SHE HATES YOU
Caleb knows it’s best to ignore the spiteful thing. It’s been spewing up hate messages since the second he laid eyes on it. For a noiseless object, it is terrifying. Inside it must churn with hot poison.
DREAMS YOU DEAD
Some of its threats and evils are in small cold letters, like it wants him to strain to read it. Others blaze large. If they were any hotter the window would melt and allow its anger to pour out into the world.
SHE KILLS AGAIN
He hates these messages the most, the ones that sound like it knows the future. He really hates that the future always sounds very bad for him.
KILLS YOU TODAY
Then acts as if it can read his mind, like it knows precisely what he’s thinking.
HA HA HA
He hates this thing. It’s been fifteen minutes and he wants to hurl it at the nearest wall and smash it to bits. Perhaps he will once he’s got what he needs.
WILL NEVER HAPPEN
‘Okay, so you can read my mind. So you must know everything about me, then.’ It doesn’t answer with words. A smile peels open, fat, rancid lips that part slightly to show jagged rock-teeth perfect for flesh-tearing. They bleed, those lips. Like the mouth has chewed itself. Or recently fed. Caleb slams the eight-ball on the floor, with enough force to bounce that foul mouth out of the screen. ‘I won’t put up with your crap! If you know everything about me then you must know that!’ He’s shouting; he’s got to cool it. He doesn’t want it to know that it’s got under his skin (but if it knows everything then it already knows that it has, but he won’t let it see, no, he can’t ever show it on his face), and he doesn’t want anyone hearing where he is. Anyone, or anything.
Huddled in a corner of the main hall, Caleb knows it’s madness to be here, and that’s exactly why he came. Nobody would think to look for him here. Nobody would believe he could be so reckless.
He can hardly believe it himself.
The murky window nearby isn’t easy to see out of, despite a hard rubbing with his sleeve, but at least it allows him to keep an eye out in case someone (thing) approaches. Plenty of space in this hall for escape too. Four sets of doors, lots of windows.
THEY ARE NEAR
‘They can be as near as they like, it doesn’t really matter if they don’t come in here, does it?’
THEY CAN HEAR
‘Then I’ll keep my voice down.’
NOT YOU. ME.
A blunt and horrible threat.
Caleb doesn’t know enough about this unpleasant ball, this haunted abomination that should not exist. Like everything else, he is too far into something he doesn’t understand.
STUPID LITTLE BOY
He would love to crack it open like a skull, spill its brains. ‘Say whatever you like, it doesn’t bother me.’
I CALL THEM
‘I don’t believe you. You’re just saying that.’
AM I REALLY?
Stalling. The idea comes to Caleb that bluntly. The eight-ball is stalling. It is distracting him and upsetting him and doing whatever it can to waste time and stop him asking his questions. Caleb needs to put up his shield, the one he uses when Dad (dear dead Dad) is at his worst, when Dad tells (told) him that he should be up in that graveyard instead of Mum, that he’s a waste of every last minute, that Dad doesn’t know why he should give time and money over to a boy he never wanted.
Dad might have done him one single favour. He’d given Caleb plenty of training in how to take torrents of crap and pretend he was still functioning fine.
‘If I ask a question, you have to tell the truth, right?’
SHE HATES YOU
‘Answer me properly. You can tell all the lies you want, but if I ask a direct question, do you have to tell the truth?’
A blank pause. Then, I ALWAYS TELL
This could be a part of its games.
‘Are you dead?’
LONG TIME DEAD
That gives Caleb a peculiar thrill, excitement twisted with horror. He’s having a conversation with a ghost. ‘How long?’
BEFORE YOU ALIVE
An answer that’s not quite an answer. He will have to be careful with this politician. ‘What’s your name?’
EIGHT IS NAME
NAME IS EIGHT
‘No, what’s your real name?’
A large question mark, flashing.
EIGHT IS NAME
NAME IS EIGHT
‘What was your name before you died?’
NAME WAS MINE
A feeling in Caleb’s gut. He peers out across the courtyards. There’s no one. A fine drizzle smatters the glass. ‘How long have you been in the ball?’
DO NOT UNDERSTAND
‘Okay… How long have you been Eight?’
TWO YEARS LONG
‘And Misha put you there?’
GIRL THE GIRL
This message flashes up repeatedly until Caleb says, ‘Alright, alright, I get it.’ He’s not sure why it didn’t occur to him until now. Some dumb part of him (the bigger part, he suspects) simply believed that Misha must have stumbled across the ball and decided to keep it. But she didn’t. She made it. She purposely made this strange and frightening creation.
If there is a God, thinks Caleb, would He allow this to exist?
HE DOESN’T CARE
Caleb chooses to ignore that. Perhaps there are some questions he really doesn’t want the answer to.
YES YOU DO
YOU ALL DO
More distractions, it’s all distractions with this insane ball.
‘What’s Misha doing?’
BUSY RIGHT NOW
Wrong question. Or rather, questions asked the wrong way. ‘What’s she up to at the graveyard?’
LOOKING FOR ME
Damn thing tells the truth, all right. It twists and turns to tell the truth it wants to.
SHE’S NOT HAPPY
Caleb has a vivid vision of Misha flipping her bedroom upside-down in the search for Eight. He’s not far wrong.
And something’s coming for him, but Eight won’t tell.