#james jonee

“Name?”

“Septicie.”

“Real name.”

“Anton… Anton Brodes.”

“Age?”

“Don’t know.”

“Do you know why you’re here?”

“Something about the power outage in the town, probably.”

“Anton, I just need to know what happened. Can you do that for me?”

A sigh.

 Anton Brodes was working his usual late night shift at the surveillance company downtown during the worst rainstorm recorded in the town ever. Earbuds in, he was whistling to the music pounding in his ears as he ran the mop down the corridor.

He looked up as a flicker of sparks flew into the hall from a room.

“Anybody out there?” No answer. Concerned about the possibility of a humanitarian crisis, he crept to the room to make sure nobody was inside.

The room was an array of brightly-coloured sparks and fizzing wires. As his eyes travelled around the room, Anton realised one of the large circuit boxes had short-circuited and was breaking apart the rest of the room.

“Damn it, why my shift?” Taking a deep breath, he reached out to begin repairing the wires.

As his hand touched the box, a bright flash blinded him temporarily. He vaguely registered falling forwards, and a cold chill running up his arms. As his body fell to the floor, the sparks and wires from the circuit boxes began to seep into his pores, manipulating his DNA and causing him to yell in pain. Then he passed out.

 ***

“Name?”

“You know my name, Inspector.”

“This is protocol, Jackie. Just say your name for the record.”

“You just said my name.”

“Full name.”

“Jackie Brodes.”

“Age?”

“Twenty-five. Look, if you want me to tell you what I saw, just say. Don’t go through this ‘protocol’ stuff. We’ve been through this a dozen times.”

“Tell me what you saw.”

“With pleasure.”

 Jackie was sitting on the roof of the police station, surveying the area the same way he did every night. A flashing to his left alerted his attention.

“What the hell?” He squinted at the bright light emanating from downtown, trying to place its exact location.

“Anton!” Unwinding his rope, he began to swing across the city, Spider-man style. His heart pounded in his chest, worry clouding his face.

Arriving at the company, Jackie used his patented electronic lockpick to get inside, following the sounds of yells to find Anton’s cleaning equipment abandoned.

“Strange. He never leaves that alone,” Jackie commented to himself as he looked down the corridor. Flickering lights impaired his vision, and he put on some night-vision goggles to see better.

Heading down the hall to the room with sparks, he saw an amalgamation of wires covering a moving figure. Upon further inspection, Jackie realised it was his estranged brother, wrapped in cables and unconscious.

“Anton, hold on, I’ll help you. Power switch, power switch…” he spun in a circle, finding the master switch for power, and flicking it off. As soon as the cables had stopped fizzing and writhing, he began to disentangle his brother.

“Are you alright? Anton, talk to me.” He held the janitor, feeling static electricity prick his skin with every movement. Tilting his head, the hero activated the communications device sewn into his hood.

“We have a code yellow in the surveillance company downtown. Power surge or short circuit. There’s been a casualty. Please hurry.” He held Anton close, ignoring the pricks of static as he tried to make the man open his eyes.

 Anton woke up in the darkness, a heavy weight on his chest. Opening his eyes, the lights of the room flickered, then shone brightly.

He raised his arm to shield his eyes, then held it back to look at the bandages wrapped around it. Curious, he lifted his other arm, seeing the same thing. What happened?

“Oh, you’re awake. How are you feeling?” A nurse walked into the room, clipboard in her hands and warm smile on her face.

“I feel…” he drifted off as his voice crackled. He tried clearing his throat, only for the lights to flicker. He looked at the nurse, who shrugged.

“There’s a thunderstorm outside. The lights flicker whenever that happens.” Anton nodded, slowly, not telling the nurse that the room was dark before he opened his eyes.

“I’ll call your brother in. He’s been sitting outside for hours.” She left, leaving the door open before leading a man in a red hoodie inside.

“Hey, Anton. How are you feeling?” Instead of speaking, Anton raised his hands and began to sign to the hero. The Brodes family had learnt sign due to their father going deaf in their early years.

Something weird is happening to me. Jackie read the signs, then nodded, turning to the nurse and asking to be left alone. She left the room, giving Anton a wary glance.

“What do you mean by weird? Are you sick?”

When I opened my eyes, it was like I turned the lights on. Then my voice…

“My voice crackles, Jackie.” The hero started at the sound of the janitor’s once smooth voice. He sat down, lifting Anton’s arms to inspect the bandages.

“Do your arms hurt? I found you wrapped up in sparking wires. I can call Schneeple if you want-” Anton shook his head furiously, grabbing the hero’s wrists.

I just want to get out of here. Take me home. Jackie nodded slowly, thinking.

“It’s Chase’s week with you. I’ll give him a call.”

 ***

“Mr. Brodes, I understand your concern about your wife and family, but your brother-”

“He’s not my brother.”

“-Anton has been through and done something terrible to the city. I need to know everything you know.”

“You know, it’s only been two months since he was found at the surveillance company. My family’s been missing for two years.”

“As soon as you tell us your story, we’ll go back to the investigation on your wife.”

“Fine.”

 Chase was sitting at the police station, discussing a missing persons’ report for the eighth time in two months.

“They’ve been missing for a year and a half, sir. There must be a priority for that.” The officer sighed, running a hand through his hair.

“Mr. Brodes, we’ve been looking for years, and gotten nothing. They disappeared. Maybe it’s time to-”

“No, I refuse to believe they’re… that word. If they were, you would have found a record of that, wouldn’t you?”

“True, sir. Look, the man in charge of your case will be back tomorrow, why don’t you come back then?” Chase sighed in frustration, then nodded.

As he left the station, his phone began to play the tune of ‘Bad Case of Loving You’, signalling Henry was calling.

“What’s up, Hen?” The voice on the other end was shaky, a little confused, and strongly laced with German roots.

“You need to come back home. I think you should call Marvin on your way.”

When Chase arrived home, he saw Henry standing in the doorway to the kitchen, eyes trained on a person at the table.

“Who’s this?” Chase took his hat off and hung his wet coat on the coat hanger by the door.

“Did you not call Marvin?” Chase shook his head, trying to get the water off his hair.

“No reply. Where did Charlie Chaplin come from?”

“That’s the weird thing. He just appeared on the stairs when I came home. I thought maybe Marvin had something to do with it.” The doctor paused to consider something, then chuckled to himself.

“Actually, the weird thing is over here.” He led Chase to the foyer, turning on the light and pointing to the stairs. About halfway up, the pastel green paint had faded to monochrome, looking like a broken television set.

“Great, our newcomer drained the colours from our stairs.” Chase looked back at the kitchen, watching the visitor sip on tea.

“Dr. Schneep, I know you’re very busy, but I just need the full story.”

“I understand, Inspector, but my story does not have any connection to Anton.”

“It will help us understand Chase’s story.”

“Ah, I understand now. I shall tell you what I know.”

 It had been a long night at the surgery. Henry rubbed his eyes as he climbed into his car, yawning as he started up the engine.

As he drove home, he turned on the radio to listen to the news, shaking his head against the drowsiness. He bought a coffee from the drive-through café before parking in the front drive of the house. The mailbox was full, so Henry knew Chase was still out, looking for his missing family.

When he opened the front door, the smell of his grandparents’ fabric softener wafted out. He looked at his coffee, downing the final drops, then stepped inside.

A man stood on the stairs, the colours of his clothes and appearance bright against the monochrome of the wall and stairs. The intruder stared at him, blue eyes wide in fear.

“Who are you? How did you get inside?” Henry closed the door behind him, pulling his phone out and ready to call the police.

“No, please, do not call the authorities. I do not know how I got here. One minute I was climbing the stairs to my room, and the next I was here. I am just as confused as you are.” Henry lowered his arm, stepping forward to look at the intruder more closely.

“Come down those stairs. Let me put the kettle on.” He watched as the visitor walked down the stairs, walking into the kitchen as if he owned the place. The doctor put the kettle on, then stepped back outside to look at the stairs. It was as though someone had turned off the colours on that one patch of stair and wall. Chase is not going to like this.

He pulled out his phone again, calling his cousin’s number with shaky hands. When the vlogger answered, he told him to come home and call Marvin. After putting the phone down, Henry made tea for the visitor, and another cup of coffee for himself.

“What is your name?”

“Jameson. Jameson Jackson. My friends call me JJ.”

 “Can I have your name for the record?”

“Jameson Jackson.”

“Age?”

“Twenty eight.”

“What is your relation to the Brodes and Schneeple families?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think I’m related to them at all.”

 JJ whistled as he ran the duster along the shelf, sneezing as the dust flew everywhere.

His sister had gotten married over the weekend, and he was getting used to the new-found silence around the place. He still couldn’t play any records at full volume, because the walls were thin, and he hated that fact.

Having completed the cleaning downstairs, JJ picked up the basket of folded clothes and headed upstairs. The staircase was old, veneered wood that creaked on the fifth, tenth, and fifteenth step. He looked at the peeling yellow paint on each step as he manoeuvred the basket past the railings, making a mental note to repaint the whole staircase as soon as possible.

When he reached the dreaded tenth step, instead of a creak JJ heard mutterings echoing through his house. He strained his ears to listen, not quite understanding the dialect nor the language. He blinked, thinking his eyes had begun to play tricks on him as the colours began to wash out around the place, then dropped his basket as the world spun around him.

When at last he opened his eyes again, he was on the steps of his – no, someone else’s house. It looked like his own, but the house was painted pastel green instead of his custard-yellow, and questionable devices were set up everywhere. He looked at his feet, seeing that he was standing in a space on the stairs that had its colour drained from it.

He started as the door opened, revealing a man in a sharp suit, staring at him in shock and confusion. The man walked inside, taking something out, possibly a new-age device to call the authorities. JJ, fear coursing through his blood, pleaded with the man, telling him truthfully that he didn’t know how he got here.

Accepting an offer for tea, he showed himself into the kitchen, which obeyed the layout of his own house, and sat down.

“What is your name?” JJ bit his lip, unsure whether he should trust this man, but opened his mouth anyway.

“Jameson. Jameson Jackson. My friends call me JJ.”

 “Name.”

“Shut up. I’m concentrating.”

“Marvin, for once can your family actually do what I ask?”

“Nope.”

 Marvin’s newest grimoire arrived on his windowsill, wrapped in several layers of silk and brown paper. After Jackie and Anton left the house, he began to unwrap his new item. As the storm raged outside, Marvin prepared his ingredients to try yet another summoning spell.

He had been interested in advancing his necromancy skills to summon his mother and ask her about his family, and the suspiciously cheap pricing on the spell-book had made his plan easier to work on.

Carefully, he began to recite the spell, focusing on his mother: her appearance, her voice, the smell of her perfume. Then he began to think about his family tree, and how he knew next to nothing about it. He wondered if his mother knew her father, or even her grandfather. Suddenly, the pile of ingredients burst into flames, signalling the completion of his spell.

There was no sound outside the door. No smell of his mother’s perfume, no distant hum of her voice. Marvin put his items away, sighing in defeat. He had failed, for the first time in at least a decade. Disappointment made Marvin crawl into his bed and hide under the covers, ignoring the ringing phone and waiting for either Jackie or Anton to return home.

 “Name.”

“Robert Davies.”

“You say you were dead?”

“Yes.”

“And somehow you’re related to JJ and Marvin?”

“Maybe…”

 The storm was fierce outside the cemetery. At the top of a hill, isolated from other family members, a tombstone loomed. The name and dates had been worn off the surface, but everybody knew the grave had been made twenty years ago.

A bolt of lightning illuminated the stone surface, and the dirt before it shifted. As rain pelted down on the ground, white stumps began to emerge from the ground. Slowly, as if a plant was growing, the stumps grew longer, thinner, and eventually converged into a hand.

A large crack was heard in the distance, followed by a second bolt of lightning, splitting the tombstone into two. The hand continued to emerge, growing into an arm, a shoulder, a torso, and finally, a head.

The eyes were white and milky, blinking in the rain as the mouth opened, gasping for air. A second hand reached out of the ground, less intact than the first, with the forearm missing. As the figure pulled themselves from the ground, they noticed they also had a hole in their throat and a large hole on their left leg.