In The Red

“Get the camera, get the camera, don’t drop the camera, you dumbfuck–”

“You’re the one who took the strap off. Nice save, Andrew.”

Andrew does not thank him for the compliment, because he is currently thumbing frantically through the shitty handy-cam’s various half-homebrew video settings (infrared, slow-mo, black and white for when your poltergeist footage needs to be really arty–) and dislodging his band-aids in the process. The pipes are rattling like a motherfuck, and the bathtub is spewing red water.

(“My aunt’s house does that,” Ryan says half-under his breath, backed up against the rotting plaster wall with his arms crossed tightly to his chest. He’s only too happy to hand off the job of cameraman; he’d rather be an objective rational observer, and that makes it worse, that he’s not even trying to puncture the mood by pointing out that all this is just a little bit ridiculous.)

“Do you hear that? Something’s knocking on the pipes. Something’s trying to bang out a message on the pipes. Neiman, are you getting audio?”  Carl hugs his battered black folder and clutches his homemade EMF meter, busted handheld tape recorder jammed in the pocket of his belted jeans, spooling raw tape. His mouth is agape, and he has that traffic-barrier deer look that suggests both terrible intensity of focus and a complete lack of direction.

“All clear on audio. Ask it something–”

“Ask what it wants,” Ryan says reasonably.

“Ask what its name is. His name,” Andrew catches himself. 

(Nicole would have added, “or her name." But she’s waiting in the car like someone with a heathy respect for life and limb, playing smartphone games with her feet up on the dashboard.)

The plumbing gives another horrible metal-on-metal groan, jerking and shuddering as if it means to tear itself loose from the wall, and one last splash of ugly red water bathes the dingy porcelain. Neiman tries to frame the shot to catch it in action before their best creepy visual slinks muddily down the drain. Carl sucks in a tight breath.

“What. Is. Your name.”

(Talk normal, for fuck’s sake, we’re not doing an ouija board. Andrew bites his lip and says nothing, straining to hear. A voice. A presence. Fucking Morse code, whatever.)

One last subsonic shudder, a low rumble. One knock. Then another.

Ryan Connolly is mouthing “spell it”, and Carl is shaking his head so forcefully his hair is flopping in his face like a pennant. Listen, listen, listen. Constant vigilance.

A groan, not metallic but organic, grating like serrated edges on flesh. An utterance. A voice. Andrew is rigid, clutching the camera even though he can feel slippery blood tracking the back of his hand, he is stiff as a corpse and the lone bare electric bulb that flickers in the corner of his vision cannot make him flinch. He’s just got to keep his eyes fixed – not even on the backlit preview frame, which mostly shows Carl’s colorless terror-face and some rusty plumbing, but on the little red dot that says recording is happening. A record of what?

No more voice. Just like that, it’s gone. Then four quick knocks, evenly spaced – a pause while they gawk, while Carl clutches his official ghost-hunting ring binder to his chest like it’s going to be torn from his hands – and then another four. A steady count. One, two, three, four. Suddenly the room isn’t so icy-cold any more – it’s hot, he can feel the blood pulsing in his cheeks and it stings. They’re all waiting for something, waiting around like a bunch of assholes, and they don’t even know what. Fixed, immobile, attentive, listening. The EMF is maxed out. The little red dot, the light. One, two, three, four. One, two.

Mid-count, the bulb shatters, sending a shard of hot glass whipping across Andrew’s cheek, slicing. The lights go out. But he does not flinch.