Small white lights are strung across the walls in a rough and worn looking garage. Blurred photographs of trains traveling at night hang on the walls. Some stand on the floor while leaning against the walls. A chain tied to the rafters hangs down to a bubble chair suspended just above the floor.
In the chair slouches Wyndham, facing the garage door in the north wall, wearing black trousers, a white dress shirt, a formal burgundy vest, a pocket watch, and an eye patch. He absentmindedly handles a Mauser pistol withdrawn from the holster on his thigh.
Behind Wyndham’s chair is a woman lying face down on the ground with her head encased inside a heavy concrete cube. She struggles to push herself back and forth across the floor with her legs. Each time she collides with the east and west walls she stops momentarily before turning and moving in the reverse direction.
A man sits at a grand piano in the north-east corner and his foot is nailed to the floor through the sustain petal. His pinky, middle, and index fingers are glued onto the keys of two C# minor triads located at the lowest and highest possible ends of the keyboard. He plays furiously, straining through clenched teeth, mashing the two minor chords rhythmically and as fast as possible, each solid chord ringing out over another until a dissonant symphony of clashing overtones echoes in thick waves off the garage’s high ceiling back down onto the shuddering and erratic notes below.
Eliza and Ryan knock once, wait, and enter through a squeaky iron door off to the side. Eliza holds an angel cake on a tray.
Ryan approaches Wyndham’s left side and Eliza approaches Wyndham’s right side, neither of them seeing the identity of the man in the chair.
Ryan wears black slacks, a black turtle neck, and a gray blazer. Eliza wears a dark blue pantsuit, pearl earrings and a scarf made of earthy colours−terra-cotta, tan, and brown.
Ryan, with his hands in his pockets, casually kicks the concrete cube encasing the head of the woman crawling across the floor. He nods.
“Those are some DAMN nice angles you have there,” he says.
Eliza walks to the piano player while staring at his fingers glued onto the keys. She says over her shoulder while touching her scarf “you know, Ryan, it’s a real shame more symphonies aren’t written in C sharp minor…it’s such a lovely scale, really…”
Wyndham says nothing.
They continue walking until they both stand in front of Wyndham, Ryan facing his left side and Eliza facing his right. When they see they both stop in their tracks. Eliza drops the angel cake to the floor where it flips upside down and squishes against the concrete.
The piano player slows his frenetic pace gradually until he plays the C# minor keys to which his fingers are glued in broken, single note arpeggios lurching along at a hesitant speed.
“Where is Ms. Horrocut?” Eliza asks. “I had a cake for her, but…” she looks down.
Silence.
“I had no idea you were still here,” she says. She turns to Ryan. “Did you?”
Ryan shakes his head.
Silence.
Eliza says “well, how are you? When did you arrive?”
Silence.
“As a child,” Wyndham says.
Eliza says “Oh no, I meant—”
“You know what I meant,” Wyndham says.
Silence.
“Well,” says Ryan, “I don’t think I need to be−”
“Yes…I think we do,” Eliza says. She turns back to Wyndham. She frowns and says “and you need you to start…saying what you need to say.”
“Oh, why do you bother, Eliza? You already know−” says Ryan
“I DON’T know. That’s why I’m asking Wyndham.”
Wyndham starts, saying “it’s…” but Ryan and Eliza wince. Wyndham purses his lips. Eliza giggles, then resumes a professional posture. “Oh, forget it,” says Wyndham.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m fine now,” Eliza says. “Really.”
“It’s the Academy,” Wyndham says. He pauses. “I remember this place, when I was young, at “Ms. Horrocut’s Academy”, the one she ran here, out of this house.” He gestures generally behind him. “You know.”
Ryan scoffs. “Oh, come on−” he says.
“I wish it wasn’t…but it is,” says Wyndham.
“If that’s what it is, then that’s what it is,” says Eliza.
Wyndham pauses. He squints and peers at Eliza and Ryan. “But who nominated me?”
Ryan shuffles and looks down.
Eliza bows, blinks, and looks up.
“Okay,” she pauses. “It was us…we nominated you,” she says.
Wyndham stares at them, his eyes unchanged, but his mouth now slightly open. “How−” he starts saying.
Eliza takes a step forward. “It was highlight recommended,” she says.
Ryan also takes a step forward. “Can you imagine a place that wasn’t highly recommended?!”
Wyndham says “Alright.”
Eliza looks at Wyndham. “We’re very sorry…for interrupting…just now.” She pauses. “What is it you remember?”
Wyndham maintains eye contact with her. “Dark hardwood…the floor was dark hardwood, all over, all over the house. The walls were all this…decaying green. There were some carpets, maybe−”
“Carpets! …were there or weren’t there?!” Ryan says.
Wyndham turns to him. “I can’t remember.”
“Well…” Ryan says.
Eliza says “Ryan…” and Ryan raises his hands, remaining silent.
Wyndham continues. “The furniture was very old, with the old patterns.” He pauses. “I remember stuffed owls.”
“Okay, okay, good…but what were the days like?” Eliza says.
“Like?” Wyndham asks.
“You know!” Eliza says. “How were they arranged?”
“Oh,” Wyndham says. He closes his eyes. “In the morning we sat at desks, individual desks in the study, with a grand piano in the corner. Through a doorway, you know, with no doors, I saw the foyer, right there.” He pauses. “When we sat there waiting in the morning, sometimes I saw this very old woman go by.” He pauses. “She just sort of…shuffled by, with this horrible blood red wig a size too large drooping over her eyes.”
“Just shuffling past?” Eliza asks.
Wyndham nods.
“Did…did you see anything else?” Eliza says.
“Yes, one morning, when we walked from the door to the kitchen−” Wyndham says.
Ryan grunts. “Right, the kitchen…”
Wyndham looks at him.
“Do you mind?” Wyndham says.
Ryan rolls his eyes. “Fine, fine…”
Wyndham closes his eyes again and resumes his recollection. “We passed the kitchen, and, well, I looked in, and I saw them…the very old woman again, first, frail, thin, hunched over, still wearing the large red wig on her head, sitting at the kitchen table…facing a man with no shirt on, who I swear must have been three hundred pounds.”
“Just sitting there?” Eliza asks.
Wyndham nods before going on. “I heard the clock ticking−”
“Okay, okay, good.” Eliza says. Wyndham sneers. “But…what did you do there…I mean…during your days there?”
Still with his eyes closed, Wyndham says “we sat in the study, individually, at those small tables, in rows. Ms. Horrocut sat in the corner, her white hair tied back, with her eyes closed, reciting details of several missing persons cases.” Wyndham opens his eyes and looks first at Ryan, then at Eliza. They avoid his gaze. Wyndham closes his eyes again and continues. “We had to copy it all, every detail…word for word, onto these little cards, except…” Wyndham laughs, “…the cards were 4.5 inches high and 6 inches long, which Ms. Horrocut said was too big, so we always started the day by cutting them, smaller, exactly ½ an inch off the top, and 1 inch from each side, first the left, then the right , but…” he pauses, “we had to write using tiny, cramped letters just to fit what we could of the cases she recited to us on the cards…but it was never enough space…” he pauses, “because they were too small!”
Ryan furrows his brow, frowns, and gestures to Wyndham to lower his voice, whispering “Wyn…come on…”
Wyndham says “no.”
“She must have let you outside though. She must have,” says Ryan.
“Yes,” Wyndham says, “sometimes…she let us walk, to the end of the street…and back.”
Silence.
“But do you remember” Eliza asks, “I mean, what she had you write on the cards?”
Wyndham gets up from his chair. He smiles. He walks up to Eliza, bringing his face within several inches of hers.
“Card number 1,” he says, “when they finally found the boat it lay half-sunk in the water. The windows were all smashed inwards. In the engine room there were mattresses stacked against the engine. Every clock on board had stopped at 5:20. On the deck they found a doctor’s bag; upon opening it they found it stuffed full of uncoiled bandages stained with blood when…”
Eliza turns away. Wyndham pauses. He goes on.
“Card number 2,” he says, “they found what remained of her headphones ten kilometers away from where she’d last been seen rounding the corner of the street on her brand new bike. They found the headphones next to tracks from her bike in the park’s dirt. They found nothing else. They heard nothing else, until a year later, when someone found a photo on the street, a scrap of paper like any other, of her, bound and gagged next to a young boy who…”
“Wyn,” says Ryan, “we don’t need to hear this—”
Wyndham makes a sharp turn and walks directly up to Ryan until Ryan’s face is within an inch of his own.
“Card number 3,” he says, “she lived near the sunny coast. One day she left. No one knows why, but she disappeared. Days passed…and three weeks later her mother, who was quite a bit older, received a phone call: she heard her daughter’s voice saying “help me, please, let me out−” before she heard another, deeper voice saying “THAT isn’t yours.” The caller ID read “moonlight,” and they found her finger inside her folded clothes in a bag at the back of a convenience store freezer where…”
Ryan turns away. Wyndham pauses. He goes on.
“Card number 4,” he says, “he called home first, and told his wife he’d be taking a detour through Spruce Lane on the way home, but he never arrived at home, so she phoned the police. The next day they found his red car, parked in front of an antique shop on the edge of town, with his keys, his wallet, and his phone still on the passenger seat, and they found his laptop washed up under a bridge over the creek nearby, without its hard drive, which they found one hundred yards down along the shore, on which they found nothing, exactly what…”
Wyndham smiles with the left side of his mouth and walks back to his bubble chair suspended from the ceiling in the garage.
“Please…” says Eliza.
Wyndham looks at her.
“Card number 5,” he says, “the autumn evening fell over the coast, and she left her child with her sister, before heading out at 5:00pm, intending to speak with her ex-husband before going to work, but was never seen again, even by her ex-husband, as he told investigators, but her purse appeared by the entrance of the closest park, three days later, with nothing else, except its strap torn, and a note inside which read “Dear Kurt, I cannot wait, not anymore, so I’m off, off to see Dr. Z, trust me, this is the best decision while mother is gone−” and when her mother flew back in she stated that she knew no Dr. Z, and that a man named Kurt had picked up her daughter for a date, once, though he never came to the door, but she didn’t know why…”
“No…” says Ryan
Wyndham looks at him.
“And card number 6,” he says, “they called the islands at the far tip of the coast The Marble Lords, uninhabited except for the men who manned the lighthouse there, until one winter when a ship found no guiding light as they approached, and the next day’s re-supply ship with its relief crew found no activity on the islands or around the towers as they sailed towards The Marble Lords, the relief crew not saying a word during the journey. The flagpole stood bare next to the light house and the railings on the dock had been ripped up. The beds inside the tower were unmade and the dishes were done. Cold ash lay in the grate and the clocks had all stopped at 5:20. The log book lay opened to the final page with the former crew’s last five entries:
*April 1st *
A heavy north by north-east wind, high waves. the strongest winds I’ve seen.
John is not happy so far.
*April 2nd*
The sea still churns. The wind whips across us.
Thomas and Pietr are still weeping.
*April 3rd*
The wind is shifting, due east, then due south.
John kneels in silent prayer.
*April 4th*
Blank
*April 5th*
The storm has died. The sea is quiet.
He is watching.
The relief crew said Thomas and Pietr were the toughest men they knew, with no explanation as to how…”
Wyndham finishes.
Silence.
“That’s all,” says Wyndham. “We never wrote the conclusions…if there were any.”
Silence.
“Well,” says Ryan, “I don’t know about all that.” He pauses. “Did Ms. Horrocut even give you their names?”
“Yes,” says Eliza, looking suddenly alert. “Did you even find out if they were real?”
Wyndham says “I asked her what their names were…once.” Pause. “She told me that their names were…irrelevant to the lesson.”
“But there must be away to find—” Ryan starts saying.
“There isn’t,” Wyndham says back. “I’ve looked…but never found anything here.”
Wyndham looks from Ryan to Eliza and back.
“There is no evidence here, of answers…of any kind…” he says.
Eliza shivers.
“But…what are you saying?” she says. “Just what are you saying?”
Ryan glares into Wyndham’s eyes.
“Yes,” Ryan says. “Just what are you trying to say?”
Wyndham closes his eyes. He nods his head several times in succession.
“The answers…to the questions…I mean they weren’t here then, and I’ve found none since. We need to accept that…”
“No…” Ryan says, shaking his head. He turns away.
“…that this place…it…serves no purpose,” says Wyndham.
Ryan turns around.
“YES IT DOES!” he shouts.
Silence.
Wyndham sits down. He smiles and says “oh I’ve had time to look…because I’m the last one left here…who can still look in the house…unless you’d rather look for yourselves…just through that door…” he gestures with his Mauser pistol to the door in the south wall behind him.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” says Ryan.
Eliza shakes her head.
“You know we can’t,” she says. “We made a decision…to nominate you.”
“Because,’ Ryan says, “you can…look.”
“But we didn’t think…that you’d stay…after it closed” Eliza says.
Silence.
Wyndham scowls.
“When?” he asks. “When did it close?”
Ryan and Eliza say nothing.
“When. Did. It. Close?” Wyndham says.
Silence.
“No, I would truly like to know. When did Ms. Horrocut’s Academy close?”
He stands.
“WHEN?!”
Silence.
“Okay,” Wyndham says. He walks to the piano players and slams the lid down onto his fingers glued to the keys two C# minor triads. The piano player doesn’t scream. He begins frantically pounding out solid, reverberating, droning chords again, continuing the symphony of clashing overtones echoing in thick waves off the garage’s high ceiling. Ryan and Eliza look away. They stay silent. Wyndham walks quickly to the woman crawling across the floor with her head encased in a cube of concrete. Wyndham viciously kicks her in the ribs repeatedly, asking Eliza and Ryan “WHEN DID IT FINISH?” over and over after each blow…
