by Brian Short
He turned his head and looked at me, as if to ask, And you are…?
“My name, uh…”
He scowled, as if, Can I help you with something?
“I work here,” I explained. “My shift starts. After yours.”
Again, another subtle head shift, this one meaning, You’re a little early, in that case.
“I suppose…” I started, then, “Look, I was gonna…” and finally, “I’m just going to leave this here for now,” I said, removing my backpack and setting it onto the floor. “I’ll be back in a… little bit.”
“Suit yourself.”
I turned and stepped back through the front door, out again onto the porch. I looked down at Henry on the bench, beside where I stood. He turned his head slowly, with its gray scraggle of natty hair, and looked up at me with wide, yellow-balled eyes. I nodded. He nodded, then turned again gravely to face forward to the street. Beyond him Willy walked in tight circles, widdershins, deasil, whatever. His eyes, staring forward, met mine for about twenty degrees of arc as he revolved, though I was not convinced that he saw me. Mary sat hunched in her wrap of cigarette smoke, like a tightly protected, stiff lump. She did not move. Beyond her, in the street, I watched someone pass by on a tricycle with an exaggeratedly large front tire. They chimed their handlebar’s bell as they passed. Soon they were followed by someone on a bicycle, who chimed their little bell as they passed. Next, after them, came someone on a unicycle, who bleated a compressed air horn as they passed. They were followed by no one at all.
“I’ll be back,” I said, “in a… little bit,” and stepped around Mary, down the narrow walk to the street.
•
Not the hill that I hate. Not that. It’s the upslope. No, it’s the weight of the air. I’ll have to go to where it’s thinner, it’s lighter. She. The heat, the buzzing sounds. Insects like little machines of war. Help them. Hurt them. Cut them. What is it? What’s with? I wanted to see her, I thought that I would see her. I thought that I. That she.
And to the eye he sends a glorious beast, and its back will be broken. And it will send us heat, and our conveyance then will be broken. And we will flop down dead in the sun. Amen. And we shall breathe in dust no more. Amen.
I saw a skull-man in the mirror tonight, hollow-eyed, grinning past me. I saw a skeleton. It said, who would love you? I thought that I. These nights. So long. Ten years. No, more – eleven; and even more now, to count the months, the days, the hours. Why is everyone I meet a ghost? I’ll have to tell them: I have seen the ball of the sun, and it was sinking. I’ll tell them also: begin with a wound to the head; that’s the first lesson. Next, take the thing you thought was yours and dry it out in the sun. Now shake it, shake the dust, repeat.
The sun sinks in earnest now (it has in fact been silent).
Remember this, okay: you will drive into the darkness. The deep, deep mountain darkness. There you will meet the night. Its body has forgotten you. A long time now, its body has forgotten you. This can’t be avoided. In the end, nothing is avoided. Embrace it; embrace the night. Wind your limbs around the body of the night; she, at least, won’t refuse you. It isn’t allowed. Negotiations of price are based on merit. Not hers; yours. Depending on your worth, she may take everything or nothing. If she takes nothing, that is dishonor. You will be forced to come back, in yet another body, in yet another life. All negotiations then will cease.
I am alive again.
•
“What are you doing?”
Jim looked up from my papers without guile. The beads hung in his beard rattled and clacked.
“That’s my bag. Why are you in my bag?” The contents of my backpack were spread out over the desk: my books, my notebook, a folder with some loose papers in it, some ballpoint pens, a few business cards from the small pockets. I’d walked back into the office to find Jim poking through all of these things like there was nothing to it, like there was no reason not to.
His eyes glistened at me, bright and clear, like he’d not heard the tone in my voice.
I said again, “What are you doing?”
“You left it here. I was just looking.” He blinked innocently, like a deer caught stealing lettuce from a garden. “You have good taste in literature. This Murakami?” He held up a paperback. “It’s one of my favorites. I can’t wait for his next one, which I’ve heard should be out in English next year. It’s already a bestseller in Japan. As you’d expect, right? So why is it, if something’s on the top-ten list here, I automatically assume it must be shit? Just lowest-common-denominator shit, you know? But in Japan, well, that’s different. But is it, really? It’s a matter of perception, it seems. I expect that Japanese culture must be more refined than my own.” He set the book down and picked up another. “I don’t know who this is.” He dropped it, then poked at my spiral-bound notebook, open to a page mid-way through. “I have to admit that I’m confused by your notebook, though. Your style is a bit too dense for my taste. Are these dreams you’re writing? Or you’re speaking in code, or something? Why would you do that, in your own journal?”
I sat down opposite him, not knowing what to say.
“Who are the fish-people?” he asked.
•
“…Thank you, caller. Next on the line, from west of the Rockies…”
After Jim had left, and after the evening round of meds, the contents of my bag replaced and the office again my own and quiet, I sat back and listened to the drifting voice that had chattered in the background all along, unnoticed.
“Wow, thanks for taking my call, William. I was afraid I might not get through. I’ve been trying to call for… for weeks, now… I, uh…”
“I’m not screening my calls tonight. I’ve sent the screeners home. What’s on your mind?”
“Well, I, uh, William… let me tell you…”
“Yes?”
“I think I’m being followed.”
“Followed, you say. By who?”
“I don’t know… exactly, but, uh… everywhere I go… I think they’re trying… to make me forget… something.”
“They’re trying to make you forget something? What is it they want you to forget? Because if you tell me, and you tell everyone listening tonight, then they’ll have failed, because we’ll all know about it.”
“I, uh…”
“Can I get a cigarette?”
“Davis, come in.”
“Can I get a cigarette?”
“Yes, of course, come in.” I waved tall Davis in, and he bent his way forward through the door and stood looming over the desk, his hand stretched out, his mouth crooked with something that was almost a grin. “What is it?” I handed him three from his pack of generics in the cabinet.
“I got him to play.”
“Who?”
“The police man. He didn’t want to, but I got the police man involved.”
“That sounds…” I started, then, “Involved? In what?” Davis giggled. “He was going to move a piece, and I told him he couldn’t. But I lied. He could’ve moved the piece. He didn’t know any better.”
“…Uh, Davis? I don’t think you want to go messing with the police. They can really…”
“He moved the other piece instead. He didn’t know.” “…Okay. Okay. Just don’t smoke those all at once. And don’t give them all away, either.”
“Thangew.”
•
In his wake the stillness rushed again to enter, filling the room, and radio voices pushed into the foreground – “our last hour tonight, we’ll hear from investigative reporter Sandra Song. She has just returned from the state of Arizona, where she’s met with and interviewed a rather remarkable UFO witness. What makes this witness so unusual is less what he’s seen – although that is remarkable enough – but his credibility, and the fact that he is willing to talk with us on-air tonight, as he is a small-town lawman… and willing to stake his reputation publicly on the veracity of his story. A move like this is typically career suicide for anyone
established in their community, as I well know. Whether that community be intellectual, business, government, science, or in this case law-enforcement, the response is usually something just shy of public stoning. It’s not that credentialed people aren’t seeing these things or having these experiences – they do, all the time, just like anyone – but to publicly speak to it, generally… generally, it invites such a rash of contempt and derisive laughter that you can be just about certain you won’t be taken seriously again. Why this is so is a complex issue, and you’ve certainly heard my views on the matter before, so I won’t go on about that now. Rather, I’d like to turn it over to Emmy Award-winning reporter, writer, editor, and filmmaker, Sandra Song.”
A woman’s slightly tremulous voice spoke next, filtered through the phone line, restricted into treble. “Thank you, William. And that is certainly true. In my two-and-a-half decades of investigating and reporting on the unknown, it has very seldom been the case that police officers have been willing to speak publicly about their experiences, much less to use their actual names on air – though the fact of the matter is that the police are as often witnesses to UFOs and related phenomena as anyone else. More often, perhaps, given the nature of their work. Moreover, with their training and observational skills, they make the best witnesses for reporters, such as myself. I’ve talked with many police officers in the course of my investigations, though it has been rare that they are willing to have their name published or used in the media. It’s truly a shame that our culture, as yet, is still biased toward blanket disbelief and knee-jerk dismissal of the unknown, making it, as you’ve said, William, a matter of personal and professional necessity to remain anonymous.
“Given that, I was surprised when the sheriff of a rural Arizona township contacted me with his story, yet much more surprised when he agreed to a recorded interview and the use of his actual name over the air. Sheriff Friendly is in fact himself the entire police force in Cleric, Arizona, a small community situated at the top of Charles Mountain in the central part of that state. It was regarding his sighting of a very large metallic sphere in the sky, and his subsequent pursuit of this same object, that Sheriff Friendly first emailed me over a year ago. We have since then had several conversations about further developments –”
“Can I… can I get a cigarette?”
“– the ongoing nature of which –”
“Please. Please can I have a cigarette?”
“Davis, I just gave you three cigarettes.”
“I know. Please.”
“– a profound impact on the town –”
“What did you do with them all? You didn’t have time to smoke them. Did you give them away? What did I tell you not to do?”
“Please. I know.”
“– a baffling decrease in the population, people inexplicably vanishing –”
“If I give you any more cigarettes, you have to make them last. I don’t want you coming back here again in ten minutes asking for more. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“What do I not want you to do?”
“– Sheriff Friendly, of Clerick, Arizona…”
“Ask again for more. In ten minutes.”
“Thank you, Sandra.”
“That’s right. So if somebody asks you for your cigarettes, what are you going to tell them?”
“No.”
“Thank you, Sheriff, for agreeing to this interview. Now when you first contacted me, I have to admit, I thought that your name was a joke, because you didn’t want to come forward with your real name.”
“No, Friendly is my real name. I get that a lot, as you might imagine. It was worse back when I was a beat cop in Los Angeles. Officer then, not Sheriff…”
“Right, ha-ha. But it was because you’d seen –”
“Very good. Here’s three.”
“Thangyew.”
“– metal object, as you’d described it.”
“That’s right, Sandra, it was a very large, metallic sphere, and as far as I could tell, very high up in the atmosphere. It seemed faint, like the moon seems faint in daylight.”
“And yet it was not the moon?”
“No, it wasn’t, and I could tell that instantly. For starters, it was much larger than the moon would appear. About twice the size, I’d say. Also, it was completely featureless. The moon, even in daylight – you can see the craters, it has different shades and tones to its surface, and though faint, you can see that. This had none of that. It was simply a blank, silver, matte-like surface, and though it seemed very far away, because it was so faint, it could have also been relatively close. I say that because of the way that it was behaving.”
“What exactly did you see this object doing?”
“It seemed… it seemed to notice me.”
“Hi. Can I talk?”
“Yes, Rose, what is it?”
She wore a mask of rouge, lipstick, and eye shadow, freshly though unsteadily applied, and thick as the hide of a rhino.
“I can’t sleep. And I’m feeling the forces move through my body again. They come down on me in waves, one after the other after the other, and they push through me, they push through me, and I think they must be trying to take something away.”
“Yes. Is it? Okay.”
“…It moved when I moved, or when I thought about it moving. I thought it should move, and it –”
“They enter my body through the stomach, and through the skin.”
“What is it again that we give you to help you sleep?”
“Diazepam.”
“Good God.”
“…And you felt in this case that the object was somehow connected to you, mentally? That you were in communication with it?”
“I felt giddy, a little, like… effervescence… But yes, it and I, the object and myself, were definitely connected, and when I first looked up and I saw it, I just kind of knew that immediately.”
“Here, Rose, I’ve got it.” I emerged from under the desk, where I’d folded myself up to reach into the cabinet, to find her not in the chair where I’d left her but standing over me, looming, as much as she could loom, staring down at my back. “Uh. Rose?”
“They have been raping me.”
“What are you talking about, Rose? Who has?”
“The forces take things from me. They’re after my soul.”
“– when it moved again. At first it was just gone. It was there and then not there. Then I saw it… bouncing on the horizon, like a little… I don’t know how else –”
“OFFICER FRIENDLY?”
“Yes, Davis, what is it this time? Don’t tell me…”
“Can I get another cigarette?”
“What did I tell you last time? What did I say?”
Rose, wide, rouged, had not moved an inch, but stood swaying, rocking only slightly side to side. This was how she loomed.
“It enters me through the skin and through the stomach.”
Davis in the doorframe said, “Not to give my cigarettes away.”
“No, Davis, that was not what I said.”
“But you did –”
“What I said was not to come back here in ten minutes asking for another. No, I won’t give you any more cigarettes, not for one hour.”
“But…”
“…After it disappeared again, I don’t know why, but I thought that I should follow it. Just follow it. I couldn’t see the thing, so I don’t know how I thought that I could do that, but all the same… I got into my Jeep and drove down off the mountain, into the valley, where it is wide and flat. I drove off the road and kept going…”
“What did I say? Davis. No. Rose. Here.” I handed her the two small, yellow tablets from the supplementary section of her mediset. Her hands brushed mine lingeringly as she accepted them, smiling. I flinched.
“– the heat there, and the wind… it’s methamphetamine country, almost no one lives –”
“But… that isn’t what you said.”
“The
devil takes my soul from me. He takes it out through the skin.”
“Take those, Rose.”
“Diazepam.” She blinked her thick, and what I could now see were false, eyelashes several times in quick succession.
“Right. They’ll help you sleep.”
“They will help me.”
“To sleep. Yes.”
“They will.”
“Yes.”
“But that isn’t what you said.”
•
After shuttling the others out, I’d gone downstairs and locked myself into the kitchen, where the high, small square of a window shone reflectively dark, where I stared for a long time at the marred, grease-dark surface of the flattop grill. I stared and stared, and did not move, my hands held forward, arms bent at angles, fingers hooked to the flange of the grease trough in front. The radio on the shelf behind me, barely audible, was tuned to the same station.
“…rash of vanishings, homes and businesses left empty. This has happened in the months since. First a few, now almost everyone – everyone goes away, only they don’t leave. They’re just gone, no one hears anything…”
I put my right hand forward onto the metal grill surface, let it rest there, laid its weight down full: cold, a fine grit of carbonized substance. The shape, the sky. I set my other hand down also. It’s possible I can remember this now. Because I could again picture it, as it had once appeared. Cold, spheric. Hyperaware. The intelligence. What it knows? Who can imagine that? This wasn’t the same as it had been; it wasn’t inside of me. It was not in my mind, not so immediate; no mass, no presence. This was imagination, only as much, but it was more than I’d been capable of since… as if it were almost within reach.
Mosquito. It is in the sky now.
I leaned my body forward and rested my weight against my hands, then held that a moment, angled into it. When I stood back straight and picked my hands up again, their palms were dark with grit and burnt grease. When I laid them back down, the surface was not so cold as before.
“…Ever since, I’ve felt the presence, the change. The others leaving, always I’m somehow at the center, the turning point, the fulcrum of something, and it draws closer, this sense of being known, so completely…”
