A Cat, a Hat, and a Piece of String

by Joanne Harris

  That crib. That bloody crib, he thought. Standing there so quietly. Looking as if it belonged there, as if there could possibly be a reason for all this paraphernalia. And those curtains drawn across it, like a tent, hiding whatever was inside.

  Of course, there was no baby, he thought. There couldn’t be a baby. The baby had never existed outside his wife’s desperate imagination. Cookie, she’d called it. Kooky was right. Whatever was in there – a teddy, a doll – was just a substitute for what she had lost, a symptom of her unreason, proof that he was right to interfere—

  He would confront her, Jack told himself. He did still love her, after all. Once he’d forced her to face the truth, then maybe they could try again, go back to the way they’d been before. He took a step towards the crib. The scent of sweet things intensified. A sugary, floury, milky scent, like pancake batter or cookie dough. Once more he thought he heard something shift and sigh behind the patterned curtain. Was there something alive in there? A rabbit, maybe even a cat?

  ‘Jack? What are you doing in here?’

  It was Maggie. Soundless in spite of her bulk, she must have come up behind him. He turned, feeling guilty despite himself. Mumbled something about being worried about her.

  ‘Worried?’ She smiled. ‘Well, as you can see, both of us are doing just fine.’

  ‘Both of you?’

  ‘Cookie and me.’

  Now Jack could stand it no longer. He turned and stepped up to the crib, reaching out a trembling hand to yank aside the curtain. The cupcake-printed fabric tore. A row of bells jingled merrily. Jack looked inside the crib, his mouth falling open in sudden surprise as he saw what was lying inside—

  Maggie smiled. ‘She’s perfect,’ she said. ‘Isn’t she, Jack?’

  Jack said nothing, but stared and stared.

  ‘I knew things would be OK if only I trusted my instincts. Sugar and spice and all things nice. That’s what little girls are made of. Isn’t that right, Cookie?’ Maggie smiled. Her doughy face was radiant. She reached down into the open crib and picked up what was lying there, and Jack began to back away, away from his wife and out of the room, feeling blindly for the door, almost tripping over the strings of fairy lights that twisted like vines over the floor of the living room.

  Maggie watched him go, and smiled. She thought it might take Jack some time to come to terms with fatherhood. She looked down at the baby again, and smelt that milky baby-smell. Sugar and spice and all things nice—

  And then she kissed the thing in her arms and said:

  ‘Hey, Cookie. Daddy’s here.’

  Ghosts in the Machine

  I wrote this story for my daughter, a great lover of Phantom of the Opera, who always believed that Christine Daaé ended up with the wrong man …

  HE ALWAYS TAKES the graveyard shift. He likes the dark and the solitude. The glow of the screen and a few LEDs are enough to mark his passing, and besides, he could do the work blindfold. He has been working here fifteen years, ever since he could patch a cable, and now he knows every inch of the place, every file in the archives. This man has nursed the studio from analog to digital. He is far more than an engineer, far more than a sound technician. To all intents and purposes, the man is Phantom Radio. He knows every secret, hears every word spoken on or off the airwaves. Every piece of equipment here has passed between his fingers.

  But to most of the day people, he is just the man who keeps the machine alive. Some know his voice from the sound box; few have ever seen his face. At night, there’s even less chance of that; the station runs on a skeleton staff, and the late shows are merely recordings, broadcast to give the illusion of life while the day people sleep at home in their beds and he can have the place to himself.

  This is when he is happiest. When he can be completely alone. In the lobby, there’s just one security guard; but he never pays attention to him, and from midnight to five in the morning, Phantom Radio whispers and hums with the seashell voices of ghosts, speaking from headphones in the dark, sending their message of fake goodwill to the sleepless and the desperate.

  One such sleepless listener is sitting at her computer right now. She calls herself Lady of Shalott; her real name is much more prosaic. She too is nocturnal – perhaps by choice – and she likes to hear the radio – the cheery, familiar voices, the music, the songs – as they clatter and chatter and chime against the giant screen of night.

  It’s true that things sound different at night. Even silence has a different tone; a resonance unheard by day. Her fingers on the pad beside her move with amazing precision, summoning sounds and images. Her face – almost close enough for her forehead to touch the screen – is bathed in a subaquatic glow. She is beautiful – though she does not know it; with the pallor of one who barely goes out by day; eyes blinking with electric stars. This is her favourite radio show; pre-recorded and broadcast between midnight and three every morning. It is nothing particularly special – just three hours of oldies strung together with late-night monologue – but sometimes, for her, there is something else. Something no one else knows about. At least, she presumes that no one knows. Who else listens, anyway? It’s only a local station.

  She sends in a request for a track. She does this quite often, sending her choice to requests@phantomradio.com. Even though the show isn’t live, she finds they always play her song. There must be someone, she tells herself, waiting for her e-mails. Tonight, she is feeling wistful, maybe even a little sad. What will she choose to match her mood? Something by the Carpenters, perhaps; sweet and sincere and maybe just a little hokey, like still believing in true love.

  Dear Phantom,

  Are you there?

  She types.

  Her computer has been adapted with a vocalizer and a refreshable Braille display. Through this tactile medium she can talk with people online. See them, darkly, through the glass. Hear their voices, like echoes of life that resonate through the world of the dead.

  None of it is real, of course. But the feel of the words at her fingertips, the texture of the Braille display, as familiar to her as the lines and scars on her own palm, brings with it a comfort that cannot be denied. The touchpad lets her read web pages through a series of raised pins that translate the text into a form that she can understand. She prefers it to the vocalizer; the synthetic voice is unpleasant, while the Braille display is pretty – pretty as beads, or rice in a jar, or the sound of rain on the rooftops.

  Dear Phantom,

  Are you still there?

  She types her message; mails it; waits – at her fingertips the web shifts and moves like a tapestry of pixels.

  What am I waiting for? she thinks. What do I think will happen?

  Sometimes she gets so tired, waiting here in front of the screen; feeling the world at her fingertips instead of confronting it face to face. She wonders what would happen if she simply turned the computer off and walked out into the world alone – and then she thinks better of it, and sighs, and returns her hand to the touchpad – that pad of raised pins that rise and fall according to the shapes on the screen, and which, with exquisite sensitivity, she interprets with her fingertips.

  Are you there?

  He thinks: Yes, I’m here.

  It’s something like divination; something like enchantment; and as she weaves she sings to herself, like a mermaid in a story, as if in her net she might one day catch a shimmering shoal of fallen stars.

  Of course, the screen only reflects. It isn’t quite reality. She knows this, and yet it is the closest she gets to the world of other people. The Lady of Shalott, she thinks; watching the world through a darkened glass; waiting for someone to pull her through; waiting for someone to see her face—

  He smiles to himself as he sorts through the mail. Few people ever write in to this, the midnight-to-three o’clock show. The graveyard shift, they call it; and he is happy to work it, ghost that he is, here in the familiar dark, away from their stares and their whispers.

  Most people find him difficul
t to look at in the daylight. It is not so much the shape of his face, which is eccentric, nothing more, but the birthmark that disfigures him, a slap in the face from an angry God.

  Some people are better than others at hiding their reactions. Some simply smile at him fixedly, as if attempting to compensate. Others never look at him directly, perpetually fixing their gaze on a point just beyond his head. Some are exaggeratedly cheery; others will do whatever they can to avoid being anywhere near him at all.

  Women and children are the worst: the children because of the fear in their eyes, the women because of their pity. Some women, he notices, seem to be curiously drawn to him – he has come to hate these especially. Middle-aged, overweight, nurturing types, who dream of taming a monster. These are the worst of the lot, he thinks, and does what he can to drive them away, although they are tenacious as weeds, seeing in his rudeness the germ of something ripe for redemption.

  The internet is his escape. No one needs to see him here. He can exist as an avatar; words on a screen; a voice in the dark. Here the world is his to explore; a world in which not only he, but no one has a face.

  He checks the mail again. There she is. LadyofShalott@gmail.com. She often sends in song requests; sometimes with a little note describing what she did today; or why she chose that particular track; or simply one of her whimsical thoughts—

  Dear Phantom (she always begins this way),

  Have you ever wondered what happens to music when it stops? The soundwaves keep on going, of course, so I guess it never stops at all. It just keeps spooling off into space, for anyone to catch who can. Wish upon a star, they say – but can’t I wish upon a song?

  He never writes back. The Phantom does not indulge in personal chat. But this has never deterred her. She never seems to need a reply. In fact, her notes are longer now than they were when she started to write to him. Perhaps it is the allure of the dark; the screen of the confessional. She tells him all kinds of personal things – everything except one thing, in fact; the reason she’s here in the first place, feeling her way into his world—

  I like the songs you play (she writes). I like the way you make them fit together, not just randomly, but in a way that tells stories. Do I ever hear your voice? Or is it just DJs recording links, while someone else makes the connections?

  It’s a question no one has asked him before. The voices on the airwaves – those cheery late-night chatterers – always get plenty of mail from their fans. But she seems much more interested in what’s going on behind the scenes. She’s smart, he thinks. She knows it’s a fake, cleverly rigged to make it sound like a live broadcast. Because the appeal of the graveyard show is all about the shared experience; the feeling that there’s someone there, talking away into the night, sharing time, sharing thoughts—

  Who’d stay up till three a.m. to listen to a recording?

  She would. Of course she would.

  Nowadays he has been taking more care in constructing those late-night playlists. He knows she listens attentively, and he tries to make it a challenging game, interspersing sly references to current events, to films, to plays, even sometimes to his dreams—

  Dear Phantom,

  Last night I thought you were lonely. So many sad, sad songs. So many tunes in D minor. Perhaps your name begins with a D? I try to imagine what it might be. David. Dominic. That’s not right. In fact, I don’t think you have a name. Phantoms shouldn’t have names, should they?

  And Phantoms shouldn’t have dreams, he thinks. Especially not dangerous dreams like this. He makes himself a cup of tea, then goes into the bathroom. Switches on the overhead light and slowly, deliberately, studies his face.

  He doesn’t do this often. But sometimes he must, just as sometimes in life a man has to suffer in order to grow. If she saw him now, he thinks, she would react like everyone else. She wouldn’t be able to help herself; and he would see that look in her eyes, that look of half pity, half disgust, and that would be the end of it. It has happened before. It always will. And yet – and yet—

  Dear Phantom,

  I wish—

  What does she wish? She wishes he would answer her. Better still, she wishes to hear his voice. The Braille display is always so bland, robbing words of inflection. She wishes she could know the sound of him; his dialect, the stress he puts on syllables, the texture of his words.

  Dear Phantom (she says),

  Do you know what I wish? I wish I could hear your voice. I’m very alert to voices. Accents, too – I can spot a fake in a crowd at two hundred paces.

  A fake, he thinks. Is that what I am? A monster who believes he’s a man? He wishes he could grant her wish. But that would be a mistake, he thinks. He’d never get away with it. To mess about with the broadcasts could end in his dismissal, and where would he go if he lost this job? What would he do in the human world?

  I wish—

  At least I can play her request, he thinks. That much is within my power. And yet—

  I wish, he thinks. I wish—

  The studio is empty and dark. The chair in which the DJ would sit is like a cradle of darkness. Behind it, there’s a baby grand, under a canvas cover. He pulls the cover from the piano. Fingers the smooth, cool rows of keys.

  Through the headphones, the seashell voice drones and hums and murmurs. It’s almost two; there’s nobody here; no one to report him. Who even listens in at this hour? A handful of insomniacs; a drunk; a depressive; a lonely young girl—

  Dear Phantom,

  Are you really there? I like to think you are, of course, but sometimes I find myself wondering. Like the music spooling off into space in the hope that someone will hear it, am I just sending out random signals without a chance of ever being heard? I know you can’t answer, and maybe it’s wrong of me to try to put you on the spot like this, but maybe you could just give me a sign? Anything. A dot. A dash. Or are you just like me, perhaps – a ghost in the machine?

  He smiles. A ghost in the machine. Once more, she has seen through his disguise. This is what he has always been; nameless, faceless, voiceless—

  It takes a few seconds to check the mike and to secure a channel. He waits until the end of a track. Slips on the headphones. Sits at the desk. And then he ends the broadcast and switches from Recorded to Live.

  A red light blinks. He adjusts the mike. Picks up where the recording left off in the same soft and intimate voice –

  This is Phantom Radio. You’re listening to the graveyard show, bringing you home from midnight to three.

  No one would know the difference unless they were paying attention. These voices are generic, he thinks, their tone as bland as birdsong. And yet, she will know. She is listening. Tuned in to his frequency; she will know that he is there.

  And now he finds himself talking to her. Surly by nature, to his surprise he finds that he does have a voice, after all. Tonight, here in the studio, he is going to play a special request; for the first time, live and unplugged—

  She hears it in the silence. Live silence and studio silence have a completely different quality, and her ears, attuned to every nuance, are quick to register the change.

  Then comes his voice, and the hairs on her arms rise like the pins on the pad at her side. She readjusts the sound controls; tweaks the mid-range and the bass to give the optimum result. Digital sound is so clean, she thinks; she can hear every sound that he makes; from the creaking of his swivel chair to the way his breath catches in his throat when he pronounces certain words.

  Fingers on the touchpad, she can almost see him now; seeking out the shape of his mouth, the way his face turns away from the mike whenever he glances towards the door.

  The piano is slightly out of tune – others might not notice this, but she, with her eerie sense of pitch, can hear every variation. And when he sings – softly at first, but slowly gaining in confidence – she takes in every shade of sound, every modulation. Delivery; accent; mannerisms; everything is suddenly clear – and the voice itself; untrained, but
rich; a woody, smoky baritone that fits perfectly with the impression she has of what his face must be like—

  I wish. I wish. This is what I wish for. That this moment should never end, that it should carry beyond the stars on a single, perfect algorithm—

  It lasts for less than five minutes in all. Then the recording takes over again, with its flat studio silences. He wonders what she made of it all. He wonders if she was listening. Maybe she has fallen asleep. Maybe she was never there—

  He checks the mail.

  Dear Phantom (she says),

  Thank you.

  Nothing more. He wonders why. Is it nervousness, he thinks, or has he somehow crossed a line? After all, it’s easy, he thinks, to talk to someone who may not be there. But to give that person a voice – or a face – is to destroy the illusion. Perhaps she is shy of him now – or worse, perhaps she is disappointed—

  He waits. She writes no more that night. The next night, his impatience is such that he can barely function. Throughout the day – and for the first time anyone can remember – Phantom Radio is plagued by technical problems. Finally, the producer comes in, and finds him asleep in the sound booth. He gives him a sympathetic talk that also serves as a warning – get your act together, you – but never looks him in the face.

  Midnight comes. The graveyard shift. Still she has not written back. He grins bitterly at himself for expecting anything different. The fact that after all these years he is still capable of making a fool of himself gives him a perverse kind of pleasure. As if a girl like that could ever care for someone like you, he thinks. Without ever having seen your face, she already knew you were a freak.

  And yet—

  Throughout the show, he waits for her mail. Nothing comes, not even a song request. He is vaguely angry at himself for half expecting otherwise. She has probably moved on by now to another all-night station. Or maybe she’s asleep in bed, or out with someone special.