The Fall of Never(8)
Something jarred her awake in the middle of the night. Some fleeting sound, there and then gone, too quick for her to catch. But it had been there.
She lay in bed for a long while, staring at the dark ceiling. The lull of traffic down below used to soothe her, put her right to sleep, but not tonight. She’d grown immune, she supposed. Either that or she was in some bad shape. Through her bedroom door she could see the bathroom across the hall even in the dark, a bitter reminder of what had happened earlier that evening. She closed her eyes, trying not to think about it, trying not to think of that peculiar image of hands reaching out for her, of water—no, it wasn’t water, it was blood, somehow she knew it was blood—running down her legs and pooling on the floor. A bright light…a closed door, her hand coming out and slowly turning the knob, pushing it open…
I won’t be getting back to sleep tonight, she thought and got up.
In the kitchen she fixed herself some warm milk to which she added a tablespoon of sugar. In the dark, she crept back out into the main room with her milk and sat down on the couch. The only visible light issued in from the two windows on either side of the computer desk, and the computer monitor itself, blinking its KEEP EARTH CLEAN, IT’S NOT URANUS! screensaver. She reached up from the couch and tapped the space bar on the keyboard and the screensaver disappeared. What took its place was the paused video stream from the tape she’d been watching with Josh before getting sick and charging into the bathroom. Setting her milk down, she got up and sat down in front of the screen, rewound the video stream, and played it back. Nellie Worthridge’s voice came out, too tinny on the computer speakers: “Could just be a hunger headache.” Hunched over the keyboard, she watched the old woman spread jam on her toast and smile at the camera. Then the camera panned to the left, following the old woman over to the cupboards where she replaced the jar of jam. One of the gears stuck on the wheelchair and Nellie toggled with it for perhaps a second or two—Kelly remembered this happening—before bringing the wheelchair back around. At that moment, the audio stream died and the sharp black-and-white fuzz invaded the screen.
“Damn you, what’s the deal?”
She brought up the computer’s video editing bank, tried to eliminate as much static as possible, but it was a futile attempt. And it made no sense. For whatever reason, the dailies were ruined.
Just for a second, the audio stream kicked back on. The sound jarred her, and she lifted her fingers off the keyboard, thinking something she’d done had made a connection somewhere. But just as quick as the sound came back on, it vanished again.
And what the hell did I just hear? Maybe I’m really starting to lose my mind, but I could have sworn…
She rewound the footage a few seconds then played it again. Still no clear visual, still no audio…but then yes, she heard it, that quick little audio blip, so abrupt yet suddenly so clear…
It was her name. Someone was saying her name.
But that didn’t sound like Nellie Worthridge and it didn’t sound like Josh, either.
She played it back a third time, but this time she heard nothing. A fourth—nothing. A fifth—nothing.
What the hell is going on?
Although the picture on the screen was still fuzzy with static, she thought she could almost make out shapes beneath it. At one point, the video cleared enough so that she could make out Nellie Worthridge in her chair talking to Josh behind the camera. Still no audio, her wrinkled lips worked in silence. She brought up her hand and motioned at something on her kitchen counter, silently laughing to herself like an ancient, crippled mime. Then blurbs of sound, too there-and-then-gone to be properly deciphered: “on it…making for…see…ate”—or was it “eight”? It just didn’t make sense; digital video simply did not operate in such a fashion—
On the screen, Nellie eased her wheelchair around, her back briefly facing the camera, just as another figure moved past the front of the camera. Upon seeing it, Kelly froze (and she felt something in the back of her mind turn over, or almost turn over, like something trying to return to life but not quite able to). The moving image—it was most definitely a person—was too close to the lens of the camera to be properly defined. But it was definitely there, this moving figure that was neither Josh nor herself, and obviously not old Nellie Worthridge. The figure, from what she was able to ascertain, was pale and quick, nearly transparent—almost like a ghost. If it wasn’t for the fluid, muscled way it moved across the camera’s field of vision, she would have no reason to even think it was a human being.
Can’t be. Just isn’t possible.
She rewound the video and played it back and yes, the pale figure again moved quickly in front of the camera. With her computer’s editing tools, she tried to clean the image, take some of the distorted fuzz away, but the image—whatever or whoever this was—was just too close to the lens to see clearly. She rewound the video a third time, now hitting the keys with shaking hands, feeling that sense of mounting dismay rise up inside her like a volcanic eruption. Suddenly, it was like smelling something she hadn’t smelled in a long time, or hearing a song she hadn’t heard since childhood.
That’s nostalgia, something inside her head whispered. It’s finally remembering the unremembered.
This time, the fleeting pale visage did not pass in front of the lens. Like a piece of dirt that had rubbed itself free of the lens, the figure was gone this time, and all she saw was old Nellie Worthridge turning around in her wheelchair and bumbling toward the refrigerator while Josh filmed. The picture was clear now (there was still no audio) and whatever had been present on the screen only a minute before was now absent. Vanished, like a phantom.