The briefcase leans against the wall, within arm’s reach of his body.
Softly, Malorie treads across the dining room. Floorboards creak under her weight. She stops and stares intently at his bearded, gaping mouth. He wheezes a bit, steady and slow. Holding her breath, she takes a final step toward him and stops. Hovering above him, she watches closely without moving.
She kneels.
Gary snorts. Her heart flutters. She waits.
To get the briefcase she must reach across his chest. Her arm dangles inches from his shirt as he slumbers. Her fingers grasp the handle when he snorts again. She turns.
He is staring at her.
Malorie freezes. She scans both of his eyes.
She exhales softly. His eyes are not open. Shadows fooled her.
Swiftly, she lifts the briefcase, rises, and leaves the room.
At the cellar door, she stops and listens. She hears no movement from the dining room. The cellar door opens quietly and slowly, but she can’t help the whine of the hinges. It sounds louder than it usually does. As if the whole house is slowly creaking open.
And with just enough room to enter, she slips inside. The house is silent again.
She slowly descends the stairs down to the dirt floor.
She’s nervous; it takes her too long to find the string for the lightbulb. When she does, the room gushes with bright yellow light. Too bright. Like it might wake Cheryl, sleeping two floors above.
Glancing around the room, she waits.
She can hear her own labored breathing. Nothing else.
Her body aches. She needs to rest. But right now, she wants only to see what Gary brought with him.
Stepping to the wooden stool, she sits.
She clicks opens the briefcase.
Inside she sees a worn toothbrush.
Socks.
T-shirts.
A dress shirt.
Deodorant.
And papers. A notebook.
Malorie looks to the cellar door. She listens for footsteps. There are none. She pulls the notebook out from under the clothes and sets the briefcase on the ground.
The notebook has a clean, blue cover. The edges are not bent. It’s as if Gary has kept it, preserved it—in the best condition he could.
She opens it.
And reads.
The handwriting is so exact that it frightens her. It’s meticulously crafted. Whoever wrote it did so with passion. With pride. As she flips through the pages, she sees some sentences are written traditionally, from left to right, others are written in the opposite direction from right to left. Still others, deeper into the notebook, begin at the top of the page and walk down. By the end, the sentences spiral neatly, still perfectly crafted, creating odd designs and patterns, made of words.
To know the ceiling of man’s mind is to know the full power of these creatures. If it’s a matter of comprehension, then surely the results of any encounter with them must differ greatly between two men. My ceiling is different from yours. Much different from the monkeys in this house. The others, engulfed as they are in hyperbolic hysteria, are more susceptible to the rules we’ve ascribed the creatures. In other words, these simpletons, with their childish intellects, will not survive. But someone like myself, well, I’ve already proven my point.
Malorie flips the page.
What kind of a man cowers when the end of the world comes? When his brothers are killing themselves, when the streets of suburban America are infested with murder . . . what kind of man hides behind blankets and blindfolds? The answer is MOST men. They were told they would go mad. So they go mad.
Malorie looks to the cellar stairs. The light from the stove shows through the thin slit at the bottom of the cellar door. She thinks she should have turned it off. She thinks about doing it now. Then she flips the page.
We do it to ourselves we do it to ourselves we DO IT to OURSELVES. In other words (make note of this!): MAN IS THE CREATURE HE FEARS.
It’s Frank’s notebook. But why does Gary have it?
Because he wrote it of course.
Because, Malorie knows, Frank didn’t tear down the drapes at Gary’s old place.
Gary did.
Malorie stands, her heart racing.
Tom isn’t home. Tom is on a three-mile walk to his house.
She stares at the foot of the cellar door. Light from the stove. She expects shoes to suddenly obscure it. She looks to the shelves for a weapon. If he comes, what can she kill him with?
But no shoes obscure the light, and Malorie brings the notebook closer to her face. She reads.
Rationally speaking, and in the interest of proving this to them, I’ve no choice. I will write this a thousand times until I convince myself to do it. Two thousand. Three. These men deny discourse. Only proof will change them. But how to prove it to them? How to make them believe?
I will remove the drapes and unlock the doors.
In the margins there are numbered notes and corresponding numbers are written painstakingly across the top. Here is note 2,343. Here is 2,344. Ceaseless, endless, brutal.
Malorie turns the page.
A noise comes from upstairs.