Even though I was just a little kid I still found it unsettling. It was always at night. Always when I should’ve been sleeping. Many nights, if I opened my door a crack and looked out to the living room, there she would be. She’d stand facing the window with her back to me and her hand on the light switch.
Up down up down up down.
Sometimes, there were pauses that made it seem like there was some sort of pattern. Other times my mom would simply flip the light switch wildly with a madness in her eyes, a madness I’d watch reflected in the glass.
She caught me watching her once. I remember it vividly. She turned and smiled warmly. “Honey, you should be sleeping,” she bent and ran her fingers through my hair. “It’s okay. Go back to bed, sweetheart.”
But I knew that whatever it was, it was far from okay.
I was an only child, and it was just the three of us. My mom and dad moved a lot when I was growing up, but this slowed around the time I turned 9.
That’s when mom got her own special room. When dad stapled dark squishy styrofoam to the walls of a spare bedroom. We’d moved to some dizzyingly high apartment building. 30 stories up or more. Looking back, the walls were water stained and roaches ran when you turned on the lights, but to nine-year-old me it was a palace where my ears popped in the elevator.
I mostly remember my mother as being sweet, while I always remember my father as a silently furious man. It was as if he held his entire body white knuckled. Teeth and muscles alike were held so tight I wouldn’t be surprised to hear them crack or tear.
There were a lot of things that stressed dad out. One of them was Uncle Damien. He’d only come when dad wasn’t home, and he and mom would whisper at the kitchen table. A couple times, dad had found out that Damien had been over. He got somehow even madder than his resting rage and tore into my mother with a fury.
Then there was the murder. I blamed myself for a long time. The signs were there, but as you’ll come to see, what was a kid to do? My mom was black and blue, but still, she’d look out into the neighborhood below, and flip the light switch frantically.
_____
The police station smelled of brewing coffee and the musk of wet human. My nostrils flared as I folded my umbrella and stomped my boots on the black entrance mat. Luckily, I didn’t have to wait. As soon as I said my name at the counter a detective ushered me around the corner and into a well-lit office.
He shut the door and we both sat. “I’ve got it right here,” he said as he pushed over a pink journal. There was a brass clasp where it looked like a little lock had been sawn away. “Rachel McCann’s Diary.”
I reached towards the notebook but paused. “May I?”
He nodded. “Go to where it’s dog-eared. That’s where this all starts.”
I did as he said, and I read.
March 24th, 2008
Someone in the Willams building is flashing their lights at night. I saw them flashing three nights ago and again tonight!
I told Daddy but he didn’t see it. He missed it! He says it’s probably just a kid like me messing around, but I don’t think so.
10:12. Both times I’ve checked the time when the lights were flashing, and it was 10:12. If there are 1400 minutes in a day the odds of that happening twice are one in 1400! Or something like that.
Daddy thinks it’s just a cowhencidence. But he hasn’t even seen them flash.
March 25th 2008
They’re flashing right now! As I write this! The Williams building towers over our house but I can still see someone standing in front of the window as they flash the lights!
It’s 10:30 and the flashing has stopped. It didn’t start at 10:12 tonight so maybe daddy is right. But I don’t think it’s a kid. The person I saw looked like a grown up.
Daddy said the flashing could be some kind of code! Like morse code! He’s not curious about the flashing like I am, but he said he’d still teach me to understand code!
March 29th 2008
Morse code is not that hard! The dots are when the lights flash and when they stay on for a pause, that’s a dash. I realized watching videos that the flashing in the window might be too fast for me to understand though.
But I think I know enough to at least tell if the flashing is actually code or not!
Now I’m just waiting for the lights to flash again.
It’s been four days and no flash!”
The next entry didn’t have a date. It started with a series of dots and dashes. Morse code, I realized.
There
Are
Three
It’s been flashing! And I know what they’re saying! I couldn’t get it all, not even close. It flashes too fast! But I got the end. They said in code that there are three!
I’m trying to figure out what that means. Maybe it means they’re being held prisoner by three people. I think it might be someone that needs help.
They’re sending morse code and I’m the only one seeing it. But I haven’t seen the signal for SOS.
If I do, I’ll tell mom and dad. Maybe I can save this person!”
The rest of the page was filled with more dots and lines.
“I suck at morse code. It’s the middle of the night now. I woke up and saw the lights flashing again.
I tried to write the flashing as morse code but it must be wrong. It’s going too fast.
The words are—”
The writing stopped and continued on the line below.
“I’m not a scaredy cat but it’s late and something is wrong. I heard a shout downstairs. I can’t bring myself to leave my room. I’m hiding under my bed like a little girl. I can still see from here. The lights are flashing. Flashing slower. The message is repeating.”
There were more dots and dashes. The ink was smudged as if Rachel had been written furiously.
This can’t be right. The flashing lights. They’re not in trouble. They’re talking about me.
She’s
Under
The
Bed
That has to be about me. The lights aren’t flashing anymore. The person at the window, they’re just staring at me now.
There must’ve been a pause before the last sentence was written. The words were separated from the rest of the text.
Small and written slightly sideways it read: “That’s not daddy’s voice.”
I leaned back and shivered.
The detective spun the journal on the desk, so it faced him.
“We interviewed the occupants of every south facing apartment in the Williams tower, but we found no leads. You’re saying your mother would frequently flash the lights?”
I ignored him, lost in my own head. “What happened to the girl?” I asked.
The detective frowned. “You don’t know?”
“I mean I do. She was found killed the morning after this was written. Her parents, too. But how’d she die?”
The detective raised his eyebrows. Scratched his cheek with a thumb. “The parents throats were torn open. The coroner said the cuts were so dull it was like an animal had done it. And the girl… Her nose and mouth were sewn shut. She suffocated. And… some of her skin was sewn too, like surgical scars. But can you tell me more about your mother? We believe that whoever killed the McCann family was getting assistance from the person that was signaling with the light. The south facing apartments of the tower have an excellent view of the house. Can you tell me where your mother is now?”
I never could remember Uncle Damien’s face. My mom turned off the lights when he visited. But when I heard the detective say Rachel’s skin was sewn an image shuttled back into my mind. I saw Damien’s mouth closed with a black slit of sewing thread. His clothes were made of an ugly beige leather. Like skin, stitched together.
“He would do her bidding.” My dad told me drunk one night when I was only a kid. “That thing that comes and sees your mother when I’m away. It’s not your uncle. It’s a demon. I locked her away, and still, she uses the lights to talk with it now.”
“Hello?!” The detective yelled. “Anybody home?”
I shook with a start. “Sorry. I was just—” I stood abruptly. “Leaving.”
“This is still a murder investigation. You have to tell me about your mother.”
“You should know detective; she’s dead,” I said and practically ran from the room.
_____
That night I stood in my kitchen and poured a drink with a shaking hand. A pen and a single sheet of college-ruled paper sat on the counter.
I didn’t know what to make of it all. In my early teens, the newlyweds down the block were found murdered, and my parents and I were moving across the country again. My father was screaming at my mother asking her what she’d done.
I remember my dad pulling into a gas station, his face was bleeding from where my mom scratched him. He reached across the tiny backseat, opened my door from the inside and pushed me out.
With tears in his eyes, he looked at me and told me he loved me. Then he stomped the gas pedal. The car was a dot in the distance when I saw it swerve into the oncoming lane.
When I caught up with the car, I could see the black shadows of my parent’s bodies still burning in their seats.
Maybe my mother hit the wheel, but really I know my dad took things into his own hands to keep her from hurting anyone else.
I had put these demons in the past. Buried them. But what lead me to the police station and down memory lane in the first place was what I saw now. What I’ve seen the last three nights in a row.
Out the window, in an apartment building a few blocks down, lights are flashing in a single window.
A man has been walking down the dark street below. His mouth is a tight line. I swear I can see the sewing thread from here.
I know who it is. I know it’s Damien because I’ve already translated what the flashes say.
It’s a command.
It’s written on the paper on the counter.
Sew
His