Personal Effects

by J. C. Hutchins

  I passed the memory card to Rachael.

  “We need your computer,” I said.

  As the laptop’s photo editing software imported my two photographs from Room 507, I quickly explained the pastels I’d left for Drake, and the wall murals he’d drawn.

  We crowded around Rachael’s tiny desk: she was driving, Lucas and I stood behind her, leaning in like cartoon vultures. I sipped my beer as the photos blinked onto the screen.

  “Windchill,” Lucas said, rubbing his arms. “This … is some spooky shit.”

  Yes. Yes, it still was. The photos couldn’t evoke the scale of Drake’s murals—the jaw-dropping awe of their size. But their frantic, fluid mania was here, captured in pixel-perfect precision. Inelegant curves, swirls, zigzags … blotches of color here and there. It was an on-screen acid trip, incomprehensible, a half-remembered dream.

  “He didn’t tell you the point of this,” Rachael said, her finger teasing at the laptop’s touchpad. “Didn’t give a hint.”

  “No. He said the Dark Man drew them.”

  Lucas squinted at the image of the left wall—the first photo I’d taken. He trailed his finger along part of the image in a vertical, vaguely S-shaped path. He didn’t touch the LCD; he’d been around Rachael enough to know better.

  “See that?” he asked. “These curving vertical lines here and here, and down there. They’re incomplete. They start and stop, so this is easy to miss. But watch. Try to imagine, hmmm, heh. Yeah. Think of a long spaghetti string.”

  He finger repeated the motion, and the pattern became more clear. These lines were not connected—globular gulches of color separated them—but it was clear they followed the S-shape Lucas had illustrated.

  “There’s something like that over here,” I said, pointing to a series of lines on the other side of the photo. They lanced downward in a diagonal formation, also separated by manic patches of color.

  “Kinda like missing data,” Rachael said.

  My eyes flicked to the second on-screen image. The photo I’d taken this morning.

  “No. Encrypted data. Look.”

  The right wall’s mural featured the same “spaghetti string” lines Lucas had identified, as well as the diagonal ones I’d just found. But there was a twist. This photo’s lines represented the missing content from the other photo. The stuff that filled the gulches.

  “No fucking way,” she said. “He’s blind. There’s just … no fucking way.”

  Lucas’ voice was a whisper. “Do it, Hochrot. Merge the pictures.”

  Her finger slid against the track pad as she created a new file. Tap. Click. Double-click. Click-click.

  Tktk.

  I shivered, suddenly cold.

  She pasted the first mural image into the new file’s blank canvas. The mouse pointer rushed to the second photo. Copy. Now back to the new file. Paste. The mouse highlighted a tiny number in a sub-window. 100%, it read.

  Her finger tapped the “down” arrow on the keyboard. 90. 80. 70.

  The second photo faded with each keystroke, slowly revealing the first photo beneath it.

  60. 50.

  “Stop,” I said.

  “Windchill,” Lucas muttered, shaking his shaggy head. “Windchill, holy shit, windchill.”

  The two images were now perfectly visible together, stacked like plates of semi-transparent glass.

  The lines Lucas had spotted were now complete. The picture itself was … complete. Two halves made whole.

  “This isn’t possible,” Rachael said. She reached up, absently tugging the bottle from my hand. She downed a hearty gulp. “This can’t be happening.”

  We stared at the screen, too stunned to say more. The once-manic crosshatches and half-swirls now made a kind of sense, meshed together. Triangles popped from the colorful ether. Diamond shapes. Serpentine lines. There was still no overt message here … but there was purpose, and that fascinated me.

  It also frightened me.

  A clatter rang from our bedroom. The three of us flinched simultaneously then gazed past the living room doorway, through the kitchen, into the dimness beyond. Bliss hissed from the shadows. An invisible Dali spat, then meowed.

  Rachael turned back to the screen. “Play nice together,” she whispered, distracted. “Play nice.”

  I shivered, again. The air in here felt heavy and wet. Claustrophobic. I glanced around the living room, feeling foolish—feeling crazy—as I did an inventory of the walls. I looked up, at the ceiling. Had that water stain been there before—

  “The Black,” Lucas said.

  I blinked.

  “What did …” My tongue was thick and dry in my mouth. “ … you say?”

  He tapped the LCD this time, his fingertip smudging the screen. Rachael was too engrossed to complain.

  “There’s black here and here. Dig it. Half swirly-moon on the right.” My eyes slid leftward as he spoke. “Half swirly-moon on the left.”

  The black scribbles—which had been etched into the high corners of Room 507’s murals—were near the top of the merged image, each positioned equidistantly from their respective vertical edges. Lucas was right. They looked like half-moons.

  My eyes trailed down the picture, following a straight line from one of the black stains. A column of strange colorful shapes ticked down the photo. A “U” on its side. Three bars stacked atop each other. A thumbnail-sized crescent moon. Others.

  “You see that” Rachael asked. She took another pull of my beer.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I do.”

  Lucas gave a little yelp then snapped his fingers. Rachael and I gasped.

  “Print,” he said, patting her shoulder. “Print, sister, print. Control-P. Nitro-like, meep-meep.”

  She executed the keyboard command. The nearby laser printer whirred and hummed. Lucas snatched the color photograph before it hit the tray and bolted back to the steamer trunk. I was a half-step behind him. Rachael closed the laptop and followed.

  He cleared a spot on the table’s center, shoving Drake’s personal effects to one side. He slapped the picture onto the trunk and looked up at us, his eyes gleeful.

  “Pole of gob-gook here,” he said, finger dragging down one column of runes. He jabbed at the other black splotch. “Pole of gob-gook here.” He repeated the move.

  He grinned.

  “Now watch this katabatic shit.”

  He folded the photograph into vertical sections then overlapped the paper, accordion-style, until the black halves became a full moon. The process reminded me of the puzzles on the back of MAD magazine.

  There were words on the page now.

  “‘RETURN TO SENDER,’” Rachael read. She looked at me. Her face was white. “This can’t be happening.”

  Lucas’ fingers were a machine gun now, tapping the photo.

  “New stuff, all over the place. Those weird shapes from before—they’re new shapes. Hey. A long red line, going from here …”

  His finger pressed against the bottom-right corner of the page. It slid upward in a slow, leftward arc.

  “ … to the top of the page, over here. Little green boxes, bam, bam, bam. Big-ass bluish thing here. And look. From the Earth to the moon.”

  A vermillion tentacle snaked from the large red artery, dead ending at the center top of the photo. The swirling black hole.

  “Map,” Rachael said.

  I nodded, numb.

  “Yeah,” I said. I knew it. I’d seen it. “It’s a map leading to Daniel Drake’s home.”

  We jumped at the sound of thunder.

  Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony blared from my cell phone’s speaker. The thing jigged on the steamer trunk, vibrating.

  Bum-bum-bum-bummmmm.

  “Christ, not now,” I growled. I glanced at the others. “It’s Dad.”

  “Pick it up, bro,” Lucas said.

  I turned to him, surprised.

  “Dude, no,” I snapped, appalled. I grabbed the phone. “He wants to sabotage my career for some bloodlust vendett
a!” I stared at Lucas, incredulous. “Dad’s been keeping shit from us for years, man, rotten stuff, for fucking years, burying, re-writing …”

  I stopped myself. No. Not now. Maybe not ever.

  The phone rang again. My thumb jabbed the button that would send the call to voice mail.

  Lucas crossed his arms.

  “So he didn’t tell us about Sophronia two years ago. So what? Have you told me every girlfriend you’ve ever had”

  Faraway, in the bedroom, Bliss hissed again. Dali growled, an air-curdling rrrrreow.

  “Knock it off,” Rachael called to the pets. “Lucas, he said he doesn’t—”

  “I get it, I do,” Lucas said. “You’re pissed, he’s pissed, it’s a Pissapalooza. But he’s family, and this”—he pointed to the photo—“is windchill shit, too spooky to be anything but real. Can’t you feel it? Dude, look at your arms, you’ve got pebbles for pores. You’re shivering. It’s fucking freaky.”

  “Th-that … ,” I stammered, “that doesn’t make it real. This is all explainable. Every bit of it: Drake’s Dark Man, the killings, that map. Just because someone says you’ve been ‘marked’ doesn’t make it so. You wouldn’t even be wigging now if I hadn’t told you!”

  Lucas took a step toward me.

  “Aren’t you afraid”

  “I don’t—”

  “Aren’t you”

  “Of course I am. How can I not be, with the week I’ve been having? But Luc, being scared doesn’t mean I—”

  Another hiss, louder this time. Then came the delicate scratching of cat claws on hardwood. And then: tktktk.

  “Did you hear that” I whispered.

  The phone buzzed twice in my hand. I nearly screamed.

  “Z, please. At least play the message,” Lucas said. “I need to know he’s okay.”

  I nodded, because I needed to know, too. Far too much was happening now—this now, right now, this moment, this heartbeat—to ignore the message. I was learning to hate him, but I loved him. I still loved my father.

  I tapped the speakerphone button and dialed into voice mail.

  The air around us roared; Dad had called from the car.

  “Zachary, it’s me. I’m a few blocks from your house right now. I heard about what happened at The Brink today. Incident, ah …”

  I heard the flick-rattle of paper.

  “ … incident report 507-482. My God, young man …”

  I pointed at the phone. See? I mouthed. Lucas shushed me. The engine in the background surged, accelerating.

  “ … Zachary, that could’ve been you,” Dad said. “The next time, it might be you. And it can’t be you, Zach, I won’t allow it. I’m coming there right now to discuss this, and if you’re not there, I’ll sit and wait and whatthehell—”

  Car horn now. Tires screeching, sliding. My father, howling.

  The phone trembled in my hand, its speaker overpowered by the explosive clap of an impact … and then shredding, squealing metal. Steel laughter.

  The line went dead. We stared at each other, immobilized, disbelieving.

  From above, from the ceiling: tktktktk.

  And then the lights flickered

  The lights blinked off, the entire apartment black now, inkswimming

  The cat hissed

  Lucas moaned, horrified

  Light now, on the table, something buzzing on the table

  Bzzzzz

  Richard Drake’s phone, screen glowing

  Bzzzzz

  Vibrating

  Bzzzzz

  INCOMING CALL

  Bzzzzz

  SOPHRONIA POOLE

  In my ear, so close, like a lover

  Tktktk.

  The three of us moved together. Wrenched open the front door. Pounded down the apartment stairs.

  Screaming.

  22

  We scrabbled down the concrete front steps of our building into a world of darkness. Every light bulb on this block of Avenue B was dead. People around us yelled and cursed with frustration. The sound-scape of the city played kick-drum backbeat to our high, ragged breathing. The wind howled.

  Lucas was gasping, his limber knees bent, his pose feral. Rachael’s eyes burned bright with confusion. I was sweating, bone cold, paralyzed by panic and fright and a sudden certainty that’d I’d been wrong all along, that the thing was here, alive, snaking around us, constricting.

  “What the hell’s going on, Z?” Rachael screamed. “What’s happening?”

  “Blackout,” I said. “I don’t know.”

  Oh yes, you do. Tell the bitch she’s been damned, that she’ll be devoured, that you did it, Zach, you killed her just like you killed Emilio, cursssed cursss—

  “LOOK!” Lucas wailed.

  He pointed north. Far beyond our block—and the darkened block beyond that—was East 14th Street. Blue and red strobes flashed on the horizon, from its major intersection.

  “Dad’s accident!”

  “Luc, you don’t know th—”

  But he took off at full speed, not listening. The door of Seventh City Comics, a ground-floor shop in our neighboring building, swung open. Blake Lafferty, Seventh City’s owner, dashed onto the sidewalk, swearing at the blackout. Lucas was nearly on him, about to plow into—

  Lucas leaped sideways, his body soaring parallel to the ground. His hands slapped onto the metal light pole by the curb, and his body tucked into a ball, sneakers screaming toward the pole. Their treads slammed into the metal—bong!—and he shoved off at an angle, flying past Blake like an agile tree monkey. Lucas somersaulted on the sidewalk, found his footing and tore off north again, toward the intersection.

  This all happened in the span of an eye blink.

  “Come on!” I yelled to Rachael.

  We followed him, shouldering past a wide-eyed Blake.

  Lucas was an urban kangaroo. He bounded, rolled and slid past pedestrians, every footfall a close call, every leap reckless and magnificent. The world was his Autobahn, his junglegym. Store awning supports became monkey bars. Fire hydrants, rocket launch pads.

  We ran and ran, screaming his name.

  My brother did not see the shopping cart until it was too late. The homeless man’s cart, overflowing with cans and clothes, rattled directly into Lucas’ path—and from my vantage point a quarter-block away, I thought he was done. But Lucas pushed further, faster and dove … forward.

  Again, his hands slapped home first, gripping the top edge of the metal basket … and in an instant—stretched thin like taffy—his arms took over, wrenching his torso skyward. My eyes freeze-framed him there, a Central Park handstander, a Cirque de Soleil performer … and then his momentum propelled him forward, and his hands were free. His body backflipped, feet smacking safely onto the concrete.

  But he tumbled. He smashed into a cluster of strutting boys, none of them a day over seventeen. They toppled like tenpins, howling. Lucas was up now by the street curb, patting the boys, manically barking “dookle, sorry man, dookle, sorry, real sorry.” One of them shoved him. Lucas flopped into the arms of another boy. This one punched him in the face.

  My brother reeled, snatching at a third boy. He grabbed the kid’s jacket and—in a blurred miracle maneuver—performed a simultaneous foot-sweep and toss. The kid blasted into the puncher, and they went down again.

  The first kid pulled a gun.

  “Fuckin’ cap you, yo!”

  I barely heard the gunshots over my screams.

  Either Lucas was fast, or the kid had lousy aim. The three bullets went wild, one of them splintering a store window across the street. And that’s where Lucas was bolting now, into traffic, away from the danger, still heading toward East 14th. His body made a graceful slide across a car’s hood, like a ‘70s cop-show hero.

  The world around us plummeted into pandemonium. Bystanders ran from the gunfire, others dropped to the pavement. Still others rushed toward storefront doors, bottlenecking the entrances. The block had gone raving mad.

  “Coi
ncidence!” Rachael yelled as we ran. Her voice was raw, manic.

  “What?”

  We were in the street now, dashing alongside the cars, questing for a gap in which to cross.

  “Rationally explainable,” she gasped. “The pictures, timing—yes—timing, all bad timing, the call, blackout, call on the phone, call from a dead person, not dead, battery’s bad, transistors going, we saw that earlier, bad screen, cracked case, number belongs to someone elll—”

  She stumbled and spun, her body flailing into the street. My goddess’ magenta hair glowed neon. Her glasses glittered like a mirror ball.

  Headlights.

  “NO!” I bellowed.

  I leapt beside her, snatched at her arm. The tires screamed.

  The car’s grille stopped inches from her face.

  I pulled her up and we crossed the remainder of Avenue B, still tracking Lucas, ignoring the verbal diarrhea spewing from the terrified driver’s mouth.

  Tracking. Hunting.

  Oh yes, I thought. Drake was right. It’s here. It’s real. We’re all being hunted now.

  We finally arrived at the intersection of B and East 14th. I was reeling on an adrenaline high, wheezing, legs burning. Rachael gasped beside me, her face pale and sweaty.

  The cityscape here was soaked by the strobes of a police cruiser, stopped in the center of the intersection. The Crown Vic’s rear bumper was a crushed, mangled mess. Behind the cruiser was a black BMW, its hood crumpled. Smoke billowed from beneath the steel.

  Lucas stood by the Beamer. He’d been right. Dad was there, pressing a handkerchief against his bleeding nose. The cop was gone; I figured he’d responded to the gunfire.

  “You’re okay,” Dad said as he saw me approach. He sidestepped Lucas and strode toward me. “Thank God. Now do you believe me? What I said about Grace?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” I said. “I’m just glad—”

  “You’re going to tonight, young man.” He threw the handkerchief onto the asphalt. “This gets settled tonight.”