Chapter 14
After dinner with Emily, Ethan rolled in to his apartment complex around 8:00 PM. He was frustrated that he wasn’t sleeping. He was more frustrated that he wasn't sleeping with Emily, but she complained of a cold at the restaurant and promised him a rain check. His concern for her was genuine. He would’ve gladly taken care of her, although he couldn’t make the promise to keep his hands off of her.
He would occupy his time and his hands with his research. Tools gathered and placed appropriately, he began the test again. One depressing hour later, he had the same results. That exercise, he decided, was worthless. Until there was some other quantifiable sign, he would forego the crayons.
Maybe they prefer ball point, he thought, and moved on to the voice recorder.
He played back the audio, listening for any responses to his questions or inexplicable noises, and found nothing. He tried the headphones while the recorder was on, but found he couldn’t monitor and record simultaneously with that gear. It was break time.
He grabbed a glass of water from the kitchen and then dove into the internet again, looking for ideas. It disappointed him that the apartment was absolutely silent. Any noise would've been accentuated in a recording. The red crayon caught his attention.
“Were you in my bedroom last night?” he asked it.
No response. He stared at it, trying not to blink.
“Did you open my drawer while I was asleep?”
Red was starting to annoy him. He envisioned a fondue pot of molten wax, the crayon dangling above it from a chain. It dropped a bit each time it failed to answer his questions. Back to reality.
“Did you turn off my recorder?”
His third question didn’t cause levitation or spirit mists, either. No glowing, full-torso vapor flew out of the wall, and nothing went bump in the night.
Now he had three worthless audio files. The one from the previous night, the one he just checked, and the new one were listed in the LCD window as ‘Audio01’, ‘Audio02’, and ‘Audio03’. He downloaded them to the notebook computer for analysis.
First he opened Audio01 and put on his headphones. With the volume up to the brink of distortion, he listened to the entire forty-five minutes. Slobber took this opportunity to nap. As before, there was nothing but snores, and then that odd scratching sound. Was it a glitch or a surge of some sort?
Software allowed him to zoom in on the sound and stretch its waveform across the screen. He watched the bright blue line vibrate on its black background. It reminded him of a plucked guitar string. Still, there were no voices.
Definitely no voices.
“Damn.”
Ethan’s head throbbed. He gathered the stuff up and headed to his bedroom. Placing the recorder on the dresser this time, he hoped it might capture less snoring and more other. Then he sat on the bed and leaned to put the pad and crayon away.
He opened the nightstand drawer—and fireworks went off in his skull. Ethan's spine froze and he slammed the drawer nervously, stunned and staring for a moment.
Then he opened it once more, slowly, and listened intently. It was the same sound! He closed the drawer and opened it again…and again…and again. He smiled wider with each repetition. Ethan ran to the living room with the enthusiasm of Scrooge on Christmas morning and grabbed the laptop to play it back.
He was manic, completely jazzed by the finding. Sleep beckoned, but had to take a back seat. He compared the live sound to the audio track several times, even recording it again.
Placed next to each other on the LCD screen, their waveforms even looked similar. Each one a slightly different length, but the waveforms all looked very much alike. Fifty plays later, he was thoroughly convinced. Either he was a sleepwalker or something else had opened that drawer. He had to tell someone. Ethan glanced at the clock.
2:00 am.
It would have to wait until morning.
..ooOOoo..
“Hello?” Emily said, phone in one hand, wadded up tissue in the other.
“Good morning,” said a cheerful Ethan.
Her scruffy voice replied, “Aren't we chipper? How can you be so happy when I feel like I was scraped off of someone's shoe?”
Ethan smiled to himself, twirling a yellow #2 pencil in his fingers and staring blankly at the monitor on his desk at work. “I'm sorry, girl. How do you feel?”
“I feel like absolute crap. Thanks for asking,” she said, sniffing and then blowing her nose.
“Did I wake you?”
“No, it's fine. I'm glad you called. Did your experiment work?”
It would have been clear to a total stranger that no one could be as happy as Ethan sounded if he was actually working while at work. His smile broadened even further as he conveyed his results. It was the most excited he'd been in a long time.
“That's very cool, babe.” It was all she could manage, and the sound of her voice concerned him.
“I’m sorry you feel bad. Do you need anything? I can run something over on my lunch hour or right after work.” He stopped twirling his pencil in anticipation of her reply, ready to make a list if need be.
“No, I'll live, really. When I feel better, I'll need you to come over and cuddle. Right now I don't want to see anyone.”
She sniffed again and coughed away from the phone.
“I'll check on you later. Get some rest, all right?”
“I will. Thanks, baby.”
Em sniffed through her cold as she hung up.
Ethan glanced at the monitor and decided it was time for more coffee before he got busy.
..ooOOoo..
He was certain it was the largest hunk of bullshit, but he stopped at Waffles on the way home from work to see if they had a Ouija board. Part whim and part morbid curiosity, it was the only thing he could think of that he hadn't tried. Waffles was a local toy shop, named affectionately for its mascot, Waffles the Clown. His eerie mannequin stood in the entry like a cigar-store Indian chief and likely did more to drive off customers than invite them. The look from the elderly cashier made it more than worth the trip.
“We sure don't sell a lot of them things,” she said, as he handed her a twenty dollar bill.
She's right about that, he thought.
There were only two left on the shelf, both covered with ancient grime. The packaging was so beaten up it was barely recognizable as a box. He'd needed to strain to reach the second one. He pulled down his prize in a puff of dust that might have originally come from the forming of the planet. Unlike the one in front, this one was at least sealed in plastic. Taped shut wouldn’t do. Something told him that first one had been returned. If the thing held any power at all, there was no need in bringing home someone else’s baggage after they’d left an open session.
The old woman in the blue apron smiled as she rang him up, but looked repulsed by the box. It had a large sun and moon on a midnight blue background. There were clean finger marks in the dust where she had gripped it to slide the box across the UPC reader. As she took a second disgusted glance at the box, she slid it into a thin plastic bag…a little harder than she needed to.
Under the title were the words: ‘The Mysterious Mystifying Game’, a description Ethan regarded as redundant. He also laughed at ‘Parker Brothers, Salem, Mass.’, printed on the bottom.
Where else would they come from?
He picked up his purchase, receipt and change from the cashier.
“Thanks, Beverly, you have a great day!”
“You too, hon. Be careful what you wish for,” she warned, with a nervous smile.
Ethan turned at the exit and glanced back, certain he saw her cross herself as he waited on the automatic door. Her superstition made him chuckle, but it struck an uneasy chord with him as well. His heart pounded as he walked out the door, the frightened look in the old cashier's eyes haunting each step.
Maybe there's something to these things, or at least the belief in them
, he thought. And maybe it would be wise to set the thing on his dresser until that feeling passed.