The Printer From Hell

by Amy Cross

  “Did you hear about that?” Sanjay asks. “Tragic. Some drunk driver smashed straight through the front door of the place. They're saying at least one person is dead.”

  ***

  A short while later, I step out of the car and stare in stunned horror at all the flashing blue lights that are swarming around the entrance to the service station. It's less than twenty-four hours since I was last here, and I can see emergency crews working at the side of a car that has smashed straight through into the foyer.

  “Sources say the driver of the vehicle has been taken into custody with only minor injuries,” a news reporter explains nearby, as I wander past and head toward the scene. “Although officials have refused to comment on claims that the driver tested positive for alcohol in his system, individuals close to the case have told this channel that the suspect is believed to have been over the limit.”

  “Sorry, Sir,” a police officer says suddenly, stepping toward me with an outstretched hand, “I'm going to have to ask you to stop right there. The service station is closed until further notice.”

  “What happened?” I ask, peering past him and watching as crews continue to work in the brightly-lit foyer.

  “I'm sorry, Sir,” he replies, “but you need to get back into your vehicle and leave. The next service station is a half mile to the south.”

  “Is anyone hurt?”

  “Sir, I -”

  “Is anyone hurt?” I ask again, turning to him. “Please, it's important.”

  “I can't comment on any specifics at this time,” he tells me. “Please, Sir, I need to ask you to leave the area right now.”

  I open my mouth to ask him one more time, but suddenly I spot a stretcher being carried away from the front of the crashed car and over toward a waiting ambulance. Whoever is on the stretcher, their entire body is covered by a sheet.

  Feeling a buzzing sensation in my pocket, I take my phone out and see that Mary is trying to get in touch again. I know she only wants to keep begging me to go to her father's, and I really don't have time to deal with all of that right now, so I ignore the call and slip my phone away again.

  “Okay,” I tell the cop, as I turn and head back toward my car. “I'm sorry. I'll go.”

  Once I'm back in the car, however, I sit in silence and watch as the bright lights of the various ambulances and police cars continue to fill the cold night air. I know that this is all just a coincidence, that there's no way it's linked to the weird hallucination I suffered here last night, but I can't help thinking back to the sight of that poor woman crushed against the wall.

  And even from here, I can tell that the car crashed through the doors in just the right spot to hit the wall where I found the woman. It's almost as if I saw it all happen.

  Chapter Twenty

  “Yeah, I'm just feeling really groggy,” I tell Janice over the phone the next morning, as I wait for my first coffee to be ready. “I'm gonna have to stay home.”

  Once I've told work that I won't be in, I consider calling Mary before realizing that it might be best to just wait a short while. Besides, I don't exactly have anything new to tell her, and she'd only keep nagging me to get out of the apartment. Having spent the night alone here since I got back from the motorway service station, I haven't heard a single weird bump or experienced anything unusual, but I can't stop thinking about the bruises on Josh's face and arm, or the fear in his eyes.

  My son is scared of me.

  In an attempt to distract myself, I spend the morning taking the entire apartment apart. I search everywhere, for anything that could possibly be connected to the strange events. I unscrew wall panels, I check light fittings for hidden microphones or cameras, I even roll up the carpet in several rooms to make sure that no-one could have crept in or out. Frankly, I'm quite sure I'm on the verge of turning into a crazy person, but I figure that the longer I keep looking, the more likely I am to eventually come across something that might lead me in the right direction.

  Finally, a little after noon, there's a knock at the door and I find Mrs. Monroe waiting outside.

  “I'm sorry to bother you again, Mr. Holland,” she says sweetly, “but I'm afraid I really must insist that you deal with the disturbance in the basement.”

  ***

  With a faint sense of dread, I set the Maxinomoticon box on the kitchen table and open the top so I can look down at the printer.

  No, not dread.

  Dread's too strong.

  Concern. That's all it is. I'm not going to let my imagination run unchecked, and I'm not going to overreact. I'm just to coolly, calmly assess the situation.

  Having been down in the basement and checked out our storage cage, I found absolutely nothing that could be making a noise. Mrs. Monroe insisted, however, that there had been an intermittent bumping and banging sound coming from down there, and finally I figured that she was mistaken. Still, I knew she'd want to see me carrying something out, so I grabbed the printer and brought it back up to the apartment. This way, I can kill two birds with one stone. I can make the old dear leave me alone, and I can take this pile of crap to the dump.

  First, though, I figure it can't hurt to plug it in one final time.

  “Let's see what you've got,” I mutter, setting the printer on the table and then plugging it in at the wall. I hit the button on the printer's lid, and then I grab a beer as I take a step back and wait for the magic to happen.

  Almost immediately, the printer whirs to life and starts processing another job.

  “Been saving one up for me, have you?” I ask, taking a swig of beer.

  Figuring that the machine will take a while to get going, I grab my phone and head out into the hallway. I pull the door shut, so Mary won't be able to hear the printer's tell-tale noises, and then I give my wife a call. When the message goes straight to voice-mail without ringing, I leave her a quick message asking her to ring me, and then I head to the bedroom and check the nightstand. Sure enough, her phone charger is right there, so I figure it might be a little while before she gets back to me.

  Then again, hopefully she'll realize she's overreacting and she'll bring Josh home today. Unless...

  At the back of my mind, I can't shake the fear that maybe she doesn't quite trust me, that she thinks I might be responsible for those bruises after all. I know she trusts me, but still, anyone would have concerns in that situation.

  Taking another swig of beer, I head back to the kitchen and find that the printer has already spat out not just one, but two new pictures, and now it seems to be working on a third.

  Grabbing the new print-outs, I see that the first shows just another shot of the bedroom, albeit with more dirty smears on the walls and with the wardrobe doors still hanging wide open. There's nothing particularly freaky about this image, so I check the next and -

  As soon as I see the photo of Josh's room, I freeze.

  Of course, it's not exactly Josh's room, but it's clearly the same space within the apartment. His bed is over by the window and there are no posters on the walls. Instead, the scene is once again kind of a mess, with red and brown stains on the walls and bare, exposed floorboards covered in junk. Frankly, it looks like some kind of crack house, but I can't help feeling a little disturbed by the realization that whoever's taking these photos, they seem to be moving around the apartment.

  This apartment.

  My family's home.

  “It's a prank,” I mutter, grabbing the third photo as it slides out of the printer. “It has to be.”

  This time, I find myself looking at an image of the hallway. The door to the main bedroom is visible, and I feel a shudder run through my chest as soon as I spot what appears to be a woman's hand hanging off the side of the bed. Squinting, I peer closer and see that the hand is badly bruised, maybe even cut in a couple of places.

  And still the printer is whirring and working on a new page, as if it's trying to catch up after spending a couple of days in the basement.

  I feel a little ne
rvous as I reach down and take the next picture, which turns out to be very different to the rest. This time, I find myself looking at a close-up, almost blurry image, showing what appears to be a patch of very pale, very blotchy flesh. There are a few freckles, and some odd red dots that seem like welts in the skin, but apart from that it's difficult to really work out what I'm seeing. An arm, maybe, or a leg.

  In fact, I'm so distracted by the flesh on display, it takes a moment before I see that there's some kind of text at the bottom of the picture. Most of the letters seem to be part of a foreign language, the same language that's plastered all over the box, although there are a few batches of familiar words:

  Apartment four.

  Steve and Mary Holland.

  Receive this print-out.

  I pause, before realizing that these are all from the message I sent to the printer the other day, when I thought that maybe I could get in touch with whoever's sending these pictures. After all, if someone else is sending documents to our printer, maybe the documents we send are going to their machine. In which case, it would appear that they definitely received the message I tried to get to them.

  And they know we're here.

  “You're a freaky little thing, huh?” I mutter, looking down at the printer again now that it has fallen silent. “Where are you getting all this crap from? It's obviously wireless, but what's the range? Is it someone in the next building? Further?”

  I hesitate for a moment, before turning and heading through to the hallway.

  “Is anyone here?” I call out, starting to feel slightly desperate. “I don't know how you're doing this, but why don't you show yourself? Whatever game you're playing, I'm getting really tired of the whole thing!”

  I wait.

  Silence.

  Suddenly feeling a buzz in my pocket, I check my phone. To my surprise, I find that it's not Mary returning my call, but a message from Magnus. He's sent me a link, and when I click through, I find myself watching a video with the title 'Dzigniav Wolonovsky – Interview 12/8'.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “No, you've got it all wrong,” Wolonovsky mutters as the video continues. “I'm not saying they have their own world at all. I'm saying their existence, such as it is, remains constantly in flux as it adapts to our world. There's causality here, and it flows mostly one-way.”

  Although it's clear that this Wolonovsky dude is out of his mind, I can't quite bring myself to stop watching. Slumped in a chair, in what looks like a prison cell or a psych ward, he's extremely pale and he hasn't once looked at the camera. Instead, he's staring down at the floor, and his thick, unruly black hair is covering most of his face. He's the kind of guy you'd cross the street to avoid if you met him in real life, and so far he's spent the entirety of the video rambling like a madman.

  “Tell me about your first experience with this other world,” the unseen interviewer, presumably a doctor of some sort, says after a moment. “You said you were very young at the time.”

  “Six,” Wolonovsky snaps.

  “And did you understand what was happening at the time?”

  “At the time?” This time, Wolonovsky actually seems to chuckle, although it's a laugh that makes his entire body shudder slightly. “I still don't understand it now. I'm not that arrogant. I know what I've experienced, but I'm not gonna sit here and tell you I have it all figured out.”

  “And since the age of six,” the voice continues, “you've made multiple journeys to the other world?”

  “I already told you about all that.”

  “You mentioned the violence.”

  Wolonovsky doesn't respond immediately. Instead he sits silently in the chair for a few seconds, still staring down at the ground.

  “You said it's a violent world, Dzigniav,” the voice says finally. “Can you tell me what you mean by that?”

  “I mean it's a violent world,” he replies. “Simple as that. This world we're in right now, right here, is violent, but the other world, the place I've been...” A faint smile crosses his lips. “That's where the really bad stuff happens. The mirrors, the harmony of the two... I've seen things over there, man. I've seen the most horrific sights, I've heard screams that were so loud and so agonized, they're still echoing through my mind right now as we sit here. And I've met...”

  His voice trails off.

  “Who have you met, Dzigniav?” the voice asks. “Have you interacted with people from that other place?”

  “There were certain conversations,” he replies, and his grin seems to be broadening a little. “I had questions. I tried to ask them. Wouldn't you, if you had the chance?”

  “You communicated with people from the Hellform world?”

  “They don't call it the Hellform world themselves,” he mutters, suddenly sounding a little irritated. “That's just the name I came up with to describe the madness I encountered. I guess it was my way of making sense of the whole thing.”

  “And why did you feel the need to do that, Dzigniav? Why did you need to understand it?”

  There's a pause, and for a moment the only sound is the faint hum of the camera. Finally, however, Wolonovsky looks up and stares at something off-camera, and then he looks straight into the lens.

  “You think I'm mad,” he continues. “I hope you're right. Every morning, I wake up hoping that this will be the day when I realize I simply lost my mind. Because the alternative, the idea that the Hellform world really exists... It's too much to live with. And do you want to know the worst thing?”

  “Sure, Dzigniav,” the voice replies calmly, with just a hint of condescension.

  “Whenever I see the news on TV, I can't help thinking that little patches of that place are starting to break through. That the gap between our world and their world... It's not so big. They're just one wrong blink away.”

  With that, the video ends and I'm left staring at the screen. I've got to admit, even though Dzigniav Wolonovsky was clearly out of his mind, he had a certain charisma that made his ridiculous stories really stand out. I can't even begin to imagine the kind of mental illness that would lead someone to conjure up such an absurd set of claims, or to give those claims such a lurid and obsessive level of detail. For all his evident problems, Wolonovsky clearly has quite the active imagination, even if ultimately his thoughts led him to a locked cell on a psych ward.

  My phone buzzes, and sure enough Magnus is trying to get in touch.

  “Did you watch it yet?” he asks.

  “Yeah, thanks for that,” I mutter sarcastically. “You've really put my mind at ease.”

  “There are more videos,” he continues, “but it's kinda hard to find them. They're on the dark-net, and they're not exactly labeled properly. I'm gonna try to get some more, so I'll send them to you and -”

  “Why would I want to watch videos of some freaky mental patient rambling on about all this disturbing stuff?” I ask. “Even if he mentioned that Maxinomoticon company once or twice, it doesn't mean anything. Either he happened to stumble upon another piece of shit printer like mine, or he just gabbles on so much that eventually pretty much every combination of letters ends up dribbling from his lunatic lips. You can't actually believe that the guy's onto something.”

  “Are you okay, dude?” Magnus asks. “You sound more gnarly than usual.”

  “I'm just tired,” I mutter, turning and looking back over at the printer as it sits quietly on the kitchen table. “I swear, ever since I brought that goddamn machine into this apartment, crazy things have been happening. My wife has even taken our son to her father's for a few days, to get him out of the place. That's how nuts the situation has become.”

  “Dude,” he replies, “you need to get on top of that shit, like, pronto.”

  “Thanks for the advice,” I say with a sigh, getting to my feet, “but I think I've gone far enough into the twilight zone now. It's time to start clawing my way back to the real world, and that begins with calling my wife and taking this printer to the dump. Somehow this
thing...”

  My voice trails off as I realize what I was about to say. I was about to start blaming the printer, to suggest that somehow this goddamn machine brought a torrent of bad luck into our lives. Maybe even that it opened the door to something malevolent that has begun to reach through to us. I quickly dismiss those thoughts, of course, but I still want to get the printer out of here as fast as possible. Just to be safe.

  “I should get going,” I mutter. “I need to get the printer to the dump.”

  “Can I take it off your hands?” he asks.

  “It's a piece of shit, Magnus.”

  “I'm totally into weird tech. Please, dude, I'll pay you. I just wanna poke about with it.”

  I pause, before realizing that the last thing I want is to get caught up in any more of this madness.

  “Fine,” I tell him, “but you have to pick it up tonight after work. If you haven't taken it by six, I'm heading straight to the dump. And I assure you, I'll take great pleasure from watching this thing get crushed.”

  Once the call is over, I bring up Mary's number and try to reach her. When I get put straight through to voice-mail, however, I remember that she left her charger behind. I don't want to bug her, but I'm worried about Josh so I bring up Mary's father's number and wait for him to answer.

  “Hey Pete,” I say as soon as he picks up, “how are you guys doing?”

  There's a faint rustling sound on the other end of the line, which is pretty standard with Pete. The old chap tends to be a little slow these days.

  “Steven?” he replies finally. “Is that you?”

  “I was just wondering if you could put Mary on,” I continue, making sure to raise my voice a little since I doubt he's got his hearing aid switched on.

  “Mary?” he stammers.

  “Can I have a word with her?”