When you look back on everything that happened, it’s hard to pinpoint a beginning, or a moment where you could have turned aside. Everything feels out of order. Did it begin when you were a kid? When you learned their names, understood their warning? Or did it begin that day when Alex called you – called you – and breathlessly told you to meet them in the Physics building late one night?
You’re already in your pajamas, and grumpy about being disturbed halfway through your second episode of old school Doctor Who. “Can’t you just tell me about it over the phone?” you grumble.
“Absolutely not,” they whisper. “You have to come see this for yourself.”
The building is dim and echoey when you arrive, illuminated by the red glow of the emergency lights, and the occasional glow spilling out from under a closed lab door. Finally, you get to the office that Alex shares with three other student researchers, and with a furtive glance back and forth they pull you inside.
“Calm down, James Bond,” you quip, but Alex is serious. “I don’t know who’s watching,” they say. “So I’m erring on the side of caution.”
Once you’ve taken your coat off and sat down, they fill you in. They’ve been spending most of their research assistantship so far this term helping their supervisor go through old files: cabinet after cabinet of old lab notes, quizzes, and attendance sheets. They had just finished emptying out a dented brown metal filing cabinet, but they couldn’t get the bottom drawer to close. Finally, they found the culprit: an ancient spiral bound notebook with yellowing pages that had fallen behind the drawer and gotten stuck.
“It’s not just boring physics notes or whatever,” Alex whispers. “It’s some kind of journal. Of something weird.”
On the inside cover, in spidery handwriting, the owner has written “Property of Dr. Ellen Valentina. Confidential.”
You flip open the notebook at random.
October 9, 1975
I haven’t dared to tell anyone about the voice in my head; the voice that I somehow know is their voice. They don’t take me seriously enough as it is.
Sometimes, it’s just sounds: clicking, or distant music. Sometimes there are words, but the words feel all tangled and wrong, like talking to my aunt Mary after she had her stroke. Sometimes, like today, they just sent me a set of images.
I copied them down immediately, and have recreated my drawings below. I have no idea what to make of them.
Why did they choose me for this task?