Lost Signals (32 page)

***

Greg sucked down the last of his cola with a bored slurp, nudging the crescent-shaped ice blocks around the bottom of his oversized cup with his equally-oversized straw, hoping for one last sugary taste. The surveillance business paid well because all the Listeners would up and die in protest of the utterly mind-numbing nature of their job. They were random quality control. Making sure the computerised recognition software was functioning well enough to
probably
catch the keywords it had been instructed to flag. Probably.

He checked the small digital clock in the corner of his computer screen, then the silver and leather watch strapped to his wrist, reassured that his break would come in twelve minutes and four seconds, then he could take his giant cup and replenish his cola supply from the postmix machine he had personally petitioned to have installed in the staff room. The second-hand dispenser sent by God himself to break their workplace monotony. Greg took on the job of cleaning the nozzles and flushing its pipes daily with a kind of passionate fervour, while 2IC Chuck replenished the soda water and flavoured syrup baggies with the same grudging sense of responsibility which he performed every other duty. Toady little man with jowls and warts. Nothing pleased the second-in-command.

The drone of voices changed, a new recording, another subject. Greg lifted his empty cup and inhaled around the edges of the paltry melted dregs, fighting an urge to chomp at the plastic straw. His eyes wandered, his feet jiggled, and he looked at the clock another three times before the next minute was up.

Maybe if he ever caught anything interesting, an error in the system, pouncing on some awesomely vital intelligence, then it would all be worth it. If he could ever be the fucking hero.

Another file played. Ten minutes until break. He bounced his knee, keeping one ear on the voices rambling on. Then the next. The next. The next.

‘Gregory
 
?’

He froze, lips circled around his straw. He knew that voice.

‘Greg, man, say something.’

What the hell was this
 
? Some kind of answering machine message or a call that failed to connect
 
? Maybe a butt-dial. No one else spoke. Just this person sounding painfully reminiscent of his brother.

‘Come on, Greg, I know you’re there. Speak to me. It’s been too long. Don’t reject me when we finally get a chance to talk.’

‘Steve
 
?’ he whispered into the empty room, in spite of the insanity. He had no microphone or speaker. This wasn’t a phone call connecting over headset, just a pre-recorded sound playing over the speakers wired into the walls around him.

‘Oh, thank God. I thought you were going to ignore me. How’s it hanging, man
 
?’

‘How . . . how are you doing this
 
?’

‘Ever heard of a God-damn phone, Greg
 
?’

Steve’s answer defied every sense of reason, but the poor surveillance officer couldn’t offer up his denial. His next words tried to cling to the dry insides of his throat, but he had to force them out, to whisper to himself, before they choked him, ‘I thought you were dead.’

‘What an ugly thing to say, brother.’

The subtle tone of blame stung worse than Greg could have anticipated. Like he carried personal fault for believing the medical examiner when they declared his older sibling deceased, aged thirty-one, cardiac arrest. Or the coroner, or the sympathetic nurses, the autopsy pathologist, the mortician. ‘Fuck you, Steve.’

‘Yeah, yeah, you too, pal. How’s the fam’
 
?’

‘No, you don’t get to just, just call me, or whatever this is, and not tell me how you’re still alive. We buried you, for God’s sake. Black lacquered coffin, expensive fucking flowers sitting on top while we all huddled and cried in the chapel.’

‘You’re the one who relied on their account while refusing to see me.’

Ouch. A sharp truth. Greg would not, point blank, no-God-damn-way, view the body at any point in the process. But their parents hadn’t felt the same qualms. They’d have known their own son laying on the cold steel bench.

‘Are you listening to me
 
?’

‘Yeah, man.’
Christ, I’ve missed you.

‘Good. We’ve got a lot to catch up on.’

Greg leaned forward and listened, forgetting all about his break and the postmix cola which had momentarily been the highlight of his life.

***

Lewis held the receiver to his ear and frowned when static snarled at him again. ‘Mrs. Harrison, I can dial out, but there is still interference coming through the line. This might be physical damage off-site. Would you like to try it out and see if this is going to be okay for now
 
?’

‘Call me Pearl,’ she said distractedly as she nodded once and took the phone in a shaking hand. Lewis made no comment, but this wasn’t the first time he had noticed fear at the suggestion of using the phone. An otherwise perfectly charming woman, bustling around, happiest when he accepted sharing a pot of Earl Grey with her. Her hands hadn’t trembled when she provided the fine china teacup or poured the steaming liquid.

Her wrinkled finger punched in a number with the rapid precision of someone who rings the same person weekly. Her hesitant expression crumpled to helpless misery as the line crackled.

‘Don’t you talk to me,’ she whispered and hung up the phone with a decisive crash. She cast a sideways look to Lewis. ‘Still broken.’

‘Mrs. Harrison—sorry, Pearl—was there someone on the other end of the line
 
?’

‘No, of course not,’ she snapped.

The technician widened his eyes and softened his voice. ‘I’m sorry to be a bother, but I thought I heard otherwise.’

‘Like what, young man
 
?’

‘Well, like you telling someone not to speak, for starters.’

A very pink blush rose through her round cheeks, filling her face with the colour it otherwise lacked. ‘That’s just . . . just an old woman’s silliness.’

‘I’m here to help.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘And why not, ma’am
 
?’

Her hands rose to cover her spectacled eyes, hiding from him, herself, the truth. ‘Because I need a priest. I’m hearing the voice of my dead husband.’

‘On the phone
 
?’

‘Yes, and he’s been gone for a long time, dear. Fifteen years. Why now
 
? Why torment me
now
, after a decade and a half
 
!’

He was so surprised by the saddened outburst, he found himself murmuring a banal attempt at an explanation, something, anything to soothe her, he didn’t quite know. ‘They have just finished upgrading some other lines in this area, any changes in your service could be caused by that, perhaps they crossed some wires or inadvertently tampered with the phone line. Teething problems . . . What am I even saying
 
?’ Corporate tripe had rolled out of him before he caught up with the words. ‘That has nothing to do with your, uh, unique situation. I’m sorry.’

Pearl’s shiny eyes turned to him from between parted fingers. ‘You believe me.’

Lewis wasn’t a religious man, but that didn’t make him a sceptic. ‘Well, sure. I believe you have every reason to think you’re hearing your husband. I don’t know why, or how, or if it could be possible. I’ve never met anyone who could speak to the dead.’

‘Why now
 
?’ she repeated, as if Lewis could provide even the barest of answer. ‘No one has fitted new wiring in my head, young man.’

The technician gave a thin smile and shrugged in answer. ‘You probably know better than I do what might have changed for you, Pearl. Do you want to call someone with my mobile
 
?’

‘What
 
? What do you mean
 
?’

‘You mentioned a priest. Do you need to use my phone to contact them, if your landline isn’t satisfactory
 
?’

***

‘What’s wrong, son
 
?’

‘I’m fucking appalled. You have no idea.’

Samuel’s hands shook with the need to hurt someone. Why wouldn’t his mother’s ghost stop talking in his ear
 
? Saliva flooded his mouth, a precursor to the need to vomit, hurl up whatever contents were left in his stomach after his thin breakfast of reheated pancakes. Nothing special. Just like his life.

‘Fucking pathetic,’ he wheezed, lengthening his stride to reach a sink or the toilet bowl before the rhythmic clenching in his gut evacuated the syrup and cream-drenched foods.

The impact of his knees against the tiled floor sent shocks of pain up through his thighs and into his hips. Almost a distraction welcome enough to give him a moment of reprieve—but, no. He flung the lid and seat up and matched the violent movement, thrusting his head toward the welcoming porcelain.

Thank fuck Gran cleans this,
he thought in between retches, grateful for the chemical-pine disinfectant. Only thing to make this experience more miserable was if he had to get up close and personal with the malignant scent of old urine or crusty markers of a bowel movement. His breakfast returned to the world amidst deep, primal grunts and the wet, heavy splatter of half-digested food erupting into the waiting water. He coughed to dislodge slimy, bitter pieces from the back of his throat. His nostrils dribbled sympathetic mucus, eyes leaking tears which might almost turn into full-fledged crying. Almost.

Instead, he took the rage and need for pain and slammed his fist into the old ceramic cistern, over and over, until the impact left a ribbon of hot burgundy bruising across his knuckles. The fine web of broken skin over his pointer and middle fingers painted blood, brighter on the outside.

Samuel pressed down the flusher button and sneered at the injury throbbing up his arm from the mess he had made. Another good distraction, but not enough.

He spoke aloud to the voice still crawling into his brain from the all-important Cochlear implants, the ones which questioned,
Are you listening
 
?,
and demanded, and wanted to know why he wouldn’t take up Grandpa’s rifle and pick off the crowd of workmen trundling around, nine people gathered to dig a single God-damned ditch. ‘Just shut up. Shut the fuck up.’

‘It will take away some of your pain.’

‘Bitch, please. You have lost any authority on the matter of my pain.’

Dead, car crash, same one which killed his father, because they thought it was just fine to get drunk at their company Christmas party and drive home. A grand finale to all the reasons he hated them both.

‘It’s okay, son. You’ll come around.’

He eyed the heavy toilet seat. Was it plastic
 
? Heavy-duty, whatever the material. If he laid his cheek against the chill edge of the toilet bowl and wrapped his hand around the seat and slammed it down again and again, driving the weight with his taut bicep into the vulnerable point of his temple, maybe he would black out. Maybe he would die.

‘Go back to hell. You’ve been dead long enough.’

‘Don’t make me tell your father, Samuel.’

***

The walls were half concrete, half glass. Windows topping a squat grey pre-fabricated panel. No hand-laid bricks for this department, no sir. Joe Rale looked around the soulless room with an echo of its bland, impartial indifference across his countenance. He served a purpose, and that purpose was to figure out what happened here, not muse over the five months left until early retirement, even when scenes like this one reminded him why the job burnt people out in a hurry, and why he had not bothered applying for a transfer when his childless uncle died and left Joe a meagre inheritance of property and money.

Blood which should have already dried made a slow trickle off one of the blinds. Even arterial spray didn’t tend to get so thoroughly behind Venetians to become a secondary curtain of tacky crimson. Joe watched a congealed droplet roll down the inside of the saturated glass from his safe distance beyond the edges of the crime scene. No one had entered the cordoned-off surveillance cubicle.

‘Once more,’ he said to himself, an old habit, a good habit. Make the facts stick. Don’t buy conjecture. Get to know the details. ‘Surveillance guy, Greg, in his twenties. Working alone. Listening to the tapes, checking for errors in the auto-transcription. Skips his break. First time ever, for the entire department
 
; no one ever misses the chance to get out of these boxes. Supervisor, Charles, “2IC Chuck” to the staff, returns to check. Peers through the window and has the presence of mind to radio through that he can see Greg is near-catatonic in front of his workstation. Opens the door, radio transmitter button still depressed under his thumb, everyone hears the screaming start.’

The other investigatory officials orbited the area, not approaching, everyone forbidden from entering the room.

Described as hellish, demonic,
he thought, but did not add to his oral monologue.
No conjecture.
‘People come running. Charles has been bludgeoned to death, and Greg is found perched over the corpse, disembowelling the unfavoured supervisor. Next person to enter the room, security guy, Aaron, has a Taser. Incapacitates Greg. Then uses his pocket knife to slit Greg’s throat, and is seen holding the body and dancing. Fourth and fifth victims enter, Haverly and Robert. They were overheard saying they would pin Aaron down. Instead, Robert turns and impales Haverly through the eye with a ballpoint pen less than three steps into the room, and Aaron and Robert begin fighting, until indeterminate injuries occur and both men end deceased. Body count in this single room is five men, no prior signs of mental or physical illness, all cleared for access to sensitive materials.’

Joe glanced down at the folding pocket notebook balanced on his open palm to check for anything he forgot in the retelling. The facts were all there, and made less sense every time he rehashed them.

‘Five men all step inside this room and experience some kind of psychotic episode.’