Transcription (16 page)

“That sounds good,” she said. “But it’s not what you’re working on?”

“No,” Thomas said, shaking his head. He took a sip of wine. “No.” He glanced at the window. Sunset was coming in less than an hour. At sunset, his urge to begin writing would overwhelm him again. As the days grew shorter, his call to the typewriter shifted earlier and earlier.

Judith was still waiting on more of an explanation.

“I have this urge to write. It’s unavoidable. But it’s not the prison piece I’m working on. Each night, it’s something new. They’re terrible, terrible things.”

“What do you mean?”

“Imagine the worst, most horrific thing. You remember all those accounts and police reports I was reading a couple of months ago? Imagine those, but worse. I don’t know, maybe they just feel worse because I’m really seeing them with my own eyes and then writing them down. It’s awful.”

Thomas realized that tears were streaming down his face. He used his napkin to mop them up.

“Just stop writing them,” she said. “I know how you are with writing, but you can stop, I’ve seen you do it. Go cold turkey. If these stories are so terrible, you should stop.”

He shook his head. “That’s the thing—I don’t know if I can. Somehow I think that once the story gets into my head, if I don’t let it out, it will consume me.”

“What does that mean?” Judith asked. She looked down, saw the fork in her hand, and seemed to remember her dinner. She stabbed into her salad.

“I’m not myself when I’m writing these stories,” he said. “It’s like I’m channeling them from somewhere else. I’m beginning to feel like I’m one of The Big Four, but instead of using a knife or a gun, I’m using a typewriter.”

“Honey, that’s absurd. You’re nothing like those men. You wouldn’t hurt a fly, and you know it.”

“But it’s not me,” he said.

“That’s it,” she said. “No more writing. You’re taking a break, starting right now.”

Thomas looked out the window. The light was getting long through the dry leaves that would soon fall.

“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea,” he said.

“I’ll be with you the whole time. We’ll get through this night together, and tomorrow night will come even easier. In a week, you’ll be good as new. Trust me.”

Thomas nodded. He wanted to believe in something, and Judith’s confidence and enthusiasm were always contagious.

“Yes,” he said.

“Good.”

#
 
#
 
#
 
#
 
#

As the sun set, and they settled together on the couch, Thomas was convinced that he wouldn’t make it. His fingers began to tap out tiny patterns on his leg.

“Stop,” Judith said. “Don’t think about it. Time will pass faster if you don’t think about it.”

She was right.

They watched TV. They finished the bottle of wine. She fell asleep against his chest with his arm draped protectively over her. Hours passed, and the urge to type left. Tom found himself over the hump and glad for the effort. His spirit soared with new optimism. Perhaps if he took a little time for himself and then came back to the prison story, he could attack it with a fresh perspective. Now that he had broken the spell of the place, he could finally achieve real objectivity.

He let his eyes drift shut to the evening news.

In his dream, they were putting a blindfold on him while the band played The Star Spangled Banner. He heard the firing squad raise and cock their weapons at the marshall’s command. In a second, it would all be over. Once they fired, his suffering would end forever.

Static.

He wakes to a wall of white noise.

The only light in the room is the flickering static of the television. He blinks and shakes his head. The random dots on the screen invite him to stare. They offer whispered secrets, just for him. He turns away from the black-and-white noise and turns on the lamp. He stands, shuts off the TV, and decides to head for the bathroom. Tom doesn’t make it that far.

There’s a note on the side table, near the phone.

“Tom—didn’t want to wake you. Greta called. James had a nightmare and wants to come home. I’m walking over to get him. Back soon.”

Tom sets the note down and continues to the bathroom.

#
 
#
 
#
 
#
 
#

Thomas was urinating when the story came to him.

It began with the dinner he and his wife had shared. They moved to the living room, and settled into a nice evening. Sometime after she fell asleep, the story turned very dark. In his story, as his wife slept, Tom had engaged in serious mischief.
 

The Millers lived around the corner and down the block. He crept through back yards and along the edge of the road to get there undetected. Once he found the house, Tom set about climbing onto the roof of their side porch. He looked in through the window of the sunroom. When James slept over at Bobby Miller’s house, that’s where the boys stayed. He saw his son, stretched out on a makeshift bed on the couch. Bobby was on the other couch.
 

Tom put on his mask. He wore a skeleton mask. It was an early Halloween purchase that he hadn’t yet shown his son. Skeletons were James’s favorite, probably because they always scared him so much.

Tom waited. He was certain that James would wake up. He believes there’s an instinct people have when someone stares at them, and its strongest in children.
 

In a few short minutes, he’s proven right. James opens his eyes to the dark and blinks rapidly as his eyes resolve the figure outside the window. When he sees the grinning skull, James opens his mouth to scream. Nothing comes out.
 

Tom smiles beneath the mask.

He pulls out the other prop he brought along. It’s the butcher knife from the kitchen. He twists it until it catches the moonlight and carves a sliver of light for his young son.
 

James’s lungs find fresh air and his scream finally emerges, piercing the night.

Tom sprints back to his house to a chorus of barking dogs.

He dumps the knife and mask in a bush and slips back under his wife’s sleeping form a full minute before the phone rings. She stirs at the sound. He’s already fast asleep.

Judith rises, puts her hand on her husband’s forehead and notes his elevated temperature. Before rushing to the phone, she pulls the blanket on top of him.

“Hello?” she whispers. “No, Greta, it’s fine.”

After a pause she says. “No,
I’m
sorry he woke you. Don’t think of it. I’ll walk over and get him.”

Tom is asleep for this exchange, but the force that’s controlling Tom hears every word.

She pulls on a thin jacket and slips her feet into shoes. She takes a flashlight from the shelf as she leaves through the back door. Tom’s eyes open as the door shuts. He moves faster than she did. She’s walking along the sidewalk, pulling her jacket tight around her, as he’s slipping through yards. He’s wearing his mask and carrying his knife.
 

She turns on to the Miller’s street as Tom slips from behind a hedge.
 

Judith spins and her flashlight lands on his shoes. Judith pauses and tilts her head as the beam of the flashlight swings up to his hands and then to the masked face.

She doesn’t try to run. She doesn’t scream.

Tom moves forward, holding the knife in both hands, like it’s a present for her. When he draws close enough, he lifts one hand to pull up the mask. The face under the mask isn’t Tom’s. It’s a twisted scowl filled with hatred and loathing.
 

Judith’s eyes grow wide. Like her son earlier, her first attempt at a scream yields no sound. She doesn’t get a second chance. The man who is Tom, but not Tom, drives the knife up, under her ribs and into her lung.
 
The muscles that would push air out of her chest are sliced into ribbons as he drags the knife out and plunges it back in.
 

Her hands come up and reach for the blade as he pulls it out again. Her fingers can’t grip the sharp metal edge. Tom withdraws the blade and flees.

#
 
#
 
#
 
#
 
#

As he flushed the toilet, Tom shook his head to dismiss the story. It was too terrible to contemplate. He tiptoed by the shape on the couch and went to the kitchen. The mess would be twice as ugly in the morning if he didn’t take care of it right then. He stood at the sink, watching hot water and bleach spiral down the drain when the phone rang. Thomas walked calmly over and picked it up.

“Hello?”

“Thomas? It’s Greta. If she hasn’t left yet, can you have Jude bring a fresh set of pajamas for James. I just noticed that he had a little accident.”

“Oh, jeez. I’m sorry about that Greta.” He remembered the note. “She’s already gone.” He pulled the phone cord and leaned back against the counter. The dishes were all stacked next to the sink. He just had to finish drying them off so he could put them away. He pulled the towel from the handle of the oven. “Wait—she’s been gone for, like, ten minutes.” He stood up straighter. “She should be there by now.”

Two different realities were trying to merge in his head. In one version, his wife was right there on the couch, where he’d left her when he went to use the bathroom. In the other, she had left a note and gone to pick up their son. The shape on the couch was still there, but there was the small problem of the voice on the other end of the phone line. Thomas stretched the phone cord as he walked to the back of the couch.

“She hasn’t gotten here yet,” Greta said. “When did you say she left?”

Tom pinched the blanket and lifted it. The other side of the couch was bathed in shadow. There was nobody under the blanket.

Panic washed through Thomas’s veins.

“Oh, shit, Greta. It’s been too long. I’ve got to go.”

He let the phone drop as he ran for the door. It clattered to the vinyl floor and bounced to a stop against the wall. The spring on the screen door groaned and dragged the door shut behind him. Water dripped from the dish rack into the sink. The knife, clean and dry, was back in the butcher block. It was the same knife that a lot of his neighbors owned. They’d all bought their sets at the same time from Mrs. Gunther when she’d lost her husband. She had gone around to all the neighborhood block parties and sold the sets from a color catalog that she had punched holes in and mounted in a binder. The money would go towards her mortgage. Dozens of people had signed up and bought them.

#
 
#
 
#
 
#
 
#

Thomas sprinted down the street and around the corner. He saw the bouncing flashlight of a walker, and relief flowed through him. He slowed to a walk.
 

“Judith?” he called.

The flashlight, still half a block away, came up and pointed at his eyes. He advanced, catching his breath.

“Judith?” he called again. The person didn’t answer.

Suddenly, the flashlight pointed down at the ground. It looked like someone’s garbage had been tipped over by a dog, and that’s where the flashlight was trained.
 

Thomas heard the figure scream. It wasn’t Judith’s scream. Thomas couldn’t identify it. The lights in the nearby house came on, and then the light at the end of their walk. Thomas realized two things at once—it was Greta Miller holding the flashlight, and that wasn’t overturned garbage on the sidewalk.

He started running again.

Thomas threw himself to the ground and skidded to a stop on his knees as the neighbor’s door opened.

“Judith!” he screamed. Thomas lifted his wife’s limp head and cradled it as he smoothed her hair back from her face. “Judith!”

Greta was running towards the neighbor’s open door, yelling, “Call the police! Call the police!”

Judith’s eyes came open and locked on her husband. She tried to form words, but had no air to push out the sounds. Thomas found her wounds and clamped his hands on them to try to slow her bleeding. Far away, sirens wailed.
 

Thomas is pulled from her as the paramedics go to work. He is held back by neighbors in pajamas and robes. Everyone’s breath fogs from their mouths and catches the flashing emergency lights. The drama has pulled a huge crowd. Greta gives Thomas unheard assurances and then disappears. She is replaced by her husband, Mike. Thomas rides to the hospital in the ambulance. Mike follows in his car.

Mike is there for everything. He’s there, guiding Thomas by the shoulders towards the waiting room as Judith is wheeled to surgery. He’s there as the police question Thomas again. Mike’s pajama bottoms poke out from the waistband of his jeans. His t-shirt is covered by a suede jacket.
 

Mike’s constant mantra is, “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay. She’s going to be fine.”

The policemen confer with their colleagues, who accompany another victim with a knife wound.

The detective arrives and asks both Mike and Thomas if they’ve seen anyone lurking in the neighborhood lately. Mike answers while Thomas tries to gather enough saliva to lubricate his mouth. He can’t seem to form words. His tongue is glued to his teeth until someone brings him a paper cup of water.

#
 
#
 
#
 
#
 
#

I’m sorry. I can’t write this anymore. I’m sorry you didn’t get to speak with your mother again. Her last words were for the police. She described her attacker. I heard that the sketch the police made was on the news.

That first night, my heart was torn in two. I wanted to confess, but I couldn’t figure out if I was really the one who had done it. I remembered two versions of that night. In one, I snuck around with the mask. In the other, I was asleep on the couch. After all the horrible things I had imagined, I couldn’t say for sure if I had executed the crime, or simply imagined it.
 

As the days wore on, and the attacker she described wasn’t found, my certainty grew. I knew too many details about the attack before that phone call. There was no way I could have had the image of her wounds in my head before I left the house. But your mom had described a tall, heavyset man in his twenties. It took me a week to figure that part out.