The Intrusion

Twenty-Eight

[Jordan]

I keep my eyes fixed on the screen as the tape begins to play. The grainy, black and white recording flickers dimly.

"Sorry, I think I backed it up a bit too far." George startles me, and I nearly jump where I'm standing. "We should get there soon, though."

The clock at the bottom of the screen ticks away on fast forward.

9:30pm: Nothing.

9:35pm: Nothing.

9:40pm: A man carrying a bag of groceries enters the building. He pauses and checks his phone. He gets in the elevator.

9:45pm: Nothing.

9:50: A couple holding hands enters the building. The woman drops something on the floor. She picks it up. They get in the elevator.

9:55pm: Nothing.

10:00pm: Nothing.

10:05pm: A family of three enters the building. The kid looks tired and ornery. The man bends over and ties his shoe. They get in the elevator.

10:10pm: Nothing.

10:15pm: A man carrying luggage enters the building. He speaks to the security guard. He gets in the elevator.

10:20: Nothing.

10:25: Nothing.

As the minutes tick by, the footage darkens. Large grains of static stretch across the screen, randomly appearing and disappearing. The monitor flickers like an old TV trying to get signal. Then, in a flash of light, the whole computer goes dark. When it finally starts to glow again, all that's left is dense, meaningless static.

"Sorry, we've been having trouble with the recordings the past couple of days," George says. "It's been doing that off and on. It's well past time they upgraded these cameras. Just keep watching. It's coming up."

But he doesn't need to tell me. I haven't taken my eyes away from the screen.

It's still completely dark. Empty. Shuttering grains and crackling, smoldering sparks of mixed-up signals.

Then, in the dense, deep, vibrating static of the screen, something moves. Something is walking.

A shadow.

It enters the building.

It's in the lobby. It creeps up to the camera. The recording slows, playing in stop-motion—frame by frame like a dancer in a strobe. The shadow takes a form—a human shape. The screen pulls away from me. I feel like I'm moving—falling. Everything around me pulses and rises, like I'm in an elevator—some great horrendous elevator.

I can't move.

Paralyzed.

The shadow figure stands right in front of the camera, pressing against the screen. Stretching and pulling at the glass and trying to get out.

It has no face.

An enormous, powerful and all-knowing nothing swirls like a vortex where its face should be.

I want to scream, but I can't. I can't move, and I don't even know if I'm still breathing. A mouth opens in front of me, pulling at the melted glass of the computer screen. It stretches like a mutated bird hatching from a semi-liquid egg somewhere deep underwater. It screams in this high-pitched voice I can't hear in my ears and can only hear in my soul, like the buzzing sound a mosquito makes or the TV when it's still on but no one is watching. Deep red, viscous blood drips from a beak full of teeth, bone and chewed-up rotten meat.

And then, in a flash, the shadow retreats from the screen.

But it's not gone.

No.

It gets in the elevator.

I NEED TO SCREAM!

I can't move.

I'm going to pass out.

"Miss, are you all right?" a voice asks. Something touches my arm. "Miss Harper?"

Suddenly, I'm jerked from whatever hold the screen has on me and pulled back to the present. George stares at me, concern evident in his brown eyes.

"Sorry." I snap myself out of it and look back at the screen. The static is gone. The recording is back to showing the lobby. It's 10:40pm. "Did you... did you see anything weird just there?" I bring myself to say.

But the confused look George gives me tells me he didn't see any of what I just saw.

"Never mind." I keep watching the screen. I had to have been imagining that, right? I've heard that in complete darkness, with lack of any sensory input, our minds create things. They imagine forms, shapes—creatures—to keep us company in the void.

"Miss, here," George interrupts my thoughts, pointing at the screen.

And then I see it.

I mean her.

Or no... fuck.

A girl walks across the screen... and I know her. But I don't mean I know her. I mean... she's me.

I watch myself walk across the lobby. I stop in front of the front desk for a second and say something to the security guard, and then I leave the building.

Oh God.

What the fuck?

George stares at me, but I don't know what to say. We both watched the same tape, and there is no denying that it was me. She looked just like me. She was wearing my clothes, and she even had my purse with her.

"Miss Harper," George begins slowly, "do you see—"

"Yes," I cut him off. "I'm so sorry." Tears burn behind my eyes. "I'm so sorry for bothering you." I rush away from the lobby desk and to the elevator.

When it dings and I get in, I finally let myself sob. I have no idea what is going on. I'm horrified. I'm losing it, and I don't know what to do. That was me on the camera. It was me that pulled all of my stuff out of my purse and left it strewn about my table. It was all me.

But I don't remember any of it.

All I can think is sleep walking. Some horrifying, half-cognizant form of sleep walking where I am lucid but somehow not writing any memories.

I have no idea what to think. I have no idea what to do.

The elevator dings and I get out.

As I walk to my room, I think about that shadow figure I saw on the tape again, and I have one last thought to try to pull me through all this madness.

I think about my dream. I think about the intruder.

I need to talk to Andy again.

I know where he lives.