Bad Glass

She played her flashlight across the floor of the closet. The blankets took up most of the space, but there was more of Weasel’s stuff inside. There was a stack of flannel shirts folded into a pillow at the head of the bed and, lying next to it, Weasel’s fedora. I remembered it from my first day in the city. He’d doffed it like a gentleman as he greeted me.

Taylor once again panned the flashlight across the small room, finally settling on a stack of notebooks tucked into the corner. They were cheap notebooks. I recognized the style: black-and-white marbled covers, the words Composition Book and College Ruled stamped across the front. There had been stacks and stacks of these things at my university bookstore—nearly a full pallet, dumped right inside the front door—on sale for fifty cents each. A worn-down nub of pencil lay on top of the stack, and there were wood shavings scattered across the floor.

Taylor let out a curious grunt. “His journals,” she said. “He’s always writing. Every fucking day.” She got down on the blanket and pulled the topmost notebook into her lap. She held up her flashlight and flipped through the thin pages. I could see densely packed words scrawled in pencil and ink.

She leaned forward to put the notebook back, then paused in midmotion. Her eyes widened, and her left hand started to move slowly at her side, gently caressing the blanket down by her leg, feeling … something. I couldn’t see what she was doing. After a couple of moments of tentative exploration, she scooted off the edge of the blanket and pushed it back violently, bunching it up against the far wall and exposing the concrete beneath.

And then she let out a sudden, strangled sob.

“No, no, no,” she hissed. She clamped her eyes shut and fell back against the wall. Her legs went dead, and gravity pulled her back down to the floor.

There were fingers in the concrete. Four fingers and the tip of a thumb, sticking up from the broom closet floor.

Fingers, reaching up from the world below.

Taylor dropped her flashlight, and it rolled slowly across the floor. The fingers were at the edges of its light, but they still cast sharp shadows: tapered pyramids stretching across the concrete, pointing up toward the left-hand wall. The flashlight stopped rolling, but the shadows didn’t remain still. The fingers were quivering. Not strong, conscious movements, but rather an electric tremor, tendons adjusting beneath skin, pulling tight against bone.

Taylor let out a weak groan. “It’s Weasel,” she said. Her voice was a raw, guttural whisper. She kept her eyes clenched shut. “It’s Weasel,” she repeated.

I didn’t say anything. My heart was beating fast, but I was not afraid.

I was numb. I was astounded.

I got down on my knees and pulled the flashlight over to my side, fixing the fingers in the center of its beam. The fingernails were ragged and packed with dirt, and there was a bruise beneath the middle cuticle. The knuckles had been scraped raw, but otherwise there seemed to be little damage. And the concrete itself was absolutely perfect—no cracks, no crumbling, no hint of violence of any type.

I glanced back at Taylor. She had her hands up over her eyes, as if she were trying to hide, as if she were trying to retreat from the world into the comfort of her pressed palms. I left her alone. Instead, I grabbed my camera and started taking pictures.

Journal. Undated. Weasel’s words:

(A composition book, battered and creased. The first twenty pages are filled with cramped, handwritten letters—messy and uneven, often deviating from the light blue college-ruled lines. The first couple of pages are written in ballpoint ink; then pencil takes over midsentence.

Entries are generally short—brief bursts of words separated by thick horizontal lines. The horizontal lines are bold; they’ve been traced and retraced, scribbled back and forth with a heavy hand. The entries are undated.