In my excitement over finding food, I had almost forgotten about the tape I found in the alley. I remembered only after I was home and had mushrooms in a shallow fry on the stove. I stepped away from the stove to grab the new tape for a closer look since I had so hastily shoved it away. Grabbing it from my bag on the counter, I examined its label I was correct it was a tape from my parent’s series, but this one displayed a five in addition to the initials. I was missing tapes three and four, and anything that may come after five, if anything at all. I had no idea how many tapes there were.
I glanced around as I scanned for Atramenti, hoping I could get in a question or two before they decided they were done with my curiousness. They hadn’t accompanied me to the store, and I had yet to see them back since I returned. An innate blanket of worry set in, as if I was waiting for my beloved pet to return, hoping they were safe. But Atramenti was not a pet, they only resembled one. It was something I had to continually remind myself of. They’ll be back whenever they feel like it. It was all I could tell myself to soothe my unease. Unease. That was what I felt when they were gone. They had keen senses, whatever they were, and I didn’t.
I shook my head, hoping to rattle the unease from my mind, and returned to the stove to check on my mushrooms. They were just about finished when I heard a creak emanate from my front porch. I jumped. It’s just the wind. My attempts to soothe myself only lasted for a few moments though, as when I looked out the kitchen window I could detect no breeze outside. All of the foliage stood still, as if I was looking not out the window but at a painting. I tensed back up as I heard the creaking once more. This time it sounded closer to my door. Had I locked the front door? I couldn’t remember, and now I was afraid to go check. Something, or someone, was on the other side of that door.
I turned the stove off and dumped my mushrooms onto my plate before I took the still hot pan and made my way out of the kitchen. The front door was still closed, but not for long. I had, in fact, not locked the door when I got home. As I watched the door creak open I bolted down the hallway towards my room. I hid in my bedroom doorway, just out of sight of the front door. Fuck, what do I do now? I couldn’t believe I had forgotten not only to lock the damn door, but that I was likely still being followed or watched, if not by Kadi, then by The ARC. Maybe it’s Kadi. I tried to conjure up a way that this wasn’t a dangerous situation. Maybe Kadi is coming by to give me some answers. That was a stretch, she would have knocked. The idea fell from my mind in an instant when I heard a voice from the front of my home.
“Molly? We know you’re home.” We? So there’s more than one of them, great. But something else caught my attention. I recognized that voice. It was Clyde. We chatted at the market frequently, and he had a distinct drawl in his voice. My guess was that Janelle was with him, as she often was.
As I contemplated this I heard two distinct sets of footsteps begin to wander my home. “I’ll start with the kitchen.” I heard a woman’s voice say. It was Janelle’s voice. And she made me realize something else. I left my bag, with all of the tapes, on the kitchen counter. I immediately knew I had to act fast.
I jumped out from hiding. “I’m here! What do you need?” Clearly I had taken both of them by surprise. They startled as I hopped into the hallway, frying pan in hand. Clyde immediately pointed a gun a me, his hand shook as he did.
“I’m sorry for bargin’ in Molly, but you know what we need.” His voice was trembled just like his hand did. “We need those keys.” Janelle said as she stood quietly near the kitchen entrance, watching my every move. So the tapes are keys. I was right. I kept that revelation to myself for the time being. All I needed to do was get to the kitchen first, or maybe misdirect them. I wasn’t sure what was going to get me out of my current predicament anymore. I decided to lie.
“I don’t have the tapes anymore. They’re gone.”
Clyde retightened his grip on the handle of the gun pointed at me. “You’re one bad liar. Johnson was right.”
“I told him so.” Janelle piped up from the other side of the room. Her tone accusatory.
Just then I saw two golden eyes in the dark of the night behind Clyde. The two seemed to notice my fixation on something and turned to look themselves. As they did, what I assumed to be Atramenti stepped forward, into my home. They looked twisted and wrong. Their void-like coat rearranged into a beastly looking creature. Clyde and Janelle both stammered some words of “What is that?” And a few “I don’t know!” Remarks followed. But I knew what I was dealing with. This void didn’t scare me.
The next few moments were a blur. While the two were distracted I ambushed Clyde and bashed him over the head with the hot pan in my hand. I hit him hard enough he fell backwards and dropped the gun he had. His head clipped the table near the front door before he hit the ground. I quickly picked up the gun and pointed it back on Janelle, backing up as I did so. Atramenti had made their way inside and was closing in on Janelle.
“Leave.” I said in the sturdiest voice I could muster.
She looked between the creature, Clyde’s limp body, and me before she threw up her hands. The fear on her face was apparent. This was clearly more than they had bargained for when taking this job for Johnson. I cocked my head towards the door once.
“Let her pass Menti.” Atramenti did just that, and she bolted out the door.
I closed the door behind her and locked it this time. Clyde was still on the ground, I had assumed he was unconscious, but as I checked his pulse, there was none.
“Fuck, Menti he’s dead!” Panic began to well up within me. I killed a man, holy shit what do I do? I had no idea if Johnson would send police to my door next or just more members of The ARC. Neither were welcome. I could have gone to the police first. Claim self defense, because it was. But then how would I explain why this happened. The tapes? And the void? They’ll think I’m crazy. I realized that Johnson was probably thinking the same thing. He couldn’t go the police without blowing the top off his whole operation. That gave me some relief. I let out the breath I hadn’t even realized I was holding.
As I tried to regain any amount of composure, Atramenti just sat and watched me. Once I was back to thinking straight, we both got to work boarding up my home. Windows, doors, everything. No one in, no one out. I couldn’t be sure that would be the last of Johnson’s attempts to get back the tapes, but I could start to actually prepare myself.
I didn’t just have spare wood lying around, so instead I took apart a couple bookshelves and used that wood to cover the windows. I made sure to draw any curtains as to not draw too much attention from the outside as I went. I barricaded doors with heavy furniture so that they wouldn’t budge if attempted to be opened. It took hours, with Atramenti occasionally alerting me to a missed spot, but finally I had a secured home with a dead body inside.
It took a while afterwards for me to realize. Clyde’s body had begun to decompose faster than I would have expected. What should have taken a handful of days had only taken hours. And instead of any maggots or other insects eating away at the corpse, an orange fungus was what gnawed away at it. Blight. I wondered if this was where it had gotten its name from. I stared, mouth agape as I watched the fungus as it twisted and turned its way around Clyde’s body. It was an almost beautiful dance, except for the smell. I didn’t know what I could do about that though, it’s not like I could have opened a window. Not anymore.
Deciding to at least move his body from the front entryway, I grabbed some cleaning gloves and got to work as I dragged his heavy corpse. My hands wrapped around his already decaying wrists making me grateful for the gloves. Inch by inch I made my way closer to the hallway closet where I’d stash him for the time being. As I did so, I saw something shifting around in the corpse’s pants pocket. I stopped for a moment, setting down his arms, to investigate.
From the outside of the pocket I could already guess what it was. It was rectangular and only a few inches long. I delicately reached inside, careful to avoid any Blight, and when I pulled out the object I was correct. It was a cassette tape. Once again one from my parent’s collection. The initials were present, as was the number four neatly written on the tape’s label.
So The ARC still had one tape, but I’m assuming just the one wasn’t enough. I thought back to the building I visited within the void. The building’s inscription that read something about needing two keys. Somehow these tapes counted as keys, or at least The ARC seemed to think so, and I didn’t have anything better to go off of. I then found myself with four tapes in my possession. Tapes that The ARC was willing to try to kill for. Tapes that I apparently was willing to kill for.
I didn’t understand what was so important about that building besides the look of it, so I planned to let the Blight fungus regrow in my living room overnight in hopes the void grows large enough for me to enter once more. This time though, I’d be taking my bag with the tapes, player, and journal with me. And maybe some kind of flashlight to help ward off the darkness, even just a bit.
After I finished moving Clyde’s dead body to the closet, I sat in my living room watching the Blight regrow from underneath my floorboards. I was glad the closet was just out of view, I couldn’t keep watching the Blight reclaim his body. I killed a man. I pushed the thought from my mind. It was self defense. I pushed that thought from my mind as well and focused on the new task at hand. Waiting for the void. I knew it would take several hours, if not all night, to regrow the void that still lingered in my living room.