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Authors: Andrew Pyper
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betrays the words. You are winning , it says instead. You’ve already won .
“You must prepare for an education in what frightens you.”
“Why not begin now?”
It smiles.
“Soon you will be among us,” it says.
At this, part of me floats up and away from my body. Looks down on myself to see my mouth ask a question it has already asked.
“Who are you?”
“Man has given us names, though we have none.”
“No. You won’t tell me who you are because there is power in knowing the name of one’s enemy.”
“We are not enemies.”
“Then what are we?”
“Conspirators.”
“Conspirators? What is our cause?”
It laughs. A low, satisfied rumble that seems to come up from the foundations of the house, from the ground beneath it.
“New York 1259537. Tokyo 996314. Toronto 1389257. Frankfurt 540553. London 590643.”
When it stops, the man’s eyes roll back in his head to show the bloodshot whites. It takes an impossibly long breath. Holds it. Lets it out in words that carry the acrid sting of charred flesh.
“On the twenty-seventh day of April . . . the world will be marked by our numbers.”
The head falls forward. The man’s body still again. Only the low breathing that keeps him this side of death.
8:22
Three minutes. That’s how long I was in conversation with it. With them . Three minutes that already feel like a whole chapter of my life, a stretch like Adolescence or Fatherhood in which the terms of selfhood are fundamentally redefined. The time between 5:24 and 8:22 will be When I Spoke to the Man in Venice . And it will be a period marked by regret. A loss I can’t guess the shape of yet.
Time to go.
If I was brought here to witness the symptoms of this diseased man’s mind, then I’ve seen enough. Indeed, the wish that I’d never entered this room at all is so strong I find that I’m shuffling backward toward the door, putting inch after inch of distance between myself and the sleeping man, trying to pretend that I might rewind the last quarter hour and erase it from my memory as easily as I could erase it from the camera that records my retreat.
But there will be no forgetting. The camera will hold the man’s words with the same vividness that I will.
And then he does something that will be even more impossible to erase.
He wakens and raises his head. Slowly this time.
It is the man’s face, though altered in a way perhaps I alone could detect. A number of fluid, minute adjustments to his features that, collectively, shift his identity from whoever he once was to someoneelse, someone I know. The eyes slightly closer together, the nose longer, the lips thinned. My father’s face.
I try to scream. Nothing comes out. The only sound is the voice the man speaks with, my father coming out from within. His seething accusation, his bitterness. The voice of a man who has been dead for over thirty years.
“It should have been you,” it says.
6
I STUMBLE FROM THE ROOM AND DOWN THE STAIRS . F IND MY FEET, lurch through the empty waiting room—no sign of the physician—and out to the narrow street. I run from 3627 without looking back, though part of me wants to, a part that knows if I look the man will be standing at the second-floor window, released from his restraints, grinning down at me.
It’s only after the fire in my chest forces me to rest against a wall protected from the sun that I realize I am still holding the camera. And that it’s still recording.
11:53
My thumb presses STOP . The screen blackens.
All at once I’m doubled over, retching onto the bricks. An ache in my bones, angry and unforeseen. It bears a similarity to every other flu I’ve ever had, though there’s something distinct about it in addition to its suddenness. The nearest I can come to describing it is that it’s not physiological, not an illness at all, but a thought . The infection of a virulent idea.
I wipe my lips on the shoulder of my jacket and carry on.
Tess.
I’ve got to get
“You must prepare for an education in what frightens you.”
“Why not begin now?”
It smiles.
“Soon you will be among us,” it says.
At this, part of me floats up and away from my body. Looks down on myself to see my mouth ask a question it has already asked.
“Who are you?”
“Man has given us names, though we have none.”
“No. You won’t tell me who you are because there is power in knowing the name of one’s enemy.”
“We are not enemies.”
“Then what are we?”
“Conspirators.”
“Conspirators? What is our cause?”
It laughs. A low, satisfied rumble that seems to come up from the foundations of the house, from the ground beneath it.
“New York 1259537. Tokyo 996314. Toronto 1389257. Frankfurt 540553. London 590643.”
When it stops, the man’s eyes roll back in his head to show the bloodshot whites. It takes an impossibly long breath. Holds it. Lets it out in words that carry the acrid sting of charred flesh.
“On the twenty-seventh day of April . . . the world will be marked by our numbers.”
The head falls forward. The man’s body still again. Only the low breathing that keeps him this side of death.
8:22
Three minutes. That’s how long I was in conversation with it. With them . Three minutes that already feel like a whole chapter of my life, a stretch like Adolescence or Fatherhood in which the terms of selfhood are fundamentally redefined. The time between 5:24 and 8:22 will be When I Spoke to the Man in Venice . And it will be a period marked by regret. A loss I can’t guess the shape of yet.
Time to go.
If I was brought here to witness the symptoms of this diseased man’s mind, then I’ve seen enough. Indeed, the wish that I’d never entered this room at all is so strong I find that I’m shuffling backward toward the door, putting inch after inch of distance between myself and the sleeping man, trying to pretend that I might rewind the last quarter hour and erase it from my memory as easily as I could erase it from the camera that records my retreat.
But there will be no forgetting. The camera will hold the man’s words with the same vividness that I will.
And then he does something that will be even more impossible to erase.
He wakens and raises his head. Slowly this time.
It is the man’s face, though altered in a way perhaps I alone could detect. A number of fluid, minute adjustments to his features that, collectively, shift his identity from whoever he once was to someoneelse, someone I know. The eyes slightly closer together, the nose longer, the lips thinned. My father’s face.
I try to scream. Nothing comes out. The only sound is the voice the man speaks with, my father coming out from within. His seething accusation, his bitterness. The voice of a man who has been dead for over thirty years.
“It should have been you,” it says.
6
I STUMBLE FROM THE ROOM AND DOWN THE STAIRS . F IND MY FEET, lurch through the empty waiting room—no sign of the physician—and out to the narrow street. I run from 3627 without looking back, though part of me wants to, a part that knows if I look the man will be standing at the second-floor window, released from his restraints, grinning down at me.
It’s only after the fire in my chest forces me to rest against a wall protected from the sun that I realize I am still holding the camera. And that it’s still recording.
11:53
My thumb presses STOP . The screen blackens.
All at once I’m doubled over, retching onto the bricks. An ache in my bones, angry and unforeseen. It bears a similarity to every other flu I’ve ever had, though there’s something distinct about it in addition to its suddenness. The nearest I can come to describing it is that it’s not physiological, not an illness at all, but a thought . The infection of a virulent idea.
I wipe my lips on the shoulder of my jacket and carry on.
Tess.
I’ve got to get
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