“I don’t suppose you know anything about breaking and entering.”
Emma didn’t respond for a few moments.
“Where are the reels?”
A steady mist rained down on Julia as she walked through the city’s dark industrial center, where grey buildings idled as they awaited working hours. Julia wanted to twirl her hair or bite her nails, anything to occupy her nervousness, but the strands were coming out in thick locks, and three of her fingernails had already detached. Instead, she repeatedly wiped water from her glasses, a useless task which only defined the amorphous shapes surrounding her for a few seconds before the lenses were saturated again. When she could identify nothing, every shape was Hans.
In her weakened state, the portable projector she carried was even more difficult to lug than usual, but she was degrading so quickly that she didn’t know how long she could make it. A thin layer of vinyl protected it from the water. She hoped it was enough.
Finally, she saw Emma huddled under a streetlight, tiny droplets of rain visible in its yellow glow. If the older woman noticed her horrific state, she made no mention of it, and Julia could scarcely meet her eyes to search for truth.
She led Emma down the street until they reached the archive. The lobby glowed faintly, but the rest of the building was as cold and dead as the others surrounding it. The brutalist facade wasn’t much to look at even in daylight. While the Eye Filmmuseum jutted up gloriously along the waterfront like a spaceship blasting off, this offshoot had no reason to appeal itself to tourists.
Inside stood the silhouette of a man in a hat, waiting between the two double doors. Though she couldn’t make out his face, his eyes bored into her, looking through the tiny pieces of flesh he’d stripped away. He turned his head to her left, at Emma, then back to Julia.
“Can you see anybody inside?” Julia asked, testing her.
“Not yet. Do you?”
Silence resumed for a moment.
“No,” she lied, not knowing why. A desire to tell the truth surged, but she caught it on the tip of her tongue and suppressed it. “Come on.”
They reached the front door, and on an impulse, Julia opened it.
“Why is it unlocked?” Emma asked.
Julia ignored her and pushed forward through the door, toward Hans and his reels, but Emma hesitated, eyes watering in fear.
“I—you don’t have to stay,” Julia said. “You can go if you want . . .”
It would have been okay if Emma had turned away, relieving in some small way, but she didn’t, and this comforted Julia to an extent she didn’t understand. The woman followed through the doors and into the archive. Julia relished the warmth of her presence.
Nobody was there. Inexplicably, the security guard at the front desk was absent, and nothing was locked. Julia walked quietly through the building’s empty hallways, Emma behind her, awaiting the moment when an alarm would go off or a rough voice would shout, “You there, stop!”
The doors to the archive hallways, the individual rooms, all unlocked. How had Hans done this? It was a silly question. How had he done any of it?
“Isn’t this dangerous?” Emma asked. “Anybody could come in and steal these things. Aren’t old reels worth a lot?”
“Some are.” She started to explain further, but her thoughts dissolved to mush in her mind. She stopped, clutched her forehead, tried to think straight.
Hans peeked from distant hallway corners, ajar doorways, never getting close. She felt his eyes on her, sure any false move would further incur his wrath. It was hard not to look. Would it matter if Emma knew she could see him? Maybe not, but the desire to conceal her insanity beckoned. It made him feel less real.
When they reached the hallway that housed the archival rooms, she easily knew which one to enter. Hans stood, half in, half out of the doorway.
“In here,” she told Emma.
Inside, Hans lurked beside her reels, arms folded. No longer obscuring his face, he watched them enter, his mouth a straight line. His eyes pierced Julia’s mind, as if to say, you’d better hurry. There were hundreds of other reels in the room, but she paid them no mind. Nothing else was housed in the archive, no posters, windows, or seats. Just a plain, cool room to keep the reels safe.
“These are the—”
Julia cut off her words when she felt something hard and small come loose in her mouth.
A tooth. She spat it into her hand and stuck it in her pocket, turning away to keep Emma from noticing. A few steps toward the stack of reels made her go woozy again. Coppery blood dripped into her mouth from the tooth cavity, and for an instant, the entire room flashed red.
Her stomach lurched, but there was nothing to vomit. She hadn’t eaten in two days.
“Julia?”
Julia turned to Emma, who stared at her in horror, as if now, under fluorescent lights, she had a full view of the person Julia had become. The person who was afraid to look at herself. Julia’s eyes blinked in and out of focus.
“We have to play them.”
“Now? Here?”
“I’m not gonna make it much longer.”
“Yes, that’s why you need to go to a hospital!”
Squatting on the floor to maintain her balance, Julia ignored her and unfolded the projector, then told Emma to bring her the first reel. Emma did as she was told, and Julia prepared it. Her hands were so clammy it nearly slipped through her fingers. At her instructions, Emma hit the lights, and Julia flipped the switch on the projector. It hummed to life.
The first woman. Hans’s wife? Emma’s great-grandmother?
The relief was immediate. Her nausea passed. Like an opiate entering her bloodstream, euphoria consumed the pain. She teared up, and when she wiped her eyes, the liquid was barely pink.
She started laughing. She must have looked insane, but that only made her laugh harder. Emma said nothing, and Julia didn’t bother to look at her until the reel ended.
Emma’s eyes were two full moons. She trembled.
“Another reel,” Julia said, no longer caring how she was perceived.
“I don’t—”
“Another reel.”
Reluctantly, Emma handed one to her, and Julia played it. A child. More bliss. More laughter. More intoxicating relief.
“Next one.”
“Julia, please.”
“Give it to me!”
After three reels, Emma started crying.
Julia ignored her. She stood, walked to the light switch and turned it on. Then she looked at the fingers still without nails, felt the empty spot in her mouth where the tooth was before.
Nothing had gotten better.
When she turned back, Emma picked up a reel, held it like a venomous snake.
“I think we should destroy these.”
At that, Hans whipped his head toward Emma.
“No,” Julia said. “We can’t! I can’t.”
“These are . . . fucked up! I don’t think you see what they’re doing to you. We have to destr—”
“Don’t!”
Emma lurched forward and grabbed several more reels, but Julia was too invigorated to let her get away. She tackled Emma in the doorway, sending the reels flying into the hall. They smacked against the walls and linoleum floor. Emma fell too, but Julia paid her no mind, instead dropping to her knees and gathering the dented canisters. Hans watched her, and she no longer hid her gaze. She turned, stared into his grey eyes, and felt the bridge of time warp between them. He smiled with teeth like television static.
“Please, fix me!” she said. “I’m playing them, I’m playing them!”
Emma moved aside as Julia reentered the room and faced the projector toward a blank wall again. She flipped it on. One of the children appeared and spun around and around and around.
“Julia,” said Emma gently, “Stop. Don’t let this haunt you forever.”
“Let it?” Julia asked, crying again. “Like I have a choice?”
“Destroy them,” she said. “I
think . . . I think if the reels are all gone, maybe you’ll be okay.”
“Maybe? And what if it kills me? You don’t know a goddamn thing! It should have been you!” She jutted a finger at Emma.
“Julia, I’m sorry.” The older woman stepped back.
Julia put a hand to her heart and felt her pulse slow as the film’s effects took a deeper hold.
“I’m . . . sorry too. Please, please just sit and watch with me. I don’t want to be alone.”
Emma sat on the floor next to her, placed a hand on Julia’s shoulder. For the next several hours, the two watched reel after reel. Men, women, and children who should have disappeared into the annals of history. Julia tried not to notice that her body still wasn’t changing back to normal, that Hans kept watching behind them. Time stretched to agonizing lengths, but even when Emma shifted in discomfort, looked on the verge of speaking, she said nothing and waited patiently for the end.
When the last reel approached its conclusion, Julia looked at her hands. They were the same, just as bad as before. Fingernails were still missing. Her tooth hadn’t regrown. She ran her finger across her phone scanner to no avail.
“What are you doing?” Emma asked.
“It didn’t work. I can’t undo it.”
Hans walked behind Emma, looked to make sure Julia was watching. He raised a hand above the older woman’s head and held it there for a moment. Julia stared up at him.
“What are you looking at?” Emma asked.
“I . . . you . . .”
Emma suddenly made a strange choking sound. Eyes bulged. Her lips opened and closed like a fish pulled from water. Beside her, the reel ended and the projector spat out plain white light. Emma’s face went pale, her eyes grey. She tried to speak, but her teeth dissolved into bone dust. It spilled from her mouth to the floor while Julia watched in bewilderment.
The woman’s skin sunk inward as if all the moisture was sucked from it, like Julia’s face in the hospital reel: pulled until every patch was concave, until flesh became ash. Locks of blonde hair fell to the floor.
Above Emma, Hans still held out his hand. Now, Julia could see his face more clearly, the details in his eyes and mustache and pores. He looked at her with more intensity than ever before, a gaze so potent it pierced her from the distant past. A look that said, you could have avoided this. I suggest you don’t let it happen again.
Soon Emma was nothing but a skeleton beneath a pile of clothing. Then the bones disintegrated into more dust. Julia buried her head in her hands to gather herself.
“Why? She didn’t do anything!”
Hans stepped closer. When she looked up, his eyes widened into perfect circles of strobing blacks and whites. She couldn’t turn away. In them she saw an infinite plane of time; chronology jumbled until linearity became meaningless. But somewhere in the swirling clouds of static was a circular motion, a cyclical ratio indicating order.
His eyes brightened until they were so blinding she had to turn away. When she finally looked again, beams of light projected from his sockets onto the wall behind her. He hummed like a machine, the sound spilling from his fully agape mouth.
The image of her face covered the wall, her features contorted into agonized horror. The peaks and valleys in her expression were lined with textures only time would bring.
The camera panned across a living room, turned to a young woman seated before a screen. Beside her, a projector cast an image she’d seen before—Hans and his sign: play us forever. The film disintegrated as it spun on beside the girl, who turned wide-eyed to Julia, stammering inaudible excuses, face pained by guilt.
That face—so familiar yet so distant. A face half her own that would not exist for years, one she hadn’t been sure ever would exist. A girl she didn’t yet know but already adored. The images disappeared, and his eyes went dark. She buried her face in her hands.
“Why?” She wanted to scream the word, but she barely muttered it.
The name of his film entered her mind: The Balance of Decay. The loop of punishing time spinning eternally, degrading what remained of her until there was nothing left. The weight of infinity pressed down on her—the past, present, and future pulling in all directions at once. In an entropic universe, there is no restoration without destruction, no give without take.
When she finally looked up, Hans was gone. She shook her head involuntarily, again and again. As she packed up the projector, then gathered the reels, she muttered the same phrase.
“Never again, never again, never again, please, Hans, I won’t let it happen again.”
She scooped Emma’s ashes into the woman’s clothing and left to toss the bundle into the chilly waters of a canal.
“I’m so sorry . . .”
It wasn’t until she stashed the projector and all the reels away in her apartment that she finally looked in the mirror. Staring back was the self she knew, the one from a week ago. But in her eyes she saw the slow decay of her body, the rate at which nature would unravel her into bone and stardust and then come for who was next. Until then, she would see a scar that would never heal, that would reopen again and again and again as she played those reels until forever’s end finally came.
ALEX WOLFGANG is a horror author from Oklahoma City. When not reading and writing horror, you’ll find him camping, playing the drums, watching movies with his wife, and backpacking around the world. His debut collection Splinter and Other Stories is available now. He’s been a member of HOWL Society since May 2020 and is proud to call it his horror home. Follow him on Twitter.
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Illustration by P.L. McMillan
Well, Yer Honor, I s’pose that was when it all began—with that warnin my grandmammy gave me some sixty years ago. She looked me right in the eye, wavin that switch in her hand, sayin, “Boy, ya stay away from Gooseberry Bramble, ya hear?”
She said them words near a hunnerd times that summer, back when I stayed at her ol lean-to out in the Black Cobb backwoods while my pappy, come to find out, went philanderin.
But, Yer Honor, if I may address these folks before us today—
Y’all folks know, like any youngin with a noggin full a dreams an desire, that warnin from my grandmammy only tickled my curiosities—built em up like a heck lotta scratchin grows a skeeter bite.
An if y’all ever had somebody put the fear a God in y’all durin yer childhood, no matter if it was with a switch, belt, or open hand, then y’all know what I mean when I say it wun’t even til the sixth or seventh time my grandmammy fell asleep in her rockin chair on the porch that I finally screwed up the courage to sneak off to Gooseberry Bramble.
I member that afferrnoon like it was yesterday, tip-toein an squeakin down them crooked porch steps ev’ry time my grandmammy took a gulp a air, snorin ev’ry sev’ral seconds or so. But when I finally got to the foot a them steps, feelin them pine needles crunchin unner my shoes, I reckoned I was scot-free. Had the same crooked grin I got now, too, cept back then I wun’t much more than two beanpole legs with a wild bunch a blond hair. But I figure all y’all men out there member bein boys, so y’all know that feelin I had—headin out fer an adventure, even if it meant riskin a whuppin.
Now, I reckon y’all think the last thing this murder trial needs is some ramblin ol geezer yarnin bout his boyhood, drawin out the proceedins. Seems like no matter what I say, y'all got yer sights set on Mr. Ramblewood over there fer the deaths a them dozen children. But I might just change yer minds, so listen close. When I swore on that Bible just now, I swore to tell y’all the truth—an that’s what I’m fixin to do, so help me God.
Anyhow, back to that summer affernoon. So some half hour later, affer I got down them steps an done a whole lotta runnin an hurryin—mosely cause I didn’t know when my grandmammy’d startle awake an come a-hollerin—I made it to the river.
I member standin there on the shoreline next to that ol fishin boat tied up to a tree. Never did find out who owned it. But there I was, dog-tired an covered in scrapes an s
cratches from my neck down to my ankles cause I ran through all them nettle patches an oak scrub. Made it to that shoreline in record time, though, an I member standin there, seein them pine trees wavin in the wind above a patch a gooseberry bushes right out cross the water.
Now, all y’all know that sensation ya git when yer somewhere ya don’t belong. Specially as a child. An maybe it was a chill risin up off the water, or some kinda breeze, but as I looked out at that thicket cross the river, a shiverin somethin awful ran up my back—like a stranger done snapped off an icicle an slid it up my spine, all terrible an slow. Affer that I reckoned goin in them bushes wun’t a good idea. There was somethin over there I wun’t s’posed to see.
But how come my grandmammy got to know bout it an not me? I wun’t a baby no more. Considerin all the chores I was doin round the lean-to—choppin wood, fixin fence, haulin scrap—I was halfway to manhood.
An heck, by the time I got through all that scrub, my tummy was a rumblin anyhow. Them berries were gonna hit the spot, no matter what was over there.
So I unhitched that ol boat an went cross that river.
Folks, I’ll tell ya even today I don’t blame my grandmammy none fer fallin asleep when she shoulda been watchin me. She done her best to warn me bout that place in ev’ry damn way she known. Now some a y’all sittin out there might reckon me a simple man—or a simple boy at that time—specially fer not listenin to my grandmammy, or fer not learnin nothin from a whuppin neither, but I was sharp as a tack—an I still am to this day. Y’all can see I ain’t got no hair an I ain’t got many teeth neither—hell, my eyesight is just bout near gone, too—but l know fer damn certain I got my mind. That ain’t gone just yet.
Since alotta y’all folks got faces like fresh pails a mornin milk, I can’t reckon ya knew my grandmammy. But if y’all was acquainted, then ya’ll woulda known she'd drum up any ol story to keep a youngin like me outta trouble. Such as tellin me if I stuck my hand in her pickle jar one too many times then my whole arm’d turn green. But I was as slick a boy there ever was, an I learned right quick her warnins were just some made-up hogwash, specially given all them pickles I done snuck outta the cellar that summer. No green arm to show fer it neither.
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