of various colors, shapes, and lengths; the fingernails, some short, and some red and long like a woman’s.
I did not like the mash-up of parts.
A piece of all the people in the walls had latched onto him, hitched a ride on his young body. Thumbs and forefingers from men, women, and animals grew out of his knuckles. Fragments of fingers, of other hands, sprung from his forearm and wrist.
Thick, large veins, blue and varicose, wrapped over and under his digits like jungle vines. Each of the dozen fingers seemed to move on its own: upward, downward, to the left, to the right. Each had seen decades, millennia; they were connected to their original
owners and Shorty in an unbreakable strand of time and space that you can't feel or see but, like dark energy, you know exists. The chains of evolution, broken or fixed—who knows?—normally visible between species, were now inverted, transmuted into this freaky carnival show.
Where his body ended and theirs began was anybody's guess; they must have connected somewhere. In any case, Shorty was too far away now, traveling the distant cosmos within himself.
“Maybe I should have let myself go all the way in.” His eyes gleamed, his fingers danced. “Perhaps I should have drifted along with the spirits. Who knows what adventures I would have had!”
He pushed his chair back and stood, turned away, and stared out the window. Clearly he’d forgotten I was there. The yellow sun silhouetted his grotesque figure, his many fingers sprouting from his bizarre hand: the hand of ages, of pyramids, of solar systems.
He raised it chest-level, his palm turned toward me. The many fingers on the bad hand waved goodbye to me, each on its own.
I turned slowly and left the man alone with his thoughts.
That was two months ago. Just six weeks later Shorty Gray abruptly left this world for another.
Perhaps he’s finally found the secret of the walls . . .
A week ago, I dropped my last rent check in the mail and resigned from my job. I’m riding a train now, up through the Carolinas, all the way to Connecticut. I’m heading north to Pickering Cemetery, to the house where Shorty lived, to the basement where he heard the voices.
What goes on in the walls at night?
I’ll tell you when I get there.
The end.
Acknowledgments
I don’t remember my reason for writing this book, but I’m sure it was a good one. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much I enjoyed recalling the stories of Shorty Gray.
It would not have been possible without the help of my beautiful wife, Briana Gokay. Karen S. Conlin’s edits were gold. Travis Schirmer’s insights into nearly every story were indispensable.
Thanks to Kim Scott (www.feedyoureye.com) for her magnificent cover art, and many thanks to my film partner Jordan Harris for his cover design and story notes. Also to Kyle, Kacie, and Thomas, and authors John Robin and William Burcher for their helpful notes on earlier versions of “Who Goes There,” “The Developer,” and “The Boy Who Swallowed Rocks.”
To Ray Bradbury, for telling me what to write, and for cheering me on all the way. And to Loren Eiseley, for reminding me of the “things that rustle in thickets upon solitary walks.”
To all the readers, thank you.
About the Author
Andrew Schrader is a writer and filmmaker. His 2016 award-winning documentary, All We Did Was Live, has helped raised awareness about homelessness in Berkeley, CA. He’s also the award-winning feature filmmaker of The Age of Reason and Fever Night (aka Band of Satanic Outsiders). This is his first book.
Please sign up for his mailing list for news, giveaways, and free stories from his upcoming book.
For more information, please visit:
andrewjschrader
www.andrewjschrader.com
What Goes On In The Walls At Night: Thirteen tales of disgust and delight Page 18
