“Nice,” he said.
“Pan right.”
The shelves of a prefab bookcase sagged with the weight of hundreds of CDs. On the spine of each jewel case was a tiny, Braille-stenciled sticker. Every disc was a clue, a peek into Grace’s mind.
“There’s no time to write all this down,” I said dispairingly.
My brother looked at me with an expression so comical and cartoonish, I nearly giggled. One of his eyebrows was cocked impossibly high on his forehead; his lip was curled in a sneer. He looked like a frizzy-haired Elvis Presley.
“Bitch, I’ve been rollin’ since I flipped this on,” he said, nodding to the camera. “I’ll get this, and then stand watch by the door. Wanna make sure our neighbor out there isn’t scheming. You check out the rest of the apartment. How much time?”
I checked my watch. “Ten minutes.” I walked out of the living room into the cramped hallway. My footfalls echoed off the naked walls.
This tiny flashlight was doing a piss-poor job of beating back the darkness. The day-night slipped around me like a glove, oppressive; I felt it soak my clothes, seep into my pores.
I gave the bathroom a once-over. Nothing of note here; no prescriptions, only store-brand toiletries. The kitchen was equally devoid of personalization. I thought of my apartment; how Rachael and I had done everything we could to make that place special, ours.
How could a man live an invisible life? I wondered. There’s gotta be something here, something his, truly his, something hiding.
I nudged the door at the end of the hall with my foot. The bedroom door swung inward, its hinges stutter-squeaking like a giggly child. The blackness was overpowering here. It hunts best in the pitch, I heard Grace say. I licked my lips. My nyctophobia was slobbering, ravenous now. Gooseflesh was having its way with my skin, cascading down my arms, my chest (I felt my nipples stiffen, and shivered), my balls were digging up inside me, every hair standing on end.
The flashlight in my hand sputtered, spiraling the room into a candlelight flicker show. My teeth gnawed into my bottom lip as I shook the thing—work, work, goddamn you.
The door slammed shut behind me.
I couldn’t scream… and if I had, I would not have heard it now, Jesus Christ, the sound of skittering leaves, of gravel tossed upon hardwood. Tktktk. Blood squirted into my mouth, my incisor gone too far into the flesh, lip cut.
The shadows swirled and jittered and the flashlight failed me. I slapped its head against my right palm now, and there, in my peripheral vision, a shape high on the wall, a thing with horns, now without, a thing with snakes for arms, dancing, looming, and I could hear it speaking now, a cicada hum—
“Would. You. Be. Miiiine?”
The flashlight winked out… and then flashed bright again.
I stared at the wall, wracked with shivers, not blinking at the shade-thing towering above me. It no longer danced. It no longer spoke. But its snake arms still jittered, frightening things.
I blinked. Looked down at my trembling fingers. The fingers on my right hand. The light surged past them, casting their shadows on the wall. My fingers. My fucking fingers.
I pulled my hand away from the flashlight, and the monster disappeared.
“Get a grip, you idiot,” I said. I swallowed the bitter blood mixed with spit in my mouth and swept the light over the room.
It showed a bed—fastidiously made, taut sheets, military corners—an empty night table, a chest of drawers, an open closet door. I looked inside the closet, up to a shelf above hanging khaki pants and dress shirts. It was empty. Light kicking south now, to the floor. Two pairs of shoes. One set were expensive, gleaming Italian dress shoes. The other was a pair of pristine Reeboks.
A search of the nearby chest of drawers was equally fruitless. Socks, briefs and white undershirts glared up at me, their slumber interrupted. God, it was so dark in here.
“Focus,” I said, and did my best to.
I aimed the flashlight toward the far corner of the room. There, beneath another curtain-covered window, was a full-sized electronic keyboard resting atop a metal card table. Its white and black keys gleamed in the light. I thought of Emilio Wallace’s haunted face from this afternoon, of his too-white teeth and the hollow gaps in between. A tiny, ancient television sat beside the piano.
Why would a blind man need a TV? I wondered, and then immediately cursed myself. That was the selfishness of my sighted life spilling into this one. One need not see to watch. Grace had proven that already, hadn’t he?
I leaned in, looking more closely at the twelve-inch TV. What did the man watch? I snatched my untucked shirttail and used it as an impromptu glove. I tugged on the silver volume knob.
It didn’t switch on. I checked the power cable—it was plugged in—and twisted the chunky VHF knob. It dutifully clack-clacked, trying to switch stations. Nothing.
I spun the UHF knob beneath it. It made a subtle ticking sound, like a stopwatch.
I stiffened. I knew that sound.
You surely do, Zach. That’s a tick-tick that takes us way back. Giddy-giddy.
I growled at the voice in my head and leaned closer, nearly placing my ear against the plastic box. I turned the knob slowly. It’d been more than five years, and here I was, sliding on this suit, quietly alarmed at how easy it was to do so… and how well it still fit.
Tick-tick-tick-CLICK.
“Two to go,” I whispered.
The other tumblers soon fell, and the front of the television popped open like an oven door. I looked inside.
The bedroom door behind me screeched open, and I nearly screamed. More light surged into the room.
“We’re in deep shit,” Lucas said. His face was flushed and manic in the light of his Handycam. He slammed the door behind him. “Cops. Lots of cops. Spotted them from the hallway window. Coming up the stairwell now.”
“Cops? I thought it’d be some D.A. intern—”
“Shut up, man. We gotta bolt!”
I reached into the hollow television and pulled out a metal box, about the size of a large paperback book. I slapped it into his free hand, shut Grace’s home-brewed safe and gave the combination knob a spin.
Lucas shook the box. The tinny sound of cardboard or paper clicked against the box walls. But there was something else clanking inside, too. It sounded small and metallic, like a silver dollar.
“Hold this,” he said, passing me the Handycam. He pulled off his pack and slipped the lockbox inside. With one efficient tug, the pack was zippered tight, and our work here was done.
We grinned at each other in the darkness.
“Okay. Katabatic,” Lucas said.
And then the fury of New York’s finest descended upon us.
The voices were not voices; they were monstrous roars, banshee-screams from an unholy two-hundred-foot daikaiju, window-rattling wails.
NYPD! GET ON THE FLOOR! ON THE FLOOR NOW DO IT NOW WE’RE COMING IN ON THE FLOOR NOWONTHEFLOORNOW!
From beyond the room and down the hall, I heard the pistol-shot of wood shattering, hinges swinging madly, a doorknob bashing into drywall. I started, staring at the closed bedroom door.
Lucas punched my arm, hard.
“Help me!” he hissed. I turned and watched him tear the dark curtains off their cheap aluminum rail, watched the plaster dust—exquisitely captured in my trembling flashlight beam—puff into the air as the rail’s screws were ripped from the wall. The curtains tumbled. I dashed to my brother, wrenching the card table, keyboard and TV away from the wall.