Before the Fall(111)

*



Bill Cunningham leans forward in his seat. They are on a set designed to be seen from a single direction. This means that the walls behind him are unpainted on the backside, like a set built for an episode of Twilight Zone, where an injured man slowly realizes that what he thinks is real is actually theater.

“And on the flight,” says Bill. “Describe what happened.”

Scott nods. He doesn’t know why, but he’s surprised that the interview is unfolding in this way, as an actual interview about the crash, what happened. He assumed they’d be trading body blows by now.

“Well,” he says, “I was late. The cab never came, so I had to take the bus. Until we reached the runway, I assumed I’d missed it, that I’d get there just in time to see the taillights lifting off into the sky. But I didn’t. They waited. Or not waited—they were folding in the door when I—but they didn’t leave. So I—got on—and everyone was already—some people were in their seats—Maggie and the kids, Mrs. Kipling. David and Mr. Kipling were still on their feet, I think. And the flight attendant gave me a glass of wine. I’d never been on a private jet before. And then the captain said, Take your seats, so we did.”

His eyes have moved off Bill’s by now, and he finds himself staring directly into one of the lights, remembering.

“There was a baseball game on, Boston. It was the seventh inning, I think. And the sound of that, the announcer’s voice, was going the whole time. And I remember Mrs. Kipling was next to me and we were talking a little. And the boy, JJ, was asleep. Rachel was on her iPhone, maybe choosing songs. She had headphones on. And then we were up.”

*



Gus snails past LaGuardia, incoming and outgoing flights roaring past overhead. He has the windows up and the air off so he can hear better, even though it’s ninety degrees out. He sweats as he listens, tendrils running down his sides and back, but he doesn’t notice. He hears James Melody’s voice.

“I’ve got a yellow light.”

A pause. Gus can hear what sounds like tapping. Then Melody again.

“Did you hear me? I’ve got a yellow light.”

“Oh,” says Busch. “Let me—that’s got it. I think it’s the bulb.”

“Make a note for maintenance,” says Melody. Then a series of unidentifiable sounds, and then Melody exclaims, “Merde. Hold on. I’ve got a—”

“Captain?”

“Take over. I’ve got a goddamn nosebleed again. I’m gonna—let me get cleaned up.”

Sounds from the cockpit that Gus assumes are the captain getting up and going to the door. As this happens, Busch says: “Copy. Taking control.”

The door opens and closes. And now Busch is alone in the cockpit.

*



Scott listens to the sound of his own voice as he speaks, both in the moment and outside of it.

“And I was looking out the window and thinking the whole time how unreal it felt—the way you sometimes feel like a stranger when you find yourself outside the limits of your experience, doing something that feels like the actions of another person, as if you’ve teleported somehow into someone else’s life.”

“And what was the first sign that something was wrong?” says Bill. “In your mind.”

Scott takes a breath, trying to make logical sense of it all.

“It’s hard, because there was cheering and then there was screaming.”

“Cheering?”

“For the game. It was David and Kipling, they were—something was happening onscreen that had them—Dworkin and the longest at bat—and their seat belts were off by that point, and I remember they both stood up, and then—I don’t know—the plane—dropped—and they had to scramble to get back in their seats.”

“And you’ve said before, in your interview with investigators, that your seat belt was off.”

“Yeah. That was—it was stupid really. I had a notebook. A sketchbook. And when the plane pitched down my pencil flew out of my hands and I—unbuckled and went after it.”

“Which saved your life.”

“Yeah. I guess that’s true. But in the moment—people were screaming and there was this—banging. And then—”

Scott shrugs, as if to say, That’s all I really remember.

Across from him Bill nods.

“So, that’s your story,” he says.

“My story?”

“Your version of events.”

“That’s my memory.”

“You dropped your pencil and unbuckled to grab it, and that’s why you survived.”

“I have no idea why I survived, if that’s even—if there is a why, and not just, you know, the laws of physics.”

“Physics.”

“Yes. You know, physical forces that picked me up and threw me from the plane and somehow let the boy survive, but not—you know—anyone else.”

Bill pauses, as if to say, I could go deeper, but I’m choosing not to.

“Let’s talk about your paintings.”

*



There is a moment in every horror movie that hinges on silence. A character leaves a room, and rather than go with him, the camera remains in place, focused on nothing—an innocuous doorway perhaps, or a child’s bed. The viewer sits and watches the empty space, listening to the silence, and the very fact that the room is empty and the fact that it is silent convey a dawning sense of dread. Why are we here, waiting? What’s going to happen? What will we see? And so, with a creeping fear, we begin to search the room for something unusual, to strain against the silence for whatever whispers live beneath the ordinary. It is the room’s very unremarkableness that adds to its potential for horror, what Sigmund Freud called the Uncanny. True horror, you see, comes not from the savagery of the unexpected, but from the corruption of everyday objects, spaces. To take a thing we see every day, a thing we take for granted as normal—a child’s bedroom—and transform it into something sinister, untrustworthy—is to undermine the very fabric of life.