Chapter Text
In some out-of-the-way supermarket, already crowded from the weekend rush, there’s a circle of people surrounding a shelf of brand-new box televisions, freshly manufactured, the latest 1985 model. Made and distributed locally. Should the average person have a hearty $554.55 laying around, they’d have the opportunity of bringing one home. Sure, they’re pricey, but what does it compare to having the fanciest technology of all your neighbors?
Some people find the antennae to be a silly look on them, one reminiscent of what you would see on the average car to catch radio signals, or perhaps on a common house roach, feeling and sensing its surroundings by just a slight twitch and turn. What most people don’t know, or what they don’t realize, is that the antennae on a television–or any electronic, for that matter–is capable of capturing much more than a broadcast or a phone call. In fact, should it be strong enough, any kind of nearby frequency will latch on to and claim the box as a vessel for their taking.
And then, who knows? What is the paranormal if not the world’s finest conspiracy? Wouldn’t you like to own your very own gateway into other layers of our dimension, right in the center of your living room?
This could be yours, and more, for just five-hundred dollars.
And remember, there’s no better fix for pesky television static than some good old concussive maintenance!
Sequoyah Wright, May 1994
I pulled into the driveway this evening to find that Tim’s window had been closed, with the curtains drawn. This was strange to me, as just before I had left for work, he’d been sitting on the nook of his windowsill, waving me goodbye with a sweet grin and a book in his lap, and it was rather early to darken one’s bedroom. He knew very well that I like curtains to be open until the sun goes down–for the sunlight is better for everything in the house–and I found it uncharacteristic of him to go against my wishes like this. It was minor, I know, and I wasn’t upset–not yet, anyhow. More curious, really.
When I opened the door and made my way to the kitchen island to set my purse and keys down, I called out for Tim, but he remained in his room, the door shut. Another thing I didn’t particularly like. It makes me paranoid.
My concern built with every step I took down the hall and towards his room. I knocked lightly against the wood of his door, only three times, and told him it was me–then asked if I could come in. He didn’t respond.
I tried turning the knob, and found that the door had been locked from the inside. My light raps against the door had become rather thunderous, demanding he open the door. What must have sounded more like anger had mostly been fear, and the most intense worry I’d felt since he was seven. In those four years hence, I had made adjustment after adjustment to his routine and guidelines in the hopes that it would make peace and hold it steady, so as to keep from ever reigniting that anxiety in my chest again. It is becoming increasingly clear that my efforts were in vain.
When he did not respond once again, my panic had reached a boiling point, and I fetched my credit card out of my wallet and began to try and force the door open. My hands had already begun to shake.
I finally felt the lock separate from the wall, and I furiously swung the door open, immediately scanning the bedroom for my son.
And there he was, curled up on his bed, facing away from me, arms hugging his knees tightly to his chest. It was now that I could make out the quietest, most heartbreaking sobs emitting from him, and I marched over to pull him close to me, never quitting the slew of questions as to what had happened, and what had him so hysterical.
In truth, all I think he’d wanted was his mother, as he had wordlessly thrown himself onto me to cry and choke out words of some sort of intruder in the house. At first, I had half a mind to carry him out of the house and back to my car and immediately dial for the police; but then it hit me.
Of the dozens and dozens of drawings Tim had taped to his wall, there had always been a series of depictions he’d made that deeply troubled me. Just above his bed, he had a growing collection of drawings in black crayon and marker, all of the same tall, thin man among pine trees.
In what I could make out of the chicken-scratch etched onto some of these papers, Tim would allude to being almost ‘haunted’ by this person. When he was eight, I remember him crawling into my bed at the dead of night, broken down into tears, crying over the very thing he had been hiding from today. At first, I had written it off as a nightmare, or perhaps that something in his dark room had played a trick on his eyes, but I know better now. Tim had always been a troubled boy, no matter how much time and money I poured into helping him. And when I’d brought some of his more concerning drawings to his behavioral pediatrician, they immediately requested a series of screenings pertaining to some admittedly scary things. The moment I heard the word ‘Schizophrenia’ leave Dr. Keaton’s mouth, I stood up from my chair and led Tim out of the room and back to the car. I refused to believe something could be so wrong with my son that he would need to be institutionalized. At the time, I couldn’t even fathom having him taken from me for something so harmless as an imaginary friend.
But it got worse as he got older.
He began to destroy things in his room, and even hurt himself with his own teeth and nails in a sort of manic fit to take his mind off of what threatened him. He would yell at me, and cry all through the night. I always tried to hold him through it, like any good mother would, but I always felt that I was missing a step. Making no progress.
He couldn’t even go to a regular school because of his issues. I tried, and it did not end well. I was able to find him a tutor to stay with him at home, one with experience in what they called ‘special education,’ claiming to know exactly how to de-escalate any kind of situation with a ‘disturbed’ child, and guide them through education at a controlled and average pace without the stress of an actual school setting. It sounded promising, and for a while there, it was. Tim was much happier, could write well, read well. He’d even begun playing with my piano and making his own food in his free time. I was so relieved I could have cried every night thinking about how close I was to screwing up. I was so thankful for the tutor, and for all the therapists and counselors who offered all of their help to give my Tim an easier life.
But it wasn’t enough. Why couldn’t it have ever been enough? It was said to me multiple times: Tim needs more than a daily prescription, he won’t thrive in this environment in this state, he needs isolated help. It killed me to think about it. Was I really such a failure of a mother that I would have my baby removed from me because I was incapable of fixing him? Was I doing more harm than good, keeping him here and trying to heal him myself?
I had to face reality: my son’s mind was unstable like I’d never seen before. All I’m doing is making things worse by keeping him here. That does it!
I held him in my lap while I called the doctors over in Ash Lake and asked if they had any openings. They told me I’d need to bring his credentials, and of course, a referral from his pediatrician and physician, concurrently. I practically sobbed all through the conversation, even as I tried to keep my cries down, but I inferred that the receptionist had already heard plenty of disheartened people cry madly as they were forced to turn over a loved one to their care. It felt the same as euthanizing a beloved family pet. I know this is for the best, but he doesn’t. All he knows is that his own mother is trying to give him away, and nothing else. God, it guts me alive to even think about it.
I was allowed to send him in with one home possession, and asked him what he’d like to take with him to the doctor’s office. He settled on his stuffed bear, Buddy. When he had gone away to the restroom, I wrote on a note and tucked it into the pocket of stuffing on Buddy’s back. A reminder to him that I loved him more than anything else in the world, and that mommy would come see him someday soon.
I’ll never forget watching his face shift from discomfort to absolute terror and disbelief as they held him and made him watch as I left through the front door. All of his screams and cries for his mama, I almost wanted to vomit from the grief I felt. I drank myself to sleep that night, and had at least 9 more cigarettes than my usual.
All I could bring myself to do was lay on the couch and stare mindlessly into the television until it fuzzed over completely.
I’ll never forgive myself.
Tim assumes that his mother’s well-kept diary had been lost, among other things, when they cleared out her house following her death. It was something he’d have liked to have kept, to look through and follow her beautiful penmanship letter for letter, and know the ins-and-outs of her mind. But of course, of all of the people he asked, couriers and cops and the like, they turned up empty in their search for a small, leather diary. And so, as hard as it was for him to process, he would have to move on never truly knowing how his mother had felt about him in its entirety. All he had to show for her care was the beaten up teddy bear he’d shoved into a box in his closet, still smelling of ash and mold, and the barely-surviving slip of paper hidden in its velcro pocket.
He does his best to not let it mean the world to him. There are things in the present that require more attention, more energy. Those being the foreboding tower of undone assignments sitting on his desk, and the fact he’d been roped into acting in a student film made by someone he had only just met a couple of weeks ago. Thank you, Brian! That’s just what he gets for associating with the world’s most charismatic psychology major, being stapled awkwardly to any kind of commute or event or activity or what-have-you that Brian planned on having literally anything to do with. Tim was practically his shadow, attached at the hip; it’s mostly his fault that he ends up in these situations. He cites Brian’s studies on the human mind for how he manages to convince Tim to do things he’d never even entertain the thought of before meeting him.
In fairness, Brian had to work to get as close as he did with Tim. Does he know everything? Not nearly. But given that Tim’s monotonous voice and unwelcoming demeanor had driven away just about every other remotely normal person on campus, it was a miracle that Brian had even gotten to witness Tim laugh. He was much friendlier than he was in his freshman year, Brian will give him that. He probably credits himself too. He should.
Tim had long-since considered taking up his mother’s residual hobby of journaling, as per the suggestion of his doctor, as a way to straighten out and organize his thoughts. He considered the factors, namely his careful, consistent handwriting which had been something he took pride himself in. He may enjoy it so thoroughly, in fact, he’d allow his diary to take priority over his growing mountain of glaring engineering assignments, which would normally have had his head spinning by now. Should he have anyone over, simply because he struggles greatly with trust, he’d tuck the diary into a compartment under his desk that he made himself. Everything, down to the pen he’d have chosen to write with, would be sacred; having its own space next to where the diary is stored. He hopes that this one will not be lost too.
As for the movie, well, he’s not sure. Every steady train of thought he’s tried to form on the subject had derailed onto something entirely irrelevant, like who he does and doesn’t know on set, and what playing a character in an angsty romance film would entail him having to do. He tries to think clearly about what he’s going to do about all of this, but ends up spooking himself half to death with all the what-ifs.
The only thing that never crossed his mind had been whether or not he’d be liked by anyone on set. Never a huge concern of his, as he’d started public school late into life and never learned to put such a premium on his personal reputation. If someone likes him, cool. If someone happens to not like him, that’s okay too. Brian had always been the complete opposite, something they tended to bicker about now and again. Sure, Brian was laidback, friendly, willing to strike up conversation with just about everyone, but Tim knew him well enough to know just how much goes through his head every time he talks to a stranger, or Hell, even someone he knows. It’s no wonder that, despite always being up and raring to go, he looks so tired–it must take a lot out of him to constantly be under so much stress.
And so, he was thankful he didn’t care even a fraction as much for how he was viewed by others. He felt perfectly comfortable in his own lane, never bothering others, very quiet and reserved, and always polite. He had been taught a lot on how to go about socializing from the hospitals he stayed at, mostly what not to do. A lot of it was obvious, like don’t stab people with silverware, or scream slurs into their face, or tell them that you tried to kill yourself a few days ago. He figured he was doing a pretty good job so far.
Otherwise, how else would he be on his way to a gazebo in some far-off park to shoot a scene for some guy named Alex’s movie?
He cracks a window, and lights a cigarette while stopped at a light. Even without the dark, tinted glass, the sky still kept to a muted blue-grey, characteristic of Alabama winters. He wiped a hand down his face in anticipation for the worst: frost, hail, and being sealed to the film set.
Pulling into the parking lot, he found an open spot right next to Brian’s truck, and made sure to put his cigarette out on the ceiling of his car before opening his door. Classy!
He didn’t have to walk very far before catching the eye of Alex, who flagged him down with a stack of script sheets clutched in his hand. “Hey, Tim!”
Brian peeks around Alex’s shoulder, and ambles down the path to meet Tim halfway, always with the content grin and the thin tooth-gap he was shy to show off to anyone else.
“Hey, man,” he nudges Tim’s shoulder. “You ready for this?”
All Tim can offer in response is a half-hearted, “Guess so,” before he’s being dragged off to set.
Initial filming went smoothly, from Tim’s perspective.
Alex passed out scripts to he and Brian and gave them 20 minutes to go through them and provide feedback et al, while Seth focused on arranging the camera into place on its tripod, and messing with some of the lighting provided by cheap homegoods, namely living room lamps that Alex borrowed from his own house. What stuck out most to Tim, aside from the horrendous scriptwriting that read more as an intentional spoof than a film major’s thesis project, had been the setting Alex chose for the outdoor scenes. An isolated park, Tim forgot what it was called when Alex explained it all to him, Rosewood? Rosswood? Anyway, it put him off to a degree Brian was able to point out practically right away. Something like, “you’re even stiffer than usual — do forests creep you out, too?”
Tim shrugs, looks around a little more; it doesn’t get easier, doesn’t grow on him. At best, he was able to tolerate the openness of his surroundings, with all its roots and vines and tree bark, for the duration of the shoot. The greying sky, smeared with heavy clouds and empty of a sun, did nothing at all to put him at ease. It was then that Tim decided he much preferred the indoors.
The script was impressively awful, like it worsened since auditions. Brian’s ability to keep from laughing until he sobbed while reciting lines such as ‘I feel magnetized to this hopeless town’ could have won awards, and in Tim’s mind, it did. His own lines were short and sparse, and he thanked God for it. Dialogue so bad it overrode Atheism, performed in a gross, smelly gazebo on a rainy Saturday. He will never understand film majors. He just won't.
He hopes that the added emotion he tried to promote in his acting did something to save the lines he parroted at Brian, but knows better. He’s already begun trying to purge today from his memory, leaving in the parts where Brian grins at him and Alex signals praise from behind the camera. There, they trade empty remarks with unmoving faces for what must have been the longest two hours of Tim’s life. Alex holds up a hand, says, “that’ll do it,” just as the rain begins to let up.
When the scene wraps without so much as a second take, Tim holds in a sigh of relief. The camera cuts, his shoulders drop, and he takes a seat on a nearby bench next to Brian while Alex talks to Seth about something that, for all the arm gestures and laughing, could not possibly be related to the movie.
Tim is smoking his fourth cigarette of the day, and Brian is asking if he thinks this movie will ever make it to TV. Tim has to force himself not to bark-laugh at the prospect. God, he hopes not.
They’re there for a while, the sun begins to set, Alex comes over to pitch the idea of hanging out at his place. All for project-appropriate reasons, of course. To plan, to revise, to rehearse. Because they’re mature adults with reasonable work ethics.
Everyone agrees.
It rains on the drive, Tim still hangs his arm out of the car window, cig pinched between two fingers.
No planning ever gets done. At some point, Alex had put Alien on his shitty CRT, and the four immediately set aside all concerns for lost time. Brian and Seth kept commenting on how hot Ripley was, Tim audibly ‘awwwed’ at Jonesy the Cat and looked visibly worried for him whenever he came into contact with the Xenomorph, Alex hummed Lucky Star for hours after the film ended. Next was Seth’s suggestion of Night at the Museum. Tim gained two new favorite movies that night.
On the couch, gathered together and packed tightly, the boys discussed just about anything except for Marble Hornets. A new band Brian’s been into, Seth’s linguistics professor who he swears is a serial killer but cannot prove it, Alex having to go to his cousin’s wedding on the 3rd. Tim, for once, felt like a normal person. It felt unnatural, but in a way he didn’t particularly mind, especially with Brian’s right arm jammed into his left. He had bigger problems, namely the lack of personal space.
The next door neighbors began blaring rock music by an artist Tim for once couldn’t identify, to his annoyance—and it blended nicely into the background like droning static, amongst Alex’s gripes of his neighbors being rude and inconsiderate. The other three didn’t seem to mind, especially not Brian, who rhythmically patted his knee in tandem with the song’s percussion.
Tim had been the only one of the four to keep track of the time, shaking Brian’s shoulder and murmuring that it was already past 9pm. They both had important tasks to take care of, ones that could not, unfortunately, be ignored for the sake of pointless and menial conversations that frequently hit brick walls, held on a rickety leather couch that Alex got from his grandmother. Brian huffed out a laugh, returned the contact with a soft pat to Tim’s own shoulder, and told the others they’d be off for the night. Seth agreed, he had plans–some job interview he had scheduled for the next day, while Alex was noticeably silent as goodbyes were exchanged. No one pointed it out. Tim nearly did.
Brian and Seth laughed through a passive southern goodbye, practically shoulder-to-shoulder as they walked in drunken patterns to their cars. The moon had already hung high, quartered and marred with clouds and the light speckle of stars. Tim busied himself with such a sight, stalling the trip back to his car for as long as he could, parked around the bend of trees concealing Alex’s house, hidden in a neck of the woods that smelled vaguely of roadkill. Goosebumps rode up his arms as he waved off his friends, both having their backs to him, and rounded the corner of Alex’s home to start toward the clearing where he’d arrived.
The trees, the bushes, the very grass he trot over had been alive with the trills and chirps of bugs and owls. A coyote laughs out a broken howl, deep into the open distance–Tim feels something stir in his chest.
He wishes he’d had the foresight to have brought the flashlight kept in the glovebox of his car; wishes he hadn’t miscalculated the darkness of an early spring night, this far out into the sticks.
A light trail of deer corn makes up the only path visible to him as he trudges through tall sweetgrass and on muddy soil. Faint hoof tracks are carved shallow into the soft dirt, and a hawk calls from above an empty clearing overhead. The bugs fall silent. In only a moment, everything is silent.
The long walk gives him an unbearable amount of time to think. He isn’t sure if he was headed in the right direction, nor is he sure he is still in proximity to the house. He smells gasoline, and walks just a little faster.
He doesn’t want to think about anything other than his car. About going home, and sleeping the rest of his life away. He doesn’t want to think about how much he hates forests, how he hates the dark, how familiar the thinning trees are beginning to look.
He wonders if he’d forgotten his pills this morning. Wonders if he should begin carrying them on his person; would that get him in trouble anywhere? At school, maybe. But he’s got rights, and he’s got issues. Anyone looking his way could tell.
Anyone, he thinks. There’s no one here.
The pressing feeling of solitude now holds a tight bind on his body. The grass gets taller for every quarter-mile he seems to walk. The bushels of tree leaves now mask his view of the sky. The many trunks of the thicket seem to crowd around him, and eventually, it feels as if he may ram his shoulder right into one, should he move without due care. It is the darkest it’s ever been. There is only forward.
The light, hypnotic thrum of calling owls, and the boisterous engine of a nearby tractor fall upon deaf ears.
It doesn’t feel like all that long ago, that things were uncomfortably normal. He thinks of Jonesy the Cat as he stumbles through the dark. Thinks of Ripley, calling for him through tears, with the monster that left her ship empty and cold just a few steps behind her. His mind fuzzes over, he grows dizzy, he settles on the idea that he should begin keeping a journal. He wishes to have been a part of whatever enchanting conversation Brian and Seth had kept on engaging with even as they leaned against the doors to their driver’s seats. Wishes he had asked Alex if he could crash on the couch for the night. Wishes he had bought a flashlight, wishes he had a phone, wishes he never agreed to hang out late at night, wishes he had never agreed to audition, wishes Brian would show him more respect, wishes they had found his mother’s diary.
He hates how quickly his thoughts will have his hands knotted viciously into his hair. Hates how a brief overview of his own life, and the bullshit situations he finds himself in will immediately have him driven up the wall.
He continues taking the only path that winds through the maze of trees. He hopes his car is on the other side.
He wonders if his minor in poetry will do him any good once he gets his hand on a diary, or notebook. He always finds that colorful, effective language is easier to achieve once you abandon linguistic reason and allow yourself to break rules. You can adopt rhythm, you can even rhyme, but there is nothing more important to the craft than the imagery which your short sentences promote. He has a compendium at home of Edgar Allen Poe, recounts the story about the one-eyed cat, how it leapt and ran for its life at the first sight of its owner, for how could it have known that he would one day come home with a face knitted with drunken fury? How could it have known, that the most affectionate and respectable human it had ever met, would be the very one to lay harm upon it? To watch the glassy eye roll.
He takes brisk and careful steps through the marsh. Remembers the lighter in his pocket. The air is still of a breeze, and so, when the flame clicks to life in his hand, it does not move with anything but the swaying of his body. He holds a free palm over the golden glow. It does nothing much to light the way, but a harsh warmth spreads through his hands and heals the quake in his arms. Going home now seems like a far-away task, a goal he’s had for his entire life. The trees stretch on, and on, and on. The owls cry louder. The coyotes have come back. One-eyed, thin-legged cat, bounding for its life from the one that hunts it.
The atmosphere builds with an evident growl that lay below the Earth. The woods begin to dwindle. A clearing opens to him, just over ten feet ahead. He makes out the metallic glimmer of his car’s hood as it meets the moonlight.
The world clips away with a crude pop in his ears.