Dead Echo

  *

  Since childhood he’d always written everything down. He was the first (hell, the only) boy he ever knew who kept a diary. Every day, Sunday too. Right now he had one whole bedroom devoted to the past; heap after boxed-heap of worn and beaten journals, his name on every one. Whatever passage of time they covered scrawled underneath. And even though he’d tried to keep his passion shielded from the world there had been people over the years who’d discovered and called others’ attention to it. He’d been the “writing sissy,” the “scribbler,” “pencil pusher,” “ole cross Ts,” and a handful of other colorful descriptions. If he wanted to remember them, all he had to do was thumb through the pages of his life and he’d find them there. He’d left out nothing important. No matter how much a name hurt, or a situation, or a whole school year, he’d left out nothing. Sometimes even his co-workers called him “The Scribbler” but he just let it roll off his back. What the fuck did they know?

  He was “The Chronicler” and that was it. He’d always been.

  But he knew, sitting there in his new house, gravely aware of the past he had entrenched himself in, that his life had not been so bad. It’d had its ups and downs, like everyone else’s he supposed, but it had never gotten unbearable. Until now.

  He looked down at his writing desk. He was not one to write just anywhere. It had to feel right. The room had to be conducive to his needs, not too much light, cool, accepting. The first thing he’d done with this new house was pick out a bedroom to turn into an office. The second had been to paint it blue. The blue of Destin’s surf, out past the first breakwater. He had it written down, had everything written down. He guessed that was what made him a good adjustor because he never missed a trick. If something was in question, all he had to do was go back and look it up. He even suspected it made a few of his fellow adjustors a little bit jealous, this uncanny ability to remember everything about seemingly every particular case. But then again, he was “The Chronicler,” wasn’t he? Could he expect anything less? Could anyone?

  His eyes rode over to the pile of journals he had stacked in a corner (the farthest corner to be exact) of the room. He knew the dates without looking, had pulled them for the very fact of those numbers. March 3, 1992 to April 17, 1995. Just over three years, Christ, over 1,000 days! It was hard to believe those kinds of numbers now, sitting here at this desk, miles away, a lifetime away. Indeed, hard to believe, but the evidence stared back at him from the corner like a dull eye. Seventeen standard journals, the kind you picked up at Dollar General or Hallmark stores (if you didn’t mind paying a little extra). Every one of them filled with his tight, precise handwriting. He’d wanted to leave more for the next occupant of 9535 Samane but he never once considered leaving the journals. They were his lifework (his real lifework) and parting with them would have been akin to leaving an arm or leg behind as he left. But as hard as it’d been to delve back into the horrors those journals contained, he had gone back and tried to piece together a warning of sorts, something the next person (or persons) would be able to hold and say: See? I’m not crazy. Here’s proof. Miles just hoped it wasn’t too late because he knew how people were. He’d been the same. Even faced with that list of horrors he’d taken the pains and time to write down, he’d still held to the idea that the fault was his own. That something had gone awry with his mind, that he was not seeing things as they really were. People were like that. Quick to place the blame on their senses rather than admit what they saw didn’t fit the patterns they were used to. Miles sensed this basic fault came from the act of dreaming. After all, that’s what he’d suspected for the longest time, that somehow the things he saw were only manifestations of his sleeping mind, no more real than a talking monkey. Of course, he’d had no idea why (no text to consult), but that hadn’t stopped him from thinking such things. In fact, it had made it easier. That way he hadn’t thought he was going crazy. He’d been like Ebenezer Scrooge, rationalizing the supernatural off on a bad stomach, or more pointedly, poor sleep. But, gradually, those rationalizations had worn thin.

  It had finally been the finger that did it.

  And strangely, it had been after a quiet week: no sounds from the attic, no phantasmagoric blood splattered floor to ceiling in the bathroom, no creeping forms in the house at night. Only a finger, as dry and desiccated as some small stuffed animal hanging in a hunting lodge. From the smallest instance, the greatest illumination, he thought, wrote it down on the inside cover of the journal closest to him. An original? he wondered, because its irony cut to the bone.

  He remembered walking into the kitchen early that morning (it had been a Saturday) and turning on the coffee pot. He’d walked down the driveway to fetch the paper (he knew every move, it was all written down) and glanced at the front page as he made his way back to the carport door. He’d spread the paper out on the island, gave it a cursory flip-through as he waited for the coffee, crossed over to the refrigerator to see if they still had anything quick to put together for breakfast and noticed they didn’t (he was in no mood for a pepperoni Lean Pocket). Backtracked to the cabinet where he got a coffee mug, filled it to the rim, black. He’d still had the paper in his left hand, peering at it over his glasses, when with his right he’d opened the drawer to get a spoon. And that’s when he’d seen it, a little piece of bone-white stick, he thought at first. But no, that wasn’t quite right. It was ragged at one end and had a disconcerting fleshy quality now that the first glance was done. He dropped the cup then, heard very faintly (as if from a long way away) as it shattered on the tile floor, felt very faintly the splash of hot liquid against his bare calf. He’d reached in for the pair of tongs, gripped the two-inch piece of whatever-it-was from among the rack of forks where it lay and pulled it free of the drawer, placed it on the paper. Pushed his glasses high up on the bridge of his nose and squatted down to get a better look. A finger sure enough, there was no denying what he saw. He reached down and poked it with his own finger, appalled and disgusted at the rubbery, wrinkled texture of flesh on bone. Bloodless.

  And that had been that, the moment when he knew it was not insanity, or stress, or simply a joke his senses visited upon him for reasons unexplained. At that moment he knew everything was real, all the questions he’d had in his head answered.

  But there had also been his damnable curiosity. Without that, he thought, he knew in his bones that Debbie would still be alive.