Come Find Me(55)

“Right.” Isaac scratches his head, sliding his chair in closer. “I’ll just get right to it, then. It’s an audio signal?” Except he says it like a question, which doesn’t instill the greatest confidence.

“What?” Kennedy says, and Joe steps closer to the machinery.

“What does that mean?” Joe asks quietly.

“Like, radio signals. There’s plenty going right by us all the time. I don’t know what happened with this one, why it’s displaying like this in the program, but anyway, it’s really broken up.” His hands fly over the keyboard. “But I pieced it together.” He gives Joe a meaningful look, which could be interpreted as a warning.

“Do you want me to play it for you?” he asks.

“Yes,” Kennedy answers before Joe can get a word in.

Isaac takes a deep breath and turns back to the computer. A second later, the sound fills the room.

    There’s some static first, and then we hear a voice. “Is anyone there?”

My head jerks up. The air chills. It’s Kennedy. It’s her voice, except faster, higher-pitched. Panicked.

All the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. The whole room narrows to a point, and that point is Kennedy. She tenses, becomes a statue, her eyes empty.

The static cuts in and out. “Can anyone hear me?” Then it’s just the sound of her breathing, like her mouth is pressed too close to a microphone. Then movement, like things are being slid across a table, or a floor. More static, and then her voice again. “Something’s happening in my house. Something terrible. Help us. Please—” The transmission cuts off, and the sound of static fills the room, until a robotic voice gives the time stamp in stilted syllables. “December fourth. One-oh-three a.m.” And then it starts back up again, on a loop. “Is anyone there? Can anyone hear me?”

“Turn it off,” Joe says, his tone furious.

Isaac presses a button, and the room falls silent. We remain silent. Isaac turns in the chair, looking at the floor. “Did your…uh, was the setup, did it have, like, a radio transmitter?”

“I don’t know,” Kennedy says, speaking in a whisper. She’s practically out the door already. I think she’s going to be sick. I wonder if this is what I looked like when Abby told me about the email.

Isaac continues, like it’s not a big deal. Not enormous, the size of the universe. “Was there, like, you know, an antenna…?”

No one answers him. I’ve seen the antenna on the top of the shed, though. I’m guessing the answer is yes.

    Isaac takes a deep breath, moving the gum to the side of his mouth. “What I’m guessing is that you transmitted a signal. And this is the bounce back, playing.”

Joe steps toward her. “Is this some sort of joke?”

Isaac frowns. “Depending where it was transmitted, it could bounce back off the moon. Or off something closer. A satellite, even, the atmosphere…I don’t think this was intentional….”

Her eyes are wide, panicked. She shakes her head, but she doesn’t speak. There’s something familiar, like a sense of déjà vu, itching at the back of my head.

“December fourth?” I ask. “Are you sure?”

“That’s why I called you in,” Isaac says to Joe quietly. “It must’ve been transmitting on some sort of loop.”

Joe whips his head from Kennedy to Isaac. “Is this the nine-one-one call? She made it at one-eighteen a.m.”

Isaac presses a button, to start replaying the message. But we’ve already heard it once. Kennedy is moving back, like she can’t possibly sit through it once more. I reach an arm for her, but she doesn’t notice me there. “One-oh-three a.m.,” the recording tells us again, at the end.

Fifteen minutes before the call to 911. We all turn to look at Kennedy, but she’s gone.

“Dammit,” Joe mumbles under his breath. And then he takes off after her, and it’s suddenly just me and this dude in the room. I hear her words again. So familiar. I close my eyes, and I see my brother, as I saw him in the fever dream, standing across the room, moving his mouth: Help us. Please.

“Play it again,” I say.





No.

That’s the only thought in my head. No.

That cannot be all that’s out there. Nothing but my echo, reflecting back.

Standing outside Elliot’s window that night, I peered into the shadow house. And then I ran. Soaking wet, under the storm, I took shelter in the shed.

And that’s all this is: my shout into the abyss, when I hid in the shed, when I tried to get help, when I had no phone but saw the microphone. I knew Elliot had added an antenna to the shed over the summer, when he was out here working. I hoped it would work like a radio transmitter, like those things truck drivers use. That someone would pick up the signal and call for help.

A shout into the abyss, and no one answered. Is anyone there?

The answer is the same as it’s always been: No.



* * *



—

    I’ve run clear across campus. I have no idea where I am. The trees cover the ground in overlapping shadows. I want to sink into the earth.

And then I’m back, with the smell of dirt and dust, inside the shed with the computers running over the top, the wires trailing under the ground, my back pressed against the wall while I’m sitting under the desk, shouting those words. Help us. Please.