by Cat Knight
Julia envied Alden’s soft snoring. He was asleep, and she wanted to join him.
Yet, two voices inside her head would not allow it. Well, three voices actually. There was the GET OUT woman and the GO AWAY man.
And while those voices floated around inside her mind, the third was the one that pulled her down into the depths of her darkest being.
A snarky nasty voice that predicted her failure, that promised a loss so monumental, that she and Alden would never sleep soundly again. It was the sound of that one, that she couldn’t abide.
Thoughts of failure hit at her resilience.
Your glass is always half empty.
Better plan for the worst, it’s gonna happen.
There’s a storm cloud above you and it’s gonna reign failure down.
All you ever get from life is a sock full of coal.
Alden will wake up one day and realise he’s made a mistake.
Julia hated how those thoughts popped in and wondered why her own voice told her it was so. The voice robbed her of sleep and of joy and of every happy moment. But try as she might she couldn’t banish it.
As her eyes finally closed, she thought about how bad things could get.
Chapter Six
Julia made sure she reached the studio before anyone else. She didn’t know why that felt important, but it did. As she walked down the hall to her office, she half expected a voice to greet her, or rather, to frighten her away. When nothing happened, she was as surprised as if there actually had been a voice. Carefully she opened the door to her office, looked all around making sure no one waited. Then, she put down her bag and went to the break room.
Making tea had a soothing effect. Routines were like that. Find a good habit and keep it going. She had just poured her first cup when Ears arrived. Ears preferred coffee in the morning, and he drank godawful instant crystals that tasted like dirty dish water to Julia. Of course, the crystals sort of went with Ears’ outfits which looked straight out of a second-hand store.
“We have a session today?” Ears asked.
“No, why?” she answered.
“Rattler’s here.”
“Where?”
“In the studio. I saw him as I fired up the board.”
“I’ll check it out.”
Julia carried her tea into the studio where Rattler was hooking up his guitar.
“Excuse me,” she said. “I don’t believe we’re recording today.”
Rattler grinned, his cowboy hat pulled down. “I know. I thought maybe I could play for a spell. People around my flat are kind of tired of the music. If you think they’re a mite backwards, I’d agree. After all, a good bass is mellow.”
Julia thought a moment and shrugged. “I don’t mind. But don’t bother Ears. He’s working.”
“Yeah, I figured. It turned out hokey-dokey, right?”
“So far, so good.”
“Great. I put some bodacious music on that sucker.”
“Right.”
Julia half waved and headed for her office. She met Ears in the hall.
“Rattler is practicing,” she said. “If he wants to hear, turn on the speakers, but don’t record him. Oh, don’t tell him about our ghost either.”
“I wasn’t going to,” Ears said. “I’ll excise that little piece and work on a patch.”
“Don’t get rid of it. I may want to listen to it again.”
“It’s all yours.”
Julia set her tea on the desk, sat down and turned on her computer waiting until it flashed on. She turned away for a moment and looked out the window at the ponderous construction vehicles. Something told her that she should be outside, some place safe and lovely. She ignored that something and turned back to her computer. That was when she saw the message plastered in big, red letters across her screen.
GO NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
For a long moment, Julia couldn’t move. She merely stared. She was like a fish mesmerized by the bait, a moth drawn to a flame. The words were plain and final, their meaning straightforward. Someone wanted her out. It was that simple.
She summoned the courage to tap a key, and the message disappeared.
“What the hell?” Julia’s voice had risen a decibel and sounded as scratchy are Ears voice.
She tapped a second key, and nothing happened, so she tapped several more. Julia was almost panting in fear, but the message was gone. She ran her fingers through her hair and grabbed her tea. She had to figure out what was happening. More importantly, she had to find out who was making it happen. She spun away from the computer and tried to think.
The message wasn’t there when she arrived, was it? No… but then, her computer wasn’t on then either. She didn’t think so anyway. And while she was making tea, two people had come in—Ears and Rattler.
One of them must have left the message for her, but why? She spun back to the computer. What was happening?
She trusted both Ears and Rattler, but it now looked as if one or the other had something to hide.
Whoever it was had not only put the ghost on the recording but had monkeyed with her computer. Which one? She didn’t think asking would produce the answer. So, how could she tell? She remembered that she had half the video to review. Maybe the answer was there. Sipping her tea, she pulled up the video and watched.
Chapter Seven
Rattler shook a pill into his palm and started to put the cap back on the vial. Just one? He wasn’t feeling all that good, so he shook a second pill into his hand. He tossed both pills into his mouth before he added the cap to the vial and the vial to the box. He replaced the box. So far, so good. This was the perfect place.
“GET OUT!”
Rattler spun at the voice, his eyes darting all over the basement. What the hell was that? He stood frozen, wondering if the voice had been real or something conjured up by the second pill he had taken. He shivered, and he was pretty sure it was the pill.
“Who’s there?” he whispered.
No one answered.
For a moment, Rattler wondered if he should retrieve his stash and find another hiding place. This basement was suddenly not so friendly. Hadn’t he felt a hand the last time? And now voices.
“LEAVE!”
He stared at the boxes because the voice seemed to come from that direction. But there couldn’t be anyone. No one had been there when he came down, and he sure as snake’s eyes hadn’t seen anyone pass. This was crazy. Crazy.
He had been there before. But he had conquered that, hadn’t he?
Crazy.
As he watched, the boxes quivered. From bottom to top, each and every one vibrated, as if they were attuned to some sound he couldn’t hear. He knew there was construction on the outside, but this didn’t feel like construction. Bulldozers wouldn’t cause the boxes to quiver and shimmy. For a moment, he thought maybe the boxes would come alive somehow, and alive they would be things he couldn’t handle.
Or was it his eyes?
He blinked and closed his eyes for a good ten seconds. When he opened them, his blood ran cold. Several boxes had wiggled out of place. But not all, just some. And they seemed to have a pattern of some sort. He stared and let his eyes run up and down them.
LEAVE!
The extended boxes spelled “LEAVE”.
Rattler was scared, spooked, frightened in a way he hadn’t been frightened in years. He had to get out, escape. This was…insane.
Slowly, he backed up the steps, keeping a careful watch.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Julia needed more tea. She had found two times when Rattler had placed his hand inside his bag for a few seconds, and when he pulled it out, it was empty. Odd. She stood and grabbed her cup. As she passed the studio, she noticed that it was empty. She stuck her head into the control room.
“Did Rattler leave?” Ears, headphones on, didn’t even look over, so she walked up, and tapped the board. He pulled down one side and frowned at her.
“Did Rattler leave?” she asked.
“Must have,” Ears said.
Julia looked through the glass, and at that moment spotted Rattler’s guitar. If she knew anything it was that Rattler would never leave behind his guitar. With sudden urgency, she turned and ran out of the room. She met Rattler in the hall.
“Where have you been?” she asked.
“Loo,” he answered.
“It’s the other way,” she said.
“Yeah, I know. I got all turned around. New place, ya know?”
He stepped past her and continued up the hall. For some reason, she thought he looked shaky, nervous. Why was that? Was he sick? She watched a moment before she raced to her office. She ran to the desk and tapped a key, half expecting a message. But the screen showed nothing but the paused video.
If Rattler hadn’t been in her office, where had he been? And what had he been doing?
She used her password to lock her computer before she went for tea. As she passed the studio, she saw Rattler packing up his guitar.
In the break room, she pulled the milk from the fridge and sniffed it as her mother had taught her to do. Her mother never ruined a cup of tea with sour milk.
And the milk Julia sniffed was indeed sour, which seemed odd. Hadn’t she just bought it? She looked at the use-by date and discovered that the milk should have been good for another week. Was the fridge not working? She opened the door and stuck in her hand. Felt cold enough. She checked the freezer. Ice. That was a good sign. She surmised the date on the carton was wrong, or something had happened during transport. She poured the milk down the drain and decided that tea without milk wasn’t all that bad. She was almost to her office when she heard the voice.
“GET OUT!”
She stopped cold. It was the woman’s voice. Julia was pretty sure it was the same woman’s voice. Julia waited to see if it would come again. Her hand shook, and the tea sloshed over the rim, running across her hand. She hardly noticed. She wanted to hear it again.
But it didn’t come. She ran into her office and put her cup on the desk. Then, she went back to the hall and looked high and low. She had reasoned that there had to be a speaker somewhere.
Or a device, something that spoke the words. Because if there wasn’t a device, then she had to doubt her own sanity.
Hearing voices wasn’t in the realm of the normal. Hearing voices was out there on far end of the bell curve, out there where the loonies giggled and sanity became a distant memory. She looked for more than a few minutes.
She found nothing.
That was bad.
She bit her finger, bit far harder than she should, but she had to make sure this wasn’t some sort of extended dream. She had to make sure it was real. Her aching finger said it was real. She was about to return to her office when Ears charged down the hall.
“What in the bloody hell did you do?” Ears demanded.
“What are you talking about?” Julia answered.
Ears sputtered in anger. “C….come with me!” He whirled and marched away. Julia had no choice but to follow.
Inside the control room, Ears handed Julia a pair of headphones. “Listen!”
Julia put on the headphones as Ears started working the board.
“GET OUT” filled her earphones, and she wondered why Ears wanted her to hear it again. She was about to take off the headphones when she heard it again.
“GET OUT”.
She frowned. This was getting old.
“GET OUT”
She tapped her fingers on the board.
“GET OUT”
Very, very old.
“GET OUT”
She took off her headphones and stared at Ears.
“You heard it?” Ears asked.
“We heard it yesterday,” Julia said. “Right after you slowed it down.”
“Not these,” Ears said. “These are all new, and they’re not slowed down.”
Julia couldn’t speak right away. She was processing the information. “They’re new, and they’re all in the recording?”
Ears nodded.
“How many?”
“Last count…one thousand, four hundred, and forty-one. I used a music recognition app, so there might be some dupes.”
“All right,” she said. “Let’s start at the beginning. Tell me what happened.”
“I cut out the ghost. And I patched in music, and I thought I was almost finished. It sounded good too, real good. So, I saved the file because I didn’t want to lose it. Then, I rewound and listened to the patch. That’s when I heard it.”
“Get out,” she said.
“Yes, precisely, ‘get out’. For a moment, I thought maybe I had pulled up the wrong file.
I make that mistake once in a while, but not when I’m being this careful. Then, I heard the second one, then the third, and then…” His voice faded.
“And you don’t know how it happened?”
He shook his head. “What do you want me to do?”
“Do you have clean copy? I mean, one with only one, er, ghost on it?”
“I think so.”
“Pull it up. No, wait, transfer it to some other device. Another phone or computer or something. Then, pull it up. See if the ghost has multiplied on that copy also.”
“Will do. And if it’s only one ghost?”
“Keep that file away from the big board. Put it some place safe. If we need to, we can take it to another mixer. Got that?”
He nodded as he stood. “I swear I didn’t do it,” he said. “I don’t know how it happened.”
“I know,” Julia said. “I know. Just get us an almost clean file. We’ll work from there.”
She returned to her office. As she found her seat, she tried to wrap her brain around the ghost or ghosts. How many did Ears find? Over a thousand? How in bloody, bloody hades did a thousand errors creep into their file? Well, not a thousand different ghosts, a thousand copies of the same ghost.
What did that mean? She decided the next step would require a professional, the best professional she could find. She picked up her phone.
Minutes later, Ears appeared in the doorway. “I made three copies,” he said. “On three separate devices. So, I think that covers us. Can I go home? I’m really not feeling all that great.”
“Yes, of course,” Julia answered. “Go home. Rest. Tomorrow, we’ll figure out a way to finish the project.”
“We will.”
She watched him go, and having a second thought, she rose, followed Ears to the front door and locked it behind him. Why? She wasn’t exactly sure, but she suddenly didn’t want anyone to surprise her.
You’re getting paranoid Julia.
In her office, Julia pulled out a bottle of whiskey and poured a dollop of whiskey into her cup. As she swirled the whiskey, she knew she had to reason her way out of her predicament. Someone was deliberately sabotaging her business, and as far as she could see, there weren’t many suspects.
She pulled a pad and pen across the desk. The top name on her list was…Ears.
There was no denying that Ears was capable of adding a ghost to the file. In fact, he was capable of adding a thousand ghosts. But, why would he? His job depended on her. His income depended on her. What did he stand to gain? Might he hate her so much he would kill her business for spite? That didn’t make sense.
More, she didn’t believe that Ears was a good enough actor to fool her. He seemed genuinely beside himself. While he was the first on the list, surely there was a more likely suspect.
She took another sip and wrote “Rattler”.
Julia was not at all sure Rattler had the ability to plant a ghost inside one of her files. But Rattler certainly had the wherewithal to plant something that would create sounds.
And there were those seconds during the gig when he stuck his hand into his bag. And wasn’t he there in the morning? To practice? And he had turned the wrong way when coming out of the loo? What was that about?
But it was Rattler, and he needed her studio as muc
h or more than Ears. So, why would he insert a thousand, stupid ghosts into her system? It was insane.
She pushed the pad aside and grabbed her cup. God, how she wished she could fill the cup and keep refilling it until she forgot everything about her crazy ghost. She might have followed that wish if her phone hadn’t buzzed. Her professional had arrived. She smiled as she ran to unlock the door.
Chapter Eight
By quitting time, Julia had pushed aside the cup as well as the pad. She really didn’t like whiskey that much, and she definitely didn’t want to get drunk. Luckily, her desk no longer shook from the construction. That was when her professional stepped into the office.
“Great news,” the young woman said. “Your system is completely clean. No sign of any intrusion, no malware, no Trojan horses, nothing. Your software is completely up to date. That includes your security software and fire wall. You’re as safe as Scotland Yard.”
While that was good news for the young woman, it was hardly what Julia wanted to hear. She had been certain that someone had hacked into her system and spread viruses like a bee spreads pollen.
“Are you sure,” Julia asked. “I thought that maybe we had been hacked.”
“Not a chance. You’re fine.”
Julia thanked the young woman and said good-bye. Julia was far from pleased.
She had spent pounds she didn’t have to get no closer to the solution to her problem. If her system wasn’t hacked, then she had been sabotaged, and the possible saboteurs were as unlikely as fish in the Sahara. The only benefit of the professional was that Julia could cross off a system error.
“LEAVE!”
Her head popped up. She looked to the door, which was just as empty as it had been five minutes earlier. A chill ran down her spine. Looking across her desk, she grabbed her stapler. It wasn’t all that heavy, but it was the only thing that remotely resembled a weapon.
“Who’s there?” she asked.
That she received no answer didn’t really bother her. She hadn’t expected one. She scooted around the desk, stapler in hand, and skipped to the door. Taking a deep breath, she jumped into the hall, ready to hammer anyone lurking there.
