The Roommate
The red digits of the clock-radio read 8:45 as Daniel pulled himself out the window of the...
The red digits of the clock-radio read 8:45 as Daniel pulled himself out the window of the townhouse bedroom he rented for a smoke. He wasn't sure why, exactly, that he felt the need to hide the fact that he enjoyed a pipe. Maybe it was because his appearance as a chubby, nineteen-year-old orange and black tiger wearing a heavy metal t-shirt and jeans, smoking a pipe suggested combustibles other than tobacco. Or maybe he thought the pipe made him look like some kid that was trying to look older than he was. House rules were house rules: No smoking in the townhouse unless your fur was on fire. Out the window Daniel went.
It was a nice night. The light pollution hid many of the stars, but a few could be seen. The moon was a brilliant half, and a gentle breeze ruffled his fur. The gable of the window blocked the breeze enough that Daniel could strike a match and watch the sulfur burn off before sucking the flame into the bowl when his phone suddenly rang, loudly playing "Somebody's Watching Me", a joke that damn bear roommate of his kept playing on him. The precarious crouch behind the gable, the lit match, and the phone were too much. Something had to give and it did, the phone sliding down the roof, the pipe hitting the gutter, and Daniel sliding down, tearing his jeans and carpet-burning his knees on the asphalt shingles, causing many a sailor-like explicative to slide out of his mouth.
Daniel got to the phone, slid down to get the pipe from the gutter. He sat on his duff and flipped the phone open. "Ehh... hello?" He hadn't even had a chance to check the number.
"Daniel... Hi. This is Professor Jim James. Sorry to call so late. You were interested in participating in a research study?" A rumbling baritone on the phone.
"Research... Oh yeah! I applied for that before classes started."
"We had some subjects drop out at the last minute. Are you still available?" the professor asked.
Yes! Daniel pumped his fist in the air. Grants and loans paid the rent, but studies allowed luxuries.
"Certainly. I'm free."
"Good, good. Can you come by my office for a spot interview tomorrow? Brinbane 815. Top floor. At... 3:30?"
"... I have a class until 4. I can get there by 4:15" Daniel countered.
"That'll be fine. I'll see you then." And the professor rang off.
"Danny, are you out there?" Only one person called him "Danny". Shit. Bryan.
"Yeah, I'm out here," Daniel replied.
"I'm coming out." The window opened wider on the other side of the townhouse roof and the bear, dressed also in a heavy metal t-shirt and jeans, climbed out.
"Did you steal one of my pipes again?" The damn bear sounded amused.
"No..." Daniel knew he was blushing.
"Sure you did. The Rhodesian Bulldog in my ashtray was missing. I should make a present of it to you." The bear smiled.
"Well...," the tiger began.
The bear chuckled, "All you have to do is ask. Get that thing out and fire it up. I've brought out one for me." The bear said, patting the roof. "And get up here. It's safer closer to the windows. Who was on the phone?"
"Professor James."
"James... That Bull with the Psychology department?"
"I think so." Daniel climbed gingerly up the roof.
"Well... be careful of him. He's pretty strict on protocols and gives vicious exams."
"I'm going inside, Bryan."
"Suit yourself. I'm going to have my pipe out here. Be sure to put the pipe you borrowed back in my ashtray."
Daniel awoke, fully clothed, on his bed the next morning. On the dresser was a note in his handwriting:
Jim James Brinbane 815 October 29 4:15
Daniel looked at the clock, swore under his breath, and rushed off to school. --- . ---
The wrist-watch on the tiger's left arm read 4:10. Daniel's legs ached and his tail was drooping, dragging up the stairs behind him. Sweat soaked through the underarms of his button-down shirt. He wished he could kill the asshole who decided that the elevators for the entire building were keyed-access only. He had just climbed nine flights, coming in from the basement in the hopes that perhaps the elevator would have buttons but to no avail. He stood for a moment, heaving, puffing, and swearing.
"Room 945... Of course," Daniel muttered as he looked at the number of the first room outside of the stairwell. He turned around and went down a flight of stairs. Apparently the idea of the floor number matching the outer digit of the room number didn't go with this building.
The trip down the stairs and through half the building gave Daniel a few minutes to catch his breath. He knocked on the door.
"Come in," a melodic baritone answered. Daniel opened the door.
"And you would be Daniel. Call me Jim."
The bull was standing by his desk and came forward to shake his hand and guide him to a chair. No shoes, because bovine hooves just didn't fit them, polished black and shiny. The bull wore a loosened tie and had glossy horns. The office had a faint smell the Daniel couldn't quite place, and was lined with books and boxed sets of journals organized by year.
"Have a seat, and let's get started. You're on time. I like that," Jim said.
"I'd have been a few minutes early, but someone put key locks on the basement elevator."
"Hmmm? Oh that. You have to go to the sub-basement to get to the unlocked elevators. They're around the corner, behind the huge globe."
"Anyhow, I've only got ten minutes. Ready?"
"Certainly, Pro... Jim."
The bull smiled. "Have you ever seen a ghost or a haunting?"
Daniel blinked. "No."
"Alright... How firmly do you believe that there's an explanation for everything?"
Daniel thought, "Well... fairly firmly. There has to be an explanation, I think. Just because something isn't understood, doesn't mean that it's unexplainable."
The bull grinned. "I think you'll do fine for the job. We're going to set you up with a camera and send you into an allegedly haunted house. The camera has infra-red and ultra-violet modes. Your job is to walk through the house, scan each room, then come out to our truck and tell us what you saw." --- . ---
Daniel on his bed in his bedroom, looking over the manual that came with the gear Professor James had given him.
"Damn. It looks like a cheap Chinese Hi-Tablet. But it does thermal and UV imaging," he said under his breath.
"What does thermal and UV imaging," a rumbling voice asked.
Daniel looked up to see Bryan peeking into his backpack. "This thing? Let's go check it out."
"Hey! I haven't..." Daniel found himself talking to an empty doorway.
Bryan was half-way down the stairs. He'd taken his boots off and held a finger in front of his muzzle. The big bear got up on his tip-toes and had the Hi-Tablet pointed at the floor. "Ah-ha," he said, quietly.
Daniel looked at the screen on the tablet. He could see two reddish blobs with long tails moving together, rhythmically.
"Hey! Turn that off. It's not nice to spy on Tara and John like that!" Daniel said indignantly.
"And miss the big finish! Don't be silly. Look!" Bryan said.
Daniel watched as the movement got more erratic.
"And bingo!" the bear said. A bright red splotch erupted from one of the blobs into the other and the pair collapsed into one large red blob.
Daniel took his tablet back from the smirking bear and spent the next thirty minutes in his room, double-checking that no video file of the humping basement-dwelling felines had been recorded. --- . ---
Daniel turned off the radio in his car, then the lights, and then the engine. The car was nearly was old as he was. The radio had acted weird on the drive over. Stations that normally came in clear kept drifting in and out. The radio finally locked solidly on a station playing music from the time he was born. Good thing Daniel was into old music. The new still sounded, to him, like someone was being paid too much to hit an electronic trashcan with a stick.
The clock on the dashboard read 11:00. The Google Maps directions on the Hi Pad were confusing and made him drive ten miles past his freeway exit. The house at 1313 Fenway stood at the end of a decimated cul-de-sac. The houses on either side were also for sale. Most of the houses in the addition seemed to be sporting For Sale signs of one type or another.
Daniel stepped out of the car, waved to the truck where Professor James and a couple of grad students sat, set the Hi Pad on record, and started quoting from the script he'd been given to memorize.
"Today is October 31, 2011. It is 11 PM Pacific Daylight Time. I am at 1313 Fenway in Cupertino at the direction of Dr. James James. He has directed me to leave this recording device on, cycle through all recording spectrums inside and outside the house. I am to dictate anything that I see as I see it, and then return this recording device and measurement data to the truck waiting across the street. I have 30 minutes to complete my task before the team across the street will come in to the house after me to check on my well-being."
Daniel cleared his throat, walked onto the driveway. Immediately he saw a shadowy presence, but then the moon came out from behind the clouds and he was standing in an un-assuming driveway is a past-date suburb.
"I'm starting with the backyard first. I see three trees heavy with avacados... What's that?!?"
Daniel pressed the cycle button on the Hi Pad app three times and stood speechless as a Nun in a white habit, a bird of some kind, stood at the tree picking fruit. He could see right through her insubstantial body. He took a breath and tried again.
"I..I.. see what looks like a penguin Nun, gathering avocados in a basket. Wait, there are three of them." Daniel's voice quaked as he panned the camera across the yard. The wind blew and suddenly he was alone.
"I hope that recorded. That was fantastic! What am I getting myself into?" Daniel monologued. "I'm now going to use the Realtor's code to gain access into the kitchen.
Daniel slid the Hi Pad under the lock box, ran the app, then switched back to recording mode. A metal key slid out of the box and he unlocked the door, pocketing the key.
"I'm now in the kitchen. Nothing seems amiss. It's empty. I'll pan around. Wait. There's seems to be a wolven woman loading the dishwasher. And she doesn't react to the sound of my voice."
Daniel toggled through the camera setting on the Hi Pad again before the apparition vanished.
"I see no signs of a projector or a light source," Daniel continued, slowly walking around the dishwasher that had just seemingly been closed a moment before.
He opened the dishwasher and found it empty. Just then the dishwasher appeared closed while Daniel could clearly feel the dishwasher was open in his hand as the apparition repeated its ghostly task of loading the dishwasher with dishes that suddenly appeared on the countertop.
"The haunting in this room, if that's the right word, seems to be a loop; the same action over and over again. To verify I will film the actions a third time." Daniel spoke into the camera as he watched the wolfess complete filling the dishwasher, then, a few minutes later, fill it again.
"I see no signs of a projector, but the repeat with no variance suggests a recording of some kind."
Daniel continued into the living-room/dining room nook off of the kitchen. Suddenly, "Somebody's Watching Me" blared out and he jumped, checking his cell phone that showed no call. Daniel turned around and found a TV that had not been there a moment before was playing MTV, showing the video to the song. He stood and turned around, finding a pair of teenagers, a dog boy and a bear girl, making out on the couch. The dog boy seemed to be making some headway as the bear girl had just had her bra un-done. Suddenly both sat up straight in surprise as the lights came on in the room. The girl screamed, "Dad!" and the apparitions vanished.
Daniel stepped back, and watched as the scene replayed again, and yet again, this time flipping through the infra-red and ultra-violet modes. No heat came from the events, and no ultra-violet. The scenes did not appear on his camera using visible light.
"Odd... The apparitions I'm seeing, in this case a teenage bear and a dog making out on the couch and then being interrupted do not seem to film in any of the modes on this Hi Pad," Daniel noted for evidence. "I wonder if I am recording."
Daniel stopped the recording, slid the slider back five minutes, and pressed play. A message box popped up that read, "Re-play requires a pass-phrase".
Daniel resumed recording, "Apparently I am not supposed to be able to play-back my recordings. Why would the recording software be set up that way?"
Daniel continued into the bedrooms down the hall. In the first, he found a little bear girl in pig-tails playing jacks. In the second, he found a teenaged boy horse masturbating, interrupted, shouting "Mom!" at the end of the loop. In the master bedroom he found two male cheetahs, naked, playing some sort of William Tell game, with one shooting an apple with a crossbow on the head of the other. Each time, the scenes repeated after about a minute. They did not change, and there was no interaction with Daniel. Daniel recorded each scene, made verbal notes, and left.
Daniel walked back down the hallway, where the living-room scene was repeating again, that damn song had been heard a dozen ties or more as he investigated the other rooms.
"Last room, the basement and garage," Daniel said as he walked down the stairs. A door stood ahead and Daniel opened the door.
"Danny!" a familiar voice greeted him.
Daniel opened the door to find Bryan, naked, chained to what he could only think of to call a sling, in the middle of the room.
"Bryan?" Daniel began.
"Hurry, Danny! He's coming back! You've got to save me!" Bryan stage-whispered.
"Okay! Where are the keys?" Daniel dropped the Hi Pad as he ran to his friend.
"Save me! Here should be something in here to save me!" the bear answered.
Daniel nodded, "Okay! I'll start looking for the keys!"
"In the corner! Oh no, he's coming. Hide! I'll try to cover for you!" Bryan hissed, trying to push Daniel behind him, but unable to reach due to the sling and the chains.
Daniel found the door to the garage, where he nearly tripped over shoeboxes of video-tapes.
"Gonna fuck me again?" Daniel heard Bryan say through the door.
"Umph... Umph... Wha... What are you doing with that necktie?!?"
Daniel could only just imagine what was going on behind that door as he stumbled, his pulse racing, trying to get to the garage door to get the Professor outside, or the Police, to help Bryan.
--- . ---
Daniel awoke in an empty garage, Professor James shaking him, "Are you alright?"
Daniel sat up in the harsh light of the garage, covered in dust, clutching a single shoebox to his chest. "Bryan!"
He got up quickly, rushing to the basement door to find an empty room. The Hi Pad sat in the middle, filming the ceiling.
"What happened?" Daniel asked.
"I was just about to ask you the same thing. We gave you forty minutes, same as the rest of our volunteers. They all came out with their Hi Pads and were debriefed. We came in to check on you and found you un-conscious in the garage. Where did you get the shoebox?"
"I don't know." Daniel opened the box to find it full of compact videocassettes.
--- . ---
The rest of the night was spent getting Daniel to the hospital for a checkup, then a debriefing where he learned that he'd been part of a control group. The other group had been selected because they were local students or had otherwise heard the local folklore about the house being haunted. Daniel was from out-of-state. The house had been rigged with holograms. A review of the Hi Pad video showed the holograms repeating, with no heat or UV signature. His observations had been spot-on.
The basement room was supposed to be empty. The video showed an empty room. No sign of a bear in bondage. The audio clearly picked up Daniel saying:
"Bryan?"
And then:
"Okay! Where are the keys?" Which was followed by a thud as the Hi Pad started filming the ceiling.
And then:
"Okay! I'll start looking for the keys!" Followed by the sound of the door to the garage opening and closing.
"I cannot explain what you say, or the shoebox of tapes. You will let me know if you have such an episode again, yes?" Professor James had asked.
They watched about three minutes of one of the videotapes next. It proved to be graphic homemade snuff porn. That led to bad coffee, stale donuts, and a deposition from all four of them at the Police station.
Daniel stumbled home at 7:30 AM, just as Tara and John were heading out to work.
"You went to a late-night party on a Monday?" John asked.
"More like hours spent with the police. I'll tell you the story when you get home from work." Daniel mumbled, heading upstairs. He barely made it to bed.
--- . ---
Bryan had to be a ghost. He had to be, Daniel thought. The next day, the door to Bryan's room was locked. Daniel had tried knocking, then turning the handle when he woke up. Three days late, he asked Tara about his roommate.
"Bryan? Who's Bryan? We told you when you moved in, the other bedroom's rented by Matt. He's out-of-the-country. Germany, I think. So you have the upstairs all to yourself." Tara said.
--- . ---
A year later found Daniel in a new apartment. Mat had returned from Germany, proving to be a goat wearing hipster black glasses and stone-washed jeans. Tara and John gently announced that they were pregnant and needed the extra space, so Matt and Daniel moved out that Sumer.
Daniel, now 20, had bought some more pipes and stopped sneaking out on the roof, out of sight, to enjoy them. The balcony on his new apartment, shared with Matt, was more convenient. He had also declared psychology as a major and landed an assistance-ship in Professor James's lab.
It was a damp October 31, a Wednesday. Daniel walked home from class, passing a newspaper stand. The headline read: "Cold Case Solved" Underneath was a photo of Bryan. Daniel bought a copy.
Reading the front page in the drizzle, Daniel learned 20 years ago, Bryan's mutilated corpse had been found in a field. The tapes had solved his murder and many others. An already in-custody polar bear had pleaded guilty to the crimes.
Daniel opened the door to his room to find a small wooden box on his bed. Inside was a familiar-looking Rhodesian Bulldog.
For Danny: Thanks for saving me. I told you I'd give you this pipe as a gift. Bryan