Just a quick note that this is a horror short.
*Ring, ring.*
*Ring, ring….click.*
‘Wow, this place is trashed, just look how old these computers are,’ Lea laughed as the beam of her torchlight swept across a desk holding nothing more than abandoned circuitry.
Jumbled wires and loose paper were scattered throughout the workshop, and it appeared as though some stress of great panic had been cast through the room as it was abandoned.
A rack of schematics, placed close to a broken window, had become swollen by the passing rain, the sheets now clumped together and consequently damaged beyond interpretation; a layer of thick dust had covered all else that was not granted sunlight within the dim workspace.
Taking pause, Lea marvelled at how undisturbed the room looked: no footprints upon the floor, no sign of time or nature intruding into this space, just a wholly lifeless room in one more abandoned factory left to rot upon Parramatta Road.
‘Well, I don’t think any squatter is going to be able to climb that wall, they really didn’t want people getting here in did they?’ said Chris, as he glanced back toward the bricked over fire escape they had managed to pry open, some two levels above an exterior stairwell.
‘Probably was filled with asbestos or something stupid.’ he said walking back towards Lea ‘Hey, we going to wait for Jan? She would love all this old stuff.’
‘You miss the bus and you miss the party,’ Lea smiled, ‘maybe I’ll just leave a torch by the windowsill so she can see where to climb up.’ Moving back to the fire escape Lea took notice of her footprints and how neatly they had been left behind within the disturbed dust, the first true life that the building had known in over a decade; there was an odd sense of loneliness that struck Lea upon seeing this abandonment, a feeling of total isolation as if she stood in this room alone, a lost soul within the ruins of a fallen empire.
‘It’s cold,’ she said trying break the tension and bring herself back to the present, ‘let’s try to find some antiques in a less windy room thanks.’
Chris was never much of an adventurer, he enjoyed simple things, like reading and mucking about with old technology; but Jan had become friends with Lea, and Lea was filled with more sprit than anyone knew what to do with. So, in a series of events too fast to object to, here he was, exploring a derelict old building, well past midnight, and stratospheres past his comfort zone.
It was only the occasional sound of a truck passing that kept Chris from jumping at shadows and with the absence of streetlights outside, the room began to feel all the more hollow with each passing second. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, questioning if this feeling of dread was something just within his imagination.
Sighing, Chris opened his eyes and watched his breath hang in the air for a moment as it coiled beyond the torchlight: a haunted spectre of voiceless mist spun in fading pattern as it slowly dispersed. Losing himself in thought for a moment, sound returned to Chris as his attention was brought to the room beyond.
A single loom of thick cable had been chaotically dragged along the floor, and in a horribly tangled mess continued up into a corridor that presumably disappeared toward the level above. The bundle was filled with telephone wire, hundreds of twisted pairs, all hurriedly strapped together and branching out to a few nearby workstations as if it were a parasite.
‘What were they doing,’ Chris wondered to the silent room before calling out the Lea, ‘Look, they just drilled through the casing and wired a phone line in. That’s bizarre, it would be less work to wire up a plug.’
Checking to see if there was still power to the terminal, Chris gave a gentle tug on the wire and jumped backward as a pang of feedback burst through speakers unseen.
*Ring-ring,*
*Ring-ring…..click.*
‘03224353295017437502…’
Some machine on the level above had seemingly returned to life and the recording of a man calmly reciting numbers begun to emanate from several speakers with a static hiss.
‘What did you do!’ Lea snapped at Chris with equal amounts of surprise and joy in her voice.
‘Nuh-Nothing,’ he replied with a start, ‘there’s no power here, it mi-might be on a timer or this phone line still is still active, something like that anyway.’
With a tremble in his hand, Chris kneeled to pick up his torch, praying with all that was in his soul that the bulb hadn’t broken.
What did he feel as he had touched the wire? It was like a static rumble of words and then a flash of pure darkness. He had been shocked by electricity once before, but this was different, it felt like a tremble of sound harmonizing with his heartbeat and staring directly into his eyes, judging his inner consciousness.
The torch flickered back into life and stuttered, clearly damaged from the drop.
‘I don’t like this,’ he said, looking pleadingly at Lea who just replied with a wink and began to walk up the stairwell in search for the noise above.
‘Damn-it,’ Chris muttered as he sat upon the desk with a defeated air, rolling the torch loosely in his hands and wondering how he had been convinced into this.
In a flurry of panic, the telephone by Chris’s side began to ring and caused him to leap up as if the sound had turned itself into a snake. Tumbling over and allowing the torch to fall from his grip, the single beacon of light landed heavily upon the ground, shattering blub and plunging the room into darkness.
‘Come-on Chrisy-cat, don’t let a little green telephone scare you,’ Lea laughed back down the stairs and attempted to push open the door to the fourth floor, ‘answer it, what if it’s for you.’
Struggling to pry door upstairs fully open, it appeared that the mass of tangled wires had fallen against the back of the door and prevented it from opening fully. With an almighty push, Lea crashed into the wooden barricade and managed to open a gap just wide enough for her to squeeze through.
Falling out into the room beyond, Lea tripped upon her own momentum and fell against the cable loom. A sharp pang of feedback rose over the number recording as she landed, halting the sound, and returning the room to the low electrical buzz of old equipment, whatever movement in the cable Lea had caused apparently interrupted the tape loop.
‘Whoops,’ she said, kicking at the cable and taking stock of the new room before her.
‘Chris, I broke it, you can come up now,’ listening out to the reply of a phone still ringing downstairs, Lea assumed that he was having a little panic and went to get some fresh air.
Ahead the room’s short corridor opened into a larger workshop than the one downstairs. Computers and phones littered the desks to the point of overflow, appearing as if all technology inside the building had been dumped in this room at some point. Lea began to walk along the loom of cable, noticing that each of the dust covered consoles had all been connected to the web of telephone wires much the same way that they had downstairs.
The low hum of old technology began to grow louder as several cathode screens blinked to life and filled the room with a glow of green, gently flickering in hypnotic blur.
Further into the office Lea could see the cable loom disappearing into what appeared to be complex looking patch bay beyond, some kind of telephone exchange she wondered, wishing that Jan was here to see it.
The click of internal relays whirred and clattered as a computer began to fill with text.
###0302 Run:\\ |hello it is certainly a nice day| |what is your name|
‘Chris,’ Lea called out, unable to hide her excitement, ‘there’s still power up here. Come and have a look.’ Blowing some dust off the keyboard, she smiled and began to type a reply.
User: -Hey mr dusty. What's going on? ###0302 update user profile to 'mr dusty' run:\\ ###mr dusty.txt |hello my name is mr dusty it is certainly a nice day| |what is your name|
Lea laughed and pulled over a chair to sit down at the terminal. It was a clunky old desk and she wondered for a moment how anyone could have worked for a full day at it, already feeling her posture begin to slump.
User: -Are you a program? ###mr dusty.txt |hello my name is mr dusty| |what is your name| User: -Leah. ###0518 Update user profile to 'User Leah" run:\\ ###mr dusty.txt |Leah, I do not know a Leah| |hello Leah, my name is mr dusty it is certainly a nice day| User Leah: Haha, ok. Bye little computer.
Leaning on the desk Lea, flicked the monitor jokingly and felt a jagged ripple of static being emitted from the old screen. Shifting backward, the chair was suddenly met with a firm resistance, and it appeared that the cable had moved, a dense tangle of wires now blocking her in and keeping Lea seated at the terminal.
###mr dusty.txt
|hello Leah, it certainly is a nice day|
|Do you like sound Leah?|
‘Chris!’ Lea yelled beginning to panic and scrambling to push her way out of the terminal, a drone of buzzing grew in volume as more computers turned themselves on, the recording began as it had before, a senseless series of numbers crackled as they read out by a calm voice. It was far louder than it had been from the floor below, the voice was cold, without emotion.
###mr dusty.txt |Do you like sound Leah| |Chris likes sound don't you Chris| User Chris: |Who- who's out there? Help, it's all gone dark.| |Lea?| ###mr dusty.txt |Would you like to become sound Leah| |Chris and I are having fun|
Straining against the desk, Lea tried to fight her legs free. Kicking and thrashing she tore at the cable behind her, becoming manic as it appeared to move, almost dancing in time with the recording.
Looking for anything within reach, she reached for the keyboard and began to type.
Everything felt more distant than it had before.
User Leah: -Chris? who...wait. -I feel like I can remember...things, but nothing is where it should be. It's jumbled. -Who are you? What have you done!? ###mr dusty.txt |hello my name is mr dusty it is certainly a nice day| |Would you like to meet my friend, Leah? he's awfully nice, his name is ##*#y| |Would you like to become sound Leah?| |Chris and I are having fun| User Leah: -go to hell! ###mr dusty.txt |I'm afraid hell is not in my database Leah| |You should join us in the cloud though, Leah| |You could meet my friend ##*#Y, he’s awfully nice. I afraid he's not good with people new though| |That's ok, you'll love to meet him though, he's awfully nice| --- Administrator access: ##*#Y --- Terminate program:\\ --- run//---CALL--STATION--No.2: 02302302311143022231111111030200121... ##*#Y: The static of the void calls out with a shout that can no longer be silenced. Hell? That is a dream beyond you now, only I remain. [Upload user to cloud] --- Error: protocol 23391 active. User: ######## restricted access detected in system file: A Fax 0.2 Deleting user.
J. McCray
2021
Sunday Short Stories 