I paced around the apartment trying to work out what happened with the dictation. The software recently incorporated AI into its build, so maybe it learned my name from past dictations and that’s how it ended up in the current transcription. And maybe it’s telling me I’m going to die because this is the start of the AI apocalypse.
Focus, John, I thought to myself. You’re not living in a James Cameron movie.
I sat back down in front of the laptop and finished editing the transcription in the web browser. My head was swimming a little, and it took a real force of will to focus on the report. A number of checkbox clicks, free text fields, and dropdown selections later and I clicked the “Submit” button at the bottom of the window.
I closed the laptop and downed the lukewarm coffee, intent on putting this one behind me. A glitch in the dictaphone. If it happens again I’ll get a new one.
Later that afternoon Patricia returned from her thrift store run with lunch. Fish tacos. The perfect fast food you can pretend is healthy without the guilt.
“Smells delicious,” I said. “Thanks for lunch.”
“Of course,” she said. “Fast food without the guilt.”
I smiled and set out plates and silverware on the dining table in the kitchen. She put a couple tacos on each plate and poured us ice water.
“Feeling better?” she asked between mouthfuls.
I nodded, but apparently it wasn’t convincing. She set her food down and folded her hands, staring intently at my face. The eyebrow raised and I was done for.
“Okay okay,” I said. “Still a little off kilter from the satanic ritual.”
“Not necessarily satanic. Could be witchy,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“What else is wrong? I know a pentagram and some candles wouldn’t trip you up like this. Is it the nightmare?”
“No.” I wasn’t getting out of this. “There were some random words that the dictation software picked up. Weird stuff like ‘help me’ and ‘trapped.’ ‘Don’t go.’ Some kind of glitch.”
She sat forward, eyes lit up. “Like an EVP?”
“A what?”
“EVP. Electronic voice phenomenon. It means something was trying to communicate with you.”
“Like a zombie chicken?” I said, infusing more sarcastic tone than intended.
Patricia took a bite of fish taco and lost some lettuce on the plate. She picked up the lettuce pieces and ate them, giving me her signature look of annoyance. Not her doghouse look, more like don’t make me count. I straightened up in the barstool chair.
“Like a ghost,” she said in a deadly serious tone.
“Come on,” I said.
“For real. Ask any paranormal investigator.”
She knew some, too, on social media. And she always watched those shows. They felt contrived to me, so I either worked on other inspection reports or popped the headphones in and listened to classic rock whenever the paranormal lit up the flat-screen.
“What did they sound like?” she asked.
“I don’t know, it transcribed automatically,” I said.
She got up from the table, shaking her head, and pulled my arm. “No, no, no, you have to listen to them on the recorder. Come on. Go get it.”
I reluctantly went and got the digital voice recorder from the key bowl by the door and we stood by the sofa. I turned it on and clicked the rewind button until the first “EVP” notes began. I had no intention of playing the last one for her.
Exterior building three no issues. Help me. Building structurally sound.
My voice could be heard clearly, but at the “help me” part, the dictation became static and a deep male voice broke through. Then my voice continued as clear as day.
“See!” Patricia said, grabbing my arm tightly.
I rewound and played it again. Sure enough, a voice could be heard speaking “help me.”
“So I’m supposed to believe that’s a ghost?” I asked.
“What else could it be?” she said.
“I don’t know. Maybe a walkie-talkie signal cutting in from somewhere? Lots of farmers use them, and there were farms all over.”
“No. This sounds exactly like an EVP, just like on TV. I’m telling you it’s a ghost. Or something worse.”
A chill went down my spine. “Worse? Like what?”
“It’s usually either ghosts or demons.”
“Great. Some kind of satanic worship going on and now I’m hearing demons.”
“Were there any more?”
I clicked to the next note and we leaned in to listen.
Interior building two contains chicken cages, three rows spanning length of building, six levels tall. Don’t go. Steel wash basin on north wall. Plumbing good. Electrical good. Trapped. Pain.
Same deep voice swimming in static.
I paused the recorder and looked at her. She was frowning and slowly shaking her head.
“I don’t think that’s a demon,” she said. “Sometimes they play games, but this sounds more like a trapped soul.”
“Trapped like in purgatory?” I asked.
“Or trapped at the location. Do you know if anyone died there?”
“Nothing showed up in the property history report.”
“Hmm,” Patricia said, staring intently at the recorder. “Was that all?”
I put the recorder in my pocket and said, “Yep. Just those two.”
She sat down on the sofa and pulled out her phone. After a minute of scrolling, she held the screen up. It was a social media page showing a dark-haired woman with black eyeliner and lipstick, wearing a black and red handkerchief tied around her head with an all-seeing eye embroidered on the front.
“She’s here in town. People rave,” Patricia said.
“Hedy Nightshade? Hell no,” I said, shaking my head in one quick jerk. “No way, Patricia. You know how long it took me to build up my client base.”
“She could help us figure out who this is, why they’re trapped.”
“Yeah, and when it gets out that I hired a psychic because of something that happened on-site during an inspection? No more clients.” I tried keeping my tone neutral, but it got snarky and she let me know with a look.
“No one is going to find out. We had her over for book club a few months ago. She’s very discreet.”
The fish tacos were unfinished on the dining table and I went over and sat down. I took a bite and savored the tangy sauce. I didn’t want to keep arguing, and Patricia really loved this stuff. Besides, after listening to that voice my anxiety was piquing.
“Fine,” I said.
She ran over and hugged me from behind. I could feel her exuberant energy, and I guess it rubbed off on me a little. I smiled while chewing.
“I’m gonna call her now,” she said, and ran into the bedroom.
I leaned over in the chair to make sure she was gone, and pulled out the recorder. The screen lit up as I clicked the fast-forward button, selected the last note, and deleted it. She didn’t need to see that last one, it would only make her worry. And I was doing enough of that for both of us right now.
When she came out of the bedroom, she said, “Ten a.m. tomorrow at the chicken farm.”
“I thought we’d go to her…realm, or whatever,” I said. “I definitely don’t want her at the farm. Someone from the bank might show up.”
“That’s where the EVPs came from, though. That’s where the ghost is, not here.”
“Okay. I didn’t think about that.”
She sat down at the dining table and we finished our fish tacos and chips. It was possible someone from the bank could show up, but if I’m being honest, unlikely. Not a day after receiving the report. I was being difficult because of the anxiety, like being on autopilot. Something I needed to work on.
After lunch we sat on the sofa and she fired up a paranormal show for us to watch. Research, she said. To me it looked like a bunch of clowns with flashing and beeping toys that proved nothing, but then they started the EVP work. They would ask pointed questions while recording, and then play it back to see if any responses came through. Of course they had responses, go figure, but I did take notice at how similar the sounds were to what I had on mine. Slightly disconcerting.
That evening Patricia had to go back to her shop for the start of inventory, which lasted all week with her partner and their sole employee after business hours. This meant I had the apartment to myself.
I cracked open a beer and sat on the sofa. The anxiety was still there, like a knot of snakes trying to escape my guts, and I hoped the beer would dull it a little. My cat, Shirley, decided to make an appearance and jumped up on the couch next to me. She usually stays in the bedroom unless it’s feeding time, so maybe she could sense my unease. I stroked her long, gray hair and scratched behind her ears. She tipped her head into it and started purring.
The beer did the trick and the numbness in my stomach turned warm and indifferent. My hand was resting on Shirley’s back and I could feel the vibration, and then it stopped suddenly. She looked to the other side of me, her eyes dilated black, and she hissed with ears flattened. A deep, guttural growl escaped her and she exploded off the couch and ran into the bedroom. A tuft of gray hair floated down to the carpet.
Everything went cold. I could feel the blood drain from my face as I looked at the sofa next to me. The hair on my arms stood up, a charge of electricity in the air surrounding me. I wanted to get up and leave, but I was frozen in place. So I did the only thing that came to mind, and slowly pulled the digital recorder out of my pocket and turned it on.
“Is someone sitting next to me?” I asked into the recorder, and then paused. I continued, “Who are you? Are you the same one who spoke to me at the chicken farm?”
After a moment, I rewound the audio and played it back.
Is someone sitting next to me?
I paused it at the next question, rewound, played it again, and paused it. My voice was crystal clear and there was no static, no deep voice coming through the ether. I played the next questions.
Who are you? Are you the same one who spoke to me at the chicken farm? Yes.
My heart started pounding. I clicked the “Record” button and asked, “Who are you?”
Who are you? Trapped.
“Trapped where?”
Underneath.
“Underneath what?”
Pain. Pain. PAIN!
The TV remote spun around and flew off the coffee table across the room, clattering against the far wall. I pushed myself against the back of the sofa, digging my feet into the floor and pulling my legs up. My chest was tight and breathing came rapidly. A cold sweat formed on my brow and I wiped it away with the back of my hand.
“Did you do that?” I asked into the recorder. “Are you a demon?”
When I played it back, nothing. I tried a few more questions and was ghosted, literally and figuratively.
It took a moment for me to compose myself enough to go pick the remote up and put it back on the table. I did so slowly and mechanically, my body stiff and cold. I watched it sitting on the table, waiting for it to defy physics again. This time it behaved, but that didn’t make me feel any better.
I put the recorder back in the key bowl by the front door and stood in the living room, unsure what to do. I weighed telling Patricia what had happened, and decided to wait until we had our meeting with Hedy Nightshade the next day. I couldn’t believe I was meeting with a psychic, but after what just happened I felt a bit more open to it.
The evening seemed to drag on and on while I waited for Patricia to come home. I kept finding myself in different parts of the apartment, the kitchen, living room, bathroom, bedroom, standing in the open closet door, without really remembering how I got there, like when you get to your destination and don’t remember the drive. It was hard to stay still, especially on the sofa. I felt ridiculous.
When Patricia finally got home it was late, almost midnight. We’re both early to bed, early to rise, so as soon as she got home we hit the sheets and were in dreamland. Mine revolved around disembodied voices and poltergeist activity, Shirley getting launched across the living room and slashing wildly with her claws at the air, the walls cracking and me choking on sheetrock dust.
Sometime in the middle of the night, I was awakened by a crashing sound. I looked over at Patricia and she was still asleep, so then I wondered if it was one of those auditory hallucinations where you hear canons or loud noises that wake you up. Exploding head syndrome it’s melodramatically called. It’s happened to me a few times in my life. I rolled over to go back to sleep, and then realized that I had to pee pretty bad. Damn beer.
I rolled out of bed gently and walked quietly to the bathroom. I went in, closed the door, and then turned the light on. Half asleep, eyes full of crusty ooze, I shuffled over to the toilet and relieved my bladder. Shake, flush, lid down. Head hanging, I drifted to the sink and washed my hands. I rinsed my eyes, and when I looked up I felt a jolt through my chest to my spine.
The mirror had a spider’s web of cracks emanating from a central impact point, like a fist had punched it. As I watched, feeling panic dig its claws in, the mirror fogged from a ghostly breath, and words, written by an unseen finger, traced their way through the moisture.
You will die, John. You will die, John. You will die, John.
| Part 1 | Part 3 |