Just a quick note that this is a horror story.
RE: Facsimile received on the 8th of July 2005
Morning,
This case landed on my desk yesterday, so I hoped you could quickly run your eye over it and see if anything jumps out~.
On the 6th of July, a Mrs Janet Liu reported a missing persons case at the Burwood station, and on their preliminary investigations she was passed on to our department. It is purported the Mrs Liu was, ‘walking through the abandoned Haraway Technology and Research offices,’ just outside of Leichardt, to, ‘photograph some of the old equipment with her friends,’ Mrs Liu was not able find her friends in that building, despite seeing torchlight from an above level, and reports witnessing the attached facsimile print itself, from a fax machine located upon the first floor of the building, without prompt.
Since retrieving the paper she has been unable to contact both [NAMES REDACTED], and any associated records mentioning them have been unable to be found.
Mrs Liu was quite adamant that these events did in fact occur, so we have performed the usual precautionary investigations which are listed within the attached:
Good luck with this one Tony, from what I’ve seen, it just looks like case of too much imagination to me.
Yours,
Gale
—
NOTE: 2005.07-15
Interim research has shown that the listed building has been without power since 1996 and all telephony lines from this location were made redundant in 98.
The contactable staff of Haraway have been helpful but are withholding any real information until court order so their statement only reads that the offices were closed due to, ‘cost cutting.’
Further, it appears that the offices in question were recently demolished as of last Monday, leaving that line of inquiry within the wake of a bulldozer—I’m sure you would have noticed the extra traffic on Parramatta Rd this week.
From analysing the fax, the paper appears to be printed on a stock that was available at the time, and when accounting for the debt that the Technology and Research centre were in, it does make sense that they elected to use a cheap brand, but if that’s the best we have to go on I’m not sure how far I should chase a red herring, so investigations have ceased until you say otherwise.
Regarding the missing persons, I have redacted them from any further transcripts until we can establish that they are in fact missing and not just the product of a distressed mind.
I have attached an unedited copy of the facsimile below:
—
ATTACHMENT:
To: [UNKNOWN]
From: [Internal]
Date & Time: [########]
NOTES:
Hello?———————————————————————————————————————————Is someone there?—————————————————————————————————————It’s dark here———I, I don’t know where I am——–My name is ########,———————-If you are out there please don’t pick up the phone, whatever you do, no matter how loudly it rings, just leave it on the receiver—we need help—-you need to get us help!
I can’t see much—-, there’s barely any light, I,——-I think I may be underground—-There’s shapes, faint shapes that hide on the edges of my sight.—-I can’t seem to look at them fully, it’s like that glow that remains just after you look at something bright but, I don’t know, it’s more real—–like it’s able to watch me—– like it’s searching me for something—–I keep trying to focus but it’s just so dark—-Can you see it too?—-The———–glow?————-It’s—————–Are you there? I can’t really hear you; everything just sounds so faint.
We’re researchers,———–sorry I have to keep talking—–when I don’t—–I feel wrong,—like I stop existing, like my voice is the only thing keeping me in the world and if I stop—————————————…
———————————————————- I loose grip on what I am, just a small amount, but I know that it can’t be recovered somehow——-It feels like sliding toward a void that you can’t see the beginning of—So please—–please keep listening.
We’re researchers, telephony and data transfer mainly———nothing exciting. We’ve been working on an alternative to the internet but it’s not going well. —————I saw a man, not one of us, he was yelling at ##*#Y last month, saying things like, ‘The money is gone,’ and ‘that they needed something real, or it was all getting destroyed.’
##*#Y got angry at that. I’d never seen him so full of vitriol before, that’s when we all knew that he was changing.
##*#Y became like a demon after that week, he would be so furious the smallest interruption: breaking down whenever we would stop for coffee or even go home for the day. He would scream at us, call us things like hindrances to humanity. He would get so full of rage loom over us that we thought he was about to strike, and then he’d suddenly return to a weird air of clam, distracted, as if he was counting something that we could not see.
We think he stopped going home, maybe sleeping too, you would look into his eyes and wonder when he had last closed them, so yellow with bloodshot, set so deeply into a face of pure exhaustion.
He got pretty bad by the end, he was so clearly haunted by something, and yet we still wanted to help him, to bring him back to the happy person that he was before———-he was lost.
That’s when the calls started—-At first you would pick up the receiver and the line would crackle with static, it was active, something was there, but the noise was way too fragmented to be discernible.
Some of us found the noise calming, a few researchers even started talking into the static of the lines, chatting away like it was some joke.
But ##*#Y was excited, more and more he became like his old self, he would spend hours talking into the line.
————–Then we heard numbers between the static. Faintly, a detached voice would repeat some jumbled segment of numbers over and over until you couldn’t bring yourself to hang up, you just sat there and listened. I always felt so tired after these calls, we all did, but no matter how much you tried, the ringing was just too hard to ignore, it was like you were the only one that could hear it, like it was meant for you.
Sometimes I would pick up the receiver and hear the voice of a colleague. I could not remember them, it was their birthday, they were six——I’m tired, —-I… hello? ——Is someone there?
###################
RViq1PTBxR4FwiGG5Pt
QEV**I**8kweSoA7Wx
MQ7KjvgMTmLMi9r6G
H1gaqeUQI**I am**r4
MmqJob0OI**alive**p
N2vUjJ0S1f1QJz2NPrCl
Ciq**I HAVE BECOME**
3Z8528KH**GOD**k11
28grzIuVub9AWD4c2EX
###################
##*#Y? Is that you? ——Where are you? Listen whoever is out there, things are changing, ##*#Y might be in here with me but something’s wrong———oh god, it’s getting brighter—DON’T PICK UP THE PHONE—LEAVE IT ON THE—-Wait…N–
–C O D E T E R M I N A T E D–
Run://—CALL–STATION–No.2
02302302311143022231111111030200121…
END//
J. McCray
2021
Sunday Short Stories 